Dark Isle #1 Read online

  "Some change, sir? Please. If I have three quid I can get a coffee in McDonald's."

  Mark glanced into a shop doorway to his left. Sure enough, there was an old sleeping bag heaped up there.

  How can a town like Cambridge have people sleeping rough?

  It was one of the many baffling things about this country, the way in which wonderful architecture and great learning could exist alongside Victorian-style deprivation. He shrugged. He couldn't expect to understand this country after living here for just a year.

  And it's not as if America is some kind of Utopia.

  "Sure," he said, reaching into his jeans pocket. "Look, I've only got a ten pound note, take this."

  "Oh, thanks," replied the young woman, giving a wan smile. "That's really kind of you."

  "No problem, enjoy your coffee!" he said, trying to sound friendly but realizing he might just come across as a jerk. He walked on, feeling awkward and slightly depressed. The encounter had robbed the morning of its beauty.

  He put his phone away and picked up his pace, weaving through the complex, and narrow streets of the ancient city. A good breakfast would perk him up. After all, he had a meeting to prepare for.

  ***

  After thanking the good-looking American, Lucy shoved the ten pound note into her jacket and set off for Mickey-Ds, happy that she would be able to get a breakfast bagel as well as a good-sized coffee. She struggled to focus, as usual, on the task ahead. Lucy's mind tended to drift. At nineteen, she'd had several lifetimes' worth of woes thanks to a nightmare family and spells in hostels that were dangerous, violent places. Drugs and booze had taken their toll. She had trouble with words, found it difficult to grasp ideas sometimes. She had been clean for months now, but it wasn't easy because in a town full of students, she kept running into people who were selling all sorts of stuff. Even now she sometimes saw things that weren't there.

  The man on the bicycle was a good example.

  Lucy had her head down, staring at the sidewalk as she scuttled along, and didn't pay attention to the cyclist at first. But the creaking and clanking of the bike sounded so wrong, different from the near-silence of well-oiled ones ridden by thousands of locals, that Lucy glanced up.

  The bike was weird and clunky, but the man riding it in a strange 'sit up and beg' posture was even odder-looking. He was wearing thick, old-fashioned clothes that must have been really hot even on a cool day. On his head he wore a cloth cap, the sort her granddad had called 'a cheese-cutter' thanks to its flat peak. As he pedaled, his bicycle chain rattled, the sound echoing in the narrow street.

  Maybe they're making a film about the old days, she thought, and looked around for a camera crew. Cambridge was a popular location for television and movie makers, not to mention students on various media courses. But Lucy could see no sign of anyone but a team of bin men collecting the trash of one of the city's many restaurants. She looked round for the cyclist, but he was gone.

  Focus, girl, she told herself. Weird, yeah, but it's none of your business.

  ***

  After a leisurely breakfast, Mark walked over the broad swathe of parkland known for quaint medieval reasons, as Christ's Pieces, then crossed over the road onto Midsummer Common on his way to the River Cam. It was just after eight and Cambridge was coming to life. Dog-walkers were out in force, and cyclists were buzzing back and forth. The noise of traffic from the major highways was now perceptible; a background roar.

  Mark took out his phone again and frowned. Another mystery email had appeared. He deleted it without thinking. Then there was one from Sue, his long-distance girlfriend, and he hesitated before deciding not to open it. Things had been a little fraught lately with Sue pointedly asking him whether he was coming back to the States as planned. He didn't want to, but hadn't come right out and asked her to come and join him in Britain. She had her own career, after all, and wouldn't take kindly to the notion of the ‘loyal little woman’ thing and dropping everything to stand by her man.

  But I love it here, he thought, looking around at what the locals called the 'common'- as in common land. It was a great expanse of open grassland dotted with trees, crisscrossed by cycle paths, and with plenty of benches and picnic spots. It gave onto the Cam, which meandered slowly through the heart of the town. It wasn't hard to fall in love with a place full of beautiful buildings and fascinating people, surrounded by beautiful countryside, and just an hour from all the attractions of London.

