No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories Page 7

  “Listen,” I said, deciding to lighten the atmosphere if I could. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You go back to the taverna, and I’ll go get the fish. We’ll have the Greek girl cook them for us and dish them up with a little salad—and a bottle of retsina, as we’d planned. Maybe things will look better after a bite to eat, eh? Is your tummy up to it?”

  She smiled faintly in the false dusk, leaned forward, and gave me a kiss. “You know,” she said, “whenever you start worrying about me—and using that tone of voice—I always know that there’s something you’re worrying about yourself. But actually, you know, I do feel quite hungry!”

  The shadows had already reached the taverna. Just shadows—in no way night, for it wasn’t properly evening yet, though certainly the contrast was a sort of darkness—and beyond them the vast expanse of the sea was blue as ever, sparkling silver at its rim in the brilliant sunlight still striking there. The strangeness of the place seemed emphasized, enlarged…

  I watched Julie turn right and disappear into the shade of the vines, and then I went for our fish.

  The real nightmare began when I let myself into the chalet and went to the sink unit. Doubly shaded, the interior really was quite dark. I put on the light in the arched-over alcove that was the kitchen, and picked up the two fish, one in each hand—and dropped them, or rather tossed them back into the sink! The ice was all melted; the live-looking glisten of the scales had disappeared with the ice, and the mullets themselves had been—infected!

  Attached to the gill flap of one of them, I’d seen a parasite exactly like the ones on the big grouper; the second fish had had one of the filthy things clamped half over a filmed eye. My hair actually prickled on my head; my scalp tingled; my lips drew back from my teeth in a silent snarl. The things were something like sheep ticks, in design if not in dimension, but they were pale, blind, spiky, and looked infinitely more loathsome. They were only—crustaceans? Insects? I couldn’t be sure—but there was that about them which made them more horrific to me than any creature has a right to be.

  Anyone who believes you can’t go cold, break out in gooseflesh, on a hot, late afternoon in the Mediterranean is mistaken. I went so cold I was shaking, and I kept on shaking for long moments, until it dawned on me that just a few seconds ago, I’d actually handled these fish!

  Christ!

  I turned on the hot tap, thrust my hands forward to receive the cleansing stream, snatched them back again. God, no! I couldn’t wash them, for Dimitrios had been up there putting something in the tank! Some kind of spawn. But that didn’t make sense: hot water would surely kill the things. If there was any hot water…

  The plumbing rattled, but no hot water came. Not only had Dimitrios interfered with the water, introduced something into it, but he’d also made sure that from now on we could use only the cold water!

  I wiped my trembling hands thoroughly on sheets from a roll of paper towel, filled the kettle with water from a refrigerated bottle, quickly brought the water toward boiling. Before it became unbearable, I gritted my teeth, poured a little hot water first over one hand, then the other. It stung like hell, and the flesh of my hands went red at once, but I just hugged them and let them sting. Then, when the water was really boiling, I poured the rest of the contents of the kettle over the fish in the sink.

  By that time the parasites had really dug themselves in. The one attached to the gill flap had worked its way under the gill, making it bulge; the other had dislodged its host’s eye and was half-way into the skull. Worse, another had clawed its way up the plughole and was just now emerging into the light! The newcomer was white, whereas the others were now turning pink from the ingestion of fish juices.

  But up from the plughole? This set me shuddering again; and again I wondered: what’s down there, down in the slop under the ground? Where does everything go?

  These fish had been clean when I caught them; I’d gutted them, and so I ought to know. But their scent had drawn these things up to the feast. Would the scent of human flesh attract them the same way?

  As the boiling water hit them, the things popped like crabs tossed into a cooking pot. They seemed to hiss and scream, but it was just the rapid expansion and explosion of their tissues. And the stench that rose up from the sink was nauseating. God!—would I ever eat fish again?

  And the thought kept repeating over and over in my head: what was down below?

