Thieving Fear

THIRTY

'What did she say?'

Ellen kept the question in her eyes as she watched Hugh end the call. Beyond her the steps leading to the beach were unequal slabs of sand edged with stained yellowish strips of wood that put him in mind of exposed bones. 'She says go on,' he said.

'And what do you say, Hugh?'

'I say go as well,' he said and stowed the mobile in his pocket.

'Then let's,' Ellen said as if she wanted to believe they were playing a game, and set about descending to the beach.

She grimaced at her legs more than once, perhaps holding them responsible for the irregular strides she had to take. The spade clanked against the edges of the steps as Hugh followed her. By now the entire late-afternoon sky was as good as black with the possibility of a storm. It appeared to jerk lower, giving way beneath its burden, with every step Hugh took. It had already cleared the beach of any visible human audience to his and Ellen's behaviour. Across the river, which had retreated several hundred yards from the cliff, it was reducing the summits of the skyline of Welsh mountains to shadows of themselves. The only signs of life were dozens of thin-legged birds that scurried along the water's edge to peck at the glistening sand. They were too remote to bother about Ellen or Hugh as he joined her on the beach. When she didn't move or speak but only gazed towards the mountains as if she hoped for a glimpse of the sun, Hugh had to ask 'Anything wrong?'

'Rather than everything, you mean?' Without relinquishing the distant view Ellen said 'Maybe my imagination isn't up to this. I can't get it round what we're going to do.'

'We don't need to imagine, we just have to do it. We've got to go back to where you brought us for a walk, yes?'

'When you all got the exercise I needed.'

Hugh lifted the spade towards the blackened sea beyond the river. 'It's that way then, isn't it?'

'That's right,' Ellen said, looking at last.

'It's right and it's right,' Hugh declared, and then doubt overtook him. If he'd regained at least some of his sense of direction, why had it been restored? He could easily feel that the nightmare was biding its time before overwhelming him with worse. This prompted him to wonder 'What are you feeling like now?'

'No better for being asked.'

However clumsy the question had been, he couldn't improve on it. Leading the way would draw her attention to his improved state, and he loitered until she became impatient with his reluctance. He suspected that she was battling some of her own as she set off along the beach.

As he trudged to keep pace with her, their goal seemed to stir in its sleep, or its surroundings did. A quivering advanced from the horizon through the vast black slab of mud that was the sea. Several small boats at anchor near the river's mouth squashed their reflections flat and then were pushed up by them, a sight that put Hugh in mind of lids being raised from beneath. Clumps of grass began to twitch as if the buried heads of which they were the muddy greenish scalps were about to rise from hiding, a prospect at which the seabirds appeared to take fright, soaring in an elongated flock like a cautionary arrow along the shoreline. The next wind brought swathes of sand whispering along the beach, hissing in the grass and constantly changing their outstretched shapes as if each unstable flattened mass were attempting to form a secret sign before dissipating among the furrows etched by the tide. The mats of shrubs that patched the cliff face rattled like restless skeletons, while the bushes at the edge of the common nodded together, only to straighten up as eagerly as any audience. Hugh tried not to let them make him feel watched and anticipated, and of course the presence he heard stirring in the rusty hulk of an abandoned boat at the foot of the cliff was composed of wind and sand. He'd grown so concerned to separate the landscape from his uneasy perception of it that he didn't realise he had strayed ahead until Ellen called 'Where do you think you're going, Hugh?'

'Wherever you are,' he promised and saw that she'd halted by the path they'd all climbed to the common. 'Is he up there?' he said almost too low to be heard.

Ellen's mouth seemed reluctant to let out her voice, even though she was standing well away from the cliff. 'There,' she murmured and snatched her hand back.

She'd pointed at a hole in the cliff, a few inches lower than her head. In the midst of his apprehension Hugh wondered whether it had been in the photograph he'd found on the Internet. Otherwise the stretch of cliff was unchanged, and he didn't like to think what else the power behind this might be able to do. Ellen ducked to glance in and immediately recoiled, pushing at the air with both hands and then gripping them behind her. 'There,' she said again, and more loudly 'Hugh –'

He lifted the spade like the weapon it could certainly become and tramped fast towards the cavity. It was big enough to stick his head in, not that he intended to, which meant it was equally capable of producing a head. As he came within arm's length – only his own arm, he hoped – the hole, which was too close to perfectly circular for his liking, emitted a wordless moan and a trickle of earth. Hugh faltered until he realised these must be caused by the wind. In any case, if the worst the hole could bring forth was the kind of noise an old-fashioned ghost might have emitted, how much courage did he need? He'd used hardly any yet, and it should be nowhere near running out. He dug the spade into the sand and leaned on the handle while he crouched to peer into the hole, and a face peered out at him.

