Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts

  He tried to move. He couldn’t. Somehow they had paralysed him. He lay on the beach at the side of the pool, flat on his back; legs straight. In an odd detached way he realised that the white things had hauled themselves out of the water on their soft white bellies, like crocodiles. They nuzzled forward across the stony beach, their huge, unborn baby eyes, as bright as glass balls, fixed on him.

  At first Barstow thought they were kissing his face, forehead, neck and bare arms. Then he realised the small soft mouths were sliding across his bare skin, searching…

  When they found what they wanted they suckled at him like new-born piglets round a fat sow, noisily gulping down the warm red milk.

  Barstow lay bleeding into a dozen mouths. It hurt; he was frightened and he began to cry.

  “Don’t be sad. You made this happen.”

  Barstow opened his eyes. In the gloom he could see the boy squatting on his chest, looking down at him. The boy’s eyes were kind.

  The suckling things had nearly taken all his blood. His heart began to crumple like an empty beer can crushed in a palm of a hand.

  The boy smiled.

  “You’re going now. You’re going underground… daddy.”

  Expressed from the Wood

  The day your life ends will, in most cases, begin very much like any other.

  Rachel pedaled along the road that cut through fields of brilliant yellow rape crops. Her fiancé, Paul, had to pedal hard to keep up; sweat rolled down from his thick red hair. They’d taken a long weekend break to do their usual thing. Pack their back packs, get on their bikes, then explore the Yorkshire countryside faraway from the stifling city.

  “Hey, will you look at that,” Paul panted. “There’s a guy filming us.”

  A man of about twenty-five with shaggy black hair and jeans cut off at the knee sat on a farm gate, swinging one long leg and aiming a camcorder at them.

  “Just smile and wave, Paul. I don’t think he’s a full shilling… Hello,” she called to the camcorder man. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  The man said nothing and continued to film them as they freewheeled by.

  “Ignorant peasant,” grunted Paul, trying to shift the bike’s gear. “Damn… Rachel, I’ll have to stop while I get the derailer off.”

  Rachel effortlessly swung the bike round, her strong legs pumping the pedals.

  “You’d think all those yellow flowers would smell sweet. It’s rotten, like something gone musty.”

  ‘Oh, the rape crops? In six months you’ll be cooking your revolting stir fries in that.”

  “Rape? It should be called something more picturesque. Look at it, it looks like we’ve ridden into a Van Gogh painting.”

  “That was sunflowers.”

  “Bog off,” she said happily and kissed his sweaty forehead as he fiddled with the bike gears.

  “Come on,” she said, “I want to find a bed for the night.”

  “What’s the rush?” Straddling his bike’s cross-bar he leaned sidewards and slid his arms round her waist. “How about a tumble in the rough?” He nodded to a meadow of long grass. “It’s a long time since we made love alfresco.”

  “Only if you want to make a blue movie.”

  He kissed her nose. “What are you talking about, munchkin?”

  “I’m talking about your friend with the camcorder. He’s coming to join us.”

  Annoyed, Paul glared back to where the camcorder kid was walking toward them with the viewfinder bonded to his eye.” I’m going to tell him where he can shove that thing—sideways.”

  “Paul. Leave him, I think he really is a bit simple.”

  “Should lock the bugger up… Hey, wait for me.

  “Rachel pedalled slowly enough for Paul to catch up. “Rachel. Where we going to find a hotel or even B&B out here? There’s bugger all. Just look at it.”

  She saw Paul scanning a countryside that was pretty much featureless. Mile after mile of it was fiat, intensively farmed agricultural land of rape and potato fields. There were no houses, they’d seen no traffic pass along the straight road they cycled along. Brushing the fringe from his eyes, he grinned at her. “We’ll have to sleep rough.”

  She grinned back. “No bed, no sex.”

  What she saw in Paul mystified her. She’d been a top rated County class athlete. For years she’d despised the kind of man who was bookish, physically weak, lacked manly vigour; oh yes, and possessed ginger hair. Never ever look twice at a man with ginger hair; she detested it.

