Oddly Enough, page 16
He was sitting comfortably astride the midships seat, baiting a hook, when he noticed a shadow. It ran under the boat and was gone, and he felt the back of his neck tighten. It had been big. He looked up hopefully, but the sky was still cloudless. A basking shark, maybe? They were common enough. And harmless, he reminded himself. Still, he hesitated before dropping the hook carefully back into the water. Whatever it was, it wasn’t interested in the dinghy. And if he did snag it, it’d surely break the line. He stayed where he was, examining the dimpled green water around him. No dramatic fins cutting through the water, no menacing music. Whatever it was, it was gone.
He was just starting to relax when a swirl of turbulence caught his eye, just on the corner of his vision. He turned jerkily enough to set the dinghy rocking, but there was nothing to see except spreading ripples. His heart was pounding. He hadn’t seen what caused the disturbance, not properly, but there had been something. Something big, and … and green, maybe? Were basking sharks green? He’d never had to ask himself that question before. Or anyone else for that matter. He searched the water anxiously, half-standing with one hand on the sun-warmed engine cowling. Nothing, no shadows, no more turbulence. Maybe it was gone. Maybe it had even been a turtle, something like that, and he’d just misjudged the size—
One of the rods went. Not far, just an angry little rattlesnake hiss as the line was pulled out, then stopped. Tim sat down hard and started to reel the other rod in. He didn’t want whatever it was to try this line too— The reel snarled suddenly, the line spinning out, and he gave a little yelp of alarm. It stopped just as quickly as the first, both lines hanging limp into the green depths, and after a moment Tim started reeling one in carefully. It didn’t take long. He hadn’t put much line out, and it came up quickly. He turned to bring the second one in, then sat and regarded them anxiously. Both hooks were gone. It wasn’t strange, not with the size of that thing out there, but it made him uneasy anyway. The dinghy suddenly seemed very small and fragile, the town very distant. He stood up again, searched the water for more shadows, then tugged the starter cord for the engine. He’d had enough. The day had lost its joy.
The engine coughed, then fell silent. He tried again, and again, sweat forming on his shoulders as he tugged stubbornly on the cord, almost falling backward into the bow more than once. He played with the throttle, and the choke, and swore at it in a creative manner that would have surprised Patty. And finally, with the skin between his fingers raw from clutching the toggle on the end of the cord, he gave up and sat staring at the sea. No more ripples or turbulence, except those made from his own panicked movement. No shadows, either. He sighed, wondering if he’d imagined it, then unclipped the oars from under the seat and set them in the rowlocks. He could phone someone, he supposed, but he thought that maybe the engine would start again if he waited. He’d had an old car when he was younger that was like that. It seemed to sense urgency. He dipped the oars in the water and back out, and was gratified to feel the boat start slipping forward. Okay, so this wasn’t so hard. Good. He put his back into it.
This was hard. This was so hard. His back was aching, and his hands were sweating on the oars, and every time he looked over his shoulder (because that was how the professional rowers did it, with their backs to their destination, so he assumed it must be right), the town had slipped to one side or the other as he zig-zagged across the bay. Plus it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. He tried the engine again, but it still wouldn’t start, and he felt oddly determined not to call anyone. It wasn’t as if he had Fred’s number, anyway, so he’d have to, what? Call Mrs Mallow? He didn’t like the idea. And what could she do anyway? He settled himself back down at the oars, then gave an involuntary little yelp as a shadow slid across his stern. Long and tapered, but hard to get any other sense of it from here. The size of it, it had to be a basking shark. But it was fast. Were basking sharks fast? All the photos he’d seen of them they had their cavernous jaws open, and they certainly didn’t look as if they’d go very fast like that. He leaned into the oars. It wouldn’t be interested in him, anyway. He didn’t even have any dead fish aboard.
There was a bump from the bow, gentle but distinct, and Tim added a new level of creativity to his swearing. He never swore at home. It must be a sea thing, he thought, and craned his neck, hoping to see some debris bobbing away. There was nothing but a swirl of disturbed water that made his stomach contract. Just keep paddling, he thought, then remembered the kids’ movie – although that was just keep swimming, wasn’t it? A bubble of nervous laughter rode up from somewhere, and he tried to speed up.
Another bump, but it was more of a tap, wasn’t it? Like someone knocking a walking stick against a door. Tap, tap, again, and he tried to ignore it, to paddle harder. Tap. TAP. A dent appeared in the bottom of the dinghy, popping up next to his foot, and he shrieked, and thrashed at the water with the oars. But now the boat wasn’t moving forward at all, in fact it was tilting, the bow rising as if the sea had thrown a rolling wave out of the still water, but the wave wasn’t moving, it was just sitting there and lifting the bow, or was it that the stern was sinking? No, that couldn’t be it. Why would it be sinking? He must have run over a log, that was all it was, a silly log, and it had lifted the bow, or it was caught around the leg of the outboard and making the stern heavy. He should just go clear it, just lift the engine over it and he’d be away again, and maybe he should call Mrs Mallow after all, or the Coast Guard, or the bloody Natural History Museum, because whatever was drifting toward the surface behind the boat was no log, and no shark, and it was twice as big as the dinghy at least, and it had one paw … claw … something … on the outboard, and as its head surfaced Tim screamed, then fainted.
