Lurker

by Gary Fry

  8

  When her husband arrived home, she fell into his arms.

  He’d got back early, surprising her, and although he’d worn a familiar fraught expression, as if the world and its meanest denizens were perched on his shoulders, she’d wasted no time in running to him, in the hope he’d support her in the way she’d craved since…since…well, for a long time now.

  “Oh, Harry, Harry,” she cried, nuzzling her face into the junction formed by a shoulder and his neck. He smelled of strong aftershave, as if he’d added this during the day…but of course he had clients to see, folk to deceive with oily banter.

  “Hey, hey, what’s the matter, Meg?” He pushed her away, but not unkindly. He’d never been the most affectionate person, except for when she’d consented to his advances in the dark. Nevertheless, he held her then, at arm’s length, his big hands gripping each of her biceps. “Slow down…take deep breaths…and…and tell me about it.”

  If he sounded apprehensive, it was because of the distress his wife of fifteen years was clearly suffering. When she didn’t immediately respond, he gripped more firmly, shaking her a little, and this, overly forceful though it initially seemed, had the desired impact. Words were jerked out of her, like stones falling from the mouth of a mine.

  “I’ve been having bad dreams,” she said, tears muffling her phrasing, as if she were buried underground. “Some were about you, Harry…and some about our…our…” She hesitated, drew breath, and then continued. “All those poor people…and their jobs…”

  “Sorry,” he replied, his tone sharpening. “Is this about me and what I’m doing at work?”

  “What…do you mean?”

  “I’ve already explained. Redundancies have to be made. It’s all right for you, out of the business world now. But you seem to have forgotten that sometimes tough decisions have to be implemented.”

  She looked at him, still sobbing. “Harry, how can you think that…that any of this is about you?”

  “You just said it was.”

  He sounded as paranoid as she’d once been, and that disturbed her. She tried reassuring him, because that was what she’d always done, ever since they’d met. “I was talking about…about…Oh, I don’t know. I’m confused. Help me, Harry. Support me.”

  But he only pulled away. “That’s all I ever seem to do lately, isn’t it? I mean, I agreed to come and live out here, because I’d hope that would put an end to…to…well, to whatever’s bothering you.”

  She felt as if something had just reached inside her with unforgiving tentacles, yanking out her guts to feed upon. “Whatever’s bothering me?” she repeated, unable to believe what her husband had just said. “You mean a little detail like…well, like losing my baby?” After stepping up close to shout, she added, “Losing our baby.”

  Harry struggled to meet her gaze, simply paced aside and snatched up the newspaper from the coffee table beside the couch. “Yes, yes, I know,” he replied, as if his grief could be contained by trivial distraction. Indeed, moments later, he started reading the newspaper.

  Everything Meg had been through the last few days seemed to merge in her mind, forming another version of that hideous creature she’d both read about and possibly brushed up against during her walk this afternoon. Since then, she’d been curled up in the armchair with the front door locked. She’d made neither an evening meal nor cleaned the house in advance of her husband’s return. Maybe that was why Harry was unsympathetic: after another long day in the office, delivering tough news to colleagues, he’d be hungry and have expected his wife to have fulfilled her half of the tacit deal they’d recently forged. If he was now earning their keep, he expected a few home comforts without complications.

  That had struck Meg as fair, even though accepting it had meant sharing his monetary mind-set. That was simply the way Harry thought, investments leading to returns, while ensuring he acquired all he deserved. Meg assumed such reasoning lay at the heart of all successful marriages. Quid pro quo. Fundamentally a business arrangement. Romance built on firm foundations, like a fine house in a stable lot.

  Nevertheless, she thought there was more to it than this. A relationship didn’t involve only practical support; it needed emotional nurturing, too. She and Harry had been through a terrible time, and the problem was that they’d never talked about it. The sad truth was that he hadn’t wanted to.

