Alex raised the phone higher. At the edge of the light beam he saw movement. Another couple steps revealed a flowing stream. The roar of water reached deafening levels as they drew closer.
Alex paused at the water’s edge, scanning about with the light. Upstream water poured from the dirt ceiling, while downstream it swept around a bend in the tunnel. As he swept the light over the ledge running parallel to the stream, Kim gasped.
He spotted them too.
More of the weird tracks on the muddy stone. They followed the ledge. On right after the other.
Alex held the phone in front of him. He reached back and took Kim’s hand in his.
“Be careful,” she muttered.
He nodded and led the way onto the ledge.
Precarious didn’t begin to describe it. Aside from being soaking wet, the ledge was maybe a foot wide. After a couple ungainly steps, Alex had to let go of Kim’s hand. He leaned his right hand against the dripping wall for better balance. Walking like amateur tight-rope artists, they reached the bend in the tunnel.
Alex stopped to wipe the soggy phone on his jacket. Not that it did any good. His jacket was soaked through.
He glanced over his shoulder to check on Kim. She flashed him a small smile from between curtains of sopping hair. Alex returned her smile and trudged on.
The ledge turned into a ramp on the other side of the bend. Alex struggled to stay upright. Kim slipped twice almost immediately.
Alex turned to help her. She glared up at him, wiping the muck from her hands on her already stained jeans. Alex held out a hand to help her up.
“Come on,” he said, hoisting her up with a grunt. “Got to go slow and careful.”
Kim started to snark back but slipped again. Alex watched the switch in her eyes. She knew what was about to happen. Alex dropped the phone and grabbed for her, but he was too late. His chilled fingers grabbed at wet, muddy clothes and nothing else.
Kim plunged sideways into the rushing stream.
“KIM!” He snatched up the phone and aimed the light at the stream.
He expected her to hit the water and resurface instantly. Alex waited several eternal seconds, sweeping the phone’s light up and down the stream.
The stream must have carried her away.
Alex slid and skidded down until the ground leveled out again. Here the roar of the water calmed. Instead of a turbulent stream beside him, Alex swept the light out over a sprawling subterranean lake.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “KIM!”
The only response was his own echo.
“Come on, come on, come on.” He began to pace at the water’s edge, sweeping the light over the lake in wide arcs. “Come on. Where are you?”
“KIM!”
Alex swore and kicked a stone into the water.
“KIM!”
He spotted something, a flash of white in the water. He moved the light back in a slow sweep.
The phone beeped.
The sound of the battery dying.
10% power. Enough to last a few more minutes.
The light moved over a patch of white in the dark water. One of Kim’s socks.
She floated face down in the water.
“No. No. No. KIM!” Alex stripped off his jacket, dropped the phone, and dove into the water.
He swam to her in the dark, grabbed her, rolled her over. Alex listened for her breathing.
Nothing. Her skin already felt cold.
He kicked back, pulling her toward solid ground and the light pointing uselessly at the ceiling.
“Please, please Kim.”
His fingers and toes were numb.
The cell phone beeped again.
Alex struck something with his foot. Something solid. In open water.
He halted for a moment, gasping, his chest on fire.
Nothing. The cavern and lake were empty.
He kicked again, harder, the shore drawing closer.
The phone beeped again.
His right hand brushed a rough surface, like softer sandpaper. He whipped his head around but saw nothing.
A thick coil snared his right foot, jerking him down. Alex yelped, grabbing Kim for dear life. He kicked away but the coil tightened. A tentacle as wide as his forearm.
He struck at the snare on his leg but its grip grew stronger.
The phone beeped again.
Alex spun in the water, hoping to kick at the tentacle’s owner. The chill in his bones went straight to his heart.
Two white oval eyes stared back at him.
In a frenzy, Alex tore free of the monster’s grasp. He pulled Kim’s lifeless form to shore.
The cellphone beeped again as his hand slapped wet stone. Alex pulled himself up next to his jacket and heaved Kim up behind him. He had her halfway out of the water when something jerked her back.
