Then I saw it.
I had gotten there before I had realized it. The boat suddenly careened more than usual, and I saw now that I hadn’t spotted it before because the sail had been in the way the whole time.
Before me rose a giant of a granite block, dark, worn and gnarled by erosion. It went steeply down into the sea opposite me. Down in the foaming surf I could make out sharp and jagged stones that time had broken loose from the cliff wall. The sea was white at the foot of the mountain, and the water broke with a thunderous sound. In a flash I thought about why the pointed stones hadn’t been worn smooth by the water, why they rose like sharp knives towards the sky though they were certainly hundreds of years old, and that was the only thing I had time to think, for suddenly I discovered, with a growing sense of fear, that I was too close – I was far too close!
I was headed at whirlwind speed straight towards the granite cliff!
I tugged like a madman at the tiller. I had the wind from the starboard tack, the boat had spun off a little because I hadn’t had time to slacken the jib; it was way too big. I tried to go against the wind. The thundering from the cliff wall was deafening and the breaking waves tossed crushingly against the sharp stones. All at once I recalled the drunkard’s words:
‘A hell of a sailor – or downright mad . . .’
I felt the cold sweat drip off me. It had gotten dark like in a cellar. The granite wall rose up higher and higher as I was mercilessly pushed towards the diabolical stone teeth, and I cried out in the storm, cried out in fear when I looked death in the eyes among the crashing breakers. A prayer poured from my lips. Then the bow fell off. There was a violent strain on the leaden sail, and the whole boat trembled during the maneuver. I pulled at the rudder with all my strength, my muscles were like knots under the oilskin. There was a cracking in the rigging.
Then!
It banged like a rifle shot when the turnbuckle on one of the starboard stays snapped like a violin string. There was a crunching sound in the mast and I watched open-mouthed and in fear as the timber split and splintered, saw the storm pull sail and mast and rigging overboard as if it had been a handful of leaves. I was almost blind from the rain and saltwater, but I knew what I had to do and grabbed the ax from the steering hatch and tried to cut through what was left of the rigging. It was too late. A mighty wave seized the boat and sent it sidelong against the cliff, and I sat and waited for the impact that I knew must come.
There was a crushing sound like the jaws of a wild beast against thin bone. The shock knocked me almost senseless, and I hung with my torso over the gunwale as I struggled to keep myself onboard. Then another impact, and it was as if a giant’s hand gripped me and whirled me round and round – it was all just froth and foam and sea, smashed bits of wood and rope. I felt a powerful blow to my head that half deprived me of consciousness at the same time as I felt something clutching my wrist. In my half-conscious condition I thought I had gotten my hand caught in some rope and struggled desperately to get it loose. The grip only grew tighter. Everything was going black. Red and white figures danced and whirled before my eyes, and I was drawn into a maelstrom of water and light and darkness. I only hoped that death would come quickly . . .
I was past the breakers. They were behind me, and I was lying on my back in a calm eddy. Above me the sky was yellow. Bewildered, I tried to find firm ground underneath me and discovered I could manage to stand. The wind was no longer blowing. The surf went thundering towards the stones, and I could see the white foam over the serrated rocks, but where I stood it was still. I tottered shakily up onto some flat stones up on the beach and lay down exhausted with my head resting on my arms.
I do not know how long I lay there on the rocks. It was still twilight when I opened my eyes, and the sea was just as heavy out there. It might have been a couple of hours, or a minute. I got up stiff and sore and tried to make out the wreckage. It wasn’t to be seen. I suddenly noticed that I was frozen and shivering. I turned to go further around the cliffside and try to make my way inland, and it was then that I saw her.
She stood only a few meters from me, barefoot on the smooth stones. Totally still. Her face was white, and her hair, which was long and shiny and black like a raven’s wing, waved lightly in the weak breeze. She was wearing a dress that looked as though it were made of white linen. I stood motionless, without making a sound. Then I felt my legs beginning to move of their own accord, and I walked, but with steps that were not my own, up to where she stood. I could now see her face quite clearly.
Her face was almond-shaped. The dark eyes shone as with an inner glow, as if her head were translucent, and they stared right at me. Her mouth was pale but had a softness that I had never seen before, and which is not common among our women.
‘Come,’ she said in a low, melodic voice as she extended her hand toward me. I took it, almost without knowing it. It was warm and soft. She turned halfway around and signaled that she wanted to go upwards toward the cliff wall. I followed her, for I had no will, and the grip on my hand was firm and determined. Together we went upwards along a path that wound along the cliffside in a steep ascent. She walked beside me, upright, with her head raised and that black hair waving and fluttering behind her. I looked at her from the side as we went up, and she turned her face toward me and smiled. It was a peculiar smile. It was half as though she were crying, but at the same time the smile reflected a thousand years of happiness, as if she were seeing something she had always sought . . . and found. Her eyes glittered, and it was again as though I could see straight through them and out into the starry sky on the other side. In the same moment I knew that I belonged to her.
