Hammerhead Cove 7

The Shadows over Hammerhead Cove

Published: 27 Apr 2017

It was while pushing his brother’s bike through the narrow shadowed streets of Hammerhead Cove – the broken and burst paving of the sidewalk bouncing the wheels while the rain remained a fine mist content to hang torpid in the air – that Takeru concluded that there were more empty houses than people in the islands other coastal town.

He hastily passed boarded-up doors and shattered windows half covered with broken planks of wood, stoops to small three storey brownstone blocks where weeds had pierced the cracked concrete steps, decayed wooden benches and barren dead or dying dogwood trees. Of the dogwoods that still showed life – the barely green leaves had developed tan spots circled by purple rims with necrotic looking veins and leaf margins – this infection had progressed along the thin twigs where it would break into cancerous looking cankers, while succulent shoots proliferated on the lower trunks and stronger looking branches. Far from being a horticulturalist, Takeru knew very little of plants and trees – but he knew disease when he saw it.

Believing the road to be a more of an even surface, and with more than a passing notion that the blighted trees should be kept well clear of, he shifted from the splintered sidewalk to the cobbled thoroughfare, with only the sound of his footsteps and the turning wheels of the bike for company.

Many of the buildings that he passed seemed to him as though they were about to collapse – bent and twisted with rotted wood window frames and cracked glass – a few of the detached houses were leaning into each other as if the mere act of standing had exhausted them and the only thing keeping them from collapsing entirely was the support of their equally bone tired neighbour. Tired, thought Takeru. The whole town looks tired. Two of the town houses that he had passed were narrow, little more than fifteen feet wide – these houses loomed forward at a seemingly impossible angle – their second storey’s leaned strikingly above the road beneath his feet.

Remembering the lessons in middle school about the earthquakes that had hit the island, he wondered what it must have been like for Hammerhead Cove. He couldn’t imagine losing as much as the people of this town had… and he wondered why those quakes hadn’t affected other parts of the island.

The silence and his thoughts were shattered on hearing the sudden booming boisterous bark of a gull. Takeru looked up to a broken bust above the arched door of one abandoned town house: the large bird tilted its head and, with seeming soot stained feathers, flapped its wings at the boy and howled at him again before taking off into the darkening gray sky above them. The sudden shifting of the bird’s weight caused the bust to crack and crumble where it fell to the steps below with a thunderous crash that echoed down the narrow street.

“This isn’t creepy or anything…” Takeru muttered to himself as he looked at the smashed remains of what appeared to have once been a human head.

At sixteen, Takeru had seen his fair share of old horror movies. He’d sat up late at night with his brother and watched Professor Horrible’s House of Horror every Halloween weekend since he was ten. At first the nightly four movie marathon, that the heavily made-up Professor Horrible would introduce, would terrify him – from the black and white nightmares from the 1940’s and 50’s: where cloaked monochrome figures lunged from the screen – to the Vincent Price starring films of the 60’s and 70’s: garish technicolour blood so red that it would make his own freeze. Haunted houses and Werewolves stalking European villages, Vampire Counts gorging on bare breasted maidens and Creatures emerging from the deepest darkest waters… but as he grew older and still revelled in falling asleep on the couch in the living room, with his brother Hinata, beneath quilts and a mountain of popcorn and candy – those films ability to instill terror in him had waned somewhat. Now, mostly, they appeared fun, schlocky and camp. Films to be laughed at and lovingly mocked with his brother, while both pretended that the stories on screen didn’t really bother them half as much as they actually did.

He cast aside thoughts of those Universal terrors – of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, of the Wolfman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon and gave little thought to the unfavourable foreshadowing that he began to believe Hammerhead Cove was welcoming him with.

It was the wind from the ocean that made him wish that he had listened to his father and packed something more than the shorts, t-shirt and hoodie that he was wearing. Whether it was the chill air curling around his bare tan legs or witnessing the harrowing husk of Hammerhead Cove firsthand that raised the few light hairs he had smattered across his muscular calves and smooth shins, sending shivers through his skin, he couldn’t attest to.

