The Bay

I can't stop the clattering of the cartridge around the breech, the noise is unbearable. Just to try to stop the shotgun shaking I put it between my knees, but neither my legs nor my hands are steady enough that I can slot the ammunition home.
In those brief instants when the shell is at its closest to the hole my tremors build; my fingers, out of control and as weak as if I had a fever, betray me time and again. Finally the little cylinder drops from my failing grip and falls end over end to the storeroom floor. Mortified, I watch it and wait a painful age for the crash when it hits the tiled surface at my feet. Somehow I contain the urge to lunge after it; to try to catch it would surely mean I would drop the gun as well.
So the shell bounces and the sound goes right through me. I swear and whisper under my breath; I pray, although I never pray, that nothing will hear, that the thing will not come into the dark corridor beyond the low door.

No-one had listened to Michael. The old man had seemed to be entering into a fantasy of advanced old age. "It's happened before" he had said and we had dismissed it. Beyond the grim jokes that people make about the ancient and confused, hoping to side-step the fact that one day, all-too-soon, they will be like that themselves, neither old time locals nor newcomers had given the ravings a second thought. "See the ruins and the old church" Michael had wailed, "what do you think happened to all the people?"
It didn't matter how many strange things happened, no-one was willing to believe that the old man might understand something that the rest of us could not even begin to see.
June had been cold; not one of those grey Junes that come every few years, but a genuinely cold month as if we had been plunged back into winter. On the first of the month snow had swirled across the bay and engulfed the island, and on the third the first frost in years had settled in the little walled gardens and the low lying lanes.
There were no fish in the island's waters. It wasn't just that catches were down, there were no fish, no-one caught anything, the waters were dead. The seals left the headland and, even as fishermen persevered the birds flew away to other islands or to the mainland. I remember watching a solitary black-backed gull skimming over the brooding waters. It neared the beach on the north end of the bay, wheeled and turned once again for the open ocean; it was the last bird I saw this summer. It had not even needed to land to know that there was no welcome for it on the island.
Of course in the old days hard times like these would have threatened starvation, but nowadays no-one depends on the fishing, no-one eats the gulls' eggs or gathers seaweed for the pot. I came back to write, back to the old family house. I made my money a long way away, sit at my pc in my warm house and have a nicely stocked larder thank you very much. It would have been better for all of us if we had panicked sooner; we would have left together while we still could.
As it is, we forgot, we chose to forget that this world is not as safe as it can seem when the sun is high in the middle of the day and the waters of the bay shine azure beneath a limitless sky. The twelve houses and the very modern island community would, we were all very sure, come through the bizarre weather and the temporary inconveniences. We ignored the ruins and Michael's visions of other times.
Three times in the middle of the month sudden storms blew up out of the north, each time as the mail boat was trying to cross to the island. The black swell became suddenly turbulent, almost as if it had been stirred from below; the wind chopped the waters and flung the boat around in plain view of those of us gathered to meet it. The arrival of the post and a few provisions was hardly a matter of life and death. We pushed our fears and forebodings deep down inside; we laughed and talked about how we'd all just have to pull together until normal service was resumed.

Then one night the sea was as calm as a mirror. The sky cleared and the air turned cold enough to freeze the breath in the lungs. I stood at my door and looked up; I saw stars I did not recognise, constellations that I had seen in nightmares but fancied that no waking man had ever looked upon. I went inside and tried the telephone, I needed to speak to someone, anyone somewhere else, I wanted to think of London and hear the news from the world I had left behind. The phone was dead.
From the bay there came a noise that I could describe as a scream, but perhaps it was more of a high-pitched screech, piercing, triumphant. I rushed once again from my door and to the end of my path, from there I could see the bay and all the way across to the old lighthouse. The chill air snapped at me and numbed my face. Something smoothly disturbed the water out there; it moved unerringly towards the beach.
No dog barked and no light came on. Perhaps the wave of terror that preceded the thing had stilled every hand and silenced every voice. I know that I did try to shout out to my neighbours. I wanted to scream "something is coming" or just "run!". I suppose my mouth moved, but the sound died with a half swallowed breath.
And so I watched the thing come from the sea, as fast as a surging tide and a good deal blacker than the night. As the thing swept from the beach and into the lower lane I noticed a figure across the bay, starlight white upon his upturned face. Michael and I, it seemed, from opposite ends of the village, were watching together as the horror played out.
The first door cracked with the sound of dry kindling broken easily for the fire. Still there were no screams and now I was sure that this thing from the bay would take all twenty eight souls on the island without thought or mercy. With some ages old rhythm it had risen to feast on life, to destroy and devour hope, to wipe clean the island of its innocent human colonists with their tiny dreams and their brief span of years.
I must have heard four doors smashed and somehow the village still lay sleeping. I don't know why, but at that moment, as the creature crashed into May's cottage, I found I could move again; I could shout. I screamed. 'Wake up' I cried, 'Wake up and run fro your lives'.
There had always been a shotgun or two at Cameron's place, an old flare gun too. I ran as I hadn't run in years. Even if I couldn't kill the thing perhaps, I reasoned, I could defend Cameron's little boat until some other people arrived. The waters of the bay held no terror for me now, the abomination which had lurked there was ashore.
I turned into Cameron's path desperately gasping cold air into my heaving chest. The paving stones were greasy, some oily layer betrayed my footing at every step. A clean white sphere sat on the ground in the gaping hole where once there had been a front door. I should have known from the first what it was; there was no more left of Cameron than that long smear and that cleaned skull.
For long minutes afterwards shock kept my fear in check. Only in the storeroom, shotgun in hand did I begin to shake. I must have succeeded in waking some people with my shouts because I heard screams, long agonised screams. I wish I had never woken them, perhaps it would have been easier had they never opened their eyes.

