The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (50 page)

“A room?” The woman who answered sounded tired but friendly. “We’re not really ready yet, we’ve been doing some renovations and—”

“All I need is a bed,” Jeffrey broke in. He took a deep breath. “The truth is, my wife died recently. I just need some time to be away from the rest of the world and . . . ”

His voice trailed off. He felt a pang of self-loathing, playing the pity card; listened to a long silence on the line before the woman said, “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. Well, yes, if you don’t mind that we’re really not up and running. The grout’s not even dry yet in the new bath. Do you have a good head for heights?”

“Heights?”

“Yes. Vertigo? Some people have a very hard time with the driveway. There’s a two-night minimum for a stay.”

Jeffrey assured her he’d never had any issues with vertigo. He gave her his credit card info, rang off and called to reserve a car in Penzance.

He slept most of the way to Plymouth, exhausted and faintly hungover. The train from Plymouth to Penzance was nearly empty. He bought a beer and a sandwich in the buffet car, and went to his seat. He’d bought a novel in London at Waterstones, but instead of reading gazed out at a landscape that was a dream of books he’d read as a child—granite farmhouses, woolly-coated ponies in stone paddocks; fields improbably green against lowering gray sky, graphite clouds broken by blades of golden sun, a rainbow that pierced a thunderhead then faded as though erased by some unseen hand. Ringnecked pheasants, a running fox. More fields planted with something that shone a startling goldfinch-yellow. A silvery coastline hemmed by arches of russet stone. Children wrestling in the middle of an empty road. A woman walking with head bowed against the wind, hands extended before her like a diviner.

Abandoned mineshafts and slagheaps; ruins glimpsed in an eyeflash before the train dove into a tunnel; black birds wheeling above a dun-colored tor surrounded by scorched heath.

And, again and again, groves of gnarled oaks that underscored the absence of great forests in a landscape that had been scoured of trees thousands of years ago. It was beautiful yet also slightly disturbing, like watching an underpopulated, narratively fractured silent movie that played across the train window.

The trees were what most unsettled Jeffrey: the thought that men had so thoroughly occupied this countryside for so long that they had flensed it of everything—rocks, trees, shrubs all put to some human use so that only the abraded land remained. He felt relieved when the train at last reached Penzance, with the beachfront promenade to one side, glassy waves breaking on the sand and the dark towers of St. Michael’s Mount suspended between aquamarine water and pearly sky.

He grabbed his bag and walked through the station, outside to where people waited on the curb with luggage or headed to the parking lot. The clouds had lifted: a chill steady wind blew from off the water, bringing the smell of salt and sea wrack. He shivered and pulled on his wool overcoat, looking around for the vehicle from the rental car company that was supposed to meet him.

He finally spotted it, a small white sedan parked along the sidewalk. A man in a dark blazer leaned against the car, smoking and talking to a teenage boy with dreadlocks and rainbow-knit cap and a woman with matted dark-blond hair.

“You my ride?” Jeffrey said, smiling.

The man took a drag from his cigarette and passed it to the woman. She was older than Jeffrey had first thought, in her early thirties, face seamed and sun-weathered and her eyes bloodshot. She wore tight flared jeans and a fuzzy sky-blue sweater beneath a stained Arsenal windbreaker.

“Spare anything?” she said as he stopped alongside the car. She reeked of sweat and marijuana smoke.

“Go on now, Erthy,” the man said, scowling. He turned to Jeffrey. “Mr. Kearin?”

“That’s me,” said Jeffrey.

“Gotta ’nother rollie, Evan?” the woman prodded.

“Come on, Erthy,” said the rainbow-hatted boy. He spun and began walking toward the station. “Peace, Evan.”

“I apologize for that,” Evan said as he opened the passenger door for Jeffrey. “I know the boy, his family’s neighbors of my sister’s.”

“Bit old for him, isn’t she?” Jeffrey glanced to where the two huddled against the station wall, smoke welling from their cupped hands.

“Yeah, Erthy’s a tough nut. She used to sleep rough by the St. Erth train station. Only this last winter she’s taken up in Penzance. Every summer we get the smackhead hippies here, there’s always some poor souls who stay and take up on the street. Not that you want to hear about that,” he added, laughing as he swung into the driver’s seat. “On vacation?”