Another pair of pale oval eyes glared back up at him.
Not just one pair.
Six pairs of eyes glowed in the dark water. All moving toward him with alarming speed.
The phone beeped again.
He lunged back, hugging Kim from behind.
The monster in the lake tugged hard.
A second set of eyes stopped near the first.
Before Alex had a chance to react, the two creatures ripped Kim from his numb hands and pulled her under.
The phone beeped again.
“KIM!”
More eyes settled below, peering up at him.
A tumultuous splashing tore the water nearby. Out of the turbulence crawled a nightmare creature. Six round legs ending in a circle of spines that gouged the rock propelled the monster toward him.
Alex scrabbled back, slipping on his jacket.
The phone beeped again.
Pale, glowing eyes at least ten feet high bore down on him. A thick crab’s claw swiped at his feet, its owner emitting angry clicking sounds.
Alex retreated further down the shore, the stone ledge narrowing with every step. The crustacean creature gave chase, crawling along the wall at an odd tilt. Its colossal claws snapped at him, missing by millimeters.
The ledge became too thin. Alex shuffled further, his back against the wall. His feet slipped on the wet stone.
The monster stopped.
The phone beeped in the darkness.
The creature’s pincers snapped at him, unable to reach.
Alex sighed, even allowed a nervous chuckle.
It couldn’t reach him.
The monster tried to scuttle closer but its clumsy legs stumbled on the slick stone.
Alex checked the lake to his right. His heat stopped. His breath caught in his throat.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of glowing oval eyes stared up at him from under the water.
If one came up out of the water in front of him…
Something heavy brushed against his ankle through his jeans. A tentacle extended from among the landward creature’s legs. The tendril slithered around his legs and jerked him forward in its iron grip.
The creature leapt into the lake, pulling him along. Alex scraped at wet stone as he slipped into the water.
The phone beeped again.
John Johnson
Oliver Smith
Kerenza sits on the Loor-Stone waiting: waiting and watching for John Johnson to come home over the grey-green ocean. Her pretty silk dress is all raggedy now: she is ripe with the smell of old seaweed, the smell of the drowned, the smell of flotsam on the sand. Kerenza watches the lonely reef: bare shattered rocks and granite teeth poke through the surging green water and flying foam. An old tattered cormorant tumbles down into the waves dressed in oily black feathers, hunting for the pipefish and rockling and blenny in the kelp-beds – black fish, black weed, black birds on the water: This
is all she has without John Johnson.
The cormorant sits on the shredders and biters and witches’ hat towers and hangs his ragged wings out to dry like threadbare flags in the rolling wind. He laughs at her loss and Kerenza curses the harsh, wicked bird.
In her hunger for John Johnson, Kerenza reaches out for God who keeps him, reaches out for the love he brought her, reaches out for the sea that took him away. Either God, or love, or the sea sends a gift over the waves. It sends a little boat that rides the white tops beyond the granite spikes – a skiff blown on the wild south-westerly wind. John Johnson calls her with the voice of the breaking surf. John Johnson calls her with the voice of the gulls. John Johnson calls her.
A freak roller catches the boat and lifts it over the reef and rocks; the sea leaves it close to the beach where it waltzes with the shore and the sands. Karenza wonders if it could carry her to John Johnson. She lifts her ragged skirt out of reach of the waves as she trots down the beach, she splashes through the shallows, then gathers her hem about her thighs and hauls herself into the boat before the tide should take it away again. The boat has been on the sea a long time: the keel has grown thick with barnacles and weed, the inside has grown with anemones and limpets in the deep pooled-water below the rower’s bench. Crouching beneath the tiller is the dried out husk of a seaman. His coat is all rags, his hand rests on the tiller to keep the rudder steady, his skull smiles kindly at Kerenza.
“Hello,” she says, “will you take me to John Johnson.”
But the sailor is silent on the matter.
