Max Gilbert

  "What are we going to do? Jump them?"

  The Skipper turned the blurred panda eyes on Mark; he smiled grimly. "A blinded man and a boy? No ... But

  I know they must die, son. I've heard enough of their boasting. Death and torture are meat and drink to these beasts. No, I thought it all through and I see no alternative. We've got to do it."

  "What, Skipper?"

  "Son, you've got to scuttle the ship."

  Now, in the greasy pit of the ship, Mark began to heave open the last sea-cock to admit the murky water.

  Overhead the clanging did not stop. It sounded like a distant engine with a huge, slow beat. Bang ... Bang ...

  In his mind's eye he could see the blind skipper of the Mary-Anne in the freezer store, beating the metal walls with the iron bar, his breath billowing out great white clouds like a steam engine running at full belt.

  It would be drawing the men down at a run, the taste of whiskey still on their tongues. What the hell was the man doing in there? they would be asking one another. Only Almighty God knew what was in store for them. By the time they had forced open the door of the freezer store they would be too late to undo what Mark had done.

  And the cabin boy? Where the hell is he? We'll split him open with the ship's anchor when we get our hands on the runt!

  The thought drove him on. He grabbed the fourteen-pound hammer and hammered at the sea-cock shaft until it jammed tight in its socket. No one could shift it now without stripping the whole mechanism.

  Like rats in a trap the hijackers were caught.

  When he had finished he followed the fleeing rats upward. He reached a ladder that ran up a steel service well to the forward deck and began to climb.

  Once on deck he planned to cut the lifeboat away from its derrick; hopefully he would make shore or be picked up by a passing ship.

  Outside it was dark. An icy breeze ripped at his hair and clothes.

  As he straightened, he came face to face with a huge figure; a pair of eyes shone unnaturally bright in the dark.

  Christ! He never thought he'd encounter one on the deck.

  For once one of their number looked almost astonished, seeing Mark outside at night.

  Before the man could react, Mark turned and ran. The deck was wet. His feet slipped from under him. As he struggled to his feet he saw the hijacker raise a revolver.

  This time when Mark ran he did not slip. And he didn't stop running. He didn't even slow his pace when he heard the crack of the shot. The bullet gouged six inches of paint from the railing to his left.

  The guard-rail loomed like a white barred fence out of the dark.

  Mark Faust did not hesitate. He vaulted over it...

  ... and fell into another world.

  Chapter Five

  The bastard, thought Chris Stainforth savagely as he stamped on the accelerator pedal.

  "Don't drive so fast, Chris."

  "I'm so bloody angry." Chris overtook a tractor on a straight length of road. "What that idiot did to us."

  "Well, it's done now. It's over."

  "But why? We'd agreed to everything. We'd agreed the rent on the caravan; we'd agreed the date we were moving in; we'd even bought the bloody light-bulbs for it."

  "Chris ..."

  "And the brass-faced sod ... he just stands there, tells us sorry, he's not renting us the caravan. He's expecting his daughter home from Canada and he wants to save the place for her."

  "Chris ... All right, so we lost the caravan. It's not the end of the world."

  Chris felt the fury burn into him. "What a lame excuse... the daughter. Do you believe him, Ruth? Because I don't."

  In the back, David sat quietly, scared now.

  "I've a good mind to-"

  "A good mind to what, Chris?" demanded Ruth. "We have nothing in writing. We can't sue. Or are you going back there to batter the man's brains out?"

  Chris shot Ruth a glance. He saw her looking at him, her eyes thick with tears.

  He eased off the accelerator and the speed began to drop until the fields full of black and white cattle were no longer a blur. And for God's sake at least pretend you're in control of yourself again.

  "No. I know there's nothing we can do," he said in a deliberately low voice. "It's my stupid fault. I should have tied Mr. Greene down to a written agreement." He called back to David, "How you keeping, old son?"

  "Not bad, Dad."

  "Shall we have another game of Superman later?"

  David grinned broadly. "Sure can, Dad."

