Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  The railway journey to Halesworth, by way of Ipswich, was quiet. A slight, shy fellow, given to too much reading, Philip stared out of the railway carriage window throughout, answering questions politely but with no sense of engagement.

  Isaiah Rawkins himself was at Halesworth Station with their large, two-horse wagonette. He was a short, portly man, with red cheeks which came more from his own wares than from any sea breeze.

  “Beatrice, good to see you again.” Isaiah kissed my glove. “And, um, young Philip, yes.”

  They shook hands formally as a porter placed our cases in the carriage.

  During the journey Isaiah and I engaged in empty conversation about London these days, the weather and his trade, while Philip once again stared at the countryside. With the Adnams Brewery doing well at Southwold, Isaiah had secured business supplying wines and spirits to all their public houses, and he was busier than ever.

  “Emilia will be delighted to see you,” he said. “The wagonette will be yours for the week, as I have my automobile. She has many ideas to entertain our young…to entertain anyone who wishes to take, um, advantage of this mild October.”

  Little need be said of our being installed at Bitterns, the Rawkins’ large, comfortable place just outside Halesworth. Emilia was not given to fuss, and so left Philip to arrange his room to his liking, pointing out that Isaiah had a small library downstairs which was open to all. I had warned her of my nephew’s circumstances in a letter the day before.

  “Remind me, Beattie, how old is he?” Emilia poured tea for the two of us in the drawing room, dismissing the maid as soon as the tray had arrived.

  “Twenty-three,” I sighed. “The arrangement was ill-starred, the two of them with such different expectations, but they would hear nothing against it from those around them. With Philip’s allowance from his grandfather, he was keen to marry. She was taken by his earnestness at first, drawn in by his plans, I believe, but near the end, well, she saw only the limitations which marriage would impose.”

  “We did not do so badly, did we?”

  I smiled. “No, indeed, but perhaps we were fortunate. Now Philip’s girl has fled to an aunt in Scotland, breaking his heart, and he has been reluctantly attached to an aunt in England…”

  “Yourself.” Emilia laughed, her brown curls their usual tangle. “Well, a change of air may do him some good, so the coast it will be.”

  After a light dinner, Emilia insisted on taking us to see her study. I had been many times before of course, but it was always an experience. The smell, for example, was never the same. One week she had garlands of seaweed drying on a ceiling rack; the next, a fox hide curing by the window. Had she continued her schooling, I think that Emilia might have been counted a considerable natural historian. As it was, she was known as a slightly eccentric enthusiast, and rarely published at all.

  Her study contained shelves of books and pamphlets in disorder, along with far more shelves displaying relics of her trips around Suffolk, most of them as yet unlabelled. The jumbled nature of the room seemed to intrigue Philip, who examined item after item.

  “Aunt Beatrice, what’s this?” He held up a Kilner jar full of murky brown liquid. I peered over my glasses as he swirled the jar, but could see nothing else.

  “Emilia?”

  She clapped her hands together.

  “Goodness, you’ve found my foetal pig. How marvellous.”

  Philip and I abandoned the jar to examine other, more recent finds of hers. A small Chinese table stood by the door, its lacquer peeling. The surface was littered with pale, delicate shells of a type I had not seen before.

  “Sea potatoes,” she said, pleased at our attention. “The heart urchin, Echinocardium cordatum. They burrow in the beaches here, rarely seen alive. These are what we call their tests, or shells.”

  She passed some around, letting us examine the fragile shells, which were indeed almost heart-shaped. The largest was three inches from top to bottom, the shell dotted with rows of tiny holes.

  “They have flexible spines in life, you see,” she pointed out. “Harmless, but no doubt part of their burrowing equipment. We might find more tomorrow at Dunwich.”

  The wagonette ride to Dunwich the next afternoon was pleasant, Emilia chatting as she drove. We disembarked in the fields by the remains of Greyfriars Priory, a tumble of walls and arches which seemed perilously close to the beach.

  “Most of Dunwich has gone, of course, washed away by centuries of storms. It’s a haunted coast, in its way. There are supposed to be a dozen churches out there, under the sea.”