  But Sod’s law is all powerful, she told herself still bemused. Because she’d gone and fallen for Paul. He was a mature student, he wallowed in books as a hippo wallows in mud. Until she persuaded him he’d not ridden a bike since he was eleven. His arms were as white as lard and as thin as sticks. He’d eat only meat pie and mashed potato. Chinese food, which she loved, made him sick. And oh yes, he had ginger hair: a great thick clump of it that sat on his head like an over-sized cap, beneath that, a white face drenched with freckles.

  Now she was dragging him on a biking weekend and they still had to find a bed for the night. Which at the moment seemed unlikely.

  Just as she reconciled herself to sleeping rough they found the village that only seconds before had been invisible.

  Running, unseen at this low angle, across the fiat farmland was a narrow valley. They stopped to look at it, it was such a curiosity. Rachel couldn’t help but compare it to a motorway cutting. As deep and as wide, it had the same steep sides. Where the central reservation would have been a stream slid round boulders. The village consisted of perhaps thirty houses. Beyond them was a church built out of brick the colour of tangerines; it glowed a yellow-orange in the late afternoon sunshine. Beyond that were trees, the tops of which were almost level with the surrounding fields. A sign gave the name of the village: Hambrooke.

  “Curious and quaint,” said Paul fiddling with the gears again.

  “But I think we’ve struck gold. Isn’t that a pub down there?”

  “It sure is. Come on, last one down’s a ninny.”

  She beat him easily and had to wait for him to pedal labouriously up to the front door of the ivy covered pub.

  “Ninny,” she said and went inside.

  Yes, said the white haired landlord they did have rooms and yes they were all vacant. After entering her name and address in the guest book she went outside to find the bikes propped against the wall and Paul examining four cylindrical stone pillars that stood on a triangle of grass at the front of the pub.

  “You had me fooled then,” she said, walking up to slap him on the butt.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You look like a real archaeologist, not a second year student.”

  “Any more cheek, my young girl and I’ll have you dunked in the village pond.”

  “What are they?”

  “Sandstone pillars, six feet high, four feet in circumference, each fixed with three iron rings, probably fifteenth century.”

  “What are they for?”

  “God knows…” He ran his hand up the length of one in a way that suggested the feel of it might offer more clues. “Possibly they supported some structure like a Butter Cross, you know four columns supporting a roof under which merchants and traders met. Or possibly they were intended to tether animals… Anyway, have you booked us in?”

  “I have.”

  “First things first then. Beer. I’m parched.”

  They had the beer garden to themselves. Paul sat looking sweaty and shagged out while she sat back, stretching out her long legs, enjoying the pleasant buzz the twenty mile bike ride had given her. She was no longer the athlete who used to win medals in the 1000 metre races but she was still fit enough to pedal all day without tiring—and this flat countryside had been a breeze.

  By the second pint, however, Paul’s tongue was recovering. “One of my lecturer’s is trying to persuade me to turn that last essay I wrote on Akhenaten into a magazine article.”

  “Who?”

/>   “Akhenaten. The Egyptian pharaoh.”

  “Do you think there’ll be much public interest in something like that?”

  “You remember Akhenaten? I wrote that earlier essay arguing that the Pharaoh Akehenaten’s Hymn to the Sun God, Aten, is too similar to the Biblical Moses’s compositions for it to be a coincidence. Anyway, Kirk Smith thinks it would be worthwhile developing the argument that Moses was actually employed in the court of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. After all Moses is an Egyptian name. And that basically that the religion Moses taught his tribe wasn’t an early form of Judaism but the religion of the ancient Egyptians, which eventually evolved into—”

  “Keep talking—only present your best profile.”

  “Pardon?” Paul wiped beer froth from his upper lip.

  “Behind you.”

  Paul turned round. Sat on a garden wall was the camcorder man, long legs swinging. He was filming them.

  Anger narrowed Paul’s eyes. “Buggeration.”

  * * *

  That evening they walked through the village to the wood.