  Although Chris put on a cheerful front, he was worried. The sea-fort's interior remained in a semi-derelict state. Ten years ago, a builder had attempted to convert the place into a hotel. It had new mains services: water, electricity, access road. There were new windows giving panoramic views of the sea. The builder had gone bust, leaving work half done. Mounds of rubble rose from the floor of virtually every room. The place was patently uninhabitable. It would be months before they would have even the most basic accommodation for themselves.

  He turned off onto the gravel car park of the country inn that was their temporary base.

  "Home!" shouted David gleefully.

  "Not for long," said Chris, then added with a grim smile, "hopefully." The plans he and his wife had made were important to him. He would not allow them to fail.

  The wheels crunched over the gravel as Chris slowed the car to a stop alongside the gable-end wall of the hotel. A few cars were already there. In six weeks tourists would fill the bars until they overflowed into the beer garden and car parks. Next year at this time, Chris told himself, we'll capture some of that trade.

  "Can I play on the slide?" shouted David, taking a heroic leap out of the car.

  "All right," said Ruth. "Until lunch."

  He ran to the area of lawn where there were swings and a large fiberglass elephant with a long pink-tongue slide that curved down to the ground.

  David liked to climb the steps, sit on the elephant's head and survey his world.

  His parents went into the hotel.

  "One, two, three, four ... David counted up the steps. "... five, six, seven, eight." The breeze seemed to be stronger up here. He looked around. It was very high. When his dad stood near the elephant David was higher than his dad's head. David'd call him names, then giggle as his dad growled like a monster and tried to jump up and grab him, his hands grasping like monster claws. It always ended the same way, with his dad climbing the steps and David aiming pretend kicks at the monster's snarling face-just like the films. Bang! His foot would smack into the monster's head. Then it would plummet to the ground below.

  To oblivion, he would think with a walloping sense of satisfaction. Then, panting, he would look down, and the sprawling monster would be his dad again, laid flat out on the grass laughing breathlessly, his Adam's apple bouncing in his throat.

  David looked up. Big fluffy clouds like mountains of mashed potato hung in the sky. In between, the sky showed through, dark blue.

  He sat on the head of the elephant and watched the water flow in the stream that ran by the hotel garden. His dad had told him that the stream ran down to the coast not far from the sea-fort. There it flowed across the beach and into the sea-all that fresh water getting mixed up with the salt. Sometimes they threw sticks into the slowflowing water and imagined them floating all the way down to the sea like lazy seals.

  Sometimes things came up from the sea, his dad had told him. Once a dolphin had swum all the way up-river from the sea to the town where they lived. It had got lost. The police, the council (or was it the fire brigade?) had to catch it and send it safely back.

  As he sat in the warm sunshine his attention wandered from the stream to the gulls gliding in big circles high overhead, and he wished he could fly. Up, up, up, high into the sky. As high as the mashed-potato clouds.

  "Yes," answered David, looking round.

  His mum-or was it his dad?-had called. It must be time for lunch.

  No. No one was in
the car park. Just a few empty cars. And there were no windows at this end of the hotel to shout out of. Maybe his dad had sneaked behind the big willow tree down by the stream.

  "Da-had!" he shouted, grinning. "I know you're therehair!"

  He looked hard at the tree, leaning out from the elephant as far as he dared.

  No. There was definitely no one there.

  It must be someone shouting in the farm over the road. Lots of people are called David.

  He sat back down again on the warm fiberglass elephant head. It was nice being there.

  "What?" His voice echoed across the car park. "Where are you?"

  He was certain someone had called him again.

  Again there was no one there. All he could see moving was a duck in the stream. The duck quacked and flew away, its wings cracking noisily against the water.

  Fly ...

  David wanted to fly. Maybe he only had to want hard enough.

  And there in the sunshine he felt warm-and light enough to float up and away over the tree-tops like a bubble.

  Overhead the sky got bluer and bluer and the clouds bigger and bigger.

  I can ... I can ... I can ...

  David Stainforth stood on the great gray head of the elephant, arms outstretched like wings; he felt no fear; below him the lawn, as soft as a mattress. Air rolled around his face, making his ears tingle.

  He leaned forward into the breeze. It blew lightly over his finger-tips. He was like a big, big bird getting ready to fly. Lean forward. Further ... Further ...

