by Nigel Bird
“You daft thing.” He put her down and clipped her lead to her collar straight away. She wasn’t finished though, and jumped up for a few more cuddles before she was able to settle.
Dougal remembered his manners and turned his attention to his old friend when he reached the bottom of the cliff.
“Evening Doc.”
“Evening Dougal.”
“Nice night for it.”
“Aye.”
Dougal opened the fastenings of his shoulder bag and pulled out a flask. “Fancy some soup?”
“I wouldn’t want to trouble you.” It was the same routine every night, like a dance they’d perfected over the years.
“It’s hot.” The steam swirled in the air when Dougal removed the lid.
“You drink it yourself, now.” Dr Brown dug his hands into his overcoat pockets and turned towards the waves as if he weren’t interested.
“Oxtail.” It was always Oxtail that his wife packed, knowing full well it was the only soup that the old man enjoyed.
“Well maybe I’ll have a wee mug if it’s no bother.”
Dougal pulled out a mug from his bag and passed it over. “Sure. Have this one,” and he poured in the hot broth. The smell of beef that filled the air was spicy and delicious.
He poured some for himself and then emptied the flask into a bowl which he put down on the floor for Sheba. She sat obediently and waited for the command. “Carry on,” Dougal told her and she lapped up her supper.
The two men stood shoulder-to-shoulder gazing out towards Fife watching the blinking green light on the far shore.
“You got any leads on these missing dogs?” the old man asked.
“We’d put them on them if we could find them.”
“Aye, well, those Newcastle gangs know what they’re doing. Don’t go getting your hopes up.”
It was too late for that. Dougal’s hopes were always up, whether he was training the next generation of rugby stars or buying his lottery tickets on a Saturday night. “Seen anything unusual?”
“Seen? No.” The doctor clutched on to his mug to warm his fingers that poked out of the frayed ends of his fingerless gloves. “I’ve heard some strange things, mind.”
“Go on.”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Everyone thinks you’re crazy.”
“Aye. Well they’re not here in the middle of the night. It’s like a breathing it is. Like my Nora used to sound when she was snoring. Kind of like sandpaper on stone is all I can tell you.”
“Maybe it’s phantom carpenters,” Dougal joked.
“Or Black Agnes back from the dead.” Both men laughed, spraying soup from their mouths and onto the pebbles around them.
Their arms lifted and the sleeves of their coats became their serviettes as they wiped their faces and cleaned themselves up.
Dougal put the mug to his lips and gulped down what was left of the Oxtail. “Well I’ll need to be reporting in at The Rocks. Find out what the rest of the team have been up to.”
“Very nice. It’s gone up in the world since I used to drink there.”
“They lay on a nice spread for the volunteers. Smoked salmon and the like.”
“Aye, that’ll be right.” The doctor gulped down the rest of his soup and then passed the mug back.
Dougal took the cups and the bowl, passed the lead over to his friend, stepped forward to the water’s edge and bent down to rinse everything clean. As he rubbed at them, he heard something the likes of which he’d never heard before. A low, rasping hum coming from the middle of the beach. Sent a tickle around the inside of his belly, the kind of feeling he’d had on the force when he knew that something wasn’t right. His mouth opened and he looked up at the doctor with his eyes screwed together like someone had asked him to answer a really hard question.
“See, there it is,” the doctor said. “Now I guess it’s the both of us they’ll be saying is mad.”
Dougal emptied the water from the mugs, put them in his bag and took the lead back. Sheba gave the doc’s hand a lick, shook and bade him farewell.
“See you tomorrow,” Dougal said.
“If Agnes hasn’t got me first.”
Dougal turned to walk to The Rocks. Sheba stuck close by, her head rested against his calf like she did on bonfire night. Her ears were pricked and her belly low to the ground and she moved like she was stalking sheep. Seeing her like that gave Dougal the creeps. He clenched his fist inside his pocket ready for any attackers who might be lurking in the shadows.
It turned out there was nobody there.
Dougal couldn’t recall anything quite like it in all his years on the force or during his retirement.
As the pair headed along to the pub, Dougal tried to get a bearing on where the hum was coming from. Where it was coming from seemed to be everywhere.
Kings
Dr Jenny Wilson cursed under her breath. Cursed about the weather, the Scots, her ex-husband and her car – the weather because it was freezing, the Scots because she barely understood a word they said, her husband for leaving her for a woman of twenty-seven - exactly half her age – and the clapped-out Ford Mondeo for practically deafening her as she’d driven from the King’s Buildings along the A1 out to Dunbar.
Cursed most of all about herself. Her stupid wellington boots. Her old-lady’s coat and her fear of open spaces.
In spite of the chilling breeze coming off the sea, she felt beads of sweat forming on her face and on her palms. Her heart began to race and she wasn’t sure whether she should run back up the steps to her car so she could feel the comfort of the doors that would keep the strangers out or to roll into a ball and try and blend in with her surroundings.
If only she could have spoken to Dr Chalmers about it. Explained the situation. Told him that she couldn’t do fieldwork anymore. Not now. Not ever. He might have listened. Confined her to the office. Let the students do all the hard, practical work.
