THE HAAR

DAVID SODERGREN
 This book is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to names and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
without written permission from the author.

Cover art by Trevor Henderson

Copyright © 2022 David Sodergren

All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9798800159837
 For my gran
You would not have liked this book at all.
 CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Afterword
The Memoirs of Connie Jamieson
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by David Sodergren
 1

M M M A -
first time she saw a man turned inside-out by a sea monster. You
might think it would bother a woman of her age, but, as Muriel was
fond of saying, she had seen a lot in her eighty-four short years.
Most notably, she had been first on the scene back in sixty-six,
when the lighthouse lamp failed and The Charlotte Dane fishing
vessel had crashed into the rocks, disgorging its human cargo into
the bay. Muriel had witnessed it from her rain-streaked kitchen
window as she scrubbed the dishes. She ran from the small cottage
she shared with her husband Billy, and waded into the sea, rolling up
her pinafore and dragging mangled bodies from the pounding water.
The rest of the fishing village of Witchaven had soon joined her in
the rescue attempt. Some of the men they pulled from the icy sea
were still alive. Some were dead, and others were in pieces.
The next morning, Muriel had carted her trusty wheelbarrow
down to the beach and collected as many parts as she could find.
Legs, arms, feet… even a head had washed ashore. She left the
wheelbarrow in the garden while she phoned the authorities, then
made soup for lunch while waiting for the limbs to be taken away for
identification.
 So aye, it’s fair to say it took more than a little blood to turn Muriel
McAuley’s cast-iron stomach. In fact, the only thing Muriel couldn’t
abide — that really, truly nauseated her — were stuck-up wee
arseholes in suits telling her what to do.
“I think you should leave,” she said curtly to the tall woman in the
powder blue suit.
The woman smiled politely, displaying rows of immaculately
straight, white teeth, but remained steadfast in Muriel’s doorway. The
coastal wind blew a strand of blonde hair across her face, and she
casually brushed it aside. Normally, Muriel would invite a guest into
her home, especially on a crisp morning like today… but not this
woman.
The wind howled in from across the North Sea, and the woman
on the doorstep shivered, trying her best to disguise it. Those
Americans never could get used to the Scottish climate, thought
Muriel.
“Miss McAuley,” the woman said brusquely, her pleasant facade
coming perilously close to slipping. “Just listen to what I have to say.”
Muriel couldn’t stop staring at her teeth. They were perfect. She
had never seen anything like them. They looked like they had been
carved from ivory, not a gap between them, not a single
imperfection. She wanted nothing more than to swing a right hook
and knock them out of the woman’s thick skull.
It wasn’t like Muriel to lose her temper. As anyone in Witchaven
would attest, Muriel never raised her voice. At least, not in anger.
When she was calling for her chickens, or for her son Paul to come
in for tea, then sure, she could shout as loud as a trapped coo. But
Paul had left home forty years ago and had a son of his own now,
and Billy had built a chicken coop and fence to stop the hens from
wandering off, so Muriel’s larynx had been well rested for a good few
decades.
But this woman was putting all that to the test. She clutched an
expensive leather bag to her chest, her knuckles red raw from the
cold.
“Miss McAuley, this is a once in a lifetime deal. You’d be, if you
don’t mind me saying, a fool to pass it up.”
Muriel narrowed her eyes and tried to compose herself.
“I’ve been called a lot worse than a fool over the years, young
lady. In fact, I think I’ve been called every name under the sun, and
by people I respect a lot more than you. And, might I add, it’s Mrs
McAuley, not Miss.”
The woman’s eyes brightened. She was a beautiful girl, no older
than thirty. Muriel thought she would be best working her charms on
men. What old buffoon could say no to a smile like that?
“Oh, you have a husband? Perhaps I should talk to him. I’m sure
there must be a way to come to an agreement and end this
unpleasant business once and for all.”
“My husband has been dead for twelve years.”
The woman’s smile lapsed, her lips eclipsing the brilliant white
teeth. “I see.”
“He died in this house. The house he built. Our house. And when
he passed, God rest his soul, this land, and everything on it, became
mine. I’ve lived here most of my life. My son was born here, and I will
surely die here, but not before I’m ready.”
Muriel rose to her full height, all five-foot-two, putting her eyes
level with the woman’s flawless, blemish-free chin.
“And I most certainly will not sell to some toe-rag from the telly so
he can build a golf course and ruin a beautiful piece of land, no
matter how many millions of pounds he has.”
 The grin returned to the woman’s face, her teeth seeming to force
her mouth open in their desire to dazzle all onlookers. “Billions,” she
said.
“Excuse me?”
“Mr Grant is a billionaire. Not a millionaire.”
“I don’t care if he shits gold bullions,” said Muriel, her cheeks
colouring at her choice of language. “I, and those left in this village
with a modicum of decency, will never sell to the likes of him, not for
all the tea in China. And the fact he sends you door-to-door like a…
like a bloody vacuum cleaner salesman, instead of coming himself,
speaks volumes about his character.”
“Mr Grant is a very busy man, as I’m sure you can appreciate. He
would love to come and meet the residents face-to-face, but he has
a great many duties overseas.”
“Aye, more folk to kick out of their homes?” snapped Muriel. She
was getting cold, and wanted to close the door and head back inside
for a seat and a cup of hot tea, but the woman’s feet were firmly
planted in her doorway.
“We’re not kicking anyone out,” the woman said, putting the word
in air quotes. “We’re offering them a unique chance at happiness.”
“You’re destroying the natural beauty of the land!”
Muriel gazed past the woman at the waves lapping against the
unspoilt white sand beach. The rolling dunes led up to the cliff face
where local youths used to defy death by leaping into the frigid
water, back when there were local youths in Witchaven.
The woman snorted. “You call this beauty? Wait until you see
what Mr Grant has in mind.”
Muriel shook her head. “I’ve seen him on the news. He’s planning
on landscaping the whole area. This land is protected, you know.
What he’s doing is illegal.”
 “Well,” said the woman. “Your local council doesn’t agree.”
“Aye, and what a bunch of plums they are. They might be willing
to be bought, but I’m not. They can’t buy me, not for all the tea in
China.”
“You already said that.”
Muriel stared at the woman. Was she repeating herself? She was
too angry to think straight. She had watched Mr Grant outline his
plans for the area on the news.
A slum, he had called the village. A slum!
Witchaven was many things, but a slum it was not. A fishing
village since the eighteen-hundreds, it consisted of two dozen
cottages and a few farm houses, all blindingly white in the sun. The
views were spectacular, the sun rising over the ocean every
morning. Life was peaceful here. The only concession to modern
progress was the addition of electricity and telephone lines back in
the sixties, around the time the Post Office had opened. Now, of
course, the Post Office was gone. Mark and Lizzie had shuttered the
windows for the last time four months ago, having accepted a deal
from The Grant Organisation. Three days later, the building had
been demolished, the same building where Muriel used to post her
Christmas cards and pick up her groceries.
Muriel bristled. “I know fine well what that daft mug off the telly
has planned, but the people of Witchaven still value integrity and
tradition. We won’t stand for you coming in here and taking our land,
turning it into—”
“It’s Patrick Grant’s land.”
Muriel’s blood boiled. Oh, they had shown her their title deeds
before, a map with parts of the coastline coloured red to mark the
land Grant supposedly owned. With each new deed they presented
to her, the red area crept further and further along the coast,
encroaching on properties that had stood since Witchaven’s
inception.
Muriel’s fingers tightened into loose, trembling fists.
“Get out of my house. Get off my property, and off my land.” She
advanced on the woman, who took a step back, stumbling over the
crooked step. “And make no mistake, this is my land, and will remain
that way until I am dead and in my grave, millionaire or no
millionaire.”
“Like I said, a billionaire,” the woman answered coolly. Her smile
was gone, replaced by a glimmer of contempt. She turned to leave,
heading towards the car that idled by the gate, dark and menacing,
the windows tinted black. A burly man in sunglasses stood with his
arms crossed, a radio hooked up to his ear.
Security? thought Muriel. Against who? Me?
She laughed, and the woman looked back, regarding her
quizzically.
“Consider your options, Mrs McAuley,” she said. “An opportunity
like this doesn’t come along often, and who knows how long it’ll stay
on the table. Everyone has a price.”
Muriel hid her shaking hands behind her back and smiled. “Tell
you what, young lady. You scurry back to your boss and tell him to
double his offer.”
The woman paused. “Miss McAuley… I’m sorry, Mrs McAuley… I
knew you were a smart woman, I really did.” She started towards
Muriel, reaching into her bag. “I have the paperwork—”
“Aye,” interrupted Muriel. “Tell him to double it, then shove it up
his arse.”
The woman froze. She took a deep breath and removed her
hands from the bag. “You’re making a mistake,” she said. “The
biggest mistake of your life.”
 Muriel locked eyes with her. “Get off my land, or I’ll shoot you,”
she said quietly, almost a whisper.
The woman backed up, her legs moving almost as fast as her
mouth.
“Are you threatening me? Because I’ll go to the cops. I swear, I’ll
—“
“Right, that’s it.” Muriel turned away, moving through her hallway
with surprising speed. “You’d better be gone by the time I get back,
missy, or I’ll sink a cartridge into that plump bottom of yours!”
She heard the woman shout something to the driver, and saw a
flurry of activity out of the corner of her eye as she threw open the
door to a cupboard and reached inside.
“I’m coming for you!” she roared, glancing out the window to the
woman hurrying through the garden in her skirt and high heels.
Panicking, the woman tripped, landing in the mud and screaming in
terror as the security guard rushed to her aid.
When Muriel reappeared in the doorway, the woman glared at
her, the whites of her eyes visible through wet mud that dripped
down her face like melting clay, eyes that stared with unconcealed
hatred at the weapon in Muriel’s hands.
An old wooden broom.
“That’s not a gun,” the woman said, spitting a mouthful of foul
gunk onto the grass.
“Did I say a gun?” Muriel asked innocently. “I’m sorry, I meant
broom. I’m gonna skelp your arse with a broom.”
The woman tossed a handful of mud towards Muriel. The missile
fell short of its intended target.
“You old bitch!” she snarled. “You ain’t gonna live forever!” Her
accent had changed, sounding looser, less refined. The security
guard helped her up, brushing the mud from her jacket, and she
slapped his clumsy hands away from her chest.
Muriel smiled and waved, watching as the woman bundled
herself into the car, still shrieking expletives. If she thought it would
shock Muriel, she was dead wrong. She had grown up and lived
among fisherman all her life, and though she tried never to swear
herself, she had heard it all before. The car careened around the
bend, the wheels kicking up thick clouds of dirt as quiet fell once
more upon Muriel’s modest cottage.
“A slum,” she muttered. “The man’s a bloody menace.”
She shivered. It was cold out today. The sky loomed above her,
grey and heavy and ready to collapse. Muriel reached for the door.
Her hands trembled. They always did, these days. She couldn’t stop
them.
No matter. It only bothered her when she was drinking her tea,
and she had learnt the painful way not to fill the mug too near to the
brim. She closed the front door and ambled back into the living room,
her heart pounding from the excitement. There, she sat by the
window in her favourite chair and gazed out over the beach. Beyond
it, the blue sea stretched to the horizon, a fishing boat bobbing lazily
beneath the clouds.
Muriel closed her eyes. She wanted to relax, but couldn’t. She
had work to do. And anyway, she knew they’d be back soon, with
more offers and veiled threats.
They always came back.
 2

T
the twelve years since Billy’s passing.
Muriel sauntered out to the chicken coop, collecting the eggs for
this evening’s dinner. Three today, a respectable haul. She checked
her post box, found it was empty — it usually was — then went back
inside and put on the wireless.
The radio, grandma. It’s called the radio.
She smiled at the thought of her grandson correcting her, and
tried to recall the last time she saw him. This had been the first year
he had forgotten to call and wish her a happy birthday. She couldn’t
blame him. Jack was twenty now, and lived in London. He had his
own life to live.
“Young people have to leave the past behind if they ever wish to
grow up,” she said. Since Billy’s death, Muriel had made a habit of
talking to herself. It kept the cottage from getting too quiet, especially
on the long winter nights. She gazed at a photo of her and Billy,
taken on their wedding day.
“Whereas old farts like ourselves have nothing but the past.”
She reached for the photo, wanting to lift it, but her trembling
hands betrayed her. Her son had forced her to visit a doctor a few
years prior, a strange, thin man who ran some tests to check if she
had Parkinson’s. It turned out she didn’t, but no explanation for the
shakes had been offered.
“Have to learn to live with it,” she said, determined to pick up the
photo frame. It took her a moment, but she managed, clasping her
fingers and thumb around the edge. The photograph shook in her
hand. “Like standing in a bloody earthquake,” she muttered, and laid
the frame back down before she dropped it. Billy gazed at her from
the photograph, from across time itself, this simple image a bridge
between then and now, the good times and the bad.
“Ach, it’s not so bad.”
Not so bad? Pretty soon you’re going to be out of house and
home.
“Then so be it. I won’t sell our house. If they want rid of me, they’ll
have to come round here and personally remove me.”
She tried to smile, but the thought terrified her. What if they
could? What if they did? She couldn’t stay with her son. He had a
family. Also, she had a nagging suspicion he wanted to put her away
in a retirement home.
“You’re getting on, mum,” he would say whenever she called.
“What if you had a fall? There’s no one around to check up on you.”
“If it’s my time, it’s my time,” she would always reply. The pair of
them were like a broken record, and it did nothing but strengthen her
resolve, just like whenever those slick Americans would call round
with their fat cheques and hungry eyes.
Muriel didn’t care about money. Could they not understand that?
She had a pension, and a small amount of savings, enough to see
her through. But most importantly, she had her home and her dignity.
She didn’t want to move into sheltered accommodation, or — God
forbid — a care home.
 During World War II, she had been shipped off to a home for
boys and girls, and there she learned the value of independence,
losing herself in her drawings. In the late fifties, she was offered a
job as an illustrator, but upon learning of her upcoming nuptials to
Billy McAuley, the offer had been rescinded.
The company didn’t hire married women, they told her.
It was the hardest choice of Muriel’s life, but she never regretted
it. She turned down the job and married Billy. He built a grand home
for them, and though it had fallen into slight disrepair since his death
— she wasn’t able to climb the ladder to fix the leaky roof anymore
— her home it would be forevermore. In a way, it was as if he was
still with her. The old easy chair by the window, which he had made
himself, felt like his warm embrace. The creaks from the porch
reminded her of his snores, and the mantels were decorated with
ships in bottles, the one creative endeavour Billy had enjoyed.
A practical man, and a fisherman all his life, he had no time for
the arts, though she used to catch him looking wistfully at her
watercolour of Witchaven Bay that hung over the open fireplace.
Ah, the fire!
The wind was picking up, the sky threatening a downpour, and
the log supply was dwindling. Muriel grabbed the wicker basket by
the door, slung it over her shoulder, and headed outside in her
housecoat. The woodshed was next to the chicken coop, and she
entered as it started to spit rain. The logs were too large for her
fireplace, so she filled the basket as best she could and lugged it
from the woodshed to the old tree stump.
She picked up the axe from the basket and set to work. The axe
seemed to grow heavier with each passing day, but despite that, she
hacked at the wood, splintering it, chopping it into manageable
pieces, imagining it was Patrick Grant’s face, smashing—
 No, no, no!
That would not do. That would not do at all. She was a peaceful
woman. What would Billy have thought?
“He would have thought the same thing,” she said, as the rain
drummed against her face. She lifted the basket of chopped wood,
feeling the strain on her shoulder, and gazed across the bay.
So many lights. So much noise.
The wilderness was disappearing, replaced by trucks and diggers
and men in hard hats pointing. They were always pointing at
something. Recently, they had begun working through the night, pile-
drivers thumping relentlessly, mirroring the frantic beating of her own
heart as she tried to sleep. They weren’t supposed to do that,
weren’t allowed, but no one cared. The police, the town officials, the
Scottish government… they all stood idly by, happy to accept Grant’s
money and look the other way as he ran roughshod over rules and
laws.
Apparently, laws don’t apply to the rich.
The barbed wire boundaries of the worksite enlarged every time
she looked, edging closer and closer to her property. Soon, they
would be on her doorstep.
She was glad Billy wasn’t here to see his beloved Witchaven
trampled and ruined in the name of progress.
“You’re an old fool,” she said, taking one last heartbreaking look
at the men and the vehicles and the destruction they invariably left in
their wake. She wondered if she had the patience to outlast them.
She wondered if she still had the spirit.
 3

“O !O !”
Terry Munro thumped a scrawny fist against the table, and the six
people present quietened. Muriel gave a wry glance at Arthur
Eastman, who rolled his eyes in response. Terry — once a respected
lawyer — had retired to Witchaven eighteen years ago to live out his
remaining days in peace and solitude. He was quickly appointed
chairman of Witchaven Council, and had been drunk on power ever
since. However, the official town hall had fallen to the mighty wrath of
the diggers a few weeks back, and somehow Terry didn’t seem as
authoritative standing in his kitchen, hammering his fist and
bellowing like the residents didn’t fit comfortably around his dining
table.
“You don’t need to shout,” said Muriel. Her hands were clasped in
front of her, and she fiddled nervously with her wedding ring. She
looked at the worried faces gathered around the table. Six of them,
plus Terry, were all that remained. How could it be? Once a close-
knit community of fifty-five, and now there were only seven of them.
Where had everyone gone?
She knew the answer. The rest had taken the money and run. In
some cases, it was understandable. They were young, able to make
a new life somewhere. They weren’t tied to the land. They hadn’t
lived their lives here, had no sentimental attachment to Witchaven.
For most, the offer from Grant was more money than they would
ever see. She couldn’t blame a young family for jumping at the
chance. Of course, within days of accepting and moving to pastures
new, their cottages had been razed to the ground.
Progress waited for no one.
“They were round again yesterday,” said Arthur in his usual
booming voice. Arthur was Muriel’s nearest neighbour. He had been
Billy’s best friend and chief rival, often comparing their catches at the
end of a long day’s fishing. Since Billy’s passing, Arthur had taken it
upon himself to make sure Muriel was getting by, sometimes
dropping her shopping round in his tractor.
“Aye,” she nodded. “That they were. Damn near had to chase
that awful woman off my property. I keep telling her, I’ve been here
since nineteen-canteen, and I’m not going anywhere, but she won’t
listen. None of them listen.”
“Same here,” said Jock Baird, gesturing to his wife Jeanie. “Two-
hundred-and-fifty-thousand she offered us. I said to her, sweetheart,
what am I gonnae spend that much money on? A gold-plated
coffin?”
Arthur laughed at that, and Terry banged his fist again.
“Order, order.”
“Och, Terry, give it a rest,” said Arthur. “There’s nae a bloody riot
going on.” He looked suspiciously at Davey and Lorraine Farquhar.
The usually gregarious pair hadn’t said a word since arriving beyond
some mumbled hellos. “What about yous?” said Arthur. “You’ve been
awfy quiet. It’s no like you, Davey.”
Davey Farquhar looked at his wife, then down at his liver-spotted
hands. He tugged his cap down over his forehead.
 “Ah, well, y’know…”
“Know what?”
Davey swallowed. They all knew what he was going to say before
he said it. “We, uh, accepted their offer.”
Arthur stood, his chair clattering behind him. “You bloody what?”
Davey looked straight at him, his cheeks reddening. “One of
these days, they’re going to win. Might as well get out while they’re
still paying us to do so. There’s talk of a…” He turned to his wife.
“What was it, dear?”
Lorraine Farquhar focused on the table. At fifty-seven, she was
the youngest person at the table by a number of years. “A
compulsory purchase order,” she said.
Davey turned back to Arthur. “Aye, one of those. Then we’ve no
bloody choice, have we? We’ll be out on our arses!”
“There’s always a choice,” said Muriel. The two men looked at
her. She sighed. “This is our home. They can’t take it from us.
They… they just can’t.”
“They can, and they will,” said Davey. “They dinnae give a shite
about us. They’ve nae morals, nae compassion. We’re just flies
buzzing about, annoying them. They’ll get rid of us any way they
can, and all the chin-wagging we do here isnae gonna stop them.”
“We can fight them,” said Arthur, though his body language had
changed, his shoulders drooping. “In the courts. I have my title
deeds showing that it’s my land.”
“Aye,” sneered Davey, “You against Grant’s lawyers. That’d be a
laugh. It’s no like on bloody Judge Judy, you soft bastard.”
“I don’t know what that means,” said Arthur, but it was a lie. He,
like the rest of them, had the telly on a lot these days. Anything to
drown out the incessant noise of the machines that clanked and
thudded relentlessly, terrifying the wildlife. “But fine, go on and
bugger off, leave us to fight. Dinnae need you anyway.”
“Aye, we will then. We’ll be gone by Thursday.”
Arthur picked up his chair and sat heavily. The wood creaked
beneath him. “Well, good riddance to bad rubbish.”
Muriel tapped gently on the tattered sleeve of Arthur’s thick
woollen jumper. He glanced at her, then put his head in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” said Davey. “I just dinnae have it in me. We’re no
twenty anymore, Arthur. I’m getting on. My sight’s going. My whole
body aches every morning.” He took his wife’s hand. “We need to
bloody sleep. This is no way to live.”
“Aye,” said Arthur, staring down at his chipped coffee mug. “Well,
good luck to you both.”
Davey nodded in muted response. He helped his wife to her feet
while the others sat in silence, then fetched their coats from the
stand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope it works out for you all.”
“Take care,” said Muriel. “Keep in touch.”
Davey half-shrugged. “Aye, sure thing.”
With that, the Farquhars left. There was a brief blast of cold air as
the front door opened, and then it slammed shut.
Arthur looked at Terry, then at Jock and at Jeanie. He put his
hand on Muriel’s and gave her a light squeeze.
“And then there were five,” he said.
 4

T
Terry’s cottage. It was eight o’clock, and night had fallen on
Witchaven. Muriel and Arthur bid farewell to the Bairds and headed
towards Arthur’s tractor. Raindrops pelted the vehicle, the once-
green exterior of which had long since turned a murky rust-brown.
Muriel leaned on her stick, struggling to put her hood up with her free
hand.
“Here, I’ll get that,” said Arthur.
Too tired to refuse, she looked at him and tried to smile as he
tucked her curls under the hood of her red rain jacket.
“Need a lift?” asked Arthur.
Muriel eyed the tractor with distaste. “On that death trap? I’ll take
my chances with the weather.”
“Suit yourself. At the speed you walk, you might be home in time
for New Year.”
“Och, away and jump, old man,” she laughed.
Arthur hauled himself up the two metal rungs and onto the seat,
gunning the engine. He waved, and Muriel stood in the rain,
watching him trundle off, thick smoke belching from the vehicle’s
exhaust.
 She set off along the track.
“New Year indeed,” she muttered, smiling. “Cheeky bugger.”
As she walked, the road changed from gravel to mud, courtesy of
the lorries that drove endlessly up and down, all day and all night,
transporting sand and earth and even felled trees, her cherished
memories carted off like bodies from a crime scene. The Scots pine
that Billy had carved their initials onto had been one of the first to go,
along with a little piece of her heart. She heard an engine growl
behind her and turned to find Arthur and his tractor chugging towards
her.
“Couldnae bloody let you go this way yourself, could I?” he
shouted over the racket.
Muriel chuckled softly to herself. “You’re a fool, Arthur Eastman,”
she called up to him. “But I was always partial to a spot of
foolishness. Here, help me up.”
He held out his hand, lifting her onto the tractor’s second seat,
and they rode on over mud and man-made hills, where once had
stood Paul Macleod’s farm. There was no trace of it now, no legacy.
It was simply there one day and gone the next, like so much of
Witchaven. A yellow JCB stood sentinel where Paul’s cowshed had
been, surrounded by filth and detritus.
“Cannae bloody believe that Davey,” said Arthur over the noise of
the engine. “He was born in that house. Harbour master for fifty-odd
years. Thought he’d be the last of us to ever sell up.”
“Aye,” sighed Muriel. “You can’t fight forever.”
“Eh?” shouted Arthur. “I cannae hear you.”
Muriel raised her voice. “We’re old, Arthur. The people out there,
they don’t care about us. When was the last time you saw your
family?”
 He thought for a moment. “Two Christmases ago. Cannae blame
them. This place is a right mess. Who wants to spend Christmas on
a building site?”
He cut the engine, and they sat in silence. In the distance, the big
machines clanked and rattled and roared, echoing across the bay, a
constant thunderstorm of metallic noise.
“It’s a crying shame, I’ll tell you that,” said Arthur. He looked out
to sea, at the grey mist on the horizon. “This area is supposed to be
protected, and here they are, tearing it apart like ghouls, and no one
cares.”
“Some folk care,” said Muriel. “I read in the paper someone’s
organising a petition. He hopes to get the BBC to report it.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do,” said Arthur. He stole a look at Muriel,
then turned back to the sea. “Maybe Davey has the right idea. Are
we just being stubborn old goats?”
“Aye, we are,” said Muriel. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She gazed wistfully towards an area of the beach where the cliffs
rose to their fullest height, the waves crashing against the rock in an
unending battle. Concealed between those rocks lay the entrance to
Rory’s Cave, a local landmark, and the site where Rory Gordon,
pirate chief and cannibal, had supposedly hidden his treasure. Muriel
knew Arthur was also familiar with the story she was about to tell, but
she was feeling melancholy, and sensed he was too.
“That’s where Billy proposed to me,” she said. “I met him one day
at the harbour. It was a Friday, I remember. He got off that boat
stinking of fish like always. I gave him a telling off for it, and the silly
old fool jumped into the sea to get rid of the smell. He came out
looking like Nessie herself, dripping with seaweed. He smelled even
worse, Arthur, I can tell you that.”
Arthur smiled. “He was a daft bugger, all right.”
 “That he was. And a handsome brute. We walked along the
shore hand-in-hand. There was no road back then. No cars, no
pollution. You could really see the stars.”
“I remember,” said Arthur, his voice cracking a little.
“He led me into Rory’s Cave. It was all lit up with candles. He’d
gotten back early and prepared it, then waited back at his boat to
meet me. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was so
romantic. He got down on one knee, and… and he…”
But she couldn’t finish.
Arthur fished a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her. “Life
has a way of catching up to you, doesn’t it?”
Muriel nodded, dabbing her eyes. “Aye, I suppose it does.” She
glanced up at the stars. They weren’t as bright as they used to be.
“I’ve made peace with my death,” she said. “I think that after Billy
passed, I had to. It comes for us all. But I always thought I’d spend
my remaining days here, in my home. It’s where I belong. It’s where
Billy belongs.” She paused. “I don’t want to move. Honestly, Arthur…
I’d rather—”
“I know,” he interrupted. He laid his big, calloused hand on hers
and let it rest. “I know.”
An engine roared nearby. Muriel looked to the sand dunes, to the
dry grass rippling in the wind.
“What’s this now?” muttered Arthur.
“It’s usually trouble,” said Muriel.
“Aye, trouble it’ll be.”
A car emerged from behind the dune, a four-by-four with flashing
lights on top like a police car. It gave a quick and thoroughly
unnecessary blast of the siren, then parked in front of Arthur’s
tractor. A chunk of beef in an ill-fitting suit got out and walked
towards them with a self-important gait.
 “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in an American
accent. “This road is closed. Property of The Grant Organisation.”
“My arse it is,” said Arthur. “This is the road to Muriel’s house.”
“This road is for work vehicles only.”
“This is a bloody tractor, son. What do you think it’s for? Drag
racing?”
The man looked unsure. He spoke quietly into a walkie-talkie,
looking from Arthur to Muriel, and back again.
“I need to see some ID.”
“Like hell you do. Now get out of the way before I plough this
beast right through your fancy car.”
The man hesitated.
“He means it,” said Muriel. It was getting cold now, and she
wished she’d worn a shawl beneath her raincoat.
“I bet he does,” mumbled the man. He spoke something inaudible
into the walkie-talkie again. “Okay, you can pass this time.”
“I bloody know I can,” said Arthur. “We live here, you wee
gobshite.”
The man backed off to allow passage. Arthur started the vehicle,
then held one arm out with his middle finger raised. The tractor
rumbled along at five miles-per-hour, Arthur ensuring that his single
finger salute was aimed at the man the whole time.
“Arthur, really. Don’t antagonise them,” said Muriel, stifling a
giggle.
The man watched stony-faced as they passed. Muriel leaned
over and blasted the horn. When the security guard jumped in
surprise, she burst out laughing, and then he was gone, back to his
expensive car to do whatever it was Grant paid him to do.
The full moon rippled against the water. Back in the day, Muriel
used to spot seals and even dolphins swimming near shore. Now,
with all the noise, there was nothing. Unnatural sounds echoed from
all around. The shrill beeping of a reversing truck, the crack of the
ground splitting beneath the force of a digger, competing radios
blaring their music across the bay, the sound carried effortlessly by
the constant wind. Even most of the gulls had fled the area for
quieter pastures. For the first time, she wondered if Davey Farquhar
was correct in—
She spotted something.
“My God, Arthur,” she said, furiously tapping him on his arm. She
pointed ahead. “What are they doing?”
Arthur squinted into the darkness. “I dunno, I’m no wearing my
specs.”
But Muriel could see all too well what was happening.
“My cottage! They’re at my cottage!”
A JCB bulldozer was silhouetted against the darkening sky.
Arthur slammed his foot down, the tractor accelerating to fifteen,
then twenty miles-per-hour. Black smoke plumed from the engine,
the vehicle vibrating beneath them.
“They’re knocking down the coop,” gasped Muriel. Her heart
thudded out of control. She wanted to leap from the vehicle and
confront them, but her hip would never forgive her. Instead, she
waited until Arthur pulled up to the digger, then gingerly clambered
down the metal rungs.
“What are you doing?” she shouted as she staggered towards the
men who stood in a protective semi-circle around the yellow work
vehicle. The bulldozer lurched forward, obliterating the coop in one
clunky motion. A chicken squawked and burst from the ruin like a
tiny phoenix, as the bulldozer came to rest atop the shattered wood
and tangled wire. Muriel’s breath caught in her throat, and she
leaned against a fence post.
 She couldn’t breathe.
One of the men came to her. He wore a hard hat and a hi-vis
jacket that shone brightly in the glare of the bulldozer’s headlights.
“Stay back, ma’am,” he said. “That shed is on Grant property. It
had to come down.”
“It’s… not,” she managed to say. “I have… the property map… in
there.” She tried to gesture towards her house, but was unable to
raise her arm. Why couldn’t she control her heart? She wrapped
herself around the post, hugging it.
The man shook his head. “No ma’am. Look here.”
He unrolled a pristine sheet of paper and pointed at it.
“This here is your property. You’ll notice that your fence and that
thing we took down were actually on Mr Grant’s land.”
“That’s not… true. You just… made that up. That’s… that’s not
the map.”
The man smiled. “Well now, you’d better take that up with your
lawyer.”
“You know, money can buy a lot of things,” said Arthur as he
huffed his way towards them. “But it cannae buy decency. It cannae
buy compassion. And it cannae buy a nutter with a fucking shotgun.”
Muriel saw the man’s eyes widen, then turned to see Arthur
heading over, his old farming shotgun raised. He cracked the
weapon and slipped two shells from his pocket into the chamber.
“Now listen here,” said the man, backing up. The other workers
had stopped too. They glanced nervously at each other.
“No, you listen, ya barrel of bollocks,” said Arthur. “You get away
from this place, and leave an old woman alone.” He snapped the
shotgun shut. “Have you no shame? You’re nothing but a bunch of
bullies.”
 “You wouldn’t shoot,” said the man, looking to his colleagues for
backup.
Arthur raised the weapon and stared down the barrel.
“Fucking try me,” he said. He cocked his head towards Muriel.
“Pardon the language.”
The worker shook his head. “Listen, friend. We’re just following
orders.”
“Aye,” said Arthur. “Like in Nazi Germany?”
“Fuck you, you old bastard. You’ve had all the chances in the
world to move. Now why don’t you—”
The shotgun thundered in Arthur’s hands. A mound of dirt
erupted in front of the man’s feet. His jaw dropped, face deathly pale.
“Must be getting old,” said Arthur. “Seems my aim’s not what it
once was.”
The man took several steps back. “You’ll regret this,” he said.
“You’ll be in jail by tonight, I promise you that.” He looked to the other
workers, but they had already fled. Only the bulldozer and its driver
remained, the vehicle beeping incessantly as it reversed. The man
hopped on board and, after performing the world’s slowest three-
point-turn, they trundled down the road into the oncoming mist.
Arthur went to Muriel, putting his arm around her. “Here, you
alright?”
She was close to getting her breathing under control, but her legs
ached and she slumped down onto the grassy verge.
There, she wept.
Arthur knelt by her, watching as the bulldozer became a blurry
shape in the night fog, a strange yellow ghost hovering indecisively
between worlds.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you inside.”
 Muriel let him lift her gently to her feet. A sharp pain needled at
her side. She looked out over the bay, recalling the way she used to
watch for Billy’s trawler jostling against the waves as he returned
home. Now the only visible boat was an enormous commercial liner
far away, its lights twinkling giddily against the night sky.
“They’ll be back,” she said sadly.
“Aye, they will.” Arthur’s words weren’t reassuring, but they didn’t
have to be. The time for reassurances was past. The truth was all
that mattered now.
Inside, Arthur settled her into the chair by the window, and put the
kettle on. Muriel picked up her knitting from the side table. She was
halfway through a thick winter jersey, and she resumed progress.
The click-clack of the needles always calmed her. She was slower
than she used to be, thanks to the arthritis and the shakes, but she
still managed. She glanced through the window — God, it needed a
good scrub — and saw Arthur outside, inspecting the remains of the
chicken coop.
When he entered, she noticed the stain on his jacket from where
he had wiped the chicken blood.
“How many?” she asked.
“Two gone. Could have been worse.”
“Aye, could have been.”
“I’ll come round tomorrow to fix the fence.”
She nodded. There was nothing else to say. Muriel closed her
eyes. She had never felt quite so tired. Arthur lit a smoke, the stale
smell of cigarettes filling the air. Muriel didn’t mind. It reminded her of
Billy. It seemed everything did these days. She opened her eyes and
looked to the sky.
Was he up there? Was he watching?
“Maybe I’ll see you soon,” she muttered softly.
 “What’s that?” said Arthur. “You say something?”
But Muriel didn’t answer. She only wanted to sleep. And though
she would never admit it, part of her, deep down, didn’t mind if she
never woke up.
 5

