The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

DAVID A. SUTTON The Fisherman

When Stephanie first saw him, his eyes were wild yet unfocused. She found out why later.

She and Rod were waiting outside the holiday cottage in Pembrokeshire; the keys were promised any minute. In front of them huddled the building that had been converted from a farm structure into holiday lets. Not strictly cottages as advertised, but she was not going to quibble. Behind them crouched the tiny inlet of Nolton Haven and the swell of St Bride's Bay beyond. Stephanie had turned to watch the waves that caroused so very close to the dwellings. The beach itself was hidden from her viewpoint, below the shelf of land they were standing on. The twin biceps of the cliffs on either side hugged the bay close. Rugged and yet secure, she thought.

As she watched a seagull lazily ascend in the middle distance, a dark shape suddenly appeared out of the ground.

"Oh!" she said, starting back and colliding with her husband as he peered into a room through one of the windows.

Rod pivoted around quickly, recovering his balance and hers in turn. A few yards away an old man in oilskins was rising up as if he was emerging from the rough green turf that separated the promontory of land from the beach. They would later discover the foot-worn steps that allowed beachcombers to negotiate the ten-or-so-foot drop to the pebbles and sand.

"Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs" the old man said as he climbed the top of the rise and walked with a determined pace towards the couple. "Upon the slimy sea."

Stephanie edged closer to Rod and put her arm around his waist. He could feel her shudder. The old man was very close to them now, had entered their personal space, and she could see his red and watery eyes close up — eyes that had been staring out to sea for too many years. A seafarer's eyes, focusing not on her, but distantly, or even inwardly perhaps.

"Get away you old fool!" A middle-aged woman had rounded the corner of the holiday lettings, bearing their key. The old man turned to face her and his eyes hardened to marble, but he walked off towards the cliff path without saying anything further.

"Mrs Rollason," Rod introduced her to Steph. "Stephanie, my wife."

"He's all right," Mrs Rollason said. "Gilbert wouldn't hurt a fly I daresay, but he's not quite right, if you know what I mean." She smiled hopefully and handed Rod the. key to their accommodation. "Nice to meet you, Stephanie. I'm Joan. I've put a loaf of bread and some butter and milk in the fridge for you both, start you off. The beach shop sells groceries if you don't want to go into Broad Haven right away. If you need anything else in the meantime, please come over to the farmhouse. Either Ted or me'll always be around."

Stephanie nodded in acknowledgment, but was distracted as she watched the old man labouring up the steep coastal path that navigated the cliffs out of Nolton Haven. "Does he live around here?" she asked, hoping he did not. The man had given her quite a jolt.

"Up there," Joan nodded towards the highest visible point of the cliff. At the top, surrounded by gorse, was a small, once white-painted wooden building. It did not look much to live in. "His wife was drowned off the beach, quite a few years ago now, and he's out day and night looking for her, so they say. He's harmless enough. Needs help of course, but won't take it. Stubborn old fool."

"What on earth was he jabbering about?" Rod asked. "Sounded familiar."

"Oh, he's always saying some poetry or other. Now you two newlyweds enjoy your honeymoon and forget about old Gilbert, won't you."

When the farmer's wife had gone, Stephanie snatched the key from Rod and opened the door to Swift Cottage. A single-bedroom holiday cottage with all the modern conveniences, she recalled the brochure. The roof space above the living room was open to the rafters, one of the charming features advertised. But the furniture was a bit tatty and the kitchen units, cooker and fridge had all seen their best days some years before.

"You told her we were on our honeymoon?" Stephanie asked as she walked around the living room, her fingers lightly caressing an elaborately decorated earthenware ewer and bowl on an old sideboard.

"Well, no," Rod answered, lowering his head to come through the door from the kitchen, where he had been examining the contents of the fridge. "But I didn't disabuse her if that's what she thinks. I just told her we were recently married."

And so they were, but their honeymoon had actually been taken in Turkey earlier in the year and had turned out disastrously. The honeymoon holiday from Hell had nearly wrecked the marriage. They were still trying to get their money back from the tour company, as well as their fractured relationship from each other.

During the holiday, Stephanie had discovered that she did not really know Rod very well at all. So much for whirlwind romances. She loved him still, but the comforting ache of new love had dissipated. She tried to recapture the emotion, yet it eluded her like a favourite piece of music that on subsequent hearing no longer has the passion to arouse. On their honeymoon she found Rod quarrelsome and bad-tempered, and he took his frustrations out on her, instead of the holiday rep.