  For a mile and a half they followed the path beside the stream. Here the trees were ancient with enormously thick trunks that looked as if they must plunge miles underground. Silence pressed softly on them as they walked until it was too dark to go on. Then they picked their way back to the pub for a supper of steak, salad, and lots more beer. After that, giggling, making grabs at each others bottoms, they climbed upstairs and fell into bed, kissing and biting.

  * * *

  Rachel woke. Paul, by her side, lay face down and still deeply asleep. The morning sun hit the flowered curtains lighting the room with a brilliant pink glow.

  A door creaked. She lifted her head to see who was coming into their room.

  “Paul. Wake up. We’ve got a visitor.”

  Paul woke as if he’d been switched on. He sat up in bed and swore at the figure in the doorway.

  “You again. Right, you’ve asked for it. I’m going to use that camera to fill your bloody throat.”

  The man with the camcorder stood in the doorway, viewfinder pressed to his eye, his face expressionless, filming the naked couple on the bed as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Paul, growling, climbed out of bed. “Who the hell let you in here?”

  “I did.” The pub’s landlord moved into the doorway behind the camcorder man.

  A sudden greasy feeling slid through Rachel’s stomach. There was more to this than some retard peeping Tom. Now she could see people behind the landlord. Men and women crammed the landing and stairs as if they’d come to visit a freak show.

  “Get out… All of you… Just get out.” Paul didn’t sound so much angry now as bewildered. “Get out, I said.”

  They didn’t get out. In fact, they all came in. Camcorder man still filmed, like he was some home video anorak who’d been asked to film a garden fete at the Vicarage. Rachel pulled the duvet to her chin.

  “Get out.” Paul was pleading now. “Get out.”

  The landlord stepped into the room. “Get dressed.” he said. “You’re being moved upstairs.”

  Upstairs was an attic room. It had been stripped of furniture, leaving a worn carpet. Heavy velvet curtains covered the single window. In one corner stood a television and a video machine.

  “Sit down,” ordered the landlord. “No, not there. Sit with your back to the wall so you can see the telly.”

  Dressed now, they sat, both shaking. The people downstairs had followed and looked in at the two strangers with a silent curiosity.

  “What’s happening?” he asked. “We’ve not done—”

  “Shut up,” said the landlord calmly.

  “You’ve got no right to—”

  “We know our rights… And if you keep your gob shut, lad, I won’t tell you what’s going to happen. I’ll show you.”

  Paul, face white beneath his red hair, shut his mouth and stared up at the landlord through glistening eyes.

  The landlord turned to the man with the camcorder. “Benjamin. Put that thing down now, and show them your film.”

  The landlord crouched beside where Rachel and Paul sat and explained in a kindly voice that they were going to watch a video that would answer all their questions. He seemed almost apologetic that he was putting them through all this but, he told them, circumstances made it a necessity.

  Rachel said, “But why all this pantomime? You could have just asked us to watch the video.”

  “Just watch the telly, lass.”

  “Why don’t you answer my question? What are you going to do to us?”

  “Wyvern’s ’ungry. We’re gonna give you to the Wyvern, he—he’s ’ungry.”

  Rachel looked across the camcorder man. he’d been rewinding a tape in the video, now he stood up rattling away in an excited babble. “First’uns in years. Wyvern’s bloody ‘ungry. Chomp, chomp, chomp, ha, ha, ha.”

  “Benjamin.” The landlord scowled. “Just switch on the video.”

  Grinning, his face as red as ketchup, Benjamin held up his index finger as if he was making an insulting gesture, then with an enormous sense of ceremony he pressed the play button on the video.

  “They’re mad,” muttered Paul. “They’re completely bloody mad. Nutters… Bastard nutters…”

  “Watch.” The landlord pointed to the screen. “Benjamin here, shot this five years ago to the day.”

  Feeling cold now, Rachel watched. The screen snowstormed, flickered. Then the picture came clear and bright of the village sign, Hambrooke. Beyond that was the view she saw yesterday. The little village crouching in the valley, the church built in tangerine brick, the woods beyond following the stream, the sun shining.

