A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  As for me, my conscience left me well alone, for all that I sometimes shiver when I think too long and hard on what Pete Ogden might have seen to drive him from his house and into acquiescence in Caroline Barstowe’s vengeance. I felt, once more, a sort of kinship with her. I’ve never seen a picture of her, have only the vaguest idea of what she might have looked like, but I often wonder how I might have ended up if I’d kept working there, stayed under Pete Ogden’s petty little tyrant’s thumb. Of course, it’s likely I would have left of my own accord in the end . . . or so I tell myself.

  Caroline Barstowe is buried in a small cemetery near Fallowfield. She had no family, no one to tend her grave. So once a month I go out there, ensure it’s reasonably clean and tidy, lay a fresh spray of flowers, and stay there a little while—sometimes as long as an hour—before I go home, almost as if waiting for something. I’m never sure what. But somehow it sets me at rest.

  God grant it does the same for her.

  Home from the Sea

  IT HAD COME TIME AGAIN; she couldn’t fight the call any longer. Mary took a deep breath and walked down the corridor of the flat to the small spare room where no one ever stayed and the door was always locked. Except when it came time again.

  Mary slipped the key into the lock and turned it. It was stiff. She kept forgetting to oil it. When resisting the call, she avoided it wholly and never went near. When she opened the door the air was stale. The window had been closed for more than a month now, the doors locked, and dust filmed everything thinly. It made the evening seem dimmer still.

  No bed, no drawers, just a bare room, but hardly space to move. She’d filled it with the children’s things.

  Like all objects with the power to harm, they were securely boxed up, held firmly in place with tape and string. String and scissors and roll of tape lay by the door; this was where they were used most often. If Mary had other need of them, she went out and bought new ones. These were consecrated to their task.

  One foot inside the doorway, she hesitated and turned back, returning seconds later with a fresh box. It contained other things she would leave in the room. Hers and Paul’s things. Her old wedding dress, pressed and folded small and flat. Her wedding and engagement rings, their wedding pictures, and so many others. Not as many as in other boxes, of course. These were only the others, the ones from before the children’s birth and the few occasions after when the children had been away from them.

  Away from them. Mary shook for a moment, hands clenched tight on the box. That last time the children had been away from them, Debbie and Tom, they’d been carried away for good. A tear squeezed clear of her eyes, ran down her face to her lip, and she gasped, the box falling, because for a moment she thought she’d tasted the sea. She had loved the sea once, but hated it now; it had taken her children from her with the casual ease of some hulking playground bully stealing the treasures of a smaller child, contemptuous and hateful in the sheer ease of its theft, the effortlessness with which it batted clutching hands away. It had answered her rending wails and beseeching cries with the laughter of its crashing waves.

  And as the bully will return the victim’s treasures broken and defiled, so a week later. . . .

  Mary made a small choking sound and bent to pick up the box. She must not think about it. She had screamed and fought with them, the doctors and the police, to be allowed to see the children one last time. And the faces that had looked up at her, bloated and flabby from the sea, and, and—no, she couldn’t, wouldn’t think of it—those faces had wrenched scream upon scream from her until someone had pricked her arm with sweet oblivion.

  She didn’t hate Paul. How could she? The drownings had devastated him no less than her, and she hadn’t blamed him. No, that honour was all hers. She had betrayed her charges. She had driven Paul away, yes, but not out of hatred for him. She wondered vaguely about him, where and how he was. The last letter had had a Scottish postmark. A new job? A new life? Or had he met someone else? She half-envied and half-hated him for that—hatred, there. It hadn’t been his fault, no, but what right had he to a new life? Their world had ended, that summer day at Anglesey. His as well as hers. No right. No right.

  But she didn’t know that for sure, that he’d got another woman. And perhaps it was only she who should have to bear this penance. The fault, the neglect had been hers. Her idea, to slip off into the dunes with him, capture the old days (‘remember how the sand got everywhere?’). Only a minute, only a minute, but a minute was long enough for the sly and greedy sea. Why should they even have wanted to go in? A summer day, yes, but dull and overcast, a grimy empty sky. Why should they have gone in? They should have been safe, building their castles on the beach.