Kerenza lies in the driest part of the boat as the grey gulls rise up to paradise. She lies in the bows, away from her bony companion and waits for the tide and winds to carry them both back to John Johnson. Her father told her it was an unlucky match, told her John Johnson was a Jonah; five times he sailed out and five ships had sunk. She didn’t care. She knew no Cornishman nor Englishman nor Landsman like John Johnson, no-one as tall and brave and strong as her pale, fair man out of the north. She told her father she would have no other, and loving her as he did her father relented. But poor Kerenza – just one night they lay together before the sea took him from her.
The boat lifts from the sand beneath her. It washes forward and catches the ground again but a big snake-wave hisses in from the ocean to tear it clear of the beach and carries her out to sea again. Soon she will see John Johnson.
When they reach the witch’s-hat rocks there is a grind and snap as the black blades of granite punctures the weak wood. Splinters swirl in the bilges and the boat refuses to stay above the water. She is caught in the tide but Kerenza is a strong swimmer. The waves try to press her under, the current tries to drag her out, but she emerges from the sea with water dripping from her wet hair, she spits salt water from her mouth, she wades to the beach like a new born goddess, and she runs through the waves back to her place on the Loor-Stone. No matter: she will wait, wait for his return.
* * *
It is summer again and bright-painted mackerel boats bob on the blue waves on their way back to Penkaryth in the warm evening. In the distance a great man-o-war creeps across the reddening horizon, her sails billow as she turns to catch the wind and she heads out into the Atlantic. Kerenza waits on the Loor-Stone. Her long hair blows a white storm in the breeze. John Johnson must return for her now, return to save her from the second wedding. Seven years have gone since her first and seven years is as good as dead they say. Seven years a widow to the sea and the landsman Ross Trevelyan has waited those seven years in her father’s house. He has eaten her father’s meat and drunk his wine. He has worked in her farther’s shop and learnt his trade – he has learnt the landsman’s art of smithing silver and hammering gold.
She stands on the smooth table of the Loor-Stone and calls, “come home Johnny, come back from the sea, come home John Johnson and save me.”
John Johnson answers with the voice of wind beating in canvas. John Johnson answers in the lonely grey voice of a gull. John Johnson answers in no voice at all. His face is reflected in the green mirror as she reaches down into the rock pool but his face breaks apart in her fingers.
All the gulls wheel and cry in the lonely grey sky. They tell her, ‘you must not betray him with this new man.’
And there is Trevelyan coming down the beach to find her. She chooses a rock for Trevelyan, a pretty stone for him to remember their betrothal by. She finds a good sharp piece of granite freed by a storm. She leaves him in the water for the fishes and gulls.
“Oh, when will you return John Johnson?”
The people of Penmaby do not find Trevelyan. When they notice he is missing they search the shore. They pass her sitting on the Loor-Stone. “Bless you Karenza, he will return, you shall have your wedding,” they say.
When he does not return the vicar comes from Penkaryth to bless the sea (for where else would he have gone), to lay Trevelyan’s ghost to rest. She is poor Karenza now. What suitor would want her with two dead husbands? She does not care: what suitor would she accept? – None but John Johnson.
* * *
A voice seems to hiss and whisper in the winter white-foam tongues reaching up the beach “wait for me here pretty Karenza.”
Then again perhaps it’s just sea, just the wind, just the lonely cry of the gulls. Perhaps it is no voice at all. She takes candles from the church and lanterns from the harbour. She builds a fire of driftwood and sets all the lights along the shore to guide him home through the darkness and storms. She calls all the ships on the ocean to come to her in case he is aboard, she calls them to bring her Johnny home.
Kerenza’s lights lure a great ship in from the ocean. She stands atop the Loor-Stone with and her hair flickers like white fire in the storm and the ship leaps and rolls and runs like a wild pony on the hills and valleys and mountains of water. In the darkness the great ship breaks on the reef and a sailor struggles ashore illuminated in the blue flames of the lightening. Kerenza wades out into the insane black storm-waves, into the spray that flies horizontal in the breath of the gale, and Kerenza catches him in her strong hands. She drags him from the waves; she pumps the water from his lungs, and blows life into his cold lips. She wraps him in her arms and warms him with her body and when he wakes she asks him, “Tell me sailor boy, tell me where my John Johnson is.”