Jeffrey nodded. “Just a few days.”

“Staying here in Penzance?”

“Cardu. Near Zennor.”

“Might see some sun, but probably not till the weekend.”

He ended up with the same small white sedan. “Only one we have, this last minute,” Evan said, tapping at the computer in the rental office. “But it’s better really for driving out there in the countryside. Roads are extremely narrow. Have you driven around here before? No? I would strongly recommend the extra damages policy . . . ”

It had been decades since Jeffrey had been behind the wheel of a car in the U.K. He began to sweat as soon as he left the rental car lot, eyes darting between the map Evan had given him and the GPS on his iPhone. In minutes the busy roundabout was behind him; the car crept up a narrow, winding hillside, with high stone walls to either side that swiftly gave way to hedgerows bordering open farmland. A brilliant yellow field proved to be planted with daffodils, their constricted yellow throats not yet in bloom. After several more minutes, he came to a crossroads.

Almost immediately he got lost. The distances between villages and roads were deceptive: what appeared on the map to be a mile or more instead contracted into a few hundred yards, or else expanded into a series of zigzags and switchbacks that appeared to point him back toward Penzance. The GPS directions made no sense, advising him to turn directly into stone walls or gated driveways or fields where cows grazed on young spring grass. The roads were only wide enough for one car to pass, with tiny turnouts every fifty feet or so where one could pull over, but the high hedgerows and labyrinthine turns made it difficult to spot oncoming vehicles.

His destination, a village called Cardu, was roughly seven miles from Penzance; after half-an-hour, the odometer registered that he’d gone fifteen miles, and he had no idea where he was. There was no cell phone reception. The sun dangled a hand’s-span above the western horizon, staining ragged stone outcroppings and a bleak expanse of moor an ominous reddish-bronze, and throwing the black fretwork of stone walls into stark relief. He finally parked in one of the narrow turnouts, sat for a few minutes staring into the sullen blood-red eye of the sun, and at last got out.

The hedgerows offered little protection from the harsh wind that raked across the moor. Jeffrey pulled at the collar of his wool coat, turning his back to the wind, and noticed a small sign that read PUBLIC FOOTPATH. He walked over and saw a narrow gap in the hedgerow, three steps formed of wide flat stones. He took the three in one long stride and found himself at the edge of an overgrown field, similar to what Evelyn had described in her account of the lights near Zennor. An ancient-looking stone wall bounded the far edge of the field, with a wider gap that opened to the next field and what looked like another sign. He squinted, but couldn’t make out what it read, and began to pick his way across the turf.

It was treacherous going—the countless hummocks hid deep holes, and more than once he barely kept himself from wrenching his ankle. The air smelled strongly of raw earth and cow manure. As the sun dipped lower, a wedge of shadow was driven between him and the swiftly darkening sky, making it still more difficult to see his way. But after a few minutes he reached the far wall, and bent to read the sign beside the gap into the next field.

CAS CIRCLE

He glanced back, saw a glint of white where the rental car was parked, straightened and walked on.

There was a footpath here. Hardly a path, really; just a trail where turf and bracken had been flattened by the passage of not-many feet. He followed it, stopping when he came to a large upright stone that came up his waist. He looked to one side then the other and saw more stones, forming a group more ovoid than circular, perhaps thirty feet in diameter. He ran his hand across the first stone—rough granite, ridged with lichen and friable bits of moss that crumbled at his touch.

The reek of manure was fainter here: he could smell something fresh and sweet, like rain, and when he looked down saw a silvery gleam at the base of the rock. He crouched and dipped his fingers into a tiny pool, no bigger than his shoe. The water was icy cold, and even after he withdrew his hand, the surface trembled.

A spring. He dipped his cupped palm into it and sniffed warily, expecting a fetid whiff of cow muck.

But the water smelled clean, of rock and rain. Without thinking he drew his hand to his mouth and sipped, immediately flicked his fingers to send glinting droplets into the night.

That was stupid,
he thought, hastily wiping his hand on his trousers.
Now I’ll get dysentery. Or whatever one gets from cows.

He stood there for another minute, then turned and retraced his steps to the rental car. He saw a pair of headlights approaching and flagged down a white delivery van.