It would have been easy to turn back at this point. To spin the bike on it’s back wheel and walk back up the hill and out of Hammerhead Cove. What Takeru was witnessing, as he continued on foot and trod the cobbles, had the air of evil omen – portents pointedly pressing upon him that to continue would only result in his ruin. If he had been a little less carefree, perhaps he would have heeded the haunting welcome that Hammerhead Cove offered him – if he had been a little less concerned for the welfare of his new friend Toby…

When he thought about Toby he increasingly considered that the boy meant more to him than he had allowed himself to initially believe. He had barely considered it until he had arrived in that cursed town but without thinking more deeply about it, on the surface at least, instinct had propelled him here. After little more than twenty-four hours in the boy’s company he had become so enamoured with Toby that the thought of not seeing him placed an ache in the pit of his stomach that he hadn’t felt before. Perhaps he was a little less carefree than he thought. The ground beneath him could split where he walked and the mouth of the world could attempt to devour him… If only he could see that Toby was well first.

Continuing on foot Takeru tried to keep his eyes on the road ahead of him. The uneven cobbles were wet and loose – some occasionally shifting beneath his feet – and he suddenly wished, adding to the wardrobe he should have packed, that he had worn heavier shoes with better gripping soles. He passed more abandoned houses with rusted gates and small overgrown front gardens, more short stubby brownstone apartment buildings with boarded up windows – and he wondered if anyone lived in this town at all. He thought about the old westerns his Gramma liked to watch: an image of a lone cowboy on horseback walking through a seemingly deserted town – while unseen eyes followed him from the windows above. Eyes… His dream and the giant eye that stared through him cast a shadow over his thoughts… Now consumed by a creeping feeling that he was being watched as he walked… Takeru stopped and shifted his gaze to a fractured window above him on the left. No movement. No sound. Must’ve been mistaken, he thought with a little doubt. He shivered.

Turning left, Takeru found himself on a wider road that appeared a little less dilapidated. The brownstones, no more than two storeys high, seemed lived-in with curtains or blinds in spotless windows, clean and absent of damage – the sidewalk was well maintained and free from weeds and cracks in the concrete.

He was no more than a few steps down the street when the rancid smell of fish first hit him. The boy scrunched his nose and tried breathing through his mouth but all that had managed to achieve was to invite the reeking scent onto his tongue where, slithering slickly, it tickled at the back of his throat and caused him to cough and splutter. Being from a coastal town, with a long history of fishing, he had thought that he was used to this smell – but here there was an added bitterness – something noxious that he couldn’t get passed.

A little over halfway down the street, on either side of a slender flowering, disease free, dogwood tree two semi-basement stores sat side by side. The first, a fishmonger – the source of the stench that filled the street – with an empty plastic table and two wooden chairs out front. The other was shielded by an awning with “General Store” written in tarnished gold paint – the store’s open door released a faint scent of baked goods that was losing in its battle with the overwhelming acrid stink of fish that came from its neighbour. As Takeru passed, he stopped and looked down into the window of the fishmongers – however he could see little but dark figure like shapes through the mottled glass window. Painted artfully in black and tan were the words “Hayward, Hogmire & Huxworth: Fishmongers. Established 1793” The figures inside moved and seemed to step closer to the window as if noticing that Takeru was trying to look in. He shuddered and moved along to the general store.

Resting his brothers bike against the painted railing he walked down the flat even steps but turned suddenly when he heard the bell of the fishmongers door ring out. The door promptly closed with a thump – Takeru held his breath and waited. But no one came up the steps beside him.

“Hello?” a girl’s voice.

Takeru turned to see a young woman standing just inside the door of the general store. Pretty, in a way, with thin dark brown hair tied up into a bun that sat at the back of her head, her brown eyes were big and her nose petite with a gentle upward peak at the tip – her plump lips were drawn into a sweeping and honest smile.

“Hi!” said Takeru surprised.

“Are you looking for something?” there was nothing hidden in her question, just the simple and genuine hopeful query of a shop keeper to a potential customer. “Come in out of the rain. You will catch a cold.” She stepped aside and beckoned the boy in.

Dubious, Takeru looked back to his unsecured bike against the railing on the street above and hovered one tentative foot above the ground as he was about to step forward. Noticing the boy’s hesitation the young woman waved her hand to dismiss his reluctance. “Your bicycle will be quite safe on the street.”

