by Max Gilbert
At first Chris did not see them there.
His eyes searched the ocean boiling around the slab of rock on which the sea-fort was built, half imagining he saw David struggling in the surf that was streaked brown by strips of kelp.
The realisation of what his mind had subconsciously registered came in a slow burn of understanding. His head snapped back.
Almost at the far corner, standing on the narrow ledge of rock, four feet above the sea, was the Reverend Reed, white tufts of hair stuck out, his raincoat hanging off his thin body like a gray blanket.
Behind him a smaller figure, blond-haired, twisting and turning as if moving in a strange kind of dance.
"David!" The relief he felt was short-lived. Something was wrong.
The old man had one bony hand clamped around David's upper arm.
"Dad..."
Even though the rumble of the surf almost submerged David's voice, he knew the little boy was frightened.
He reached the ledge first, Mark behind him, Ruth last.
The ledge was narrow enough to make it feel as if they were walking along a plank, the massive wall of the seafort behind them and five feet of seething North Sea beneath their feet.
Moving as quickly as he could, Chris reached a point a dozen paces from Reed. Here the ledge, as flat as a pavement, broadened to four or five feet.
"Stop!" Reed watched them through a pair of eyes that were frightening. They blazed with a manic intensity. All civilization, culture, education had been stripped from that blazing stare. This was animal. Something trapped in a corner-terrified, but more dangerous than it had ever been before.
"Dad ... Make him let go. ... I don't like it. ..."
Chris took a deep breath. "Mr Reed. Mr Reed. ..."
"Reverend Reed, please ... Don't forget I am a holy man. The link between mortal men and God."
"Reverend Reed, look, it's dangerous out here. We should go inside where it's safe."
"Safe? Ask Gateman whether it's safe or not."
"If you're concerned about something we'll talk about it. But inside."
"No."
"Reverend Reed ... let my son go. ... please." All at once he knew that Reed had planned something. Unpleasant.
He couldn't rush at the old man because all Reed had to do was push David over the ledge into the sea. The sea was dangerous enough. But likely as not there would be things waiting there. Already he'd noticed shadows swimming beneath the surface. The Saf Dar probably, drawn like sharks to a chunk of bloody meat.
"Reverend, please come inside. My son's done nothing to you. Can't we talk about it?"
'Yes. We can talk until the cows come home. Go ask Gateman. The time for talking is over. It's time we acted.
Boy ... stand still, will you!" Shocked, David stopped trying to twist himself free.
"Reverend Reed. ... Look, please let my son go. He's only six years old. You're frightening him."
The old man looked keenly at Chris and asked: "What are your feelings now? When I twist the boy's arm like this does it distress you?"
"Yes ... you know it does. Don't do it. Please ... you're hurting him. ..."
"Mummy..."
"Don't hurt him, Reverend. He's just a little boy."
"You love your son, Mr Stainforth?"
"Yes. Of course. Now-"
"Listen to me, then. What did you buy him for his birthday this year?"
"Just let him go."
"Answer the question."
"A video ... Books ... And-and a computer game."
"You love him a lot, then?"
"Yes! But why-"
"It goes without saying that the mother loves her child. Nature programmed the female of the species that way. But fathers ... They can be different. They say they love their children. But some can be quite indifferent. They'd rather spend their free time with their own friends, drinking beer, playing squash ... football. But I believe you do love your son very much, Mr Stainforth. You spend time with him, talk to him, not down to him, you treat him as someone very important in your life. Probably far more important then you yourself realize. I see you at Christmas spending the morning playing on the living room carpet with him, putting together the toys, laughing and joking together. I truly believe you do that, Mr Stainforth. Ah, now you're wondering why I wanted to establish that belief, and why I am standing out here above the North Sea, holding onto your beloved son's arm. The reason is this, Mr Stainforth. Because I am going to kill your son. And you are going to watch me kill him."
The power of the words:
I AM GOING TO KILL YOUR SON.
Chris stood locked in the same position, trying to draw breath.
"Dad ..." David sounded weaker.