Nothing went right and, to try to salve the wounds caused by the various holiday brochure failures and their constant arguments, she had suggested on their return that they squeeze their bank account a little more, on the promise of actually getting some compensation, and go away again, for a few days while summer was still hanging on in England. Rod managed to wangle some more leave from the office and she walked another tightrope of self-certificated sick leave. It might be her last before her employer had to let her go.

"Oh, well, this might as well be our honeymoon! The Turkish one definitely wasn't! In fact, Rod," she said eagerly, throwing her arms around his neck and draping herself onto him, "let's call this our real honeymoon, eh? Try to forget about the… about the…"

"The-?" he began before he clocked her little jest. They kissed, Rod tasting the smear of lipstick she wore. He lifted her and carried her to the sofa, which creaked of old springs as he lowered her onto it. They began removing one-another's clothes and Rod's hands caressed her.

His middle finger found its way inside her and she groaned. As her heart beat faster with her arousal, she wondered if the ache of new love was returning. Then she remembered the old man. Pushing Rod up off her, her eyes looked serious for a moment. "Close the curtains will you, Rod," she asked.

He stood up and did so. "In case mad Gilbert peeks in?" he guessed. "Maybe we should pay him a neighbourly visit after, invite him down to dinner?"

"Fuck off." She reached up and pulled his belt free from his jeans as if cracking a whip. "Now fuck."

The seaward facing window of the wooden house that crowned the top of the cliffs gazed blankly across St Bride's Bay, the grey water reflected back upon itself. Inside, a shape moved across the window-pane, an eye's pupil milked by a cataract. The dwelling and its single occupant were as old and weathered and colourless as the sea.

Gilbert pulled up his chair and watched through the salt-rimed glass. Cradled in his hands a mug of hot water in which was dissolved an Oxo cube. Down below, the waves, ever eager to smother the sand, were elbowing close to the land, lifting the stern of his little dinghy where it was moored on the beach. It would soon be dark and he would venture down to the surf and the shadows, and the silver light from the moon. Once again row out on the tide, undisturbed in his search.

Tonight, as ever, he would unleash the boat and make his way to where the two walls of the cliffs hugged around Nolton's bay like protective arms. Out he would go, to where the wide sea spanned to the horizon and the gentle slop of the waves was omnipresent, but muted, so that the sound of the oars could be heard as they sliced and skated the slack ocean. Tonight would be a reprise of many such nights. A habit only curtailed when winter storms blew in, and sea spray mixed with driving rain dashed his tiny vessel with salty fury. Then he would have to curtail his repetitive and fruitless forays.

Watery runnels formed in his glazed, despairing eyes like salt waves bridling across reddened sand, and dripped in a silent cataract down a face as craggy and dark as the grey cliffs. Out there… somewhere… his beautiful lost Siren.

There seemed to be few tourists here, fewer beachcombers or sun worshippers.

Stephanie and Rod were walking arm-in-arm along the road to the pub up the hill. From up here Stephanie could see a small caravan park nestling in the valley, from which there was little sign of movement, even though summer still had a few throes to throw. She conceded to herself that the beach was a small one by any standards and that the sea was probably too inconsiderate for swimming.

The little bay, hemmed in as it was by high cliffs, allowed the tide too much wilful leeway; delightful rock pools at low tide, but precious little sand to sit on once the sea had ridden in at high tide. The bay had a wild charm but also, she thought, an aura of loneliness. As they walked she watched a lone fulmar skim the cliff's face, wheeling slowly this way and that, its wings as stiff as an aircraft's. The solitary bird evoked the sense of an ancient landscape, one so untenanted that it was a simple matter to believe that they were the first humans to reach this shore since some Celtic tribe harvested the fish here a millennia ago.

Dusk was arriving with the cold breeze off the sea. "Hug me," Stephanie said, wishing she did not always have to ask.

As he did so, Rod turned his attention to the pub. They climbed the steps that wove through the beer garden to its entrance. "Hope the food's hot."

Stephanie wished he were not so easily distracted; she would have liked more of his attention devoted to her. But not wanting to dampen things with an unguarded comment, she said instead, "I ' should think they get plenty of business from the caravan park." As they entered the lounge, the dining area was surprisingly unoccupied. "Or maybe not." If a pub's busy at mealtimes, she tended to think, its food was likely to be more agreeable.

"It's only," Rod glanced at his watch, "six-thirty. Oh, well, let's see what's on the menu."