Then again, he might have given her the sack. How could he justify having a geology lecturer who wasn’t prepared to leave the building. In her situation, she just couldn’t risk being laid off.
She cursed again under her breath, then tried to gain some control.
She stood on the beach and calmed herself, breathing in and out slowly like her doctor had advised. As she took air into her lungs, she imagined a room full of books and open boxes of chocolates. She pictured herself going over and reaching into one of the boxes and making a choice. She decided upon a caramel and then imagined herself putting it into her mouth and biting into it. The soft sweetness burst all over her tongue and happiness flowed through her body.
On her out breaths, she whispered a mantra to herself. “I love myself. I am at one with the universe.”
When her heart rate slowed, she opened her eyes and looked down at her feet, swamped in a pair of black wellies that were two sizes too big and then looked up at the horizon.
“I love myself. I am at one with the universe. I love it here.” And she did.
She wiped the sweat from her face with a handkerchief taken from the pocket of her padded anorak and enjoyed the view before her.
What struck her first of all was the monolith of the Bass Rock, standing proud in the middle of the sea. It was a wonderful example of a volcanic plug, made of phonolitic trachyte rock of the Carboniferous age. During the spring and summer, the island was chock full of gulls nesting on any space they could squeeze into. Hundreds of thousands of them in a frenzy of child-rearing and fishing and fighting. She’d been there herself on a boat trip from North Berwick. What she remembered most was the smell of rotten fish and being sick over the side of the boat in front of a group of Japanese tourists who were so excited about her condition that they took photographs of her in action. It had been a horrible day, but from the safety of the shore she felt able to fully enjoy the beauty of the sight.
Closer by and poking from the shallows of the water were the chaotic lumps of volcanic rock, bumpy and
erratic. Oddly shaped like they’d been poured in when God had been an angry child.
To her right was the cave with the eye painted onto the wall, like some kind of primitive drawing made with a spray can, and then the harbour, the order of the thick, red walls that reminded her of the human race.
She looked around at the cliffs. Admired the red sandstone that she was sure would colour the sea pink when the tide was rough. It was easy to see why all the houses and walls in the area were made from this material.
The whole of the bay in which she was standing had been an outdoor swimming pool not that long ago, which seemed like madness in this climate. If Dr Chalmers hadn’t shown her the pictures back at the university, she might not have believed it, but the evidence was strong. Even stronger when she noticed the rusting pipes between the rocks that just had no place being there. Another example of the human race trying to leave its mark on the world.
The view was certainly amazing and Dr Wilson felt her muscles relax.
The most impressive things in view were the reason she was there, the two boulders that lay on the pebbles. Huge beasts of stone. Black and grey spheres that looked oddly out of place and shone as if they were made of metal. She thought about it for a minute and wondered if they were lumps of an ore of some kind, but decided that was unlikely because of their almost perfectly spherical shape. Their symmetry was something to behold. It was as if alien beings far advanced of humans had come for a visit and left precious gifts behind. She’d seen images of the rocks below on her computer but close up and in the flesh, so to speak, they were magnificent. Like the newest wonders of the world.
She walked over to the bigger of the rocks, her bag of equipment banging against her hip as she approached.
The closer she got to it, the more excited she became. Couldn’t wait to get her chance to get close to these wonderful rocks to take specimens and make notes to take back to the university.
She ran her fingers over the surface and felt the ridges and bumps as if she were reading Braille. The circular swirls that she found were certainly unusual. More like a sculpture than natural stone. And it felt damp and warm, like it had been basking in the sunshine and then washed to keep cool. She looked up at the sun in the blue sky. Maybe it was warmer than it looked, or maybe the stone absorbed heat like marble.
She took out her rock hammer, tapped at the surface and listened carefully. The sound that came back to her wasn’t what she’d expected. It was as if the rock were soft like chalk, not at all hard and crisp the way she had imagined.
She placed a chisel into one of the many grooves. Gave it a tap with the hammer to get her sample. Even though she’d hardly put in any effort, a circle of stone several millimetres thick fell away. The thing had come off like slate. Made her think of the sedimentary rocks she knew. She placed the chisel again and tapped once more. Same result, a perfect circle of stone.
It just wasn’t right. No rock she knew of was like this. No rock that anyone knew of.
The wrongness of it all set her heart racing and the desire to roll up into a ball returned.
As if that hadn’t been enough, a strange noise filled the air. It was like the combination of a whale call and an electrical hum. Whatever it was, the sound enveloped her as if she were a parcel being wrapped at Christmas.
Though it was impossible to locate the source of the noise, she felt it was coming from the rock she had taken the sample from, as if she’d hurt it with her chiselling and it was crying out in pain.
Her pulse quickened once again and she could feel her pores beginning to open. For no obvious reason, the idea that she was being watched appeared in her brain like a spark.
She looked round. Checked to make sure she wasn’t being filmed by other geologists or worse, by one of those mean programmes that played tricks on you and made you look a fool.
There was nothing. Nothing and no one. Just a cliff, the new swimming pool and the barrel of an old artillery gun pointing out towards Fife.