  And that's when he fell.

  Chapter Six

  After leaving David at the slide they went up to their room. Ruth wanted a bath before lunch and left Chris alone in the bedroom.

  He decided to change into something a little more respectable for the inn's oak-paneled restaurant ...

  As he kicked off his jeans something fell from the pockets and rolled under the bed. At first he thought it was a few coins and went down on all fours to find them.

  What he pulled out were light and ribbed.

  He grinned. David's cockleshells.

  He would leave them on David's bedside table for him to add to his collection.

  On the ribbed outside the shells were a dirty white with the odd yellowy-brown patch.

  He turned one over to look at the smooth concave interior.

  Then he laughed.

  It had to be a practical joke.

  He turned the smooth inner side of the shell toward the bedside lamp to get a better view.

  There was no doubt about it.

  On the inside of the shell was the clear picture of a man's face. Slightly distorted, with his mouth stretching open wide, his eyes shut.

  It looked like a still from a film. A particularly nasty film. The man was crying out in terror.

  Quickly, Chris examined the other shells.

  Each had the picture of a face. Male. Female. Children. Some had their eyes shut, others open wide, shockingly wide, as if they had witnessed some horrible accident.

  The pictures, miniature paintings, he surmised, were in a yellowish-brown paint, the color spilt coffee leaves on paper.

  They had to have been deliberately painted.

  But by whom?

  For a moment he had a mental picture of some barmy old artist living in a hut tucked among the dunes at Manshead, painting miniature portraits on shells before scattering them back on the beach.

  Each shell bore the image of a face. Only one stood out from the others. The largest, a monster of its species. Almost the size of an oyster.

  The face on this one was different.

  All the other shell pictures portrayed victims. This face had narrow, scheming eyes, and the lips were pulled back in the cruellest grin Chris had ever seen.

  This one, decided Chris ... this was the hunter.

  "Chris ..." called Ruth from the bathroom.

  "What do you want?"

  "Come here a moment."

  "I'm looking at David's shells," he called, sitting on the bed, his jeans around his ankles. "There's something bloody odd about them."

  "Bugger the shells, Chris. I need you to scrub my back. And..."

  He heard more water running into the bath.

  "I've been thinking about the sea-fort. And ..."

  "And?"

  "I've been working out where we can live."

  "Surprise me."

  "Come here. You can wash my back as I reveal all."

  He smiled. "So I have to sing for my supper?"

  "Of course you do."

  He entered the bathroom which was filled with clouds of steam that rolled around him as he closed the door. In the steamed-up bathroom mirror Ruth had written "Ruth & Chris: TLFE."

  "True Love For Ever?"

  Ruth smiled through the steam. "Or until my millionaire comes along."

  Moving her bra and pants away from the side of the bath, he knelt down and retrieved the sponge from the water and began to work it into her back.

  "Ow ... You're not polishing the car. This is real skin, you know. Tender, sensitive skin. To be caressed."

  "I know." He kissed her shoulder. It was warm, wet- and smelled wonderful. "Mmm ... Nice enough to eat." He squeezed warm water down her spine. She arched her back with a deep breath.

  "Hot?"

  "No ... Nice. Now, as I was saying ..."

  "Ah ... Where we live. Don't tell me. We throw ourselves on the mercy of the Church and camp out in the graveyard, with tombstone beds and tombstone tables to eat from? Perfect."

  "No. Let me finish. Keep sponging my back. This is going to cost you. You'll be my slave for a year after this. Mmm ... Don't stop. I talk better when you're doing that."

  "I hear and obey, mistress. Right, where do we live?"

  "It's simple, Chris." She hugged her knees to her glistening breasts. "We move in straight away. Brilliant or what?"

  "We move into the sea-fort straight away?" Chris sighed. "But you've forgotten one tiny, tiny point." He leaned back, wondering if she was mocking him. "The sea-fort is derelict. The rooms are packed with rubble, and those walls haven't felt the lick of a paint brush in fifty years. So how?"

  "And I thought you were the one with the imagination."

  "And I thought you were the practical one. Come on, love. Be serious."

  "Be serious, Ruth," she mimicked.