  No wonder she’d been going quietly mad these last few months. And was that really the extent of her problem? Those handprints outside, her unsettling nightmares, the outlandish story from some anonymous local historian…Was this all suggestive nonsense, with no more basis in reality than the perverted imaginings of Hollywood screenwriters?

  Harry had yet to switch on the TV (as was his wont most evenings), but was now fully engaged with the newspaper. That was when Meg remembered the missing woman and decided to mention her, as a way of reestablishing their connection without losing track of what they’d been discussing earlier.

  She said, “Have you read the article about the missing woman?”

  Meg pictured pale hands with purple fingernails reaching over the edge of an alum-scattered cliff. Then a flesh-bare head rose up to separate them, its eyes and the tongue lolling with hideous horror…But surely that had been a stress-induced hallucination. Meg wasn’t well at the moment; she needed sympathetic assistance.

  That was when her husband replied. “She’s only a goth. Probably on welfare. Most of them are. She’s no loss.”

  Just then, Meg remembered Harry filling in company expenses forms, adding sundries he hadn’t even partaken of, making easy money on top of the fortune he already earned. She pictured him jetting away on fieldwork trips and to conferences all around the world. Then she imagined Amanda’s face, Meg’s visitor last night. The lack of a wedding band on her third-left finger; her inquisitive scrutiny of the cottage and of Meg’s familial situation…Everything seemed to fall into place for Meg. A chain of notions triggered by her husband’s heartless comment a moment earlier had brought this truth home.

  “That…goth, as you condescendingly refer to her,” she began, realizing now how little compassion Harry had ever boasted, let alone had developed after the death of their child. It pitied her to think that maybe she’d once also been so uncaring, making as much money as possible at work, using advertising to render empty lives even emptier. Perhaps the stress of this task had turned against her; maybe bad business had reached out and killed her baby, the way that insidious creature underground had risen up to assault miners centuries ago…But she was growing distracted again; she should focus on what she had to say. She looked at her husband with fierce eyes, and then, realizing without question he was having an affair, added, “That goth is somebody’s child.”

  But Harry only laughed. “She’s a grown woman, Meg. Fully capable of taking care of herself. If she was unable to cope with life and has chucked herself off the cliff, well, that’s one less person for the rest of us to support.”

  “Like…me, you mean?” She pictured Amanda’s unpainted fingernails raking down her husband’s back during hotel sex, the act he might even enjoy if he fled this evening and found the woman staying nearby. Did Harry even know his lover was in the area? Had she come to investigate his domestic territory, seeing whether the reason he’d given for not leaving his wife—she was so ill at the moment—was genuine? Then Meg repeated, “Are you suggesting I’m in need of such undeserving support?”

  “Undeserving? Hey, that was your word, not mine.”

  Mine, thought Meg, and just then, detected a movement outside, as if something large had shuffled up close to one exterior wall, its multiple limbs scratching at the surface.

  “How long has it been going on?” she asked, swooping down upon her husband with razor-sharp fingernails. She’d been neglecting herself lately, and had failed to cut them for weeks. In the throes of her motion, the less-than-eccentric booklet about Sandsend mining operations in previous eras flew off the coffee table.
“She came to see me last night, pretending she was lost and needed direction. Didn’t she mention that to you, Harry? Oh, poor innocent Amanda!”

  “What are you…what are you talking about?” he replied, flinching away from her tentaclelike swipes. She felt like a manic child, with adult hands at the ends of her arms and an adult’s mouth to speak with.

  “You heartless bastard,” she spat out, like the venom of a beast born of another world. “Did…did the affair start before or after my breakdown? Weren’t you getting enough attention at home? Didn’t the…fucking accounts balance in your mind?”

  Perceiving her seriousness, Harry seemed to relent slightly. In a calmer voice, he said, “Darling, you’re…you’re not well. I think maybe we should return to the doctor’s, see what can be done. You might need medication or…or at least more counseling.”

  She responded by lashing her nails across his face, drawing blood from his cheeks in several vibrant runnels.

