Fortnight of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  “All right, then,” he said; to the terrace in general. “Sod it.”

  He lifted the flower-decorated champagne bottle out of its cooler, picked up his glass, and stepped down from the terrace. Then he crossed to the steps that led down to the beach. Glass in one hand, bottle in the other, with sand in his white Alan McAfee loafers, he plodded to the waterline, and stood with his face to the south, to the sea, to the sun, to France, and toasted himself.

  “Well-done-Bryan-you-are-a-fucking-genius, amen.”

  He looked back at the promenade; back at the hotel terrace; just in time to see the blonde thirtyish woman in the pink top being collected by a gray-haired man in enormous shorts and heavy-rimmed glasses.

  “Sod it,” he said. The gray-haired man in enormous shorts and heavy-rimmed glasses was probably the same age as him, 37; or maybe younger. He deserved a woman who couldn’t solve the Daily Telegraph crossword without talking to perfect strangers. She probably kept on doing the crossword when he was fucking her. “‘Large guns required when leaving town, nine letters’?”

  Night began to flood slowly across the sky like washable ink. The sea continued to shush and fuss; but there was very little wind; and between the rocks that bordered St Brelade’s Bay, Bryan felt that he could have been back in his childhood, in the seaside land of Rupert Bear or Tiger Tim, where there were always crabs and starfish and sandcastles with flags that flew. He walked along the very edge of the sea, allowing it to foam occasionally into his sneakers, £210 a pair, but who cared, this was a night for celebration.

  It was almost dark when he reached the rocks on the eastern side of the bay. A faint mauvish afterlight still outlined the hills and the neighboring rooftops, but here on the beach it was chilly and damp and very black. He swigged Perrier Jouët from the neck of the bottle. It frothed violently in his mouth, and he almost choked.

  He was about to turn back to L’Horizon when he saw a quick light darting across the sand, beside the rocks. Dim, diagonal, very quick, then extinguished. He peered into the darkness, wishing he weren’t so drunk. He heard scuffling noises; chipping noises; then he saw the light again.

  He approached the rocks. The light was shone directly into his face.

  He waited, and when nothing happened, and nobody said anything, he raised the Perrier Jouët bottle. “How about a drink?” he suggested.

  A sniff. Then a man’s voice, with a burry Jersey accent, “Orright then, don’t care if I do.”

  He passed the bottle into the darkness. Swigging, sloshing noises. Then the bottle returned. “Wass that, cider?”

  “Champagne, the best. I’m celebrating.”

  “Oh yuss?”

  “I sold two-point-three million pounds’ worth of print today.”

  “Oh yuss? That good, then?”

  Bryan laughed. His laugh sounded flat against the rocks. “Good? It’s not much short of a miracle!”

  “Oh,” said the man’s voice. “You’ve come to the right place, then.”

  Bryan drank more champagne; hesitated; then passed over the bottle. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well… just here, after dark, in St Brelade’s Bay … this is the place for miracles.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Abruptly, the man shone the torch into his own face, from underneath, so that it took on all the ghastliness of a primitive mask carved out of a coconut. A thin-faced man, cavernously thin, with a prickly stubbled chin and blood-streaked eyes.

  “Aint no suppose at all. You ever seen the like of this?”

  He clenched the torch between the knees of a well-soiled pair of brown corduroy trousers; and directed it toward the sand. Then, deftly, he molded the sand into the shape of a smallish crab, outlining its claws with his fingernails and its shell with the ball of his thumb.

  He had hardly finished sculpting it when it seemed to shift. Bryan watched in complete horror and astonishment as it suddenly released itself from the beach out of which it had been fashioned, and scuttled quickly toward the sea.

  “You made a crab,” he said, his lungs rising in his ribcage. “How the hell did you do that? You made a crab and it was actually alive.”

  The man laughed, as grating and roaring as a sink-disposal unit. Then he said, “It’s the sand, ennit, this side of St Brelade’s Bay. The story goes it’s all the bones of shipwrecked sailors, ground up by the waves. Look how white it is, you could believe that, couldn’t you? And look how red these rocks are! They say they’re stained with blood. The stuff of life, this sand! The elements of life!”

