New Fears--New horror stories by masters of the genre Page 3

  Tim pointed up towards the cave. “The boggle had it, Grandad,” he said, and the line grew deeper still.

  They walked along the beach some more, but it wasn’t long before they both turned, as if by some unspoken agreement, towards the car.

  “We din’t go thee-er,” Grandad muttered as he fumbled the keys from his pocket.

  “What, Grandad?”

  Pardon, his mother would have said, but his mother wasn’t here.

  “We din’t go up near t’ cave yest’day,” said the old man. He didn’t meet Tim’s eyes. He just looked at the keys in his hand. No: at the wedding ring that nestled beneath them. “We din’t go near it.”

  “No,” Tim said.

  “Did you see owt?”

  Tim swallowed. “What?”

  “When you looked in t’ ring.”

  Tim looked at him, and this time the old man looked back. The thing in his eyes was still there.

  Me, Tim thought. You should have taken something from me. Slowly, he shook his head. “I didn’t take it, Grandad. It was the boggle.”

  “Aye. Aye, you said.” Grandad heaved a sigh. “Well, it’s back. That’s t’ main thing. Come on then, Tim. Let’s get going, eh.”

  Tim, he’d called him, and for the first time it struck him as odd. Grandad never called him Tim. He called him lad, or son; never by his name. It was strange he’d never noticed that before. Now he didn’t know what he was supposed to think about it. But there was nothing to be done but get into the car and start heading towards home as the rain, viciously, began to spit.

  * * *

  The Silence was there. This time it wasn’t hiding and it wasn’t creeping. It was a fat, sullen thing, sitting in the middle of the room so that Tim could almost see it. He stared at the window, watching the rain streak the glass, time passing outside. Soon his mother would be home. She would come to fetch him, laughing and tanned from her holiday.

  Grandad was doing a crossword in the newspaper, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and his wedding ring shining on his finger. They hadn’t spoken about it since they came back from the beach. They hadn’t been back there, either. They had been here, in this house, with the Silence sitting between them.

  Tim drew a deep breath. “Grandad, about the boggle.” Grandad buried his nose deeper into the paper.

  “If the boggle took summat from you, and you took—”

  “That’s enough o’ that now.” Grandad let the newspaper drop with a loud rustle. “Enough o’ that.” After a moment his look softened and he gave a small smile.

  “But, Grandad—”

  “It’s nowt but a story, Tim,” the old man said. After a moment, he raised the newspaper again, holding it close to his eyes.

  Nowt but a story.

  Tim thought of the thing he’d seen in the surface of the water, its bright cruel grin; a whisper of laughter heard over his shoulder. He closed his eyes tightly. Grandad was surely right: things like that couldn’t be. It was nothing but a story, and Tim had been lucky to find the ring, and that was all.

  ’S no lie, lad. Every word of it’s God’s honest truth.

  He remembered the way they had laughed together. The way they had winked. It had been different then, when there was the story between them. Something that was for them, and them alone.

  He thought of the fossil hunters, trolling their way along the base of the cliff. Them returning to their car and finding their hubcaps gone, being tormented perhaps by whispers and nips and things missing from their pockets; things they’d never get back.

  He was forgiven; he knew that. But he knew the old man would never forget, no more than he could forget his dead wife’s face when he stared into his pipe smoke. It was there, an intangible writhing thing.

  Me, he’d thought. You should have taken something from me.

  But as Tim watched the old man intent on the newspaper, that line still there between his eyes, he knew that was exactly what the boggle had done.

  SHEPHERDS’ BUSINESS

  by Stephen Gallagher

  Picture me on an island supply boat, one of the old Clyde Puffers, seeking to deliver me to my new post. This was 1947, just a couple of years after the war, and I was a young doctor relatively new to general practice. Picture also a choppy sea, a deck that rose and fell with every wave, and a cross-current fighting hard to turn us away from the isle. Back on the mainland I’d been advised that a hearty breakfast would be the best preventative for seasickness and now, having loaded up with one, I was doing my best to hang onto it.

