Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts

  Pub doors rattled open. Yawning wide like thirsty mouths to admit a flood of bodies through dry throats; filling empty glass and disco-glittered bellies. The first record of the evening belched through the freshly beer-stained air and out into the dusk.

  Where the land meets the sea, in the scummy wet divide of ocean and dry sand, the tide unloads its deep-sea cargo and retreats from the resort’s pleasure machine, sliding back in a rattle of pebbles. And by the sea-bitten wood breakwater, the pallbearer of the ocean collects and abandons its dead: Wet strands of brown leathery kelp, cracked shells, starfish, an oil-matted cormorant, the screw-shredded remains of a dolphin, the severed head of a conger eel and the scattered fragments of ten million corpses.

  “I can’t,” said the girl, gazing out to where a darkening sky was fusing with a darkening sea. She sighed. “Not all night.”

  The boy wrapped his arm about her waist. “Why not? You’re not back at school till next Monday.”

  Her voice was soft. “I know… But you know?”

  He pulled her close. “There’s only me in the caravan till Thursday. Come on… And we’ll go to the Cavern Disco by the harbor, tonight.”

  The girl stretched; a decision made. “I don’t know. I’d like to.” And she began to walk toward the lifeboat slipway. Excited, he sensed her resolution. “Me dad left half a bottle of whisky in the caravan. We’ll ’ave that. He won’t mind… Want a cig?”

  As they faded into uncertain silhouettes against the coloured lights of the town, something stirred at the water’s edge. It quivered and trembled like a stranded fish, gulping the briny air. Wide blank eyes blinked, watered, and then watched. The cars and buses stopped and started along the sea front. Some scooters crackled by. Although unseen, it sensed the great presence of the castle ruins perched on the solid mass of rock which dominated the town.

  With waves washing her feet, she rose and wavered as if unsure of her balance. Then the girl, her feet wetly patting the sand, walked up the beach toward the town. The promenade was busy—people sniffing out inviting pubs, clubs, and theaters. The machines still sang their electric songs but the candy floss stalls, sweetshops and children’s amusements had closed for the night. Fish and chip papers scurried across the road, occasionally folding about her ankles. She paused by the red shell of a wartime mine, now meekly collecting pennies for a good cause.

  Baring his teeth, the man with the camera and scrabbling fur ball of a monkey approached her—“Hello, luv. Lovely evening”—and threw the monkey at her. Screaming, it kicked, bouncing back onto the man’s arm. Tiny black fingers clutched at his lapels and tie.

  “Petro! Petro. Go to the nice girl, Petro.” The monkey squeaked. “Have your picture taken with Petro, luv. Now move that hair away, we can’t see yer face. Petro, go to the nice lady.” The monkey clung to him crying. Camera in one hand, he prised the limpet capuchin from him with the other. “It’s OK luv. He wouldn’t ’arm a—bloody hell! The sod bit me.”

  The monkey scrambled up onto his shoulders and the man sucked his bloody finger, hissing threats. When he looked up, the girl had gone. Three giggling girls, pink-flushed with martini, were crossing the road. “Hello, my darlings. Lovely evening.” He threw the monkey at them. It obligingly cuddled into the scented arms of the redhead.

  By shellfish stalls, selling cold bite-size morsels of salted gristle and muscle. Hamburger, hot-dog stalls expelling hot breaths of sausage, onion, and frying smells. More arcades. And as the money bells rang, coloured lights flashed in gratitude.

  The night wind was blowing cold. Flying in from the dark distances of the sea; sizzling the surf and driving the tattered paper flotsam before it. Some fastened jackets and coats. But most fell back before the chilling breeze to seek refuge in pubs and cafés.

  A handful, beerfull and numb, defied the cold ruffling wind and pointed out to sea where a ship was sinking. Or, perhaps, it was the street lights on the far side of the bay. Or they pointed at girls as skirts lifted in the goosefleshing updraft of air.

  A wolf whistle. “Want a cig, luv?”

  Another voice. “ ’Ave a drink of me ale.”

  “Dunt. He’s peed in it!”

  One laughed. “He’s shy. He really means, will you go to bed with him?”