  Bryan swayed. He was feeling very drunk, and he wasn’t quite sure if he were really here or not. “So what are you saying?” he asked the old man. “You’re saying this part of the beach is magic? or what? I don’t follow you!”

  The man stood up. For some reason, Bryan could smell the drink on his breath, although he couldn’t taste drink in his own mouth.

  The man swayed close to him, and said, “Whatever you make out of this sand, Sonny Jim, it takes on a life of its own. Make it after dark, and it’ll be yours till morning. Living, breathing, whatever you want. It’s sailors’ sand, that’s why. Shipwrecked mariners’ sand.”

  Bryan stared at him for a very long time without saying anything. Then he said, “Do it again.”

  “What?”

  “Make another one. Go on.”

  “I’ll have another drink first.”

  Bryan handed over the bottle and the man wiped the neck and swigged it. “Gah, bloody awful this stuff. All froth. Like drinking your own bathwater.”

  “Make another crab,” Bryan insisted.

  The man crouched down again. “What do you want, big un or little un?”

  “Big un.”

  “How big?”

  “Really big. Big as you like.”

  The man began to mold and pat the sand into a domed heap; and then to outline two monstrous claws. “Don’t want to make it too big,” he remarked. “Don’t want to make it so bloody big we have to make a run for it.” Then he laughed, and coughed, and spat into the darkness.

  Bryan watched him closely as he finished the pie-crust crimping around the edge of the sand-crab’s shell. It was almost a foot-and-a-half across, the biggest crab that he had ever seen, and by the erratic light of the torch it looked humped and sinister. But how could it live? It was only sand, after all, and it was so ridiculously huge that the man wouldn’t be able to deceive him by substituting a real crab – which was what Bryan was beginning to suspect that he had done the first time. The crab had probably been buried in the sand all the time, and all it had needed was a quick brushing-away and a tap on the shell and off it had scuttled.

  At last the man was finished. He stood up, and smacked the sand from his hands, and said, “There.”

  “But it hasn’t come to life.”

  “Give it a chance. The bigger you make em, the slower.”

  They stood beside the crab for almost ten minutes, sharing the bottle of Perrier Jouët’s best bathwater. Eventually, Bryan said, “You’re pulling my leg. That’s not going to come alive.”

  The man coughed. And, at that instant, the humped crab suddenly stirred, and swung its claw, and started to heave itself out of the surrounding sand. Bryan said, “Shit!” and jumped back in alarm, colliding with the man, and dropping his champagne bottle.

  Both of them took a few cautious paces back, well out of the crab’s reach. It stayed where it was for a moment, its bead-black eyes revolving on their stalks.

  “Do you think it’s dangerous?” Bryan whispered.

  The man shook his head. “Prolly not. It’s trying to sniff for the sea, ennit?”

  He was right. The crab was simply trying to fix its bearings. After a while, it began slowly to lurch toward the sound of the distant breakers. Bryan played the torch on it as it crossed the beach, and eventually disappeared into the darkness.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He looked around. The man was already making his way ba
ck around the rocks, toward the stone esplanade, where summer lights were strung all the way from one side of the bay to the other.

  “Your torch!” called Bryan. Then started to hurry after him. But he paused when he reached the steps that led back up to the esplanade, and stared at the rocks, and the sands that the man had called sailors’ sand, the elements of life.

  He was thoughtful all the next day. He sat in L’Horizon’s health club, eating a slow breakfast of croissants and marmalade and strong black coffee. The shouts of children echoed around the pool. Last night he had dreamed about crabs, hundreds of crabs, stirring in the darkness. Then he had dreamed about the woman doing the Daily Telegraph crossword. She had been naked, lying back on a sunbed, with a bare-shaved vulva, sticky and pink, out of which bees had been crawling, and wiping their wings, and then flying into the sunshine. She had looked up and smiled at him, and licked her lips.