They found a small table in a cosy corner by a window and ordered some wine and a meal. While they waited, Stephanie watched the rollers through the window, forever surging for access to the land, but somehow blocked at the last second by a hidden influence, and rippling back. The quickening mass of the ocean was darkening, the surf tracing ragged luminescent curves against the shore.

If she gazed seaward long enough something might take hold in her, she thought, until each gleaming breaker arrives with the impression that the sea is some surly spirit, rising swiftly, disgorging some half-sensed emotion on what was left of the beach. And that ill-natured spirit's jetsam was inside her already. Despite their earlier lovemaking, she did not feel anything much except a formless dissatisfaction.

Rod sat silently beside her, also gazing westwards, until there was nothing but blackness outside, the sea a memory of salt and the tang of seaweed. Then someone switched on the pub's exterior lights, which illuminated the picnic tables in the beer garden and two spiky Cordylines in tubs. Stephanie perked up, trying to imagine that Rod was thinking about the two of them and not his work.

The food finally arrived, and she almost balked at the size of the battered cod and mound of chips on both their plates. "We certainly won't go hungry tonight!" Smiling she brightened as she unwrapped the knife and fork from the red paper napkin and wove her head from side to side as if she did not quite know where on the plate to begin demolishing her meal. "We can find the shops tomorrow and stock up the fridge."

"Maybe we'll eat out more — I wouldn't want you slaving in that excuse for a kitchen every evening." He despatched several french fries. "I've heard there's a couple of very good restaurants in Solva."

"Expensive restaurants, Rod." She had also read the tourist information brochure the Rollasons had left in the cottage. "If you'll recall, we just gave a small fortune to that package tour company." It felt good to be chatting amiably.

"Which we will get back… eventually."

"If you say so. But, really, I don't mind self-catering." She prodded her fish and began to eat, and they lapsed into silence for a few minutes.

Later they both sat on bar stools with a glass of brandy each, to finish the evening. The pub's restaurant had not filled up significantly, and most of the clientele appeared to be locals. Among them Rod noticed the farmer who they had rented the cottage from at the other end of the bar. "Evening Mr Rollason," he said, raising his glass.

He did not mean the gesture in any other way than friendly acknowledgment, but the man raised his pewter pot also, saying, "Thanks, most obliged to you. I'll have a pint. Beth?" he called to the barmaid. "Put another one in there when you're ready."

"Nice one" Stephanie said under her breath as the farmer moved down the bar and sat closer to them. She could imagine the state of both men in an hour or two's time, after performing one-upmanship with several more rounds of drinks.

Rod ignored her comment, paying for the drinks and turning his attention to their companion. "Seems quiet," he said to the farmer. "Here. For the time of year," he added.

Rollason took a long gulp of his fresh pint. "Welsh Tourist Board," he said as if that explained everything. "Still, the cottages help, as the farm don't pay these days."

Stephanie thought Rod must have been thinking about the unpopulated-looking caravan park and the empty seats in the pub, not the farmer's holiday lets. "Well, it's a lovely place, Mr Rollason," she stated. "Very quiet. I like that." She added, "We're hoping to do some walking, forget about the car for a bit."

"Ted's the name. Yes. You've got some good walking hereabouts, if you've a mind." Just then, his attention was caught by a rough-looking figure of a man who was leaving the pub, having put his head around the door and decided against entering. He snorted into his drink. Stephanie followed his glance and recognized the man passing along outside one of the windows.

"Oh, that old man." She turned to face Mr Rollason. "Your wife told us a bit about him this afternoon. The one who lives at the top of the cliff?"

"Ay, that was 'im." He drained the rest of his pint, keeping whatever thoughts he had to himself for the time being. "I'll take another one in there, Beth, if you please."

Rod sipped his brandy. "His wife drowned, we gather, and it's sent him a bit over the edge."

The farmer glanced sideways at their two unfinished glasses and thought better of offering to buy a round. "Some say," he said conspiratorially, leaning in Rod's direction, "that it was 'im that did it. That it weren't no accident."

"Ahh," Rod said. "The plot thickens!"

Rollason ignored his quip.

Stephanie said, "That's terrible. That's murder." She shivered, in spite of the warmth in the lounge bar. Then she thought about it a bit more. "No, they'd have had their suspicions and arrested him by now, surely?"

"They?" Rollason queried.

"The police, of course," Stephanie replied. Who on earth did he think she meant?

