A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  Once again, he saw them but didn’t see them, registering the image but unable to decipher it at first, until his brain assembled the pieces. Those were poles, lodged into the ground about the generators. Some of them were bamboo canes, others rods of iron, sheathed in plastic. They didn’t belong there. They’d been put there. And so had what was hanging from them.

  Gamekeepers had used to do something similar, Sam remembered being told once. Or was it farmers? One or the other. Crows, rats, moles, foxes; they killed them and strung them, by the feet or back paws, from the nearest tree of sufficient and convenient size. This wasn’t the same, not quite; the corpses were sparrows, thrushes, a starling (their wings hanging limply outwards in death, some at grotesque angles, clearly broken) and there was a mouse, teeth bared in a last grimace, a rat . . . and was that a kitten?

  Tiny black motes swarmed round them, clustered round a pathetic little heap on the ground where a string had parted—no, not the string. That was still intact, the knot still tied at the end, round two tiny paws. And he realised that the buzzing he’d heard wasn’t just the generator.

  It had to be children. Had to be. They could be vicious little beasts; few adults could remember their childhood with real candour and find nothing to wince at. But he had never, he was sure, been guilty of such calculated sadism. Reckless, too, whoever they were; he could see the sign attached to the generator, saying Keep Out: Danger Of Death. Someone should speak to the parents, he thought numbly.

  The sight had a grim fascination all its own; it was almost a minute before he could finally look away. He took another step, then stopped again; there was a sign fixed to the fence, pitted and worn but still legible: Barton Ward Power Station. There was graffiti on it; someone had written, in angry jagged black marker, the word MURDERERS. And below it, someone else—perhaps the perpetrators of the obscenity inside the fence—had written something. The letters were shaky and ill-formed, written, he guessed, slowly and with difficulty. Perhaps those responsible were retarded or disturbed in some way; it wouldn’t surprise him. He leant closer, and saw the word hadn’t been written, but incised, with something sharp: MAKERS.

  In the grasses of the vacant lot, crickets whickered away. They were the only sound. No cars used this road, it seemed. No one came this way. The unease Sam had felt before deepened, but this time he felt there was greater cause for it. He felt more isolated and alone than he’d have thought possible in a built-up area. Normally he had no objections to solitude, but if the children responsible for what he’d seen back at the power station were nearby, and they found him, or he them . . . what then? Of what else might they be capable? It was a large step from birds and rats to people, but even so. . . .

  Well, if he was worried, the wisest course was surely to turn back now. But no; he was stubborn. Always had been. Teresa had berated him about it, but lovingly. The memory of her gentle, affectionate scolding brought a brief smile to his lips, though it faded quickly.

  Like two sides of a spinning coin, he kept seeing the deformed child and the dead birds on their poles. The link was obvious; they were both grotesque, and both seen on this journey. But perhaps there was more to it than that. He remembered the sign on the power station: MURDERERS. And he remembered something else. Photographs of mice, mice exposed to the kind of strong electromagnetic field you found close to power lines and power stations. Ballooning with cancers. Deformed. And their young . . . the young they bore, deformed. And deformity didn’t have to be only of the body.

  What if?

  Ridiculous. The child he’d seen was barely capable of moving—it couldn’t even stand, though it had tried.

  But perhaps, he thought, they weren’t all so helpless.

  Sam snorted a laugh to himself; he could just imagine Teresa, if she was here now: With an imagination like that, Sam, you should be a writer or something. True. He was making mountains of molehills.

  But still: what if?

  There was a faint noise behind him, a light scratching sound. He turned; nothing. A dead leaf, blown along the road; that was all. But there had been no wind. There must have been a quick gust. But wouldn’t he have keenly felt it, sweating anew as he was, clothes sticking to him? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

  For some reason, he thought: listen. He heard nothing. So what?

  It took him a moment to realise that the crickets had stopped. A thick, creamy silence blanketed the yellow, stirless grasses. Except, weren’t those stalks swaying gently, as though moved by something? What if they were? A gust of wind (but still he’d felt none), or some small animal. Nothing more. Nothing more.

  Even so, he began to walk a little faster. The shade of the trees clustered on the other side of the road looked cool and inviting, but he couldn’t bring himself to cross over. Whenever he thought of doing so, the bushes at the edge of the slope seemed to be rustling, even though—he was sure of it, this time—there was still no wind.

  He should turn back. But he didn’t. To do so would be to submit to fears he’d conjured from little enough (even though they seemed to gather weight and conviction with every step). It couldn’t be far to the other end of the road, which the bus into town passed every morning. Couldn’t be. If anything, surely it would be quicker, better—safer?—to press straight on.

  A little further; he could make out some buildings in the distance. He followed the road and found it branched off. The turning on the right tapered to a halt; another cobbled cul-de-sac. The one on the left led on—he could see more buildings down it.

  He looked ahead. The fork of the road cupped a small island of thin yellow grass. On it stood a pub. A banner on its wall proclaimed LIVE BANDS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT, but its windows were hidden behind roll-down shutters and there were letters missing from its name. He started down the left hand fork. Around him, crickets chirruped, then fell silent.