  He called Roger Herbert, his sales manager in York, and said that he wasn’t feeling well, and that he would spend one more night on Jersey. Roger sounded irritated but there wasn’t much that he could do about it. “Wasn’t something you ate, was it?” he asked. “You should watch the shellfish. My mother was almost killed by a whelk.”

  Bryan bought himself a L’Horizon sweatshirt and pair of baggy running shorts and went for a walk across the beach.

  This morning, children were building castles and roads out of the same sand from which the man had fashioned his monster crab. Bryan knelt down by the rocks and self-consciously made his own crab, only a small one, but as realistic as he could manage, patting the sand smooth and hard. He sat and watched the crab for almost twenty minutes but it didn’t stir. Of course the man had told him that the sand only came to life at night, but it had been worth a try.

  He spent the day sightseeing. He visited the dank warren of whitewashed tunnels that the Nazis had used during the war as an underground hospital. Then he wandered around a shoddy decrepit selection of plants and plaster statues that was supposed to be Gardens of All Lands. It was unbearably hot and stuffy inland, and so he drove to Jersey’s north shore and stood on the cliffs and watched the sea.

  Far below him, down on the beach, he saw a small Highland terrier dashing and up and down, just like the dog that his uncle had given him when he was a boy; and that gave him an idea.

  Darkness seemed to be reluctant to fall that evening. Bryan took a can of beer on to the beach and sat on the rocks and waited. At last the pedaloes were dragged ashore; and the last of the topless girls came in from the surf, a huge-breasted blonde accompanied by a spiky-haired boyfriend who looked as if he would gratuitously garrotte anybody who even so much as glanced at her.

  Then it was night, and Bryan was alone on the beach, on the sailors’ sand, with the man’s torch and a blue plastic spade that he had bought from the souvenir shop. He wedged the torch in the rocks, so that he could see what he was doing. Then he knelt down, and began to dig. It took him about quarter of an hour to fashion a small terrier out of sand, sitting with its paws neatly in front of it, and its ears perked up. He carefully drew its fur with a discarded lollipop stick, and gave it wide, appealing eyes. When he had finished he stood up and admired it.

  He opened another can of Tennent’s and stood beside the dog and waited. The wind from the sea was dark and warm; more like a restless dream than a wind. He checked his watch. It was only ten past ten. He wondered how drunk he had been last night. Maybe he had imagined that man and his monster crab. Pink champagne had always made him a little mad; even madder than Tennent’s, or Carslberg Special Brew.

  He waited an hour and nothing happened. The terrier remained a sand terrier. In the end, growing chilled and hungry, he left the rocks and walked back to the hotel. He went up to his room and changed into his navy-blue blazer and gray slacks. Before he went down to the bar, though, he went out on to his balcony and stared out at the darkened beach. He whistled, softly at first, then a little louder. “Come on, boy. Come on, boy!”

  The sea shushed; the wind made the strings of lights dance. He closed the balcony door and went down to the bar to see if he could find himself a spare bit of talent to chat up.

  Shortly after two o’clock that morning, something woke him up. He opened his eyes and listened intently. It wasn’t the sea. It wasn’t the awning over the hotel balcony, ruffling and slapping in the breeze. It was more like a scratching noise.

  He sat up. He heard it again. Skrittch, skkrittch, skkritch at his bedroom door.

  He climbed out of bed, and walked across to the door in nothing but his pajama bottoms. He listened again. Skrittch, skkritcch, skkritch, and a high-pitched whining.

  He opened the door with a cold feeling of delight and alarm, and there it was. The sand terrier; still sandy-colored; but alive; and real; and sitting up to beg.

  He knelt down in the corridor and cautiously stroked the little dog’s head. It jumped up and down and wagged its tail and tried to lick his hand.

  “You’re real,” he whispered. “I made you, and you’re real.”

  He felt extraordinary; sober and strange and incredibly elated. “Here, boy,” he called the terrier. “Here, boy, come on boy!”

  He picked the dog up and it wriggled wildly in his arms, its tail lashing against his chest. “You’re terrific,” he told it. “You’re terrific. What the hell am I going to call you? How the hell am I going to get you back to the mainland? You’re amazing!”