“I’m lost,” he said, and showed the driver the map that Evan had given him.

“Not too lost.” The driver perused the map, then gave him directions. “Once you see the inn you’re almost there.”

Jeffrey thanked him, got back into the car and started to drive. In ten minutes he reached the inn, a rambling stucco structure with a half-dozen cars out front. There was no sign identifying Cardu, and no indication that there was anything more to the village than the inn and a deeply rutted road flanked by a handful of granite cottages in varying states of disrepair. He eased the rental car by the mottled gray buildings, to where what passed for a road ended; bore right and headed down a cobblestoned, hairpin drive that zigzagged along the cliff-edge.

He could hear but could not see the ocean, waves crashing against rocks hundreds of feet below. Now and then he got a skin-crawling glimpse of immense cliffs like congealed flames—ruddy stone, apricot-yellow gorse, lurid flares of orange lichen all burned to ash as afterglow faded from the western sky.

He wrenched his gaze back to the narrow strip of road immediately in front of him. Gorse and brambles tore at the doors; once he bottomed out, then nosed the car across a water-filled gulley that widened into a stream that cascaded down the cliff to the sea below.

“Holy fucking Christ,” he said, and kept the car in first gear. In another five minutes he was safely parked beside the cottage, alongside a small sedan.

“We thought maybe you weren’t coming,” someone called as Jeffrey stepped shakily out onto a cobblestone drive. Straggly rosebushes grew between a row of granite slabs that resembled headstones. These were presumably to keep cars from veering down an incline that led to a ruined outbuilding, a few faint stars already framed in its gaping windows. “Some people, they start down here and just give up and turn back.”

Jeffrey looked around, finally spotted a slight man in his early sixties standing in the doorway of a gray stone cottage tucked into the lee of the cliff. “Oh, hi. No, I made it.”

Jeffrey ducked back into the car, grabbed his bag and headed for the cottage.

“Harry,” the man said, and held the door for him.

“Jeffrey. I spoke to your wife this afternoon.”

The man’s brow furrowed. “Wife?” He was a head shorter than Jeffrey, clean-shaven, with a sun-weathered face and sleek gray-flecked dark brown hair to his shoulders. A ropey old cable knit sweater hung from his lank frame.

“Well, someone. A woman.”

“Oh. That was Thomsa. My sister.” The man nodded, as though this confusion had never occurred before. “We’re still trying to get unpacked. We don’t really open till this weekend, but . . . ”

He held the door so Jeffrey could pass inside. “Thomsa told me of your loss. My condolences.”

Inside was a small room with slate floors and plastered walls, sparely furnished with a plain deal table and four chairs intricately carved with Celtic knots; a sideboard holding books and maps and artfully mismatched crockery; large gas cooking stove and a side table covered with notepads and pens, unopened bills, and a laptop. A modern cast-iron wood-stove had been fitted into a wide, old-fashioned hearth. The stove radiated warmth and an acrid, not unpleasant scent, redolent of coal-smoke and burning sage. Peat, Jeffrey realized with surprise. There was a closed door on the other side of the room, and from behind this came the sound of a television.

Harry looked at Jeffrey, cocking an eyebrow.

“It’s beautiful,” said Jeffrey.

Harry nodded. “I’ll take you to your room,” he said.

Jeffrey followed him up a narrow stair beneath the eaves, into a short hallway flanked by two doors. “Your room’s here. Bath’s down there, you’ll have it all to yourself. What time would you like breakfast?”

“Seven, maybe?”

“How about seven-thirty?”

Jeffrey smiled wanly. “Sure.”

The room was small, white plaster walls and a window-seat overlooking the sea, a big bed heaped with a white duvet and myriad pillows, corner wardrobe carved with the same Celtic knots as the chairs below. No TV or radio or telephone, not even a clock. Jeffrey unpacked his bag and checked his phone for service: none.

He closed the wardrobe, looked in his backpack and swore. He’d left his book on the train. He ran a hand through his hair, stepped to the window-seat and stared out.

It was too dark now to see much, though light from windows on the floor below illuminated a small, winding patch of garden, bound at the cliff-side by a stone wall. Beyond that there was only rock and, far below, the sea. Waves thundered against the unseen shore, a muted roar like a jet turbine. He could feel the house around him shake.