The farmer downed most of his pint in one go, before turning to them both. "Has a boat, he does. You might have seen it on the beach. They say he took her out in it one night and only he came back."

"But it could easily have been an accident — " Stephanie rationalized, but Rollason was quick to reply.

"Never found the body, see." Both she and Rod waited as he sipped the remains of his beer. She sensed he had a piece of evidence, a clincher he craved to impart, but wanted to milk the moment. Finally he said, "The tides, y'see, hereabouts. They always bring what's lost back to us." His implication was clear. Drowned bodies float back. Perhaps ones weighted down do not.

Stephanie raised her glass and allowed the dregs of the liquor to inflame her throat and chest. The shivers were on her as soon as she pictured the old man's face, his eyes. That old man, lurking up the cliff in his hut, his secrets wrapped about him like dark green kelp. She would make sure the cottage was locked up tight tonight.

Rollason carefully placed his tankard on the bar and, remembering that he was, to all intents and purposes, supposed to be an ambassador for Welsh tourism, said with a smile, "Don't mind them tales though. Gilbert's been living here quite a few years since it happened and nobody else has disappeared! Thanks again for the drink, I'll wish you goodnight."

Shortly after he left, Rod and Stephanie also started for home. They sauntered down to the sands for a quick walk before bed. The tide was a gentle caress, chuckling over pebbles before drawing back to reveal flat sand gleaming under a risen moon. Out in the bay the water was more agitated, as if tumbling over submerged rocks.

"Look out there," Rod said, pointing. Stephanie stared across the bay, but her eyes had not yet adapted fully to the darkness of the sea. There appeared to be ripples, or many circles of dimpled water, as if the sea itself was agitated. "Something's out there. Fish," he said, stopping to watch. "Swimming into the shallow water. Something big's herding them."

Stephanie could see the phenomenon now, frantic little blips on the surface, as what might have been the fins of fish riding about one another in their haste to escape some predator. Beyond them the sea was calmer, no sign of anything big, like a shark, say. "It's impossible to see exactly —»

"Quiet," Rod said. "Wait." As if not talking would mean whatever it was would come to the surface and show itself clearly. "There's something out there," he repeated in a whisper.

Why would he want to dramatize things? Stephanie asked herself. Yet the gentle, insistent lapping of the tide started to put her on edge. "What is it? A boat?" she asked. "I can't see anything."

Then a silver shape surfaced from the agitated black swell. It floundered. The sea decided to roughen up a bit and the rising water cut off her brief sighting. Whatever it was, the object was too large for a bird, too slim for a boat, too streamlined for flotsam.

"Yes!" she cried involuntarily as the moon highlighted whatever it was again. The roiling fish were racing away now, back out to sea beyond the arms of the cliffs. The moonlight was rippling on the shape, silvering it, modifying both its real colour and its true outline.

"Quiet," Rod insisted. He gave Stephanie an indecipherable look in the dark, and she felt someone step on her grave. Why was he trying to frighten her?

They both gazed, frozen in place by some unsettling emotion whose source eluded Stephanie. Maybe it was the stories about Gilbert and his drowned wife that had allowed vague uncertainties to invade her thoughts. Whatever the strange fancy was, she knew that Rod was experiencing a similar emotion too, though he would deny it if asked.

Moored offshore, the old man's boat bobbed as if it, too, was fearful of whatever had been chasing the fish. Stephanie allowed her concentration to lapse, hoping that a less creepy mood might intervene. Further along the beach, up the rise in the dunes were the barn-converted cottages. There were welcoming lights in some of the windows, suggesting neighbourly occupants.

"A dolphin perhaps?" Rod asked himself out loud. "Most likely."

His words drew Stephanie's attention back to the deeper water and, as a wave seemingly sloughed off a temporary skin, she glimpsed it again. This time there was a more obvious movement, almost a gesture.

"It has arms," she said. "I saw one of them waving."

"Don't be stupid," Rod said. There was not simply disapproval in the sound of his voice, but anger too. "Who on earth would swim at night, in that?" He knew plenty of brave or foolhardy friends who would, but was not going to admit it to Steph. "Got to be a dolphin. Manoeuvring a shoal of fish."

Stephanie resumed her silent watchfulness. She must have been confused. Rod was probably correct. Nobody would swim in the surf off Nolton's beach at night, not perhaps since Gilbert's wife went missing. Not in any event; the currents might be tricky.