We had come high up the cliff wall. The path, which was sufficiently broad for us both, was a mountain ledge, and below me I could see the surf thundering against the rocks. Further out the sea was rough and turbulent. The sky was still yellow, with a golden tinge. I was surprised that I wasn’t dizzy. It was equally odd, I didn’t really understand it, but up here where we were walking I couldn’t feel any wind. The air was still, the only thing that revealed we were in motion was her black hair fluttering like a mane across her pale face. I asked:
‘Why doesn’t the wind blow up here?’
She turned towards me again.
‘Haven’t you had enough wind for today?’ she said with that low, slightly hoarse voice. I could see the gleam of her white teeth. I nodded.
‘Yes.’ I noticed that she hadn’t answered my question, but I didn’t ask again, without knowing why.
She stopped suddenly. In the cliff wall, with an opening as tall as a full-grown man, was a cavern. She motioned to me to continue inwards, and half senseless I stepped in through that archway that was formed of granite and time itself. She let go of my hand for a moment and walked over to the cliff wall, which rose dark and close in front of us. She moved her hand, and it was as though blue flames came forth and illuminated the walls – small points of light – like with St. Elmo’s fire. I stood spellbound and saw her delicate body walk in between the rough walls, while lights were lit where she touched the mountain with her hands. Her whole white figure was surrounded with a bluish aura, and a few times it looked as though she were transparent.
There was no roof, nor any walls or floor, it was just her and me and the blue lights around us that twinkled and shone weakly, flickered and faded away, only to emerge again from the depths.
Then she came towards me, and I could see her face, which was pale like a moonbeam, and her eyes were like fire from an inner world when she invited me to lie down on a bed of woven rushes on the floor.
She was mine that night in the granite cave. Who she was and what she was doing there were beyond my thoughts, all I know is that she gave herself to me on a carpet of soft reeds, woven by fingers that also were caressing my neck. All at once I understood what love was, what I had lost by not having known it before, and what I knew I had alw
ays longed for. I loved her from the depths of my young heart. She was mine. I gave her all the youthful affection I had, there in that cave, as the lights sparkled and flickered. I could barely see her face, a pale surface with two dark openings into eternity. Her eyes were like the night itself. I knew at once what her name was . . .
She was my Sybil.
Was she Sybil? Was it possible that a person of that name really existed? I don’t know. But for me she was Sybil. And I loved her.
It was morning. The air was gray and cold outside the cave entrance. Far off I could hear the whisper of the surf. I felt cold and wet, and my head was heavy after the night’s sleep. I turned my head to look at my beloved.
There was no one there.
My hand lay on the woven grass, which was cold from the morning dew that drifted into the cave.
I got up slowly, trembling, still stiff and lightheaded after the shipwreck, and tottered dizzily towards the exit. I remembered vaguely the dream I had had just before waking. It was clearly etched in my brain like a relief sculpture under the sun. A swarm of cormorants, a sailing, flying, flapping flock of black birds. And one of them had been white, it had stood on the edge of the precipice at the cave opening and stretched its wings out broadly and fallen – fallen towards the sea surface, and in its fall I had seen that it was my Sybil . . .
I stood in the opening and felt the moist air drawn into my lungs as I shivered with cold. I bent over, looked over the edge and downwards.
In the same moment I felt my chest tighten around my heart and a wild pain of anguish shot through my body. My eyes glimpsed something white on the surface of the water; there was a white garment washing in towards the rock wall.
My lungs brought forth a scream that rose up in my throat and dissolved in the fog beyond.
‘Sybil!’
My hands got cut and scraped as I clung to the rough stones in a desperate attempt to get down to the water quickly. My feet stumbled on countless protrusions and the whole time I was whispering her name, over and over again, as I hoped – hoped by all that was holy – that I had been mistaken.
It took some time nonetheless before I reached sea level at the mountain wall. Meanwhile the tidewater had done its work. The white thing had drifted farther out, almost all the way out among the sharp cliff rocks, I could barely see it when it came up to the surface several times. Finally it was totally gone.
I stood with my empty hands stretched out before me, staring at that point between the rocks. The fog rolled in waves towards me.
I heard my own scream echo from the granite wall and hover tremblingly in the air where the cormorants sailed on black wings. And I swung at them when they came over me, around me, and behind me. They sat along the path up on the mountain wall, packed tightly together, and highest up, in the middle of the cave’s opening, sat the largest of them all, and it was only its head that was black like the others’, for the rest of the bird was white like the whitest garment. It lifted off with a heavy beating of its wings and sailed around up there until its wings filled the sky, then came lower and closer and stretched out until the tips of its white arms touched the horizon, and the whole time its eyes were on me, clear, dark – eyes of crystal, it was as if I could see right through them and out into the gray fog on the other side.
