Дэвид Уоллес - Island of Fog and Death

Chen’s eyes went wide. His fingertip was missing. With a shout of anger he started ripping at the rocks, loosening and pulling them free, exposing a gap at the edge of the metal plate to see what was hiding behind. Suddenly, something long and oily black lashed out and whacked him the face, tearing away chunks of flesh across his cheekbones and nose, missing his eyes by a fraction of a centimetre. He pulled backwards with a cry of pain. The thing darted out again, aiming for his eyes, and he tried to move out of the way. It was only then that he realised that he had undone the rope at his waist – and forgotten to re-tie it. He swayed backwards, tried to recover, felt one foot slip off the cliff, and with a scream of horror felt himself falling.

The last image in his mind was of a slimy black limb, lined with needle-like spikes, snapping out and into his eyes, and then he fell. He was blind before he hit the rocks beneath the cliff. There was a brief burst of agony as ribs crumpled and his lungs collapsed, and then nothing.

John Willems had spent most of the morning cleaning out the chicken run and hen house, and the afternoon fruitlessly trying to back-track the predators that had wiped out his chickens back to their lair. It was late in the day before he had a chance to check on the goats up in the top field. There would not be enough daylight to do much more than check and renew salt-licks, and assess the integrity of the fencing, but it would be a couple of jobs he would not need to do in the morning. So he put half a dozen salt blocks into a reusable plastic shopping bag and trudged up the hill in the direction of the north cliffs.

John walked the perimeter of the top field first. The field was surrounded by a simple smooth wire fence, this being a cheap and effective way of keeping his animals from wandering. The island had no resident predators that might call for wire mesh or barbed wire to keep them out. Checking the fence line was just a matter of making sure there were no breaks, and that the wires remained tensioned.

The one exception was along the north side of the field, where it paralleled the public footpath. The tourist board had put up a wooden post-and-rail fence between the footpath and the cliff edge, and had subsidised John to edge his property with the same. When he walked the north edge, John looked out for breaks, of course, but also for tourists’ litter and lost property that could be harmful to his goats. On this occasion, John spotted a backpack on the cliff side of the footpath, and a rope tied to a fence post. He climbed over both fences and carefully approached the cliff edge. Leaning over, he looked to see if he could see the owner of bag and rope, but could see nothing but the rope disappearing into the mist that seemed to cling to the cliff every day just lately. He gave the rope an experimental tug, and found that the other end was unsecured, and nothing – or no-one – was there.

He called out, “Anyone there? Hello?” There was no answer. John felt uneasy. The rope was at the point where the cliff face had crumbled away the other week, and he wondered if someone had tried to climb down but had fallen. He could think of no good reason why that should be, but the abandoned back pack and rope were suggestive. He resolved to call the police and let them know, as soon as he got back home this evening. He opened the backpack to see if there was any identification, but the pack was empty but for a flashlight, an empty plastic water bottle and some scrunched up sandwich wrappers. He shrugged to himself, and moved on.

After the best part of an hour, John had completed the circuit around the fence line, and had not seen any sign of the walker who had left his gear behind on the path. As he pushed through his gate into the field, it suddenly occurred to him that he had not seen much of the goats either. Normally they would come over to greet him, curious to see if had brought anything for them, and follow him around for a while. But this evening, they had remained in a clump near the centre of the field. That was unusual. The sense of unease he had experienced on the clifftop came back to him, as he gazed across the field in the dimming light at his goats.

He strode across the field towards the animals. As he came closer, it looked as if most of the goats were lying down. That was not right. He quickened his pace. “No, no, no,” he moaned aloud, and started running. The dark coats of the prone animals were stained even darker, and on some of them he could even see exposed bone. He sank to his knees next to the first goat he came to, but it was already clear that the animal was dead. Something had been eating his livestock.

“Bastards! Bastards!” he shouted. “Damn you, you bastards!”

He ran his hands over the dead goat, trying to work out what kind of animal could have killed it. He stood, tears running down his cheeks and surveyed the ruin of his flock.

“What the hell did this?” he asked aloud, as if the surviving animals would know.

The half dozen animals still on their feet made their way to him, but he could see they were struggling. They had wounds across their bellies, and one of them, trying to reach him, kept stumbling over its own intestines. He dropped to his knees once more and ran his hands comfortingly over the goat’s ears and muzzle. He stopped and looked down at his hand, uncomprehending. It was bloodstained. The goat had no visible wounds around its head, yet its muzzle…

The goat lunged forward and bit his shoulder.

“What the hell?” John jumped to his feet and rubbed his shoulder. “You bit me, you daft beast! That was sore! What…!”

The goat pounced again, knocking him to the ground. As he tried to stand, two more goats loomed over him. One of them darted forward to seize the skin of his stomach between its teeth, and shook its head vigorously, wrenching out a mouthful of John’s flesh and clothing. It began chewing and John began screaming. The other two joined in, biting at him.

“This isn’t happening…!”

The first goat leaned over him, and vomited. His face was covered in stinking stomach contents and bile, running into eyes and nose. He gasped for air and something squirmed into his open mouth. His eyes bulged as whatever it was wormed its way into his airways. He felt it tear open the back of his throat, and penetrate upwards. Unable to breath, he gagged and choked and struggled – but only briefly. He sank into merciful unconsciousness as something burrowed upwards, into his brain, and started to feed.

Some hours later, what used to be John Willems clumsily rose to its feet and experimentally took a few awkward steps, then fell down. It tried again. And again. And then set off, stumbling, down the hill.

A pair of camper vans threaded their way through the twisting lanes into Arwensmouth, and stopped side by side opposite the Arwensmouth Inn. Maxwell climbed down from the passenger side of the leading vehicle and stretched. Tori stayed where she was, behind the wheel, gazing at the front of the Inn. A bench seat to one side of the Inn’s front door was occupied by a stocky man with a shoulder-length white hair and a bushy white beard. But Tori was not looking at him. Her attention had been caught by the large dog that sat between his feet. She looked at the dog with outright astonishment, and then the dog looked up at her and fixed its gaze on her eyes. It looked at her for a minute, then it glanced back at the white bearded man to make sure his attention was elsewhere. It faced her again, and twitched one eye in what was unmistakably a wink.