“I don’t know John Johnson,” says the boy his face buried in her long hair.
“Tell me,” she says, “He’s a sailor and he is proper tall and strong and fair, you must know my John Johnson, sweet boy.”
“I don’t know any John Johnson,” he says holding her closer to share her warmth in the face of the storm.
“Who would not know a man like John Johnson? Who could sail on his ocean and not know?” All she wants is for him to tell her where John Johnson is. She cries and weeps, “tell me.”
“I do not know,” he replies, “but for such as you I would be him if I could,” and she feels his warm lips on hers.
She wraps her long hair about his face, covers him in it, enfolds him, twines it about his neck and pulls it tight. She takes back her gift of life, sucks the breath back from his lungs and returns him to the waves.
They, the people of Penmaby, find the lanterns and candles and fire, they find the boy. They see how he was strangled and know there is a wrecker among them. They do not call the magistrate from Roscaven. They know the magistrate, Sir William Welland, and he will hang every Jack as a wrecker and send every Jill to die in the Indies if they cannot produce the culprit. Instead they hide the dead, erase the signs of fire, and take what they can of the salvage to make the best of a bad night.
* * *
The years turn and another summer comes round. She thought she was safe when they called her Mad Kerenza, thought they would never find her another, but already there is a new man in her father’s house. Jago Marreck labours hard at the workbench while Kerenza sits on her rock amo
ng the bone-white barnacles and the green-haired limpets, above the shadows where the blue-black mussels cluster with the darker wracks and red weed and sly red eyes that wait for darkness and tides.
While Jago Marreck sits safe in her father’s house she is on the beach singing to John Johnson as she weaves him a shirt of seaweed: weaves a shirt ready for his return.
Before Jago’s seven years are up her father is carried out in a fine black coffin with a featherman walking before with a board and ostrich plumes. He has twenty paid mourners and a fine marble headstone. Sir William Welland himself reads the will and Jago is pronounced the heir to her father’s house. And when her seven years are up Jago Marreck comes to the beach keeping a promise to her poor father, he comes to lay her a fine white dress on the sand before her stone.
“Your father said I should bring this here for you Kerenza Roberts,” he says.
Kerenza answers with a shove that sends him into the waves. She places a strong brown foot on his head and holds him under the water and shouts, “I am promised to John Johnson and I will have no other.”
Her legs are stronger than his arms, her wish for his death is stronger than his wish for his life and soon the vicar is back from Penkaryth to bless the sea.
No-one lives now in her father’s house. No more suitors. It is an unlucky house, three fine young men lost, and then poor Karenza…
* * *
There is no one to carry on Master Roberts’ trade. They leave the house to the rats. Leave it to the beggars. They leave poor Kerenza on the shore to wait for John Johnson’s return.
The wait is too long. In the darkness of a winter night with a hard north wind whipping the sea into horses Kerenza takes the lanterns and candles and builds another driftwood fire. She lures another ship. Caught on the reef the ship splits in two, spills her sailors into the water. The waters are rough and cold but no storm blows tonight and a dozen find their way ashore. Karenza has grown strong in her love of John Johnson, stronger than the half drowned mariners. She wades among them asking, “Is John there. Have you seen John?”
When they lie to her and say they do not know she breaks them so they splinter. When they say it again she beats them so they bleed. When they deny her a third time she takes their beating heart and crushes it before their liar’s eyes. As she plucks the last heart out to break in her fair fingers the wind carries the shouts and oaths of the villagers to her ears. Five strong fishermen run across the sands to apprehend her. She turns and flees from them but they see her and know her and name her. She hides deep in the cliff-side. They search all along the shore. They do not find her so they march around the bay beating pots and pans to drive her away. They bring the vicar to pronounce ex-communication and anathema and exorcism.
Supernatural Horror Short Stories Page 70
