Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

“Then I ran all the way to town. We never kept a horse here, Charlie didn’t like them. The strangest thing was this sensation I kept having, this feeling that I’d gotten lost. It was impossible; that path out there was well-traveled in those days, and even now, you had no trouble, did you? But I couldn’t feel my skin. Or . . . it was as though I had come out of it. There was snow and sand flying all around, wind in the dunes. So cold. My Charlie out there. I remember thinking, This is what the Bruxsa feels like. This is why she torments travelers. This is why she feeds . You know, at some point, I thought maybe I’d become her.”

Pursing his lips, Selkirk stirred from the daze that had settled over him. “Brucka?”

“ Bruxsa . It is like . . . a banshee? Do you know the word? A ghost, but not of anyone. A horrid thing all its own.”

Was it his imagination, or had the dark outside deepened toward evening? If he didn’t get this finished, neither one of them would make it out of here tonight. “Mrs Marchant, perhaps we could continue this on the way back to town.”

Finally, as though he’d slapped her, Mrs Marchant blinked. “What?”

“Mrs Marchant, surely you understand the reason for my coming. We’ll send for your things. You don’t have to leave today, but wouldn’t that be easiest? I’ll walk with you. I’ll make certain—”

“When I finally reached Winsett,” Mrs Marchant said, her stare returning as that peculiar, distant smiled played across her mouth, “I went straight for the first lit window I saw. Selkirk’s. The candle-maker. Your uncle.”

Selkirk cringed, remembering those hard, overheated hands smashing against the side of his skull.

“He was so kind,” she said, and his mouth quivered and fell open as she went on. “He rushed me inside. It was warm in his shop. At the time, it literally felt as though he’d saved my life. Returned me to my body. I sat by his fire, and he raced all over town through the blizzard and came back with whalers, sailing men. Charlie’s father, and the Kendalls’ older brother. There were fifteen of them, at least. Most set out immediately on horseback for the point. Your uncle wrapped me in two additional sweaters and an overcoat, and he walked all the way back out here with me, telling me it would be all right. By the time we reached the lighthouse, he said, the sailors would already have figured a way to get the boys off that sandbar and home.”

To Selkirk, it seemed this woman had reached into his memories and daubed them with colors he knew couldn’t have been there. His uncle had been kind to no one. His uncle had hardly spoken except to complete business. The very idea of his using his shop fire to warm somebody, risking himself to rouse the town to some wealthy playboy’s rescue . . .

But of course, by the time Selkirk had come here, the town was well on its way to failing, and his aunt had died in some awful, silent way no one spoke about. Maybe his uncle had been different, before. Or maybe, he thought with a sick quivering deep in his stomach, he was just an old lecher, on top of being a drunk.

“By the time we got back here, it was nearly dusk,” Mrs Marchant said. “The older Kendall and four of the sailors had already tried four different times to get the rowboat away from shore and into the waves. They were all tucked inside my house, now, trying to stave off pneumonia.

“ ‘Tomorrow,’ one of the sailors told me. ‘Tomorrow, please God, if they can just hold on. We’ll find a way to them.’

“And right then, Mr Selkirk. Right as the light went out of that awful day for good, the snow cleared. For one moment. And there they were.”

A single tear crept from the lashes of her right eye. She was almost whispering, now. “It was like a gift. Like a glimpse of him in heaven. I raced back outside, called out, leapt up and down, we all did, but of course they couldn’t hear, and weren’t paying attention. They were scrambling all over the deck. I knew right away which was Charlie. He was in the bow, all bundled up in a hat that wasn’t his and what looked like three or four coats. He looked like one of my nuns, Mr Selkirk.” She grinned again. “The one with the bandeau that hides her face? I was holding her in my lap before. I made her in memory of this one moment.”

Selkirk stared. Was the woman actually celebrating this story?

“I could also see the Kendall boys’ hair as they worked amidships. So red, like twin suns burning off the overcast.

“ ‘Bailing,’ Charlie’s father told me. ‘The ship must be taking on water. They’re trying to keep her where she is.’ ”

Again, Mrs Marchant’s smile slid, but didn’t vanish entirely. “I asked how long they could keep doing that. But what I really wondered was how long they’d already been at it. Those poor, beautiful boys.

“Our glimpse lasted two minutes. Maybe even less. I could see new clouds rising behind them. Like a sea-monster rearing right out of the waves. But at the last, just before the snow and the dark obliterated our sight of them, they all stopped as one, and turned around. I’m sorry, Mr Selkirk.”

She didn’t wipe her face, and there weren’t any tears Selkirk could see. She simply sat in her chair, breathing softly. Selkirk watched her with some relief.

“I remember the older Kendall boy standing beside me,” she finally said. “He was whispering. ‘Aw, come on boys. Get your gear on: The Kendalls, you see . . . they’d removed their coats. And I finally realised what it meant, that I could see their hair. They hadn’t bothered with their hats, even though they’d kept at the bailing. Remember, I’ve been around sailors all my life, Mr Selkirk. All the men in my family were sailors, long before they came to this country. My father had been whaling here when he sent for us. So I knew what I was seeing.”

“And what was that?”

“The Kendalls had given up. Less than 100 yards from shore, they’d given up. Or decided that they weren’t going to make it through the night. Either rescue would come before dawn, or it would no longer matter. The ship would not hold. Or the cold would overwhelm them. So they were hastening the end, one way or another.

“But not Charlie. Not my Charlie. He didn’t jump in the air. He just slumped against the railing. But I know he saw me, Mr Selkirk. I could feel him. Even under all those hats. I could always feel him. Then the snow came back. And night fell.

“The next time we saw them, they were in the rigging.”

Silently, Selkirk gave up the idea of escaping Winsett until morning. The network of functioning lights and functional keepers the Service had been toiling so hard to establish could wait one more winter evening.

“This was midday, the second day. That storm was a freak of nature. Or perhaps not natural at all. How can that much wind blow a storm nowhere? It was as though the blizzard itself had locked jaws on those boys – on my boy – and would not let go. The men who weren’t already racked by coughs and fever made another five attempts with the rowboat, and never got more than fifteen feet from shore. The ice in the air was like arrows raining down.

“Not long after the last attempt, when almost everyone was indoors and I was rushing about making tea and caring for the sick and trying to shush Luis, who had been barking since dawn, I heard Charlie’s father cry out and hurried outside.

“I’d never seen light like that, Mr Selkirk, and I haven’t since. Neither snow nor wind had eased one bit, and the clouds hadn’t lifted. But there was the ship again, and there were our boys. Up in the ropes, now. The Kendalls had their hats back on and their coats around them, tucked up tight together with their arms through the lines. Charlie had gone even higher, crouching by himself, looking down at the brothers or maybe the deck. I hoped they were talking to each other, or singing, anything to keep their spirits up and their breath in them. Because the ship . . . have you ever seen quicksand, Mr Selkirk? It was almost like that. This glimpse lasted a minute, maybe less. But in that time, the hull dropped what looked like another full foot underwater. And that was the only thing we saw move.”