“OK but it’s my brothers bike so I can’t let anything happen to it!”

She smiled and dismissed his fears again with another wave of her hand as Takeru stepped into the shop: “You are a visitor? Are you a tourist?”

“No. I’m from Halpin Hope. On the other side of the Island.”

“From Halpin Hope? That is exciting. I have never been. What is it like?”

“It’s nice. Kinda ‘rustic’ but you know… It’s got it’s charms. You should come visit.” Takeru looked around the store: clean and well laid out with two wooden aisles and shelving around the walls that reached up towards the ceiling. He recalled images of stores like this that he had seen in history books about turn of the century New York. “Have you lived here long?”

“All my life.” The girl said with a smile. “I will be moving on soon though.” Her voice seemed tinged with a little sadness at the prospect.

“Somewhere good?”

“I hope so. I am about to have a baby you see…”

Her hands idly cradled at her flat stomach. If she was pregnant, thought Takeru, then she must only be a few weeks gone.

“You don’t know where you’re moving to?”

“Oh I know. It is just that I have never been before.”

Takeru abruptly became aware that the putrid smell of fish had left his nostrils and was replaced with the more welcoming scent of warm bread. “You’ve no idea how relieved I am to smell something other than whatever that is out there!”

The young woman laughed softly and nodded: “That is the Surströmming. It is an… acquired taste. They are quite famous for it next door.”

“Surströmming?”

“Rotted fish. It is salted and fermented for six months in the intestines of bigger fish.”

Takeru felt like he was about to vomit.

“We use Gold Spot Herring. It is quite delicious with water biscuits and a little pickle.”

Takeru still felt like he was about to vomit.

Noticing that her potential customer had turned a greener shade of pale the young woman smiled and thought best to change the subject: “But enough of that. What can I help you with?”

Takeru snapped his mind away from the thoughts of salted rotting fish lying in vats of viscera: “I’m looking for someone who lives here. In Hammerhead Cove. His name is Toby.”

“Toby?”

“Well Tobias really.”

“Do you know his surname?”

He suddenly realised that he didn’t. “Actually… no. No I don’t.”

The young woman placed her hands on the countertop and tilted her head at Takeru.

“We’re friends! I thought… hoped really, maybe more than that because we…” He caught himself over sharing and smiled. “He lives in a school. A boys school. With a headmistress.” Takeru promptly remembered. “There can’t…”

“I do not know who Toby is but I know the school.”

“Could you give me directions?”

The young woman seemed hesitant – her wide eyes narrowing as she thought about his request.

“Please? I’m worried about him…” Takeru pressed.

She looked to the open door then back to Takeru and with a trace of a reluctant sigh under her breath she said: “If you turn left when you leave here, take your first right and follow the road down the hill and toward the shore. You will see it across the street from the church. It is the second tallest building in town. It backs onto the water. You won’t miss it.”

“Thank you.” Takeru spun on his heels and made for the door, turning and thanking the young woman again, waving to her as he left.

As he bounded back up the steps to street level and pulled the bike free from the railings he wiped the wet seat with the sleeve of his hoodie and hopped on to the bike. He looked down into the shop once more to see the young woman, then talking on a black rotary dial telephone behind the counter – her hand covering her mouth as she spoke. He waved again and she shifted uneasily but, affecting a too wide smile, waved back at him before turning her back.

The rancid smell of the Surströmming washed back over him and though holding his breath, Takeru could feel his eyes sting and water.

As he set foot to pedal and was about to push forward he noticed a tall fat man standing in the open doorway of the fishmongers. His triangular face was frowning, with wide pale blubbery downturned lips that appeared to be sliding from his tiny chin. His large ovoid bloodshot eyes stared through Takeru and kept the boy on the back foot.

“Hi!” said Takeru with a certain sense of uncertainty. He tried not to look at the man’s white apron stained red with viscera.

“You schould not be here boy.” the man grumbled, chewing on his tongue as he spoke.

“Just… er… Just passing through…”

“Passch through quicker.”