He came to with the sun beating down on his eyelids, and a dull pain at the back of his head. He groaned, disoriented, and wiped drool from the corner of his mouth. For one foggy moment he was back on his stag do, passing out at lunchtime on a beach in Cornwall and waking up four hours later with a thumping hangover and heatstroke. Then he smelled outboard fuel and something fishy, and he sat straight up and screamed again. The large, scaly head peering over the side of the dinghy screamed back, blasting Tim with fishy breath so strong it made him gag.
There was a pause then, as they stared at each other. Tim could hear blood rushing in his ears, and the … the thing at the back of the boat blinked at him with big silver-grey eyes. It had a ruff of fins sticking out just behind its head, little nubby horns, and a large collection of very sharp-looking black teeth. One heavy paw rested on the stern, and it had long grey claws. The rest of it was green and glossy and, admittedly, rather sleek and elegant. It cleared its throat, a gunshot of sound that made Tim flinch.
“Holy crap. What the hell. Holy Mary Mother of God. Bloody hell. Um … Jesus Christ. Crikey. Holy cow.” It bared its teeth at him, then continued, swearing enthusiastically in a BBC world service accent. It finally finished on an expression that Tim had never even heard before, but that sounded anatomically impossible, then peered down at him expectantly, teeth still bared.
Tim licked his lips, and wondered if he’d been out in the sun too long. But, imaginary or not, at least the thing didn’t seem about to eat him. “Um. What?”
The creature stopped baring its teeth and its eyebrow ridges drew down in something that looked remarkably like concern. “Did I miss something? You all say so many different things. I’m never sure what the correct greeting is.” It scratched its chin with one long claw, then, with a hopeful tilt to its head, added something that would have made even old Fred blush.
“Definitely not that,” Tim said.
“No? Someone said that to me only a year or so ago.” The creature looked so crestfallen that Tim smiled.
“They’re more, ah … expressions of surprise.”
“Really? I do knock. You heard me knocking, right?”
“I … I did. But no one expects a … a … what are you?”
“I’m a sea dragon,” the creature said, and Tim could hear the obviously it had left off at the end of the sentence.
“A sea dragon?”
“Well, yes. What else would I be?”
“I was actually thinking a hallucination, possibly from toxic mould on the shower curtain. Or food poisoning from the coffee.”
The creature looked puzzled, then shrugged. “Well, I’m not.”
Tim looked at the scratches the sea dragon’s claws had left in the aluminium stern, and thought that it really was a particularly vivid hallucination. “Okay, so, sea dragon—”
“Audrey.”
“Audrey?”
“It must be an unusual name for you humans. You always have to repeat it.”
“It’s … it’s not an unusual name for sea dragons?”
“Not really. I mean, my aunt’s called Fandance. That’s unusual.”
“Okay. Yes. Okay.” Tim ran a hand over his head and noticed that his scalp was quite hot. Sunstroke, obviously. He should have worn a hat. “So … Audrey. Are you … I mean … are you planning to eat me?” It was easier to ask than he’d thought. But then, she was a hallucination, so she couldn’t really eat him. The teeth did look alarmingly real, though.
Audrey looked horrified. “Of course not! Why in the name of all good sea creatures would I do that?”
“Um … you have big teeth?”
“That’s a very personal thing to say.” She actually sounded upset now. “I’m very friendly. And no one eats people, not anymore. Well, no respectable dragons do, anyway.”
“I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Audrey sniffed, a little dramatically. “Well, I guess if you can’t even recognise a sea dragon when you see one, you can’t be expected to know these things.”
“You are the first sea dragon I’ve met. First any dragon.”
They regarded each other for a moment, then Audrey said gravely, “Pleased to meet you …?”
“Oh. Tim.”
“Pleased to meet you, Ohtim.”
“It’s … um, yes. Pleased to meet you, too.”
There was another moment’s silence, and Tim could hear gulls crying further inshore. Audrey scratched her head somewhere in the vicinity of where her ears probably were, and bared her teeth at him, making him squeak again.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“I am, yes. But I should probably be getting back to shore. I have to give the boat back.”
“Yes, of course. You might want to use the engine, though. You won’t get back against the tide, rowing.”
Tim looked around in alarm, and added to Audrey’s unsuitable vocabulary when he saw how far away the shore was. He was further away than he had been when he’d started rowing. “The engine’s broken. I’m going to have to call for help.”
Audrey sank down in the water and gave him an unmistakably disappointed look. “Humans. A few people get eaten by sea serpents, a few rogue mermaids dress up and sink some ships, and you just can’t see past it. Why do you think I stopped by?”
Tim stared at her. “You’ll help?”
“Of course. I thought you were some silly tourist, rowing for the fun of it, so I was just going to tell you to start the engine.”
Tim looked at the rods, the line coiling limp and useless. “What about my hooks?”
Audrey dipped her nose like she was embarrassed, then said, “Okay, so I was hungry. Then I realised you might need help.”
