The Claw

Ten

A scream woke Liz. It sounded as if the sky were splitting. Perhaps it was part of her dream, in which someone had been chasing someone else, but it was also above her. She saw the jets screaming away over the horizon as she opened her eyes, but at first she couldn't distinguish much else; the sun had got into her eyes while she was asleep, and everything looked bleached, over-exposed, difficult to interpret. Then she was on her feet and staring about. 'Where's Anna?' she cried.

Alan glanced up from a colour supplement; on the glossy cover a primitive mask bared pointed teeth. 'She went to get some more lemonade.'

'Went where? You didn't let her go up to the house, did you?'

'Why not? Where else would she get it from?' He was staring irritably at the supplement, as if he couldn't meet her eyes. 'She'll be all right,' he mumbled. 'It isn't far.'

'You let her go up there alone? After what happened?' Liz felt sick, her legs were rubbery. 'How long has she been up there?'

'Oh, not long. I don't know exactly.' He heaved himself wearily to his feet. 'AH right, for God's sake, I'll go up if it makes you feel better.'

He strode up the cliff path. She was meant to see how he was driving himself, exerting himself for her peace of mind. All at once Liz wondered if there was some other reason why Anna had gone up to the house. Maybe she hadn't wanted to stay with him while Liz was asleep. Had something happened between the two of them? She made herself climb faster. Sand trickled from the ragged edge of the path.

By the time she reached the top, Alan was almost at the house. The windows were blank with sunlight and she couldn't see through them. Apart from the goats, the cliff-top seemed deserted; the flattened grass looked dusty with sand and harsh light, the coast road shimmered away toward the Britannia Hotel, the fields were giant samples of paint, green and yellow. The only thing that struck her as unusual was a glint of glass by the entrance to the pillbox. It was a bottle, a broken bottle of lemonade.

It was a popular brand. Millions of people besides Anna must drink it. Nevertheless Liz craned into the dim entrance to the long low concrete building and called, 'Anna' down the crumbling steps. She held her breath, so as to hear better and so as to avoid inhaling the stale animal smell that wafted up from the depths of the pillbox. Nobody answered her, but before she could call again, she heard a faint movement from somewhere within.

She glanced toward the house. Alan had reached the garden path. If she called him, she might be taking him away from Anna – and besides, she was furious with him. Suppose the movement in the pillbox wasn't Anna but whoever had killed the goat? She was dithering while Anna might be in danger. Taking a deep breath of fresh air, she went quickly down the steps.

When she reached the bottom, at first she couldn't see. Her eyes were full of the dazzle outside. She had to stand there for a moment, one hand on the cold sweaty wall, and close her eyes. In the underground dimness with its rank smell of mould and concrete dust and something else, she heard movement again. Perhaps a goat had strayed down here; she couldn't recall how many she had seen outside. That would explain the bestial smell.

She opened her eyes as soon as she could and stepped forward, calling, 'Anna.' To her left was a bare room the width of the pillbox. Sunlight blazed in through two small square apertures high up in the wall – gunports, presumably – but it only blurred the edges of the apertures and made the rest of the room more difficult to see. Still, it was clear the room was empty, except for a couple of beer-cans and a crumpled paper handkerchief.

She turned away, down the dim corridor. Small cells opened off it on both sides, each one lit by one of the square apertures. Sometimes she had to halt and close her dazzled eyes, and then she began shivering as the chill of the place settled over her like fog. Her footsteps and the empty echoes of her voice were shrill. Wouldn't Anna have answered by now? Perhaps she was afraid to admit she was down here after being warned so many times to stay away from it. Surely it couldn't be that she was unable to answer?

Liz halted again, gripping the edge of the doorway, and squeezed her eyes shut to drive away a flock of overlapping after-images. Concrete dust whispered down from beneath her hand, and in the silence she heard another sound ahead. It couldn't be Anna. Please, let it be one of the goats… She opened her eyes and groped her way forward, though her vision was crowded with vague pale blotches. All at once she was desperate to find the source of the snuffling.

The next cell on the left was empty, and so was the one on the right. The squares of blue sky looked unreal, part of a different world. As she stepped into the dark area between the sets of doorways, she realized that the corridor ahead wasn't only dim: it was flooded. She must be smelling the stagnant water as well as the goat, for it smelled worse than any animal she had ever encountered. There was something about the smell that she didn't even want to consider.

