The Thing on the Shore

by Tom Fletcher

  Something pulled suddenly on the line. Arthur sniffed, and for a moment he couldn’t remember what that meant or what he had to do, but then he began furiously rotating the handle, wrapping the line back around it, standing up at the edge of the high stone wall, and smiling. A slight breeze moved his long black hair half-heartedly around his head, as his hands moved quickly and rhythmically, turning the handle this way and that so the motion remained smooth and constant. Whatever he’d caught felt quite heavy, and he wondered if it might be some kind of fish rather than one of those little orangered crabs he’d seen people catching in Whitehaven before. He noticed that the water no longer looked completely black, but a dark and muddy army green, while the sky above was rapidly turning pale gray.

  Arthur started to wonder if he’d merely caught the hook in a mass of seaweed or something, as he hadn’t felt any further movement on the line since that initial jerk. He watched intently as whatever it was now broke the surface of the water. At first he thought that he’d been right—it was just an accumulation of weed and mud and mollusks, the center of which tangle he’d accidentally snagged. It measured about a foot across, and strands of something trailed beneath it. It was only seaweed, Arthur knew, though it looked like hair. He considered just shaking it free, but that would have felt wrong.

  The greenish bundle was dangling at about the level of Arthur’s ankles when it suddenly moved. Arthur jumped backward but didn’t let go of the line, so the thing swayed with him, bumping into his shins. It wriggled and quivered against his jeans. He yelped, dropping the handle and moving further away. The object sat motionless again in the gray predawn dimness, and Arthur still couldn’t tell what it was. He didn’t move either; he just stared at the thing. After a moment, it started to unfurl, seeming somehow to widen and thin out. Two ungainly claws extended themselves from either side, whereupon the weed and mud fell away to reveal that it was a crab after all—just an especially big one. One of its claws was about the size of Arthur’s own hand, and the other was even larger. It looked uncomfortable, as if it were too heavy. The crab itself was a sickly green color, like pea soup, and its shell seemed misshapen and swollen. The word that Arthur kept trying to dismiss was “fat.” The crab was fat.

  Arthur stared at the crab, and he knew that the crab was staring back at him. The white nylon line led from the crab-line’s handle into the murky depths of the creature’s machine-like mouth. It must have ingested the hook and Arthur felt sick at the thought. The crab-line and the bucket had been bought for him by his mother. He couldn’t lose them. He went to grab the handle, intending to just yank the line until the crab relinquished the hook, but at the same time the crab started scuttling away, dragging the handle along with it toward the edge of the pier. It moved at an unnerving, spidery speed, but also with a sick scraping sound, as if it were dragging a considerable belly along the ground. Arthur missed the handle and stumbled forward to grab for it again. But he was already too late, and he saw the crab go plunging over the edge and the handle whipping after it. Instead of the muted splash he was expecting, though, he heard only a wet crunch. He perceived it with his stomach, rather than with his ears, and blinked nervously.

  He crept forward and peered over the edge.

  The tide had gone out a little, revealing the lower level of the steps built against the pier. The crab lay on its back on the bottom step, its thick little legs whirring like those of a beetle. Looking down at it in the morning gloom was like gazing down into some kind of mechanical grinder. Arthur thought about going down to try once more to retrieve the crab-line, but then the crab started groaning like a man. A tired man with a sore throat. Arthur’s spine stiffened. He stood up and ran away, his old trainers slapping loudly against the pitted stone surface of the pier, the groans of the crab becoming less audible as he put some distance behind him. He imagined himself completely alone, running along the top of an endless wall which bisected an endless ocean. He had tears in his eyes, worried that he’d betrayed the memory of his mother.

  The sky grew whiter. The voice of the sea was quiet and kind.

  PART THREE

  THE SUICIDE

  Harry was woken by Arthur entering the house in the early hours. Harry didn’t cope with the nighttime very well; he tried to spend it drunkenly, if possible, so that there was little chance of waking up before the alarm clock went off.