I don’t know from which direction I came home. Did I wander past Dingle and Kerry over to Ballyheigue? That’s what I must have done. I remember I saw hills and mountains that at first seemed to be quite near, while in the next moment they were far off, and then again close to me. I registered that I was walking, that my feet were carrying me forward, but several times I was tired and lay down on the ground and stretched my arms out to catch the rain that fell gently and softly down over me. One time I lay my cheek against a flower, because it was there and I was there, down on the slope where the moisture from the grass soaked in through my clothes and lay like cold fingers around my shoulders.
The old drunkard from the tavern has disappeared. I never see him anymore. They say that in his intoxication he walked off the pier one night as the sea was foaming white and the rain was whipping against our windows. If that’s true, it’s unfortunate. He was my friend. We were often at the tavern together. It also happened sometimes that we would wake up together in the morning in some ditch or other, arm in arm like two lovers. Now and then – it was quite strange – I had the feeling that we were of the same age. And now he’s gone. I’m alone. But the beer is good here, and I have a great thirst to quench.
A young man came here one evening. He boasted that he wanted to sail around Sybil Point. The silly little fool. He’s full of youthful stupidity. I warned him that night. It didn’t help.
I saw him early today too. He was coming down along the road towards the wharf with a sack in his hand. It was bright and clear and the sun had just risen. I had sat in the tavern all night, and the intoxication hadn’t totally worn off yet, and I was sitting in the grass down by the sea when he came towards me.
Translated from the Norwegian by James D. Jenkins
Yvette Tan
All the Birds
There is quite a bit of Filipino horror fiction being published in both English and Tagalog, probably not surprising given the over 500 often horrific creatures that have been documented in Philippine mythology, from the shapeshifting aswang to the hideous, vampire-like manananggal to the terrifying half-man, half-horse tikbalang. Yvette Tan, one of the Philippines’ most popular and successful modern-day horror writers, has published stories in both Tagalog and English, with most of the latter collected in Waking the Dead and other Horror Stories (2009). The following story first appeared in the anthology of Filipino horror All That Darkness Allows in 2016. Like many of Tan’s stories, it incorporates elements from Filipino mythology and folklore, exploiting the frightening possibilities of those legends to craft an unsettling modern-day horror story.
Anne caught me outside the hut, fiddling with my phone, trying to get a decent signal.
‘You’re up early,’ she said, arms crossed tight against her robe, almost straining at the fabric.
‘Just telling Tim I’m okay,’ I said. ‘Signal sucks here.’
She made a face. ‘Of course you’re okay. You’re here. Why wouldn’t you be?’
The signal held. I sent my SMS. I looked up at her. ‘You shouldn’t be out here.’
‘You weren’t inside when I woke. I got worried.’
There was a caw. A crow had joined the birds gathered in the front yard. There were a few when I arrived – birds have always been a fixture in these parts – but their number had swelled over the course of my visit, almost tripling by the time the crow arrived. They sat on nearby branches, nestled in the yard, worried at the bushes. There were different kinds. Maya birds, mynah birds, swallows, shrikes, kites. Others I didn’t recognize. It was chaos some of the time, the flurry of feathers and the squawking as they chased each other around in play. But most of the time, they were silent. They didn’t seem to be preying on each other, which unnerved me almost just as much as their being there in the first place.
The other birds made space for the noisy newcomer, who, after a few more caws, settled in.
We watched the whole thing in silence. I got up and gently nudged her back inside. ‘I’ll make breakfast.’
I have been here for a week now. I came as soon as I could, after I got the letter. Anne is sick, it said. What it meant was, Anne is dying.
And so I went on leave from work, kissed my fiancé goodbye, and traveled back to the place I grew up in, to see the friend who thinks I abandoned her.
Anne lives in her family home a ways from the barrio. It is small and neat and smells of dried leaves. We used to hang out here a lot. I practically grew up here. My parents worked abroad. My aunt took care of me, but you could tell that she would rather go to the salon or go on dates than watch over he
r sister’s kid. Anne’s aunt didn’t mind having me over, as long as we were quiet because, ‘The plants don’t like noise.’
Anne and I learned a lot from her aunt. How to cultivate a garden, how to tell which plants were edible, which herbs cured what. Anne and I were inseparable. I don’t blame her when she took it very badly when my parents offered to send me to college in Manila and I said yes.
We wrote each other at first. Always snail mail, because Anne wasn’t comfortable with technology. Their hut didn’t even have electricity, even though it had been available in the barrio forever. They were weird like that. But my letters got shorter and her replies got more bitter until we stopped writing altogether. Tim and I had just started dating then, so I didn’t think much of it when I should have. I wasn’t much of a friend.
Turned out she had been ill for a while. She had always been sickly, but she got steadily worse after her aunt passed away and she tried to keep pace with responsibilities. At first she could, and then she couldn’t. It was my mom, now retired, who found her sprawled at the foot of her hut. She refused to go to a hospital. She asked for me.
Breakfast is instant coffee and champorado. We had salted duck eggs and rice the day before, and were now craving something salty-sweet. I pour evaporated milk into my, by regular standards, extremely sweet coffee before adding some to my chocolate porridge as well.
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Page 37