  She’d led Paul astray, just as Woman had always been said to do in her long-ago Catholic childhood. She’d sneered at that, and now she’d been punished for it, and her responses oscillated between an anguished humility and a black, foaming lust for deicide. Come down from your cloud, God, you bastard, you coward, tyrant, murderer—come down from your cloud and I’ll rip out your heart.

  The photos of her and Paul were too rich in memory. Here they went, here, with all the rest. All the detritus, all the fallout. They cleared radioactive topsoil and dumped it, buried it deep. She had done the same with her past.

  Now. She took a deep breath, picked up the scissors and took the first of the boxes down. Sweetness and suffering became one here, like a kind of masochism. The memory of loss, the reminder, both told her of the blessing she had once known, and drove home once again the poverty of existence without it.

  She cut away tape and string, and opened up the box.

  Inside: baby clothes. A scrapbook. Photographs, locks of hair inside it. Just the sight, the touch of it felt like a knife sliding deep into her flesh. Her face puckered, her eyes ran; she lifted it clear and set it aside. Later. Later.

  Here. A little silver cup, a christening present for Tom. The little charm bracelet that had been Debbie’s gift, that she had never worn. When you’re older, Mary had said, showing it her. When you’re older. Debbie had been four then. Three years ago. She was five now, and always would be.

  Other things. All the children’s things. Mary grabbed the scrapbook and the rest, threw them back into the cardboard box, folded its flapped lid shut, and held it down as though it would all come bursting out. She breathed deep, throat crushed shut by grief, until at last the hurt had dimmed. Not gone, of course, it was never gone. Only the intensity varied.

  She went to the next box and opened it. A cardigan she’d knitted for Tom’s birthday, decorated with cartoon characters he’d liked. They’d been desperately short of cash that winter, no money for a Christmas present, so she’d scraped the wool and pattern together and knitted it herself. Tom would have that if nothing else.

  Tears on her face. She wiped them away, and still she could taste the sea; still the killer would not leave her side. She could even smell it.

  Smell . . .

  Mary opened her eyes and wiped them on her sleeve, she could smell the sleeve, its homely, everyday, prosaic smell. The reverie of grief was broken by something else. The sea, she could smell it. Salt, fish, seaweed.

  Her hands dived into the contents of the box. Clothes mostly, a few happy snaps, old toys. She felt chill dampness seeping through and pulled layers of clothing back, pulled things aside until——

  The cold shock of it, clammy and wet, made her cry out. Then she hauled it free. She stared at it. It was only a clump of seaweed, bladderwrack. It could be found on any beach in Britain. But it was fresh, still soaking, still reeking of the deep, in a box that she had tightly sealed with tape and string a month ago and left unopened since, and there had been no weed in there then.

  Movement over her hand—she gave a small cry and pulled it free of the clump. The weed fell back into the box and she stared at the tiny crab scuttling across the ridged hills of her knuckles. She shook it off. It landed upside down on the worn carpet, clawed legs scrat
ching at the air.

  All she could smell now was the sea. She couldn’t look in the box, again, let alone the others, dreading what she’d find. She couldn’t look. Couldn’t. It was like thrusting your hand into some weed-thick rock pool, not knowing what waited for your touch.

  Her eyes were open faucets; sobs gouged her throat. She backed away. There was no time to reseal the boxes, no time for any of it, only time to stagger clear of the door and slam it shut and twist the key in the lock.

  Even when she did, the smell of the sea followed her. And the sounds.

  Not of the sea. The hush, hush, hush of waves would have been welcome. Instead there was the sound of tapping and scraping and gentle, futile banging on the door that she had just locked. The kind of sounds children might make trying to get out of some closed space. Tired children with little strength.

