Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

His dad hopped in behind so that his legs, dark with thick hair, went either side of Frank. Water swilled crisply in the hull of the surf ski, turning warm with being near their bums. He wondered if he would get away with peeing, but thought he’d best hold it.

They lapped out to the point where the bottom was sandy and deep, and the polystyrene ball painted with the name COLLARD floated. He’d watched his dad stroke out with it the day before, seen the hooked skeleton of a blackfish dark against the sky, and he’d been sulky then that he hadn’t taken him along too. But here he was for the good bit and heat rose in his chest at the thought of the two of them on their own, bringing in the food. The sky was fully light now, but still a pale impression of the day ahead. Even the sea was a calm version of itself. It rocked them gently in their long boat, there were no rips to steer against. The wind was a soft hooting breath.

‘Righto, let’s see what we’ve got here. If it’s a shark, you knock it on the head.’ He’d nodded seriously as his dad began pulling up the rope. Once the slack had been taken, his dad pulled hard on it, frowning, the tendons at his neck and the muscles round his shoulders pulsing.

‘Is it stuck?’ he asked, worried the ski would upturn.

‘I reckon she might be, mate. Must be under a shelf rock or something. Hold on, we’ll come about and try a different angle.’ They let the tide move them gently in an arc, his dad pulling all the time.

‘Crikey! She’s a bugger,’ his dad muttered under his breath. And then a little give. Then another and he began to pull, red-faced, hand over hand, straining, with his teeth set and his arms shaking.

‘She’s coming up, mate, bit by bit — we’ll have caught on an old anchor or something.’

After what seemed like ages they saw the trap down in the water, full and black. ‘What is it?’ asked Frank, unable to keep the sense of dread out of his voice.

‘Dunno, mate, but she’s sure as hell something.’

As the trap came up at the side of the boat, his dad let it hang a little, so the seawater drained out and it became light enough to hold up and get a proper look at.

‘By crikey,’ whispered his father. ‘Get a load of that, Franko boy.’ Suspended over the side of the boat was a cage of crabs, a mess of bright blue swimming legs and the ticking noise of their breath, all of them muscling about, too many for the cage. ‘That’s at least sixteen, seventeen crabs in there, Franko.’ He held the trap over the side, the great weight gone. They both stared at it, wondering how on earth to get it back in to dry land.

Frank floated on his back, remembering how the place had stunk the good stink of boiled crab for days and the noise the shells made when they tipped a bag of them back in the sea. He smiled at the memory and tilted his head back a little so the water could get at the lids of his eyes.

Something bumped his arm.

He raised his head and saw that he had drifted clear out of the bay and there was something in the water with him. After swallowing a mouthful, he felt for all his limbs and found them still there. A fin appeared a few feet away, not a huge fin, but still a fin and it didn’t look like a reef shark. It hung in the water, oddly still, waiting for him to make the first move.

‘Shit,’ he said and he kept on saying it to keep himself calm. He tried to keep his legs in a steady stroke, but they kept shaking and flinching of their own accord. The main thing, regardless of the shark, was to get out of the rip that was taking him further and further out. He’d been caught in currents before and he knew to swim the horizon, not fight against it. He rounded the point of the bay and swam and swam, the sound of his breath like wind through a torn plastic bag. The shark kept with him, an arm’s length away to the side, and he tried to keep it in the corner of his eye, tried not to turn his head to look at it, which slowed him down.

Then the fin went under.

With every kick he imagined plunging his foot right into its mouth, having his feet taken, the sharp white bone at the ankle, bleeding to death. He passed through a cold current and thought he was being swallowed whole. His guts moved inside him and he thought, Don’t piss. God, don’t shit . As he gained on the land, he fixed on the dunes, thinking about the solidness of it for his feet, and about running up into them and rolling naked in the dry yellow sand.

Paddling hard, he came into the shallows, but it didn’t leave him alone. When he could touch the bottom with his flat foot, it darted at him, sending bow waves at his chest, coming for him and veering away at the last second, chasing him, herding. When he stood, he could see the back of it, and it made him fall over, get up again and fall over and get up. It was bigger than he’d thought, as long as he was, but worse were the dark streaks across the pale fish, the boxed head of a tiger shark. He ran in the water, falling every second step, choking on salt; his hand was speared by a sharp shell or point of coral, but it didn’t put a beat in his progress. He ran out of the water and didn’t stop until he was far up the beach, a hooting noise coming from his chest. Turning and flopping on to the ground, he watched the fin torpedo up the bay and out into the open sea.

‘Fuck me,’ he said, wiping his face over and over with his hands, standing up naked and bleeding with a sandy bottom.

‘Fucking well fuck me.’

The gravelled road leading into the village was long and black and straight, and the only saving grace was that it was too dark to see to the end of it. The clouds hid the moon and there was no light from the village, nothing to see, no way of knowing if your eyes were open or closed, and Leon was alone.

They were expecting baddies. Most likely they would come up the road, not guessing that they had got there first. Unless they’d been warned. The rest of the section were dotted about the place, with orders not to smoke, though he suspected these would be ignored. He wished he had some left to pass the time, a tiny light might give some perspective to the black. Might ward off the mosquitoes, might take his mind off the thing that sat next to him in the dark. He held up his camera and took a shot into the black. It had been fine when they were all together, when you could see other people and think about other people, but here, alone, he thought about those three heartbeats, holding the gaze of that first boy he had killed. The feel of the thing crawling up inside him. The hole his gun had dug between his legs, the sick feeling when the barrel jammed. The dead.

The Vietnamese believed in ghosts. He did not, but he was in their country now and you couldn’t help but feel it, alone in the black. He touched his eyes to make sure that they were open. The skin round his sockets was hot and dry, and the coolness from his fingertips was good. It would have been wonderful to lie down. He thought about the yellow print on Lena Cray’s dress, how it snagged over her belly.

In an instant something changed. He stayed deadly still, trying to locate what it was. When he realised he felt all of hell flatten him and horror tightened his throat. He had been asleep and something had woken him. He’d let the buggers in, they’d walked right past him, they were in there now slitting throats. He didn’t move. He barely breathed. He was sure at that moment in the black that someone held a gun to his face. He felt breath on his cheek, he would hear the click of a barrel. Then calmness. Go on then , he thought, go on then . But nothing. The breath on his cheek was gone. Perhaps it had never been there. His eyebrows arched high, he watched for the first wash of light as it turned the sky. He saw the sun rise and wondered if it would make him cry. The grass was wet from dew and between his tripod and gun a spider had strung a web, and water caught the sun as he breathed the dawn deeply.