Not daring to breath through his nose for fear of the stench of the Surströmming, he nodded at the man who wiped his thick calloused blood stained hands along the side of his apron. “I’ll be going then.”

“Aye. Make schure that you do.”

Takeru turned from the man, focused his eyes on the cobbled road ahead of him and pushed forward. It wasn’t until he had reached the furthest end of the street – there he found the smell lingered but no longer had the overpowering effect that it had beside the fishmongers, that he turned his head to see if he was still being watched. The man had climbed the steps and stood staring after him, still chewing on his tongue, still wiping his blood stained hands on his apron.

As he pushed forward – passing more seemingly occupied houses and more seemingly disease free trees, Takeru remained alert – keeping his eyes on the slick cobbled road while he followed the young womans instruction and cycled on toward the shore.

It had crept up on him so slowly that he hadn’t noticed the shadow of the church steeple as it snaked over his body. By far the tallest building in the town – Takeru stopped and craned his neck upwards: large cut gray stone that shimmered with a certain slickness from foundation to spire – moist from the rain, slate roofing that while weathered appeared in good repair, an exposed bronze bell beneath a pointed roof and what the boy assumed was once the base of a cross sitting on top. Takeru looked to the ground at the cracked concrete where he had gathered that the cross must have fallen, by the church’s wide stone steps, and wondered why they hadn’t repaired or replaced it. Although subdued, a soft yellow light shone inside the church – illuminating the large mottled glass windows. Much like the fishmongers, however, the boy could make out little but slow shuffling shadows behind the frosted aperture.

This was a peculiar moment for Takeru – a peculiar moment in a day that had already stretched its long strange fingers around his wrist and pulled him further into it. During his whole life he had never given thought as to why Halpin Hope had no church. There was no Methodist church, no Evangelical church, no Presbyterian or Baptist… It hadn’t occurred to him out of all the films he’d seen that had featured them or the places that he’d visited that had them standing, prominent and proud, that it was odd that his own town neither hosted nor desired a place of worship. Even the Halpin Hope Clinic, that he’d had cause to visit more times than he would have liked, didn’t have a chapel or non-denominational place of prayer. Only standing beneath the tall circular tower of the wet cruciform Eschau styled house of God did it strike him that Halpin Hope was perhaps, for good or ill, a Godless place.

It was the sudden striking of the bell in the tower above him that shook the boy from his thoughts. The loud ringing clang of bronze that rung deep and clear; once, twice, a third time, a fourth… and then nothing… only the faint tintinnabulation that trembled his inner ear. He pulled his phone from his pocket and wiping the raindrops from the screen with his thumb he checked the time – it was nearly six o’clock – although the dismal clouds hanging heavy with malice above the streets of Hammerhead Cove would lead you to believe it was later.

The faint soft light that warmed the churches large mottled glass windows flickered and then went dark.

Takeru turned to the building across the road – three storeys high, built with the same cut gray stone as the church, and surrounded by a painted black cast iron fence wrapped in crawling green ivy. The building was long and seemed to back onto the ocean but without trying to circle it Takeru couldn’t be sure. There was no sign to state it – but with no other structure in sight that even approached the height of this or the church – the boy had guessed that this was the school he was looking for.

Takeru wiped his hands against the wet fabric of his shorts before stepping off of his brothers bike and pushing it toward the open gate. The rusted chain that that hung loose around the broken lock looked like it had been that way for years – the need to keep people either in or out of the school didn’t appear to be a priority. He pushed at the bars in order to make room for the handlebars of the bike – the hinges squeaking at a pitch that sent shivers down Takeru’s spine and tingles through his teeth.

Making his way into the courtyard the wet moss covered cobbles, that stretched back toward the school a couple of hundred metres and outward to uncut grass lawns on either side, were stable and didn’t shift beneath his weight the way those of the road he first walked on as he entered Hammerhead Cove had.

Ahead of him, blocking his view of the tall red doors beyond, stood a tall stone fountain brimming with brown water that rippled beneath the thickening drops of rain – now falling with greater haste from the rusted iron sky.

