Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror

She dressed and went downstairs. Ordered a drink from the bar. An hour later, Jonathan was with her. Her distress was a palpable thing, spinning out from her like barbed hooks: a blind, flailing defence against his insinuative cruelty. She felt subsumed by his personality, as if he were trying to ingest her. Maybe it was the drink, but she was convinced his feelings for her were as shy of respect and concern as she had suddenly come to realize hers were for him.

‘Sorry about that whole “cunt” thing. Bit strong. You know I love you. What shall we have for dinner?’

She picked at a chicken and apricot pie while he polished off a bowl of mussels. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘This sea air! I’m knackered!’ He looked at her hopefully.

‘I’ll stay down here for a while,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready for bed yet.’

He saluted and trotted upstairs. She swallowed hard. It seemed an age ago that she had been able to think of him as attractive and warm. As — God, had she really? — a potential life-partner.

She took a drink with some of the other tourists, middle-aged women in oatmeal coir jumpers and Rowan bags. They tolerated her presence, although she could tell she unnerved them for some reason. The landlady came in and lit the fire, asking everyone if they wanted any brandy and she was going to start a game of whist if anyone was interested.

Claire bid everybody goodnight and went up to her room, the skin of her nape tightening when she heard the word ‘blood’ mentioned behind her, by one of the women. Did you smell the strength of her blood? She thought maybe that was what she had said.

Jonathan was snoring heavily. The TV was on, a late-night film with Stacey Keach. She switched it off and went to the bathroom where she undressed quietly. And stopped.

Her period had begun.

Did you smell the strength of her blood?

‘Oh,’ she said, feeling dizzy. ‘Okay.’ She cleaned herself, applied a sanitary towel and slipped into a pair of pyjamas. Stealthily, praying she would not wake Jonathan, who would read her clumsiness as a prompt for sex — or an argument — she climbed into bed and willed sleep into her bones before her mind could start mulling over the steady, sour creep of their relationship. She failed. She was awake as the full moon swung its mocking face into view, arcing a sorry path across the sky that might well have been an illustration of her own trajectory through darkness. Jonathan’s ragged breathing ebbed and flowed in time with the tide of disaffection insistently eroding her from within.

As dawn broke, she managed to find sleep, although it was bitty, filled with moments of savagery and violence that were instantly forgettable even as they unfolded shockingly before her.

Gulls shrieking as they spun above the hotel awakened her. Jonathan had left a note on the pillow:

Did not want to wake you for breakfast — you were well out of it. Nipped out for a newspaper. Enjoy your toast. Love, J.

He had wrapped two pieces of wholemeal toast and marmalade in a napkin and left them by her bed. The gesture almost brought her back from the brink but she guessed he considered it a chore. If he mentions it to me later, she thought, I’ll know he’s after a reward, a pat on the back. I’ll know it’s over. She giggled a little when she thought the death of their relationship should come down to a few slices of Hovis but that was not really the case; it was just a tidy way to cap it all, a banal necessity to make the enormity of her realization more manageable.

An hour later, they were piling along the A149 coastal road, Jonathan singing loudly to a Placebo song. The sea swung in and away from them, lost to bluffs and mudflats before surprising Claire with its proximity. She did not like the sea here. It appeared lifeless and sly. Where it touched land, grey borders of scum had formed. It simply sat there, like a dull extension of the Norfolk coastline.

They pulled off the road for a cup of tea at a small cafe. While Jonathan argued with the proprietor, who was loath to accept a cheque under five pounds, Claire watched an old woman attempting to eat her Sunday lunch. Her hands shook so badly that she could not cut her meat; her cutlery spanked against the side of her plate like an alarm. The winding blades of an old-fashioned fan swooped above them all. Something about its movement unsettled Claire.

‘Come on,’ said Jonathan, imperiously. ‘We’ll have a drink when we get to Cley.’ He turned to the cafe owner, who was now flanked by her waitresses, alerted by the fuss.

‘Suck my dick, Fatso,’ Jonathan said, and hurried away. Claire raised a placatory hand but the proprietor only looked saddened. The woman at the table raised her jerking head and showed Claire what she was chewing.

‘Jon! How could you say that? How could you embarrass me like that?’

‘Us Chettles do not suffer fools lightly, Claire. I’m not about to start now.’

She wanted to leave him, to just go home, but it was his car and she did not know where the nearest railway station was. Sheringham, probably, a good twenty miles away. She had not seen a bus or taxi since they were in Ely the day before yesterday.

‘I don’t feel as though I’m on holiday, Jon. I haven’t been able to relax. All we’ve done is drive and argue. And I really needed this break.’

‘Hey, it was your choice.’

‘Oh, like it would have been different if we were in Paris?’

He was nodding. ‘Paris is the city of romance. It’s impossible to have an argument there.’

She snorted. ‘There’s a word for people like you. Dumbfuck, I think it is.’

He let that one go, but she could see his jaw clenching, his knuckles whitening on the wheel.

She saw the windmill first. It rose up from a coppice beyond a low range of roofs, its naked, motionless blades seeming to pin the sky into position. She pointed it out and Jonathan nodded, turning the car on to a gravel track. They crested a small humpback bridge over a stream choked by rushes. The windmill was white, tall and solid. Some of its windows were open; lace curtains wagged in the breeze.

Jonathan parked the car and got out without looking at Claire. He walked through the heavy wooden door at the windmill’s base. Claire collected the bags and stood for a while, looking out towards the dunes. On the path, a cluster of birdspotters in brightly coloured windcheaters alternated their focus between her and a clump of gorse. They surprised her because there was not a man in their midst. Occasionally, one of them would raise their binoculars and favour her with a brilliant stare. A woman in a fluorescent green beanie trotted further down the path and the others followed. Claire laughed. They looked intense and foolish.

At the door, she paused. She could not see anybody inside.

‘Jon?’

There was a visitors’ book open on a bureau next to a coffee cup. A small jar of lollipops on the windowsill had been discoloured by the sunlight. ‘Hello?’

She left the bags by the door and headed towards the room to her left. The door was ajar; an old woman was turning back the covers on the bed.

‘Oh, hello?’ said Claire, raising her hand. The woman looked up and smiled.

‘Hang on dear,’ she said, fiddling with her ear. Claire saw she was wearing a hearing aid. ‘I keep it turned off when I work. Nice to have silence every now and again.’

‘My name’s Claire? Claire Osman? I booked a double room for tonight.’

She moved past Claire and checked her name in the ledger. ‘Yes. Room for two. Where’s your partner?’

‘He went in ahead of me.’

The old woman gave her an askance look before shuffling towards the other end of the room. She twisted the handle on the door at the end but it was securely locked.

‘Nobody came in here, my love. Are you sure?’

‘I’m certain!’ Claire blurted. ‘I saw him come in before me. He must have gone through that door.’

‘Aye, if he was a spirit. That’s the door to the windmill. It’s always locked unless we have a party of schoolkids come around, or enthusiasts, you know.’

‘The other guest room then. He must be joking with us.’

‘There’s someone already in that, my love.’

‘He must be in there.’ Claire felt sick. She would have been happy to see the back of Jonathan in any other circumstances but this was just too weird. Suddenly too final.

She pressed up close against the old woman’s back when she disturbed the other guests, who were sorry