The Reverend Reed maneuvered David closer to the edge of the rock. The sea churned fiercely beneath him. Chris glanced back at Mark's grim face; behind him Ruth looked as if she was in shock.
In the surf a head broke the surface. Red, grotesquely hairless, the eyes like two splinters of white glass staring at what was happening on the ledge.
"Sacrifice," said Reed. "Gateman was right. He should be here to witness this. Oh, and there he is."
Tony stood a little beyond the gates, watching.
"You were right, Gateman. I was wrong. I understand now. We have to sacrifice the boy. Just as you wanted, Gateman. The most powerful sacrifice is when you give what is most valuable. And what is more valuable than the life of a young child? If an old woman is terminally ill you hear nothing about it. But a sick child. ... then you hear about it day after day. You see it on the television, in the newspapers. Charitable people raise money to send it for the finest treatment. As the saying goes: you see a sick child and your heart goes out to the child. When I kill this handsome little boy, whom we all like, everyone will feel the grief. More importantly, the child's parents will feel it most powerfully. They will watch as he dies. Their grief will be like a hurricane." Reed reached into his pocket, groped there for a moment, then pulled out a screwdriver.
The long steel shaft glinted in the misty light. Years of use had worn the tip as sharp as a blade.
"The parents' outpouring of grief is what Gateman's dirty old god wants so badly. In return it gives us the power to remove those monsters that imprison us here so we can return to our homes, and to our lives. And we will forget this ever happened."
Mark rumbled, "After you have murdered a six-yearold boy? Man, you're crazy."
Chris felt oddly calm. More than that, it was as if all his emotion had been locked away in the heart of an iceberg. The feeling was dangerous. As if that emotion could not be contained for long. Any more than you could freeze a nuclear reactor.
"Let him go." Chris breathed ice. "Let him go now, Reed."
"Hurt him," rasped Mark, "and I swear I will personally-"
"Who said this would be easy? Not me. Ask your new holy man, Gateman. This is not easy at all." Reed angled the screwdriver so that he could force the glittering shaft into David's eye.
"Mummy ... Daddy ..."
Chris bled inside.
"Listen to me," cracked Reed's voice. "I admit it. We obey different rules here. My God, my redeemer, cannot enter this place. I know ... for some reason he is excluded. So: we sacrifice the boy. Then we are free."
"Oh no you're not, Reed." Tony spoke for the first time.
"We have to make the sacrifice, Gateman. We have to give something precious."
"Yes, we do. We must give something precious- something so precious it hurts us to part with it. But what are you giving?"
"The boy. That mother and father's only child."
"But he's not yours to give. He's theirs. The sacrifice will only work if the mother or father gives the child."
The wild look returned when Reed understood this.
"But they're not going to do it, are they?" He moved his arm back with the screwdriver's point a foot from David's eye.
"Well then, Gateman. It's a gamble. Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm wrong. But
we will have to see which one-ah ..."
How David did it Chris didn't know, but he kicked out with both feet. Reed was still hanging onto the sixyear-old boy but it threw him off balance. He had to use the hand holding the screwdriver to steady himself against the sea-fort wall.
Chris ran.
He threw himself forward, grabbing the old man's thin arm, pushing the screwdriver upward away from David.
It was the right thing to do.
And it was the wrong thing to do.
He smelled the gin stench on his face as Reed spat, "Fool... Fool."
With a single shove of his arm, the old man pushed David off the ledge and into the sea four feet below. The foam swallowed him without a splash.
"No!"
Chris threw himself down, eyes searching the surf. David didn't come up.
Just five yards away there was a semi-circle of four Saf Dar, the waves breaking over their shoulders.
Behind him Mark picked up Reed, swung him out over the sea, past Ruth, then threw him along the ledge, bouncing him off the sea-fort wall. The old man squawked like a wounded crow.
"Get him inside."
Dangerously, the villagers were spilling out through the gates and onto the dry section of the causeway.
Tom Hodgson strode forward, shotgun in one hand. He grabbed Reed by the dog-collar and hauled the old man inside.
Chris looked down at the shifting mass of water. It looked alive, sucking at the rock, slapping the sides of the causeway with a cracking sound that sent spray shooting six feet into the air.