  He looked around. Distantly, he could hear traffic on the big A-road. So near and yet so far. From his vantage point, now that the vacant lot was behind him, he could see hills rolling off into obscurity. Blocks of flats, houses. It heartened him. His sense of isolation lifted a little.

  Behind him, there was that scratching sound again, the air still close and thick. He spun round. The road, the lot, were empty. He saw nothing but a swatch of grass, at the edge of the lot where there was a gap in the fencing, tick-tocking to and fro.

  He watched and it grew still. Silence, stillness, gathered.

  Sam turned round and began walking down the left fork of the road.

  Behind him, something giggled.

  I will not run, Sam told himself. I will not run. He quickened his pace still further, though, despite the first recurring twinges from his hip. There was a rustle and a skitter, but he did not look back. There were buildings ahead, people. There would be safety, wouldn’t there?

  But it was soon clear there wouldn’t. The road, he saw, led through an industrial estate. More high fences topped with razorwire. More rolled-down shutters.

  Nobody here, he thought. On Sundays, it would be the perfect place to play, if you didn’t want to be seen.

  What if?

  Behind him, the sound of blown leaves on the road again, except that there was no wind, and no leaves.

  He thought of beaters on a hunt, thrashing the undergrowth to chivvy the birds out into the air and the path of the hunters’ guns.

  No. Please no.

  That skittering, again. What could make that sound?

  He remembered the word on the sign: MAKERS. Incised. Long nails. Or claws.

  What if?

  MAKERS.

  The poles. The dead birds.

  Sacrifices to a god. A maker. That which made them what they were.

  MURDERERS.

  MAKERS.

  It all depended on your point of view.

  He still wasn’t running, but he was walking so fast his hip gnawed at him like a starving rat, there was a stitch in his side and his breath burned in his lungs. Pain throbbed in his calves,
from ankles to knees.

  The road forked again. There. The right fork sloped up towards the A-road. He could hear its traffic swishing back and forth at the top. But——

  But there was thick high grass on either side of the right fork, and as he watched, it rustled and swayed before growing still. On purpose, he thought. Letting him know.

  The fork on the left led down under another railway bridge to a road that ran parallel. Beside the wrought-iron archway above the road, there was an arch of dull, greyish-black brick. Water was dripping from it with a pattering sound on to the stone floor and darkness crouched within.

  Grass grew each side of the road where it ran under the bridge, and that, too, ticked to and fro.

  They waited at every exit. He looked back the way he’d come, and there was no movement, but he knew they would be waiting there too. Hiding in all the niches and the little secret places of the industrial estate, and beyond them too, in the wooded slopes and the grasses of the vacant lot. What chance did one old man have, of making it all the way back to those terraced streets that might as well have been in London or Paris or on the dark side of the moon, for all the hope he had of reaching them, of seeing any place again other than this final killing ground?

  Silence gathered once more. There was the hiss and hush of the traffic on the A-road, and nothing else.

  And, from the darkness inside the brickwork archway, there came a slapping, banging, bouncing sound. Something round and pale flew out of the dark, landing in the thick grass outside. A moment later, it flew out again, back under the arch.

  Bounce, slap—once more it flew and fell out of sight in the grasses. And once more it shot out of them, but this time towards him. Automatically, he tried to catch it, but he fumbled it and it fell at his feet.

  From the grasses, from the shadows, there were giggles, sudden, high and cruel, and Sam felt his heart falter and almost stop. But then they died away and there was only the far-off traffic once more.

  Waiting. Waiting for him. He bent down, picked up the ball.

  Sam looked this way and that; there was nowhere else to go.

  All children loved games. He stared into the dark. Perhaps, if he played well, he’d see the sun again.

  Slowly, unwillingly, he walked under the arch to play.

  Graven

  DANNY AND SARAH walked along the Scarborough seafront hand in hand, watching the sun dance on the blue sea. It was a bright, warmish Easter, and in the week they had been there, they’d partaken of all the pleasures on offer— including the somewhat dubious one of the local fish and chips. Scarborough supposedly had at least one of the finest chippies in the country, but if that was so, they had yet to encounter it.

  There were the big arcades that lit up the sea fronts at night. There were secondhand bookshops to browse in, for they both loved to read. And the National Student Drama Festival was on. They’d been to see half-a-dozen shows of varying quality, and Sarah had made Danny laugh with tales of her time in Scarborough during her college days.

  But it had palled. There was only so much you could do, so many walks you could take or books you could read before you wanted something new. Danny thought he might have found it.

  ‘There’s a little village up the coast, or what’s left of it. Place called Newcross. Supposed to be worth seeing. Want to go?’

  Sarah smiled sleepily in the bright warm sunshine. ‘Why not?’

  Newcross wasn’t much of a village. It was comparatively new, built in the early twentieth century, unusual for fishing villages in this part of the world. The reason for that lay about half a mile due south of the village: the remains of the old village of Knightscross.

  A narrow winding road took them down to Knight’s Bay, the little inlet which served as the village’s harbour. They wandered down the quiet, pretty beach of rough shingle, guided by a rusty signpost marked OLD KNIGHTSCROSS VILLAGE.