Circular in design – the fountain rose up out of the cobbles ten metres from a broad stone base. Carved into the sides of that low font, were grotesque weathered gargoyle faces: bulbous eyes and wide mouths filled with razor sharp teeth – a few of which featured long forked reptilian tongues that lolled out the sides of their wet hungry looking mouths. Rising from the centre of the pool of water: a column of shining black stone – at the base large onyx hands with pointed nails were carved as if reaching up it’s length, emerging from out of the water. That part of the column which was exposed was decorated with symbols and writing that Takeru had never seen before – seemingly a part cursive mockery of Kanji and part alien looking Hieroglyph – there appeared to be no structure in the text as it circled the stone – each word or symbol simply running, almost at high speed, into the next. Sitting atop the pillar was a statue of a nude young boy, perhaps no more than thirteen, his long lean legs against the stone and bare feet flat against the sides, his naked backside was planted on the flat surface at the top while both arms, bent at the elbow, reached behind him – his hands resting on the flat surface of the pillar. The boy’s face seemed placid – almost resigned – while his eyes gazed up toward the dark clouds above. Through the statues pursed lips a faint dribble of water spouted less than an inch into the air before trickling down the side of its face, down its neck and along the cut lines of the boy’s carved torso. It was following the trail of water down the statues body that Takeru first noticed that the boy’s small penis was erect and pointing stiffly at the sky – the uncircumcised head partly showing beneath the folded foreskin. When Takeru’s eyes caught this peculiarly erotic fact he realised where the eyes of the carved monsters at the fountains base were looking… All were pointed upward – staring with wanton lust at the boy.

It was out of the corner of his eye, while staring equally disgusted and aroused at the statue of the boy and the carvings of those licentious faces, that Takeru caught a shape shift in one of the School’s long gothic arched windows on the third floor. The moment that he shot his gaze to the window was the same moment that the dark clouds above him echoed with a deep peal of thunder and a forked streak of lightning blazed in the sky. The single strike was so coruscating and strong that it reflected itself back in the schools windows, obscuring what Takeru was trying to make out behind the glass. When the light vanished what he thought he had seen had gone too.

At sixteen, Takeru had seen his fair share of old horror movies. He shook his head and tried to smile – to throw off the thoughts of the Anglo-Amalgamated chillers, of walking through decrepit English villages and across blasted moors. He tried not to think of Prince Prospero or Ligeia or the Green Man – instead trying to think only of Toby – of finding his friend somewhere on this seemingly abandoned scary movie set.

The sight of that eroticly grotesque fountain however, that school and the shifting image in the window, the thunder, the lightning and the creeping sense of uncertainty that clasped it’s fingers around him – tightening with every step he took further into Hammerhead Cove… He was suddenly returned to being that frightened ten year-old boy who cowered beneath blankets coated with spilled popcorn. More than anything at that moment, sixteen year-old Takeru Yuya wanted to hold his brother Hinata as tight as he did when, on the remote Hebridean island of Summerisle, Sergeant Howie realised too late that he was doomed.

The large red wooden doors behind the fountain creaked and slowly opened. As Takeru craned his neck he noticed a woman – tall and stick thin with narrow librarian’s spectacles perched on the end of her nose – a long sleeved black blouse buttoned to the neck and an ankle length gainsboro skirt.

“Boy!” she called out across the courtyard. “Boy come here!”

Takeru pushed the bike around the fountain and up toward the steps of the school entrance.

“What are you doing boy?” The woman’s voice was clipped and nasal. “Come inside this instant!”

As Takeru began to push his bike up the steps the woman held out her hand, palm outward, to stop him: “I am not having you drag those dirty wheels across my clean floor! You can leave your bicycle out in the rain!”

“But?”

“I said that you can leave your bicycle out in the rain!” The woman clicked her fingers impatiently and pointed to the low moss covered stone wall that ran along the sides of the steps. “Rest it against that wall. Yes! Just there! Come on now!”

Reluctantly Takeru leaned the bike against the three ft stone wall and took tentative steps up toward the woman.

“It’s my brother’s bike…”

“No one is going to steal your bicycle now come in out of the rain before you catch your death!” The woman stood back and stretched her arm into the building – showing Takeru the way.

“I’m looking for someone…” Takeru began as he passed the woman through the large arched doorway.

