From his vantage point close to the precipice Billy watched tight-lipped as Rayne embarked on the steep descent. As the boy’s bobbing head disappeared over the edge Billy held his breath, digging his fingers into the damp earth, impervious to the sudden appearance of a wriggling worm. “I knows you, boy. I’s got your face in moy ’ead now. The Angel be comin’ soon. Don’t you be takin’ anythin’ off that beach, boy. You hear? Them there pick-ups is all moin.” But, for once, his voice was low and the words quickly eaten up by biting gusts of wind.
He grasped his tongue between a broken set of discoloured teeth that spoke of a hostile encounter. A minute or so crept by and then he chuckled lowly. Without warning, a crowd of incorporeal faces appeared, each one vying for prominence in his line of vision and blocking out his view of the beach below, distracting, disturbing, frightening even. They were all made from the same mould: emaciated faces, slack jaws and dead eyes, entirely surrounding him now, swimming around his head like a shoal of fish. No one spoke a single word, but skeletal arms were lifted, importuning his touch. He wouldn’t touch them, couldn’t, and willed his mind to back off. He couldn’t help them, he couldn’t even help himself. Wasn’t he drowning, too? Billy screwed shut his eyes against the onslaught. “Be off, the lot of ye!” Small mercies: he remembered the boy. Watch him, he thought. His eyes shot open. Thankfully, the wraiths had disappeared and he crawled forward to peer over the cliff edge.
The faint snap of a twig, close in the underbrush, arrested his ears and he snapped his head around. His eyes widened as a new thought suddenly jumped into his head. More boys? Nostrils flaring, he snorted in outrage. With his tongue continuously flicking at dry, flaky lips, he slithered out of the gorse bush on his belly. He lurched to his feet and ran forward a few feet, then pulled up short as a disembodied head swam into focus. He immediately stamped to attention and saluted. “Sir … Corporal William Dixon. Yes, sir … Now? Yes, sir, right away. Thank you, sir.”
Arms folded behind a straight back, Billy parted his legs and stood still and silent for several minutes – a feat in itself. A plaintive cry of a swooping gull broke his trance and a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him, at odds with the reality of his surroundings.
He turned and began marching back towards the embankment, goose-stepping over the smaller boulders in his path and side-stepping around the larger ones. By the time he reached the door to his shack his gait had settled back to its more familiar jerky carriage and his shoulders back to their habitual hunch.
He slumped down in his only chair and stared into space, lost in the myriad of conflicting thoughts that circled his mind like a host of unseen predators. The whisperers were back, first caressing his ears before gradually growing to a collective buzz that ended up causing nothing but angry confusion.
“Silence, you pissants!”
He plucked a knife from the inside of his coat, the handle worn and darkened with age. He picked up an oily rag from the floor and began to clean the blade. The blood wasn’t fresh, already dried to dark, streaky smudges that fell just short of the hilt.
His dark grey eyes roved the corners of the gloomy interior and then came to rest on the filthy panes in his one window to the world outside. Dipping his head, eyes squinting, he checked the progress of the sun, seeking to work out if it was time yet. A frustrated sigh rose from his throat, resonating with the soft swish of cloth on metal; cleaning, polishing, wiping away the last vestiges of what he saw as a good deed, which was already beginning to fade from his memory.
Flicking his eyes from side to side, as if they were bouncing off the walls, his tongue began to vibrate with the urge to employ his disjointed thoughts, only one of which he wanted to hold on to. “The Angel be comin’ soon. Bucket an’ spade to the fore. ’Oles to dig. An’ pick-ups. There’ll be pick-ups, oi’ll be bound.”
His eyes stopped roving and focused on a small box in the corner of the hut, fetching up on the bright splash of woollen neatly laid out on the top, marred only by a small brownish stain that stood out in stark contrast to its background colour of shocking-pink.
*
Amelia Mullond leaned closer and placed her eye against the lens, adjusting the focus as she manoeuvred the telescope to take in the far side of the beach at Billy’s end. Slowly, she swung it upwards to take in the guillemots engaged in a second round of nesting within the deep crevices that scarred the rock-face as if a giant had fallen from the heavens and drawn a clawed hand through it in an attempt to halt his plunge. When she spotted the boy negotiating the dangerous precipice she jerked upright and drew up a chair to make herself comfortable.
She sat down and then took up the telescope again, adjusting the focus once more to magnify and sharpen the distant figure’s face. The corner of her mouth twitched slightly and she nodded to herself. Recognizing the same spirited youngster, who seemed to frequent the desolate shoreline more than any other beachcomber, she watched his careful descent, admiring his courage. No admonishment for his recklessness entered her mind. She wished she had just a modicum of his bravery and prowess.
He wasn’t like the others, she thought. He didn’t throw stones or make fun of her. Naughty boys were the bane of her life. She had taken their measure long ago and knew what to do. All she had to do if the naughty boys started on her was just stand still and give them a really stern look and they would always run away. The faces would change from time to time, but their rude behaviour never did.
This boy, though, was different. She didn’t know his name. He had never spoken to her, nor she to him – she wouldn’t dare – but he had never taunted her or run away from her as if she were the world’s worst person. She had passed him by on the beach many times; he was always busy turning over rocks and stuff. She knew that he saw her, but he had never done anything to make her give him the look and she had never had a reason to stop.
Amelia followed his path down the dangerous incline, holding her breath when it looked at one point as if he were destined for a fatal fall as a misplaced step propelled him into an impromptu run. She watched as he swiftly checked the sudden increase in speed with no give-away expression of fear flooding his features. How fearless, she thought enviously.
An unbidden memory flashed into her mind, of a time when she had behaved in much the same way and climbed down the very same rock-face. But that was before the bad time. Since then she seemed to have lived her life in a horrible black tunnel; single-track thoughts kept in order by the daily rigid routine that Daddy, the only light in her life, had set out for her. Flicking the well-used switch in her mind that her mother had taught her to use, she banished the bad thoughts with little more than a slow blink of her eyelids; better to concentrate on the boy.
Glancing over her shoulder, she checked the time, the loud clicking of the clock a gentle reminder that her friends needed seeing to. She decided they wouldn’t mind waiting just ten-minutes more. She was reluctant to give up the boy and his wanderings. There had been no activity on the beach for days now. A contented sigh whispered past her lips as she laid her eye to the glass and focused on the boy once more.