  So he had often thought; the hard part would be getting Sue to agree.

  His relationship with Sue was complicated, mostly because of her folks. Mark had grown up in a chaotic home thanks to an alcoholic mother and a succession of 'uncles' she had brought home. Sue's family was, in theory, just what he had always wanted, close-knit and traditional. Unfortunately, he had discovered that, in practice, they were so close-knit and traditional that he could only stand to be in the same room with them for a couple of hours, tops.

  When Sue had proudly told her parents that Mark was going to be a visiting professor in Cambridge for a year, her Dad had nearly exploded.

  "What do you want to go to Europe for?" he had demanded. "Place is full of commies, fags, and ragheads!"

  "Don't forget the Queen," Mark had replied, trying to make light of it.

  But it was the thought of spending the rest of his life in the bosom of Sue's family that made him yearn for another year in England.

  Mark was so trapped up in his thoughts that he didn't see the creature until the last second. He was walking in the shade of some oak trees when he came across it. Off to one side of the path was what he took to be a modernist sculpture. It looked like an oddly shaped mass of brownish wood, a rounded, lumpish form, vaguely oval at the top, about three feet wide, with two legs vanishing into the abundant grass.

  Sculpture trail, maybe, he thought. Cambridge was always lively when it came to the arts, and there was always some new project on the go. His eyes adjusted to the gloom and he realized that some kind of rope was dangling from the top of the object, which stood about five feet high. To his horror, the rope suddenly jerked and swung to one side, swatting at the air with a kind of brush. Mark froze, staring in shocked incomprehension. It was a bizarre tentacle, part of a larger organism that was now emitting a snorting noise. A great head appeared in the gloom. Two brown eyes regarded him coolly, but Mark was much more impressed by its two curved horns that ended in wicked points.

  It's a bull! I'm looking at a bull's backside! Maybe it's escaped from a farm and somehow got into town?

  Mark took a careful step back, then another, wondering if he should simply turn and run. Or would that make the animal chase him down? He remembered footage of matadors being gored and trampled in the bullfight arena. His blood was pounding in his ears.

  "Good morning!" called a woman walking two fat, panting Labradors up the path from the river. She paused to stand beside him, gazing at the large, brown beast. It had resumed cropping the grass under the trees, its head invisible once more.

  "Hi!" he replied, without thinking, then asked, "What the hell is that thing doing here?"

  "Oh, they bring a herd of cows in every summer to keep the grass down," said the woman. "Much better than using machinery, of course. They're quite harmless."

  "But those horns," Mark protested, trying to hang onto some of his dignity. The two dogs sat looking up at him, tongues lolling, unfazed by the big beast a few feet away.

  "Oh, it's definitely a cow," she assured him. "One of the older British breeds, which is why both sexes have horns. Evolution armed them for defense against predators! Something bred out of more modern varieties."

  "Those horns look pretty dangerous," he said.

  "Appearances can be deceptive, they really are amiable creatures,” said the woman, resuming her walk.

  I'm coming across like a dumb tourist, Mark thought. He set off along the path towards the Cam, wondering what other surprises the summer might have in store. Along the way he saw more cows, most of them taking advantage of the shade. None of them paid him the slightest attention.

  ***

  "Another idiot," said Sharkey to himself. "Why can't some people learn to read the bloody signs?"

  He stood on the edge of the landward-facing cliffs of Skara Farne, scanning the narrow strait between the island and the English coast. Sharkey's binoculars were old and in need of a good polish, but the old man's eyes were keen enough. Through the glasses he could make out the shape of a solitary cyclist riding onto the other end of the causeway that linked the island to the mainland or at least, linked it most of the time.

  "There's a bloody great notice right there, man, and you've just gone sailing straight past it,” muttered Sharkey.