  This time, though, he did wake up and, once awake, there was nothing he could do about it. He lay there in the dark, surrounded by piles of clothes. After Arthur did the washing, he would hang the clothes up on radiators all around the house and then collect them and sort them. He’d pile Harry’s clothes up on his bed, but Harry never put them away. He didn’t even move them, just crawled under the covers and let the piles topple over. Harry tended to dump his dirty garments on the bedroom floor as well, so they were all mixed up. He didn’t know how Arthur knew which ones to wash, and quailed at the thought of Arthur having to sort them by smell. At times like this he knew he had to sort himself out, do a better job, not just of being a parent but of being an independent human entity. But by the time he’d got up and gone to work and then come back from work, a quivering wreck, anything resembling resolve or pride or rationality had gone, replaced by an unintelligible mess of anger and shame and confusion and exhaustion and desperation. It wasn’t that he looked at his clean washing and then decided against putting it away. It wasn’t laziness. He just didn’t even see the washing. He didn’t see the washing up either. He didn’t see the grease on the kitchen surfaces, or the limescale in the bathroom sink. Part of it, of course, was that he always removed his glasses upon entering the house, and so everything appeared pretty blurred.

  Harry sat up in bed. The backs of his hands were feeling itchy and he was aware of a bad smell in the room. Through the wall, he could hear Arthur getting ready for bed. He waited for sounds of movement to stop, then quietly got up and threw on an old dressing gown, before creeping out of his room and making his way down the stairs. He was without his spectacles, so the interior of the house was indistinct.

  He was hungry. In the kitchen, Harry opened and closed the cupboard doors looking for something quick to eat. The light seemed dim. In one cupboard, there was the remainder of a packet of dry spaghetti and a tin of green beans.

  In the fridge there was an open packet of bacon, the edges of the meat turning dark and curling, a slimy black lettuce and an empty margarine tub. He looked into the margarine tub for a while before putting it back and closing the door. He turned around and leaned against the fridge. He pinched his nose with an itchy hand and closed his eyes. He could hear it raining outside. He imagined that the curtains were open, and he was looking at the windows. At the small beads of water that impacted and burst against the outside of the glass. The way they gleamed white against the black darkness beyond. He could hear the wind rising.

  His stomach now moaned like something sick. He thought about boiling some water for the spaghetti, but knew that then there would be nothing left for tea the following day unless one of them went to the supermarket, and that would mean spending money. He wasn’t sure if Arthur realized it but financially things were pretty bad, although who was he kidding? Arthur would have a much better handle on the money situation than he did.

  It was when he woke up during the night that Harry understood fully how close the two of them were to the brink. Yes, they both had jobs and a roof over their heads, and they would survive for as long as that remained the case, but Harry knew, in a way that Arthur couldn’t, that aspects of their life were even softer and weaker and more unstable than they appeared. Harry was held together by nothing more substantial than his own skin, and that skin was flaking away fast.

  Harry reopened the fridge door and took out the bacon. He pulled a slice out of the packet and held it there, staring at it. He looked around for the frying pan but it lay crusted with grease beneath a pile of dirty plates and cutlery. He looked back at the meat and peeled a strip off, and lo
wered it into his mouth. It was cold. It tasted of nothing. He chewed it and chewed it and threaded it around with his tongue, and chewed it some more, but it wouldn’t break apart. It was stringy, like a piece of elastic. One end of it slipped down his throat and he gagged. He instantly spat it out into the bin, which thankfully didn’t have a lid. God, Jesus. People ate raw meat, didn’t they? Maybe it was a better kind of meat that they ate. Harry sighed and shuffled through into the living room, where he collapsed into his usual armchair. The room was dark and, to his feeble eyes, the air there was thick with dust. He was letting Arthur down. He knew it.