T ,
strange new galaxies on the wall. Muriel’s eyes flickered open. She
looked around, confused. Had she slept all night in her chair? Her
aching body told her, yes, that was precisely what she’d done. It also
told her it was unhappy about the situation, but there was little she
could do about that now.
She stood, her joints creaking, and ambled into the kitchen.
Arthur had tidied up after himself, washing the mug and ashtray and
leaving them on the drying rack by the sink. She fetched an empty
glass and waited a full minute before the black liquid that sputtered
out of the tap turned to its usual pristine quality. She didn’t know
what Grant’s men had done to the water supply, but when she spoke
to them they had already absolved themselves of all responsibility,
singing their familiar refrain of “Take it up with your lawyer.”
“They should get it printed on a sticker,” she smiled.
It was another dreich day. The haar, that freezing sea fog,
lingered offshore, forming an impenetrable grey wall across the
ocean. If Muriel didn’t know better, she would have thought the end
of the world had arrived. What lay beyond that mysterious haar? She
would never know. The haar always came to her, and never the
other way round. It crept inland, wrapping itself around her cottage
before dispersing, taking its secrets with it. She remembered the
seafaring stories Billy used to tell on the long winter nights by the
fire, a glass of whisky in one hand, his pipe in the other, tales of
strange sights and sounds, of harpies and selkies, of sailors driven
mad, of boats lost at sea…
The glass of water had filled to the brim and overflowed. Muriel
inspected the glass for contaminants, and, satisfied it was drinkable,
popped some paracetamol in her mouth and swallowed them down.
Life was a constant battle to pre-empt pain these days, and today
the pain was winning. Sleeping in that blasted chair hadn’t helped.
Still, she was fitter than a lot of people her age. She had to be.
Since The Grant Organisation had destroyed the post office, she had
become more self-sufficient than ever, growing her own vegetables
and trading produce with the other residents, chopping her own
firewood, making and mending her own clothes.
Like the old days.
As the kettle boiled, Muriel felt a growing urge to get out of the
cottage for a while. Maybe she’d make some shortbread and take it
round to Arthur as a thank you for standing up for her yesterday?
Yes, that was it. A good idea. She would start right after her cup
of tea, giving the painkillers enough time to work their magic before
bracing herself for another bitter Scottish morning. She found the
telly remote control and switched it on. It was a special one her
grandson had bought her, with extra large buttons that her fingers
could cope with.
The news was on.
“Ah, not today,” she said. The news was too depressing. She
stared at her fingers, willing them to keep still as she tried to adjust
the channel to—
 Arthur’s voice boomed from the TV.
“It’s a travesty of justice,” he was saying. His accent was broad,
the way it got when he was loud and belligerent. She looked at the
screen and there he was. Video footage — wasn’t there always — of
Arthur being escorted from his property in handcuffs, flanked by two
unsmiling police officers. He wore the same tatty jumper as
yesterday, his hair uncombed, cheeks unshaven. “I’m an innocent
man!” he said to the camera, before the officers bundled him into the
back of their car, silencing him. The footage cut back to the studio,
where a pretty young newsreader stared solemnly at her imagined
audience.
“Mr Eastman has been at the centre of controversy recently for
his role in delaying the ongoing construction of Patrick Grant’s golf
course along the Scottish coast,” she intoned gravely. “Mr Eastman,
along with several other residents, insists that Patrick Grant has no
right to build on land he claims he owns. This, however, is the first
time anyone has resorted to violence.”
“Violence?” whispered Muriel. “Have you seen what they’ve done
to our village?”
The newscaster continued. “We have Patrick Grant live via
satellite right now,” she said. The screen split in two, Patrick Grant’s
repellant visage filling half of it. He wore a smart navy suit and his
usual expression of unrepentant smugness. The newscaster began
her interrogation.
“Mr Grant,” she said, “will you be pursuing criminal charges
against Mr Eastman?”
There was a delay of several seconds due to the satellite linkup,
then Grant smiled patronisingly.
“No, not this time. I mean, what’s he gonna pay with? Dirt?”
The newscaster suppressed a smile.
 “If anything,” continued Grant, “I pity him. The man is mentally ill.
He shouldn’t be living alone. He’ll end up harming himself, or
someone else.”
Muriel tried to change the channel, but her hands wouldn’t allow
her.
“So what would you say to Mr Eastman?” asked the young
woman.
Another two second delay, then Grant offered a transparently
obnoxious look of kindness. “Accept my offer. Move somewhere
safer, where you’re not a danger to yourself or the community. We
have to think of the children, after all. I’m trying to—”
Muriel stormed over to the television and jabbed the Power
button with her knuckles.
“Oh, Arthur,” she said, barely recognising her own voice. She
sounded old.
Old and finished.
Suddenly the cottage felt too small, the walls closing in on her.
She reached for her jacket, struggling to get it off the hook,
struggling to turn the latch on the door, struggling to open it.
Everything was a struggle now. Her eyes filled with tears, her heart
with sorrow. She was glad Billy wasn’t here to see her like this, a
useless shell of her former self.
Outside, the air hit her hard, and she stood, letting it run through
her hair, caress her skin. There’s no better cure fae the blues than a
brisk Scottish morning, that’s what Billy used to say. Muriel grabbed
her stick from the side of the door and made her way gently down
the path, averting her eyes from the ruined chicken coop.
The great pile-drivers bellowed their metallic song, laying waste
to the ground. Men swore at each other through megaphones, the
sound carrying all the way along the beach. Shielding her eyes
against the breeze, Muriel stepped out of her garden and onto the
coastal path, which once upon a time had been a popular walk for
bird watchers. The tide was at its highest point. Soon, it would beat
its lazy retreat from the shore, and not even Patrick Grant could stop
that from happening. She pictured him standing on the beach, arms
raised like King Canute, commanding the sea to halt. In her
imagination, he wore an old fashioned red-and-white striped bathing
costume. The image made her smile, and for the briefest of
moments, she forgot everything else.
It didn’t last.
She thought about Arthur, carted off in chains on national telly in
unwashed jeans and a fraying sweater, and about how humiliated he
must have felt.
That’s what Grant wants, though. To pummel us into submission.
Nothing was off limits to men like that. He was the criminal, not
Arthur. Not any of the residents of Witchaven, despite what the news
said.
“He probably owns all the channels.”
Men like that — rich men, with no morals — did whatever it took
to get ahead. They lied and cheated their way to the top, treading all
over the little people beneath them without a care. That was bad
enough. But even worse was the way Grant treated the land. A man
with no respect for nature was the worst type of man. She would
never understand someone who could walk through Witchaven and
not feel their heart sing.
Hugging her jacket tightly around her, Muriel shuffled in the
direction of Rory’s Cave. She supposed she was feeling sentimental.
Her talk with Arthur the previous evening had brought long-dormant
feelings bubbling to the surface. The cave was over a mile away, a
long walk for Muriel, but if she didn’t go today, would she even be
able to tomorrow? Or the day after?
You have time. You’re old, but you’re healthy.
Aye, today she was. But winter would be drawing in soon,
bringing with it frosty windows and plummeting temperatures.
“To hell with winter,” she said.
She left the path and walked down to the beach over the dunes,
the wet sand packed hard beneath her feet. If it hadn’t been so cold,
she would have taken off her shoes and enjoyed the feeling of the
sand between her toes. But at her age, that was an invitation to
catch hypothermia, so she kept walking.
Something bobbing in the waves caught her eye. A buoy? It
shimmered a strange rainbow glow beneath the hazy morning sun,
then disappeared. Muriel stopped and watched, hoping for another
glimpse, but the vision was gone, vanishing in the fine mist of the
approaching haar.
“Eighty-four years, and still you surprise me,” she smiled. She
realised she was crying.
It must have been lunchtime when she reached the cave. Her
stomach grumbled, and she wished she hadn’t left in such haste and
forgotten to pack a sandwich. She stopped and turned, looking at her
footprints in the sand. They stretched back along the beach, weaving
around rocks and crispy black seaweed.
There used to be two sets.
“Life goes on,” she whispered. “For better or worse, life goes on.”
The granite sea cliffs rose from the sand, towering above her.
Rory’s Cave lay ahead, the entrance tucked between two rocky
outcrops and only accessible at low tide. Down here, at the foot of
the cliffs, she no longer heard the diggers and the machines. It felt
like old times again.
 Voices echoed from inside the cave, and a sense of
disappointment settled in her belly. Someone was in there already.
She could hardly blame them. The atmosphere around Rory’s Cave
was different, and the acoustics within were truly special. When Billy
was at sea, Muriel would often wander down to the cave to sing her
heart out. The smooth rock walls made her voice sound its best, and
she would belt out her favourite folk songs and ballads, and even, on
occasion, some Bobby Vinton and Frankie Avalon.
She smiled, forgetting about the cold, and sang.
“There lived a wife at Usher’s Well,
And a wealthy wife was she.
She had three stout and stalwart sons,
And sent them o’er the sea.”
Somewhere on the cliff, a lonely gull cried out as the voices
drifted ethereally from the chamber.
“They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
Whan word came to the carline wife,
That her three sons were gane.”
The entrance beckoned. Muriel took a step closer. As she sang,
she found herself unable to stop thinking about that odd, radiant
glow in the sea. A trick of the light, the sun playing off the foamy
spray, or—
A scream rose, cutting off mid wail. It came from the cave.
Muriel stopped singing. It was a cry of pain. Someone was hurt,
she was sure of it, and she resumed her journey towards the
entrance, trying to quicken her pace.
A pale figure emerged from the cave. A woman. She was naked,
and running, her long hair flowing behind her. Her feet caught in the
sand, and she tripped and fell, twisting in midair and landing on her
back. If she had noticed Muriel, she made no indication. Was she
hurt? Where were her clothes? There were no young people left in
Witchaven, so what on Earth was a wee lassie doing out here?
“Are you—” Muriel started to say, before noticing a man exit the
cave. He, too, was naked. He jogged towards the girl, his erection
leading the charge, and she shuffled backwards, squealing in delight
as he approached.
“What’s going on?” shouted Muriel.
The man dug his heels into the sand and turned to her. “Who the
fuck are you?” he said, stalking towards her, not even bothering to
cover his nakedness.
Muriel recognised him.
Conor Grant, son of Patrick, the man left in charge of overseeing
the day-to-day operations of the golf course development in his
father’s absence. Muriel had seen Conor on the news, but never met
him in person. And now, she was seeing a lot more of him than
expected.
Conor sniffed, blinking erratically, his shoulders twitching. “You’re
trespassing,” he said distractedly. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Words deserted her. The man was in the scud, and didn’t seem
to care. The girl scrambled to her feet and arrived at Conor’s side,
clinging onto his arm.
“Who is she?” the girl said. She wiped a hand across her nose.
“Get rid of her.” Her voice was petulant. Brattish.
“You’re trespassing,” repeated Conor, in a voice so loud it echoed
off the cliffs.
Muriel noticed the white powder crusted around his nostrils.
Drugs.
She had seen people take them on the telly, but never in real life.
 “I’ll report you to the police,” she said, gripping her stick, wanting
nothing more than to swing it into his exposed testicles like a golf
club.
Wouldn’t that be appropriate?
“We own the police,” replied Conor, the words tumbling from his
mouth at high velocity. He glanced at his naked companion. “Same
way I own her.”
“You do not,” giggled the girl.
“Put some clothes on, the pair of you,” said Muriel.
“It’s his beach, bitch,” said the girl.
Conor smacked his hand off the girl’s arse with a loud crack that
caused several gulls to squawk and take to the skies, then grabbed
her hair, pulling her head back and kissing her.
Muriel didn’t know where to look.
“You’re a monster,” she said.
He pushed the girl away and faced Muriel with a smirk. “You
jealous? You want to try? I hear old bitches with no teeth suck the
best dick.”
Muriel’s fist closed around her stick. “You’re a filthy piece of
work,” she said. “Just like your father.”
Conor’s brow wrinkled. “I’m tired of this. I came here to screw,
and you’re killing my vibe.” He shoved her. Not hard, but enough to
knock Muriel off balance. She fell. The wet sand was hard, and the
impact knocked the wind from her. She looked to the girl for help, but
she simply pointed and laughed.
“Oh shit, bitch went dooown,” she cackled, clapping her hands
together.
Conor looked at Muriel and grinned. “Don’t ever let me see you
here again,” he said, then pulled his girl close and started to walk
away.
 Muriel lashed out with her stick. She hadn’t meant to, but her
body acted almost reflexively. The blow caught Conor on the back of
his knee, and he stumbled.
The girl drew in an exaggerated gasp. “Oh my god, are you
gonna let her do that?” The implication was impossible to miss.
Conor towered over Muriel, his cheeks crimson with fury. Her
heart pounded, body vibrating with anger and terror as Conor bent
and snatched the stick from her hand.
“Wait, I know who you are,” he said, hopping from one foot to the
other, his penis bouncing with each step. “Yeah, I know all about
you. You’re the old lady that won’t sell. We offered you twenty times
the amount that trash heap of yours is worth.”
He whacked her thigh with the stick. Muriel cried out.
“Yeah, tell her!” laughed the girl. “Beat that bitch black and blue!”
Conor ignored her, focusing on Muriel’s attempts to get up. “Well
guess what? I’m gonna make sure you never get a penny. You’re
finished. You hear me, cunt? You’re fucking finished. You’re gonna
leave Witchaven in a fucking body bag.”
Muriel rolled over, trying to scramble away as Conor kicked her in
the ribs.
“Help,” she called out, but her voice was weak. What did it
matter? There was no one around to hear her. No one willing to help,
anyway. Conor twirled her stick gracelessly, then tossed it towards
the retreating ocean.
A high-pitched whine assailed Muriel’s ears, and by the time she
managed to open her eyes, Conor Grant and the girl were gone. She
wasn’t sure how long she had lain there, but when she sat up, the
tide was fully out and the sun had begun its inexorable descent
towards the horizon. Her stick lay a good twenty feet from her, and
she clawed at the sand to reach it. A sharp pain jabbed at her ribs
with each breath, her throat wheezing.
Eventually, her fingers closed over the wooden handle. She dug
the stick into the sand, using it for leverage as she painstakingly
raised herself up, her movements achingly slow. As she got to her
feet, grains of sand spilled from her hair and clothes.
Leaning on her stick, she pressed two fingers to her ribs. The
pain was electric. Broken? She wasn’t sure. What she did know was
that she bruised like a peach from bumping against a shelf these
days, so that kick was going to leave one hell of a mark.
Unable to help herself, she wept. Behind her lay the entrance to
Rory’s Cave, and some of the happiest memories of her life. It all
seemed so long ago. A different life.
A better life. A better time.
Wait for the tide to come in. Let it wash you away from this hell.
There was nothing for her here, not anymore.
Let the tide wash her away. Let it wash her far, far away, out to
sea with the fish and the whales and the creatures man had never
glimpsed. Let it wash her away from developments and golf courses
and money and lawyers.
Just let it wash her away.
 6

T M . T
distant white walls sparkled in the dying celestial glare, as bright as
Witchaven lighthouse had once been before it was decommissioned
and left to rot. A single trawler sailed quietly in the distance on a sea
that flared a brilliant gold.
As she so often did, Muriel spent the journey reflecting on
happier times. Picnics with Billy, stolen kisses in the back pew in
church, their wedding and subsequent honeymoon. They had been
poor — she still was, she supposed — so the honeymoon had been
eighty miles down the road to the scenic town of Auchenmullan. Now
even Auchenmullan was gone, a ghost town fading into obscurity in
the aftermath of tragedy. Was she all that remained, the last page of
the scrapbook, waiting to be filed away for future generations to
ignore?
She stopped to catch her breath, leaning on the one leg that
didn’t shriek in agony each time she rested her weight on it. The sea
was calm. It would have been a fine day for fishing had Billy still
been with her. Often, he would invite her out with him, telling her he
could use a helping hand on deck, but she had always refused,
owing to her deep fear of the sea. Oh, the irony of it all! Married to a
fisherman, living by the sea all her life… and yet the ocean terrified
her.
It was the great dichotomy of her existence. She adored the sea.
She respected and admired it, and could even wade out up to her
shoulders. But being out there on a vessel, floating helplessly on the
waves, with no idea what lay beneath? No, that was too much. The
thought sent a shiver down her spine, which exacerbated the pain in
her ribs. She winced and turned away from the water. She wasn’t far
from home now, where her painkillers and slippers and comfortable
chair waited. Should she call for a doctor? Ah, by the time he arrived,
she would doubtlessly feel better. No sense in the poor man wasting
a journey, not when the price of fuel was so high, or so the news
kept telling her.
The light of the setting sun across the waves dulled, and she
glanced to her right. The haar was rolling in again. Funny. That was
usually a morning phenomenon. But now, as nightfall neared, the fog
blanketed the ocean, moving with alarming speed. If she didn’t hurry,
it would close in around her.
“Just my luck,” she said, grimacing as pain erupted up her leg.
Hurrying was out of the question, but if she at least moved a little
faster, she—
The world turned a thick shade of slate grey, tiny beads of water
forming on her jacket as the haar surrounded her, obscuring her
vision. She waved her hands in front of her face to clear the mist, but
even the arms of her red rain-jacket were barely visible. Muriel knew
what to do. Keep calm and wait for it to disperse. She didn’t want to
get turned around and end up hobbling back to Rory’s Cave.
And it was as she stood there, in the strange colourless
netherworld of the haar, that she heard a voice.
…Muriel…
 “Who’s there?” she called out. Conor Grant, come to finish the
job? No, the accent wasn’t American. “Arthur? Is that you? I need
help. I’m hurt, and I can’t see.”
A chill settled over her. The sound of the waves had stopped. The
wind, too, dropped to a reedy whisper, and then… nothing. Unnatural
silence reigned. The only thing Muriel could hear was the shuffling of
her own feet in the sand, and the powerful thump of her beating
heart. The fog turned to moisture as it touched her, and she raised
her hood as water dribbled down the collar.
Ahead, something sparkled within the haar.
Muriel screwed up her eyes. Was it the same rainbow glow she
had seen bobbing in the ocean on her journey to the cave? She
believed so. The radiance moved in spirals, turning one way and
then the other, creating hazy patterns that danced in mid-air. It was
beautiful, a kaleidoscope of shimmering colours that seemed to draw
her onwards.
“What is that?” she whispered.
The lights played against the haar like a mirage. Yet, as she
neared, the glow grew fainter.
“Wait,” she called out, not wanting the luminous display to end.
Something about it warmed her soul. She reached out to touch the
colours, but, as quickly as it had arrived, the fog vanished, taking
with it the rippling lights. Muriel found herself alone, her cottage just
up over the dunes and along the coastal path.
…help me…
That voice again. She looked around, but the beach was
deserted.
“My mind’s playing tricks on me.”
And yet still she heard a rasping sound, a shallow wheezing
nestled amongst the faraway noises of the diggers and the workers.
She took a step forward and her shadow fell across something.
Muriel looked down at her feet, and that was when she saw it.
The creature.
“My goodness,” she said.
It was unlike anything she had ever seen, a strange, amorphous
blob that pulsated like a beating heart. At first, she could have sworn
the membranous skin was purple, but it quickly changed to the
deepest cerulean blue, then to a green as vibrant as the early leaves
of spring. Despite the protestations in her bones, she knelt to take a
closer look.
“What are you?”
The creature lay still, draped over the rocks like a wet blanket.
Muriel pointed one gnarled finger and went to prod the creature.
Its eye opened.
She gasped as the eyeball seemed to bubble to the surface, a
gelatinous, milky oval with a black pupil in the middle. It looked
towards her. She withdrew her hand, and a reedy tentacle formed
from the creature’s blob-like body. It lashed out and wrapped around
her finger. Muriel stared at the slimy goop attached to her, then at the
wide eye of the creature. The eye sank back into the jellied flesh until
only a sliver of white remained, but it would not let go.
Muriel’s entire arm was numb. No, numb wasn’t the word. She
felt something, though she wasn’t sure quite what. She closed her
eyes as waves of calming pleasure pulsed from her finger. Her heart
slowed, the rhythmic pounding gradually decreasing. A soft moan
escaped her lips as the pain in her ribs melted away. One moment it
was there, the next it wasn’t, like waking from a dream. The warm
sensation travelled further through her body, the dull ache in her leg
washed away by the curious pulses.
 All at once, the feeling stopped. She opened her eyes. The
creature had released her, the tentacle receding into the slime. It lay
still, the wondrous colours gone, rocks visible beneath the semi-
transparent body.
Muriel stroked a gentle finger across the creature’s smooth, cold
skin. One particularly sharp rock had pierced right through it.
…help me…
She shook her head. She was hearing things again. The creature
gazed up at her through its narrowed eye. It looked like it was dying.
“Wait there,” she said, and stood. There was no pain when she
did, no difficulty. She just stood straight up like she was twenty years
old again. She patted her ribs and felt nothing. She rubbed at her
leg, and still nothing. The pain was gone. She looked down at the
pathetic creature. It was trying to communicate, she was sure of it.
More colour bled from its form, leaving it looking like a deflated
beach ball sagging over the rocks.
“I’ll be right back,” said Muriel. She started for her cottage, then
remembered she had left her stick by the creature.
It took her a moment to realise she no longer needed it.
 7

S ,
would have taken her at least twenty. The whole way back, Muriel
marvelled at the queer beauty of the creature, and the extraordinary
way it had made her feel.
It had made the pain go away.
And not just the pain inflicted by Conor Grant. It had absolved her
of the small aches in her bones, the gentle throbs in her hands, pain
so frequent, so constant, that she had almost gotten used to it. The
absence of it transported her back to a time before the pain, when
her body had been young and strong.
Pushing open the gate, she grabbed the wheelbarrow she used
for transporting plants around the garden and hurried towards the
beach, the single wheel of the cart thudding across the rocks. She
hadn’t run in years, and the tingle of the wind against her face made
her smile. Hell, it made her laugh.
The creature was where she had left it. How best to lift the thing?
She should have brought a shovel, or a tray. She tried to grab the
edges, but it slid through her grasp like frogspawn. Laying the
wheelbarrow on its side, Muriel instead attempted to scoop the
creature up in her arms. The big eye opened lazily, watching as she
fussed over it. Using what appeared to be its last reserves of
strength, it oozed into the wheelbarrow, the colour draining fast, its
eye closing as the sun set and darkness prevailed.
“Come on, I’ll get you home,” said Muriel. She righted the
wheelbarrow and started to push. It was hard going, the wheel
sinking further into the sand with each step, so she turned the
barrow around and hauled it behind her instead.
By the time she arrived home, the sun had set and it was full
dark. Her porch light was on, thanks to the sensor her grandson had
installed a couple of years ago, and she followed the harsh glow.
The wheelbarrow trundled over the uneven track, the creature
slopping wetly from side to side. She reached her door and backed
into it, then wrestled the barrow up the step and down the hall to the
bathroom. There, she turned on the taps, both of them at full blast.
The pipes rattled as black muck spewed into the tub, eventually
giving way to cold water that gushed out as she inspected the
creature. Was it still alive? Had she been fast enough?
The bath slowly filled.
What if it needs saltwater?
What if? All she knew was that the thing in the wheelbarrow was
dying, and she had to try to save it. All of God’s creatures deserved
that much. Even Patrick Grant, she supposed grudgingly.
Something moved out of the corner of her eye.
The creature.
It was oozing up the side of the bath. Its slimy body dangled over
the lip of the tub, and then toppled in with a splash.
“How’s the water?” Muriel asked.
There was no answer. The thing floated peacefully. It sank to the
bottom, then rose up, its body folding and billowing in apparent
comfort. The eye opened again, opened wide. It looked longingly at
Muriel for several seconds, before closing.
She thought she heard words, words she couldn’t understand in
a voice she hadn’t heard for many, many years, but it was all too
muffled, too indistinct.
The clock in the hallway chimed eight times. How had a whole
day passed? A wave of exhaustion flooded over her. And was it her
imagination, or had the pain in her ribs returned? She opened the
mirrored cabinet and found a pack of Tramadol. Barely able to keep
her eyes open, Muriel stumbled out of the bathroom and into the
hallway, bumping off the walls like a pinball. In the kitchen, she
swallowed the painkiller with a glass of water, then sat in her chair
and waited for the room to stop spinning.
When it did, she picked up the phone and dialled Arthur’s
number. The line rang out, and only then did she remember he was
in jail.
Ah, she would try again later. She wanted to tell him about her
wondrous discovery. A new sea creature! Perhaps that would be
enough to halt the destruction of the bay? She was convinced it was
a new species. Billy had never mentioned anything like it, and he
had seen everything.
A new creature. What extraordinary luck!
She put the phone down and winced as the arm of the chair
pressed against her ribs. That odd little creature had made the pain
go away.
For a while.
Yes, but a brief respite was better than nothing.
She wandered sleepily into her bedroom, and as her head hit the
pillow, her eyes were already closing. She glanced briefly at the
doorway, where that beautiful rainbow glow played across the walls
like the northern lights.
I love you, she heard Billy say, and then she fell into a deep and
dreamless sleep.
 8