  A cry hauled itself out of her like a too-large creature emerging from her windpipe and mouth. It hurt her. She hurt. Her hands reached towards the door, then recoiled, remembering the sight on the pathologist’s table. She could not face that again, could not take it in her arms, even if once she’d birthed it.

  She was hallucinating. It was an episode. There had been a few bad times after the drownings, and Paul had persuaded her to see someone. It hadn’t saved their marriage, but at least there was medication, pills she could take. They were in her bedroom. She threw the door open and groped through the shadows. She could not smell brine. Could not smell brine. The stinging on her face was only tears.

  She tore open her bedroom drawer with jagged, clumsy motions, the contents spilling out across the floor. She pawed among them until she found the little plastic bottle and clutched it in her fist. She broke the seal with shaking hands, shook two pills into her palm, tried to swallow them dry. It was like trying to force pebbles down a drinking straw. A wire was around her throat, crushing.

  Almost gagging, Mary staggered into the kitchen. She ran to the sink, twisted the tap, let it run, caught water in her cupped hands, raised it to her lips, and swallowed.

  She doubled over, vomiting, as the taste of seawater wracked her mouth and body. The pills spilled out too. Her vision blurred. She grabbed the edge of the sink, spitting into it, the sea smell rising all around her. She looked up as her sight cleared, into the kitchen window, saw herself mirrored in it and the dusk, haggard, wan, and crazed.

  And saw, behind her, two vague shapes, whose features were blurred by more than insubstantiality and her tears.

  A hollow moan was all she could utter this time, and she had to get away, but could not look them in the eyes (they had none, her memory pitilessly reminded her, they had none), so she turned, her own eyes tight shut, and blundered through the kitchen as if in a game of blind man’s buff, cannoning into walls and staggering clear.

  The bathroom, the bathroom. The door slammed shut behind her. It locked from the inside. Whimpering, she paced to and fro, sat on the toilet seat and rocked this way and that.

  Why this? Why?

  Punishment, of course. What else could she deserve?

  The tapping and scraping and thumping had started again. Before she’d locked herself out. Now she was locked in.

  There was an old razor in the medicine chest, she dully recalled. She used it to shave her legs. Easy to draw the blade along her forearms, opening the veins.

  The thumping stopped. Instead, she heard a worse sound. Her children were beginning to cry.

  Not the squalls of spoilt brats; the sobbing of children lost a long, long time and who have lost, in their turn, all hope of salvation.

  When did the soul depart the body? Mary groped back through those of her childhood’s teachings she could recall, and could find no answers. How many days? When had her children’s souls fallen clear of the rotting prisons of their flesh? And where did the souls go?

  Were they still lost on the greedy waves of the famished sea? Was that why it had lured them there? Out of hunger, loneliness? No matter; the end result had been the same. And so was the desire on the part of those she had lost. She had never thought, in the depths of her despair, that they had lost her, too.

  When she had not forgiven herself, they had. It’s only adults who grow to hate the gods. Children are naïve enough to believe that they are loved, and all else is a misunderstanding.

  On the other side of the door, they called the name that was God on their lips and hearts.

  Mary felt suddenly lighter, as though she’d been carrying a sack of bricks on her back so long she’d forgotten it was there. Now, it was gone. She understood.

  Slowly, she crossed the bathroom and unlocked the door.

  Then she turned and began running the bath. Even the hot tap ran cold, and the room filled with the scent of brine.

  She did not turn around as the door opened. Instead she undressed, then stepped at last into the water, gasping at its icy touch. She sat down, then lay flat. Her teeth chattered.

  The sea stung her eyes, and above her, her children’s faces, mercifully, remained pale blurs. She reached up and took their hands, smiling. Then she let her head slip beneath the cold, rising surface, opened her mouth wide and breathed in all her tears.

  The Crows

  WHEN SMOKE STARTED POURING out of the back of the car, Dan had to accept the inevitable; it was fucked. He pulled over to the side of the road, got out, and cursed volubly, fluently, and profanely for a full ten minutes before risking a hearty kick to the back fender. Nothing fell off, which was something at least.