  I almost succeeded. Perversely, it was the sudden calm of the harbour that did for me. I ran to the side and I fear that I cast rather more than my bread upon the waters. Those on the quay were treated to a rare sight; their new doctor, clinging to the ship’s rail, with seagulls swooping in the wake of the steamer for an unexpected water-borne treat.

  The island’s resident constable was waiting for me at the end of the gangplank. A man of around my father’s age, in uniform, chiselled in flint and unsullied by good cheer. He said,“Munro Spence? Doctor Munro Spence?”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “Will you take a look at Doctor Laughton before we move him? He didn’t have too good a journey down.”

  There was a man to take care of my baggage, so I followed the constable to the harbour master’s house at the end of the quay. It was a stone building, square and solid. Dr Laughton was in the harbour master’s sitting room behind the office. He was in a chair by the fire with his feet on a stool and a rug over his knees and was attended by one of his own nurses, a stocky red-haired girl of twenty or younger.

  I began,“Doctor Laughton. I’m…”

  “My replacement, I know,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I checked his pulse, felt his glands, listened to his chest, noted the signs of cyanosis. It was hardly necessary; Dr Laughton had already diagnosed himself, and had requested this transfer. He was an old-school Edinburgh-trained medical man, and I could be sure that his condition must be sufficiently serious that “soldiering on” was no longer an option. He might choose to ignore his own aches and troubles up to a point, but as the island’s only doctor he couldn’t leave the community at risk.

  When I enquired about chest pain he didn’t answer directly, but his expression told me all.

  “I wish you’d agreed to the aeroplane,” I said.

  “For my sake or yours?” he said. “You think I’m bad. You should see your colour.” And then, relenting a little, “The airstrip’s for emergencies. What good’s that to me?”

  I asked the nurse,“Will you be travelling with him?”

  “I will,” she said. “I’ve an aunt I can stay with. I’ll return on the morning boat.”

  Two of the men from the Puffer were waiting to carry the doctor to the quay. We moved back so that they could lift him between them, chair and all. As they were getting into position Laughton said to me,“Try not to kill anyone in your first week, or they’ll have me back here the day after.”

  I was his locum, his temporary replacement. That was the story. But we both knew that he wouldn’t be returning. His sight of the island from the sea would almost certainly be his last.

  Once they’d manoeuvred him through the doorway, the two sailors bore him with ease toward the boat. Some local people had turned out to wish him well on his journey.

  As I followed with the nurse beside me, I said, “Pardon me, but what do I call you?”

  “I’m Nurse Kirkwood,” she said. “Rosie.”

  “I’m Munro,” I said. “Is that an island accent, Rosie?”

  “You have a sharp ear, Doctor Spence,” she said.

  She supervised the installation of Dr Laughton in the deck cabin, and didn’t hesitate to give the men orders where another of her age and sex might only make suggestions or requests. A born matron, if ever I saw one. The old salts followed her instruction without a murmur.

  When they’d done the job to
her satisfaction, Laughton said to me, “The latest patient files are on my desk. Your desk, now.”

  Nurse Kirkwood said to him, “You’ll be back before they’ve missed you, Doctor,” but he ignored that.

  He said,“These are good people. Look after them.”

  The crew were already casting off, and they all but pulled the board from under my feet as I stepped ashore. I took a moment to gather myself, and gave a pleasant nod in response to the curious looks of those well-wishers who’d stayed to see the boat leave. The day’s cargo had been unloaded and stacked on the quay and my bags were nowhere to be seen. I went in search of them and found Moodie, driver and handyman to the island hospital, waiting beside a field ambulance that had been decommissioned from the military. He was chatting to another man, who bade good day and moved off as I arrived.

  “Will it be much of a drive?” I said as we climbed aboard.

  “Ay,” Moodie said.

  “Ten minutes? An hour? Half an hour?”

  “Ay,” he agreed, making this one of the longest conversations we were ever to have.