  He stood at once and knocked her backward, sending her flailing across the room. Then he pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, first removing his mobile and next his car keys.

  “I’m not staying to listen to this bullshit,” he said, as if losing patience at a meeting attended by dolefully attentive juniors, the kind he could easily push about. “I’ve tried to help you, Meg, but…this is beyond the pale.”

  His final phrase made her think of creatures lurking in space, seeking access to earth once a millennia. One had already descended, getting trapped under the planet as great geological changes occurred, burying it deep, deep, deep. Then, foolishly and unwittingly, somebody had dug it up…

  What followed, now as it had in the past, was a great rushing of beasts away from detection. Meg observed none of this, because she remained prostrate on the floor. After getting up, however, she hurried to the front door, which Harry had left wide open, and saw two vast shapes scuttle down the moonlit road that led to their home.

  One was her husband’s car, its driver hoisting his mobile, presumably to ask his unsuspected follower where in the area she was staying.

  The other was less perceptible, clinging to the ground as it moved. The roar of Harry’s frustrated engine overruled its moist, electric hissing sound as multiple limbs scrabbled and others ducked down to enhance streamlined pursuit.

  Meg shuddered, standing at the entrance to her safe, warm property. But now she had another task to complete. Remembering where Amanda’s accommodation was located, she realized she might take a shortcut along the Sandsend Trail.

  9

  If Meg even suspected she was losing her mind, a nighttime walk amid such creepy territory was probably ill-advised.

  She hurried along the path that led between tall trees and soon found herself in sight of the old quarry area, where shadows lurked with sentient menace and objects stirred all around. Maybe it was just wind this evening bending vegetation back and forth. There was a pungent scent like rotting bark, the smell of inexorable decay.

  After reaching the broad, flat area giving onto the coastline, she could at least observe any encroaching threat. Moonlight rendered the alum shale a featureless plane. If anything was lurking beyond the lip of the coastline, its sound failed to penetrate above the roar of the sea, thumping against rocks beyond the drop like hands inflicting pain.

  But that interpretation did her resolution little good at all. She was determined to reach Amanda’s accommodation, the place temporarily occupied by the woman who’d visited Meg last night, in a perverse act of reconnaissance. How little had Harry told his lover about his personal circumstances? Did Amanda work somewhere other than the insurance company that employed Meg’s husband? Was that why the woman had found evidence hard to come by, being forced to seek it out herself? And where had they both met—during a conference somewhere around the world, when Harry had run up yet more expenses unrelated to his occupational role?

  No wonder he’d acted sheepish when Meg had quizzed him recently about his expenditures. She wasn’t sure how she’d figured out the truth, but realized that during their argument earlier, a cluster of nebulous thoughts and impressions had coalesced in her mind, prompting Harry to write a confession on the spot. She knew him well; fifteen years of marriage had furnished her with intuitive certainty. And his flippant behavior and uncaring attitude had pushed her over the edge.

  Meg came perilously close to doing this herself, nearly falling off the cliff side, as she raced away from the quarry area and toward the pitch-black tunnel. While moving, she heard stealthy sounds from her left. That was where hedges and bushes were located, in which she’d spotted small mammals scavenging the other day. But this latest noise—if anything other than a restless wind—belonged to something considerably larger than any of them. It appeared to force itself toward Meg, shoving aside hip-high grass and wilting plants. She imagined this flora being crushed and dissolved beneath the thing’s multiple feet, as poison leaked from its moist, jellylike frame…But that was fanciful. She should try to get her thoughts under control. Fresh air had now cleared her mind, and the disorderly fugue she’d experienced earlier, inside the house with Harry, had finally dwindled to raw memories.

  After reaching the imposing railway tunnel, she halted momentarily, looking at the gaping hole above that excluding wall. It resembled a darker patch within the blackness of night, pledging to invade her skull if she continued looking. Eventually, she glanced away, toward the zigzagging staircase she’d noticed during her previous visit. Too many objects—pale, wriggly, shorn of flesh—stirred in her peripheral gaze as she headed for these steps, but she ignored them all. Just illusions caused by sweat-marred vision and her mind in a mild state of shock while processing it. She’d gone through so much lately, and this was surely its culmination.