  Benjamin had compensated for his retarded intellect by becoming an accomplished cameraman. There was no camera shake, nor any awkward cutting you’d associate with amateurs.

  A smooth camera pan ends to show the stretch of road they had cycled along. A transit van slowly approaches. A beat up wreck of a thing painted red and yellow with a cracked windscreen.

  The van passes by, its driver hesitant as if this is unfamiliar territory. A girl of about eighteen with peroxide blonde hair smiles and waves through the passenger window.

  The scene cuts to the pub garden. The girl, sitting with a tattooed youth, drinks pints. She smiles warmly and waves to the camera. The youth scowls. Rachel watched as the girl said something to the youth and nudged him. She guessed the girl was saying to her tattooed boyfriend, “Lighten up, he’s harmless.” The boyfriend twists his lips into a half hearted smile.

  Somehow Rachel knew the two were runaways; something about the girl switching from schoolgirlish uncertainty to a we’ve made up our minds: this is for keeps confidence.

  “Runaways?” asked Rachel.

  The landlord masked his surprise but he nodded, impressed by her intuition.

  Beside her Paul watched, his expression completely blanked, his eyes dead.

  The scene cut to: the couple walking hand in hand by the four stone columns.

  Cut to: Night time shot of the transit van parked in a lane. Torches illuminate chunks of hedgerow and the van itself. Close up shot through the back window of the van. The couple lie beneath blankets; the torch lights flash on their faces. They wake up, holding their hands high to shield their eyes.

  Rachel heard the muffled voice of the boyfriend. “It’s not the cops… I’ll break their bleeding necks.”

  Cut to a scene shot in this very room. Rachel straightened skin tingling. It was exactly the same, apart from the identity of the two people sat, backs to the wall, watching the television. The landlord was there along with the villagers peering silently through the doorway.

  You could even see the television screen. Rachel was watching the couple watching two bearded men with rucksacks cycling toward the village. One cyclist grinned and waved to the camera.

  Cut to: Close up of the girls face. Her eyes widen with shock as she hears a vicious animal snarl comin
g from the television.

  Cut to: The blonde girl and her boyfriend chained to the stone pillars.

  They stand between a pair of pillars, their arms pulled out straight by the chains in a crucifixion pose. Their faces show shock and they look about themselves as if expecting someone is going to play a nasty trick on them.

  “Oh my God,” whispered Paul. Rachel imagined he guessed what the outcome would be—for the boy and girl on the television.

  And for himself and Rachel.

  The camera panned showing the Wyvern Inn and village. The villagers were out in the streets, dressed like they were going to a wedding. They looked excited, as if expecting someone famous would be arriving soon.

  This went on for twenty minutes. The villagers stand in clumps looking in the direction of the wood beyond the church. Occasionally the camera pans to the wood then zooms in on individual trees as if the cameraman expected to film something sitting on a branch.

  On the wall separating the church yard from the track that leads into the wood stand twenty men looking into the trees. They crane their necks, point, talk to one another, heads nod, then one crouches down like he’s seen something, then shakes his head.

  Then they hear the noise.

  At first the camcorder mike doesn’t pick it up but it causes excitement amongst the villagers: they point to their ears, nodding and laughing.

  Chained to the pillars the girl and boy freeze, their heads turned in the direction of the wood.

  The sound came. A long, long, moan as deep as whale song.

  It was so deep it vibrated the television’s tinny speaker. It came again.

  Rachel’s heart lurched and she looked instinctively to the window. She’d never heard the sound before; this deep melancholy moan, yet it sounded somehow familiar. Her scalp prickled. Perhaps we carry some hereditary memory of this, she thought, her eyes pricking. Perhaps our ancestors heard this sound when they hid in their caves when darkness came. This low, booming cry that made you think of something tired and lonely—and so very, very hungry.

  The effect on the villagers was as if they were being jolted by an electric shock; they all moved back a step. The couple chained to the stone columns look at one another as if asking, “What the hell was that?”