T , M
happily in the bath.
The water had dropped several inches — it must have been
thirsty — so she topped it up.
“How are you today?” she asked, dipping her hand into the water.
The creature sailed over to her, running its slick body through her
outstretched fingers. As it did, the familiar sensation flowed through
her. She felt both giddy and light-headed, a lingering sense of
euphoria like she had drunk one brandy too many.
“I feel better than I have in years,” she told the floating blob.
Outside, the sun was shining, the sky blue.
“You need a name,” she decided, smiling. She tried to think,
running through every pet name she had ever heard. Fido, Rover,
Grub… none of them worked. They were all too normal, and this
dear creature was anything but normal. She thought of her favourite
actors and singers. Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra…
nothing seemed to fit.
“Avalon,” she suddenly said, clapping her hands together in
delight. “How about that? After Frankie Avalon.” She grinned. “Oh, of
course, you won’t know who that is.” The creature lay motionless.
She knew he was listening to her. “Frankie Avalon was a singer back
in my day. He had such a lovely voice. I must have been in my
twenties when I first heard his song Venus on the wireless. My, I had
such a crush on him.” She leaned against the bath and let her hand
linger in the cool water, remembering going to the pictures to see
Frankie Avalon in his film Beach Party, sitting strumming a guitar,
surrounded by impossibly good-looking young women in bikinis. It
had felt like a different planet to her own life in Scotland.
The creature detached itself from the side of the tub and moved
silently towards her. It wrapped itself around her hand.
…Avalon…
“Yes, Avalon. Such a pretty name.”
At Avalon’s touch, the welcome serenity flowed through her once
more. Her body relaxed, Avalon coiling himself — yes, she was sure
it was a he — around her. Her arm tingled pleasantly. Long-forgotten
memories reared their heads, memories she had thought buried.
Glimpses of her childhood, as vivid and real as if they had occurred
yesterday. Visions of her parents, faces she hadn’t seen in almost
sixty years. Old friends who had drifted into obscurity came back to
her with remarkable clarity. Those first dates with Billy, the tentative
touching of hands. So many memories… too many. They threatened
to overwhelm her.
Muriel flinched at a sudden pinch in the pit of her elbow.
“Avalon,” she said in her most soothing tone. “That’s too tight.”
She looked at him, squeezing her arm, and felt the prick of
something sharp against her skin. “You’re hurting me!”
There was a knock at the front door.
Avalon released her. Muriel watched as blood trickled from a
small puncture wound on her arm. The droplets fell soundlessly into
the water, splintering on contact in an ever-widening pool of crimson.
 “Muriel, you home?”
Avalon drifted over. His body puckered, making delicate slurping
noises as he greedily lapped up the blood.
Another knock, more insistent this time.
“Muriel?”
It was Arthur’s voice.
Muriel withdrew her arm and cradled it. She held up a stern finger
at Avalon. “No,” she commanded. “Bad.”
Suitably chastened, Avalon slumped into the water.
“Muriel, you okay? I’m gonnae kick this door down if you dinnae
answer!”
“Arthur Eastman, you’ll do no such thing,” she shouted, clasping
her hand over the cut on her arm. She cast a final worried glance at
Avalon and headed for the front door.
It was locked. Funny, she didn’t remember doing that. But she
had been so tired, and so excited at her discovery, that she must
have done it subconsciously. Shaking her head, she undid the latch
and opened the door, where a grim-faced Arthur greeted her with a
nod.
“Muriel,” he said.
“Oh, Arthur! I was so worried about you.” She motioned for him to
enter, and led the way down the hall, pausing to make sure the
bathroom door was fully closed. Why? Didn’t she want to show
Arthur what she had found?
Soon. But not yet.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Spent the night in jail,” he said as he made his way into the
kitchen to boil the kettle. He leaned against the counter and lit a
cigarette.
 Muriel went to him and placed her hand on his arm. “I saw it on
the telly. I’m so sorry, Arthur.”
He turned away, rinsing a mug in the sink. “Ach, I know. The
police waited until the TV crew arrived before doing anything. The
whole bloody fiasco was a publicity stunt.”
“It’s not right.”
The kettle whistled, and Arthur poured two mugs of tea, handing
one to Muriel.
“Grant dropped the charges,” he said, as Muriel gratefully
accepted the steaming mug. He tried to smile, his eyes betraying
him. “I’m a free man again.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Aye, and bloody Grant comes off as a benevolent wanker while I
look like some old crank with a shotgun. It’s a smear campaign,
nothing more. Anything to turn the public against us.”
Muriel took a seat and sipped her tea. Cold blood trickled down
her arm.
“You cut yourself?” asked Arthur as he settled himself into Billy’s
chair and ran a tired hand through his thinning, silver hair.
Muriel looked down at her arm. “Oh, it’s nothing. Must’ve caught
myself.”
“Should put a plaster on that. Here, I’ll go get one.”
He rose, and Muriel leapt to her feet. “No!” she cried,
remembering the plasters were in the medicine cabinet in the
bathroom. “I’ll do it. You sit.”
Arthur chuckled. “You’re looking spry for an old bat.”
Muriel felt her cheeks colour. “I had a good sleep.”
“I’ll say. Reminds me of a poem,” he called after her as she
trotted down the hallway and opened the bathroom door. “Mary Rose
sat on a pin,” he said, his voice muffled by the stone walls. “Mary
Rose.” She heard him chuckle. “Get it? She sat on a pin, and she
rose!”
Muriel did get it. She had heard it dozens of times before, always
from Arthur, but this time she didn’t answer. Avalon was halfway out
of the bath, his body making a sucking noise as he climbed.
“Stay,” she hissed, waving an admonishing finger at him.
He sulked back into the water.
…hungry…
That voice again. She looked at the creature. “That was you,
wasn’t it?”
Avalon floated on the surface, saying nothing. He had spoken,
hadn’t he? Or was it all in her head?
Why can’t it be both?
“You’re hungry?” she asked.
“You say something?” shouted Arthur from the living room.
Muriel glanced at the bathroom door, listening for footsteps.
There were none.
“Just talking to myself,” she called back.
“That’s a sign of getting old.”
…hungry…
She looked at Avalon, then at the wound on her arm. It throbbed
gently.
“No,” she said. Then, more kindly, she whispered, “Soon.”
She located a plaster and applied it, her unusually nimble fingers
dextrously removing the sticky backing. Shooting Avalon a
surreptitious glance, she closed the bathroom door and walked back
into the living room.
“You sure you’re alright?” asked Arthur.
“Aye, why shouldn’t I be?”
Tell him about Avalon.
 She would. But Arthur wasn’t ready yet. And anyway, Avalon was
her friend, not his. He made her feel funny. He made her feel special.
“You look different,” said Arthur. “You’ve got a wee glow in your
cheeks.”
Muriel made a show of looking offended. “And how did I look
before? Like death warmed up?”
“Ah, c’mon now, that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m just teasing,” she said. Something splashed in the bathroom
and her heart skipped a beat.
“What’s that?” said Arthur. “Is someone here?” He grinned slyly.
“You got a wee fancy man you’ve not told me about?”
“It’s nothing,” Muriel answered too quickly. “It’s the pipes.”
She wanted to check on Avalon. Was he escaping out the
window? Or maybe sliding under the bathroom door?
“Listen, Arthur, I’m glad you’re okay, I really am. But I… I feel like
being alone today, if you don’t mind.”
Arthur nodded slowly. “Aye, alright. Just wanted to drop round
and let you know I was home. You need anything, gimme a call,
aye?”
“I will.” She gave him her warmest smile. “I promise.”
…hungry…
She ignored the voice. Arthur didn’t react.
He can’t hear it.
She stood and ushered Arthur out the front door, not even waiting
for him to finish his tea.
“Shall I—” started Arthur, but Muriel closed the door on him,
pulled the chain across, and rushed back into the bathroom. The
room swam in rainbow reflections, purples and blues and strange
new colours she couldn’t quite place.
“Oh Avalon, it’s wonderful,” she said.
 The colours twisted and rotated, so bright she believed she could
reach out and touch them. She tried, feeling a warmth envelop her,
golden sparkles cascading before her eyes.
“Muriel.”
Her stomach lurched. She spun, looking around. There was no
one there.
“Arthur?”
But she knew it wasn’t Arthur.
“Was that…” She took a deep breath. She understood that what
she was asking was absurd, but this voice wasn’t in her head. It had
echoed off the walls. It was here in the room with her.
“Was that you?” she asked the creature in the bath.
Avalon didn’t reply. He stared at her with his milky, unblinking
eye.
“Tell me if it was!” she snapped. “Tell me!”
The wind rattled the window panes, whistling through the gaps.
Muriel dropped to her knees and reached into the bath, groping for
Avalon, trying to grab him.
“Was that you? Answer me!”
A trickle of blood ran down her arm from under the plaster. It
made it as far as her wrist before dripping onto Avalon. The red dot
soaked into the creature’s form, flowing through hundreds of
branching veins. Avalon’s eye widened. Below it, the gooey body
seemed to tear apart into an almost human-like mouth. The rent
opened and closed, mouthing unheard words as Muriel’s blood
dripped steadily into the orifice.
“Is that what you want? My blood?”
She tore the plaster off and pinched her fingers over the wound.
Blood bubbled to the surface, running down the lines in her skin.
Avalon slurped up every drop.
 Muriel’s eyes blurred. She felt she was going mad. She pinched
harder, but nothing else came out.
Avalon drifted away from her.
“Speak!” she said. “I know it was you!”
She stood, her legs quivering beneath her, and staggered to the
mirrored cabinet. That voice… that achingly familiar voice. It had to
have come from Avalon. She needed to hear it again. More than
anything on Earth, she needed to hear it again.
Her fingers fumbled through the contents of the cabinet, sending
bottles of pills and tubes of ointment clattering into the sink until she
found what she was looking for.
That voice. It couldn’t be…
She lifted down a small plastic box, snapped it open with
trembling fingers, and snatched one of Billy’s old razorblades from
inside. The box fell to the linoleum as Muriel hovered over Avalon.
Tears streamed down her face as she clutched the blade.
“If that’s what you need,” she sobbed. “If my blood is what it takes
to hear him one last time…”
She pressed the razorblade against her sagging skin and closed
her eyes.
Something hooked onto her wrist.
She opened her eyes to find a scrawny limb had emerged from
Avalon. It coiled around her wrist, finding the razorblade between her
fingers and wrenching it out of her grasp. The blade shot from her
hand, hurtling through the air and embedding itself in the wall, where
it vibrated soundlessly.
Another vine-like limb emerged from Avalon, wrapping itself
around the back of Muriel’s neck, drawing her close until her face
was inches from him. He had no discernible smell. The limb pressed
against her temple, attaching itself with the gentle pressure of a
massage.
Avalon’s huge eye opened wide. He looked right at her, through
her, into her soul… and then the eye closed.
The mouth opened again, and Avalon uttered one word.
“Muriel.”
The familiarity of the voice jolted her. It felt like revisiting a
childhood home, but finding it unchanged and exactly as she
remembered in her dreams.
“Billy,” she said, as great sobs wracked her body, her shoulders
jerking convulsively. She gazed at the oily smear in the bathtub. It
gazed back at her.
“My God,” she said. “You’re home.”

Muriel sat by the bath for hours, perching on the cold ceramic toilet
lid until her bones shrieked for mercy, but Avalon remained quiet.
The colours that emanated from him had faded once more, his body
glistening under the lightbulb like frost on a winter morning.
At six o’clock, she wandered into the kitchen. She hadn’t eaten
since breakfast, yet no hunger pangs tormented her belly. Two slices
of buttered toast later, and she was ready for bed.
As she boiled the kettle for her hot water bottle, she wondered…
had it really been Billy’s voice? She knew it couldn’t be.
Billy McAuley had disappeared at sea twelve long years ago. He
had risen early and left the cottage without waking her, setting off on
the two-mile walk to the harbour beyond the cliffs. Her own alarm
clock had gone off at seven, and she distinctly remembered standing
by the kitchen window with a mug of hot tea, watching as Billy’s boat
sailed by on its familiar route before vanishing into the haar. Thirty-
six hours later, the boat was found adrift in the North Sea by a
passing vessel.
There was no one aboard.
Muriel finished her toast, ran the plate under the tap, and
checked on Avalon one last time. There was nothing to report. He
floated there, grey and lifeless, his eye closed. Water lapped gently
against the side of the tub. Outside, the machines continued to work,
wreaking their cold industrial violence on the land. Muriel pulled
aside the curtains and peered out. The bay was lit up like a
Christmas tree, red and yellow lights blinking and pulsing. A saw
buzzed at irregular intervals as the treads of the lorries churned up
the sand, carrying dead tree trunks to god knows where, a funeral
procession for nature itself with Muriel as the lone mourner.
She pulled the curtains shut and walked through to her bedroom.
A small mirror hung above the dresser. She wiped away the thin
layer of dust and looked closely at herself.
“You’re losing your mind, you old besom,” she said.
After a while, and once the tears had started to trickle down her
cheeks again, she climbed under the covers and wrapped them
around herself, placing the hot water bottle between her feet. Light
rain drummed on the roof and leaked into a large plastic bowl in the
hallway. It was going to be a long, cold night.
“Good night, Avalon,” she called.
There was no reply.
Muriel closed her eyes. At least she had heard Billy’s voice one
last time. Oh, what she would give to spend one more day with him!
One last perfect day, walking hand-in-hand across the dunes. A
gentle hug. A kiss.
She would do anything to hold him one more time.
Anything.
 9

O , A E
porch and looked at the stars. The moon was bright and full and
shimmering against the water. Arthur checked his watch and smiled.
“Thirty seconds,” he said, struggling to hear himself over the din
from the machines. They were louder than usual. He wondered if
they actually did any work overnight, or if it was simply a way to drive
the remaining residents of Witchaven out. Psychological warfare,
that’s what it boiled down to. No, that wasn’t right. Warfare implied a
battle between two opposing sides. This was a multi-billion American
corporation against one tiny Scottish village. It wasn’t warfare.
It was torture, plain and simple.
He checked his watch again.
“Five seconds.”
He waited, counting down in his head. Then, at the stroke of
midnight, the machines stopped. No drilling, sawing, digging… it all
stopped. Arthur knew he didn’t have long. It was the end of one shift
and the start of the next, and if he was lucky, he might get five
minutes. He stuffed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a match,
then stood in blessed silence, listening to the chirrup of insects and
the smooth sound of the tide against sand, the rain hammering
against the porch’s corrugated tin roof.
It was sheer bliss.
“The way it used to be,” he whispered. Before the men and their
damn infernal machines had arrived. Before the beating heart of
Witchaven had been torn from its chest and stamped underfoot. He
had lived here all his life, a Witchavener born and bred. It broke his
heart to see what was happening to it.
As he finished his smoke, the machines started up again. He
crushed the cigarette butt against the wall and slotted it into an
empty beer bottle that stood beside the door.
“Aye, it was good while it lasted.”
He went inside, locking the door behind him. He never used to
have to do that, but now you couldn’t be too careful. Lighting up
another smoke, he sat down in front of the telly. There was nothing
on. Nothing worth watching, anyway. A rerun of some old game
show he remembered from the eighties. At least it wasn’t the news. If
he had to see that grinning sociopath Patrick Grant one more time,
he would put his foot through the fucking screen.
Arthur sat and smoked and thought about Muriel. She had
seemed off today. Distracted, and also…
“Must have been the light,” he said.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that she looked younger. Oh,
not a lot, sure… but a few years. It had been in the way she acted.
There was a spring in her step.
The thought of her made him smile. He loved Muriel, and always
had. She was the only woman he had ever truly loved. His ex-wife —
the old boot with whom he had fathered a son — couldn’t hope to
compare. But Muriel had married his best friend Billy, and that was
that. No sense dwelling on lost time when he had so little of it left to
live.
Sometimes, on the dark and lonely nights, he wondered why he
still bothered. He was eighty-eight. What did he have to look forward
to? His life was behind him. He was a relic of a bygone age. They all
were. Now he faced a cruel and indifferent world where relics were
consigned to the rubbish bin rather than placed in museums. It was a
young person’s world, and he and Muriel and the rest of the
inhabitants of Witchaven only lived in it.
He was depressing himself, but like most men his age, he
enjoyed wallowing in depression every now and again. He switched
the TV off and sat in silence, lit only by the eerie glow of his
cigarette. It was nice to be home. One night in jail was more than
enough for him. It was Patrick Grant who deserved to be behind
bars, and Arthur resolved there and then to ensure that was
precisely where Grant ended up.
“I’ll give him one thing,” he said solemnly. “The bastard’s given
me a reason to live.” The cigarette burned itself down to his fingers,
and he flinched, dropping it onto his lap. He placed the butt into the
ashtray and brushed the remaining ash onto the floor. Muriel had
warned him about smoking while sitting in his chair. She said he was
going to fall asleep and burn the house down one day, and dammit if
the woman wasn’t usually right.
“Ach, time for bed, I ‘spose.”
He stood, ignoring the aches in his limbs, and listened.
Someone was coming up the path.
No, not just someone… several people. Footsteps crunched
softly under their feet. A peal of nervous laughter rang out, quickly
shushed by the rest of the group. Arthur knew it meant trouble. They
sounded young, and there were no young people left in Witchaven.
He sidled up to the window, pressing himself against the wall. The
lights were all off. They probably assumed he was asleep.
“Wee shitebags,” he breathed.
They were getting closer. Moonlight streamed in through the
window, forming a ghostly rectangle on the floor. A black shape
appeared in it, and Arthur knew someone was there, peering in.
“All quiet,” said a whispered voice.
Arthur’s heart pounded. Who was out there? It didn’t matter. All
he knew was he needed his shotgun. He crouched, moving along
the wall beneath the window, staying out of sight, and then it hit him.
The police had confiscated his shotgun.
More laughter outside. It didn’t sound like Grant’s men. The
security guards that patrolled the area were silent and professional,
whereas these men circled the building with clumsy steps.
“Quiet,” hissed one of them.
Arthur tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. He needed a
weapon to defend himself. What did he have in the house? A knife?
It was the best he could come up with. He shuffled through the living
room, his hip nudging a side table. It toppled, the lamp that rested on
it sliding off. He shot out his hands and caught the lamp, then took
the deepest breath of his life.
The steps halted outside his front door.
He focused on the door handle, and with dreadful inevitability, it
started to move. Down it went, slowly, slowly, but the door was,
thankfully, locked. Arthur scurried forwards, keeping low. He heard
liquid sloshing in large containers, and had a fair inkling of what
would be inside.
Gasoline.
It appeared Grant was no longer fucking around.
“It’s locked,” said one of the voices.
 “Disnae matter.”
Arthur listened as caps were unscrewed. The letterbox opened,
and a transparent tube poked its way through like an antenna. Liquid
poured out of it, splattering on the floor. Arthur could tell by the acrid
stench that he was right about the gasoline.
How many of them were out there? By the sounds of it, at least
three, maybe four. And they were young. What was he going to do,
chase them off with a kitchen knife, its blade dull from forty-odd
years of use?
Call the police.
Yes, that was it. He had wasted enough time already. If he
hurried, the police would be here in, oh… about an hour. Presuming
Grant hadn’t paid them off.
Shite!
The pungent liquid soaked into the carpet. Arthur glanced around
the darkened room. The whole place was a fire hazard. The furniture
had been there since at least the seventies, and was as flammable
as hell itself. He had no choice.
He had to stop them, or he was going to die.
“Aye, fuck that,” he whispered, heading for the kitchen drawer. He
quietly opened it and located the biggest knife he owned.
The gasoline kept pouring. He heard it glugging from the canister.
Arthur’s heart thudded furiously as he prepared to defend
himself. But he was a big man, and he was fit for his age. A lifetime
of working on a farm will do that to you.
He padded to the door in his slippers and slid the chain off. Then,
with great care, he turned the lock and violently wrenched the door
open.
Arthur hit the hallway light switch and bathed the men in an
orange glow.
 Men? Bollocks. It was a bunch of wee laddies! Three of them,
sixteen at most. “What the fuck?” shouted the one closest to him.
The gasoline canister dropped from his hands in surprise. It clattered
onto the step, spilling its contents over Arthur’s slippers.
“Who the fuck sent you wee bastards?” roared Arthur. He
brandished the knife, and the boy stepped away. His face was
riddled with teenage acne, hair slicked back like a seabird rescued
from an oil spill. Two more boys flanked him, all three dressed in
black tracky bottoms and matching hoodies. Arthur expected them to
run at the sight of the knife.
He was wrong.
The first lad kicked him hard in the shin. Arthur bellowed in shock
more than pain. In his day, children had been afraid of adults. Hadn’t
they? The second boy lunged for Arthur’s wrist, trapping it between
his arm and his chest, while the first boy kicked him again, right in
the same place. Arthur dropped to one knee as the second boy
pulled him off balance. He fell, and the boy dropped to a crouch,
placing Arthur’s outstretched arm over his knee.
“Fucking old wanker.”
“Get off!” said Arthur.
The third boy came out of the shadows. He looked at the knife in
Arthur’s hand, and at the way his arm was perched over his friend’s
knee. The boy smiled, then raised his foot and brought it down hard
on Arthur’s forearm.
He heard his arm break before he felt it. There was a brittle,
violent snap, and a soggy tearing sound as the splintered bone
ruptured through shredded skin. Shock set in almost immediately. He
looked at his arm dangling limply from the elbow, and at the bone
jutting out. Blood fountained from the wound, spraying in a wide arc.
He scurried backwards, propelling himself along the floor with his
feet, his stomach churning. He vomited down his sweater as he
looked up at the boys.
They were laughing at him.
Blood jetted from Arthur’s elbow, covering the walls. Dark
vignettes narrowed his vision. He tried to speak, but all that came out
was an incomprehensible stutter.
The boys followed him into the living room.
The phone. He had to get to the phone.
“Nice place you got here,” said one of the boys. He reached for a
shelf and tore it from the wall. Books and trinkets from Arthur’s time
at sea crashed to the ground. Another of the boys placed his foot
against the TV and nudged it from its stand. Sparks erupted from the
back of the set as it hit the floor.
“Fuck off,” Arthur managed to say. It only made them laugh
harder.
The third boy waved the knife. He was taller than the others,
older maybe, but still a teenager.
“You got any money, ya fuck?”
Money? Is that what this was about?
Arthur pointed his good arm towards a metal box on the fireplace
mantel. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“Take it,” he sobbed. “Take it all.”
The boy grabbed the tin and opened it. He pulled out a wad of
notes and stuffed them in his pocket, then hurled the empty
container at Arthur. It struck him on the forehead, gashing it open.
The room spun.
“That it?” said the taller boy.
Arthur thought he might pass out from the pain. Nodding, he
grabbed his arm, his fingers finding the cracked bone. The touch
sent shockwaves jolting through his body.
 “Tommy, get the petrol,” said the boy, and the smallest of the trio
jogged back to the door. He reappeared holding the canister. The
taller boy snatched it from him and turned, grinning, to Arthur.
“You got what you came for,” Arthur spluttered, his eyelids
closing.
“Nah, mate. That’s just a wee extra. Some cunt’s paying us a
shiteload of money for this.”
“Grant,” said Arthur.
“I dinnae ken,” said the boy. “Just some cunt.”
Then he walked to Arthur, standing over him, and tipped the
canister. The remaining gasoline poured out. It drenched Arthur,
stinging his eyes, his wounds. He howled in anguish like an
abandoned dog.
That’s all you’ve ever been, he thought, as the boy discarded the
empty canister.
“Please.” He looked in the boy’s general direction, unable to see
clearly. “Don’t do it.”
He heard a lighter spark, and flinched away. It happened again.
And again.
“Fucking lighter,” someone said.
“Come on,” said another. “Light him up!”
“It’s fucking broken, ya knobber.”
Arthur’s body convulsed as the lighter sparked once more.
“I cannae get a flame!” said the boy.
“Hurry up!”
Arthur looked at them through blurry eyes that swam black with
gasoline. He saw the eldest, knife in hand, looking at the other boy’s
attempts to work the lighter.
This is it. Last chance.
 Arthur sat up, his desperate fingers reaching for the knife. They
closed over the blade. The edge sliced into his skin, but Arthur was
in too much pain to notice. He ripped the knife from the boy’s hand.
The lighter sparked one last time.
“Got it!” shouted the first boy.
A glimmer of orange light.
Arthur drew the knife back.
A sudden whoosh as he went up like a bonfire.
The boys leapt backwards. It was the last thing Arthur saw before
the flames licked higher and covered his face. He felt his skin
bubble, heard it pop, yet the pain he expected never came. The
stench of burning clothes and hair and flesh mingled in his nostrils,
his whole body engulfed in a raging inferno.
He screamed as crazed panic set in.
Water, he needed water! He lived by the shore, for Christ’s sake.
Somehow, he rose to his feet.
“Check this cunt out,” one of the boys laughed, and that was
enough to make Arthur change his mind.
To hell with the water. He wanted to ruin that boy. He wanted to
destroy him.
Arthur turned in the direction of the voice and threw himself
towards it. The knife was still in his hand. He felt it plunge into
something. The boy? The sofa?
Arthur would never find out. By this point, he could hear nothing,
see nothing, smell nothing…
He could feel nothing.
As he brought the knife down into soft tissue, he found his last
moments were surprisingly painless.
 10

M
the cries woke her. She sat up, adjusting her pillow and groping for
the lamp by her bed. It lit up the small bedroom, the piercing glow
hurting her eyes.
“Avalon?”
Next door, water lapped at the sides of the bath, but no one
called out. All was quiet.
“Just a dream,” she said, and then she heard it again.
“Help!”
It came from outside.
She climbed groggily out of bed and found her slippers. The clock
told her it was after midnight. Who was out so late?
“Please!” shrieked a wretched voice, tinged with the kind of
hopeless despair Muriel hadn’t heard since the Charlotte Dane
wreck of sixty-six, when she had pulled a man from the sea and
dragged him up the beach, leaving a trail of his intestines in a long
line across the sand.
“I’m coming,” she shouted, though she doubted the person could
hear her. She stumbled into the hallway and threw on her winter
jacket, kicking off her slippers and stepping into her green wellies.
After one last peek in the bathroom at Avalon — he was floating
soundlessly — she made her way outside.
The night air was bitingly cold against her skin. She looked
around for the source of the voice.
“Who’s there?” she called.
No answer. Had she been dreaming? Was Avalon playing tricks
on her? She gazed into the night, looking for movement. There was
nothing, no motion, save the lone willow tree that wept in the breeze.
She trudged round to the back of the cottage, zipping her jacket up
to her chin and wishing she had worn her woolly hat.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?”
The lights further inland were as bright as ever, blazing with
unnatural intensity.
Muriel screwed up her eyes. The light flickered as she squinted
through the blackness. Something was on fire. A building, far along
the track.
“Arthur,” she breathed.
It was his cottage. It had to be. It was the only building nearby
that still stood. She started to walk, then broke into a faltering jog.
There was movement in the long grass beside her, but she never
noticed, forgetting all about the plaintive cries that had woken her.
Arthur’s cottage was on fire.
She had to hurry.
The wind changed direction, carrying with it the smell of burning
timber. A light rain fell, but not enough to douse the flames that
reached higher and higher. The blaze lit the surrounding area. Surely
someone had seen it? The workers, the men operating the
machinery… it was impossible to miss! A dark thought crept into her
subconscious.
 Maybe they had chosen not to call the fire brigade. After all, it
was in The Grant Organisation’s interests.
What if it had been deliberate?
She arrived at the cottage faster than expected. From Muriel’s
vantage point, the flames seemed to touch the moon. She reached
the gate and pushed it open, but the immense heat forced her back.
The roof had already collapsed, the wooden support beams burning
black, golden embers spitting into the air like shooting stars.
She stood watching, helpless, and an hour later, when the lights
of the fire engine crested the dune, Muriel was still there, weeping for
her friend. She collapsed backwards onto the wet grass as the men
dismounted the truck and grabbed the hose.
They knew as well as she did that it was all too late.
 11

T B ,
pressed to his abdomen, warm blood pumping between his splayed
fingers.
“Help,” he said again, but the old woman had run off in the
direction of the fire.
His friends had left him.
They had just fucking left him there after the old bastard had
stabbed him. Maybe they hadn’t realised? None of them knew
murder was on the cards. They had been paid to burn the place
down, but Dean had told them it was deserted. Did he trust Dean?
No, not really. No one did. He guessed Dean had known all along,
but hadn’t told him or Nicky in case they wimped out. It was
supposed to be an insurance scam, whatever that meant. This
cottage tonight, and another one further along the coast a week later.
They were getting a hefty sum for their troubles, a thousand pounds
each, half in advance.
Now Tommy wondered if he would ever get to spend the money.
He was bleeding heavily, and needed help. Through half-closed
eyes, he stumbled towards the old lady’s cottage. Was this the one
they were going to target next week?
 Fuck, he thought. He must be heading the wrong way. The rain
made it hard to see, not to mention the horrible sensation of his
lifeblood evacuating his body at a steady rate.
He fell again, landing in the mud, and lifted his hoody and tee
shirt, appraising the two gashes in his stomach. Blood squirted from
them and he almost threw up. He had never been stabbed before.
Somehow, it was more painful than expected. His knees were weak,
but the cottage was so close. One of the windows — it must have
been the bathroom, as the glass was frosted — glowed in a rainbow
hue like a lava lamp. It reminded Tommy of the old nightlight in his
baby brother’s room, a spinning carousel that splashed the image of
a train across the bedroom walls.
He reached the white stone cottage and leaned breathlessly
against it, leaving a bloody handprint that dripped down the exterior.
Panting, he slid around the wall until he arrived at the front door. It
was ajar. The old woman had left in a hurry.
Tommy staggered inside. The house was silent, the lights off.
“Anyone home?” he said. “I need help.”
No reply. Machines clanked and thudded outside, and he
wondered briefly how anyone could sleep through the noise. He
lurched into the living room, his bloody hand reaching for the light
switch. The bulb clicked on. The room was ancient, the floral
wallpaper reminding Tommy of his grandma’s flat.
He looked around, catching a glimpse of himself in a small mirror
over the mantel. He was pale. Deathly pale. Even his lips were
drained of colour. He spotted a kitchen and started towards it.
“Fuck,” he moaned. What to do? He had to clean himself up, stop
the bleeding, and get out of here. Someone would call the fire
brigade, and then the police would show up. He had to be gone
before they arrived. His dad would fucking kill him if he got in trouble
with the police again. And Dean? Well, if he grassed on Dean, his
life wouldn’t be worth living.
He turned on the taps above the kitchen sink. Black sludge
dribbled out, pattering against the metal. Fucking useless. He tore off
a handful of kitchen roll and pressed it against his wounds. It hurt like
hell, and he bit down hard in agony, though the fact he was still up
and walking suggested the injuries weren’t as bad as they felt.
Clear water trickled from the tap now, and he bent and stuck his
face under it, tasting the cool liquid on his parched tongue. The
kitchen roll was already soaked with blood, so he tossed it in the
sink, grabbed some more, and staggered out of the kitchen. There
was a telephone on the living room table, one of those corded ones
old people still used. He knew he should call an ambulance, but he
couldn’t take the risk. Doctors asked too many questions.
It was okay. He would stem the flow of blood, then sneak back
out. His dad was out drinking with his mates tonight, and his mum
had taken the baby and left them last month, so there would be no
one home to miss him anyway. He sat on the settee, swinging his
feet up and lying across it, clutching the tissue to his belly. His blood
was all over the floor, but there was nothing he could do about that.
He checked the tissue again. There was still some white visible,
so maybe the bleeding was slowing?
Down the hall, something wet and heavy slapped onto the floor.
“That you, missus?” said Tommy. His throat was dry, and the
taste of coppery blood lingered. “I need help. You know first aid?”
Silence.
“Missus?”
He heard the metallic creak of a door handle, then a hard click. A
door wailed open on rusted hinges.
 “That you?” Beads of sweat trickled down Tommy’s forehead. He
heard something, a strange sound, a soft squelching like when his
shoes were soaked from the rain. There was a presence in the room
with him.
“Missus?”
Still no reply. It had to be the old lady. Was she deaf? Or had she
figured out what he had done and was trying to surprise him?
Fuck it. He might have been stabbed, but he could still beat the
shit out of some old cunt. He’d kill her if he had to. Dean would
appreciate that.
Something was coming towards him. It was in the room, close to
him, but he couldn’t see it. He heard it, though, slithering soggily
along the floor.
“I know you’re there,” he cried.
A voice spoke in his head. It was an unfamiliar language, yet
somehow, inexplicably, he knew what it was saying.
…hungry…
“Fuck off!”
He stood, letting the bloody kitchen roll fall to his feet, and
readied his fists, hunching over slightly to lessen the pain.
The thing was close. Why couldn’t he see it?
“I’ll fucking hurt you,” he said, taking a step forward, his
adrenaline kicking in.
His foot landed in something sticky.
“What’s that?” he said in a thin, panicked voice. He looked down
at the glowing puddle by his feet, and then it shot up, attaching itself
to his legs, climbing higher.
It burned.
The thin nylon material of his joggers withered away, revealing
raw, glistening musculature beneath the squirming jelly-like
substance. He beat at his legs, at the goop that seemed to peel
away layers of skin with each passing second, but his hand stuck
fast. It was pulled into the slime, and he felt it dissolve. Not just the
flesh this time, but the bones too. They crumbled in his melting skin
like a rubber glove filled with breadcrumbs.
The goo kept climbing, sliding up his thighs.
Tommy screamed and screamed and screamed. He remembered
the lighter in his pocket. The thing was almost there, so he shoved
his remaining hand in and pulled it out. It lit first time, but when the
enormous white eye opened and stared right at him, Tommy dropped
the lighter in terror. He screamed again, and then his voice
abandoned him as cold slime squirmed up his arsehole. He clenched
his cheeks and reached his hand into the back of his trousers,
grabbing the membranous cord with a tight fist and yanking hard on
it. It was attached to something. Something inside him. He tugged
harder, feeling the pressure on his guts, until — with one final,
Herculean pull — his bowels tore wide open, releasing a flood of
warm shit that spurted from between his clenched cheeks.
As Tommy’s internal organs started to liquify, he emitted a thin,
high-pitched whine. Through the translucent skin of the creature, he
could see his penis crumbling to pieces and drifting through the
murky body of the thing that clung to him, destroying him, killing him.
“My cock!” he shouted. “My fucking cock!”
As last words went, they may not have been profound, but they
were certainly appropriate.
 12

T ,
a single car with two officers inside.
One of the firefighters had given Muriel an umbrella, and she
sheltered beneath it as she waited. She knew the police would want
to talk to her, and that was fine, because she wanted to talk to them.
Her shock was fading, replaced by righteous, incandescent rage.
Arthur’s house smouldered as the firefighters doused it with
water. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the burning, skeletal frame.
So many memories, gone in a puff of smoke.
The officers — one man and one woman — spoke with the chief
firefighter first. He pointed at Muriel, and they looked at her with
interest. The officers thanked the man and walked towards her, rain
thrumming off their hats.
“Mrs McAuley?” said the female officer.
“That’s right,” said Muriel, trying to compose herself. “Muriel
Margaret McAuley.” She spoke her name proudly, the way she
always did.
“I see,” said the male officer. “And where do you li—”
“It was arson.”
The policeman looked quizzically at her. “Uh huh.”
 He didn’t sound convinced, and Muriel knew she faced an uphill
battle.
“Patrick Grant has been trying to intimidate us for the last year.
He’s clearly sent someone round to burn Arthur’s cottage down.
That’s Arthur Eastman — E-A-S-T-M-A-N — who lived there. I knew
Grant would do anything to get rid of us, but I never honestly
believed he’d stoop to murder.”
The officers shared a glance that suggested they thought she
was insane. No matter. She was wearing comfortable wellies, and if
she had to, she would stand out here all night until she convinced
them.
“That’s a, uh, very serious accusation,” said the officer, his
moustache twitching as he spoke. “I take it you have evidence to
back it up?” His colleague smirked, doing a poor job of hiding it.
“Well, no, not yet, but it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain.
That is a requirement to be part of the police, isn’t it?”
“There’s no need to be rude, Miss McAuley.”
“It’s Mrs.”
“Indeed.”
She took a deep breath. She was cold and tired, but she wouldn’t
be bullied by these dunderheids. “Grant’s been harassing us since
the start of the development. It was only a matter of time before
he…” She paused. “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”
“Possibly,” he shrugged. “But…”
Muriel clenched her fists, the anger building within her. “But
what?”
He started to reply, but his partner interrupted. “We know who
you are, madam.”
Muriel bristled. “And who am I?”
 The officer flashed her a tired smile. “You’re one of the
troublemakers.”
“You’re holding up the development,” said the male officer. “Mr
Grant is bringing a lot of money to this place. He’s a businessman. A
billionaire. He doesn’t go around lighting fires. He’s not a crook.”
“A crook is exactly what he is.” Muriel shook her head. “But he’s
paying you, isn’t he?”
“Mrs McAuley, please. I wouldn’t go throwing any more
accusations around.”
“It could get you in serious trouble,” said the female officer.
“Like I said,” continued her partner, “Mr Grant is bringing in a
considerable amount of money. He’s creating jobs, and doing a lot of
good for the community.”
Muriel stared at them in disbelief. “You’re the police! You’re
supposed to protect and serve the public, not the interests of shifty
wee bastards like Patrick Grant!” She spat his name out like
venomous poison.
“We’re just doing our job.”
“Aye, that’s what they all say. I’m just doing my job.” She snorted
out a pained laugh. “If you were doing your job, then a man would
still be alive. A good man. Twice the man you are, officer.”
“I’ll ask again,” he said. “Do you have any evidence to support
your claim? Any witnesses?”
“I have God as my witness.”
“And is he available to give a statement?”
Muriel stared at him. She was too angry to cry. “You’re rotten,”
she said. “Both of you. Just like that Grant, you’re rotten to the core.
Well, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
The female officer raised an eyebrow. “Are you threatening us,
Mrs McAuley?”
 Muriel sighed, the fight draining from her. She suddenly wanted
nothing more than to be alone. To think of Arthur, to grieve for him. It
was too much. It was all too much. She needed to get home to
Avalon. Maybe he could calm her again, the way he had before? He
could make the pain go away, even if only for a little while.
“I’m not threatening anyone,” she said. “It’s late, and my friend is
dead.” She choked on the last word, her eyes blurring. “I’m going
home. If you need me, I’m sure you know where to find me.”
She started to turn, and the male officer put his hand on her
shoulder.
“It’s nothing personal, Mrs McAuley. You know that, don’t you?”
“Just take the money,” said his partner. “It’ll be easier on
everyone.”
She stared at them.
“Aye, maybe I will,” she lied. “Maybe I will.”
She turned away. The officer said something else, but the words
were lost, lost forever like a single raindrop falling into the ocean.