Stephanie kept watch intently for a few minutes more as the rollers relentlessly arched up the beach. Her eyes were beginning to ache with trying to distinguish the dolphin from the waves that intermittently allowed a peep into their troughs. Wanting desperately for it to be a dolphin. There was nothing, though, nothing more to be seen. The creature had swum back out to sea in search of that elusive shoal.

Yet, lingering in her mind's eye was that half-seen shape, and it gave her the shudders just imagining what might still be out there somewhere in the depths, if it was not a cetacean. Rightly it must be something with flippers, a shark even, or a dead boat's hull surfacing, spars waving as the sea drove it.

"Well it's gone." Rod said aggressively, as though disgruntled at not being able to make a positive identification. Stephanie slipped her arm under his and tugged gently against his resistance. They turned their backs to the sea and headed to their accommodation. He turned his head back briefly, paused, took a deep breath.

Breasting the dunes using the half-hidden steps that the old man had climbed that afternoon, both of them turned to face the bay again. The moon was a fat crescent, very bright. The extra height furnished them with little more in the way of visibility, however.

Gilbert's dinghy continued to rock to and fro, the only motion besides the restlessness of the tides.

Rod was stroking Stephanie's back, but not affectionately. Unconsciously he was urging whatever had been out in the bay to reappear. The mystery of it aggravated him. Stephanie knew he did not enjoy ambiguities. She could sense his dissatisfaction, but could do nothing about that. In any case, it was hardly worth losing much sleep over.

Except… the sighting had left her rather uncertain. As if she had glimpsed something that she should not have.

Gilbert swore and stomped along the beach, his waders grinding on newly deposited seashells. As he skirted the rocky inlet, he opened his flies to relieve himself. The urine gleamed bright yellow in the moonlight and hissed as the swirls and eddies took it. He swore again and spat, the wedge of phlegm phosphorescent as it hit the surf.

"Tonight. Tonight… Tonight." He mumbled to himself as he sloshed through the shallows to where his boat was tied up. The vessel tugged on its rein, a frisky horse, anxious for the ride. He felt the vibration in the painter surge through his fingers as he untied it. That urgent, persistent pull. As if the boat knew something… He let the line drop into the swell, releasing his watery stallion. As the hull rode the shallows, he stepped aboard and fixed the oars.

Then he began to row, the wooden craft breasting the waves. His strength was transmitted to the timbers and, as if they were extensions of some strangely articulated arms, the oars rowed and rowed.

Tonight…

Beyond the cliffs, the sea swell lifted the puny craft and dropped it again, but Gilbert stood up nevertheless as he cast his fishing net overboard. "I'll give an almighty haul," he muttered to the waves. "I cut it loose once." He sat, rowed a few strokes to allow the net to drift on its floats. "I won't next time. I won't." He huddled himself against the sharp and persistent breeze, hugging his waterproofs tight around him.

The sea sensed his presence and the water grew more restless. The moon brightened as luminous drifts of cloud hurried out of the way. Selenitic light shimmered on his oilskins and lit up the boat's cracked paintwork. His eyes roamed to the heavens. "The water, like a witch's oils, burnt green, and blue, and white."

He waited as the boat nodded in acknowledgment of the waves. The moon's argent haloes existed for the brief life of the swell and were a second later lost and another created. Then there was the tug, the net pulling against the boat's prow. Instinctively he moved hand over hand, reeling in. The drag of the mesh was steady at first, as if what was netted was somehow comforted, embraced by the nylon lattice. But then whatever was hidden in the waves began making furious water.

"Coming to bed?" Rod's call from the small bedroom sounded muffled, sleepy.

"Mmm. In a minute." Stephanie moved the closed curtains aside and peeped out. There was the cove, glittering under the high moon.

The surf was rougher now, endless waves poised constantly, on the edge of breaking, gathering their brawn from tideless deeps. She cupped her hands to the glass to eliminate the glare of a table lamp and then she saw the rowing boat coming ashore.

She was holding her breath as she watched a hunched, black-clad, wetly luminous figure haul the dinghy out of the water. Across the thwarts of the boat a fishing net dragged, as if the ocean's hand had gripped the tangled nylon fibres and held them.

She knew who it was. He fell, slipped on seaweed or net or through old-age, and a muffled curse rang out loud in the night. He struggled to his feet, hauling himself up using the boat and it wallowed, daring him to try again as he lost his footing once more. He. was acting in a panic now and began dragging on the net while still prostrate in the shallows. Quickly the motion of hand-over-hand in time with yelled words, repeated over and over:

"Tonight! Tonight!"