  The cliff pushed sharply out in front on them, almost into the water itself. They stepped around. Sarah’s jaw dropped open. Even Danny, who had known what they would find, was impressed.

  The patch of beach lay between two abrupt protrusions of cliff face. In between lay a jumble of scattered, wave-worn masonry, much of it still recognisable, despite the passage of years. A church spire, its framework nearly denuded of tiling, stuck up out the sand at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  ‘What . . .?’ Sarah was stunned.

  ‘There’s more,’ Danny told her. He led her round the second cliff face. She swore as a wave washed over her foot, realising as they went that this second outsweep was far narrower than the first, only ten feet wide at most. Past it, the coast swept on, the cliff lowering till it merged with the sand and shingle. On this side, too, there was wreckage, and as they walked among the fallen buildings her foot banged against something. She looked down and saw a skull grinning up at her from the sand, dried seaweed clinging to it like hair. She took a horrified step back. Near it, a smooth-worn cross of grey stone stuck up, leaning to one side, also hung with weed.

  ‘Newcross was built after the storm in 1897,’ Danny said. ‘The old village fell straight into the sea. A lot of people didn’t get out in time, but the ones who did set up a new village just past Knight’s Bay. All that was left was what was on that bit.’ He pointed up at the narrow wall of cliff face sticking out from the rest, bisecting the scattered ruins on the beach.

  Sarah looked up at it with awe. ‘Anything much on it?’

  ‘Some statue. Supposed to be pretty interesting. Come on, race you there!’

  His long, serious face flickered with boyish humour, and she ran with him, laughing, over the beach to the path hewn out of the cliff face.

  A fence ran round the sheer cliff edge. There were no other sightseers, for both the new village and the site of the old one were out of the way. From the high vantage point, it looked as if some starving giant had bitten a chunk out of the coastline; or it would have, were it not for that strange narrow spit of cliff face that divided it and gave it the shape of a softly rounded W. Fencing also ran along the sides of the spit, which, a plaque informed them, was Knight’s Point. Most of its hundred foot length was bare but for sparse, wiry grass.

  Except for the statue at the end.

  No words were on the statue itself, or its plinth, but a well-worn stand beside it, presumably placed by the National Trust or some such body, gave what little information was known about it. The statue was thought to date back to the Middle Ages, although there was no sure proof. The earliest recorded mention of it was in 1664. No one knew who or what it was meant to represent.

  Looking at it, it was easy to see how the lost village had gained its name. It represented, quite simply, a knight and a doorway. The door and the knight’s attire looked mediaeval enough. The sculpture had, in parts, been eroded to featurelessness by a century of wind and rain, but in other places the attention to detail was clear. The grain of the planks in the door. The nails on the knight’s left hand, which was pressed against it. The links in the chain mail.

  The door seemed to be bulging slightly in its frame, as if someone or something was trying to force it wide. The knight’s left hand and foot kept it shut, while the sword in his right arm was raised to strike should the door give way.

  It was the knight’s face that had suffered the most, worn almost to blankness. The nose was a nub, the eyes little more than traces. But there was a thin line of mouth, and above it an observer could just make out what looked like a bushy moustache.

  ‘What the hell’s he keeping out?’ wondered Sarah.

  ‘Maybe he isn’t,’ Danny murmured. ‘Maybe he’s keeping something in.’

  She looked at him curiously, but he said nothing more.

  There were no souvenir stalls on the cliff, or cafés or suchlike—Newcross needed and valued the little tourist trade that the old village brought their way. So it was to Newcross that they went to shop for knickknacks and trinkets, there that they bought a print of an old oil painti
ng of the statue, the original dated 1894, just before the sea took the village away. The shopkeeper smiled at Sarah with an if-I-was-thirty-years-younger look in his eye; a smile which faded when he looked at Danny. He looked strange then. Afraid? No. The look was almost—awed.

  He thinks Sarah’s that pretty? Danny thought sardonically, and then he dismissed the idea with a shrug.

  They had coffee and prawn salad in the café, and laughed and joked. They wandered the beaches again, inspected the ruins of Knightscross, and went on over rolling dunes, making sure to get back before the tide came in. Danny was glad of the exercise, because he’d noticed more than one local glancing their way with looks compounded of trepidation, anxiety, and—did he imagine it?—the same awe that he thought he’d glimpsed on the shopkeeper’s face.

  That’s the local yokels for you, he thought, and with that, sought to banish the thoughts from his mind.

  A beautiful sunset was falling at the edge of the horizon. They stood and watched it before driving back to Scarborough.

  Sarah rarely took more than a few minutes to put on all her make-up. It was Danny who always spent twenty-odd minutes dithering in front of the mirror in the guest house room, trying to work out which tie went with which shirt. While Sarah waited, she contemplated the painting. She frowned.

  ‘Dan, come and have a look at this.’

  He trundled over, a tie in either hand. ‘Which one?’

  She pointed. ‘That one. Look——’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. Shut up and look. The face. It’s clearer in this, right?’

  ‘Yeah, course it is. Picture’s old, isn’t it? The statue was in better shape then.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. Look. What’s missing?’