As she left the scene, Muriel spotted a TV van arriving. She

wondered if it was the same journalists who had filmed Arthur’s
arrest.
Those ghouls.
How could they do that to an old man? He had a family. He had
friends. He had a life, and now he was gone.
Muriel was no stranger to death. At her age, she had watched
many of her loved ones pass away. Losing friends to illness and age
was part of getting old, and though she grew to accept it, it never got
any easier. Arthur, however, was the first person she knew who had
been murdered.
You don’t know that.
Ah, but she did.
When she arrived home, her sensor light popped on. What time
was it? She had no idea. It was pitch black, the middle of the night.
The light illuminated the path and the remains of the chicken coop.
She realised she would have to fix the fence herself. Arthur was
going to do it, but… not any more.
“What’s that?” she whispered.
There was a mark on the wall. A handprint. She walked towards it
and pressed a fingertip to the stain. It came away wet with blood.
Her heart rate increased. What if the people who had killed Arthur
had come for her? Were they waiting inside?
Then why would they leave a bloody print outside?
“A warning,” she said grimly. They knew she couldn’t go to the
police about it. The police were as useful as a smack in the chops,
and twice as unpleasant.
The front door was wide open. Had she forgotten to close it? She
wracked her brain, trying to think. In her haste, she may have done.
She looked down and saw a trail of blood leading inside.
“Arthur?”
Could it be? Could it really be? Had he escaped the inferno and
made his way to her cottage? Excitement and fear mingled in her
mind. She crossed the threshold, stepping out of the rain and letting
the umbrella fall to the hallway floor.
“Arthur, is that you?”
The living room light was on. It had been off when she left the
cottage. Someone was here. She quickened her pace, water
dripping from the sleeves of her coat, and entered the room.
 There, she froze.
“My God,” she said. Her knees buckled, and she gripped the
doorframe as she slid down it. “My God.”
The living room was a slaughterhouse.
Blood soaked the settee, the carpet. The walls, too, were sprayed
with the stuff. Something dripped onto Muriel’s head, and she looked
up at the ceiling. More blood. It was everywhere. The room reeked of
death. It was as if someone — or something — had just… exploded.
She tried to get to her feet, but she was powerless. She stared at
the ceiling, at the constant drip, drip of blood. It was on the
lampshade, on the table, on Billy’s chair, on—
Her heart stopped, nails digging into the doorframe hard enough
to scratch the paint. Billy’s old chair was turned towards the window.
There was someone in it.
She could make out a hand on the arm rest, two feet firmly
planted on the carpet. The figure stood. He was naked, outlined in
icy blue by the moonlight that flooded in through the blood-smeared
window pane.
He looked at her.
“Hello, Muriel,” said Billy.
 13

S ’ . I ’ . B ,
and had been for over a decade. Though his body had never been
found, the coastguard had carried out a thorough search, and the
police had combed the beaches to no avail. He had simply vanished
into the icy depths of the North Sea and never returned. They had
even held a memorial service for him, because Billy McAuley was
dead and gone. And yet…
There he was.
“No,” she managed to say. Breathing was difficult, as if she had
forgotten how.
“Muriel.” He came towards her with slow, lumbering steps, blood
smeared across his face, his chest. It dripped from his fingers.
“It’s not you,” said Muriel. “It can’t be you.”
She wanted to run, to flee from this monstrosity. She rubbed at
her damp eyes. A hallucination, it had to be. The stress from Arthur’s
death, from the last few years… it was catching up with her. She
closed her eyes and counted to ten.
One, two, three…
The bare feet squelched through the blood.
Four, five, six…
 She heard his breath, felt it on her skin.
Seven, eight—
He touched her face.
“Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone.”
His fingertips caressed her cheek. It was a delicate touch. A
lover’s touch. She opened her wet eyes and looked into the face of
her dead husband.
“Have I gone mad?” she whispered, her heart beating erratically.
Billy shook his head. A look of concentration crossed his face.
“No,” he mumbled, his lips struggling to form the word. He tried
again, more successfully this time. “No.” He put his palm against her
temple and let it rest there.
A curious bliss descended over Muriel, pulsing in waves from
Billy’s hand. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, coloured lights
dancing deep within the white orbs.
“Avalon,” she said, as the euphoria took hold. It flooded her
veins, numbing her nerves. She felt weightless, serene, and allowed
Billy to walk her to the settee and lay her down. There, he crouched
by her side, gazing intently at her.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” she said. “Avalon.”
He nodded. “I am the one you call… Avalon.” He spoke
falteringly, like each new word was an effort.
Muriel knew she shouldn’t feel so relaxed. What she was
witnessing, what she was hearing, was impossible.
You’ve finally gone doolally.
“Avalon,” she said, ignoring the voice in her head. “What have
you done?”
“I made the pain go away.”
She stared at him for a long time. Then, she reached her hand
out and touched his arm. It was cold and damp.
 “How?” she said.
Avalon tilted his head as if trying to understand. As he did, Muriel
studied his face for imperfections, for a flaw in the illusion. She found
none. It was Billy, perfectly recreated. Well, not quite. He was
considerably younger than when he had died. His hair was no longer
white. Instead, it was dark, and streaked with grey. The lines around
his eyes were less pronounced, his chin firmer, stronger.
“You look exactly like him.”
“I found him in your memories,” he said. “So many memories.
You kept him alive in there. You never forgot.”
“And I never will,” she said, breaking down.
“What’s wrong?”
She couldn’t look at him. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” He
touched her hand, and she withdrew it. “I’m lying on my settee with
my husband who’s been dead for twelve years, and who is actually a
sea monster, and you have the bloody gall to ask me what’s wrong?”
He looked at her blankly. “I prefer the term sea creature.”
Stunned, Muriel just lay there.
“Creature, not monster,” continued Avalon. “Monster implies…
evil. I’m not evil.”
“Then whose blood is that all over my living room?”
“Tommy Christopher Boden,” he said matter-of-factly. “He came
here while you were out.”
Muriel sighed. “And who in God’s name is Tommy Boden?”
“He killed your friend, and then I consumed him. He gave me the
strength I needed…” he gestured at his body, “…for this.”
“I’m losing it,” said Muriel. “I’m losing my mind.”
She sat up, her head swimming, and pushed past Avalon,
heading for the kitchen cupboard. There, at the back, was a bottle of
whisky. She always kept one for those nights when Arthur was
feeling melancholy and would pop round to reminisce and play some
gin rummy. With a trembling hand, she tipped the bottle and filled a
glass. Remembering her manners, she said, “Would you like a
drink?”
“Yes,” came the response. Avalon was standing right next to her.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.
“I’m very quiet.”
“Well, that’s not like my Billy at all. He was a noisy bugger.” She
thought of him gallumphing around the house in his work-boots, and
started to laugh. Avalon watched her. His mouth opened, emitting a
curious sound. It reminded her of a video her grandson had shown
her once of a goat screaming. It made Muriel laugh harder. Avalon
tried again, and this time the laughter was perfect. It was exactly as
Muriel remembered. Somehow, it was exactly as she remembered.
She touched his face, ran her fingers down his stubbled cheek,
and she was sure it was him, her Billy, and not some imposter.
“I missed you so much,” she said, her laughter turning to tears.
She buried her face in his shoulder.
“I missed you too,” he said.
Is that Billy or Avalon talking?
But in that one moment of perfect happiness, Muriel didn’t care.
What difference did it make? Billy was here.
He was home.
 14

S B ’ , M
handed most of his old clothes in to a charity shop. Of course, some
of the more tattered garments she had thrown out. It had been a
painful day for her, and there were some items with great
sentimental value that she had refused to part with.
She stood by the bedroom cupboard and lifted out a green bag,
then laid it on the bed and unzipped it. Inside was Billy’s suit. He had
worn it at their wedding, and again at a couple of funerals. A life at
sea had kept him trim, and he had never outgrown it. She unpacked
the trousers and suit jacket, then found a crumpled white shirt at the
back of the cupboard. She wanted to iron it, but she couldn’t leave
Billy standing around in the scud.
Avalon, she reminded herself. Not Billy.
She picked out some thick woollen socks and his one pair of
smart shoes. They needed a polish, but again, she didn’t want to
keep him waiting.
She found him sitting in his chair, gazing out the window.
“I left some clothes out for you.”
He turned to her. Every time she saw his face, she felt her heart
might burst. Could she ever get used to seeing him again?
 Yes, she believed she could.
He stood. “Thank you.”
“And try not to trail all that blood through the house.”
“I won’t,” he said, sidestepping the puddle.
“The bedroom is the first door—”
“On the left,” he finished. “I know.”
She smiled. It was funny how quickly she accepted it. She put it
down to her age. Muriel had seen a lot of weird and unexplained
events throughout her life. Witchaven and the surrounding areas had
always been like that. There was just something in the air. From the
mundane — drops in temperature and doors opening by themselves
— to the inexplicable, like the bizarre fate that befell nearby
Auchenmullan.
Muriel shivered at the thought. There was more to this world than
people knew. A lot more.
While Avalon dressed, Muriel busied herself by fetching her mop
and bucket and soaking up the worst of the blood. There wasn’t
much she could do about the celling and the walls. Not right now,
anyway. She glanced at the mantel clock. It was almost four in the
morning. She hadn’t been up this late since… well, since the
nineteen-sixties, probably.
She scrubbed at the floor, but the blood had stained. For now,
she would have to cover it with a rug. No matter. She wasn’t
expecting visitors any time soon.
Tommy Boden.
That was who she was mopping up.
Arthur’s killer.
It was justice. Oh, she knew it was wrong to think that. Avalon
had killed him. He had eaten him. But was the life of a murderer a
fair exchange for the life of a good man who was taken before his
time?
“Aye,” she said, simultaneously surprised and appalled at herself.
“It’s a fair trade.”
Avalon was taking too long. She abandoned her cleaning and
walked to the bedroom, peeking her head around the door. “You
alright in there?”
He was sitting on the bed, fully dressed, but leaning forwards and
looking at his feet. His shoes were on, but the laces were untied. He
glanced up at her.
“I don’t know what to do with these,” he said.
“Your laces?”
He nodded. “They don’t work.”
“Here, let me.”
She went to him, crouching by his feet and tying his laces.
“I found nothing in there,” he said, pointing at her head, “About
these.”
She smiled. “Aye, well, watching my husband tie his shoelaces
wasn’t exactly the highlight of my day.”
He stared around the room. “Nothing has changed. It looks the
same as it always has. The whole cottage does.”
“Well, it’s not usually covered in blood,” grumbled Muriel. “Now,
pay attention. If you don’t watch me tie your laces, you’ll never learn
to do it yourself.”
A thought struck her. Towards the end, Billy had shown signs of
early onset dementia. Not enough to get it checked out, but enough
to worry her. Now, teaching her husband how to tie his shoes, she
wondered if this is what life would have been like had he not… left
for a while.
He died.
 “Maybe he didn’t,” she said.
Avalon looked at her curiously.
She smiled and patted his knee. In his suit, the illusion was
complete. He didn’t just resemble Billy. He was Billy.
“How do I look?” he said.
She swallowed hard. “Wonderful. Just wonderful.”
He leaned forwards, and she thought he was going to kiss her.
But no, he placed his hands on his knees and stood. She wondered
what she would have done had he tried.
“Come,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I want to try out my
new body. Let’s go for a walk.”

The waves crashed against the rocks. The wind had picked up, and
white froth bubbled in the dark sea. They left the cottage and walked
down the garden path together, then over the marram grass towards
the beach. Neither of them spoke, not until Avalon paused on the
sand and stared out across the ocean.
“That’s my home,” he said. “Out there.”
“It always was.”
He looked as if he was about to correct her, then turned back to
the sea. The wind ruffled his hair. Muriel couldn’t keep her eyes off
him. Her body tingled from Avalon’s soothing touch, her mind aflutter.
“You regard me strangely,” Avalon said without tearing his gaze
from the water.
“It’s hard to accept. You’ve been… he’s been gone for so long.”
Avalon’s shoulders jerked in an imitation of a shrug. “You always
hoped he’d come home. You never accepted his death.”
“I made peace with it.”
 “No, you didn’t.”
Muriel thought about disagreeing, but it was fruitless. He could
see inside her mind. She had no secrets from him.
“Death is hard to understand,” said Avalon. “Especially for
humans. You lead such short lives. What, if I may ask, is the current
life expectancy?”
“I… I don’t know. About eighty, I think.”
Avalon gazed at his hand with interest, clenching and
unclenching his fingers. “It’s risen considerably. I’m surprised.” He
lowered his hand and went back to looking at the water.
“How old are you?” asked Muriel.
“Age has no meaning for me. I didn’t even believe I could die, not
until that day on the beach. You saved my life. Why did you do that?”
“You needed help,” she said. “What was I supposed to do? Walk
away?”
“Most would have. But not you, Muriel McAuley. Now I must
return the favour.”
“You already have.” She put her arm around him, and he
responded in kind.
“What are you?” asked Muriel.
“I’m Billy.”
“Yes, but… before that.”
“I was Avalon.”
She sighed. Typical Billy, being obtuse. She rephrased the
question. “When I found you on the beach… what were you?”
He said nothing for so long, Muriel thought he would never reply.
Then, he said, “I don’t know. I just am, and always have been.”
“Are there more of you?”
“I believe so.”
“You don’t know?”
 He was silent for an uncomfortable length of time. “There was
another, once.”
“A…” she searched for the right word. “A girlfriend?”
“We don’t have what you refer to as gender.”
She nodded. “But were you in love?”
Another long silence. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t remember. It was so very long ago. But I do recall feeling
what you would describe as love.”
“Aren’t you lonely?”
“Lonely?” he said, as if tasting the word. “Yes. Yes I am.” For the
first time, he smiled. “Lonely. Such a sad word.”
“Aye. That it is.” She leaned against him. She had so many
questions, but she didn’t want to be a nuisance. Still, one more
couldn’t hurt, and it was something she had always wished to know.
“What’s it like out there?”
“What do you mean?”
“In the sea. Underwater.” She smiled. “I’ve never been further out
to sea than my neck.” She glanced at him. “I’m terrified of it.”
“You’re scared of water?”
“Well, not water, silly. The ocean. Married to a fisherman, and I
never once set foot on his boat. I’ve always wondered what it’s like.
Billy loved it. He would come home and tell me about all the
wonderful things he saw. I used to think it was just because he didn’t
like other people, but I think there was something about the open
sea that had an effect on him. Like that was the only place on Earth
he truly belonged.”
“It’s different. So very different.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“No more so than on land.”
 “So you’ve been here before?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. “Before, yes. Many times. I was here before the age
of man. With my… friend. Things were different then. It was more
peaceful. And the air smelled better. But some things never change.”
He pointed to the sun, which was beginning to rise over the horizon.
“Like that. It’s as beautiful now as it was then.”
“I used to watch Billy’s boat leave the harbour and sail beneath
that sunrise every morning. Each day, I’d kiss his cheek and wave
goodbye and watch his boat until I couldn’t see it anymore. And then,
on the day he died, he got up early and didn’t wake me. Left me a
note saying I deserved a lie in.” She clutched him tighter. “I never
saw him again. It’s my deepest regret.”
“What is?”
She took a deep breath. “That I never got to say goodbye.”
He nodded, but she wasn’t sure he understood.
“That… that person you ate…”
“Tommy Christopher Boden,” said Avalon.
“Aye, him. Did you…” she struggled to find the words. “Did you
read his mind too?”
“His memories, yes.”
“All of them?”
“I absorbed them all,” he said without looking at her. “It doesn’t
take long.”
She took a breath, and asked, “Did Arthur suffer much?”
“Yes,” said Avalon. “A great deal of suffering. He died in
tremendous agony. His skin—”
“Enough,” said Muriel sharply, as more tears pricked her eyes. “A
simple yes would have done.”
Avalon looked at her. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I
spoke with someone on land. The etiquette has altered considerably
since my last visit.”
“Aye,” said Muriel, and that was something Avalon couldn’t
replicate. The way Billy spoke. He had the voice and the
mannerisms and even some of the right inflections… but the
vocabulary was all wrong. Billy was a working class man with
language so salty you could sprinkle it on a plate of chips.
“How much of him is in there?” she asked. “How much of you is
my Billy?”
“As much as you wish to believe.”
She turned to him and looked deeply into his eyes. “It’s
frightening. It almost seems real.”
“Are memories real?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Then so am I.”
Gently, as if afraid she might startle him, Muriel put her hand to
Billy’s cheek and turned him to face her. She closed her eyes and
leaned in with butterflies in her belly, the likes of which she hadn’t felt
in decades. The rising sun was warm on her face. Their lips touched,
and suddenly Billy hiccuped. Muriel chuckled, pulling back as the
spell was momentarily broken. She opened her eyes to look at him
again.
He was trembling.
“Billy?”
His whole body shook. A thin line of black liquid dribbled down
his chin, and he made a sound like he was about to vomit. He
pushed her back, doubling over, expelling a mouthful of filthy water
onto the sand.
“Goodness, what’s wrong?” said Muriel.
He looked up at her with wide, frightened eyes. The skin on his
cheeks quivered. “Get me home,” he growled, and this time it wasn’t
Billy’s voice. It was a deep, guttural tone.
“Are you okay?”
She touched his face and her fingers sank into the skin. Her
stomach lurched, and when she pulled away, the flesh stuck to her
like melted cheese. She tried to shake it off, and tore the skin from
his cheek. Beneath it there was nothing. No skull, no bone, just an
aching black void, an abominable emptiness under the facade.
“Get me home!” he roared. His teeth loosened in decaying gums,
toppling like tombstones after an earthquake. They rattled together in
his sagging mouth until the blackened tongue absorbed them. Billy
staggered through the sand towards the cottage. Muriel caught up
with him, putting an arm around his waist. He seemed to weigh
nothing. Liquid slopped inside his torso. He turned to her, his face
resembling a Halloween mask left too near the fireplace, an oozing,
melting atrocity torn from a terrible nightmare. The chin dripped to a
fine point, the ghastly mouth sliding down his face. As his eye
sockets widened, one eyeball dropped to the rocks below. It hit the
stone and burst with a soft plop.
They were almost at the door when Billy fell. Muriel tried to catch
him, but it was like catching water. Her husband toppled forwards
and his face struck the gravel path with a moist smack that turned
Muriel’s stomach.
Blood and wet flesh splattered against the stones as Muriel
screamed. With a handful of his hair, she peeled his head up from
the path, and though she had seen some terrible, awful things in her
life, this was the first to make her wish she had never been born so
as not to bear witness.
Billy’s face was gone. It had been flattened. Tiny pieces of gravel
protruded from the soft, wet mess, slime spraying from the wounds
as the fleshy balloon of his head collapsed in on itself. The skin tore
as it folded, Muriel struggling to lift him, to carry him. She picked him
up — it was as if someone had filled a suit with ketchup — and
hurried into the hallway. Little pieces of Billy’s body plopped out
along the hall, landing on the floor with a splat. She shoulder-barged
the bathroom door open and deposited him into the shallow water,
turning on the taps. Billy’s wilting hands reached for his shirt and tore
it open. His chest undulated and split into something resembling a
mouth.
“Blood,” it wheezed.
Muriel ran from the room. The mop and bucket rested by the
kitchen door, the water inside it a deep crimson. She threw the mop
to one side and lifted the bucket, straining at the weight. It splashed
over the sides as she entered the bathroom and tipped it into the tub.
The bloody water gushed over the edge, soaking the floor, her
clothes, the bath mat.
“Billy!” shrieked Muriel. “Billy!”
An empty black suit and the tattered remains of a white shirt
floated to the surface. She hauled them out and tossed them to the
floor. The bathwater was so red she couldn’t see in, so she thrust her
arms in up to the elbows, desperate to locate him.
But the red was disappearing. It grew fainter, the water level
dropping and leaving a red rim around the tub. Soon, it was as clear
as a mountain spring, and there, floating serenely, was the creature.
He shimmered beneath the surface, his eye half-open or half-closed,
she couldn’t tell.
“Where did you go?” she cried. “Where did you go?”
Avalon stared lazily past her.
“Bring him back!”
She slammed her fist into the water, the liquid cascading over the
sides.
 “Bring him back! Bring him back! Bring him… bring…”
She couldn’t continue. Muriel rested her head against the tub. He
was gone. Billy was gone. He had come back, and stayed a short
while, and now he was gone.
“Bring him back,” she said, slumping onto the floor.
She was still there hours later, when the clock chimed seven
times, signalling the beginning of the end for Muriel Margaret
McAuley.
 15

M .
Five days had passed since Billy’s visit. In that time, life had been
as normal as it could be, under the circumstances. The phone had
rung a few times, but she hadn’t answered it. Patrick Grant had
appeared on the news, blaming Arthur’s death on his smoking (a
filthy, disgusting habit, he had called it) and insufficient safety
precautions. It was the only believable statement he had ever made,
but Muriel knew it wasn’t true. Arthur had been murdered. Billy had
told her so.
It all seemed like a cruel dream now. Sometimes she questioned
whether it had actually taken place, but each time, all it took to
convince her was a quick glance at the creature in her bathtub, and
at the bloodstains all over her living room. She kept them there as a
reminder. She wasn’t afraid of anyone seeing them. With Arthur
gone, there would be no more visitors.
She stared at her reflection, at the old woman in the mirror, and
hardly recognised her. Her face was gaunt, her once rosy cheeks
now flat and colourless. Worst of all were her arms. They were
purple and black, a mass of bruised tissue surrounding dozens of
small cuts and lacerations from where she had fed Avalon. But she
didn’t have enough blood to nurse him to full health, and certainly not
enough to give him the strength to become Billy again. In a grim twist
of irony, the amount of blood needed for that would surely kill her.
But maybe there would be enough time for her to say goodbye?
She tugged the sleeves of her black dress down to her wrists.
Arthur’s funeral wouldn’t be well attended, but she couldn’t have
Terry Munro or Jock and Jeannie Baird seeing what she had done to
herself.
“Imagine their faces if I turned up with Billy.”
She knew there was a way to bring him back. It was quite simple.
Avalon needed a big meal. Like the last time, or more. He was
always so hungry. Her blood sustained him, but it didn’t nourish him.
It didn’t satisfy him. What he needed was a whole person, all to
himself.
There was no point thinking about it. The very notion was sick.
She couldn’t do it. And even if she did, what then? How many meals
would it take? How many lives—
No. She promised herself she wouldn’t even consider it. It wasn’t
an option. The boy who had died… he was a bad person. A killer. It
was justified.
There are a lot of bad people in the world.
A car horn beeped outside. The taxi. Arthur’s funeral was taking
place in the nearby town of Muir, as Witchaven’s cemetery was no
more, the bodies having been dug up and transported elsewhere to
make way for Grant’s golf course. A block of portable toilets for the
workers now marked the spot where the old chapel — where she
and Billy had exchanged vows — once stood.
Muriel tugged her sleeves down, said goodbye to Avalon, and
left.
As the taxi passed the cottage that had only last week belonged to
the Farquhars, Muriel looked the other way. She couldn’t bear to see
another domino fall. She wondered if they would be at Arthur’s
funeral. Not likely. They were probably far away by now.
When she got out of the taxi, Terry Munro was already there,
chatting sombrely with Jock and Jeannie. It was the first time Muriel
had seen them since the town meeting the previous week. Before
Avalon, before the bloodshed… before Billy.
Jeannie’s eyes brightened, and before Muriel knew what was
happening, the woman’s arms were locked around her. “Oh, Muriel!
I’m so sorry. I tried phoning, but—”
“I’ve not answered the phone,” said Muriel. “I’ve not felt like
talking.”
Jock removed the pipe from between his teeth and nodded at
her. “Aye, I can understand.”
Terry patted her shoulder. “He was a good man,” he said
brusquely. “He’ll be missed.”
“Aye, that he will,” said Muriel. “That he will.”
The rain started to fall, so they shuffled into the chapel and
awaited the beginning of the service. Arthur’s son and his family
were there, two pews in front, already discussing how to spend the
inheritance.
He’s not even in the grave yet, she thought. Still, the joke was on
them. Unless Arthur had an expensive life insurance policy, the
inheritance had gone up in smoke in the fire. He had never opened a
bank account, and kept all his money in both a metal tin above the
fireplace and a shoebox under his bed.
 Jeannie held Muriel’s hand as the minister appeared, and the
service began. He spoke at length about Arthur’s life at sea, and
Muriel found her thoughts turning to the ocean and the wonders that
lay within. Terry was called forward, and he remained stoic as he
said a few words about their friendship, his voice only cracking
towards the end. The rain hammered off the stained glass window,
and Muriel closed her eyes and said a silent prayer.