Darkness seemed to close not just around his vision but over him, and to hold him as fast as earth. He couldn't lift the spade or use it to thrust himself backwards – and then his helpless immobility gave him time to see the truth. The face in the depths of the burrow bared its teeth as Hugh grinned before straightening up. 'It's all right,' he told Ellen. 'That's not him.'

'What isn't?'

Perhaps she hadn't glimpsed the item. 'It's glass,' Hugh said, letting go of the spade to reach in.

'Don't,' Ellen cried, but his fingertips had bumped into a thin bare object – a bone? No, it was a handle, and he strained his arm further, pressing the side of his face against the clammy surface of the cliff. He must have snagged the handle, because it tilted into his grasp, so that he was able to ease his find out of the burrow. 'See,' he said, 'it was just a mirror.'

The oval glass was about the size of a baby's face, and set in black wood. Clay stained the glass and the handle, which was banded with marks that might have been left by thin fingers. As Hugh rubbed the mirror clean with the back of his hand it showed him the black sky. Indeed, the image was dark enough for midnight, and flaws in the glass made the sky appear to be sprinkled with unblinking stars. 'Ellen,' he said. 'Look.'

She did, but not at him, and still less at the mirror. She crouched to glare at the cliff and shrugged, unless it was a shudder. 'He isn't there,' she muttered.

'I told you he wasn't.' Though Hugh hadn't quite, he felt entitled to the claim. He would have moved his prize into her line of vision if he hadn't been engrossed. The space between the points of light was infinitely black, but was one of them more than a point? As he squinted and lifted the mirror towards his eyes he could imagine that the spark in the depths was composed of flecks of light. He couldn't look away, but beckoned to Ellen, murmuring 'Come and –'

'Don't you understand what that means?'

'I don't understand what this does.' As he brought the mirror within inches of his face he saw that the distant mass of pale light was a nebula if not a galaxy. How much of this was an illusion? The blackness within the glass appeared to have begun an endless fall, and Hugh felt on the brink of one, as if the egg-shaped glow at the centre of the mirror were eager for his company. The impression made him blurt 'Maybe you –'

'He's got out, Hugh.'

Hugh supposed he ought to feel as disturbed as Ellen sounded, but not yet – not until he identified the appearance in the mirror. Perhaps it was shaped less like an egg than like an eye. 'He left this, didn't he?'

'We don't want it. We don't want anything to do with it. Drop it, Hugh. Get rid of it. It's just an old mirror.'

Hugh tilted it towards his face. To his surprise, however nervous, he couldn't see himself. He seemed unable to see anything except the ill-defined shape of an eye – more like a simile or a substitute for one, all that his mind was able to encompass – in the midst of infinite darkness. It must be an eye, since it was widening as if to help him comprehend its essence. 'It's more than that,' he insisted, because it seemed crucial that Ellen should see – so important that he managed to relinquish the sight in order to hold the mirror out to her. 'Really, look.'

She turned her eyes away, but not fast enough. Her face convulsed so violently that he might have imagined it was desperate to take a different form, any form. When she grabbed the mirror he thought she meant to risk another glance, and then he saw her plan. 'Ell –' was as much as he had time to protest before she flung the mirror past him to smash on a rock.

'What have you done?' he cried and stumbled to retrieve the mirror, which was lying face down on the rock. When he picked it up no glass was left behind, and he thought it might not be broken after all. As he turned it towards him, however, the mirror gave way, though it seemed less to shatter than to ripple like dark water into which an object had just sunk. He even thought he saw glittering blackness spill out of the frame to glisten for an instant on the sand. 'Look at it now,' he complained and swung around, brandishing the empty frame. Then it dropped from his hand, although he didn't hear it fall. There was no sign of Ellen anywhere on the beach.