Right, I lay the shotgun on the floor and kneel on it deliberately. I bring both hands to the cartridge and inch the shells into the breech. Metal on metal, they finally go home. I close the gun and grip it tightly; if I am to go the way of Cameron and the others, I will go facing the thing and not before I discharge both barrels.
It can't be out there in the corridor, if it was then I'd already be dead. With some confidence then, albeit on unsteady feet, I emerge from Cameron's back room and decide how I will go to get down to his little boat.
Shadows play at the edges of my vision. I turn sharply bringing the shotgun around as I go, only to realise that there is nothing to my side but a wall and ink blot darkness.
A few paces more and I am at Cameron's back door. I strain to hear if there is anything outside, but hear nothing over the pounding of my heart. Reluctantly I take my hand from the gun barrel and try the door. Of course, it is not locked; no-one ever locks their doors here, after all we have the sea for security.
The grass glistens frostily under the unknown sky; hardly believing it I hear ice crystals crunch as I step outside. Both hands back on the gun now there are twenty paces of open ground between me and the steps down to Cameron's boathouse and the tiny harbour that he always maintained is the smallest in all the isles.
'I told you this was going to happen!'
I jump and swing around; one hair's breadth from pulling both triggers. Michael stands there, his face contorted, his head at an impossible angle and his eyes bulging. 'I saw it all in my dreams. The island told me and I tried to tell you.'
I suppose that he is only taking normally, but to me it sounds like he is shouting at the top of his voice. His presence transforms my fear to rage; I consider hitting him, but instead just turn and run awkwardly away towards the boathouse. A scream rises from a house too close for comfort. 'I tried to tell you all' Michael repeats and now his voice is raised, hysterical and self-satisfied.
At the top of the steps I glance back at the old man. Something black and far too fast momentarily fills the gap between Cameron's house and the garden wall. Michael's eyes follow me, he seems to have no idea that from behind him an incomprehensible horror approaches.
I do not wait to see him engulfed, torn from the living world and liquefied. Instead I hurtle down the steps, too fast to be safe, too fast to stop myself at the bottom. Somehow as I tumble over the side of the boat and fly from the quay of the boathouse, I manage to avoid discharging the shotgun. I land in a pile of Cameron's lobstering gear and the pungent odour of normal times fills my senses for a second.
I am certain that the engine will not start. I am going to die in the lobster boat; I am going to join the residue of seawater and crustacean in the bottom of the wooden hull. But, oh thank you Cameron, with one pull the motor roars easily to life.
Shotgun balanced on the side of the boat I work my hands raw to untie the ropes. At the end of the boathouse the open sea awaits.
The stone steps darken and now a noisome stench assails my nostrils. One last turn of the rope and without thinking twice I pick up the gun and fire; I don't aim, I just fire into the black shapeless thing that is rushing to fill my vision.
The shotgun flashes. Smoke of black powder mixes richly with the sweet exhaust of the outboard. Both barrels empty, Cameron's favourite gun spills from my hands and sinks into the water. Moments later, unaware of how it has happened, I am cutting through the thick waters of the bay, the chill air rasping at my skin and stinging my eyes.
There is no looking back, what good would that do me? I open the throttle and head for the mainland. I hear no more screams, only the motor and the hush of the bow wave.
It is possible that Cameron always kept enough fuel in the tank to make the crossing, or perhaps it is just that the luck that left me alive as the islanders died held out to see me safe ashore on the other side.
I don't look for people here, I might meet someone I know and what would I say? How would I even talk? I leave the boat for the sluggish tide and as the dawn brightens ahead of me I walk. I walk until I reach a road and in the warm mid-morning I hitch a lift, the first of many. I need to lose myself in the world of crowds, in the complacency of a city. I have survived but my life has been wiped clean. I cannot truly start again, but perhaps I can disappear and from time-to-time forget the nameless thing that came from the bay.