  I went to the shower recess, put on the light, looked in, and at once shrank back. The sunken bowl of the shower was crawling with them! Two, three dozen of them at least. And the toilet? And the cold-water system? And all the rest of the bloody plumbing? There’d be a cesspit down there, and these things were alive in it in their thousands! And the maniac Dimitrios had been putting their eggs in the water tanks!

  But what about the spinsters? They had been here before us, probably for the past three or four days at least. And what about George? George and his lumps! And Julie: she wouldn’t have ordered anything yet, would she! She wouldn’t have eaten anything!

  I left the door of the chalet slamming behind me, raced for the taverna.

  The sun was well down now, with the bulk of the central mountain throwing all of the eastern coastline into shadow; halfway to the horizon, way out to sea, the sun’s light was a line ruled across the ocean, beyond which silver-flecked blueness seemed to reach up to the sky. And moment by moment the ruled line of deeper blue flowed eastward as the unseen sun dipped even lower. On the other side of the island, the west coast, it would still be sweltering hot, but here it was noticeably cooler. Or maybe it was just my blood.

  As I drew level with the garden at the back of the house, something came flopping over the wall at me. I hadn’t been looking in that direction or I’d have seen her: Julie, panic-stricken, her face a white mask of horror. She’d seemed to fly over the wall—jumped or simply bundled herself over I couldn’t say—and came hurtling into my arms. Nor had she seen me, and she fought with me a moment when I held her. Then we both caught our breath, or at least I did. Julie had a harder time of it. Even though I’d never heard her scream before, there was one building up in her, and I knew it.

  I shook her, which served to shake me a little, too, then hugged her close. “What were you doing in the garden?” I asked, when she’d started to breathe again. I spoke in a whisper, and that was how she answered me, but drawing breath raggedly between each burst of words:

  “The little goat…he was bleating…so pitifully…frightened! I heard him…went to see…got in through a gate on the other side.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Oh God, Jim!”

  I knew without asking. A picture of the slumped figure in the chair, under the olive tree, had flashed momentarily on my mind’s eye. But I asked anyway: “The tarpaulin?”

  She nodded, gulped. “Something had to be dead under there. I had no idea it would be a…a…a man!”

  “English?” That was a stupid question, so I tried again: “I mean, did he look like a tourist, a holiday maker?”

  She shook her head. “An old Greek, I think. But there are—ugh!—these things all over him. Like…like—”

  “Like crabs?”

  She drew back from me, her eyes wide, terror replaced by astonishment. “How did you know that?”

  Quickly, I related all I knew. As I was finishing, her hand flew to her mouth. “Dimitrios? Putting their eggs in the tanks? But Jim, we’ve taken showers—both of us!”

  “Calm down,” I told her. “We had our showers before I saw him up there. And we haven’t eaten here, or drunk any of the water.”

  “Eaten?” her eyes opened wider still. “But if I hadn’t heard the kid bleating, I might have eaten!”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “I ordered wine and…some melon. I thought we’d have it before the fish. But the Greek girl dropped it, and—”

  She was rapidly becoming incoherent. I grabbed her again, held her tightly. “Dropped it? You mean she dropped the food?”

&
nbsp; “She dropped the melon, yes.” She nodded jerkily. “The bottle of wine, too. She came out of the kitchen and just let everything drop. It all smashed on the floor. And she stood there wringing her hands for a moment. Then she ran off. She was crying: ‘Oh Dimitrios, Dimitrios!’”

  “I think he’s crazy,” I told her. “He has to be. And his wife—or sister, or whatever she is—she’s scared to death of him. You say she ran off? Which way?”

  “Toward the town, the way we came. I saw her climbing the spur.”

  I hazarded a guess: “He’s pushed her to the edge, and she’s slipped over. Come on, let’s go and have a look at Dimitrios’s kitchen.”

  We went to the front of the building, to the kitchen door. There on the floor by one of the tables, I saw a broken wine bottle, its dark red contents spilled. Also a half-melon, lying in several softly jagged chunks. And in the melon, crawling in its scattered seeds and pulpy red juices—

  “Where are the others?” I said, wanting to speak first before Julie could cry out, trying to forestall her.