The noise grew louder and she felt a twinge of guilt in her heart. She quickly bagged up the samples, didn’t bother to label them and lay them carefully into her bag.
Measuring the rocks could wait. She needed to get back to the lab to do some testing before anyone else could find the answers before her.
Soon as she was ready she walked off as quickly as she could, not daring to run just in case the TV cameras appeared.
The closer she got to the steps, the more relaxed she felt and she was able to think again. It might seem ridiculous, but her mind was already going into overdrive. She could practically see the headlines: Jenny Wilson Wins Nobel Prize After Discovering Valuable New Minerals. She could hardly wait for it to happen so she could show that husband of hers that looks really weren’t everything.
At the top of the cliff-path, she relaxed completely and saw that she was no longer alone.
A stone’s throw away from her, a flock of gulls surrounded an old lady who was throwing bread to them from an Asda carrier bag. The birds made awful, honking noises as they battled to get hold of the biggest of the scraps, ugly things when they had their beaks open and were in full call. The sound reminded her of the boat trip again. Made her stomach lurch just thinking about it. “Like Gannets,” Dr Wilson moaned and then laughed at herself. They weren’t gannets at all. Black tips at the wings and small heads. They were probably kittiwakes.
The old lady in the middle was away with the fairies. She wore a woolly bobble hat that looked like a tea-cosy. The tips of her grey hair underneath it stuck out at right-angles from her ears. Her body was stooped so that it looked a big effort for her to look up at the birds around her. All the while, she muttered and smiled like she was talking to them. Having a real conversation.
Crazy old thing.
And then it occurred to Dr Wilson that she might just end up that way herself. All alone. No one to look after her. Talking to the animals like Dr blooming Doolittle. Unless she could win that Nobel Prize – once she had that, there’d be no stopping her.
Clueless
Martin took off his glasses and put them on the shelf by the wood-burner. He rubbed the sides of his nose to get rid of the tickle wearing his glasses had left behind, then rubbed the grey stubble on his chin to wake himself up.
It had been the perfect evening. Homemade lentil soup cooked on an open fire as he and his family had sat in the gypsy caravan playing board games and chatting over cups of tea.
They’d rounded it all off by toasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate. It was all so very Enid Blyton, which made it all the more wonderful that Martin had got to read the rest of the opening book in the Mallory Towers series to his daughter Emily as she lay in the bottom of the box-bed at the back of the van.
Martin had bought the caravan for Emily instead of a playhouse and they’d had it in their garden for a couple of months. The people he told about it thought it was a crazy idea, but that hadn’t put him off, and now he was sitting out under the stars with the smell of wood-smoke on his clothes it was clear to him that they’d been the crazy ones all along.
Emily was curled up in a ball under her duvet, her blond hair spread over the pillow and the light from the fire giving her face the golden complexion of an angel. Martin bent down awkwardly to get himself closer to her and he kissed her cheek before sliding out and closing over the doors that usually hid the bed from view.
Next he turned to his wife who slept on the bed above their daughter. What a lucky man to have such a beautiful woman to spend his life with. He kissed her too, picked up his tablet and went out on to the wooden steps at the caravan’s door, the usual bright colours of the hand-painted castles and roses subdued by the dim light. As he left, his little dachshund Pip waddled to the door to see what was going on.
Poor Pip. He had a bladder the size of a thimble and, worse still, when he got over excited he’d pee all over the floor wherever he happened to be standing. It meant that, for Martin, coming home was an exercise i
n damage limitation. As soon as he opened the door he’d have to grab Pip and try to get him, outside before his bladder loosened. More often than not, Martin’s shoes and trousers received a yellow shower. Even when he managed to get Pip out in time, there was a fair chance Martin would do his back in as he stooped down; sausage dogs and tall men definitely weren’t made for each other.
Martin let Pip jump down onto the lawn. He rarely strayed far, probably due to the size of his legs.
In the peace and quiet of the night, Martin turned on his tablet, clicked on the Crossword Maker programme and set to business.
There had been a time when he’d imagined making crosswords as a full-time job. He’d got a job early on for the newspapers under his undercover crossword name of Dallas and his future in the black and white squares seemed bright. Then along came Emily and the cost of raising a child meant that his dream was never going to be realised. That didn’t stop him enjoying the work mind, and he was still able to call himself a pro.
The puzzle he’d been working on was almost done. There was just one space to fill. 9 Down.
8 letters - something R, something, something A, something, something R.
For some reason he couldn’t see the answer straight away. It might have been the two glasses of red wine he’d had with the marshmallows.
His train of thought was interrupted by a menacing growl from somewhere in the woods behind his garden.
It took him a moment to realise what he’d heard.
He applied the logic he was using on the crossword to the situation. The only thing he could think of was that Pip had encountered something and had tried to scare it off with a growl. Probably a rat or a cat - Pip might have been small and have no bladder control, but he was brave to the point of stupidity.
Easing his thoughts back to the puzzle, the word came to him like someone had spoken it into his ear.
‘Predator,’ he said to himself and he punched the air with delight.
As soon as he had typed the word in and he could look at it, he visualised the anagrams he could use. Playing with words was just something he’d done ever since he was young and these things came naturally to him now.