  A voice cut across the babble: “Shut up, Mick! Leave t’poor lass alone. It’s all right luv, don’t take any notice. They’re ’alf cut.”

  Outside the pub, she paused. A door opened and someone hurried by, dragging some of the odours and the warmth of the public bar with them. Inside. Black crossbeams segregated the yellow-white walls and ceiling which was hung with polished brass. A beer-coloured, cigarette-burn patterned carpet was beginning to fray. Blue coils of tobacco smoke twisted about the room, occasionally vibrating to the throb of the jukebox in the next room. She slipped through the bar, her eyes absorbing the rows of bottles holding amber promises. A tap jetted foaming lager, and the barman’s gold-ringed fingers and fingernails clicked against the glass. She sat at a vacant table. Two dozen voices, like waves, washed over her. Submerging her beneath the bubble and hiss of words:

  “Another pint of mild, Jack?”

  A woman’s voice soared into laughter. “You dirty beggar, Harry! He’ll get ‘imself shot.

  Voices fused and dissolved. “I think it’s a bit of sunburn. It is. We ’ad a good two hours in the park, this afternoon. I wonder if a bit of cream. You know, Nivea’ll bring it out. You should’ve seen our Janet last year, when she got back from France. Her legs were burnt shocking. Just ‘ere below her knees, covered with blisters. Like balloons filled with water.”

  A match flared in the smoke-soaked air, and wet lips suckled the stem of a pipe. “Did I tell you,” said the man, “about that bloke. He lives in the same town as us? Well, one day, when he was at work, local vet phoned him, yer see, and told him to go see him straight way. And on no account go home first. So, this bloke, wondering what’s up, goes to vet’s and sees he’s got his dog—a bloody great alstatian. “What yet doing with me dog?” he asks. Vet tells him a neighbour saw the dog choking in the garden so he took dog to the vet. And vet got some tweezers and pulled out of the dog’s throat three fingers—human fingers. They were stuck, choking the dog. So this bloke phones police and tells them to go to his house. Anyway, when they get there, they find the back door open. They searched the house and found a man in the bedroom wardrobe. It was a burglar. He’d broken in. Not known there was a dog till it went for him. Only way he could get away was to hide in the wardrobe. But bloody dog got ‘old of ‘is ‘and first, and ’ad three of his fingers.”

  A crash—splintering glass—jolted the bar silent. “That’s one way o’ getting art ‘o washing up,” observed the man, his dry smile exposing the yellow chips of his teeth.

  “Oh, you and your lip, Freddy. Another quip like that and you’re barred, love,” retorted the barman, as he kicked the pieces into a corner.

  Another voice, lyrical with alcohol, was raised. “A few months ago… five or six or so, I heard about someone, who lives near us. His wife bought this big piece of steak. Like that. Big as a plate. Anyway, she cuts it in half. Puts one piece in the fridge and ’as t’other for her dinner. Later that day she’s feeling off it. Poorly. So she tells husband to get the steak and cook it for ’is supper. He goes to the fridge. Opens it. And the meat. This piece of bloody steak fills plate again. It’s hanging over the side. And when he looked at it. He saw it was just… just moving, like shivering. They took it to the Council offices, and they found it was cancer. Cancer in the meat. And they found where it’d touched some sausages, it had like infected them and they were bursting out, splitting their skins. Just think of that. That poor woman’d eaten the meat. And it was just a piece of cancer… living cancer.”

  The night was cold and still when she left the pub. A few people still walked along the promenade. But they hardly strolled; there was purpose and direction in their stride.

  In the distance the saline hiss of the
sea was subdued. Above, the sky was clearing and the light disc of the moon duplicated itself in darkened shop windows. To her left, stone steps ascended into the darkness. And twelve steps up, sat a lad, his face as white as lard. He squirted something from a yellow tube into a polystyrene cup. Then, cupping his hands around it, as if warming them, he raised the cup and rested it against his top lip. He breathed deeply—drawing great lungfuls of cold air and fumes into his chest, which burnt his nose and throat, filling his lungs with fire. A fire that flooded through his body to numb his arms and legs and his soul. Then he dropped back onto his elbows as the solvent fire dissolved his brain.

  Somebody coughed and spat. “Want a chip, luv?” Two men carrying bouquets of greasy newspaper stood by her side.