  The sign in question was large, a good four feet high with letters big enough to read without getting out of your car or, in this case, off your bike. It gave the times of high tides, which submerged the causeway for several hours a day. Sharkey didn't need written warnings. Like most native-born islanders he had an intuitive grasp of the rhythms of the moon-swollen sea. Whenever the tide was rising during the holiday season he made his way to the cliffs to check for people who, he felt, lacked the common sense that God gave the average goose.

  "Damn fool!" he said, watching the cyclist for a few more moments, just to make sure the man didn't decide to go off the road and into the sand dunes for a picnic. People did sillier things. But no, this tourist was being a standard-issue clown, and simply trying to ride to Skara Farne along what looked like a clear road. Already the waves were washing over the dunes a mere ten yards to either side. Long before a man on a push-bike could make it to the island, the road would be awash.

  Especially, thought Sharkey, when w
hat he's riding looks like it belongs in a ruddy museum.

  Sharkey lowered his binoculars and set off towards the lifeboat station a few hundred yards away. He could have called out the crew on general alert if he'd had one of those fancy new phones, but he didn't hold with that sort of thing. Besides, the official way to summon the crew was still to fire a maroon. And although he would never have admitted it to anyone, he got a great buzz out of the tremendous bang the signal rocket made when it exploded.

  He was a man who enjoyed life's simple pleasures.

  ***

  Mark crossed Midsummer Common and reached the Cam, then began walking along the riverbank path. He'd been aboard Dylan Morgan's boat before, but usually after dark and in a less-than-sober condition. His friend and colleagues tended to shift moorings now and again. Mark suspected but had never dared ask, that this was because Dylan sometimes needed to avoid the attentions of girlfriends who became too keen. Dozens of boats of various sizes were moored at Cambridge in summer. It was easy to tell the ones used as homes from the pleasure cruisers, as the latter didn't have bicycle racks or solar panels. But that still left rather a lot of houseboats to choose from.

  Come on, where are you this week you old reprobate?

  Then Mark had a stroke of luck. He spotted a patch of orange on one of the seats that lined the walkway. As he got closer, his initial guess was confirmed. It was Cassandra, Dylan's much-loved tabby cat, the only female creature he had ever fully committed to.

  "Hey, there, Cass!" said Mark. The cat arched her back to be stroked.

  Mark looked along the line of boats and, sure enough, Dylan's Flower of Albion was moored about ten yards away. Oddly though, when he set off toward it the cat didn't follow.

  "You coming in for breakfast, Cass?" asked Mark.

  Cassandra gave him a plaintive meow but stayed on the seat.

  "Okay, suit yourself."

  Who can fathom the ways of cats?

  Dylan's home was a so-called 'narrow boat', a long, slender craft designed for England's extensive network of canals. It was low as well as narrow, and any unwary visitor over five feet tended to get bumps and bruises as a matter of routine. He clambered onto the deck and knocked on the tiny cabin door.

  "Come in! I'm decent!" came a bellow from inside.

  "I very much doubt that," replied Mark.

  The exchange had become a ritual after Mark's first visit. Opening the cabin door, Mark remembered to duck and avoid the low ceiling, only to bark his shin against a chair lurking in the gloom. The smell of frying bacon emerged from the tiny galley up ahead.

  "Take a seat, I won't be a moment. Can I get you anything?" called Dylan.

  "Just coffee, I already ate,” replied Mark, with an inward shudder at the thought of his friend's artery-hardening take on breakfast. He picked his way carefully to a bench as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  After a minute, Dylan Morgan emerged from the galley with a well-laden tray. Mark took a mug of coffee and they exchanged a few more pleasantries before getting to the real purpose of this visit.

  "I really appreciate this, Dylan," he said. "I appreciate that you could get in trouble with the college authorities over this."

  Dylan shrugged.

  "As my illustrious namesake would say, sod the lot of them."

  Morgan, the senior lecturer in the English faculty, had been named after Dylan Thomas, a notoriously boozy and horny Welsh poet. Mark often wondered if he had deliberately taken on the Thomas persona or if it had just been a happy coincidence. Either way, Dylan Morgan was not one to play by the rules.