"I'm going in!" he shouted to Mark.
"No. Not yet. Those things are in the water."
"It's my boy in there. He can't swim. He's-"
"He'll come up. He's got to. Wait until he does, then grab him. They'll kill you if you go in there."
Chris threw himself onto his chest, not even noticing the Saf Dar surfacing one by one just yards away. Five ... six. Another broke the surface below the ledge ten yards to his left. Seven.
Thrusting his hands into the water, he blindly felt for David beneath the surf. Spray fired up into his face.
Water, only water. His fingers swam through it, touching nothing solid; he didn't even acknowledge the possibility that a larger hand might grab his and drag him forward into the sea.
Beside him Mark did the same, the shotgun on the ledge by his side. Behind him Ruth stood staring at the surf in numb horror. Her son was somewhere beneath it all, battered by the whirling surf, unable to breathe, the little air that remained in his lungs turning into pockets of fire in his chest. Wanting to breathe ... needing to breathe ... no air ... only a roaring darkness ...
Barely twenty seconds had passed, but to Chris it seemed like an age. His little boy was drowning in here. Or maybe he was already in the big red paws of the Saf Dar.
He had to get him out of there.
His hand caught something.
He pulled. Up came a handful of leathery seaweed.
Ten yards along the ledge, a red figure was pulling itself out of the water with a reptilian smoothness.
Tony shouted, "They're coming out of the water. We're going to have to get back inside."
Chris didn't answer; his world consisted of an area of hissing sea-water the size of a table-top beneath his face. He searched through it with his hands.
It's no good, he's gone. I'm going to go in myself. Even if those things take me. It's better than admitting defeat. He dug his hands deeper into the sea, ignoring the pains shooting through his shoulders as he stretched his arms out. His face nearly touched the water as the waves swelled up toward him, the water now rising up to within an inch of his face.
God, if only-
There!
"Got him!"
Mark knelt beside him, ready to help.
Chris felt his fingers around the thin arm. Never let go, never let go ... The words sped around his mind.
He pulled. At first nothing happened, then he saw the shape of a head just under the water, a blurred pale shape, then-
"Jesus Christ!"
A head of matted hair.
It was the dead boy.
The boy he had seen on the beach. With that procession of long-drowned men. The Fox twins; the dead pilot; the drowned fishermen. And there had been this boy. A skeletal figure with enormous eyes and black hair.
That was the face he looked into now.
The face must have mirrored Chris's in a surreal way. It wore an expression of shock, mouth wide open, a silver-sided tongue looking like a tinned sardine.
One eye stared up into his. It bulged hugely; the boy was torn by some colossal agony.
The force that had brought it to life had been so powerful it had ruptured the other eye, the explosive cancer replacing it with a red growth that swelled from the socket like a ripe tomato, its skin so tight it looked ready to split once again.
The boy opened and closed his dead mouth, trying to speak. Chris knew it was pleading to be lifted out of the sea and carried inside. After all these cold and lonely years, to be held tight and consoled. He wanted Mummy to kiss away his pain and make him better.
The vast red cancer eye began to crack open, exposing spiky fibers like the antennae of a shrimp.
Chris released his grip on the arm, which was as thin as an African famine victim's.
The face with its beseeching expression slipped away.
David had been under the waves for forty seconds.
"Hold my legs!"
Even before Mark had a chance to grip properly, he launched himself forward, his head beneath the surface of the water. Eyes open, he saw only distorted silver bubbles and rags of dark weed. His arms snaked away into the darkness beneath, searching desperately. No David.
Chris yanked his head up. Mark was still hanging onto his legs.
"Chris ... They're moving in."
The Saf Dar were half a dozen yards away, wading forward.
Soon they would be able to snatch Chris into the sea.
"We've got to get into the sea-fort!"
Gasping in cold air, Chris shook his head. He plunged his face into the water again, arms shooting out.
Hit.
He grabbed, hands gripping fabric.
Chris pulled. A blond head emerged from the swirl of bubbles.
Then Chris's head was clear of the water.
"Mark ... got him ... Pull!"
Chris hoisted himself partly back onto the ledge.