  * * *

  The drive took little more than twenty minutes. This was due to the size of the island and a good concrete road, yet another legacy of the army’s wartime presence. We saw no other vehicle, slowed for nothing other than the occasional indifferent sheep. Wool and weaving, along with some lobster fishing, sustained the peacetime economy here. In wartime it had been different, with the local populace outnumbered by spotters, gunners, and the Royal Engineers. Later came a camp for Italian prisoners of war, whose disused medical block the Highlands and Islands Medical Service took over when the island’s cottage hospital burned down. Before we reached it we passed the airstrip, still usable, but with its gatehouse and control tower abandoned.

  The former prisoners’ hospital was a concrete building with a wooden barracks attached. The Italians had laid paths and a garden, but these were now growing wild. Again I left Moodie to deal with my bags, and went looking to introduce myself to the senior sister.

  Senior Sister Garson looked me over once and didn’t seem too impressed. But she called me by my title and gave me a briefing on everyone’s duties while leading me around on a tour. It was then that I learned my driver’s name. I met all the staff apart from Mrs Moodie, who served as cook, housekeeper, and island midwife.

  “There’s just the one six-bed ward,” Sister Garson told me. “We use that for the men and the officers’ quarters for the women. Two to a room.”

  “How many patients at the moment?”

  “As of this morning, just one. Old John Petrie. He’s come in to die.”

  Harsh though it seemed, she delivered the information in a matter-of-fact manner.

  “I’ll see him now,” I said.

  Old John Petrie was eighty-five or eighty-seven. The records were unclear. Occupation: shepherd. Next of kin: none—a rarity on the island. He’d led a tough outdoor life, but toughness won’t keep a body going forever. He was now grown so thin and frail that he was in danger of being swallowed up by his bedding. According to Dr Laughton’s notes he’d presented with no specific ailment. One of my teachers might have diagnosed a case of TMB: Too Many Birthdays. He’d been found in his croft house, alone, half-starved, unable to rise. There was life in John Petrie’s eyes as I introduced myself, but little sign of it anywhere else.

  We moved on. Mrs Moodie would bring me my evening meals, I was told. Unless she was attending at a birth, in which case I’d be looked after by Rosie Kirkwood’s mother who’d cycle up from town.

  My experience in obstetrics had mainly involved being a student and staying out of the midwife’s way. Senior Sister Garson said,“They’re mostly home births with the midwife attending, unless there are complications and then she’ll call you in. But that’s quite rare. You might want to speak to Mrs Tulloch before she goes home. Her baby was stillborn on Sunday.”

  “Where do I find her?” I said.

  The answer was, in the suite of rooms at the other end of the building. Her door in the women’s wing was closed, with her husband waiting in the corridor.

  “She’s dressing,” he explained.

  Sister Garson said, “Thomas, this is Doctor Spence. He’s taking over from Doctor Laughton.”

  She left us together. Thomas Tulloch was a young man, somewhere around my own age but much hardier. He wore a shabby suit of all-weather tweed that looked as if it had outlasted several owners. His beard was dark, his eyes blue. Women like that kind of thing, I know, but my first thought was of a wall-eyed collie. What can I say? I like dogs.

  I asked him,“How’s your wife bearing up?”

  “It’s hard for me to tell,” he said. “She hasn’t spoken much.” And then, as soon as Sister Garson was out of earshot, he lowered his voice and said,“What was it?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The child. Was it a boy or a girl?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “No one will say. Daisy didn’t get to see it. It was just, your baby’s dead, get over it, you’ll have another.”

  “Her first?”

  He nodded.

  I wondered who might have offered such cold comfort. Everyone, I expect. It was the approach at the time. Infant mortality was no longer the commonplace event it once had been, but old attitudes lingered.

  I said,“And how do you feel?”

  Tulloch shrugged. “It’s nature,” he conceded. “But you’ll get a ewe that won’t leave a dead lamb. Is John Petrie dying now?”

  “I can’t say. Why?”

  “I’m looking after his flock and his dog. His dog won’t stay put.”

