All stories

My vain hopes were dashed as the sun released its white knuckle grip on the horizon and fell finally away. Now it was night. Now they would come.

I sealed tight the remaining blackout shutter on my attic window, making certain not even a speck from the flickering candle I kept inside could find its way out. I could hear Hilltop Harry crackling through the radio. I could picture him willing what signal he had to leak across our town as he spoke. He was a true hero for us and God knows how he’d lasted so long. Not that there was any sign of God paying attention. Harry was reading the code words for the morning. The same ones he’d been repeating for an hour. The only way we’d know it was safe to release ourselves again.

‘Hot summer… fzzzz… Ice cream… ekkekk… Pu… shhh... Puffin’

I loved him now for the joy in the phrases he chose. I hadn’t always.

Silence. We wouldn’t hear him again now until dawn.

The first scream came quickly. They often did. Some unfortunate who hadn’t shut down quickly enough. Who had let their light be seen. It ended in a gurgle. Then I felt the fizz in my guts, knowing what would come next.

The wail.

I was no longer sick every time I heard the wail, but it had taken a long time to get here and the enamel of my teeth still clawed at my gums. It took thirteen seconds for one of us to become one of them. I’d timed it over and over. The wail stretched across every last second then nothing. Stillness. Somewhere, the grim pack, now increased by one, scanned for another breach.

I lay down on the single mattress I called my bed, not that I would sleep, I wasn’t at that place in my cycle. I’d woken disorientated that morning so it’d be another two nights before I was exhausted enough to fall again. I picked up my map and marked on it where I thought I’d heard the scream, then I listened.

The next one was close. I slammed my palms over my ears for fear the wail might empty my bladder if it came through at full force. One, two, three… I released at fifteen and found myself clammy with sweat. I marked the map. It wasn’t precise but I’d become pretty good at working out the locations by now. It would be easy enough to check in the morning. For each scream, someone would be missing from somewhere.

I don’t know why they didn’t take the birds, just as I didn’t know an owl had been innocently working away at the insulation I’d stuffed around the point where the roof beam pushed through my wall. The chink it made was not much, but it was enough to let a flicker of light out.

I could never have marked my own scream on the map, it came from everywhere.

The wail, however, was ecstasy.

In the dream it’s always the same. The long stretch of beach, crammed with sun-baked tourists and beach towels, children running, laughing, lathered in factor 50 and eating ice creams before the sun can melt them. The tang of sea salt hangs in the still, hot summer air and the air above the sand wavers.

And amid the noise and the chaos and the excitement I am completely alone.

Adults tower above me, uncaring and unseeing; groggy and half dazed from the sun, lumbering to the cooler for a cold beer. Their children elbow past me without noticing me. It is like I have become suddenly invisible. I wave my hands and shout, but no-one pays any attention.

I push my way through the crowds, frantically looking for a familiar face or landmark. The beach towel with the puffin - didn’t the family beside ours have that towel? I stumble towards it, the salt water already drying on my skin, my feet burning in the sand. But then I see the puffin again and again, picking out its stupid grinning face across the beach, stretched out on sand, draped over shoulders, hanging from the back of a fold-away chair.

I turn back around to find I went into the water. I remember passing sandcastles and a pink bucket, but the tide is creeping in now and the shoreline is changed completely.

Excitement begins to sour around me as the heat builds. The laughter of the other children begins to turn to angry, uncomfortable crying. Water is passed around as adults try desperately to buy a few more minutes peace in the sun.

I feel the dryness of my own mouth, the pounding of the sun on my hatless head. I move to ask a girl about my own age for a sip of her water, but she scowls at me, cheeks flushed and overheated and her mother worries me away from her like an angry hen.

Soon all around me children begin to be picked up, litter bundled into plastic bags, sand dusted from backsides. There is a sense of resignation in the air. I pick up my pace, my eyes still scanning the beach ahead, but everything looks the same, whichever way I turn.

In the dream I feel again that sensation in my chest, that sense that I have no choice but to give up. I taste the salt of my tears on my lips and am impressed again by how no-one sees, no-one cares. They are too wrapped up in gathering up their own families to worry about me.

And just as my knees buckle and the hot, rough sand grazes my dry skin, and the panic rises up in my chest, I suddenly feel cool, familiar hands and my waist, the sensation of being lifted through the air and the overwhelming impression of relief envelopes me.

Then the tangle of sheets wraps itself around my legs and the bright white heat of the beach is drowned in the darkness of night. I am in my bed, I am home, I am safe.

The wolf howl echoed, and Susan shivered despite the heat of the night. Abigail was a silhouette, stark dark against the foam of the surf that shone bright in the moonlight. She was down on her haunches, knees splayed wide. When she threw her head back and howled again the dark strands of her wet hair danced around her head.

Susan hugged her legs a little tighter to her naked body and shivered again. What if they could see her now? Susan no mates. Frigid Susan, because she dashed the hopes of either of the two boys even close to her age on this stupid island.

Abigail stood. She reached her fingertips to the stars and twisted her body back and forth a little. And Susan shivered again as the hints of Abigail’s nude body showed as curves against the foaming surf. Abigail let herself relax then began to stroll up the wet sand to where Susan was hunched amongst the long grasses that gave her some feel of not being so naked and exposed in the darkness.

Abigail stood in front of her with one hip dropped and her hand upon it.

‘Just so you know, but this isn’t usually me on a first date.’

Susan’s face grew hot and a lump began to form in her throat that made it hard to breathe. Maybe not for Abigail, but Susan was one hundred percent gives it up on the first date. Technically, she was one hundred percent gives it up on every date, assuming the word every could be applied in the singular.

Abigail knelt in front of Susan and began to pick her fingers apart. ‘How can you still be so shy with me? What was it you called me after you ate ice cream off my belly button?’

‘Oh, God,’ Susan said.

‘Nope. You called me, what was it?’

Susan shook her head.

‘You called me your hot summer ice cream puffin.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Then you said that. I think we’re passed the point of coyness now.’

‘It’s the statue,’ Susan said. ‘I feel like it was watching us.’

Abigail glanced at the hill above. ‘Who was old Harry, anyway?’

Susan shrugged. ‘He founded the village. So they say. He brought his wife and kids here, to forge a new world, away from all the sin and iniquity on the mainland.’

Abigail sniggered a little. ‘Well, that worked out well for him.’ She finally pulled Susan’s fingers away and now gently began to ease her knees apart. ‘Lie back. Your turn to howl. Why don’t we try and make old stone faced Harry blush?’