After the service, Muriel stood waiting for her ride home. The taxi
was late, and the rain was coming down hard. She sheltered
beneath her brolly and thought about Avalon. Would animal blood
suffice? Could she feed him a cow? How foolish! Even if she could
bring herself to slaughter a defenceless beast, which she knew she
couldn’t, how would she transport it back to her cottage? On her
wheelbarrow?
“Muriel.”
The voice snapped her back to reality. Terry stood nearby
beneath his own sensible black umbrella. He looked tired.
“Nice service,” he said.
“Aye. Good thing it was indoors.”
Terry nodded at that. They watched as Jock and Jeannie got into
their old Vauxhall Corsa. Jock was in the driver’s seat. Muriel shook
her head as she gave the pair a solemn wave.
“That old fool shouldn’t be driving,” she said. “He’s blind as a
bat.”
Terry nodded again, and cleared his throat.
“What’s wrong?” said Muriel.
He feigned surprise. “Why do you ask?”
 “Because this is the first time I’ve ever seen you quiet for more
than thirty seconds.”
Headlights penetrated the rain, illuminating them briefly and then
passing by.
“I’ve… I’ve been speaking with Jock and Jeannie,” he said.
“We’ve been thinking.”
It was Muriel’s turn to nod. “Oh aye. What about?”
“About a lot of things. Arthur. Witchaven. Grant…”
“Just come out and say it,” she snapped.
“Now Muriel, there’s no need—”
“You’ve accepted his offer, haven’t you?”
“No. Not yet.” He rubbed at his eyes. “But we’re going to.”
She sighed. Though the words didn’t come as a surprise, they
still shattered her heart. She looked down at her feet, at her twisted
reflection in the puddles. “Why, Terry?”
He loosened his tie as if it were choking him. “We can’t fight them
anymore. Come on Muriel, look at us! We’re four doddery old farts
against one of the richest men alive. We don’t stand a chance. At
least this way, we have something to show for it.”
“So that’s it? You give up everything you believe in for a couple of
hundred thousand pounds?”
Unable to meet her gaze, Terry looked away. “They cut the offer,
Muriel. We took too long to decide. It’s fifty thousand now. They
know they’re going to win.” He tore his gaze from the pavement and
made fleeting eye contact. “Take the offer. Please. Before it’s too
late. If you wait another week, you’ll be lucky if you get five hundred
pounds.”
“It’s not about the money. It never has been.”
“I know,” said Terry. “It’s about the past. It’s about Billy. But he’s
been gone a while now. I’m sure he’d want you to be happy.”
 “Exactly. And that’s why I’ll never leave, not until they drag me out
kicking and screaming.”
“If it comes to that, they will.”
She laughed emptily. “You’re a coward, Terry. You’re a useless
bloody coward.”
“Maybe. But I know when to accept defeat. There’s no shame in
that.”
She gestured towards the chapel. “They killed him, you know.”
“Who?”
“Arthur. Grant hired some men to burn his cottage down.”
“Is that right?” Terry said wearily.
“They killed him, and instead of fighting for justice, you’re going to
just roll over and let Grant tickle your belly and throw you some
scraps. I thought you were some big shot lawyer.”
Terry looked at her sadly. “That was a lifetime ago,” he said.
“Now, I guess I’m just a… what was it? Ah yes, a useless old
coward. And I’m okay with that. I really am.”
A silver car pulled up, splashing a puddle over Muriel’s shoes and
stockings. The window wound down, and a man leaned out.
“Taxi for Munro?”
“That’s me,” said Terry. He strode towards the vehicle and
opened the door, then looked back at her. “Be careful, Muriel. If what
you say is true, and you’re still not going to take their offer, then… be
careful.”
Terry folded his umbrella and got in the taxi. He turned to her one
last time, like he was about to say something, to impart one more
priceless nugget of wisdom… and then changed his mind. The door
slammed shut, and he waved through the rain-streaked window.
Muriel held up one hand, watching as the last of the rats deserted
the sinking ship, leaving her alone by the cemetery gates, the rain
lashing down.
“And then there was one,” she said.
She smiled to herself.
“Actually… make that two.”
 16

T .
It was still chucking it down as Muriel sat in front of the telly,
trying to pay attention to The Great Pottery Throw Down. The nice
man on the screen was looking at a clay pot and crying, but Muriel
was thinking of Arthur. She had been so angry about his unjust death
that she hadn’t given herself time to grieve, and yet here, in the
comfort of her own home, she found it hard to concentrate.
…hungry…
She put the volume up on the TV. Though she couldn’t drown
Avalon’s voice out completely — it was in her head, after all — she
could damn well try. What did he want her to do? Invite one of
Grant’s people over to be his meal?
It wouldn’t precisely be murder. After all, Avalon wasn’t human.
He was a creature, and creatures can’t murder. They can kill,
certainly, but that was a different matter entirely. Was the spider a
murderer for ensnaring the fly?
“It’s not the same,” she said.
Avalon walked and talked like a human being when he wanted to.
Was he not capable of making moral and ethical decisions? Had she
not accepted him as the living reincarnation of her husband?
 The thought made her head hurt. She wouldn’t kill for him. She
couldn’t kill for him.
Oh, if only he wasn’t so hungry all the time.
She switched the telly off, listening to the melancholy patter of the
rain, then got up and emptied the bowl beneath the leaky roof into
the sink. She replaced it, and stared up at the small hole.
Billy could fix that if he was here.
“Billy’s dead,” she said.
All it would take is one phone call. Just a quick call, telling them
you’re ready to take their deal. They’ll come round, and—
She walked to the wireless and put it on. It was one of those
fancy digital ones her grandson Jack had given her. He had tuned it
to what he called ‘the oldies station’, and she never bothered to
change it. Roy Orbison was singing Only The Lonely. Muriel smiled.
She had been in her twenties when that song came out. She
remembered dancing to it with her friends. Billy had never been a
dancer, or a socialiser for that matter, but Muriel would go out with
her pals whenever she could. Of course, they were all dead now.
…hungry…
She walked to the window. Raindrops speckled the pane, the
wind blowing them horizontally. It was a treacherous evening, the
kind where she would sit up all night worrying about Billy if he was
out at sea. She wished she could have gone out there with him, just
once. The idea of the pair of them sleeping on a boat under the stars
had an undeniable romantic allure.
Lightning forked across the sky. Seconds later, thunder rumbled
ominously overhead.
…hungry…
“There’s nothing I can do about that,” she said, loud enough for
Avalon to hear in the bathroom.
 She inspected her bruised and cut arms. They didn’t look so bad
in the moonlight. She laughed drily. “Everything looks better in the
moonlight. Especially a washed-up old hag like me.”
She heard Avalon thrashing angrily in the water, and wondered if
this was what it felt like to go insane.
“I’ve no blood left to give,” she said, exhaustion setting in. Still he
flailed, the bathwater spilling over the sides and hitting the linoleum.
There was nothing she could do for him. She wanted to help, she
really did, but what could she do?
The wind picked up, seeming to rock the cottage on its
foundations. It was a miserable night, and Muriel could take no more
of it. She decided it was time for bed. She wandered into her
bedroom to collect her pyjamas and last night’s hot water bottle, then
headed back into the hall. There she paused, listening to Avalon. He
sounded like a drug addict in the throes of withdrawal. But there was
another sound too. A light metallic shriek she knew all too well.
The front door handle.
She laid her pyjamas and water bottle down on the shoe rack and
nervously approached the door.
The handle was moving.
“Who’s there?”
No reply for a long time, and then a brutal thump as a body
slammed into the door. She took a frightened step back as it bulged
inwards.
“I’m calling the police!” she said.
Another attempt on the door. This time the lock shattered, the
door opening several inches before catching on the chain. Thank
goodness she had started to lock up after Arthur’s passing.
Through the narrow gap she saw a figure, a man dressed in
black, his face covered. She turned and ran for the living room as a
third hit smashed the chain from the frame and the door flew open,
striking the wall. She made it into the living room, snatching the
phone receiver up, punching the buttons.
9…9…
Her finger hovered over the last button. What was she doing?
The police would never get here in time. And if they did, would they
even care? There had to be something else she could do, some way
to take care of matters that would be more… beneficial to her.
Muriel took a deep breath and calmly placed the phone back on
its cradle. There was no doubt in her mind.
She knew what she had to do.
The living room door opened. Two men entered, balaclavas
covering their faces so that only their eyes and mouths were visible.
“Good evening, bitch,” one of them said. Something long and thin
dangled from his hand.
A noose.
He took a step towards her, the rope swinging back and forth,
wind howling through the broken door in the hallway.
“Jesus Christ, what happened in here?” he said, gazing at the
blood-coated walls and ceiling. “It’s a fucking bloodbath.” He stared
at Muriel, lips curling into a smile. “You do this? You a goddamned
serial killer or something?”
“Something like that,” she said.
The man turned to his partner. “Check the rest of the place. Make
sure we’re alone.”
Muriel watched as the other man wandered back down the hall.
He kicked open the bedroom door and entered.
The noose swayed hypnotically from the first man’s hand. “You
call the cops?”
“No,” said Muriel.
 The man snorted. “Wouldn’t make any difference if you did.
You’re gonna die tonight.”
“So I gather.”
“Bedroom’s clear,” said the second man as he appeared in the
hallway. “It’s got that old lady smell.”
“Shut up and check the other door.”
The bathroom.
Muriel shifted from one foot to the other. This was it. A meal for
Avalon, delivered right to the door. And guilt-free, too! She hadn’t
called these men. She hadn’t invited them round. They had come to
kill her… and the world wouldn’t miss two more bad people.
The man with the noose was talking to her, but she wasn’t
listening. Instead, she tried to peer past him into the hallway. The
second man pushed the bathroom door open. It creaked on its
hinges, and Muriel dug her nails into her palms, waiting for sounds of
a struggle, for the man’s pained screams, for—
“All clear,” he said, stepping back into the hallway.
Muriel’s heart pounded. Where was Avalon? Was he too weak,
too malnourished? If so, it was her fault. He needed blood, and she
had failed to provide it. Now she would suffer the consequences of
her own inaction.
“Alright,” said the first man. “Let’s get down to business.” He
looked at Muriel. “You know why we’re here.”
“You’ve come to kill me,” she said softly. She would give anything
for Avalon’s blissful aura right now, something to calm her nerves.
“Wrong. You’re going to kill yourself. We’re just here to expedite
the situation.” His accent was American. Probably trained goons
brought over from The States especially for situations like this, thugs
more used to shaking down gangsters than threatening little old
ladies.
 It infuriated her.
She summoned all her courage and looked the man firmly in his
cold and pitiless eyes. “Going to burn my cottage down like you did
Arthur’s?”
“That was nothing to do with us. Some asshole hired those
amateurs on the cheap and almost ruined everything. You’re lucky.
You get the professionals.” He chuckled. “And anyway, I think two
fires in one week would be rather suspicious, don’t you?”
“I think one is suspicious.”
The man’s grin widened. “You’re a feisty broad, aren’t you? But
you’ve experienced a lot of tragedy, I can tell. And that’s why we’re
here. The Grant Organisation cares about you. They’re worried. An
old lady living all by herself. What if something happened to you?
What if you fell and couldn’t get up? Maybe your wiring’s faulty, and
you get a shock?” He lowered his voice. “What if — and hear me out,
I’m just spitballing here — but what if a lonely old lady was so sad
that all the men in her life died, and her friends and neighbours left
her… what if she was so sad that she took her own life? No one
would be surprised by that. People would nod and say, yeah, that
makes sense. She had nothing left to live for, so she killed herself. It
ain’t gonna make the headlines, that’s for sure.”
She looked from his eyes to the noose and back again. “I’m not
afraid of dying. I’ve lived a long life. A good life.”
“I didn’t ask for your fucking memoirs.”
“And I don’t believe I invited you in.”
The man looked at his partner. “You hearing this? The old bitch is
nuts.” He raised the noose and let it swing. “Put this on,” he said,
tossing the rope towards her. It bounced off her sternum and fell to
the floor.
 Muriel eyed it. Unable to help herself, a thin smile crossed her
lips. “You want me to hang myself?”
“That’s the idea.”
“I see.” She cocked her head at him in an unconscious imitation
of Avalon. “And where would you like me to hang myself from,
exactly?”
“From…” The man trailed off as he looked up. There were no
beams. Nothing but a flat, blood-covered ceiling, and a single light
fixture that would never take the weight of a grown woman.
“Didn’t think this through, did you?” said Muriel, her confidence
growing as a plan took shape.
“Don’t fucking question me,” said the man. He glanced around
the room.
“Looking for inspiration?”
“Shut up,” he growled. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”
“It’s supposed to look like suicide,” said the second man.
“I know that! Would everyone shut up and let me think?” He
rubbed at his brow and stared at her. “You got pills?”
“Excuse me?”
“Pills, bitch. Pills. You’re old. You gotta have medication lying
around somewhere. Enough to OD with.”
“There’s some paracetamol in the cupboard,” Muriel replied
coolly. “I think there’s only two left, though.” She smiled at him. “Will
that be enough?”
He stormed over to her, puffing himself up. “You’re about to die.
Don’t you realise that?”
“I told you. I don’t fear death. And I’m certainly not afraid of you.
Anyway, if you must know, I have a knife in the kitchen.”
He looked at her blankly. “What?”
 “Oh, keep up. A knife. I could…” She mimicked cutting her wrists.
“You know.”
He nodded slowly, the smile returning. It was an unpleasant
smile. Grotesque, in fact. “Yeah, I get it.” He paused. “You’re a
fucking wacko, you know that?”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She left him standing there and walked to the kitchen, where she
slid open the cutlery drawer and selected the largest, sharpest knife
she could find. It glistened in the harsh glare of the light bulb.
“Hurry up,” said the man.
She turned to face him, knife in hand. He stepped back.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” she said.
“I don’t trust anyone with a blade. Even a dried-up old cunt like
you.”
“Charming,” she said, and made for the door.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“Well, I’m not likely to kill myself in the living room, am I? Not
when there’s a perfectly good bathroom with a linoleum floor.”
She didn’t give him time to reply. Adrenaline flooded her veins as
she strode into the hall. As she passed the second man, she
pretended to lunge at him with the knife. He yelped and stumbled
back into the wall.
Muriel chuckled. “Big tough men, scared of a wee thing like me,”
she said, as she arrived at the bathroom. The men followed, keeping
a cautious distance. She waited for them by the bathtub, the knife
shaking in her hand, gazing down into the water, into the wide, clear
eye of Avalon.
“Do it,” said the man. “I’m getting tired of this shit.”
The wireless was still playing in the living room, the music
bleeding through the wall. Over The Rainbow. She always loved that
song, even though she didn’t enjoy the film it came from.
A pretty song to die to?
She supposed so.
The men lurked in the doorway, waiting. No one spoke. Muriel
raised her arm, the sores and cuts glaring mockingly at her, and
placed the knife blade against her loose skin. She had done this
before on dozens of occasions over the last few days, but those
times, Avalon had latched on to her and calmed her. He had
removed the pain, removed the fear, and sealed the wounds before
any real damage could be done. Now she was taking the biggest risk
of her life. She knew she might die. But there were no other options,
not anymore. She pressed the knife horizontally against her wrist,
and—
“Not like that. Do it lengthways.” The man turned to his partner.
“It’s deadlier that way,” he explained.
She looked at him coldly, then, in one fluid motion, drew the
blade back, flinching at the icy touch. Nothing happened for several
seconds, the room and its inhabitants frozen rigid. Then the blood
started to flow. It spurted from the wound, and Muriel angled her
wrist to face the bath. The red liquid spilled into the tub, staining the
water as Avalon rose to the surface, lapping it up. Muriel passed the
knife to her other hand, though she was weakening already. Light-
headed, she ran the blade across her skin. It hurt, but it wasn’t deep
enough.
She needed more blood.
“Do it,” sneered the man. “Kill yourself.”
“I’m trying,” said Muriel. Her legs buckled, and she slashed at her
arm, once, twice. Blood gushed freely, splattering into the water.
“Again!”
 Muriel was fading. The ground seemed to rise up beneath her,
the chequered linoleum turning into a monochromatic whirlpool. She
gripped the knife, closed her eyes, and plunged it into her forearm
with a savage cry.
As Muriel stood there, her lifeblood flowing from her, visions from
her past rattled through her brain. The man barked more orders, but
she was beyond hearing, beyond caring. With the kitchen knife
sticking out of her arm, she toppled forwards, dimly aware of her
face hitting the water, and then everything went utterly, truly dark.
 17

A W . T
wool itched his skin, and he rubbed a hand across his forehead as
he stepped towards the bathtub and peered in.
The old bitch floated face down in her own blood. It was a grisly
sight, but it failed to bother Aaron. He had seen worse. Hell, he had
done worse, like beating a shop owner to death with a lead pipe for
threatening to bring a lawsuit against Mr Grant. That poor bastard
had been left unrecognisable, his face a mashed pulp. At least he
had tried to defend himself, though.
He turned to his partner, Kevin Henker. “Shit. That was easy.”
Kevin removed his own face covering and tucked it into the
waistband of his black jeans. “Thought she might’ve been more
trouble.”
“Yeah. She’s been a real hardass about selling.” Aaron glanced
conspiratorially at Kevin. “Hey, man. Let’s tell Conor she put up a
fight. Don’t want him thinking he can underpay us or nothing.”
“He wouldn’t dare. We’ve got enough dirt on The Grant
Organisation to bury them for good.”
Aaron smirked. “I wouldn’t say that too loud, unless you want to
end up like her.”
 Kevin stepped closer and gazed at the woman, recoiling at the
sight. “That’s disgusting. We just gonna leave her there?”
Aaron sighed. Kevin never could handle a little blood. He was in
the wrong line of work. “Why not? It’s as good a place as any. Now
come on, let’s check we’ve not left any prints and get out of here.”
“I thought the police were paid off?”
“They are,” said Aaron. “But I don’t want to take any chances.”
He ushered Kevin out the door and closed it behind him. As he
did so, he heard something bubbling in the tub. Probably gas
escaping from the body, he figured, recalling the time he had
strangled one of Grant’s rivals to death in his private pool, the body
bloating and releasing gas as Aaron tidied up and removed any trace
he had ever been there.
He checked the hall, and sure enough, they had tracked mud and
dirt over the hallway carpet. Under these circumstances, Aaron
would usually have torched the building. Fire was the best way to
remove evidence, but Conor Grant had given him strict instructions
not to. After the Eastman place had gone up in flames a few nights
ago, it would be too obvious. They’d have to clean up after
themselves this time.
“Take your boots off and leave them at the door,” he told his
partner. They walked to the kitchen in threadbare socks, the floor
cold against the soles of their feet. As Aaron filled a bowl of water,
Kevin eyed the bloodstains on the walls of the living room.
“What do you think did that? A bear?”
Aaron snorted. “In Scotland? Don’t be an ass. They don’t have
bears here.”
“Not even little ones?”
Aaron side-eyed his partner. “No,” he said slowly. “Not even… I
mean, come on, man, what the fuck? What does that even mean?
Little bears?”
“I dunno. They’ve got those things, don’t they? Haggises, or
something. They’re small.”
“You’re an idiot,” said Aaron. “Haggises live underground. They
don’t—”
A splash.
It was somehow both distant and near. Aaron turned off the tap,
and the two men waited in silence.
“Was that—”
“Quiet,” hissed Aaron. He moved the other man aside and crept
into the living room. The old bitch couldn’t still be alive. That tub was
full of blood. It was overflowing with the stuff. A man twice her size
couldn’t have survived.
A thud.
It came from down the hall.
Aaron’s mouth was dry. He knew he should investigate, but
something prevented him. A sense of self-preservation? He glanced
at Kevin, a look of bafflement on the man’s face.
Achingly ponderous footsteps resounded from the small
bathroom at the end of the hall. Aaron tried to clear his mind. What
the hell was happening? The old lady was dead. And if she wasn’t,
then shit, he’d happily kill her again.
But it didn’t sound like her. It didn’t sound like her at all.
“Is someone else here?” asked Kevin.
Aaron shook his head. “There was nobody.”
“Maybe they came in through the window?” His voice dropped to
a frightened whisper. “Maybe it’s a haggis.”
More footsteps. Heavier, faster, pounding down the hallway.
Aaron backed away, bumping into Kevin. The men looked at each
other, and then the door burst and something came running towards
them.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t human.
The legs were misshapen and off-colour, almost a pinkish-green,
with a gnarled, half-formed penis between them. And above the
waist?
Well, it moved like a man. But it was missing too many… parts.
It had no face, just a bulbous head, in the centre of which sat one
vast white eye, surrounded by glistening veins and nerves. With no
skin to speak of, the rubbery gelatinous mass quivered with each
step.
It was coming for Aaron.
He threw himself to one side, hitting the floor as the thing collided
with Kevin.
His partner never stood a chance.
The two collapsed onto the coffee table, smashing the wood
apart and sending a mug of cold tea hurtling through the air. The
creature was on top of Kevin, muffling his frenzied screams. Aaron
tried to get to his feet, to help his friend, but he could only watch in
horror as the beast melted from the waist down, puddling on the floor
and soaking into Kevin’s legs. The man’s black jeans withered to
nothing, and Kevin screamed as smoke rose from his lower half, his
skin peeling away at the monster’s acidic touch.
Aaron forced himself to his feet, his hands finding a metal table
lamp. He staggered towards the atrocity in front of him and brought
the heavy base down on what appeared to be the creature’s head.
The dome split into messy halves like rotten fruit, the white goop of
the eyeball bursting and showering over Kevin’s howling face.
Two distended humanoid arms reached for Aaron. He stepped
back, but the limbs shot out towards his head, the soft, translucent
hands grabbing his ears and hauling him forwards with great force.
He fell to his knees, trembling before the unimaginable horror.
Kevin’s shrieks had died down to low rumbling moans as the
creature consumed him. Aaron could see blood shooting through the
beast’s veins, lighting it up until it glowed like a beacon, vivid colours
of obscene beauty spinning around the room.
The thing’s hands forced their way into Aaron’s mouth, grabbing
his cheeks. It tore them wide open, the skin at the corners of his lips
rending apart as a curious, painless sensation descended over him.
He saw himself reflected in the mirror, neck bulging as the creature
pushed its arm further down his throat, yet he felt no pain. He
witnessed his own body sagging, and heard the snap of his ribs,
one-by-one, until his torso was nothing more than a ghastly sack of
blood.
How was he still alive? How?
The flesh on his belly moved, the creature’s hand gripping his
skin from the inside, pulling it into a tight bunch.
Aaron looked up and saw the old lady standing in the doorway,
watching. Though her arms were stained red with blood, the deep
cuts had healed. It was a miracle.
A miracle!
There is a God, thought Aaron, and then the creature yanked
hard on his skin and turned him inside out like a revolting fleshy
pillowcase.

Muriel leaned against the door frame.

What a mess Avalon was making. It was a good thing she hadn’t
cleaned up after the last time.
 She watched as the two men evaporated before her, their bodies
flaking, the pieces swimming around in Avalon’s system like glitter.
The sound was the worst part, like a child sucking up the last of their
juice with a straw. She wanted to cover her ears, but her arms were
numb from where Avalon had closed her wounds, so they hung by
her sides, useless and forgotten.
She pressed up against the door, waiting until he finished. It
didn’t take long.
A new head started to grow on Avalon’s shoulders, an inflating
balloon of maddening, featureless hideousness.
The great eye opened and looked straight at her.
“Let me see him,” said Muriel.
A swirling pastel chaos shone from within, as Avalon’s unearthly
form shifted and distorted into something resembling a human.
Muriel closed her eyes and smiled.
They would be together again soon.
 18

I W ,
old married couple sat together on the settee. The wife’s hand was
clasped in her husband’s, a knitted blanket draped over their legs as
the fire roared. The television was on, bathing them in a cool blue
glow, while beyond the four walls, the wind whistled, and waves
pounded unendingly against the shore.
Muriel watched the screen, but paid scant attention to it,
preferring to steal loving glances at her husband. To think of all the
time she had wasted lamenting that she never got to say goodbye.
And now here he was! She should have had faith. Faith in the Lord.
Faith in the natural world.
Faith in Billy.
She snuggled closer, resting her head against his chest.
“You don’t have a heartbeat,” she whispered.
“I have no need of a heart,” said Billy. Before she could reply, he
leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “You always enjoyed
when he did that.”
“When you did that,” she corrected.
“Yes.” He paused. “When I did that. For I am Billy McAuley, and
—”
 “Shush now,” she said, holding a finger to his lips. She removed
her hand and ran it down his chest, tracing the lapel of his suit
jacket. “I’ll need to knit you a new jumper. Can’t have you wearing
your wedding clothes around the house. They’ll get grubby.”
He said nothing to that, and she was pleased.
“And underwear,” she continued. “I won’t have my husband
traipsing around Witchaven with no pants on.” She giggled at that
like she was sixteen years old, and for the first time in many years,
her thoughts turned to the early days of their relationship, to those
sweet, illicit fumbles. Her first time, so painful, Billy’s teenage
enthusiasm melting away at the sight of her blood. His shocked
white face, neither of them knowing what to do.
She thought of that day in Rory’s Cave, lit only by the tender glow
of the candles, Billy on one knee, her acceptance of the meagre ring
she still wore, and how he had disrobed her, her eyes closed as he
worked the buttons on her dress free, his beard scratching against
her neck, his hands finding her breasts, her…
A content smile crossed her lips as she shivered at the
recollection. She hadn’t felt like this in years. Their sex life had been
good. Oh, it had slowed with each passing decade thanks to the toll
time took on their bodies, and by the time they were in their sixties
they generally preferred to sit together and watch telly like they were
doing just now, but still… she wondered if she had it in her anymore.
The drive, the passion.
The way her body longed for Billy, she thought she still did.
Lifting her head from his chest, she kissed him on the cheek. He
responded slowly, turning to look at her. Goodness, he was so
handsome. She kissed him again, and this time his lips found hers.
All at once, a lifetime of memories flooded over her.
 There she was, playing on the beach with Bessie the family
Labrador, skimming stones with her friends, hiding in an air raid
shelter as sirens blasted through the streets. The sun rising over her
home town of Aberdeen, her first day in school, first day in college,
working in the fish market. Sitting hunched over her desk sketching,
her first dance with Billy at their wedding, pulling a dead man from
the sea.
Her body jolted. She tried to pull away, but Billy gripped her
tightly.
A woman squirming beneath her, naked and screaming with a
mouthful of blood. A baby lying in the gutter half-eaten by rats, a pit
full of plague-ravaged corpses, blood pouring down the walls, a child
—
“God, no!” she screamed, pushing herself away from Billy, from
Avalon, rubbing madly at her eyes, bile rising from her stomach. She
backed up, stumbling over the broken coffee table and falling.
“Those aren’t my memories!”
Avalon looked at her curiously. “No. They’re mine.”
“You did those things? You—”
“Not I. The people I consume… they become part of me. Their
memories live on inside.”
“But those were awful things.” She thought she might vomit, and
waited for the nausea to pass. “Those were awful, terrible things.”
“I’m sorry, Muriel. I lost control and let those memories out. It
won’t happen again.” He put a hand to his head, his eyes closing. “I
feel weak. I need to rest. I need… to eat.”
“You just did,” she said, staring up at him in horror. “Those men.
You…”
“Go to sleep. It’ll be different in the morning. It’ll be better. I
promise.”
 He stalked past her into the hallway. She heard the bathroom
door close, and the sound of Avalon lowering himself into the bath,
the water sloshing to-and-fro. The TV was still on, and she reached
for the remote control with a steady hand. She killed the set and
remained there on the floor until the euphoric effects of Avalon’s
touch started to wear off. As they did, the old aches and pains
returned like unwanted guests. She got to her feet before the worst
of it took hold, and made her way through to the bedroom. Billy’s suit
lay discarded on the hallway floor, as flat and lifeless as the man
Avalon had turned inside out that very evening.
Already the images she had glimpsed in Avalon’s mind — those
little visions of hell — were fading, and as she drifted off, she could
remember almost nothing of them. What life had he led before
finding her? How many times had he risen from the sea in search of
sustenance? How many people had he killed? Was she safe with
him?
And most importantly… did she even care?

Muriel awoke in the middle of the night, aware of a presence in her

room. She glanced around through half-lidded eyes, but the
darkness was absolute. The machines worked tirelessly outside.
They had never sounded so close.
“You were dreaming,” she muttered to herself. “That’s all.”
It had been a difficult day, a day that would have driven a lesser
woman mad. She listened for Billy in the bathtub. The water was still.
He must be sleeping. What was she going to do with him? She
couldn’t keep on like this. She couldn’t procure bodies for him just
to…
 A floorboard creaked in the bedroom.
Someone was in here with her.
“Who’s there?”
She listened carefully. There were no sounds, not even
breathing. Did Avalon breathe? She wasn’t sure.
Muriel worked her way into a sitting position, her spine painful
against the wooden headboard.
And then she saw it.
In the corner.
A person.
“Billy? Is that you?”
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, to the pale form lingering by
the door.
“Avalon?”
Muriel reached for the lamp, her fingers searching for the switch
as the figure came for her, striding forwards, arms outstretched.
It was a woman.
She was naked, her eyes blank, face expressionless. The tips of
her fingers stretched towards Muriel like antennae, dripping viscous
fluid on the carpet.
As the elongated digits attached themselves to her temples and a
wave of tiredness hit her like a freight train, she found the lamp
switch and clicked it, illuminating the woman.
Muriel wanted to scream. She wanted to so badly, but her larynx
refused to comply, her throat emitting a ghastly dry rattle. The naked
woman hovered over her, and as Muriel drifted into
unconsciousness, she gazed into the eyes of a beautiful young
woman she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
Herself.
 19

G B ,
onto the ground.
“Fuck’s sake,” he said, staring at the half-chewed remains
between his feet. “She knows I fucking hate that shite.”
Chuck Carlson burst out laughing. “Time to trade the missus in
for a younger model, eh?”
Chuck sat with his coffee thermos between his legs, trying to
absorb some of its heat. It was freezing out here, the cold wind
howling across the bay. There were few trees to shelter behind, as
most had been cut down and taken away to wherever dead trees
were taken.
Graham shook his head. “Shoulda done it years ago, pal. Too
bloody late now!”
Denny Pendrew rubbed his hands together to warm them. “You
see that bird that works for Grant, legs up to here?” he asked,
holding his hand up to his chin. “Wouldn’t mind having a go on her.”
“You wouldnae stand a chance, ya Brummie cunt,” said Chuck.
“They Americans love the Scottish accent. She’d be all over me and
Graham.”
“Bagsy first shot on her!” laughed Graham.
 “Aye, I’ll only have to wait thirty seconds then!”
This brought a chorus of laughter from the other two. It didn’t take
much, especially on the long, sterile night shifts. There wasn’t a lot of
work for the men to do. The Grant Organisation employed them
solely to keep the machines running, and to make as much racket as
possible doing so.
Graham, the deepest thinker of the three, worried that when the
miserable old bat in the cottage by the sea moved out, they would
lose their jobs. But he didn’t mention it in front of the others, too
afraid they would rib him for it. One time he had made the mistake of
wearing his glasses to the site, and months later, some of the
workers still referred to him as Einstein because of that blunder. Hell,
all he had to do was fire up the machinery and drive a vehicle up and
down a mud track a few times. He didn’t need to see properly to
perform that simple task. Fuck it, he didn’t even need to be sober.
He unscrewed his flask and took a drink of his coffee. It was Irish,
just as he liked it, and he felt the warmth sloshing around in his
empty belly. The moon was full and bright, and he gazed up at it.
Denny and Chuck were discussing the finer points of the female
anatomy, namely whether the G spot was real or, in Denny’s words,
whether it was some shite made up by hairy-legged feminists. Denny
hated feminists.
“It’s all bollocks,” Denny was saying. “No woman’s ever had an
orgasm while I’ve been shagging her. It’s made up. They’re trying to
turn all the birds into lezzers.”
Chuck turned to Graham. “What do you think, Einstein?”
“Eh?”
“Is it real?”
But Graham didn’t answer. He was looking past the men, across
the moonlit fields, to where he saw movement. He took a draw on his
cigarette. “Here, someone’s coming, lads.”
“Balls they are,” said Chuck.
“No, he’s right,” said Denny, following Graham’s gaze. “I see
someone. I think it’s a fuckin’ bird.”
That got Chuck’s attention. He turned to look.
A ghostly white figure stalked across the dunes. A woman, her
long hair billowing behind her.
Graham squinted. “Is she…”
“She is,” said Denny. “She’s fucking starkers!”
The woman strode purposefully, her bare breasts bouncing with
each step.
“You alright, love?” shouted Denny.
She didn’t answer, just kept walking towards them, seemingly
unashamed of her nakedness. Graham felt a stirring in his groin, and
knew the others did too. He reached into his jeans and adjusted his
cock as the woman drew closer. Shit, she wasn’t a woman. She was
a girl, barely out of her teens.
“Look at the fucking knockers on her,” said Denny. He sounded
impressed, and Graham couldn’t blame him. The girl was gorgeous,
with eyes so grey they sparkled. Her long brown hair cascaded over
her shoulders to the top of her breasts, her shapely legs leading to
the dark patch between her thighs, something Denny had always
said he despised.
Birds should shave their cunts, he would say at the slightest
provocation. If I want to shag a hairy beast, I’ll visit Graham’s mum at
the zoo.
It didn’t seem to bother him now, though.
“Bit chilly for what you’re wearing, eh?” he said, before glancing
at Graham and Chuck with a cheeky grin plastered to his face. He
turned back to the girl. “Need me to warm you up?”
 She stopped and looked at the men. Her skin glistened in the
moonlight.
“Are you okay?” said Graham. “Where are your clothes?”
“Who needs clothes?” said Chuck, taking a bold step towards the
girl. Graham expected her to recoil, to shrink back in alarm, but she
welcomed Chuck with open arms and a smile.
Chuck’s bravado diminished. He hesitated, as if worried he was
walking into a trap. The girl never stopped, though. She enveloped
Chuck in her arms, rubbing herself against his torso.
“What the fuck?” whispered Graham.
“Hey, wait a bleeding minute,” said Denny. “What about me? I
saw her first.”
The girl pulled away from Chuck and held a hand out to Denny.
“All are welcome,” she said. Her voice was funny, deeper than
Graham would have expected, her speech rather stilted. He
wondered if she was on drugs. If Denny was thinking the same thing,
he wasn’t showing it. He was already tugging his jeans down over
his hairy arse, stumbling as they caught on his work boots. Kicking
the last of his clothes off, Denny shoved Chuck to one side, burying
his face between the girl’s breasts with slobbering intensity.
Chuck, not wanting to challenge the alpha male, went behind the
girl, kissing and licking the back of her neck, pressing up against her
naked skin, his own jeans and soiled underpants bunched up around
his knees.
Graham wanted to join in. He took a tentative step forwards, but
something in the girl’s face stopped him. She looked straight at him,
but her face was devoid of emotion, a department store mannequin
gesturing emptily at him.
“Come,” she said. “Participate in the reverie.”
 It was a weird thing to say. He watched Chuck spit into his palm
and rub the fluid on his dick, and then the girl’s body jerked as he
entered her roughly from behind. It didn’t appear to phase her. Hell,
she hardly noticed.
“Join in or fuck off, Einstein,” said Denny as he placed his hands
on the girl’s shoulders, forcing her to kneel before him.
Graham fumbled with the zipper on his jacket.
The girl took Denny’s cock in her mouth as he clasped his hands
behind his head, eyes closing in exquisite ecstasy. Graham paused,
staring in wide-eyed fascination at the deep, undulating grooves left
by Denny’s fingers in the girl’s shoulders.
“Jesus,” he said, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh.
Chuck knelt behind the girl. “Fuck, she’s done this before!” he
laughed, as he pounded against her body, her ass cheeks wobbling
with each wet smack. Actually, thought Graham, wobbling wasn’t the
right word. Her skin rippled up her torso as far as her armpits, like
Chuck’s cock was a pebble dropped in a fleshy pond. “Come on,
Einstein!” roared Chuck. “Have a go! It’s like throwing a sausage
down an alley!”
The girl beckoned Graham onwards. He shook his head.
“Fuck me, lads, the slut’s deep throating me!” said Denny.
Graham watched as the girl’s jaw appeared to dislocate to
accommodate him, her neck bulging. The skin around her jugular
stretched, becoming translucent, the fat purple head of Denny’s cock
visible through the straining flesh.
It burst through.
“Woah,” was all Denny said, aware that something was wrong,
but not that his penis had torn through the gauzy skin of the girl’s
neck. Then he started to scream.
 At first, Graham thought it was the girl. He had never heard
Denny scream before. He had never heard anybody scream as
loudly and as piercingly as Denny did then.
The girl’s mouth was wide open, her head tilted, teeth clamped
onto either side of Denny’s waist. Smoke rose from his hips as the
girl expelled some sort of thick paste from her open jaws. Denny’s
upper torso sloped backwards, his belly opening up and spilling the
pungent contents of his stomach over the girl’s head. His legs
remained rigid as his upper half split from them and slammed heavily
onto the ground.
Chuck finally noticed the commotion.
“Denny!” he roared. “Denny!”
He tried to pull himself from between the girl’s buttocks.
“What the fuck!” he screamed, placing both hands on her arse
cheeks and trying to push himself free. “I’m fucking stuck!”
Her skin tore open and swallowed his hands whole, right up to
the elbows. The momentum forced Chuck forwards, his face
smacking off her lower back. When he tried to raise his head, he
couldn’t. He was glued to her, the skin stretching and contorting like
it was alive. It wrapped around Chuck’s head like a mummy’s
bandages, drawing him in. Blood and ooze and thick white goo
bubbled and frothed as their bodies melted as one, while up front her
once-pretty face erupted in red, blossoming mouths that puckered
and slurped at Denny’s torso. Each swollen mouth displayed rows of
sharpened teeth, all the way back to where the throat would be, as
they lapped up blood and chewed on tissue.
Graham was rooted to the spot, staring in abject horror at the
abomination that was eating his co-workers. The stumps of Denny’s
legs toppled into the dirt, and the gruesome sound snapped Graham
back to some weird semblance of unreality. He stepped away, trying
to tear his eyes from Chuck’s rigid, screaming face, still somehow
discernible through the girl’s skin.
Graham took one more step, and then a giant, inhuman eyeball
appeared on the girl’s shoulder. Through it, he saw pieces of Chuck
floating around, bubbles rising as the skin disintegrated, peeling
away in ghastly thin ribbons.
Vine-like protuberances shot out from the girl, coiling themselves
around Graham’s arms and legs. They tightened, cutting through
flesh and muscle like razor wire until they scraped across his bones.
Graham dropped to his knees, swooning as thick jets of hot blood
spurted erratically from his limbs, while Avalon feasted beneath a
full, fat moon that watched over proceedings with all the callous
indifference of nature.
 20