And some thing was dragged into the shallow water, a shape that flopped, not struggling, as if unsure whether dry land offered more safety than the sea. On the shining sand at Gilbert's feet, luminescent plaits of water… and this…?

Stephanie pressed her face closer to the glass, fascinated and terrified at the same time. In the net… bilious white, flesh that might have been partly consumed by some predator. She tried to imagine it had arms, the waving arm she had seen earlier. Gilbert reached out his hand and began tenderly to untangle the wrinkles of the net. No… she mouthed the word silently. He stood and moved in front of her line of sight and bent over the shape on the beach. There was a cry, an echo of which reverberated around the cliffs. An inconsolable cry. Stephanie squeezed her eyes hard shut and, when she next opened them, the old man was trudging for the rocks and the cliff footpath that led to his house.

Once more she tried to focus on the beach. The rising shallows served to shadow whatever had been in the net. It may have been dead or half-alive. Certainly not a thrashing beast anxious to escape its doom on the shore. But there was something still in the water, not moving much. The fishing net both obscuring and trapping its quivering. A dolphin she thought. It must be.

Rod's resonant and irritated sigh dragged her away from the window. Partly that, but mostly because she was frightened her imagination might make her go down to the beach…

"No dolphins around here miss," the young man said, shaking his head. "They're all over the other side of the bay. This spot's a problem for 'em." He nodded out towards St Bride's Bay. "Too hemmed in 'ere."

Well there was one last night, Stephanie thought, still assuring herself it had been a cetacean that the old man had caught in his net.

She had risen at first light, leaving Rod flaked out still, and was taking a walk along the beach, to make certain herself that the creature had not died in the shallows. The man had been descending the coastal path and she decided to engage him in conversation. After the usual niceties, she had asked about the dolphin. She had not mentioned Gilbert and his moonlight trip into the bay.

"I don't think I've seen a dolphin round this beach, since…" He tailed off as the clap of wood against wood carried down from the cliff.

Stephanie jumped at the sound.

"Gilbert." The young man explained. "That'll be him, lives up there." He gestured at the cliff.

"He's a bit simple, isn't he?" she asked. She did not want to talk about Gilbert, but perhaps this was as good an opportunity as any to mention about him catching something big in his net.

"He's not right," the man agreed. "But there's reasons."

"I heard his wife drowned," Stephanie prompted.

He did not need much encouragement and was soon talking. "People say Gilbert was a fisherman for forty years. He went to the Far East to live for a time and brought a pretty wife back with him, younger than he was. Indonesian. He was well into middle age by then and a grim sort. He'd lived too long alone, some said, and the first time the village saw his new bride the talk started. The first time I clapped eyes on her was almost the last." He smiled oddly.

"I'd been away working in Tenby for the summer and when I came back to Nolton I saw her — she was a cracking girl, hope you don't mind me sayin'. It was in the beach shop over there," he pointed to the caravan park. "Chatted her up a bit I did, until Gilbert turned up. Didn't know it was his missus at the time, I just assumed she was on holiday. He let me have a piece of his mind, I can tell you. After that he kept her mostly confined to barracks like, alone with him up there."

"I've been told a story that she might have been done away with," Stephanie coaxed.

"Well there was no witnesses to what happened, not here in the dark. Nolton's a quiet place. They never found her, that's the point, I'd say."

"Yes, I heard." She continued, "Bodies turn up when they drown, but hers didn't."

The young man nodded. "Ah… whether it's guilt at what he done, or sadness for his loss, Gilbert's never been right since. He takes that old wreck of a dinghy out at night, searchin' for her. One of these days it'll be him that doesn't come back." He paused, thinking. "P'raps that's what he's hoping for."

Stephanie ran her hand along the gunwale of Gilbert's boat, the flaking pale blue paint raking against her fingers. The fishing net was still strewn down the beach, a coiled nylon snake. There was no body of any description in its folds.

"Gilbert's story has become a bit of a local legend, a ghost story, if you like, miss," the man remarked. "It's whispered that his dead wife swims out there in the surf, trying to get her revenge on Gilbert. And that people might see her on a moonless night." He laughed. "Maybe that's what you saw last night, miss."

Stephanie started and looked sharply at her companion. "A dolphin. It was definitely a dolphin." And it wasn't a moonless night, she thought to herself.