  “Others?” she whispered. She hadn’t really heard me, hadn’t even been listening; she was concentrating on backing away from the half-dozen crawling things that moved blindly on the floor.

  I stamped on them, crushed them in a frenzy of loathing, then scuffed the soles of my flip-flops on the dusty concrete floor as if I’d stepped in something nasty—which is one hell of an understatement. “The other people,” I said. “The three sisters and…and George.” I was talking more to myself than to Julie, and my voice was hoarse.

  My fear transferred itself instantly. “Oh Jim, Jim!” she cried. She threw herself into my arms, shivering as if in a fever. And I felt utterly useless—no, defenceless—a sensation I’d occasionally known in deep water, without my gun, when the shadow of a rock might suddenly take on the aspect of a great, menacing fish.

  Then there came one of the most dreadful sounds I’ve ever heard in my life: the banging and clattering of Dimitrios’s three-wheeler on the road cut into the spur, echoing down to us from the rocks of the mountainside. “My spear gun,” I said. “Come on, quickly!”

  She followed at arm’s length, half running, half dragged. “We’re too vulnerable,” I gasped as we reached the chalet. “Put clothes on, anything. Cover up your skin.”

  “What?” She was still dazed. “What?”

  “Cover yourself!” I snapped. Then I regained control. “Look, he tried to give us these things. He gave them to George, and to the sisters for all I know. And he may try again. Do you want one of those things on your flesh, maybe laying its eggs in you?”

  She emptied a drawer onto the floor, found slacks, and pulled them on; good shoes, too, to cover her feet. I did much the same: pulled on a long-sleeved pullover, rammed my feet into decent shoes. And all in a sort of frenzied blur, fingers all thumbs, heart thumping. And: “Oh shit!” she sobbed. Which wasn’t really my Julie at all.

  “Eh?” She was heading for the small room at the back.

  “Toilet!” she said. “I have to.”

  “No!” I jumped across the space between, dragged her away from the door to the toilet-cum-shower unit. “It’s crawling with them in there. They come up the plugholes.” In my arms, I could feel that she was also crawling. Her flesh. Mine, too. “If you must go, go outside. But first let’s get away from here.” I picked up my gun and checked its single flap-nosed spear.

  Leaving the chalet, I looked across at the ramp coming down from the rocky spur. The clatter of Dimitrios’s three-wheeler was louder, it was there, headlight beams bobbing as the vehicle trundled lurchingly down the rough decline. “Where are we going?” Julie gasped, following me at a run across the scrub between clumps of olives. I headed for the other chalets.

  “Safety in numbers,” I answered. “Anyway, I want to know about George, and those three old spinsters.”

  “What good will they be, if they’re old?” She was too logical by half.

  “They’re not that old.” Mainly, I wanted to see if they were all right. Apart from the near-distant racket Dimitrios’s vehicle was making, the whole valley was quiet as a tomb. Unnaturally quiet. It had to be a damned funny place in Greece where the cicadas keep their mouths shut.

  Julie had noticed that too. “They’re not singing,” she said. And I knew what she meant.

  “Rubbing,” I answered. “They rub their legs together or something.”

  “Well,” she panted, “whatever it is they do, they’re not.”

  It was true evening now, and a half-moon had come up over the central mountain’s southern extreme. Its light silvered our way through thorny shrubs and tall, spiked grasses, under the low grey branches of olives and across their tangled, groping roots.

  We came to the first chalet. Its lights were out, but the door stood ajar. “I think this is where George is staying,” I said. And calling ahead: “George, are you in?”, I entered and switched on the light. He was in—in the big double bed, stretched out on his back. But he turned his head toward us as we entered. He blinked in the sudden, painful light. One of his eyes did, anyway. The other couldn’t…

  He stirred himself, tried to sit up. I think he was grinning. I can’t be sure, because one of the things, a big one, was inside the corner of his mouth. They were hatching from fresh lumps down his neck and in the bend of his elbow. God knows what the rest of his body was like. He managed to prop himself up, hold out a hand to me—and I almost took it. And it was then that I began to understand something of the nature of these things. For there was one of them in his open palm, its barbed feet seeming poised, waiting.

