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

There was a downed and decaying tree-trunk lying in the leafy undergrowth that momentarily and ridiculously put Carol in mind of a park bench. But she really wasn’t in the mood to sit and relax and it wasn’t like there was, you know, a boating lake to look at the moon in or anything. So she kept moving, across the clearing, past the downed trunk, and stopped only when the voice spoke from behind her.

“What’s your rush, sweetheart?”

Carol turned back. Sitting perched on the bench-like trunk was a sailor. He was dressed in a square-neck deck-shirt and bell-bottomed pants and Carol might have taken a moment to wonder if sailors still dressed like that if she hadn’t been too busy being surprised just to see him at all. He was sitting in profile to her, one leg on the ground, the other arched up on the trunk and he didn’t turn to face her fully, perhaps because he was concentrating on rolling a cigarette.

“Ready-mades are easier,” the sailor said. “But I like the ritual – opening the paper, laying in the tobacco, rolling it up. Know what I mean?”

“I don’t smoke,” said Carol, which wasn’t strictly true, but who the fuck was he to deserve the truth.

“You chew?” he asked.

“Chew what?”

“Tobacco.”

“Eugh. No.”

The sailor chanted something rhythmic in response, like he was singing her a song but knew his limitations when it came to carrying a tune:

“ Down in Nagasaki ,

Where the fellas chew tobaccy

And the women wicky-wacky-woo .”

Carol stared at him. Confused. Not necessarily nervous. Not yet. She gestured out at the woods. “Where’d you come from?” she said.

“Dahlonega, Georgia. Little town northeast of Atlanta. Foot of the Appalachians.”

That wasn’t what she’d meant and she started to tell him so, but he interrupted.

“Ever been to Nagasaki, honeybun?”

“No.”

“How about Shanghai?”

The sailor was still sitting in profile to her. Talking to her, but staring straight ahead into the woods and beyond. He didn’t wait for a reply. “Docked there once,” he said. “Didn’t get shore-leave. Fellas who did told me I missed something, boy. Said there were whores there could practically tie themselves in knots. Real limber. Mmm. A man likes that. Likes ’em limber.”

Carol was very careful not to say anything at all. Not to move. Not to breathe.

“Clean, too,” said the sailor. “That’s important to me. Well, who knows? Maybe I’ll get back there one of these days. ’Course, once they get a good look at me, I might have to pay extra.” He turned finally to face her. “Whaddaya think?”

Half of his face was bone-pale and bloated, as if it had drowned years ago and been underwater ever since. His hair hung dank like seaweed and something pearl-like glinted in the moist dripping blackness of what used to be an eye-socket.

“Jesus Christ!” Carol said, frozen in shock, watching helplessly as the sailor put his cigarette in his half-ruined mouth, lit it, and inhaled.

“Calling on the Lord for salvation,” he said. “Good for you. Might help.” Smoke oozed out from the pulpy white flesh that barely clung to the bone beneath his dead face. “Might not.”

He rose to his feet and grinned at her. “Useta chase pigs through the Georgia pines, sweet thing,” he said, flinging his cigarette aside. “Let’s see if you’re faster than them little squealers.”

And then he came for her.

“I was a lot faster, though,” said Carol. “But it still took me ten minutes to lose him.”

“Fuck, Carol,” said Michael. “That wasn’t funny.”

“I didn’t say it was funny. I said it was weird. Remember?”

Michael turned to look at her and she tilted her face to look up at his, dark eyes glinting, adorably proud of herself. They’d walked nearly a full circuit of the lake now, neither of them even thinking to branch off in the direction of the park’s northern gate and the way home.

“Well, it was weird, all right,” Michael said. “Creepy ghost sailor. Pretty good.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Turns out there was a ship went down there in the Second World War. All hands lost.”

“Went down in the woods. That was a good trick.”

“It wasn’t the woods . Didn’t I tell you that? It was the beach. That’s where it all happened.”

“Was it Redondo?”

“The fuck’s Redondo ?” she said, genuinely puzzled.

“It’s a beach. In America. I’ve heard of it. It’s on that Patti Smith album.”

“Oh, yeah. No. This wasn’t in America. It was in Cornwall.” She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. Had to be Cornwall because of the rock pool.”

“You didn’t say anything about a rock pool.”

“I haven’t told you yet,” she said, exasperated. “God, you’re rubbish.”

Michael laughed, even though something else had just hit him. He was walking on a moonlit night alone with a beautiful girl and it apparently wasn’t occurring to him to try anything. He hadn’t even put his arm around her, for Christ’s sake. Terry and Kirk would give him such shit for this when he told them. He wondered for the first time if that was something Carol knew, if that was what had always been behind her stories, why she found them, why she told them, like some instinctive Scheherazade keeping would-be lovers at bay with narrative strategies. He felt something forming in him, a kind of sadness that he couldn’t name and didn’t understand.

“Is everything all right, Carol?” he asked, though he couldn’t say why.

“Well, it is now ,” she said, deaf to the half-born subtext in his question. “I got away. I escaped. But that spoils the story, dickhead. You’ve got to hear what happened first.”

The park was silver-grey in the light from the moon. He wondered what time it was. “The rock pool,” he said.

“Exactly,” she said, pleased that he was paying attention.

She hadn’t seen it at first. Had kept moving along the deserted beach until the sandy shore gave way to rocky cave-strewn outcrops from the cliffs above the coastline. It was only when she clambered over an algae- and seaweed-coated rock wall that she found it. Orphaned from the sea and held within a natural basin formation, the pool was placid and still and ringed by several large boulders about its rim. It was about twenty feet across and looked to be fairly deep.

On one of the boulders, laid out as if waiting for their owner, were some items of clothing. A dress, a pair of stockings, some underwear. Carol looked from them out to the cool inviting water of the pool. A head broke surface as she looked, and a woman started swimming toward the rock where her clothes were. Catching sight of Carol, she stopped and trod water, looking at her suspiciously. “What are you doing?” she said. “Are you spying?” She was older than Carol, about her mum’s age maybe, a good-looking thirty-five.

“No, I’m not,” Carol said. “Why would I be spying?”

“You might be one of them,” the woman said.

“One of who?”

The woman narrowed her eyes and looked at Carol appraisingly. “You know who,” she said.

“No, I don’t,” Carol said. “And I’m not one of anybody. I was with some friends. We went to France. Just got back. The boat’s down there on the beach.”

“They’ve all got stories,” the woman said. “That’s how they get you.”

“Who?! Stop talking shit, willya? I –” Carol bit her tongue.

For the first time, the woman smiled. “Are you moderating your language for me?” she said. “That’s adorable.”

Carol felt strangely flustered. Was this woman flirting with her?