  At that point the door opened and Mrs Tulloch—Daisy— stood before us. True to her name, a crushed flower. She was pale, fair, and small of stature, barely up to her husband’s shoulder. She’d have heard our voices, though not, I would hope, our conversation.

  I said, “Mrs Tulloch, I’m Doctor Spence. Are you sure you’re well enough to leave us?”

  She said, “Yes, thank you, Doctor.” She spoke in little above a whisper. Though a grown and married woman, from a distance you might have taken her for a girl of sixteen.

  I looked to Tulloch and said,“How will you get her home?”

  “We were told the ambulance?” he said. And then, “Or we could walk down for the mail bus.”

  “Let me get Mister Moodie,” I said.

  * * *

  Moodie seemed to be unaware of any arrangement, and reluctant to comply with it. Though it went against the grain to be firm with a man twice my age, I could see trouble in our future if I wasn’t. I said, “I’m not discharging a woman in her condition to a hike on the heath. To your ambulance, Mister Moodie.”

  Garaged alongside the field ambulance I saw a clapped-out Riley Roadster at least a dozen years old. Laughton’s own vehicle, available for my use.

  As the Tullochs climbed aboard the ambulance I said to Daisy,“I’ll call by and check on you in a day or two.” And then, to her husband,“I’ll see if I can get an answer to your question.”

  My predecessor’s files awaited me in the office. Those covering his patients from the last six months had been left out on the desk, and were but the tip of the iceberg; in time I’d need to become familiar with the histories of everyone on the island, some fifteen hundred souls. It was a big responsibility for one medic, but civilian doctors were in short supply. Though the fighting was over and the forces demobbed, medical officers were among the last to be released.

  I dived in. The last winter had been particularly severe, with a number of pneumonia deaths and broken limbs from ice falls. I read of frostbitten fishermen and a three-year-old boy deaf after measles. Two cases had been sent to the mainland for surgery and one emergency appendectomy had been performed, successfully and right here in the hospital’s theatre, by Laughton himself.

  Clearly I had a lot to live up to.

  Since October there had been close to a dozen births on the island. A
fertile community, and dependent upon it. Most of the children were thriving, one family had moved away. A Mrs Flett had popped out her seventh, with no complications. But then there was Daisy Tulloch.

  I looked at her case notes. They were only days old, and incomplete. Laughton had written them up in a shaky hand and I found myself wondering whether, in some way, his condition might have been a factor in the outcome. Not by any direct failing of his own, but Daisy had been thirty-six hours in labour before he was called in. Had the midwife delayed calling him for longer than she should? By the time of his intervention it was a matter of no detectable heartbeat and a forceps delivery.

  I’d lost track of the time, so when Mrs Moodie appeared with a tray I was taken by surprise.

  “Don’t get up, Doctor,” she said. “I brought your tea.”

  I turned the notes face down on the desk and pushed my chair back. Enough, I reckoned, for one day.

  I said,“The stillbirth, the Tullochs. Was it a boy or a girl?”

  “Doctor Laughton dealt with it,” Mrs Moodie said. “I wasn’t there to see. It hardly matters now, does it?”

  “Stillbirths have to be registered,” I said.

  “If you say so, Doctor.”

  “It’s the law, Mrs Moodie. What happened to the remains?”

  “They’re in the shelter for the undertaker. It’s the coldest place we have. He’ll collect them when there’s next a funeral.”

  I finished my meal and, leaving the tray for Mrs Moodie to clear, went out to the shelter. It wasn’t just a matter of the Tullochs’ curiosity. With no note of gender, I couldn’t complete the necessary registration. Back then, the bodies of the stillborn were often buried with any unrelated female adult. I had to act before the undertaker came to call.

  The shelter was an air-raid bunker located between the hospital and the airfield, now used for storage. And when I say storage, I mean everything from our soap and toilet roll supply to the recently deceased. It was a series of chambers mostly buried under a low, grassy mound. The only visible features above ground were a roof vent and a brick-lined ramp leading down to a door at one end. The door had a mighty lock, for which there was no key.