  The old VW hadn’t exactly been air conditioned, but with the windows wound down and the car going at a reasonable speed, there’d been a similar effect. Now the full weight of the summer sun, naked in a boiling sky, landed on him. From a great height, by the feel of it. It was like a branding iron on the back of his neck. And, as Dan had to admit, his dress code—head to foot in solidly Gothic black—didn’t help matters.

  At least he hadn’t gone the whole hog and donned a pair of winklepickers for the occasion. The boots he wore were sturdy and serviceable and would get him from A to B in short order. Wherever B was.

  He wiped the sweat off his face and looked around. Fields stretched off in all directions, till low hills, little more than shadows in the heat-haze, cut off the vista. There was an uncomfortable feeling of being walled in, as though the whole stretch of countryside was one vast amphitheatre. Most of the fields were fallow, and weren’t too healthy-looking, either, the weeds that covered them straggly and pale like the hair on a sick man’s head.

  Further down the road he could see a couple of pylons, like bony giants strutting their stuff across England’s green and pleasant. It seemed as good a bet as any.

  Dan rooted round inside the car for his backpack and stuffed anything not nailed down into it. There was a small bottle of cola, half-empty by now, lukewarm, and flat. He looked at it dubiously and grimaced. It wouldn’t help much; probably the reverse. Still, it was better than nothing. He rolled up the windows, locked the Beetle up as securely as he could, and started walking, hoping it wouldn’t blow up in his absence, sending a pall of black smoke skyward like a signal flare gone wrong.

  It didn’t.

  After several minutes’ walking, Dan started plucking at the buttons of his black silk shirt, peeling it off over his head. His torso was rail-thin and pallid; he’d probably resemble a boiled lobster in an another hour, but as far as he could see it was that or be boiled alive. He might well be in any case.

  Sweat sheathed his skin as though greasing him up for something; he didn’t like to think what. It ran into his eyes and stung them painfully.

  Walking became his whole life, a slow mechanical plod. He began to wonder, disjointedly, if he’d already passed through at least one village on automatic pilot, not noticing.

  If he had, he didn’t do it again. A sign came up on his left: WELCOME TO—— The name was half-obliterated by green stains of moss, parched by the sun. He didn’t care what the bloody name was; as long as they ha
d a telephone. And a pub. He pulled his shirt back on, wincing as it brushed skin already growing tender.

  The ground rose up on either side of the road as he pressed on, low rolling hills surrounding him. A farmhouse perched on one. For a moment he considered approaching it, but then decided against it. Probably easier to keep on going to the village, whatever the hell it was called. Besides, he wasn’t even sure the farm was inhabited. There was no sign of activity, and he could hear no animals’ calls or cries borne on the silent, windless air. No, better to press on.

  And so he did, but as he reached the centre of the village, he wasn’t sure if this was any better. There were a few shops and workers’ cottages; most of them were boarded up. There was a war memorial whose rifle-bearing soldier was green with verdigris. The same thin moss as on the village sign, likewise scorched to a dead, dry crust in the summer heat, clung to the plinth and blotted out the names and memories of all the dead. Well, wasn’t that life in a nutshell, these days? Everything blotted out, dumbed down, memory spans shrinking like puddles in a drought? He’d been angry about it once. Now the apathy had grown over him like another kind of moss, one that obliterated his anger, covered it over and suffocated it. A sense of hatred and outrage against Authority might be painful—as the cause of the irritation never went away—but at least it was vitalising, gave definition and purpose, to him at any rate. Now it was replaced by contempt, a kind that shrugged its shoulders and accepted even as it spat diluted bile. The sum total of his protest now was dressing in black and listening to the Sisters of Mercy. Oh, and suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous arseholes, usually blundering back from the pub beered up. It wasn’t uncommon; he had friends who’d been badly beaten, known one girl raped. The worst he’d collected was a black eye. And that had been more than enough. Some of his contempt seeped out onto—into—himself, for his acceptance. But he accepted those things too, his own cowardice and stagnation.