  There were rumors about a wolf that drifted across the mountains surrounding Wasdale, preying on sheep and the lost. There were stories, of course, that it was something more than an ordinary wolf. A werewolf, they whispered. At one of the lock-ins held at the Vine, Pauline the barwoman had got drunk, and, curled around her vodka and Coke, swore desperately that a walker who had been staying at her sister’s guesthouse had seen it halfway between one thing and another. Other people snorted and said it was not a wolf but a ragged man, just some freak, probably a pedophile or something. Harry had kept quiet at that point, not really interested whether the thing was real or not. He had been thinking, God, Jesus, what a freedom. If only I could be some kind of wolf, I could hang up on all the snobby, patronizing cunts on the phone. I could tell them all to fuck right off. I could walk tall, safe in the knowledge that my survival did not depend on the appraisal of some suited worm, some cold-eyed shark. I would be strong and powerful and I would never be hungry again. I would never have to go back to the supermarket. Oh my God. Oh my God. If I had been a good man, a real man, a wolf man, then maybe Rebecca … Rebecca … Rebecca. Harry put his head in his hands.

  Rebecca was dead in the sea. Harry had seen her standing there on the cliff, dressed in her thick white pajamas, facing out across the ocean, the moon full and gigantic amidst a sky packed with insolent little stars staring down at her, like they were waiting for her to do it, encouraging her, almost, demanding some kind of drama to justify their attendance in such numbers. The moon had been like a monarch—some obese patriarch surrounded by sprightly, twisted little subjects all thirsty for something. For anything. Perverts!

  Rebecca had turned around and seen him struggling and staggering across the sparse, tufty grass toward her. She had lost her footing and slipped and hit her head on her way down to the waves below. That was all that had happened. He had seen it himself. He had seen it himself, hadn’t he?

  I saw it myself, Arthur.

  I swear to God.

  ARTHUR AND THE THING

  Arthur stood on the railway platform with his hands pressed into his pockets and his head down. It was half past one, and dry and windy. The sky was something between blue and white. On the other side of the tracks rose a green and yellow grassy bank, regularly crisscrossed with footpaths where people walked their dogs and rode their bikes. Beyond the grassy bank were some houses. Some boys and girls in their early teens were wandering along the paths, drinking and spitting. Arthur watched them surreptitiously from beneath his fringe, until the train arrived from the north. It hissed slowly down the tracks toward him and it stopped with a set of doors directly in front of him. He felt pleasure at this, but no surprise, since it seemed only right.

  The doors opened, and he, amongst others, embarked. The train set off again, tentatively, and disappeared into the round black mouth of the Bransty Tunnel.

  *

  Bony was waiting for him at Drigg station. “You look tired, Arthur,” was the first thing he said.

  “I am tired,” Arthur replied. “I don’t think I slept at all last night. I am very tired.”

  They were alone on the platform, and on their side of the railway was an inn called the Queen Victoria. The kitchen window opened on to the tiny graveled car park separated from the platform by a low wall, and the whole place smelled appetizingly of chips. Drigg was not as windy as Whitehaven had been, but the sky looked exactly the same.

  “Do we have to go to the beach?” Arthur asked. “Can we not just go to yours for a cup of tea? Or maybe even”—he nodded toward the Vic—“in there?”

  “No!” Bony said. “You came here to see something, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “I came here because you said I should. Because—”

  “I started telling you about it on Friday night, I think. But something happened, and we got distracted. You started talking about something else.”

  Bony fell silent and gave a wave to Jonathan, who did Bony’s job when Bony himself wasn’t doing it. Jonathan had been reopening the level-crossing gates, once the train had passed through, and was now ascending the steps back up to the signal hut. Arthur thought of Jonathan, in his head, as “Bony’s replacement.” He didn’t actually know his name.

  Arthur and Bony started walking.

  *

  Continuing on down to the beach, Arthur and Bony passed the singing gatepost on the left and the fenced enclosure on the right. At this point the road turned into a sandy, stony track that ran with rivulets of red water draining down on to it from the surrounding dunes. Arthur had never understood why the water was red, usually putting it down to rust, although he acknowledged that such an amount of rust would itself require an explanation.