They returned to the beach that night. They had enjoyed their day walking some of the public footpaths and bridle-ways inland, and she had been pleased for once not to have the constant sound of the sea in her ears.

Rod had wanted a quick drink at the pub and straight back to the cottage, but Stephanie was in a curious mood and almost insisted they take a stroll along the strand before they return.

The moon was hidden in its entirety by a dense eiderdown of grey cloud, transforming the beach into a dark sheet and the rocks to hunched figures swirled by inky water. Stephanie scanned the little inlet, from the horizon beyond the cliffs, to the eddies near the shore, but it was so dark tonight, she imagined that the dolphin, if he came back at all, would be indistinguishable from the water.

"Are you all right?" Rod asked tentatively, stopping, taking her hands in his.

She was surprised and pleased with his attention. "Yes, why d'you ask?"

He did not reply immediately. She saw what might have been concern in his eyes.

"It's just that… The old man," she said. "I saw him again last night, in his boat. He'd netted a dolphin… I think."

"So?" Rod put his arm around her waist and they continued their stroll. "I mean, was it dead or something?"

The waves calmly washed the sand near their feet, drawing close and then back. "No, I don't know. I'd like to know for sure."

They had walked as far as Gilbert's boat and used it to sit on. The craft had been dragged farther up the beach and rested solidly in soft dry sand, but the fishing net still lay neglected, strewn between the dinghy and the shallows.

Rod looked around. "Well, I can't see anything dead lying here. When they strand on a beach they usually attract a lot of attention." He turned to his wife, cupped her chin tenderly and kissed her. "It must have escaped. Or Gilbert let it out of his net."

Stephanie nodded, but she was unable to mould her thoughts into coherent words that Rod would understand. Her feelings were ephemeral, insubstantial, as hazy as the ghostly light upon the water.

Before long the surf was riding higher and wrestling roughly with the sand. The sky was beginning to clear as a strong breeze came off the sea and the moonlight gleamed wetly on the waves. The fish were scurrying again and Stephanie hoped that the dolphin might return, to reassure her that it was still alive.

"Brrr. Winter must be coming early." Rod wrestled with himself. "Maybe we'd better —»

"Look," Stephanie hissed, pointing. "What's that?" Goosebumps travelled up her bare arms, more through a sudden fright than the chill wind.

Near the cliff-face one of the hunched black rocks was rising, moving towards them. The light from the moon threw the features into shadow, but Rod recognized its gait almost straight away.

"Gilbert. It's Gilbert."

He passed close by them, and Stephanie could swear his wild glare revealed that he was somehow aware that she had been watching him the other night. Yet, he did not acknowledge them or glance back in their direction as he circuited his boat and continued along the beach.

"Ay, difficult waters tonight!" he shouted to himself. Swinging from one hand was a bottle of some sort. Stephanie guessed he was drunk. He wove across the strand and stumbled into the shallows, ankle-deep, knee-deep. Pausing for a breath, he arched his arm and threw his bottle as far as he could. There was a distant hollow plop of sound. Then, ludicrously, he began to wade out after it.

Stephanie never thought she would be so close to a scream. She knew Rod was immune to the atmosphere. Just the old man, drunk and half-mad and mourning his wife all these years, or plagued by guilt at a terrible crime to which he was unable to confess. But there was more to it. More she was aware of. Not aware exactly, a kind of impression that remained half-acknowledged by the conscious brain, but the substance of which her deeper psyche struggled to communicate.

She realized she need not fear Gilbert. He was too feeble and shrivelled. Too old, with his scruffy oilskins, his unpleasant face with its dark wiry bristling beard. The fuzzy uneasiness that she had thought might be because of him was something else entirely. As she watched him slouching away in the shallows, she felt the boat beneath her grind on pebbles. Rod jumped up, but Stephanie was thrown backwards into the craft and her thoughts were diverted.

All around now the rising tide was sweeping relentlessly up the beach. The sea swirled, dark fingers of water weaving like snakes into the shallow gutters circling beached rocks. Rod felt water melt into his socks as it surged over his boots and he began to run for higher ground. He grabbed the tough tussocks of marram grass and hauled himself up the dunes, off the beach, and kneeling, turned to reach down for Stephanie's hand.

But she had not followed him. Puzzled, he stood up and peered left and right along the shore. Maybe she had made a run for the rocks, silly girl. He would have to wade in now to help her avoid a soaking. But he could not see her clambering onto the rocks.