With both hands the woman pushed at the heavy wooden door behind them – a loud thud and weighty clunk as it clicked into place reverberated around the school’s reception hall.

Takeru was taken with how the interior of the building was less terrifying than its exterior. Plain magnolia paint filled most of the high walls with dark stained wood panelling flowing horizontally a third of the height from the floor. Wooden benches were spaced evenly and wall sconces gave off a warm and welcoming yellow hued light. Two sets of stairs with dark stained wooden banisters climbed upward to the second floor, on either side of the hall, while lush green potted plants sat at their base.

“We are all looking for someone…” The woman placed the spectacles in her hair and tilting her head took Takeru’s chin in her hand – raising his face into the light. “You are not one of our boys are you? Name?”

“Huh?”

She let go of his chin as her eyes flashed with anger. “HUH? HUH? We do not say HUH? The proper response to a question if you were not listening when it was asked is: ‘Pardon me, could you repeat that please?'”

Takeru flushed red. He hadn’t been corrected on his speaking since he was a child.

“Pardon,” he began, more than little embarrassed “could you repeat that please?” He squinted at the old woman before him. Only, he thought, she isn’t that old. Just… matronly?

“I had asked you where you were from by noting that you are not one of our boys and then I requested your name.”

“Halpin Hope. I’m from Halpin Hope.”

The woman lowered the spectacles back to the bridge of her nose as her eyes looked over Takeru’s body from head to toe while she circled him – taking in every inch – examining the form and shape of the boy with a realtors eye for detail. Takeru had never felt such an intense gaze before… maybe when Toby’s eyes were on him in the meadow…

“Oh and my name is Takeru. Takeru Yuya.”

“And you are here because?”

“I came to find a friend.”

“Are there no ‘friends’ in your own town that you need to come all the way to the other side of the island to find them?”

Lady, you’re a dick! Takeru prevented himself from saying the words that bounced on the end of his tongue. “He’s a friend I met earlier. He’s from here. This is the school right?”

The woman allowed a slim smile to cross her lips: “Yes. Yes this a school.” Straightening her back she peered down her nose at the boy through the thick lenses of her eye-glasses: “What is the name of this friend?”

“Toby! Tobias! He lives here and he was supposed to meet me a couple of days ago but he didn’t turn up and although he said that I shouldn’t come I wanted to make sure he was alright and…”

“Tobias Marsh is currently confined to school grounds. He was missing from morning bed check two days ago. It was a repeat infraction of the rules for Tobias… and now we know why…” The woman pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows believing that she had uncovered some deep mystery while thinking herself the world’s greatest detective.

“Can I see him please?”

“He’s busy. Work detail. Someone needs to help with the upkeep of this place and…” she stopped – seemingly catching herself as if she had misspoken. “…the Lord knows that I cannot do everything.”

“Please just for a few minutes, I rode all the way out here and I’d like to see him, just to make sure that he’s alright. Then I’ll go. I promise!”

With the suspicion a nervous child might reserve for greeting an unfamiliar dog, the woman looked over the boy once more before relenting. Takeru thought he caught something in the woman’s eyes behind the the lenses of her spectacles – some great and terrible notion that had suddenly come to her.

“Very well.” She turned her back to Takeru and began walking toward the far end of the reception where it narrowed into a windowless hall. “He is out back and will not be finished his work for another hour or so. If you wish to wait you can do so in the visitors lounge…” The woman turned realising that Takeru wasn’t following her. She clicked her heels together and nudged her head ahead of her – beckoning the boy to follow. Only when he caught up did she continue: “You can wait in the visitors lounge until he has finished his chores. After that you may see him for no more than five minutes. I then expect you to leave.”

Takeru followed the woman along the corridor – the clip clap of her fat flat heels against the wooden floor bounced around the walls. At intervals the bland magnolia walls were broken by closed doors or other, narrower, hallways that broke off both left and right – but the pair continued forward in silence.

“Are you the headmistress?” Takeru eventually asked, feeling uncomfortable in the silence.

“Oh my word no!” she didn’t look around to Takeru, instead her eyes and head stayed straight as she kept pace. “Ms Acton is the headmistress and, even while the school experiences a short break, she is far too busy a woman to greet visitors.” She stopped suddenly and turned to the boy at her back, stooping somewhat to look the boy in the eye. “I’m Ms Myerscough. The school’s Administrative Nurse.”