T .
That was Muriel’s first thought when she woke to the smell of
burning. In her dream, she had been trapped in Arthur’s cottage as
flames roared around her, the building a blazing inferno that turned
the furniture — and Arthur’s body — into crumbling black ash. She
stood at the window, thumping her fists off the glass as Billy waited
outside, watching impassively, his hands in his suit pockets. In the
dream, he was smiling.
Muriel clambered out of bed and wrenched open the door, where
she was greeted by plumes of grey smoke. She recognised the
smell, then grimaced and waved her hand in front of her face,
following the sounds of clattering dishes as she marched down the
hallway in her nightie and slippers.
Billy was in the kitchen, the sleeves of his wedding suit rolled up
to the elbows. Bacon sizzled in a pan. Well, perhaps sizzled wasn’t
the word. It was charred, dark and crispy and burning.
“Good morning, Muriel.”
She opened her mouth to reply and choked on the smoke.
“Goodness gracious,” she coughed. “Open a window!”
 He looked at her blankly, and she elbowed past him and
unlocked the frame, hoisting it up. Cold air infiltrated the kitchen,
swirling the smoke around in rolling spirals. She took the pan off the
hob and tossed the cremated strips of bacon into the garden.
Billy smiled at her. “I made you breakfast,” he said.
She glared at him. “You should’ve been a comedian with that
sense of timing.”
“Comedian? I’m not familiar with the term.”
“You’re hard work, you know that?”
He said nothing.
“A comedian makes jokes,” she said. “You know, to make people
laugh.”
“Like a court jester?”
She ran the pan under the cold water. “It’s been a while since you
were on land, hasn’t it?”
“I ate a jester once,” he said in response. “He tasted funny.”
Muriel started scrubbing the greasy pan. “Thank goodness you’re
handsome,” she muttered. “Here, get out of my kitchen. Sit down
and I’ll make us something.”
“Nothing for me,” he said.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
As the words left her lips, she realised she knew the answer. Last
night came back to her in heartstopping clarity, that moment of
staring into the eyes of her younger self, like looking into a haunted
mirror and seeing the past. The pan slipped from her hand and
landed on a glass tumbler, breaking it.
“My God,” she said. “What did you do?”
“I made breakfast.”
“Before that, I mean. Last night. You…”
“I fed, and now I feel strong. I thought you would be happy.”
 “Happy? Billy, you were me. You can’t just go around turning into
me whenever you want. What if someone—”
“Recognises you?”
She chuckled drily. “Fine. But why me? Why a woman? Did you
at least put some clothes on?”
“Clothes were not necessary.”
“They’re always bloody necessary, Billy. Especially in Scotland.”
His face was expressionless. “I thought you would be happy,” he
repeated. “Don’t you hear it?”
“Hear what? I’m quite serious, you can’t—”
But then she did hear it.
The silence.
A shiver ran the length of her spine. The machines had stopped.
She turned and scurried into the hall, grabbing her coat and
opening the front door. Stepping out into the morning, she let the
breeze envelop her and listened, trying to identify the far-off sounds
of workers and radios and machinery… but there were none. All was
still, save for the subtle harmonies of nature.
The waves, so calming and distant. The wind whipping off the
side of the building and shivering the grass. Seagulls cawing over
the sea.
She realised Billy was by her side. He took her hand. “Do you—”
“Shhhh,” she said. “Listen to it.” Tears pricked her eyes. “It’s so
beautiful.”
The sun hovered far above them, and she felt the pleasing heat
radiating on her cheeks.
“You did it. You stopped the noise.”
“Only for a while,” said Billy.
“Aye. But for now…”
She squeezed his hand. It felt firmer, more lifelike.
 Billy turned to her, the morning light on his face, the wind running
through his hair.
“Would you care to accompany me on a walk?” he asked, and
Muriel smiled and said she would.

They took the coastal path, heading onto the beach when the ground
underfoot became too muddy and treacherous. Muriel realised she
still had her slippers on, so she kicked them off and let her bare feet
sink into the sand. She felt twenty years old again.
They passed the rock where she had found Avalon that fateful
day, but neither of them mentioned it. Things were different now. It
was Billy she was with, Billy whose hand she clutched. Not Avalon’s.
He didn’t even have hands.
She stole an adoring glance at him, enjoying his company,
enjoying the tranquillity. Just the two of them, surrounded by peace
and stillness, the way life used to be.
“How many?” she asked suddenly, her curiosity getting the better
of her.
“I don’t understand the question,” said Billy.
“You seem strong. Stronger than before. How… how big a meal
did you have?”
“Three courses,” he said, stony-faced. “That was humour.”
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
“I consumed three men.”
“Okay, yes, I got it.”
“And humans often talk about three course meals.”
She stopped and stared at him. “Billy, I got the joke.”
 He looked oddly wounded. “I was being a comedian. Did you not
find it funny?”
She paused a moment. “You and your friend didn’t use humour
much, did you?”
“We communicated largely through intercourse.”
“Oh my,” said Muriel, her cheeks colouring.
“We could do it,” he said. “I know how.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re too old for that nonsense.” She looked Billy
over. “Well, maybe you’re not. But I am. I’m coming up for ninety, you
big galoot.” She waited for him to say something, her heart beating
fast. When he didn’t, she turned from him and resumed walking. Billy
followed.
She wanted to be with him. To lie in his arms, to feel his tender
caresses. But who was she kidding? She couldn’t get up to that
malarky these days. She’d break a hip. And anyway, it wouldn’t be
fair. He still looked so youthful. He was half her age, for crying out
loud. She wondered if perhaps he could make himself a bit more…
age appropriate?
“Here we are,” said Billy.
Muriel looked up. The entrance to Rory’s Cave beckoned.
“You brought me here,” she said.
“You thought about it a lot.”
He placed his hand on the small of her back and gently urged her
towards the cliffs over soft sand that whirled around their feet in
hypnotic circles, and in her mind they were young again, two lovers
setting out on an adventure, unprepared for what awaited them but
brimming with the confidence and swagger of youth.
They entered the cave.
“Close your eyes,” said Billy, and Muriel did. What did it matter? It
was pitch black. “I’ll guide you.”
 As if he needed to. Muriel knew Rory’s cave inside and out. So
many afternoons whiled away in here singing, after her duties
around the cottage and garden were complete. So many memories.
Three steps forward. Left turn. Duck your head.
The whole way, Billy’s hand pulsed with its sweetly numbing
effect.
“You can look now,” said Billy, his voice reverberating off the
smoothly rounded walls.
“I don’t know what you expect me to—”
Muriel opened her eyes. For the longest time, she simply stood
and stared, letting her tears quietly fall.
“I… I…”
But there were no words in her vocabulary to describe what she
felt deep down in her soul.
The cave was lit by candles. Hundreds of them. They lined the
walls. They were perched on rocky outcrops, and glowed softly in
nooks and crannies. A red and white blanket lay across the sand, a
bottle of wine and two glasses atop it. Muriel slowly spun around,
taking in the glorious vision. It was as she remembered it the day of
Billy’s proposal, right down to the smallest, most imperceptible detail.
The only thing missing was the faint whiff of fish and seawater
emanating from Billy himself. She turned to him, awestruck, and he
took her in his broad arms.
“Are you happy?” he asked.
“Oh, Billy… it’s—”
He kissed her.
Muriel felt a tremble within her as she ran her hands through
Billy’s hair. She looked into his eyes, tracing her finger down his
face… but something was off. The hand.
It wasn’t hers.
 It was young, with not a wrinkle or liver spot in sight. And yet it
was attached to her arm. Her impeccably smooth and youthful arm.
“What have you done?” she said, touching her face. It was soft
but firm, the skin around her neck tight.
“It can’t last,” said Billy. “It tires me. But for now… enjoy it.”
“I love you,” said Muriel, and at that moment, the creature known
as Avalon couldn’t have been further from her mind. She embraced
Billy with a passion and vigour missing from her life for so many
years, bursting open his shirt, the buttons popping and falling
forgotten to the sand as he unzipped her winter coat and she stood
before him in her frilly pink nightie, feeling ridiculous but also
insanely, unbelievably aroused.
“Is this real?” she asked quietly.
Billy looked at her and smiled. “Does it matter?”
“No,” she said, as Billy laid her body down across the blanket.
She gazed up at him, and her heart filled with so much love she
feared it might burst. “I don’t think it does.”

They lay together, Muriel’s head resting on Billy’s chest, the blanket
wrapped around them. The candles flickered, casting weird shadows
on the cave walls. Muriel watched them with fascination, as content
as she’d ever been. She sighed, and it came out like a purr, which
made her laugh.
She wondered what time it was, then decided she didn’t care. If
time had any common decency, it would stop altogether and leave
them frozen in this one perfect moment for all eternity.
“I can’t lose you again,” she said.
 Billy stroked her hair, now a lustrous brown rather than the dull
grey it had been when she woke up that morning. “You won’t have
to.”
“But don’t you need to go back to… wherever you came from?”
“If I have food and water, I can stay as long as required. I have
lived for eons. I have seen civilisations rise and crumble. Your
lifetime is but a drop in the ocean to me.” He waited, letting his words
hang in the air, then punctured the silence. “And it’s nice to have a
friend again. You’re a good person, Muriel. I won’t let any harm come
to you. I know you regretted never saying goodbye to him… to me…
but this time it won’t be necessary. I will be by your side until the
end.”
She thought she might cry again, but she was all out of tears.
He smiled and touched her cheek. “Though perhaps you could
teach me the intricacies of making breakfast.”
She stared at him for what felt like forever. “Was that another
joke?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do believe it was.”
 21

H - - , .
The machines had started up again, and Muriel could identify the
flashing lights of police cars in the distance. She wondered what was
left of the men Billy had fed on. He always had been a messy eater.
As they walked, she felt herself slowing down. The old aches and
pains were returning, and when she looked at her hands, they had
aged many years.
Billy grunted and rested a hand on her shoulder. He was stooped
over, his chin flat against his chest.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Tired.”
“Shall we stop and rest awhile? I wouldn’t mind a wee seat
myself.”
“No. We should keep going.” He offered her a grave glance, and
she understood. He was losing strength. Making her young again —
whether it was reality or an illusion — had taken a powerful toll on
him.
“Will you make it back?”
“I’m… not certain.”
 Muriel stuffed a hand into her coat pocket. There, she found a
tissue and a scrunched up SPAR carrier bag she used to carry eggs
from the chicken coop.
“Would this be any use?” she asked, holding up the bag.
“Is it made of flesh and blood?”
“No, you big oaf. I mean, if you made yourself,” — she struggled
to find the right word — “small again, I could carry you in this.”
He looked at her with sad eyes, his mouth a narrow slit. “That
might work.”
His eyeballs rolled up into their sockets, and immediately his face
started to droop, the flesh bubbling, tiny pin-prick holes appearing as
the skin stretched and—
“Wait!” cried Muriel. “Take your suit off first!”
He froze, and in his impossibly wide mouth she saw a large milky
eye staring at her. Billy remained like that as he fumbled with his
shirt buttons, his fingers dribbling down the crisp white cotton.
Muriel helped him. “You’re not the one that’s going to have to
wash this,” she muttered, ignoring the fact that her husband’s face
was slowly disintegrating. She stripped him, then laid the bag on the
sand and made him step into it. His skin was already peeling, and
pieces of it were stuck to the inside of his trouser legs.
“You will continue to feed me, won’t you, Muriel?” he said, his
words slurred and barely legible.
“Of course I will,” she replied. “You’re my husband, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am.”
She turned her back on him as he dissolved completely. A couple
should always have a little privacy, she thought. It was what had
made them such a strong pair. They had spent a lot of time apart,
with Billy at sea for up to ten hours a day, six days a week. As was
tradition among fisherman, he never worked Sundays, and though
he didn’t attend church — the existence of God was one of the few
things they disagreed on — he always walked her there and picked
her up afterwards.
She heard him slopping wetly into the bag, and turned to find him
looking up at her. He fit perfectly, and she lifted the bag by the
handles.
“Comfortable?”
He blinked at her.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
She set off along the beach with the sun on her back and her
husband dangling from her hand in a carrier bag. Gosh, she was
sleepy! Her steps became leaden, leaving long troughs in the sand.
For a while there, she had forgotten what it felt like to be old. Over
the course of a lifetime, it’s possible to get used to the failure of the
human body. But right now it was all coming at once, and she felt
herself growing more and more fragile with each laboured step. She
moved the bag to her other hand, inspecting the dark purple bruises
on her wrist and fingers from where it had pressed.
“Not long now,” she said, praying that the cottage would come
into view soon. When it did, the sight reinvigorated her, and she
marched onwards with renewed hope, hope that died an instant
death the moment she spotted the black truck parked outside her
gate. As ever, a security guard loitered by the vehicle.
Muriel sped up, even though her aching bones urged her not to.
The toothy woman was there in her suit, a dark grey one this time,
trying to peer through the window. She knew why they were here.
They had sent men to kill her last night, and had now arrived to
admire their handiwork. Well, if that woman expected to find Muriel
dangling from a rope in the living room, she was in for a shock.
“Get off my property,” Muriel shouted.
 Startled, the woman turned to her, staring as if she couldn’t
believe her eyes. The look of disbelief quickly gave way to one of
barely concealed, seething anger.
“Miss McAuley,” she said through gritted teeth. “What a pleasant
surprise.”
Muriel approached the gate, ignoring the security guard. “Didn’t
expect to see me? Come round to check on me, see if I’m still alive?”
The woman licked her lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”
Those men you sent round last night, she almost said, then
thought better of it. Those men were dead. She had to play it cool,
and not be drawn into saying something incriminating. After all, she
was an accessory to murder now.
“Then why are you here?” asked Muriel, choosing her words
carefully. “I hoped I’d seen the last of you.”
The woman forced an ugly smile. “I’m here on business, actually.”
She looked closely at Muriel. “Three of our workers disappeared last
night. I was wondering if you knew anything about it?”
“You think I killed them?”
“I said they disappeared. I never said anything about them being
killed.”
Suddenly Muriel was on the back foot. She glanced down at the
carrier bag in her hand. “Aye, well… I was asleep.”
“I also never said what time.”
Muriel took a breath. She had to stop blurting out answers and
consider her responses, but her heart was racing, and she was tired,
and she needed to get Billy into the bath.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
She moved towards her door, and the woman stepped in front,
blocking her passage.
 “For what it’s worth, Miss McAuley, the police say they were
murdered. They left their belongings behind, you see. And blood. A
hell of a lot of blood.”
“Why are you telling me this?” The carrier bag swung by her side.
“I’m eighty-four years old. You can’t think I had anything to do with it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. People are capable of crazy things when
they’re backed into a corner. Like a last-ditch attempt to frighten off
property developers. Would you stoop to murder, Miss McAuley?”
“No,” Muriel shot back sharply. “Would you?”
The woman raised her thin eyebrows. “Certainly not. We’re a
respectable organisation. The Grants do everything by the book.”
Her eyes flicked down to the carrier bag dangling from Muriel’s hand.
“What have you got there?”
“Nothing,” Muriel answered, far too quickly.
“You keep staring at it. You weren’t out disposing of evidence,
were you?”
“How dare you,” said Muriel, a tremor working its way through her
limbs. “I think you should lea—”
The woman was fast. She lunged for the carrier bag and grabbed
it from Muriel’s firm grasp. The plastic handle tore, Muriel’s heart
stopping as the bag fell, splatting onto the ground between them.
She dropped to her knees as the contents leaked onto the grass.
“A bag of slime,” said the woman with evident distaste. “How…
delightful.”
That’s my husband you’re talking about, thought Muriel, as she
started to scoop Billy back into the bag, taking great care not to hurt
him.
The woman stood over her, watching. “You missed a bit,” she
said, pointing her toe towards an errant piece of goo. Muriel reached
for it, and the woman pressed her foot down, grinding it beneath her
heel.
“Stop!” shouted Muriel. “You’ll hurt him!” She tried to prise the foot
up, but the woman wouldn’t relent. Muriel gripped her ankle and dug
sharp nails into the flesh, drawing blood.
“Jesus fuck!” shrieked the woman, kicking free and retreating to
safety.
“Everything okay, ma’am?” came a man’s voice, followed by the
sound of the security guard’s hurried footsteps crunching on the
gravel path.
“It’s fine. This bitch is fucking crazy, that’s all.” She inspected her
ankle, then glared at Muriel. “That was it. Your last chance, and you
just fucked up, big time.” She smiled, displaying those pearly white
teeth again. “We’ll be back soon.”
Muriel looked at the contents of the carrier bag, then turned her
head towards the woman. Her heart beat furiously in her chest.
“Wait,” she said.
The woman paused.
Muriel tried to smile. “Please, come inside for a minute. I want to
show you something.”
And just like that, it was out there. An invitation to murder.
Billy was hungry. He needed fed, he needed strength.
And this woman — this horrible, awful woman — needed to die.
“Fuck off,” she said, abandoning all pretences. “There’s nothing in
there that I want to see.” She walked towards the gate, and Muriel
crawled after her.
“Wait! I’ll sign the deal! You can have my home, just come
inside!”
“Too late,” came the sharp reply.
 Muriel grabbed the woman’s trouser leg and tugged on it. “Stop!
Come inside! Please!”
The woman tried to shake free, and Muriel wrapped her arms
around her leg, clinging on for dear life.
“Jesus, would you help?” the woman said to the security guard.
“She’s pulling my pants down!”
Muriel was, but she didn’t care. She had to stop her from leaving.
“Just come inside, I’m begging you!”
“Get the fuck off me!”
The woman’s trousers slid down past her hips, Muriel digging her
fingers into the fabric like a toddler throwing a tantrum. The woman
slapped and kicked her, and then the burly security guard’s hands
were on Muriel’s shoulders.
“No! No! Leave me alone! Get them, Billy! Get them!”
But he didn’t. He just lay there, resting in his bag.
The guard wrenched Muriel free. Fabric tore, and she noticed she
had taken the back pocket of the woman’s trousers with her. The
guard shoved her backwards, and she hit the dirt, rolling onto her
side. Winded from the impact, she struggled to breathe, tears
stinging her eyes.
The woman hauled her torn trousers up and stared at Muriel with
seething fury. “You bitch,” she spat. “Think you can humiliate me?
Huh?” She shook her head. “You don’t know the meaning of
humiliation, old lady. Just you wait. I’m gonna fucking destroy you.”
She turned to leave, and when her arse crack flashed into view
through the enormous split in the back of her trousers, Muriel burst
out laughing. The laughter soon turned into a coughing fit, and she
lay there choking as the pair got into their car and drove off down the
dirt track.
 It was a while before she was able to get to her hands and knees
and make her way towards Billy. She carried him inside, limping as
she did so, her body wracked with pain, her head throbbing.
In the bathroom, she topped up the water and slid Billy out of the
bag. He was dull and colourless as he splashed in, the big eye
remaining resolutely closed. Sustenance was what he needed, but
where could Muriel get any now?
She sat on the toilet lid and looked at him.
“You old fool,” she said, her breaths coming in gasps. “You
wasted your strength on me.”
She had to return the favour. Holding her arm up to her mouth,
she pinched some flesh and bit down on it. The pain was
excruciating, her wet eyes closing as her incisors sliced through the
skin and blood frothed to the surface. She spat out the small mound
of flesh and held her arm over the bath, letting the fluid drip into the
water. Billy drank heartily, though it wasn’t enough. It was never
enough.
“What now?” she said to the empty room, too exhausted to think.
All she knew was that the woman would return.
Well, that was fine. Billy would just have to wait a little longer.
They hadn’t entertained visitors together in quite some time.
It would be nice to have someone round for dinner.
 22

T .
Muriel stayed in the cottage, nursing her bruises and looking out
the window, waiting for the woman to arrive with the police, or
another gang of hired killers to show up… but they never did.
As the sun set and night’s dark cloak settled across the
landscape, the machines shut down, and blessed, heavenly silence
descended. Concerned, she checked on Billy. What if he was—
No, he was still there, drifting in the bathtub.
She wondered what had caused the workers to stop.
It was a bad omen.
She sat back in her chair and tried to enjoy the silence, but it had
never felt so threatening. She put the telly on and flicked through the
channels, unable to find anything she wanted to watch. Instead of
switching it off, she left it playing in the background. Funny. She had
gotten so used to the noise that now the quiet bothered her.
Billy was hungry. His voice rattled around her head like a stone in
a shoe.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ll just have to wait.” Her own stomach
grumbled, and she realised she hadn’t eaten all day. There were
some crackers in the cupboard, so she crunched on a couple of
them. They were dry and flavourless, and she gave up after eating
two and joined Billy in the bathroom, perching on the toilet in her
robe and slippers.
The razorblade that Billy had flung from her hand last week was
still half-sticking out of the wall. She attempted to pluck it free, but it
was stuck fast, so she removed her blood-soaked bandage and
flattened her arm against the wall, feeling the sharpness of the razor
against her skin. Wincing in anticipation, she scratched her arm
down the blade. Then she stepped out of her slippers and climbed
into the bath with Billy, sitting in silence and letting him drink from
her. As she did, a strange melancholy worked its way through her
bones. It was an inexplicable feeling, like things were gradually
coming to an end. She supposed they were.
She looked at Billy and imagined his human face. What if she
never saw it again? If they came and took her away, would they put
him in a zoo? An aquarium? Or worse, take him to a lab to be cut
open and experimented on?
No. She would die before allowing that to happen.
“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. I don’t fear
death,” she said. Billy looked at her through his glassy eye. “When
the time comes, I will accept my fate and take my place by the Lord’s
side. I know there’s something afterwards. I don’t know what, but I
know there is. I’ve always had faith. I’ve lived a long life, and I’ve
tried to be the best person I could, even though I’ve made mistakes.
We all do. That’s what life is. A series of mistakes you learn from.”
She glanced at Billy with love in her eyes, the light reflecting off his
transparent form. “Billy McAuley, you were the best thing that ever
happened to me. When you left, my heart broke. I wasn’t sure it was
fixable. I wasn’t sure I wanted it fixed. Some nights, I thought it would
be best if I just closed my eyes and never opened them again. At
least then I might see you again. But something kept me going, kept
me carrying on all these years.” She smiled sadly. “It was hope, Billy.
I always had hope. And now, here you are. You’re back. You were
taken too soon.” She paused. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to you
then, and I don’t intend to now. We belong together, Billy McAuley,
and that’s how we shall stay. Together.”
Billy swam towards her, layering his slick body over her chest and
shoulders in an approximation of a hug. Muriel closed her eyes and
thought of Patrick Grant’s smug face, of his son Conor kicking her to
the ground, of the woman with the perfect teeth…
She thought of them all, and she smiled.
“I don’t fear death,” she said. “But they do.”
 23

