Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

The man was naked, and incomplete. Blood-stained bandages covered the stump of his left hand and right foot. More bandages were wrapped around his mid-riff and upper thighs to create a sort of nappy, the front of which, where the bulge of his genitals should be, was dark with blood. The sheet beneath him was similarly blood-stained—sopping in places. Clearly the man’s horrific wounds had been bandaged not in the hope that he might recover from them, but simply so that he wouldn’t die from them too soon.

Sickened with horror and pity, Skelton returned his attention to the man’s face. The man opened his mouth and gave another gurgling, inarticulate groan, and now Skelton could see why he had been unable to form words, to call for help.

His tongue had been cut out.

Skelton opened his mouth to offer words of comfort, of reassurance, but before he could say anything the man suddenly reached out with his remaining hand—his right—and grabbed Skelton’s wrist. Skelton’s instinctive response was to jerk away with a cry of revulsion, but he forced himself to remain where he was, and even reached out to place his own right hand over the man’s.

And then he froze. He stared at the hand that was gripping his wrist. As a boy he had fallen from a tree and sustained a gash on his hand that had eventually become a ridge of white scar tissue, shaped like a question mark, beneath the knuckle of his third finger. Impossibly the man had an identical scar in the same place. Slowly, with a sense of dawning realization, Skelton raised his head and peered at the man’s face once again.

Because of the bandage wrapped around the man’s head and eye, Skelton hadn’t seen it at first, but now it was so evident that it couldn’t be unseen . The man’s face might be pale and etched with pain, his lips and chin flecked with blood from his mutilated tongue, but Skelton was in no doubt whatsoever that the man in the bed was him; that he and this poor creature were one and the same.

He could see from the expression in the man’s remaining eye that he knew Skelton had finally realised the truth—and not only that, but that he was grateful for the fact. The victim opened his mouth and gave another gurgling groan, and this time Skelton heard an appeal in it, a plea—not for help, but for something else, something more merciful than mercy itself.

All his life Skelton had shunned responsibility, and even now his instinct was to fetch someone who might be better equipped to deal with this situation: DI Parr or Mrs. Derry.

But there was no one better equipped. This was his life. His decision. And it was time that he finally faced up to that.

Carefully, gently, he slid the pillow from underneath the man’s head.

“It’s all right,” he told him. “The pain will be over soon. I promise.”

Then, with love, he placed the pillow over the man’s face and pressed down as hard as he could.

As kids we’d dare each other to go further and further into the dunes each day. You couldn’t come back until you found something, some .proof you were there: A cigarette butt, a page from a book, a shoe, a ribbon. We always found something. I cheated often, tucking things into my swimming costume so I wouldn’t have to travel too far. I didn’t want to stumble on a dead boy, but I didn’t want anyone saying I couldn’t do it because I was a girl.

We’d been going to this beach every year since I was seven. There were four houses lined up, with pathways of sand between each one. The houses were raised, enough so we could squeeze under there on really hot days and drink lemonade and eat the icecreams our dad bought for us from the van.

We were called House 1.

All four houses were identical; painted blue, full of glass, open and airy. It was like a second home to us and the families in the other houses our second neighbours.

Good and bad.

Four houses, four boat houses, four families, lined up.

From the beach you’d think isn’t that nice . You’d think lovely families getting along .

That’s what you’d think.

Some years there were dozens of us there. Other years there were just a few. It was always a mix of fun, boredom, fear, and fast food. Sun and sea. Just the smell of suntan lotion can evoke those early years, when things were simple and your only responsibility was to wash the sand off your feet before you went inside.

We got ours cheap because those two boys were murdered in the dunes and no one wanted their kids nearby. Dad was a cop and taught caution and self-defence; no one would get hold of us. But the dunes still terrified us. The way you were blocked off, alone. No one could hear you.

We’d tell stories of murderers and lost boys, of ghosts that made you blind, or made you so sad you wanted to go to sleep forever. Jason thought he knew more than the rest of us because his dad found the bodies, but we’d all heard the story. His dad would tell us if he was drunk on the beach and none of the mums were there to stop him. I first heard the story when I was 8.

Jason and his dad were House 2. He always told it the same way but each time, as I grew older and more worldly, I understood more.

At 8, all that made sense were the boys and their bodies and the dunes.

The Vietnam War was on, but he didn’t go, even though he was 20, nearly 21. He’d dropped out of Uni, finding himself, he said. His eyesight was poor and he was woefully overweight, like Jason. Cruel children (me. My brothers Bernard and Gerard) called them The Beach Balls. I loved my brothers and did everything they did. Bernard, the oldest, known for acting without thinking which wasn’t fair because really he thought too much. And Gerard, only 18 months older than me, was funny as fuck from the moment he realised sticking his toes in his mouth made people laugh.

Jason’s dad didn’t care who listened. He told the story word for word, every time. “There were three of us that day. Me, my best mate Nick, and Kate.” Kate was House 3. “I wouldn’t normally have got a girl like Kate. She thought of me as a brother. A nuisance. But so many of them were shipped out. We had what? Three mates die over there. Two of her brothers were there. They were fit. Not shit like me. Shitness runs in our family, sorry, Jason. So I was 20, she was 17, and she’d barely have a bar of me. She was hanging out though because my mate Nick was heading over and that made him a hero. I tried to get him to do the conscientious objector thing, keep him home. But he wouldn’t. And he was fit, strong. Kate liked him but she was too girl-next-door for him. Too boring. We’d been smoking, but not much, and we’d had a few beers. The beach was crowded and Nick and I were getting ‘the look’. People gave it to you when they saw you having fun. Because we had mates. They had sons over there fighting, and we were having fun. So you got the look.

“We piled a few more beers and a ton of ice in an esky (even at the beach you gotta have cold beer) and Kate chucked in some leftover sausages and we headed out into the dunes where no one went.

“There were ghosts in there or kiddy-fiddlers, depending on who warned you, so people kept away.

“We went in. We walked until we couldn’t hear voices anymore then plunked ourselves down. Kate had a towel and Nick sat on it with her, so I sat on the esky, facing the direction of the water.

“At first I thought it was a pink crab. Four legs poking out of the sand. A pretty big crab. Nick and Kate were sitting close and that shat me so I thought I’d dig out the crab, drop it in between them.

“I scrabbled in the sand, but realised quickly it wasn’t a crab.

“It was a hand.