"Steph!" There was no longer any beach to speak of, the sea had swamped nearly all of it. Sloshing inelegantly was Gilbert's boat, heading out on the bay, preceded by the drift of net draped over the prow.

Stephanie struggled to sit up, her right hand and forearm tangled in the net. The boat wobbled about and made her queasy. How foolish, she said to herself. Then the boat surged forward, the net tightening, the nylon cutting into her arm.

She felt the dinghy being dragged by the net. She was unable to sit up properly, so she threw herself over on to her front to try to loosen the fibres with her free hand. The boat wallowed heavily and took on some water. Pulling at the mesh awkwardly with her left hand, Stephanie wondered what was tautening the swathes of it in the deep water under the boat. The dinghy was shunting the incoming waves, bludgeoning itself against them, raising white spumes over the prow. Spray cascaded over her, soaking her blouse, chilling her skin.

The moon gleamed on the water as she grappled with the raw nylon, and overboard she saw silver filaments dapple the swell. Like little silver fish, she thought, their fins skipping to the surface.

The danger she was in did not make itself apparent until that moment. She saw the erratic movements of the silver fish and the looming presence of the cliffs at either side of the bay. The open sea was very close. She struggled frantically with the mesh, tearing at it with her lacerated free hand.

Briefly, she stopped her labours to take on reserves of air, her chest heaving in panic. Out to sea the fish were gaining ground, leaving her and the boat behind. Yet still the tangled net pulled the craft against the tide. And there now, she saw. A hump of water, breaking over… a shape so sinuous in the swell that it might have been made out of the ocean water itself.

Stephanie was overcome with a strange composure, as if some nymph of the sea were hypnotizing her. The dinghy was awash and might stay afloat only a few minutes longer. Her knees and lower legs were submerged in the chill brine. Time was pausing for her to ready herself, and she felt she was ready. She was calm, waiting.

Out on the flowing water was the thing she had seen before. No, not a dolphin. Nor was it Gilbert's wife, she was long gone. Wavering arms surfaced, seeming to beckon. Was this what the old man had really been fishing for? Was it from this that he sought revenge for his loss? The boat's prow dipped into a trough and did not recover. Not far away, Stephanie watched the sea creature dip too and she knew that she was next.

He had to wade in chest-deep and swim, then catch hold of the stern. He howled Stephanie's name and the word fell flat across the ice cool water. Hauling himself up, the boat's stern went down although the resistance was still firm.

"Fucking stupid old man!" Rod's shout was swallowed by the waves. He hauled on the boat. "It's me, Steph, it's me!" The greedy water lugged the boat as Rod lugged back. Unexpectedly, the remnants of the net untangled themselves from within the dinghy and fishtailed over the side. "Got you now…" He began to make headway towards the shore, turning the craft around so that he could drag it by the prow.

Stephanie rolled over and sat up. She turned to look out to sea. Gilbert's net was swirling, billowing as if it had become a jellyfish. And farther out, a silvery-black shape spread its arms and dived into the deeps.

The boat scraping on pebbles brought her back, alone, from the arms of St Bride's Bay.

She did not pretend to know what had happened. She felt sure she had heard Rod call out to her from the water. Sure it had been his hands that had righted the dinghy and saved her. But, of course, she could never be sure.

She saw Gilbert alive the next day, walking on the beach, so at least he had not drowned from his foolish wading into the sea. She walked past him, still numb from the police questions and a sleepless night. Stephanie wanted to thrash an explanation out of his senile face but thought, whatever he said, she would not have been able to piece together the facts.

All she could think was that something, some being, had surfaced out of the sea off Nolton Haven. A malign apparition. The old man went fishing there, married to the waves as much as he had been married to his wife. Perhaps he had drowned her, or perhaps one stormy night she had taken the boat and saw something… never to return.

Pondering this, the hard ball of pain in her belly intensified. She cupped her hands around her abdomen, held her breath, wondered why the sense of loss was centred there. A heavy stone of hurt, curled up inside her. An anguish that might, in the end, reach her mind and end the numbness.

Gilbert searched endlessly for an answer. Stephanie felt that she would not. Perhaps he came close enough the other night. He nearly netted whatever it was that wallowed and hissed amongst the swell of the deep sea along the beach. And Stephanie felt that if she had been in his position, and had seen what the old man knew was there, she too would set a nightly tryst with the night dark sea. Peering into the kingdom of underwater moonlight and racing surf. An insane and possibly futile pursuit for a lost love, or something that might replace it. Casting her net, trying to catch that elusive dream.