Hasty for the Dark: Selected Horrors by Nevill Adam L. G

Author:Nevill, Adam L. G. [Nevill, Adam L. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories
Publisher: Ritual Limited
Published: 2017-10-30T19:00:00+00:00

Call the Name

Upon sand the colour of rust and beneath a sulphur sky, a great shape is stretched across a long, flat beach. Embedded haphazardly about the vast bulk, scores of milky eyes stare at nothing. Black salt water slaps the grey mass of lifeless flesh and cloaks the corpse with foam. In the far distance, unto the reddish headlands at either end of the shore, the body remains shiny where unbroken, and pulpy where deterioration has ulcerated the smooth flanks. The only mercy here is that in dreams there is no sense of smell. In yolky light falling through thickening, stationary clouds, a long beak is visible, open and lined with small killer-whale teeth that suggest a smile. What might have been a great fin or flipper is as ragged as a mainsail hit by grapeshot but still points to the heavens.

In other places, on a shoreline that might have bordered an empty lake on Mars, long pellucid protrusions of jelly streak the sand, as if the wall of flesh was disembowelled during a battle between Leviathans in the lightless depths of the black ocean.

Cleo cannot tell. No birds fall upon the beached giant.

Her appalled study of the corpse occurs upon a shore she now recognises as the old Esplanade of Paignton. What remains of the Shoreline restaurant becomes visible. Its supporting steel posts have fallen; the building must have been smashed onto its face and taken away by the sea. A shore as much transformed as the atmosphere and ocean. Changes that her mind aches to comprehend, until Cleo realises she is no longer alone on the beach.

Behind an outcrop of red rubble, a few hundred feet from where she stands gaping, two whiskered heads appear. The heads are black and as sleek as seals. But those aren’t seal faces that grin upon the necks of these creatures. Nor do seals have muscular shoulders and arms.

Looking over her shoulder at the rocks, Cleo moves away as fast as one can move on loose sand in a dream, which is neither fast nor far.

The smooth heads disappear only to reappear closer to her position, beside a cement wall washed as smooth as a pearl. The black things raise their snouts in the manner of expectant dogs amidst the fragrance of food.

Somewhere behind the long headland of rubble and rock at the rear of the beach, a great shriek rends the air. A terrible whimpering follows the roar. This piteous cry issues from a second party. The sound of distress breaks a shard from Cleo’s heart.

Beyond the shore, the dull thump of a heavy body being thrown to the ground registers as a tremor as much as sound. What resembles the breaking of a tree’s thick limb is augmented by a series of excited shrieks. Something large is being put to death by something bigger and fiercer than itself.

In her haste to flee, the thing that Cleo runs over is crispy beneath her bare feet and recoils into itself as she treads the form deeper into the sand.

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