W …
Engines roaring…
Voices, chatter, shouted orders…
Muriel’s eyes flickered open. What was all the commotion out
there? She yawned and shuffled around until her legs dangled off
the edge of the bed, letting the cold air wake her.
So much noise. But not the usual ribald banter of the workers,
nor the incessant clang of the infernal machinery. Different sounds.
Louder. Closer.
Much closer.
Cars engines idled. Several of them, right outside her door, like
she had woken up in a car park. As Muriel rubbed the sleep from her
eyes, she understood it meant one thing.
It was time.
She tucked her feet into her slippers and stood, stretching stiffly.
Doddering through to the kitchen, she pulled aside the curtains and
peered out.
“Lord in heaven.”
At least twenty black cars were parked on the road to her
cottage, from her front gate to beyond the dunes and out of sight.
Men paced back and forth, speaking into walkie-talkies and glancing
around shiftily, one hand tucked into their jackets. They surrounded a
small group of people near her garden, well-groomed men in
impeccable suits. She recognised one of them immediately.
Patrick Grant, in the flesh.
What was he doing here? Didn’t he live in America? The last time
he had visited Witchaven to oversee progress of the golf course, the
locals had pelted him with fish and rotten fruit. Back then, there had
been a full village to stand against him, rather than one stubborn old
woman.
Grant’s son Conor lounged by his side, struggling against the
wind to keep his hair under control. He barked words at a young
woman, who scurried away to one of the vehicles. She returned
moments later with something in her hand, which she rubbed into his
hair, before holding up a mirror so he could admire himself. He
nodded approvingly, though Muriel noted he didn’t say thank you.
She expected nothing less from such a contemptible family of
reprobates.
Patrick Grant — the billionaire arsehole himself, in all his foul
glory — waited while another young girl in a short skirt attached a
small electronic device to the lapel of his jacket. Beside him stood
the woman with the perfect teeth. She clutched a briefcase and
shivered in the cold, shooting occasional glances at Muriel’s
property, no doubt plotting her revenge.
Muriel didn’t like this at all. She had thought a couple of people
might come, enough to feed to Billy and dispose of without alerting
anyone. That Grant himself would show up with his whole three-ring
circus had never occurred to her. There were too many of them. Far
too many.
 Her hand trembled, and she gripped the curtains, almost pulling
them from the rail. There was no way out. What could she do?
Escape out the back window? Nonsense. She would never make it.
And anyway, how could she take Billy with her?
Billy.
They would find him. He didn’t have the strength to defend
himself. He needed blood. Blood and flesh.
Then Muriel spotted it.
A nondescript white van amongst the other vehicles, its paintwork
dulled by time and the Scottish elements. But visible through the
grime and dirt were three words that sent electric shocks sparking
through her body.
The Beechburn Institute.
She knew of it. A psychiatric hospital near Inverness, it had been
in the papers recently with stories about the appalling living
conditions and inhumane treatment of its patients. Muriel recalled
seeing photos of tiny square cells with faeces smeared on the walls,
and of tear-streaked faces staring vacantly through iron bars.
“My God,” she whispered.
They were going to have her committed.
The realisation stunned her. How could they? She was of
perfectly sound mind! They… they wouldn’t dare.
Grant chatted idly with his attractive young assistant, his arm
snaking around her waist, hand firmly gripping one arse cheek.
Conor elbowed him and gestured towards the cottage. Muriel
realised he was pointing directly at her.
She closed the curtains, knowing it was too late. There would be
no stopping them now. The men in white were here to take her away
in a straightjacket and fling her into a padded cell to live out the rest
of her miserable existence. Never again would she gaze out over the
ocean, or feel the sand between her toes, or smell the sea air. Her
home would be demolished. Their home.
Hard knuckles rapped urgently against the front door.
“Mrs McAuley, we know you’re in there.”
She stumbled into the bathroom in a daze. “Billy! They’re here!”
He floated to the surface, blinking lazily at her, and she plunged
her hands into the water, attempting to grasp him, to shake him. He
seeped through her fingers like pus oozing from a sore.
“Billy!”
“Who’s she talking to?” said a voice outside. “I thought she lived
alone?”
A harsh knock again. No wonder they thought she was insane,
the way she had carried on the other day, scooping up jellied pieces
of her husband into a carrier bag and clinging on to that awful
woman’s leg. She had dug her own grave by acting so foolish!
Leaning on the bath, Muriel pushed herself up. Billy was going to
be no help here. She would have to defend herself. As she stood, a
glint of light caught the razorblade in the bathroom wall. Once more,
she tried and failed to prise it free. What did it matter? It was too
small to intimidate them. She needed something bigger. The kitchen
knife? No. What about…
She moved into the hall. The wicker basket sat by the front door,
filled with chopped logs, the hand axe lying atop them.
What are you doing?
She didn’t know. She reached hesitantly for the weapon.
Are you planning on using that?
No, of course not. It was a warning, that was all. To show them
she meant business, and that she wouldn’t be turfed out of her own
home by a shower of rascals.
 They knocked again, unaware that the door was propped shut
only by Muriel’s welly boots and a bin bag.
“If you don’t let us in, we’re going to break down the door.”
Muriel took the axe handle in her shaking hand. “Go ahead,” she
said. “It’s reinforced. You’ll never get in.”
“We’ll see about that,” she heard a man mutter, then listened as
quick footsteps charged towards the door. It burst open easily,
propelling the welly boots across the hall as a security guard came
flying in, unprepared for the lack of resistance. His head thudded
against the wall, and he rubbed it as he stared at Muriel, his eyes
darting to the axe in her hands.
“She’s armed,” he shouted, fumbling in his jacket for something.
A gun?
Panic set in. Muriel dropped the axe and raised her hands.
“Don’t shoot,” she stammered, as another man entered, his
weapon already drawn.
“Put the goddam guns away,” said Patrick Grant, shoving the
second man out of the way. “The fucking TV crews will be here any
minute.”
She was surprised to hear him swear. He never did on telly, but
she supposed that was all part of the ruse.
He turned to her and offered a gregarious grin, like they were two
old friends meeting up for a coffee and a natter. “Mrs McAuley, it’s a
pleasure to finally meet you.”
She stepped out of his reach. “The pleasure is all yours,” she
managed to say as her heart hammered in her chest. The axe lay at
his feet, and he kicked it aside as he came towards her.
“Well, that’s not very nice. After all, you’re the one who’s been the
fly in my ointment, so to speak. I’ve shown you nothing but
kindness.”
 Muriel glared at him. “You’re a rotten man, Mr Grant. A filthy,
rotten man.”
Grant turned to his son. “You getting this, you fucking deadbeat?
I told you to record everything.”
“Sure thing,” said Conor, as he aimed his mobile phone at Muriel.
There were five of them in here with her now. Grant, Conor, two
security guards, and the woman bringing up the rear. Conor squinted
at his phone screen. “Hey dad. Give her the axe. I can get a shot of
her swinging it at you.”
“And what if she hits me?” said Grant. They spoke like Muriel
wasn’t present. It made her blood boil. This was her cottage. It was
her home.
“She can’t do any damage,” said Conor. “Look at her. A gust of
wind could knock her over.”
They advanced. Muriel kept reversing until she bumped into the
settee and almost lost her balance.
“Billy,” she shouted, suddenly very afraid. “Billy!”
“Who’s Billy?” Grant asked. No one had a good answer.
“She’s fucking lost it,” said the woman, puffing herself up in her
new, untorn suit. “I told you she had. You should’ve seen her with her
bag of slime.”
Grant looked at Conor. “Are you getting this?”
“Jeez, dad, shut up! I’m recording.”
It was chaos. Muriel didn’t know what to do. Her mind raced from
scenario to absurd scenario. The TV crews were coming? Is that
what Grant had said? Of course, that made sense. It was like when
Arthur had been escorted from his home in chains, the reporters
somehow already on the scene and recording. The same fate
awaited her, except they would forcibly remove her and bundle her
into a white van while the nation watched. If only Arthur were here
now.
Or Billy.
She pictured him floating in the bath, weak and powerless,
wanting to help but unable to. It was up to her now. She couldn’t let
them take her, not like this. She was all that remained between
Witchaven and its destruction, and she had to fight. But how?
“The press are here,” said the woman. “Right on time.”
Muriel glanced out the window at the approaching vehicles. More
vans blocked the road, battling for space. BBC, STV, SKY NEWS…
they came in droves, doors sliding open, young men and women in
smart clothes piling out, fixing their hair and practicing smiles.
“It’s over, McAuley,” said Grant. “You lost. Credit where it’s due,
you lasted longer than I expected, and for that you have my respect.
Not many people can’t be bought.”
“You’re a charlatan,” she said in a low voice.
“Sticks and stones,” he shrugged, then turned to the woman. “Are
they ready? Let’s get this over with. I flew halfway around the world
for this.”
“I’ll tell them the truth,” said Muriel. “I’ll—”
“You won’t tell them a damn thing!” said Grant. His face reddened
in anger. “Who’s going to believe you?”
“I’ll tell them you killed Arthur. I’ll—”
“Don’t you get it? No one gives a shit. No one cares. You’re old
and you’re poor. Society washed its hands of you a long time ago.”
“Some people care,” she said. “There’s a—”
“A few fringe weirdos, that’s all,” said Grant. “And they’ll only care
until the next issue comes along. And when it does, you’ll be
yesterday’s news. A footnote. Forgotten. Maybe one day, when I’m
taking a shit, I’ll think to myself, what was the name of that old
woman I had committed? And I’ll think real hard to myself, trying to
remember… but I won’t. Because you’re insignificant. You’re nothing.
You’re literally nothing.”
The woman put a hand to her ear, listening intently as a deep
voice crackled through her earpiece. “We’re ready to go,” she said.
Grant nodded. “Have the press been briefed?”
“Of course.”
He looked at Muriel. “We told them I’ve come here to talk to you,
to make you an offer. But you went crazy and attacked me. How do
you like that?”
Muriel said nothing, for there was nothing to say.
The game was over, and Grant had won. He had cheated, of
course, but that didn’t matter to him. Winning was all that counted. It
was all that had ever counted.
“Holy shit, look at her arms,” said Conor.
Muriel knew what he was referring to. Her arms were a
patchwork of cuts, bruises, and lacerations from where she had fed
Billy.
“What is she, one of those self harmers?”
“Who cares?” said Grant. “Get it on film.”
Conor moved in closer, and Muriel tucked her arms behind her
back. She didn’t know why she bothered. It would make no
difference. Grant was right. He was rich, and she was poor, and that
was all that mattered. The wealthy can get away with anything.
Murder, even. She considered imploring the guards to do the right
thing, appealing to their consciences, but once more, it came down
to money. Grant was paying them, not her. They would do anything
he asked.
No, she was completely out of options. She was finished.
 Muriel didn’t want to, but she started to cry. She couldn’t help it.
To have it end like this after everything she had been through, carted
off to the loony bin on national telly, her home destroyed, Billy cruelly
taken from her once again. She wiped away a tear. This would be
the second time she never got to say goodbye.
It was too much to bear. Muriel’s body sagged. She was so tired.
Tired of Grant, tired of the noise… tired of living. She knew she
shouldn’t complain. She had glimpsed happiness, which was more
than some people could say, but now her sad little dream was over,
and her time with Billy had once more come to an end.
She wiped a trail of mucus from her nose and looked at Grant.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s over. You won.”
Grant smiled. “I always do.”
“Sir, the press have gone live,” said the woman. She held up her
mobile phone, the volume raised, a man’s voice reporting on…
…the scene in Witchaven, where local woman Muriel McAuley is
currently engaged in a stand-off with billionaire Patrick Grant. It
appears she has taken hostages, and is making demands that…
Muriel tuned it out. There was only so much dishonesty she could
listen to.
“May I at least go to the bathroom?” she asked.
Grant regarded her warily. “Why, so you can call for help?”
Muriel swallowed hard. “I don’t keep a phone in the bathroom, Mr
Grant.”
“What about a cell phone?”
“I… I don’t have one.” Tears streamed down her face. She had to
get to the bathroom. She had to say goodbye to Billy. They couldn’t
part like this, not again. It would destroy her already tenuous grasp
on reality forever.
 “Please,” she said. “I’m begging you. I’ll get down on my knees if
you want.”
Grant waved a dismissive hand. “Oh stop. This is too pathetic.
Go piss, and hurry up. Every second I spend in this disgusting house
makes me want a shower.” He looked at his lackeys, and said, “I
don’t even wanna touch anything!” They laughed at that, because
that’s what he paid them to do.
As Muriel walked towards the door, Grant moved out of her way
as if she were carrying some kind of contagious disease. “Be quick
about it,” he said, then looked at the woman. “Shelly, go with her and
make sure she doesn’t try anything stupid.”
Shelly! At last Muriel had a name to go with the face and the
perfect teeth.
“I don’t want to watch an old woman piss,” said Shelly, her brow
wrinkling.
“Well, you’re gonna do exactly that,” said Grant. “Don’t let this
cunt out of your sight for even a second.”
Muriel shook her head. Imagine if he spoke like that on telly! She
had never met a celebrity before, and under different circumstances,
this peek behind the facade would have fascinated her. Not today,
though. Today she was going to do something she had dreamed of
for the last twelve years.
She was going to say goodbye to her husband.
Muriel passed Grant, then Conor, and lastly, the security guards.
Shelly lurked by the bathroom door like an unpleasant odour. She
gripped Muriel’s arm and roughly manhandled her into the bathroom,
closing the door behind them.
She produced a mobile phone from her pocket and started
tapping at its screen. “Enjoy your last piss as a free woman,” she
said off-handedly. “After the electroshock therapy, you’ll have to be
content with pissing the bed.”
Muriel ignored the remark. As she passed the bathtub, she saw
Billy simmering below the surface. He looked so placid, so tired. She
wanted to dive in there and hold him one last time, but she couldn’t,
not yet. She had something to say to him first.
Muriel hiked up her nightie and sat on the toilet. She rested her
elbows on her thighs and put her head in her hands. “This isn’t how I
planned on doing this,” she said to Billy as her bladder released.
Shelly looked up from her phone and side-eyed her. “Yeah, no
shit.”
But Muriel didn’t hear her. She was too focused on her husband.
“I thought we’d have more time. I thought we’d be together until
the end, like you said. This time, at least. Few people get second
chances—”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Please,” said Muriel, looking up at the woman. “Just let me say
this.” She stared at the bath again. “Billy McAuley, you’re the—”
“Would you shut up?” said Shelly, tucking the phone back into her
pocket in a childish display of irritation.
Muriel took several deep breaths. She glared at the woman
through wet, teary eyes, her lower lip quivering. “Let me say what I
have to say. That’s all I ask.” She turned back to the bath and tried to
speak, the words catching in her throat. “Billy,” she managed. “It’s
been—”
“Shut up!” said Shelly, as she stormed across the linoleum
towards Muriel, grabbing her arm and practically wrenching it from
the socket. “I’ve had enough of this bullshit,” she said, as Muriel fell
forwards, shooting a hand out to arrest her fall. She pressed it
against Shelly’s chest, the momentum resulting in her shoving the
woman hard. Attempting to maintain her balance, Shelly staggered
backwards, losing her footing and hitting the wall.
Her body jerked, mouth opening in a desolate silent scream as
her feet slid out from under her and she dropped to the ground,
leaving a thick trail of blood down the wall. She landed on her arse
with a bump, then slumped to the side, landing face down on the
floor. Her back was red and soaked, her suit jacket sliced open to
reveal an enormous gash that ran the length of her spine. Muriel’s
gaze followed the trail up the wall to the bloodstained razor blade.
She smiled. Billy had protected her after all!
With a desperate gasp, Shelly rose to her feet. Blood gushed
from her torn flesh, splattering across the linoleum.
“What’s going on in there?” shouted a voice from the hallway.
“You bitch,” slurred Shelly, blood trickling from the corner of her
mouth, two teeth marks puncturing her pink tongue. “What did you
do to me?”
She came for Muriel, arms outstretched, blood pooling beneath
her. Bubbles frothed to the surface of the bathwater, golden spirals
whirling through the air as Shelly staggered towards Muriel with a
tortured grimace etched onto her face. She turned to look at the
extraordinary light show, her expression turning to one of bafflement,
and as Billy rose from the water, Shelly screeched in horror and
stumbled over her own feet, falling towards the—
Crunch.
Her perfect teeth thudded against the porcelain toilet bowl. The
top row shattered, tiny fragments of dusty enamel showering into the
yellow water. The woman looked up at Muriel, eyes glazing over, her
teeth nothing but sharpened points jutting haphazardly from ruptured
gums.
 Muriel paid her no heed. She was transfixed by the colours
reflecting off the walls, spinning and pirouetting before her eyes. It
was happening. Billy was waking up.
He could smell the blood.
An oily arm erupted from the bathtub, wrapping around Shelly’s
neck. She choked out a startled wheeze as the thin cord tightened,
cutting into her skin. The veiny appendage bulged as it sucked the
spurting blood from Shelly’s throat, her face turning red, then blue,
then purple.
“Oh, Billy,” said Muriel, her heart dancing with joy as he crushed
Shelly’s windpipe. The woman let out a final savage cough, plumes
of crimson blood spilling down her chin. Her neck was no more than
an inch wide now, her bulbous head wobbling back and forth like a
balloon on a stick. Then the skin frayed, tearing, as the spinal
column crumbled to fine powder and Shelly’s head popped clean off
and thumped onto the linoleum.
Blood sprayed from the twisted and broken stump atop the
woman’s torso, as Billy’s arm groped madly across the floor.
Muriel lifted the woman’s severed head by the matted hair, the
mouth locked in a grisly snarl, eyes bloodshot and terrified. It was
surprisingly heavy, but then, it had been many years since Muriel
had held a decapitated head. She thought back to that night when
the Charlotte Dane had crashed against the rocks, and the carnage
that had washed ashore. She supposed, in a way, it had been a
portent.
“Shelly, goddammit, answer me!” roared Grant from the hallway.
Muriel smiled and tossed the head into the bathwater with a
resounding splash, listening happily as Billy fed.
The bathroom door flew open, and there stood Grant, flanked by
his security guards, their guns pointing right at her. She was
surrounded by blood, and Shelly’s headless corpse lay stiff and
lifeless in her lap.
“My god,” said Grant. “What have you done?”
Muriel looked up at him. “I kept telling her, it’s Mrs McAuley,” she
said.
Grant’s eyes remained locked on hers. “What the fuck are you
talking about?”
Muriel couldn’t seem to stop smiling. “I’d like you to meet my
husband, Mr Grant.”
 24

O G ,
the barrel of his gun pointing directly at Muriel. “Get Grant out of
here,” he shouted.
But no one else moved.
A wet slurping noise filled the air, the stench of death hanging
heavy over the room.
“I said, get him out of here,” repeated the first guard. His hand
trembled as he stepped towards the tub, craning his neck to see in.
“Someone’s in there.”
Muriel watched as Grant and his team cautiously approached the
bathtub, all except Conor, who hung back in the hallway, a fearful
expression creasing his features.
“Is it Shelly?” asked the guard.
“Can’t be. That’s Shelly… down there.”
They glanced at the headless torso cradled in Muriel’s arms, then
back to the tub. Muriel let Shelly slide off her, then crept closer until
she too could see inside the bath. They were right. There was a
body in there, a naked man lying face down in a pool of bright red
blood, his buttocks and shoulder blades rising above the surface like
plump, fleshy islands.
 “What’s going on in there?” said Conor, unable to disguise the
tremor in his voice.
Grant paid him no attention. He turned to Muriel. “What the fuck
have you done?”
She didn’t answer.
The first guard leaned over, feet firmly planted on the floor, and
prodded the man’s exposed skin with his gun. The corpse drifted
through the water, bumping gently off the side of the bath and
floating towards him again.
“He’s dead.”
“Well,” said Grant. “Who is it?”
The guard gingerly reached for the corpse’s hair. He twisted it
around his fingers until he had a good grasp, then raised the head.
“Jesus Christ.”
There was no face. Instead, slippery creatures writhed in its
place, thousands of miniature eels squirming frenziedly. Before the
man could release the monstrosity, several of the creatures lashed
out, coiling around his hand. Their dart-like faces burrowed into his
skin, long bodies slipping easily through flesh and sliding up his arm,
the tissue bulging as they entered his body. The man shrieked in
horror. He raised his gun with his other hand and fired six rounds into
the nightmarish vision, the bullets blasting through the churning
mess and slamming into the tub.
“They’re inside me!” he screamed, falling backwards as the thing
stood, thousands of obscene wriggling beasts twitching and
thrashing together to form something resembling a human physique.
“Billy,” said Muriel placidly, as she watched Grant’s jaw drop.
The guard on the floor stared at his squirming arm in utter horror.
He held his gun to his bicep and fired three shots into it, the bullets
whizzing past Muriel’s head and burrowing into the wall.
 “Get them out of me!” he cried, his arm dangling loose from his
shoulder, held in place by nothing but stretching veins and tendons,
his flesh alive with crawling horrors that rippled up his neck. He
dropped his weapon and scratched at his face, screaming, nails
digging bloody trenches in his cheeks as his eyes went dark and oily
and dozens of creatures spewed forth from his mouth in a revolting
torrent.
With a yell, Grant finally turned away, heading for the exit as
Conor, in a blind panic, slammed the door shut and ran for his life.
The closing door smacked Grant hard on the nose, and he toppled
backwards, blood gushing from the cracked appendage, his head
striking the sink. He dropped unmoving to the floor as the second
security guard opened fire, unleashing a volley of shots from his
handgun. They passed through Billy, slick bloody chunks dropping
from his torso and splatting noisily into the bath. The guard kept
pulling the trigger on his weapon, but there were no more shots to
fire. He looked at Muriel with wide-eyed fear.
“What is it?” he screamed.
She smiled to herself. “That’s my Billy.”
Forgetting all about Grant, the guard turned and bolted for the
door. As his fingers grazed the handle, he grunted. A twisting,
elongated arm penetrated the soft flesh of his back and gripped his
spine, yanking him from the door and turning him in midair. The man
howled in agony as he hurtled towards the abomination in the bath,
the creature’s chest expanding, opening, the worms slithering out the
way and forming a gaping, ragged mouth. He struck it headfirst, and
the torso crunched down on him.
The other guard was still screaming, though his cries had turned
to tortured gurgles as more and more of the bizarre eel-like beasts
plopped out of his mouth. His face had swollen up like a balloon,
lumps and tumorous boils undulating across his cheeks and
forehead. Tiny creatures that reminded Muriel of tadpoles trickled
from his eyes like black tears, until the soft orbs burst under the
pressure and millions of the creatures erupted from the sockets and
flooded the floor.
Still the man lived.
His colleague was halfway inside Billy now. His legs had stopped
kicking, dangling like limp noodles as Billy ingested him, the limbs
splitting from the torso and flopping heavily into the bath.
The room burned with fabulous, insane colours that sparkled and
whirled and danced and played, radiant hues that didn’t exist on any
known human spectrum.
Billy climbed out of the bath. He was taking shape, becoming an
approximation of a human again. Becoming himself again.
Billy. Dear old Billy. Her companion. Her lover. Her friend.
He sat atop the first security guard, steam rising as the man
sizzled and dissolved, their bodies entwining. Billy’s veins throbbed,
glowing with a neon phosphorescence almost blinding in its
starkness. Muriel smiled in wonder at it all. She already felt his
strength flowing into her, a tingle that started in her toes and ran the
length of her body. She closed her eyes, knowing that when she
opened them, Billy would be there in all his splendour, and he would
take her in his arms and—
Crack!
The noise splintered her thoughts. She opened her eyes, and, as
she expected, there was Billy, naked and covered in blood. But
something was wrong. The way he looked at her was different.
Confused, or… or worried.
What’s wrong, she tried to say, but no words came out. Instead,
she ejected a mouthful of coppery fluid. Smoke rose in the corner of
the room.
She squinted, and there was Patrick Grant, a handgun gripped in
his tight fist. His hands swayed groggily as he aimed at Muriel and
pulled the trigger a second time.
The bullet entered her right breast, her body jerking, and
suddenly she was staring at the ceiling, dark red blood arcing before
her like a crimson rainbow. Her vision blurred. She touched her
breast, and traced her finger around the small, smoking bullet hole,
the hot blood drenching her nightie.
Grant fired again, and this time the bullet rippled uselessly
through Billy’s torso. It appeared from his upper back, all velocity
gone, and fell to the ground with a light metallic clang.
“What in god’s name are you?” roared Grant as Billy stalked
towards him. He kneeled before the man and reached for his face,
the tips of his fingers sinking into tanned flesh.
“Wait!” spluttered Muriel through a mouthful of blood-flecked
phlegm. Her voice was ragged and shot, air wheezing from her
lungs.
Billy turned to her. He released Grant, letting the man’s head thud
to the floor and leaving him gasping for breath. “May I?” he said,
glancing at the bullet wound in her breast.
She nodded, watching in crazed fascination as her husband
pressed two fingers into the small hole and widened it, rummaging
around. Blood spilled and dribbled, but she felt nothing, and when
Billy withdrew his fingers with a metal shell between them, she
wasn’t surprised.
He placed his hand on her breast and held it there, a comforting
warmth spreading across her upper torso. Her skin pulled taut,
stretching to cover the damage. She knew she should be dead.
Somehow, Billy had kept her alive. But then, wasn’t that what he had
been doing for the last twelve years?
“You want me to kill him,” said Billy, his eyes flicking over to the
unconscious Grant.
“No,” said Muriel. It came out as a dry cough.
“That wasn’t a question,” Billy insisted. “I’ve seen it.” He tapped
her head. “In there. You thought about his death a lot.”
“No, I…” but she couldn’t lie. It was true, and Billy knew it. From
the first day they had met, in his own quietly perceptive way, he had
always known what she was thinking. They were soulmates. Why
else would they have found each other again after so many years
apart?
Muriel looked over at the sad, crumpled heap in the corner. Blood
leaked from the back of Grant’s head, and from several finger-sized
holes in his face.
A thought hit her. Where was Grant’s son? Had he managed to
escape? The last time she recalled seeing him was when he had
slammed the door in his father’s face. Loyalty did not run deep within
the Grant family. But did that mean—
Whirring overhead. A helicopter? Muriel glanced up as if she
could somehow see through the roof.
“Muriel McAuley,” came a voice from outside, booming through a
megaphone with authority. “We have you surrounded. Do not harm
anyone.”
She looked at Billy. He took her hand. “Too late for that,” he said,
then smiled at her. “That was another joke. I’m getting good at them.”
“Yes,” said Muriel quietly. “Yes, you are.”
“Come out with your hands up, or we will be forced to enter. ”
Were they bluffing? Muriel didn’t know. Unsurprisingly, the elderly
wife of a fisherman had never been involved in a hostage situation
before, nor a stand-off with the police.
“There doesn’t need to be any more bloodshed. Give yourself
up.”
Conor must have made it outside. What nonsense had he told
them? What lies had he spun?
Her phone was ringing. She tried to ignore it. The police would
come in soon. How many of them? How many men with guns, how
many cameras recording the events? How many people watching at
home?
The phone continued to ring.
She didn’t know what to do. Was this the end? It was all too
much. Life had been so simple, once. So enjoyable. Now it was
nothing more than a living hell. She glanced at the half-eaten
corpses of the security guards, at the slippery creatures wriggling
across the floor towards Billy. The foul stink of decay was
overpowering. She needed to get out of this damn bathroom. Might
as well answer the phone, doubtlessly the police enquiring about her
demands.
It was all so ridiculous. The only thing she wanted was for
everyone to leave her and Billy in peace. Was that too much to ask?
She slipped free of Billy’s hand and rose, catching a glimpse of
herself in the mirror, her entire torso drenched in blood.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to answer the phone,” she said, then stopped and
turned to him. “Don’t eat Grant while I’m away.”
“I won’t,” he said.
She navigated the hall, grateful to be free from the bathroom,
stooping as she passed the windows in case they had one of those
snipers ready to pick her off like in the movies. In the living room,
she settled herself into her chair and picked up the telephone.
 “Hello?”
“Gran? Is that you?”
She smiled. It wasn’t the police. It was Jack, her beloved
grandson. He sounded upset, like he’d been crying.
“Gran, are you okay? What’s going on? You’re all over the
internet!”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “How’s London treating you?”
“Fuck London!” He paused. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to swear. But
Gran, please, what’s happening?” He was crying. She could hear it
in his voice.
“Everything’s fine, Jack. Your old granny is going to be just fine.”
“Fine? Fine? There’s a… there’s a—”
A helicopter buzzed overhead, drowning him out. When it
passed, he was sobbing down the phone. “…give yourself up.
Please. I’m watching it live, and I can see them outside.”
She fumbled for the remote control and switched the telly on. The
first thing she saw as the image faded in was her cottage, and a
serious looking man in a suit talking to the camera. A message ran
across the bottom of the screen.
…PATRICK GRANT IN HOSTAGE SITUATION…SEVERAL
PEOPLE ARE DEAD OR INJURED…WHEEL OF FORTUNE WILL
RESUME SHORTLY…
“…reports of shots fired,” the newsman was saying. “Grant’s son
Conor escaped from the melee, though we’ve been unable to speak
with him yet.”
“And what’s happening now?” asked an offscreen voice from
back in the studio.
The man glanced furtively at Muriel’s cottage. “There appears to
be some kind of standoff in Miss McAuley’s house.”
“It’s Mrs,” grumbled Muriel.
 “We know that Patrick Grant and three members of his team are
still in there,” continued the anchor, “though with the amount of
gunshots heard, we can only guess at the number of casualties.”
Police officers conferred behind him. One signalled to another,
sweeping his arm in a motion that suggested someone was going to
sneak round the back of the cottage. She turned the telly off and
stared numbly at the empty black screen. A tiny voice crackled from
somewhere, and she realised Jack was still on the phone, the
receiver dangling by its cord. She lifted it and put it to her ear.
“Gran? Gran, are you there?”
“I’m here, Jack. Everything’s going to be okay, I promise. It’s all
just a silly misunderstanding.”
“They said you killed someone.”
“No, not me. Billy did.”
“Billy…? Who’s Billy?”
She smiled sadly. “Why, Billy’s your grandfather! He’s here with
me. He’ll protect me.”
A long silence followed. “Grandpa’s dead. You… you do know
that, right?”
“No, he wasn’t dead. He just went away for a while. But he’s back
now, and he won’t let any harm come to me. Grant shot me, and Billy
saved my life. He plucked the bullet right out of me! Oh, it was quite
a sight.”
Jack sobbed on the end of the line.
“Jack, listen to me. You might think I’m mad, but I’m not. He’s
really back.” She waited, listening to her only grandson’s hitched
breathing. “I love you, Jack. You’re a good wee laddie. Tell your dad I
love him too, will you? I doubt I’ll get the chance, and I think it’s
important to say goodbye to your loved ones.”
“Goodbye? What—”
 “It’s alright. I know what I’m doing.” She sighed. “You’re going to
read a lot of things about me, but none of them are true. These men,
the ones from The Grant Organisation… they killed Arthur Eastman
from down the road. They tried to bully us out of our homes.”
“Gran, please…”
“Shush now, your granny’s speaking. Jack, I’m going to go
outside soon, and I don’t know what’s going to happen when I do.
But before I go, I want you to promise me something.” She didn’t
wait for him to agree. “If you love someone, tell them. Tell them every
day. Never let them forget. And if they go away for a while, never
forget them. They can come back, Jack. They can come back.”
“Gran…”
“Goodbye, Jack. I love you,” she said, and placed the receiver on
the cradle. The man outside was still yelling into his megaphone, but
Muriel was no longer listening.
She walked down the hallway, ducking below the window again,
and re-entered the bathroom, where Billy and Grant waited. Grant
lay motionless on the blood-covered floor beneath the sink, his gun
out of reach. Billy squatted naked beside him. He looked up at
Muriel.
“How many are out there?”
She took a moment to answer. “A lot of them.”
“I can kill them,” he said.
“All of them?”
“All of them. It wouldn’t be the first time. I haven’t made it this far
without learning how to survive.”
“Some of them are innocent, Billy. They’re not all bad people.”
“I have killed the innocent, too. Sometimes you have to… to
survive.”
 Muriel shook her head and sat next to him. She picked up Grant’s
gun and turned it in her hand. “No, I can’t let you do that. The bad
people can die. I’m okay with that. But not the innocent.”
“I’ll make it quick. I’ll snap their necks before I—”
“Billy, no! Even if you did… what then? What’ll you do once the
TV cameras have broadcast your massacre live on telly for the world
to see, eh? They’ll send the army after you!”
“I’ll kill them all to protect you. It may take some time, but time is
something I have in abundance.”
“Aye… but I don’t. I’m eighty-four, Billy. I don’t want to spend the
rest of my life on the run. We’re not exactly Bonnie and Clyde, are
we?”
“Then what do you want?”
She thought. With death breathing down her neck, the answer
came to her quite easily. “If this is the end, Billy, then what I want is
to spend one more day with you. That’s all. Just one more perfect
day with you.”
Billy looked at the carnage that surrounded them. Blood and
intestines and little pieces of human detritus littered the floor. “For a
perfect day, it’s not gotten off to a good start.”
“Another one of your jokes?”
“I thought that was a good one.”
Suddenly overcome with emotion, she took his hand and brought
him close to her. “Promise me one thing, Billy.”
“Anything.”
She swallowed hard. “Promise me this time I’ll get to say
goodbye.”
He kissed her, and though the room stank of blood, and though
she knew she was going to die today, it was the most perfect,
extraordinary kiss of her life.
 “I promise,” he said.
She reluctantly pulled away from him and ran a hand over his
stubbled cheek. “Billy McAuley… will you accompany me to Rory’s
Cave?”
Billy nodded. “It would be my honour,” he said.
And this time, Muriel could hold back the tears no more.
 25

O - , J M A
at his iPhone, the insane miniature drama playing out in real time on
the screen.
“She’ll be okay,” said Ben, placing a hand on his boyfriend’s
shoulder. Jack wanted the touch to comfort him, but tension bound
his muscles. What was she doing? Had she gone crazy?
No, he didn’t believe that. His grandmother was no more likely to
kill a man than he was. She was the kindest, most gentle soul
around, and the idea of an elderly woman shooting two armed
security guards dead and taking the world’s most famous billionaire
hostage was, at best, laughable.
But what if she was telling the truth? Had Patrick Grant been
responsible for Mr Eastman’s death? When Jack read about that
online, he had wanted to call his gran, but he didn’t know what to
say. Death terrified him, and he hated how she spoke about it in
such a laid-back manner.
“When it’s your time, it’s your time,” she would say.
Or when she gave him fifty pounds for his birthday and told him,
“You can’t take it with you when you’re dead. I’d rather live to see my
loved ones spend my money.”
 It frightened him. But knowing her resilience, and her lack of fear,
the idea that she would fight to the death to defend her home
seemed more and more plausible.
What really scared him was the way she had spoken about ‘Billy.’
His grandpa was dead, and had been for a long time. It was odd,
though. She spoke with such conviction, as if she truly believed what
she was saying. The last time they spoke, he hadn’t noticed any
deterioration in her mental faculties, but he conceded it was hard to
tell over the phone.
“I should have visited,” he said. “I should have been there for
her.”
“You can’t be everywhere at once,” said Ben. “You’re not to
blame.”
Tears stung Jack’s eyes, and Ben handed him another tissue.
There was a box of them on his lap, left over from when they had
somehow locked themselves out of the house in the rain while
walking their beloved pug, Bianca Del Rio. Bianca had been fine
thanks to her shiny fur coat, but both Jack and Ben had caught
stinking colds and spent the next few days in bed, blowing their
noses until they were red and painful.
Bianca leapt onto the settee, snuggling between them. She could
always tell when one of them was unwell or upset. Jack stroked her
fur and remembered something his gran had said to him on the
phone.
He turned to Ben, and said, “I love you.”
Ben smiled. “What’s that for?”
“No reason. Just wanted you to know I love you.”
Ben gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I love you too.”
“I know. And from now on, I’m gonna tell you every single day.”
“Even when I don’t tidy up?”
 “Even then.”
Ben grinned. “You’ll forget.”
Jack smiled through the tears. He wouldn’t forget. Not ever. He
had made his gran a promise, and if he couldn’t be there for her,
then the least he could do was keep it.
“Shit,” said Ben.
Startled, Jack looked at him. “What?”
But Ben’s eyes were glued to the phone screen. “There,” he
whispered.
Jack followed his gaze, his heart racing, toes clenching so hard
his feet went numb.
On the small screen, the BBC News camera zoomed in on the
cottage.
The door was opening.
Someone was coming out.
 26