  I snatched back my hand, heard Julie’s gasp. And there she was, backed up against the wall, screaming her silent scream. I grabbed her, hugged her, dragged her outside. For of course there was nothing we could do for George. And, afraid she would scream, and maybe start me going, I slapped her. And off we went again, reeling in the direction of the third and last chalet.

  Down by the taverna, Dimitrios’s three-wheeler had come to a halt, its engine stilled, its beams dim, reaching like pallid hands along the sand. But I didn’t think it would be long before he was on the move again. And the nightmare was expanding, growing vaster with every beat of my thundering heart.

  In the third chalet…it’s hard to describe all I saw. Maybe there’s no real need. The spinster I’d thought was maybe missing something was in much the same state as George; she, too, was in bed, with those god-awful things hatching in her. Her sisters…at first I thought they were both dead, and…But there, I’ve gone ahead of myself. That’s how it always happens when I think about it, try to reconstruct it again in my own mind: it speeds up until I’ve outstripped myself. You have to understand that the whole thing was kaleidoscopic.

  I went inside ahead of Julie, got a quick glimpse, an indistinct picture of the state of things fixed in my brain—then turned and kept Julie from coming in. “Watch for him.” I forced the words around my bobbing Adam’s apple and returned to take another look. I didn’t want to, but I thought the more we knew about this monster, the better we’d know how to deal with him. Except that in a little while, I guessed there would be only one possible way to deal with him.

  The sister in the bed moved and lolled her head a little; I was wary, suspicious of her, and left her strictly alone. The other two had been attacked. With an axe or a machete or something. One of them lay behind the door, the other on the floor on the near side of the bed. The one behind the door had been sliced twice, deeply, across the neck and chest and lay in a pool of her own blood, which was already congealing. Tick-things, coming from the bathroom, had got themselves stuck in the darkening pool, their barbed legs twitching when they tried to extricate themselves. The other sister…

  Senses swimming, throat bobbing, I stepped closer to the bed with its grimacing, hag-ridden occupant, and I bent over the one on the floor. She was still alive, barely. Her green dress was a sodden red under the rib cage, torn open in a jagged flap to r
eveal her gaping wound. And Dimitrios had dropped several of his damned pets onto her, which were burrowing in the raw, dark flesh.

  She saw me through eyes already filming over, whispered something. I got down on one knee beside her, wanted to hold her hand, stroke her hair, do something. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want those bloody things on me. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s all right.” But we both knew it wasn’t.

  “The…the Greek,” she said, her voice so small I could scarcely hear it.

  “I know, I know,” I told her.

  “We wanted to…to take Flo into town. She was…was so ill! He said to wait here. We waited, and…and…” She gave a deep sigh. Her eyes rolled up, and her mouth fell open.

  Something touched my shoulder where I knelt, and I leapt erect, flesh tingling. The one on the bed, Flo, had flopped an arm in my direction—deliberately! Her hand had touched me. Crawling slowly down her arm, a trio of the nightmare ticks or crabs had been making for me. They’d been homing in on me like a bee targeting a flower. But more slowly, thank God, far more slowly.

  Horror froze me rigid; but in the next moment, Julie’s sobbing cry—“Jim, he’s coming!”—unfroze me at once.

  I staggered outside. A dim, slender, dark and reeling shape was making its way along the rough track between the chalets. Something glinted dully in his hand. Terror galvanized me. “Head for the high ground,” I said. I took Julie’s hand, began to run.

  “High ground?” she panted. “Why?” She was holding together pretty well. I thanked God I hadn’t let her see inside the chalet.