She was sick with apprehension now. The goat must be injured; that was why it was snuffling. She forced herself forward, to get it over with. Empty cells, blurred squares of distant sky, shrill echoes of herself that she couldn't hush. Now she was at the edge of the water that covered the floor, and now she could see why it was darker here: a clump of bushes outside prevented daylight from reaching into some of the cells. At the edge of the darkness, she realized something else. The stench that she had tried not to define reminded her very much of blood.

Before she knew what she was doing, she was groping forward along the left-hand wall. The water was shallowest at the edges, but even so it soaked her sandals at once. Reflections doubled the doorways, which looked drowned and wavering. Each cell was darker, each step toward the snuffling took her further into the dark.

She flinched and almost cried out when she glimpsed movement in the next cell opposite, a dark shape creeping away from the entrance. It was only ripples in the water that had spread into the cell. The water made her feet drag – as if her fear wasn't enough to slow her down. There was a dim shape in the next cell across the corridor, but that was just a stain on the concrete floor. So was the dark huddle on the floor of the cell beyond that.

She was sloshing onward now, pressing on because she'd almost lost her footing. No, it couldn't be a stain. It was an object, a glistening object lying on the dank floor. Surely it must be dim reflections of the ripples that had made it seem to stir. There was no need for her fists and her stomach to clench like this.

But it had eyes, and they were watching her.

She stumbled backward, fighting to keep her balance on the slippery floor. It was only some tramp sleeping rough, she told herself desperately: a tramp – that was why he was so thin. So he was naked – why not, on a day like this? But even then she didn't believe herself, not when she could see how his entire body was glistening. The liquid that covered him from head to foot was too dark for water. She had smelled it all the way along the corridor. His bared teeth were glistening with blood too.

He was rising slowly on all fours, exactly like an animal in its lair. Around him she thought she glimpsed scattered bones, ragged with flesh. His eyes gleamed yellow, his teeth bared further in a grin or a snarl – and then she was running wildly down the corridor, almost falling at the water's edge, one outstretched hand scraped raw by the rough concrete wall. She might have screamed for Alan, but her throat was choked by fear and the smell of blood. She was sure that any moment the thin bloody figure would leap on her back, drag her down on the floor of the dark corridor.

When she reached the steps she stared back, trembling. The corridor was deserted. She fled up the steps, so clumsily that she fell, bruising her knees. She stumbled into the daylight, away from the pillbox, toward the house.

Alan was striding toward her, half-dragging Anna. 'She was waiting for the lemonade to chill,' he said angrily. 'I had to go searching for her. She was waiting by the road – she wouldn't wait in the house.'

He saw Liz's expression and came quickly over to her. 'My God, what's wrong?'

It would take too long to describe what she'd seen. 'There's someone down there,' she said, pointing to the steps, though her hand was shaking almost as much as her mouth. 'I think he's the one who killed the goat.'

'Is he, by Christ? Well, we'll soon find out.' Before she realized what he meant to do, he disappeared into the pillbox.

She hadn't wanted him to go down. There was only one way in or out, and he could have guarded that while she called the police. He'd strode into the pillbox as if he was eager for violence, and now she was afraid of what might happen, down there in the dark. Suppose he couldn't see the creature until it was too late? Suppose it was ready for him – waiting for him? Wind tugged at the grass, sand hissed at the edge of the cliff, the cries of children drifted along from the Britannia Hotel. It was only half a mile away, and so was Jane's house in the other direction, but somehow that only made her feel all the more alone.

She told Anna to wait where she was, a hundred yards away, then she hurried alongside the pillbox, trying to see through the gunports. But she could see nothing, and worse still, she couldn't hear Alan; her ears were full of the ominous roar of the sea. She wavered between the gun- ports, afraid to cry out a warning in case it distracted him. What had she sent him down there to confront? She couldn't even reach the gunport of the cell where she had seen the figure crouching in the dark, for the bushes were too thick.

She was still wavering outside the pillbox and straining her ears when she heard movement on the steps. She glanced nervously at Anna to make sure the child was far enough away to be in no danger. But it was Alan on the steps. He stood shaking his feet dry, and gazed oddly at Liz. 'Come on, let's go down and finish the wine if it hasn't been pinched,' he said. 'There's nobody in there. Nobody at all.'