  The dunes lay still beneath the wheeling gulls, and they rose on either side of the path, as if to frame the beach ahead. The tide was out, yet the rustling surf could be heard, even from this distance. On top of the dune to one side of the path, and immediately before the sand leveled out, there stood an old lookout hut or some such. It was a stone structure shaped like half of an oval with an open doorway in its flat side and a long, narrow, curving window—protected by a thick, gnarled metal cover on a hinge—facing it, and looking out over the beach and the sea. The little building stood resolute, silhouetted blackly against the pale, indistinctly colored sky. It was probably from the war: World War II, or maybe even the first one. Or maybe it was even more recent than that. Who knew? Arthur would like to have known, but had never got round to looking it up.

  “We have to head left,” Bony announced, once they’d emerged from the dunes. The afternoon was cool but not unpleasantly so, and Arthur felt glad of the walk after all.

  “I went crab fishing last night,” he said.

  “You should have called me,” Bony said.

  “It was late.”

  “Catch anything?”

  “A weird crab, Bony. It scared me. It was all fat and had a voice like a person.” Arthur looked sideways at Bony as he spoke, expecting him to laugh or look doubtful, but instead Bony just looked like he was thinking. “I ran away from it,” Arthur concluded.

  Bony remained silent for a moment longer, then said, “That’s strange.”

  “I thought maybe it was something to do with the acid. I don’t think I ever want to take it again, Bony. I had an episode.”

  The two of them were walking side by side, keeping to the slightly wetter, harder sand, and leaving footprints as a result. Ahead of them, in the distance, the shore curved out to the right, out to sea, ending in the massive dark bulk of Black Combe.

  “There was no acid,” Bony said shortly. “I was had.”

  “What?” Arthur said, stopping.

  “I was conned. No acid. It was dud.”

  “Then what …?” Arthur started, but stopped. He narrowed his eyes and looked down at his feet. He carried on walking.

  “What what?”

  “Nothing … Well, let me think, and then I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me afterward, then.”

  “After what?”

  “After this. We’re here now, nearly. Look, you can see it.”

  Bony pointed.

  Arthur’s gaze followed the direction of Bony’s skinny arm and long finger, and saw something lying on the beach.

  “It doesn’t look all that interesting from this distance,” he said. “It looks like plastic. Lots of
big white plastic bags full of sand.”

  “It is more than that,” Bony said.

  As they got closer, Arthur became aware of the smell. It smelled foul and somehow warm. It smelled like feces and sweet, rotten fish. The white mounds rose up to Arthur’s head height, and he saw that it was all flesh, it was something organic. Dead, maybe, but organic. It looked soft, like dimpled, skinless fat, but when he reached out and touched it it felt tough and dried-up. For a moment he saw it as the remains of some astoundingly obese human, broken up by the waves and deposited on the shore, but it was too big and, besides, there was nothing recognizably human about it.

  It was not totally white, but had pinkish cords and threads stretching over and around it—dark red protrusions that spoke of some kind of internal structure. And black spots that may have been caused by decomposition, or maybe not.

  “What is it?” Arthur asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bony replied. “Exciting, though, isn’t it?”

  “Very.” Arthur walked all around it, examining it from all angles. It was huge. He hadn’t realized how big it was. It was also quite shapeless, and it spread out from the central mound in various twisted arrangements and contortions. In places, though, it looked flat and smooth, almost as if it had pooled there and then solidified. “You’d think it would have attracted more attention,” Arthur remarked.

  “Well, people do stop by and look at it—like we’re doing right now.”

  “No,” said Arthur, “I mean … scientists and people. Biologists, zoologists … people who can work out what it is.”

  “I guess that would need somebody to actually report it,” Bony said, “and I know I certainly haven’t. I think everybody just assumes that somebody else knows what it is.”

  “Maybe somebody else does know what it is.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What are we going to do with it?”