“Hi! I’m Takeru Yuya!” Takeru extended a hand out toward the woman.

She looked at his hand, at his face and straightened her back: “Yes… you had said.” She spun back around and continued walking.

As Takeru quickened his pace to keep up, he noticed that the further down the corridor they progressed, the shabbier the finish to the schools interior decoration looked: the paint on the walls began to a look a little tired, the wooden floor a little more scuffed and less cared for and some of the cone shaped lighting sconces on the wall were either cracked and blinking or needed replaced altogether. It was while noticing this that Takeru wasn’t paying attention to Ms Myerscough in front of him and when she had come to an abrupt halt by a door on their right he bumped into her – causing her to give a high pitched yelp of excitement normally reserved for the surprised and easily startled upper class ladies of Jane Austen novels.

“This is the visitors lounge. You can wait in here…” After pulling a long brown mortice key from a hidden pocket in her skirt, Ms Myerscough inserted it into the the rusted lock and turned it. Stiffly the lock clicked and the door opened. “There are books and periodicals on the shelves… plenty to keep you amused until your ‘friend’ is finished with his chores.” She reached into the room without looking and switched on the light.

Takeru felt her hand on his shoulder, although she remained a few inches beyond actually placing her fingers on the boy, as she guided him in.

“If you are hungry I could probably get one of the boys from the kitchen to bring you some Surströmming and a few water biscuits!”

“NO!” Takeru realised he was being too emphatic in the face of the woman’s… generosity? “I’m fine thank you. I’m sure it’s… lovely?… though…”

“Very well. When you have seen Tobias I’ll come and collect you and show you out.”

Takeru half smiled and waved as she closed the door. When he heard her lock the door from the outside as he turned into the room a brief twinge of fear dug both into his thoughts and gut.

Looking around the room, Takeru thought it comfortable looking if sparse: In the centre – two Cabriole sofa’s stood back to back – the blackwatch tartan cushioned seating looked comfortable while the sinuous sensual curves of the wooden backs and legs struck Takeru as vaguely sexual. But then most things struck Takeru as vaguely sexual. Against the wall on his left, next to a second door, was a wooden two seater Chair-back Settee – the uncomfortable looking wicker seating browned and practically threadbare. To the doors left, a bookcase with a dozen of so books in varying degrees of ware. The wall ahead of him was empty – nothing but the fading magnolia paint and what looked like a few scratches – perhaps where furniture had once been move?. On the wall to his right was another bookcase with less books than the first and a third sturdy looking door.

No windows, thought Takeru. He wondered how deep into the building they had gone and how far the school stretched back toward the sea.

The books on the shelves held little interest to him. Most were histories and herbologies, a few pamphlets that appeared older than the school itself. On one shelf, beside an empty small blue and white porcelain vase, a thin aged leaflet caught his attention.

On brittle looking yellowed paper stamped in brown and reddish ink: a lidless fish eye glared back at him. Beneath the eye – writing like that which he had seen carved around the porous pillar that supported the aroused youth in the centre of the fountain outside of the school. Looking at it in the better light of the visitor’s room he could still make no sense of the seemingly unintelligible scribblings. A few words looked similar to the text on the prints of Japanese woodblock paintings that his mother had decorated their home with – but whereas the Kanji looked graceful and artfully beautiful, Takeru had thought that these symbols looked ugly and filled with evil intent. Below and printed in English were words that he could read but could barely make out – faded as they were by the light and the passing of time.

Taking the leaflet, Takeru seated himself on one of the Cabriole sofa’s in the centre of the room and leaned over the paper in his hands as if the very secrets of the universe were contained in its twelve pages:

“In Yuth-R’lech’s Name. Being an incomplete history of the Sacred Order of Yuth-R’lech and a brief practical guide to the teachings of the Great Old Ones.” Takeru squinted as he read aloud and smiled to himself. Shit! He thought, It’s like something out of The Lurking Terror! The worn text insidethe leaflet seemed incomplete and broken:

This history fo..s only the part of …ch this historic island was sett..d by the goo… folks of New H…n, the foun…. of Hamm..head Cove, the d..co.ery of Rh’ahmen-P’jleck a.d the refo..ati.n of the c..rch to the Sacred …er of Y..h-R’lech, may he guide .ur hea… to the a…ning a.. rebi..h of our l..d, .t…, and the rise of ..e holy and ancient city of .’…h!