“Oh. Well, that’s okay. I didn’t want to catch anything anyway, really.”
“Why did you have the lines out, then?”
“It was a reason for being out here.”
Audrey lifted her snout out of the water and stared at him out of those silver eyes, then shook her head. “Humans,” she said again, then put one paw on the transom and started to swim.
They stopped just outside the breakwater, Tim sitting in the stern with one hand on the outboard tiller for all the world as if he wasn’t being propelled by a large underwater dragon.
“There you go,” Audrey said cheerfully. “Home safe.”
“Thanks,” Tim said, still fairly sure he was imagining the whole thing.
“My pleasure,” she said, and raised one paw to him. “Be more careful next time.”
“Will do,” he replied, but she was already gone, the water swirling in her wake. He put the oars back in the rowlocks and paddled back to the boat ramp, sheltered from the tide behind the breakwater. The sun was still warm on his head and the seagulls were fighting behind the fishing boats. It was all very normal, and very dragon-less, and he thought it was past time he got out of the sun. He’d be seeing dancing pink elephants next.
Fred met him at the ramp as the nose of the dinghy bumped into the green-stained mooring poles, and put one hand on the engine. He grunted. “When did she die?”
“Just outside the breakwater.”
“Cooled down quick.”
“I guess,” Tim said, and gathered his gear together, leaving the old man to deal with the outboard while he clambered out of the dinghy and picked his way over the rough ground to a bench by the shed. He was just pulling his shoes gingerly onto his sunburned feet when Fred stopped next to him, the oars in one hand and the fuel can in the other.
“Used to be, mariner types made offerings to the sea,” Fred said. “To ensure safe passage.”
Tim looked at him, feeling a dehydration headache starting behind one eye.
“Before the voyage, after the voyage, and other times too. You know, an offering to Neptune as you cross the equator and so on.”
Tim still said nothing.
“It’s worth thinking about. No one offers thanks, why should the sea look after you?”
“So I should leave a fatted calf on the beach at full moon just because I went out in a dinghy one afternoon?”
Fred snorted. “You could. But I find some biscuits left on the end of the breakwater at sunset works a treat.”
Tim summoned a laugh from somewhere. “I guess I could do that. Be in the spirit of things.” He definitely had sunstroke – or the old man was a bit strange. Probably both.
Fred handed him something from his pocket, a hard flat scale with a filigree pattern of waves running through it. The sun turned the fine edges into emerald glass. “There you go. Little souvenir from the back of the boat. Enjoy the rest of your stay.” And he stumped away in his wellies, the oars swinging over his shoulder. Tim watched him go, the sharp corners of the scale digging into his hand and the headache thumping insistently behind his eyes.
He’d heard of places playing tricks on tourists, but this seemed excessive.
Sunset was late, and Tim was tired, but he stayed out anyway. The B&B wasn’t the most enticing place to spend time, and what else was he going to do? Sit in a pub and watch midweek football? No, that didn’t appeal. So he sat on the end of the breakwater instead, flanked by his two toothless fishing rods, with a book open on his lap and a bag from the corner shop at his feet.
He had been planning to go straight home rather than risk the B&B again. Not that it was terrible, but, well. There was that mould. And he was fairly sure something had bitten him in bed last night, a thought which made the skin at the back of his neck go all funny.
But he’d had sunstroke, and a hallucination. Patty had wanted him to go straight to hospital, or at least to a GP. He’d refused both, but they had agreed he should stay on another night, and he’d bought insect repellent to treat the bed with. He’d also treated himself to a small can of beer, which he took from the bag now and cracked open as he watched the sun dip into the sea, spilling like molten glass over the smooth surface of the water. The can foamed onto his hand, and he shook the spill off with a little tut of annoyance, then settled himself more comfortably onto the rocks, smelling salt and hops and the peculiar tang of unseasonal days.
He wondered if sea dragons preferred chocolate digestives or hobnobs, and if he should have bought some bourbon creams. Everyone liked bourbon creams.
He waited.
The Lizards are Anxious
A second entry for the Twitter prompts. I quite love them, not necessarily as prompts, due to my aforementioned ornery-ness, but as strange little snippets that are almost a story unto themselves. A snapshot of a world set at just slightly the wrong angle.
And every now and then, one opens a door to something else.
I can’t find the exact prompt again now, but it involved the ghost of a sous-chef who can only say, “the lizards are anxious!”
As they may well be.
Rachel ran her finger carefully down the listings in the Ghost Hunter’s Manual & How-to Guide.
“Poltergeists and Restless Spirits,” she read aloud. “Haunted Objects. Ek … eko … Ectoplasm and its Origins.” She closed the book with a sigh and looked at the cat sat on the table next to her. “Laetitia, it’s all just the same as the other books. Nothing new. Nothing interesting.”
The cat looked at her with cool green eyes, then rubbed her face on the edge of the book, almost knocking it from Rachel’s grip. She giggled, and scratched the cat’s head.
“Honestly,” she told the cat, “we’re not learning anything new here. I mean, the case studies are interesting, but it’s just rehashing the same old stuff. If only Mum would let me sign up for that online course. I bet we’d learn loads from that.”