  He was just about to go back into his room when the night porter appeared at the end of the corridor. “Sir?” he called.

  Bryan kept on stroking the terrier’s head. “Everything’s fine, thanks.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but no dogs permitted.”

  “Oh … I didn’t know. I’m sorry. He’s only a little one, very well behaved.”

  The night porter looked at the wriggling terrier, unimpressed. “I’m sorry, sir. Hotel rules. No dogs; not even by arrangement.”

  “Well, what am I going to do with him? I can’t just let him go.”

  “We have a kennel downstairs, sir, in the luggage room. I can take him down there for the night, but you’ll have to make alternative arrangements tomorrow.”

  “All right, then,” Bryan agreed, handing the little dog over. “You’ll make sure he gets something to eat, though, won’t you?”

  The night porter gave him a tightly-stretched smile. “I believe the grill room has some hamburgers left over, sir.”

  With that, he carried the dog away. Bryan closed the door of his room, and thought: I’ve got a dog. I’ve actually got a dog. I made it out of sand, and it came alive and found me.

  He switched on his bedside light, and then opened up his mini-bar and took out a beer. Who cared if it was two o’clock in the morning. This called for a drink!

  He was standing by the bed, swallowing ice-cold beer out of the can, when his gaze wandered across the room to the copy of Men Only lying open on the desk. A blonde with breasts even larger than the girl on the beach was smiling back at him, her thighs wide apart. He swallowed more beer. He didn’t take his eyes off the photograph.

  Early the next morning, he went down to the porter’s office to collect the little dog.

  “I’ve come for my dog,” he told the sandy-haired porter.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “The night porter took my dog last night and put it in the kennel in the luggage-room.”

  “Oh, certainly, sir. Please wait.”

  The porter disappeared, and then returned looking flushed. “I’m sorry, sir. Your dog doesn’t seem to be there.”

  “You haven’t let it out?”

  The porter shook his head. “The luggage room has been locked all night, sir. It always is.”

  “Let me take a look,” Bryan insisted.

  He went behind the counter and into the luggage room. At the far end stood a large green-painted kennel, with a wire door, fastened with a loop and a nail. Bryan knelt down in front of it, and peered inside.


  “As you see, sir,” the porter remarked. “No dog.”

  But on the floor of the kennel was a half-eaten hamburger patty; and in the opposite corner, a small heap of dry white sand. The terrier had been put in here; and it hadn’t escaped. But it looked as if the sailors’ sand could only live and breathe by night. Yours till morning, the man had said.

  “Do you want me to make some inquiries, sir?” the porter asked him. “I could talk to the night porter, if he hasn’t yet gone to bed.”

  Bryan shook his head. “No … don’t worry. I think I know what’s happened.” He spent all day lying on his bed staring at the girl in Men Only. Belinda, from Staffordshire, 40D, likes sculling. Sculling? That must be made up. But she was just the kind of girl who really appealed to him. The face of a princess and the body of a stripper. Fine cheekbones, provocative blue eyes.

  And if he were to sculpt Belinda from Staffordshire out of sand, she would be real, and she would be his. She wouldn’t belong to some belligerent oick on the beach; or some middle-aged businessman in heavy-rimmed glasses. She would be his. For the night, at least … and in the morning, she would be gone, leaving him without any responsibilities whatsoever, except to brush away the sand he had used to create her.

  He stayed at the hotel all day, swimming and exercising and taking saunas. The day seemed to last for ever, and during the afternoon the sun seemed to be staying permanently high in the sky, as if it was refusing even to think about setting.

  But at last he was out by the rocks, in the warm and welcoming darkness, with his torch and two spades and plenty to drink.

  He took his time. Belinda had to be perfect. He marked out her height on the sand, 5ft 4ins, then he carefully dug and smoothed and patted and shaped. It was almost half-past eleven by the time he had finished. He knelt in the sand beside her, and lightly ran his hand over her breasts and her stomach. In the slanting torchlight, she looked almost alive already.