Takeru began to wonder if this was a prop from a school play, then turning the leaflet over in his hands thought it perhaps too decorative a thing for that; the print too convincing, the detail too laboured and paper too thick.

It is of v.tal imp…anc. that we of H….rhead Co.. adhere to the word of and res…t the bounteous gen..osity ..forded .s b. The .ee. O..s of Rh’…en-P’…..

Struggling to make a coherent sentence out of the faded text in front of him – it was as Takeru turned the pages in search of an undamaged paragraph that he came across the images: brown and red printed wood carvings, that while faint, were bolder than the text; A twisted mockery of a cityscape whose obscenely phallic buildings spiraled into the sky, piercing the clouds; a beach on which a hulking malformed man, standing twice the size of those around him, offered out a fish with his left hand while dragging a net full of more behind him with his right; a row of pregnant women on beds, their legs raised in stirrups, their faces torn in pain; a naked young boy lying tied to a stake on a beach – his curved erect penis resting flat against his belly…

At sixteen, Takeru had seen his fair share of old horror movies. And looking at these images he tried to toss aside thoughts of the monsters of New Line Cinema… of Freddy Krueger’s fish knife finger tipped glove reaching for his feet from beneath the sofa he was sitting on… of Jason Voorhees smashing a relentless thick fist against one of the doors to the room.

Takeru knew the trappings and cliches that accompanied even the most well regarded movie nightmares and seeing these images gave him cause for pause. From the moment he stepped off of his brothers bike and set foot on the cobbles of Hammerhead Cove, through ominous meetings and sights shrouded in ill portent, it had seemed to him that he had stepped onto the set of one of those films. Where he not unnerved by the last hour and a half of his life he would have laughed, believing that he had walked blindly into the poor purple prosed fiction writings of an unstable mind…

A clink sounded like two empty glass bottles being tapped together and the room was plunged into pitch black.

“Shit!” Takeru stood from the sofa and dropped the leaflet to the floor. “Hello?”

Nothing.

The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone – using the faint light of the screen to cast a dim orange glow. He held the cell phone up but was revealing little but the twisting shadows of his immediate surroundings.

Those horror movie monsters that he had tried not to think about; The Wolfman, Michael Myers, The Creeper… Suddenly all sat crouched in the shadows just out of sight. If he held his own breath he’d worried that he’d hear them whispering to one another in the dark.

With shaking hands outstretched the boy slowly stepped forward – toward where he believed the light switch to be and blindly felt along the along the wall.

The door to Takeru’s right was hammered with a single almighty thump! Practically jumping from his skin, Takeru dropped his phone to the floor. “Fuck!”

His heart pumping hard in his chest, the boy dropped to his knees and felt around on the floorboards for his cell.

Another thump, so much more forceful that the first, that if he’d have had the light to see, Takeru would have been able tell you that the wood bowed into the room as it met the weight that was hammering against it. As his hand clasped his phone the boy stood and reached for the door that he had entered the room through, pulling hard on the handle – only when it failed to give did he remember the sound of Ms Myerscough locking it from the outside. He strained his ears and behind the door could hear, but not decipher, the whispering of words – seemingly wet and dripping from too wide mouths.

“Hello!” Takeru rapped on the door. “The lights have gone out and something… someone is banging on one of the others doors!” The voices whispered lower. Takeru thought that he heard one of them laugh. “Can you let me out please?”

It was the snickering and wicked laughter in response to his request that filled with him panic.

A third thump – the door all but splintering. He thought about calling out louder – telling whoever was banging at the door that he was supposed to be there, that Ms Myerscough had placed him in that room, that he had only wanted to see his friend Toby.

It was as he opened his mouth and was about to speak those words that he heard the sound of the third door creak open…

To be continued…

Let me know what you think of my story:Ellio