  "The thing is," Dylan said, "the interview panel is going to decide whether you get another year as visiting professor, not just on the basis of your teaching, which is excellent, but also on your research. And I'm afraid the other candidates are looking a bit stronger on that front."

  "I know," replied Mark, "it's just that, with adjusting to a new teaching role in a foreign country, I haven’t had much time to do any research, let alone submit an academic paper."

  "Publish or perish, old chap," said Dylan, shoving a fried egg into a bun and adding a dollop of ketchup.

  "You must produce something, otherwise your resume will be too thin and we won't be able to keep you on at St Caedmon's," pointed out Dylan. He bit into the fried egg sandwich, and yolk dribbled down his chin onto his ancient Ramones tee-shirt.

  "Those things will kill you," said Mark.

  "Well, at least I'll die fat and happy," replied Dylan, "making way for younger, leaner chaps like yourself. But you won't be able to fill my shoes at St Caedmon's unless you publish something!"

  Mark spread his hands in a helpless gesture, not easy in the cramped cabin of Dylan's home, one of dozens of houseboats moored on the bank of the Cam.

  "I appreciate you giving me the heads up, Dylan," he said, "but I'm fresh out of ideas. Of course, there's my chapter in the standard text on Gothic fiction …"

  Dylan shook his head.

  "Not enough, just rehashing your greatest hits! You need to publish something new under your own name, a piece of original research. Preferably something that captures a bit of media interest."

  Mark nodded. When Dylan had begun his career in teaching over two decades ago, the idea of a professor attracting good PR for the university would have seemed grotesque, demeaning. Now it was vital to put some kind of popular spin on everything you published to try and stay ahead of the game. But nothing Mark had been working on before he came to the UK was particularly newsworthy. ‘Newsworthy’ usually meant controversial or with a tie-in to a TV show or movie.

  "Stumped, old chap?" asked Dylan, wiping egg off his tee-shirt with a paper napkin. "Well, what about looking into your illustrious predecessor?"

  "Who? You mean the visiting professor from last year?" asked Mark, confused.

  "No! I mean the chap who lived in your room in the college one hundred years back, give or take," said Dylan. "Here, let me find the damn book."

  He began to rummage among the cardboard boxes of books that occupied much of the cabin space.

  "How can you live like this?" asked Mark, trying to adjust his six-foot frame on the narrow bench seat.

  "It's cheap and people leave you alone," replied Dylan. "I prefer being on the margins. Ah, here he is!"

  He pulled out a book and tossed it across the tiny cabin. It was an old hardback volume without a dust jacket, and as Mark took it, he got the distinctive whiff of old paper familiar from innumerable second hand bookshops.

  "A cheap wartime edition," explained Dylan. "No real value, poor quality paper and binding. But it contains all his best-known stories."

  Mark opened the book, flipped to the title page, and read.

  The Dark Isle & Other Ghost Stories by Montague Summerskill, D.Litt, FRSA

  "So this guy lived in my room at St Caedmon's?" he asked, reading the list of story titles. "How come I've never heard of him?"

  "Simple," said Dylan, "he died before he could finish his second collection of tales, so he was a bit of a one-hit wonder. That's his only book, and it was published at the outbreak of the First World War, so it was rather overshadowed by world events despite excellent reviews. It's a lost classic, in my humble opinion. I don't think it's currently in print anywhere. Having said that, a few of the tales in it have been anthologized. And I think a couple were dramatized by the BBC ages ago, back in the black and white era when they did ghost stories every Christmas."

  Mark turned to the middle of the book and read a few sentences of Summerskill's prose in a story entitled 'The Burial Mound'.

  I found myself possessed of the conviction that I had stumbled upon something best left undisturbed. For several minutes, I had had the definite sensation that I was being closely observed, and yet whenever I turned around to scan the moors around me I could not see a soul. This should have reassured me, but instead I found myself wondering if some furtive watcher or watchers might be using the lie of the land to conceal themselves while keeping me under scrutiny.