  “Really?” I gazed out over the grey water, imagining spires and stained glass windows being stared at by the fish, pews and stalls which now harboured only crabs and lobsters.

  “Mmm. They say you can hear the bells ringing some nights, far below the waves.” She handed each of us a small hessian sack for anything interesting we might find.

  An easy slide brought us down the crumbling cliffs to the stretch of beach. A line of shingle, a line of sand nearer the water. I had waxed and treated my boots, knowing what Emilia would have us doing, and was pleased enough to stroll along with her while Philip ranged ahead. He had not been communicative that morning and was lost, I supposed, in the doldrums of his own thoughts.

  “Now, Beattie, tell me about the captain who was bothering you at the Sutherland’s dance…”

  And we walked, discussing life, the latest gossip, and of course Captain Martins, who I had threatened to shoot if he pressed his attentions further. My late husband had been an army man, and I did know how to load and aim a revolver, after all.

  “So after the next waltz, we—”

  “Aunt Beatrice!”

  A hundred yards away, Philip was waving to us. My nephew stood near the lapping waves of the outgoing tide, tips of foam on the long lines of dark water. Around him were shells, not only razor clams and the little tellins, but at least half a dozen tests, as I had learned to call them, of heart urchins.

  Emilia was delighted. “Quite a high tide earlier this morning. It seems these were discarded in its wake. Let’s see what we have.”

  We spent some hours exploring the lower beach, popping anything to which we took a fancy into Emilia’s sacks, and the sea was coloured with the first pink tinges of sunset by the time we abandoned our beach-combing to return home. Even Philip seemed more animated than usual.

  At Bitterns we washed, ate a cold collation (Isaiah was in Ipswich on business), and examined our finds. Most were akin to Emilia’s existing collection, but she had found a large tellin, the two halves of its shell spread in the manner of a perfect rose-coloured butterfly. Some of the urchin tests were broken, the material like fine porcelain. She discarded those as Philip went though his own sack.

  “Mrs. Rawkins…” He stared at the rounded object in his hand. It was crusted with sand, the crude shape of a heart and some three and a half inches across.

  She took it from him gently, and frowned. Her hand-brush took the sand away, to reveal something which was clearly not an urchin.

  “Wood,” she said, peering through an eyepiece she had been using to identify crustacea. “It appears to be a wooden carving.”

  “Of a heart urchin?” he asked, though I thought that one would hardly need to make an effigy of these common animals.

  “No, of an actual heart I think, Philip. Quite a curio. A sailor’s carving, perhaps, from a dull voyage.”

  She threw it back to him, and went about her work.

  “I shall keep it as a memento of this afternoon.” He cradled it oddly in his hands, as if it were delicate, then slid it into his jacket pocket. I forbore from saying the cloth might stain—at least his attention had been dragged from his own unhappiness.

  Isaiah returned not long after, and a pleasant late supper ensued, punctuated by Isaiah’s tales of dim-witted shipping agents and watered whisky. Emilia and I laughed or nodded as appropriate, used to his stories. Philip picked at his food, saying little
but offering the occasional faint smile.

  “Emilia tells me you found a rather unusual ‘urchin’,” said Isaiah, wiping his fingers on a napkin. “Might I have a look?”

  My nephew took the carving out of his pocket, though at first he seemed reluctant to hand it over. Isaiah turned the object in his thick fingers, examining it.

  “Amazing what gets washed up around here. Emilia found, um, part of a figurehead once, half-buried in the sands after a storm.”

  “Because of a shipwreck?” I asked.

  “Or an incompetent carpenter who had not affixed his work securely.” Isaiah laughed. “This wooden thing, however, reminds me of something I once read, long ago. A local bit of, um, nonsense. You could try my library, young man.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rawkins.” Philip took the carving back, slipping it into his pocket once more. I had to wonder why the boy was still carrying it around. There was something about it which was not to my taste.

  The Rawkinses and I played cards for an hour or two, leaving Philip, at his request, to follow Isaiah’s suggestion and investigate the library. I did not see him again that night.