  After climbing rickety wooden risers, she reached the top of the flight and then found herself in a flat, broad field. A muddy path ran along one side, and Meg realized the property she sought was located that way. She began pacing, her arms snapping at her sides, as if her hands had become heavier and conducted the movement like pendulum heads…But that was another thought she pushed aside.

  When she reached the end of the country route, a stile hindered her progress. She wrestled her shivering body through its framework and then stepped into a new area. This was a narrow lane with no curbs; unfailing moonlight lent its tarmac a glaze like ice. Meg began marching along it, her footsteps clunking with crisp reverberations. She pictured a car venturing here recently, its hot tires headed for the only destination up ahead: the secluded cottage Amanda had mentioned last night, and to which Meg had offered clear directions. She imagined the woman repeating these simple instructions to the man who’d called her earlier by mobile, someone who hadn’t known she was in the region, but who was nonetheless as guilty as sin.

  As well as loved ones, Harry had also cheated his business. The thing from another world and underground wasn’t fond of such anti-corporate behavior and had a tendency to sever hands and heads in uncompromising protest…But surely that was ludicrous. Yes, now Meg’s mind had cleared again, she understood this was true.

  Which was why, when she spotted the lengthy, whitish shape writhing on the roof of the building up ahead, the image shocked her to the core.

  But then the thing was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared, like a wedge of moonlight scraped from the roof by some fleeting cosmic hand.

  Nevertheless, while advancing toward the property’s driveway more urgently now, Meg heard unpleasant noises, as if something had forced entry and not in a conventional manner. Even the sight of her husband’s company car parked in front of the cottage—Meg had known it would be there—did little to upset her perception of a maniac being unwilling to relent, tearing aside slate and wood, brick and plaster…Then she was right up close to the building, her fingers clenched tightly in sticky palms, each greased despite the chill of night.

  She was now ready to confront more truths than she felt she could willingly
assimilate.

  10

  The front door was locked. This was Meg’s first realization. She hadn’t wasted time holding back to consider the implications of her actions or lapse into any other behavior that befitted a middle-England woman who’d been brought up well by honorable parents and had worked in an ostensibly respectable job. Instead, she’d simply advanced on the cottage, ignoring more crunching sounds from inside, and, after thumping firmly at the door and receiving no answer, tried turning the cold metal handle.

  It had refused to budge. Amanda had clearly let her lover inside and closed out any potential interference. Did the woman want to talk to Harry, letting him know her true feelings and maybe even giving him an ultimatum? Why else would she have traveled so far to the coast? Their relationship must be serious, with Amanda wondering why the man she loved refused to leave his wife. And had she figured out the reason the previous evening? Had she perceived the heartbreak in Meg, lurking behind a cheerful façade? For a brief period after the tragic event, Meg hadn’t wanted sex and had been unaffectionate with her husband, while also letting the house go to seed. But she’d had a good excuse, hadn’t she? Of course she had. None of this negligence, which had lasted only weeks, justified her husband going off with another woman. Meg had lost her baby, for Christ’s sake. Her baby.

  “Harry!” she screamed, battering knotlike fists against the door again until the flesh ran red. “Harry, come out of there, you coward! You dishonest bastard! You…you heartless fucker!”

  There was no reply, the cottage remaining in silence, but…was that actually true? Once all the breath had escaped Meg, causing her to gasp in the cool air, she thought she heard a noise from inside, though one that sounded anything but of human origin.

  It was like a heavy mobilization of moist flesh. Meg imagined some vast species of sea life prizing through a gap too narrow to accommodate its bulk. It was fortunate the thing had so many insectlike limbs to propel its relentless motion, gripping door frames with many borrowed fingers and seeking its quarry with inherited intelligence.