  “Yer can do better than that, Shillies. ’Ave a bit of his fish. Best bit of cod in Scabs” The gleaming white fragment of fish was clutched in his oil-glossed fingers. “She looks foreign to me. Look… She can’t understand a word yer say.”

  The other tapped his head knowingly. “No, I think she’s a bit… in the head. Even so, she doesn’t look bad.”

  A soft laugh padded into the night. “God knows. Yer can’t see her face for all that ’air.”

  The other’s voice dropped to a whisper: “Do you look at the mantelpiece when yet poking the fire?” Throwing away the screwed-up newspapers, they each took an arm and led her up a darkly winding side street. Packed with cars, it was silent. Black windows of houses, like blind eyes, stared hard against the night.

  “Here’ll do. It’s the back yard of that old chippie. No one’ll see us.” Into the high-walled yard they guided her. Then drew her toward a bed-sized patch of balding grass. “It’s my turn first this time, Shillies.” Shillies relinquished his hold on her and moved out of sight behind a shed of sagging boards.

  The other pulled her close and her long arms wrapped about him like the white rubber tentacles of an octopus. She opened her mouth as he bent toward her. The silver-gray of her tongue moved, and her teeth were a tightly packed row of blue-black mussels set in white flesh. The shells opened. Mother of pearl flowers. Hypnotized. His lips met her water-cold flesh. Salt pricked his tongue. And the rush and hiss of the sea was in his ears. Bitingly cold brine flushed through him, cascading into his lungs. His mouth jerked open and then was as still and as silent as his cold, dead heart.

  Shillies started when she appeared at his side. Softly, he called his friend’s name. His voice failed. She was turning her face to his. A strange flat immobile face; the face of a… No. No. It was the face of a girl. Her fingers. No, the wet sucker tentacles of a squid, touched his lips—and pressed. He could not resist as they pushed into his mouth, probing his tongue. His mouth yawned wider and wider as the chill hand, then wrist, slipped into his mouth. And smoothly slid into his throat. No air reached his lungs as the arm, as long as death, continued its tight slide through the core of his body. Eternally, working its way along the winding path of his stomach. He could still feel its cold unceasing passage through his saltwater being as he lay face down in a sea of newspaper balls, chip trays, wooden forks and crushed Coca-Cola cans.

  Where the land meets the sea. The milk surf rolled up the beach toward the town. And waves moved across a crackling band of pebbles to swirl and bubble about her feet. Then, calmly, she stepped forward into the roaring darkness of the nighttime ocean.

  Three-fifths of the world’s surface is covered by water. Should the polar ice caps melt, then the sea level would rise dramatically, flooding many hundreds of square miles of dry land.

  Where the sea meets the shore. The ocean surged up the beach, rushing, tumbling, cascading, falling, rising toward the dry land.

  The tide had turned.

  Swallowing a Dirty Seed

  “Could you spare us some food?”

  “Food?”

  “We haven’t eaten all day. We were camping up the valley.”

  “We lost the rucksack with our supplies,” the man added.

  It was five in the afternoon. Despite the new electric oven causing the mains’ fuses to blow every forty minutes, I’d cooked my first proper meal in the cottage. A leg of Welsh lamb in rosemary; to accompany that, fresh vegetables, and an apple and walnut stuffing of which I was particularly proud. The oven had behaved itself, nothing had been burnt, or emerged raw. And I’d just poured myself a glass of crisp white wine, so chilled the glass immediately frosted. That’s when I heard the knock on the door.

  The cottage, tucked deep in a Welsh valley, was miles from the nearest village, and at first I thought it was the man from the garage returning my car a day early. Instead, there on the doorstep, looking as if they’d just hiked back from the Antarctic, stood a man and woman in their early twenties. Both looked exhausted. Dark rings underscored their strangely glittery eyes; the man leaned forward, one elbow against the door frame to support his weight. He was slightly built with dark curly hair. He wore a corduroy jacket and jeans; the girl wore a brown suede jacket with black trousers. If anything she looked physically stronger than the man. Statuesque would be a description to suit her; she’d tied her long blond hair back into a pony tail; her brown eyes fixed on me without a hint of shyness.