  Our second visit to Dunwich was at Philip’s request. As Emilia thought his interest to be healthy, I acquiesced. The trip was without note, excepting one seemingly unimportant incident.

  I had settled by the cliffs, which were little more than dunes in places, and was polishing a pebble on the coarse grass. Emilia was further down the beach, inspecting wrack from the last tide. I scanned the horizon for my nephew, and saw him on the shingle, holding the wooden heart in one hand and talking, as it seemed, to the air. I had to suppose that he was talking to himself, or reciting poetry perhaps, as the lovelorn do, and I said nothing when we reunited.

  The afternoon was overcast. Philip chose to cloister himself in the library again, whilst I helped my friend to put some order into her linen stores. Emilia was not enthusiastic about domestic duties, but occasionally interfered with the work of her maids as a token gesture.

  The full-time housemaid, Sarah, was already folding bedsheets which had returned from the laundry.

  “If I may, ma’am…” She bit her lower lip, obviously feeling awkward in my presence.

  “Yes, Sarah. Say whatever it is.” Emilia smiled.

  “The young man, ma’am. Did he get very wet, yesterday?”

  “What might you mean, dear?” I asked before Emilia could speak, trying to sound gentle.

  The maid looked at the toes of her boots.

  “It’s just that, me and Lucy were wondering, with you two ladies seeming dry, and so much water in the young gentleman’s room this morning…we thought as he might have fell in or the like.”

  “Water?” I pressed her for more details.

  According to Sarah, there had been wet patches on the carpet of Philip’s room when she cleaned it, and his armchair had been quite damp, as if someone had sat in it after a ducking. They had had to coerce the gardener into taking the chair outside to air it.

  “There was some spray on the beach,” I said quickly. “That must be it.”

  I slipped her sixpence, to share with Lucy, and her pleasure at that seemed to dismiss the matter.

  Emilia and I abandoned the linen for a walk in the garden. The armchair was there, by the gravel drive, and indeed, the upholstery was damp. I could think of no explanation, knowing that we had kept quite dry all day.

  I ventured to inspect the library myself that evening. A book was open on the table by the window. I lifted the cover without fully closing the book. Leather-bound and somewhat foxed, it bore the title Curiosities of Old Suffolk, Being a Collection of Sundry Tales, by one Josiah Smith, Rvnd.

  I sat down and turned to the open section.

  In the Parish of Dunwich they have a number of such stories, including that of a young woman who killed herself after being abandoned by her sailor lover. It is said that the girl, being without that Mercy which God might have granted, may be encountered as a restless spirit on the sands. Some believe that those creatures known as sea potatoes are shaped in a reminder of her lost heart.

  Others, more fantastically, report that she tore the organ in question from her own bosom and cast it to the sea. Old folk say that her heart may yet be found on Dunwich sands, hardened by grief, and that if found it should be consigned to the waves, for ill-fortune will otherwise follow.

  The general tone of the book made it clear that the Reverend Josiah Smith placed little faith in the folk legends he had recorded.

  This must be the tale which Isaiah had vaguely remembered at dinner. Philip had indeed found a heart-shaped object in the sand. I did not for one second believe that it was any organ of the lost girl’s, hardened or otherwise, but nor did I have any sure notion as to why someone would carve such a thing. If it were not a sailor’s discarded toy, then had it been made to keep an ageing legend fresh, to attract those who took pleasure in the macabre? Was what remained of Dunwich Town (a grand word for those houses which had not been washed away) eager for additional revenue?

  Whatever the truth, I was hardly pleased at this discovery. I feared that it might play upon my nephew’s mind, abandoned as he too saw himself.

  As the next day brought a smatter of rain, we undertook a train journey down the branch line to Southwold, where we had lunch in a respectable hotel called Masons. The food was palatable and a good view could be had of the harbour.

  “Rather dull for you in here, Philip,” I said, knowing that in Oxford there were many more lively establishments catering for student tastes. “Perhaps we might call in at a local hostelry afterwards?”