T .
Muriel took a final look at the interior of the cottage. Her home.
Their home. So many memories, memories that had been strong
enough to bring her husband back. The comfy chairs, the worn
carpet, the leaky roof, the chipped mugs, the glass ashtray
perennially sitting by the sink. She considered taking her and Billy’s
wedding photo with her, but why bother? Billy was with her in a bag
slung over her shoulder. He weighed on her, and she knew she had
to move.
Grant stood before her, and she pressed one of the guard’s
handguns into the small of his back. She didn’t know if it had any
bullets left in it, but no one else knew for sure either, and she could
only pray the gamble would pay off.
“Go,” she said to Grant. “Slowly.”
“You’re making a big mistake,” he said without turning. “My men
could shoot the pecker off a hummingbird.”
She jabbed the barrel into his spine, watching as he squirmed.
There was such a commotion outside. So many people talking,
cameras flashing, that damnable helicopter whirring overhead. She
peered past Grant and saw dozens of men hiding behind cars, theirs
guns trained on her.
“You’re gonna die,” he said.
Muriel snorted. “They won’t risk hitting you. They’d never risk
hitting a rich man in a fancy suit. You’re too important.”
“Then I’ll kill you myself,” he said, taking an unsteady step
forwards. The back of his suit jacket was stained red, his hair matted
with blood from where he had struck his head against the sink.
…hurry…
She followed Grant, keeping in step with him, not bothering to
close the door behind her.
No going back now, she thought grimly.
“Let Grant go,” came the voice over the megaphone. “Put the gun
down, and give yourself up. There’s nowhere for you to go.”
Her trusty wheelbarrow stood next to the garden path. Carefully,
she slipped the bag containing Billy off her shoulder and laid it into
the cart.
…I could kill them all…
“No. Only the bad ones.”
“What?” said Grant, turning to look at her.
“I’m not talking to you.” She pressed the gun harder into him.
“Take the wheelbarrow.”
“I’m not pushing that thing like a goddam Mexican farmer.”
“You’ll do exactly that, Mr Grant. You’ll do it or I’ll shoot you in the
back and let you bleed out onto my lawn.”
He breathed deeply and grasped the handles of the wheelbarrow.
“That thing in the bag is looking at me,” he said.
“And don’t you forget it,” she replied. “One false move, and he’ll
rip your guts out in front of everyone.”
 She looked at the crowds of armed policemen and security
guards and reporters. Not a single face she recognised. Where once
the whole village of Witchaven would have been out and gawking,
now there stood a sea of unknown faces. Beyond it, a fine mist
obscured the beach.
The haar was coming in.
“Not long now,” she said.
“What?” said Grant.
“I told you, I’m talking to my husband.”
“You’re crazy. You’re fucking crazy. That thing isn’t your husband.
It’s a monster. After you’re dead, I’ll make sure scientists take it to a
lab to study it. I’ll watch as they cut it apart, and every time the
scalpel blade slices that fucking thing open, I’ll think of you, McAuley.
I’ll think of you, and I’ll laugh.”
“You’re a bag of shite,” she said. “Now walk.”
Pushing the barrow in front of him, Grant started down the path,
his expensive shoes scuffing along the gravel.
“Stop right there,” said the man with the loudspeaker. “Stop, or
we will have no choice but to shoot!”
“Get out of my way,” she shouted. “Everyone move, or I’ll kill this
man.”
A thick murmur of discussion buzzed throughout the crowd.
“Do as she says,” said Grant. “She’s crazy. She killed them all.
Her, and that…”
“Go on,” said Muriel. “Tell them all about it.”
He didn’t, though. He couldn’t. Muriel smiled. His security detail
slaughtered by a shapeshifting monster? They would think he had
gone mad, and his ego would never allow that indignity.
The officers slowly backed away from their vehicles, arms
outstretched, weapons unwavering. Muriel tried to keep behind
Grant, using him as a human shield. Cameras rolled all around,
reporters competing for space, voices fighting to be heard over each
other and the constant drone of the helicopter. She watched it hover
in the sky, the black silhouette barely visible through the onrushing
cloud of fog. It was getting hard to see, the haar thickening, but that
was of no concern. She knew the way.
“Keep going,” she said. The wheelbarrow thudded down a small
step, and they passed through the gate.
“Where can you go?” The booming voice floated ethereally
through the mist. “Give yourself up, and nobody needs to get hurt.”
“Shit,” she heard someone else say. “Can’t see a damn thing.”
Dry grass cracked beneath her feet. She stepped on a rock and
almost lost her balance. Grant’s body stiffened as he sensed
weakness.
“Walk,” she said.
He chuckled in defiance. “You’re gonna die, cunt.”
“Aye, so you keep saying. Now tell them not to follow.”
“Stay where you are!” he roared. “Don’t follow us.”
She could no longer see the men, just the suggestion of the
flashing red and blue lights through the fog. She wondered if her
family were watching on the news, then pushed the thought aside as
her feet sank into the soft sand. Grant slowed.
“Keep going,” said Muriel.
“I can’t push this damn thing through the sand.”
“Then pull it.”
He looked at her, his face ghost-like through the haar. “Just
where in the hell do you think we’re going?”
With the gun pointed towards him, she looked to the sea and felt
an icy chill travel through her.
“We’re going home,” she said.
 27

G .
Occasionally, he would drop to one knee, exhausted, and she would
press the barrel to his skull and gently encourage him to continue. If
he had fought back, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. He could
easily overpower her, yet he never did. He was too much of a
coward.
She glanced back through the vaporous mist that had settled
over the beach and turned the landscape into a dull grey
nothingness. Even though she couldn’t see them, she was sure the
men were following. Were it not for the haar, they would have shot
her by now.
Grant stumbled and fell, almost tipping the wheelbarrow. He
looked up at Muriel. “I can’t go on,” he said, panting and out of
breath, his cheeks beet red. He wasn’t much younger than her, she
supposed. Late sixties, early seventies. People like him didn’t have
to keep fit and active, though. They paid others to do everything for
them.
“Get on your feet. We’re nearly there.”
“And then what?” he growled. “Huh? And then what? You can’t
run, you dumb fuck! You’ll have to sleep soon. Yeah, you’ll have to
sleep, and then—”
Her fingers tightened over the gun and she smacked him hard
across the back of the head. As the cold metal made contact, her
finger squeezed down on the trigger.
The gun fired.
The noise took them both by surprise, and Muriel screamed as
the shot flew wildly off into the mist.
“Jesus!” yelled Grant.
Muriel pointed the weapon at him, her heart pounding. Well, at
least she knew it was still loaded.
“Get up,” she said. “And hurry.”
They were barely twenty feet from the cave, but the men were
closing in, dark shapes emerging from the mist like curious
phantoms. They bellowed orders at each other, and the camera
crews wouldn’t be far behind. They followed tragedy and misfortune
like flies round dung.
“I see them!”
“Straight ahead!”
“Shoot on sight!”
Muriel grabbed the bag. “Right, inside!” she shouted at Grant. He
reached for the wheelbarrow and she kicked it over, surprised by her
strength. “Leave it!”
Without a word, he staggered onwards, Muriel close behind. The
mouth of the cave was dark and uninviting, a far cry from the last
time she had been here. Grant went first, bumping his head off the
low ceiling, and she followed shortly after, Billy lighting the way with
his soft glow. They passed through the narrowest section and into
the small cavern. Grant was there already, sitting on his arse with his
knees tucked into his chest. He mumbled something to himself.
“What did you say?” said Muriel.
 “Don’t kill me,” he said, his voice muffled. “Please don’t kill me. I
can pay you. One million. In cash, however you want it. Two million.
Name your price. I can…”
He trailed off, looking down at the sand. Even Grant, the kind of
man who probably believed he was always one step ahead of death,
knew the end was drawing near.
Muriel looked around the cave. The candles that had adorned the
walls when she and Billy had last visited were all gone. Or had they
ever really been there?
Billy’s glow dimmed as the weird puddle in the bag slowly grew,
bursting the carrier apart as it took shape. Muriel watched,
fascinated. For the briefest flicker of time, she remembered finding
him on the beach, carting him home in the wheelbarrow, and naming
him Avalon. At the time, it hadn’t seemed particularly significant. But
that was always the way with life-changing moments, wasn’t it?
Soon, Billy stood before her, naked as ever, and she embraced
him while Grant talked softly to himself, muttering profanities and
inanities in hushed tones.
“Five fuckin’ million, and she won’t take it. Ten million, goddam
cunt, fucking whore… twenty million…”
“What now?” said Billy.
Muriel didn’t know. Her plan ended here, back where it had all
begun. The cyclical nature of life had always dismayed her. The fear
that she would end up helpless and infantile in her old age was the
one thing that kept her awake at night. Well, apart from the noise of
the machines… but she didn’t have to worry about that anymore.
“We know you’re in there,” echoed a voice from outside. “Come
out with your hands up.”
Muriel stepped back and took Billy’s hands in hers. They were so
cold.
 “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For coming back to me. It was so hard without you. I managed,
but it was so hard.”
“You saved my life.”
She smiled, but she wasn’t sure what he meant by it. The
candles were lit again, candles that moments before hadn’t been
there. The glow played off Billy’s unshaven face, the flames
reflecting in his eyes.
“It doesn’t have to end like this,” he said.
“I think it does.”
“Fifty million,” muttered Grant. “Fucking old whore won’t take—”
She turned and shot him.
Grant’s skull ricocheted off the stone. His jaw flapped, hands
grasping at air, and then his whole body slumped to the side, lying
awkwardly as blood spurted from the entry wound, his brains
dribbling down the cave wall.
“See?” said Billy. “It’s not so hard.”
She shook her head. “He was one of the bad ones.”
Billy ran a hand through her hair, the strands falling in front of her
face, long and dark and in a style she hadn’t worn for decades. Her
smooth, unblemished hand caressed his cheek.
“Miss McAuley, this is the police. If you’re not out within one
minute, we’re coming in.”
“So they keep promising,” she said.
Billy looked at her. “They’ll kill you.”
“I don’t care. This time, I get to say goodbye.”
She kissed him, her young body aching with longing.
“Your sixty seconds begin now.”
 “What if you never had to say goodbye?” said Billy, as he lifted
the hem of her ill-fitting, blood-soaked nightie.
“What do you mean?”
“Forty-five seconds, Miss McAuley.”
He kissed her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. “There is another
way.”
“I told you,” she smiled, as his stubble scratched against her bare
skin. “You can’t kill everyone.”
He gazed at her. “Haven’t you always wanted to see the ocean?
To understand it, to love it, the way Billy did?”
“Of course.”
“Thirty seconds. Come out now, or we will shoot to kill.”
“Then see it with me. Through my eyes.” He pressed his body
against hers, and put his hands on the sides of her head. “Come with
me, Muriel, and we’ll never be apart again.”
She gazed at him. “Will it hurt?”
Billy smiled. “I’d never hurt you, Muriel.”
“Fifteen seconds. This is your last warning.”
“Do it, then,” she said. “Take me with you.”
He kissed her then, a kiss unlike any she had ever experienced.
She closed her eyes as a warmth spread from her mouth through
her body, travelling quickly through her bloodstream.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he whispered.
“For how long?” she breathed.
“Until I—”
But she never did hear the end of the sentence.
 28

T .
“Jesus, Scotty, get the camera!” said Chrissie Mackay. She
patted down the creases in her jacket and shivered, trying to hide it
and failing miserably. “How’s my makeup?” she asked as Scotty
fumbled the camera with freezing hands.
“Perfect,” he said without looking at her.
She glanced around. Against police instructions, they had
followed the officers through the fog, maintaining a surreptitious
distance. Now, as the mist vanished, she found the men standing in
a semi-circle before a narrow opening in the cliffs. Grant’s security
team positioned themselves in front of it, while the police officers
were more cautious, most lurking behind rocks.
Everyone was armed.
“All this for one old woman,” whispered Chrissie with a shake of
her head. “You rolling, Scotty?”
“Ready when… oh shit, they’re going in!”
Chrissie turned to watch as Grant’s security advanced on the
cave, guns drawn.
“Rolling,” said Scotty.
 Chrissie glanced at the camera and put on her best, most serious
news face. “This is Chrissie Mackay, coming to you live from the
scene of the Witchaven siege.” She spoke in a whisper, keen not to
draw any unwanted attention from the police. “The fugitive, Muriel
McAuley, has taken Patrick Grant hostage, forcing him into a cave
and carrying an unidentified package. You can see the wheelbarrow
used to transport the package abandoned in front of the cave. Now,
it appears that… holy fucking shit.”
Scotty grimaced. “Chrissie, we’re live, you can’t… holy fucking
shit!”
Neither of them could help it. What they were seeing was
unexpected, to say the least.
It was Patrick Grant, and he was stark bollock naked. He stood in
the cave entrance and surveyed the scene with his hands on his
hips, his small penis poking out like a curious rodent from beneath a
thick nest of pubic hair.
Chrissie composed herself. “I apologise for the language,
viewers. It seems Patrick Grant is alive and well and, uh… rather
chilly.” She turned to Scotty, and they shared a look of disbelief.
The security team swarmed Grant, one of them removing their
jacket and draping it over their employer’s shoulders. It blew in the
wind like a cape, the gust catching it and lifting it high onto the rocks
where the gulls nested. Another man tried the same, but Grant
strode onwards, letting the jacket fall to the sand as his men scurried
after him like a Benny Hill sketch.
As the bizarre spectacle unfolded, Chrissie imagined what must
be going on back in the studio control room. This would be a ratings
bonanza. Then she remembered she was on live TV, and half-turned
to the camera. “I… I don’t know what’s happening,” she admitted,
either to herself or to the worldwide audience presumably watching
with their jaws scraping along the floor. “Patrick Grant appears to be
safe and well, but the condition of the fugitive is currently unknown.
Grant is refusing the offer of clothes and heading towards Conor, his
eldest son. I imagine he wants to make sure his family is okay. It’s a
heartwarming scene in an otherwise sordid… oh my fucking Christ!”
At this point, the live feed was cut. Knowing that nudity was a no-
no on morning television, Scotty had already zoomed in on Grant to
capture him above the waist. He was a professional, after all, and
wanted to keep his job. But the moment Grant lunged for his son and
tore his throat out, the producers in the Glasgow office cut back to
the studio so fast that newsreader Ian Booth was still sitting with his
feet up on the desk and a finger up his nose when he found out he
was on air.
Through Scotty’s lens, the blood flowed from Conor’s ruptured
jugular in lurid high definition, while his guards stood around staring
at each other in apparent confusion.
Grant clawed at his son’s throat, tearing out handfuls of fleshy
meat and discarding them on the sand. His fingers closed around his
dying son’s vertebrae, crushing the bones with one powerful fist, and
the lifeless torso crumbled to the ground, blood gushing from the
severed head that Grant held aloft, brandishing it like a macabre
trophy.
“Get out of the way!” shouted the police officers, fingers poised
over triggers. It took Chrissie a moment to realise they meant Grant’s
security team. The guards formed a protective circle around their
boss, their own weapons drawn and aimed at the police.
Grant didn’t appear to care what was happening. He hurled
Conor’s head at the rocky cliffs with such force that it stuck to the
cliff-face for several seconds, before weeping down the granite to the
sand. Chrissie heard the skull shatter from her high vantage point,
and that sound, more than anything, was what made her turn to the
side and — a professional to the end — vomit off-camera.
When she looked back, Grant was striding towards the police
officers. They kept screaming for Grant’s team to disperse, but the
men were loyal and enjoyed getting paid, so they accompanied him
across the beach, never allowing the officers a clear shot.
“What the fuck is going on?” asked Chrissie. She signalled for
Scotty to follow her, and together they crested the dune and bore
down on the surreal scene. No one noticed they were there, thanks
to the tall naked man covered in blood who attracted all the attention.
Chrissie knew the network would have cut the feed by now, so she
grabbed her phone, desperate for a signal.
She connected immediately to the Grant Organisation wi-fi.
Smiling, and with a string of vomit on her chin, Chrissie Mackay
opened Instagram, went live, and recorded the most-watched video
in the history of social media.

Patrick Grant reached the edge of the water.

The tide lapped at his bare feet, and he kept walking. His guards
followed, exchanging nervous glances, asking Grant if he was okay,
and did he not want a jacket, and what had happened in the cave?
Soon the water was at his knees, but still the guards followed. They
weren’t about to let their meal ticket wash out to sea. When it
reached their waists, two of the men retreated to dry land. And when
Patrick Grant turned back to the shore and spotted a woman
recording him on her phone, he raised one hand in the air and
waved to her.
 “Goodbye, Jack,” he shouted. “And remember your promise. I
love you.”
Grant smiled, and as the last of his guards abandoned him, he
turned away and walked further into the sea, until the waves crashed
over him one last time and he disappeared from sight.
The police and his guards stood by the water like lost lambs,
waiting for him to resurface, but it was not to be.
Patrick Grant was no more.
 29

I ,
around, each more outlandish than the last. Some suggested that
Grant had been spiked with LSD, while others maintained voodoo
was responsible, though when pressed for details, none were
forthcoming.
One common claim was that the whole thing had been faked by
the liberal news media, and a few crackpots believed he had
revealed himself as a new messiah, one so disgusted with the world
that he had chosen to kill himself rather than go to the trouble of
saving anyone’s soul.
As for Muriel McAuley, all present on that fateful morning had to
sheepishly admit that when Grant had emerged from the cave, they
had forgotten about her. Later, when the chamber was searched, no
trace of the woman could be found, except for the torn bag she had
forced Grant to push in the wheelbarrow. Oddly, Grant’s clothes were
never recovered, and it was widely assumed that Muriel had made
her escape while Grant’s massacre had caused a distraction, using
his suit as a disguise.
As an explanation, it was preposterous, but no one could come
up with a better idea, and so it stuck.
 In the end, there was only one person who had a good idea of
what happened that day, but when Jack McAuley — who had heard
his grandmother’s words leave the lips of Patrick Grant, directly
addressing him — died aged seventy-three in an automobile
accident, he took his secret to the grave.
His husband of forty-seven years, Ben McAuley-Richter, noted at
the funeral that Jack had promised to tell Ben he loved him every
single day of their long and happy life together… and that he had
kept his promise and never missed a day.
 30

T
imagine.
It was a different world, a sensory overload that simply increased
in magnitude the deeper they descended. Though at first it felt like
the overwhelming weight of the water would crush them, the sense
quickly dissipated as she acclimatised.
She thought of the strange creatures Billy had described to her
over the years, weird colourful beasts she now witnessed with her
own eyes, and was glad she could finally share the extraordinary
sights with him. She felt foolish for having missed out all these years.
Better late than never, she and Billy thought.
A yawning chasm opened up before them, and as they plunged
into the abyss, Muriel felt a pang of regret for what she would be
leaving behind. Her home, her family. Witchaven.
Her entire life.
She wondered if The Grant Organisation would continue to wreak
havoc after the loss of their glorious leader, and then realised that it
no longer mattered to her. She would never return. Up there she was
obsolete, a tragic memory. There was no place for her in that world,
not anymore.
 But she didn’t care.
Because she and Billy were together again, and would be
forever, even after she had forgotten all about her old life, and who
she was once, the names Muriel and Billy McAuley slowly fading into
oblivion as time swam inexorably on.
The idea frightened her a little, but the fear would pass.
Goodbye, she thought, as Muriel Margaret McAuley, eighty-four
years young, let go of the past and calmly succumbed to the
darkness of the ocean.
 AFTERWORD

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up, spending

many weekends at their house, where my brother and I could stay
up late and get a bag of chips for tea and maybe a sweetie from the
‘goody tin’ in the kitchen before supper.
My family didn’t own a video player until I was a teenager, but my
gran had one she rented from an electronics shop so she could
record episodes of Poirot and Columbo. She lived above Ritz Video
(later bought over by Blockbuster), and would happily rent any horror
film for me, no matter how gruesome, as long as it didn’t look too
sexy. (For the record, the only film she ever refused to rent was the
Danish thriller Nattevagten, which I think mentioned necrophilia in
the blurb).
She also worked in a charity shop for a while, and brought me
back my first ever Stephen King novels, The Stand and The Dead
Zone, for which I am eternally grateful.
Years later, after my grandfather had passed away, I moved in
with her again for a while, and it was like nothing had changed. I
would get us chips for tea, we would watch episodes of Pointless,
and then she would go to bed and I would stay up late watching
horror films.
Muriel Margaret McAuley isn’t directly based on my beloved
grandmother Connie, but I did use some elements of her life for
Muriel’s backstory. My gran loved reminiscing about the old days,
and around the time I was staying with her, she wrote her memoirs.
She was a child during World War II, and it was a fascinating glimpse
into life back then, not only the grim horrors of war, but also of fun
and youthful adventures.
 I know it would make her immensely proud to think that people
from all across the world had read her words, and so I present to
you, dear reader, the life of Constance Sclater Jamieson. I’m just
sorry it had to appear alongside a story in which a boy’s penis is
dissolved by a sea monster.
 THE MEMOIRS OF CONNIE JAMIESON

I was born and lived all my life in Leith, an “only” child but never a
“lonely” child, surrounded by numerous cousins, aunts and uncles,
and lots of friends. My husband John and I were both baptised as
infants in Harper Memorial Church on Coburg Street.
My parents were in the Church Dramatic and I was often involved
throughout my life in acting, singing, dancing, and piano (no TV back
then!). I sang in various choirs, played the piano for parties and
dances and, with my mum, performed at many venues (ie duologues
in the broad Scots at Leith Town Hall). I always loved working with
children, and ran playgroups, Sunday School etc.
Schooldays in my Primary years featured rather fearsome
teachers. If you were sitting listening to the teacher, you were
allowed to sit in one of three positions. Hands on head (clasped),
arms folded, or hands clasped. Boys and girls were segregated at
playtime in two different playgrounds by a stretch of concrete. A
teacher stood supervising. She had a big iron bell which she rang to
signal the end of playtime.
Your exam results at age eleven entitled you to a school and
specific subjects. The highest marks usually got you Latin, French,
and Maths. The second highest were the same but with Latin
replaced with Domestic. The last group got English, Arithmetic, and
Domestic. I was at Leith Academy. You paid fees then, and the
teachers all wore black robes and, on special occasions, their mortar
boards. They also had, and used, “the belt” for punishments. In the
1930s, it was fifteen shillings a term, or about 75p [$1] these days!
When war broke out I was at school and the children were all
being evacuated. My parents said if we were to be killed we may as
well be together, so I stayed at home. We got “gas mask drill” at
Nelson’s College and I spent many an hour in the air raid shelters in
George Street.
As the schools got smaller, people were asked to give a room in
their home as a classroom, and we had Miss Trommer and her class
on a Friday in our sitting room. Our church had socials and dancing
for the soldiers, and I remember playing the Hokey Cokey on piano,
as well as lots of Scottish music.
I joined the pre-service Training Corps at sixteen and was taught
first aid, car maintenance, etc. I fancied going to The WRENS
[Women’s Royal Naval Service] but when I got my call-up papers at
eighteen there was only munitions. I was reserved for one year, but
then the war ended.
As a teenager I only knew “rationing” of everything. If you saw a
queue, you joined the end even if you didn’t know what it was for! I
remember huge crowds and great excitement — “A banana, a real
banana!”
Everything was scarce — I had a jacket made from a blanket as
mum was a lovely sewer. When John and I married in 1948, friends
gave me their “clothing coupon” rations so I could have a dress and
a cake!
One could buy little dolls of celluloid for a penny, one of which
was accidentally thrown into our coal fire, followed by the dubious
excitement of the fire engine and chimney being swept!
I went from school to Nelson’s College in Charlotte Square for a
year and into an office as a shorthand typist at twelve shillings and
sixpence a week. My mother got the ten and I kept the two and six. I
had always loved drawing and painting and was studying privately to
be a commercial artist in Dundee, but when I became engaged to
John I was given a choice — career or marriage. I chose the latter —
no regrets!
 Before we were blessed with two lovely daughters and six
grandchildren, I had two adventures. One was to Denmark and
Sweden on John’s ship. It was a cargo vessel, and not very comfy,
with rough weather, but the trip was enjoyable. Then I went to
America on the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and on to South
Carolina via my American pen pals.
The first time I flew was with my chum in 1947, from the Channel
Isles to London, and to keep the plane balanced, all the passengers
and their luggage were weighed and placed accordingly! I sent my
mum a postcard that said “Flying home”, and she said she never
slept until I got back!
My favourite sports were swimming, cycling, and tennis. John
and I both had our life saving medals. I was a keen youth hosteller in
the days of hard bunks and army blankets. We used to wash in the
river. Often, during the war, an army lorry would give us a lift
(including our bikes).
I joined Leith Library at age seven. To join, you had to be able to
write your own name, and at every visit your hands were checked. If
the back and front weren’t clean, or if your nails were dirty, you were
sent home.
As a child we always celebrated special events, like Christmas,
birthdays, Easter, and Hallowe’en, and I continued every year until
my daughters Wendy and Claire grew up.
In my childhood, Christmas was not a holiday in Scotland. The
men went to work, and there was no tree or Christmas dinner.
However, I hung up my dad’s sock and made paper chains which
were hung from the four corners of the room with a paper ball in the
middle. Over the years, some of the customs came over from
England.
 I was lucky as a child, as my dad was with the LMS Railway
(London, Midland and Scottish Railway). When he got his one week
a year holiday, we went to England, Ireland, and Wales, as we got
free travel. Mum would book a “Room with attendance”, which meant
she bought the food and the landlady cooked it.
Whenever we had a party, you were expected to do a “turn” —
sing, recite, piano etc. At my granny’s, while my aunts and uncles
were dancing, my job was to keep turning the handle of the
gramophone to keep the music going!
Easter involved dyeing your hardboiled eggs and rolling them
down a hill, usually in Starbank Park. At Hallowe’en, a “treacle” stone
was hung from a pulley. You tried to take a bite while someone
shook the pulley. At birthdays, we played all sorts of games, wore
party clothes, and had a cake.
The streets were always full of children playing games. Peevery
beds [hopscotch], Plainy Clappy [a throwing and catching ball game],
skipping rope etc. The boys had separate games to the girls. We
would run down to the beach to find the rag and bone man. If you
gave him a rag, you got a balloon!
We watched funeral processions go by on horse drawn carts.
The plumes were black for a man, purple for a woman, and white for
a child. There was always great respect when they passed in the
street. Everyone stopped. The women bowed their heads and the
men took off their caps or hats (bare heads were rarely seen) and
bowed until it passed. Women never went to a funeral, which back
then were all burials. They could look at the body in the house,
usually lying in the parlour.
Wedding cars were expected to throw pennies out of the window,
a “poor-oot”. If no money came, “hard-up” times would follow!
 On Sundays, I wasn’t allowed to play outside, nor sing, hum, or
whistle (unless it was a hymn). We went to Church, then Sunday
School, and either had visitors or visited, or dad would take me down
to the docks for a walk. Sometimes I got to go on the boats if he
knew them.
There were several “cures” for certain “things”. Vinegar was for a
headache, and a sore throat meant your tonsils were “painted” with a
long brush. Every Friday, a large dreaded spoon of syrup of figs was
administered. Anything “chesty” was a mustard poultice, a sting was
rubbed with a docket leaf, and a lump was rubbed with butter.
We had a wireless [radio], and I was sent every so often to the
garage to have the accumulator filled with oil to make it work. We
had gas lamps before electricity and the lamplighter used to go
around the streets with a long pole lighting the lamps.
There were always huge queues for the cinema to see a film (in
black-and-white) and we’d stand for more then three hours to get in.
In the queue, there would be entertainment. At The Playhouse on
Leith Walk, a wee woman sat on the pavement playing an old
gramophone. She was always dressed in black, and collected her
pennies in a cap or a hat.
As a child and adult I swam a lot in Victoria Baths, Portobello
Baths, and always the sea. Mum, Dad, and I used to swim at the
Breakwater at Granton on a Saturday, and I can still hear mum’s
instructions — “Keep your mouth shut!” No, this didn’t mean “don’t
speak”. There was a lot of sewage floating in the water, and it was to
stop any from going down your throat!
I never knew anyone with a bathroom, just a lavatory, and before
the advent of toilet rolls we cut squares of newspaper with a hole
made to fit a piece of string. I remember I was once in hospital aged
eleven with what turned out to be tonsillitis, and it was either
horsehair or moss that was used!
When you went swimming you took a “shivery bite” (a snack) and
if you asked for a drink, it was always water. On a picnic, sometimes
you would put liquorice in it to make it “sugary water”.
I’ve lived in this area for generations, when Leith was separate to
Edinburgh, which began at Pilrig. My grandfather “away back” was
born in Victoria Park, which was a farm with the “big house” (still
there, now a nursery) and ruins behind of the farmworkers’ cottages.
On a Sunday in the park (there was a bandstand there) we would go
and listen to the band play, but during the war all metal was needed
so the railings etc were removed.
Portobello had an open-air pool (big time!) and we’d dive in the
water and swim to the raft. The boys would shake it to knock us off!
If we missed the last tram car, we’d just walk home. I never knew
anyone with a car, so we all walked any time of night.
I had “pen friends” in many countries. I stuck a pin in a map of
American states and wrote to the Head of a school from that state
asking if any of her students would like to be pen friends. At the time,
letters between countries were still censored. I got lots of replies and
passed them around my chums. At Church, at the end of the war, the
minister asked if any of the young folk would like to write to a
German boy or girl, and I got Ingeborg Fleischammer. We never met,
but corresponded through marriage and children (we both had two
daughters) until she died. I still have two American pen pals from my
teens, and I’m eighty-seven!
Constance Sclater Jamieson
19/01/1925 — 19/03/2017
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The biggest of thanks to my wonderful wife Heather. I love you!

Cheers to Boris for being smol and very silly and my best friend.
Thank you to Trevor Henderson for his terrific cover artwork.
A hearty cheers to my beta readers — Steve Stred, Joanne
Easton, Emily Cardwell, John Bender, and Andy Marr.
And — you know it’s coming — thanks to you, dear reader, for
supporting truly independent horror. You fucking rule.

This book was written to the following music —

James Horner — Cocoon

James Horner — Cocoon: The Return
James Horner — Humanoids From the Deep
James Horner — Braveheart
Ennio Morricone — The Thing
Pino Donaggio — Piranha
Stelvio Cipriani — Tentacles
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Sodergren lives in Scotland with his wife Heather and his best friend,
Boris the Pug.
Growing up, he was the kind of kid who collected rubber skeletons and
lived for horror movies.
Not much has changed since then.
Since the publication of his first novel, The Forgotten Island, he has written
and published a further seven novels, from slashers to gialli to folk horror to
weird westerns to bikersploitation.
 ALSO BY DAVID SODERGREN

THE FORGOTTEN ISLAND

NIGHT SHOOT
DEAD GIRL BLUES
MAGGIE’S GRAVE
THE NAVAJO NIGHTMARE (with Steve Stred)
THE PERFECT VICTIM
SATAN’S BURNOUTS MUST DIE!

HEX-PERIMENTS: A DARK BIOTECH ANTHOLOGY

(featuring the story ‘Those Damn Trees’)