  Both wore trainers. For campers they were pretty poorly equipped. I saw no sign of tents or sleeping bags.

  “We can pay,” the girl prompted. She unzipped a pocket on the inside of her jacket and pulled out about two pounds in change. The man leaned forward, trying not to look too obvious, but I could see he was drawing the aroma of the roasting lamb through his nostrils, as if he’d be nourished on the scents alone.

  I smiled. Heck, I could afford to play the good Samaritan now I’d finally managed to sell my flat in Manchester and put down six months’ rental on this place. “Come on in,” I said, “I’m just about to eat anyway. Roast lamb okay? No, put the money in your pocket. The pair of you look as if you could do with a drink. White wine?”

  “God, yes.” The man sounded shocked by my generosity. “Brilliant. Thanks.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr…?” The girl held out her hand.

  “Stephen Carter.” I shook her hand.

  “My name’s Dianne Johnson.”

  Her grip was firm, even vigorous. By contrast, the man lightly held my fingers when I shook hands with him. He said his name was Ashley May. I could easily have imagined he was a young Church of England vicar who’d gone on a camping holiday only to find that the girl or the weather, or both, were more than he could cope with.

  “Pretty lousy weather for camping,” I said, pouring the wine. “This is the driest day we’ve had in a week.”

  “That’s Wales in April.” The girl made polite conversation. “We thought it might be warmer.”

  “I came here for the light,” Ashley said in a small voice. “Here in April you get good light.”

  “Good light?”

  The girl explained quickly. “Ashley’s a landscape painter. He’s been commissioned by a gallery in Bangor to paint three landscapes. They’ll print a limited edition.”

  “To sell to tourists.” Ashley shook his head and drained the glass of wine in one. “It would have paid the rent, too.”

  Would have paid the rent? He sounded as if some catastrophe had struck.

  “Here, Ashley,” I said, “let me fill your glass. Top up, Dianne?”

  “Please… lovely wine.”

  They drank as if they needed it. Both were trembling as they lifted the glasses to their lips.

  They’ve just had one hell of a shock, I realised, surprised at my sudden insight. Yes. They’ve come through something terrible.

  Now they were trying to pretend they were tired campers, forcing themselves to make polite conversation with me; yet it looked as if any moment the self-control would break and they would run screaming down the hillside all the way to Criccieth.

  I served them huge platefuls of lamb and vegetables. They ate every scrap. I offered seconds; they hungrily accepted.

  When
they had finished, Dianne looked at Ashley in a way that asked a question. He nodded. Then Dianne looked back at me.

  “I don’t like to ask this; you’ve been so generous. But would you mind driving us to the nearest town?”

  “Normally, I’d be delighted to oblige. But my car’s at the garage.”

  “Then may we telephone for a taxi?”

  “I’m terribly sorry. I’m still waiting to be connected. I’ve only just moved in.”

  “Is it far to town? Could we walk there before it gets dark?”

  “I’m sorry to have to keep being so negative, but there’s not a chance, I’m afraid. It would be a good two-hour walk.”

  Ashley glanced out the window. He looked frightened. “God… it’s nearly dark now. Dianne?”

  “Don’t worry, Ashley. You won’t be like him. There’s no sign of anything?”

  “No. But I can feel it.”

  “Ah, sorry to intrude,” I asked awkwardly. “But are you in any kind of trouble?”

  Dianne looked at me sharply. “Trouble? We’re not on the run from the police or anything like that.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that. It’s just both of you seem… unnerved.”

  “We’re fine,” said the girl tartly.

  Ashley shot her a startled look, as if she’d just told the lie of the century.

  “We lost our tents.” Dianne attempted to sound matter-of-fact, as if they faced a minor glitch in their plans. “You wouldn’t allow us to sleep here tonight?”

  “We’re so tired,” Ashley said. “The tents went yesterday evening.”

  “Went?”

  “Stolen.” Dianne shrugged. “We’d gone for a walk. They had been taken by the time we got back.”

  Come on, Stephen, I told myself, you can’t turn them out on a day like this. Well… evening would be a better description now. It was falling dark early as rain clouds avalanched over the Welsh hill tops. Already lights from cottages on distant hillsides twinkled like stars.