  In our youth, Emilia and I had undertaken many dares, not the least of which was going into a Camden public house and ordering a half-pint of porter each. The denizens of that establishment had been too surprised to do anything other than stare as we finished our drinks and left to collect our reward from a friend.

  The hotel waiter recommended The Quay as “tolerable”. We admired the Southwold lighthouse which stood, rather disconcertingly, in the centre of the town and had only been erected a decade earlier. The Quay, a tall, narrow tavern, was to be found a short distance beyond that landmark, near the new pier.

  The beer was Adnams, as I had expected, and we could see a case of spirits bearing Isaiah’s import mark by the bar. I had acquired a taste for ale from my husband, and Philip was used to drinking it at his college, but Emilia only sipped, declaring it “a trifle sharp”. She and Isaiah favoured a mellow, aged sherry at home.

  The tavern was busy but not crowded. As Philip went to fetch a second glass of ale for the two of us, he lurched to one side without apparent reason, almost falling. In the process he jostled a man in an oilskin coat.

  “Sir, I do apologise—” began my nephew, regaining his balance.

  The fisherman (I assumed) was not looking at Philip. He was staring at an object on the floor. It was the carved heart we had found the day before, kept in Philip’s jacket ever since.

  “That yers, bor?” The man pointed at the carving.

  “Er, yes.” Philip picked it up, shoving it back into his pocket hastily.

  “If Oi was yer, Oi’d hull e back, ’fore next tide is gorn.”

  Philip looked nonplussed, but the fisherman had walked away. My nephew turned a questioning look on Emilia.

  She was frowning.

  “He said that you should throw it away, into the sea. I can’t imagine why.”

  The man who had spoken to Philip had lingered by the tavern door, tamping down his pipe. I made my way to him quickly.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  The look he gave me was one of indifference.

  “You said something to my nephew, at the bar.” I nodded in the direction of Emilia and Philip. “I wondered, did you recognise what fell from his pocket?”

  I saw suspicion growing, but I was, if I flatter myself, a tall, handsome enough woman and practically dressed, not some ribbon-bedecked girl from a seaside charabanc.


  “Aye,” he said begrudgingly. “Oi sin e, betimes.”

  Men are men, whatever rank they hold. I improvised what was hopefully a winning smile.

  “If you could give me just a little more detail about the…item?” I prompted.

  The fisherman pushed his pipe-stem into the corner of his mouth. “Jackie Stanley did find e, this las’ winter. Kept e, too.”

  “And could I speak to Mr. Stanley?”

  “Not unless yer swim well an’ deep-loik, lady. Oi see him drown an’ gorn, not a se’enday after that, off Lower-stoff.”

  “You believe that the carving brought bad luck?”

  He stared at me from under dark, unkempt eyebrows.

  “Jackie found e, and no good come after, if that be what yer want t’hear, lady.”

  There was no more to be had from that source.

  On the train journey back I felt something pressing at the back of my mind.

  “Did you trip on something, Philip, in that tavern?” I asked. “When you almost fell.”

  “Trip? Oh, no. I was trying to avoid the girl.”

  “What girl was that?”

  “You know, Aunt Beatrice, the one with the tangled hair. She was right in my way.”

  Emilia and I exchanged a glance. There had been no one between my nephew and the bar save the man in oilskins. I knew my friend well, and with that glance we agreed to leave the matter there.

  That night, I slept badly. It was windy outside, and I could swear that I could smell the sea, even that far inland. The air felt damp, my bedclothes felt damp, and I went to the window to see if it was actually raining.

  It was not, but there on the front lawn, illuminated by the lantern at the main door, stood Philip. That carving was in his left hand; with his right he was gesticulating, as if illustrating a point to someone. The lantern shifted in the breeze, and for a moment I thought that I did indeed see a slender figure before him, then it was gone.

  I examined the lawn that morning, on the pretext of admiring Emilia’s rather random approach to gardening. It was easy enough to see the prints of Philip’s boots in the grass, but were those other prints beyond his, less defined?