Figures of Fear: An anthology by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page A

Hotel, past the framed photographs of the Lusitania survivors.
    He heard Kate let out that sweet high cry of pleasure. He heard Sean say, ‘ Sissikins ’. He looked in horror through the open doorway and saw their reflection in the press, Kate with her fingers buried in her curly red hair.
    He ran downstairs and out through the door and into the wind and the sunshine. He felt as if he had been in the same head-on crash that had killed his father and mother on the N25 at Churchquarter. He was too shocked even to cry. He was still sitting there when Sean came out with his shirt untucked, his cheeks flushed, his upper lip beaded with clear perspiration.
    ‘What’s the matter with you, boy? I thought you were going swimming.’
    He didn’t answer. Instead, he stood up and started to walk quickly towards the beach. He prayed that, this time, Sean wouldn’t follow him, but without even turning his head he knew that Sean was only ten yards behind him.
    He reached the dunes and sat down. Sean circled around him, kicking the sand.
    ‘We should dig ourselves a hideout, like.’
    ‘No,’ said Michael.
    ‘Don’t be so soft. We could pinch some bottles of beer from the bar and we could sit in our hideout and drink them and nobody would know.’
    ‘No,’ Michael repeated.
    Sean picked up a piece of driftwood and started to dig. ‘You’re not going to help me, then?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘All right then, please yourself so.’
    Sean went on digging and the wind began to rise, keening through the grass like the banshees that were supposed to wail whenever an O’Connor was close to death. When Sean had excavated a tunnel into the side of the dune that was more than four feet deep, Michael stood up and said, ‘Stop, Seanie! Don’t! Don’t dig any more! It’s too dangerous!’

    Sean waggled his head and crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. ‘You’re a header, Mikey. It’s a hole in the sand, that’s all.’
    ‘Just stop it. I’ll go tell Da what you’re doing, else.’
    ‘Go on, then! What do you think he’s going to say? We’re on a seaside holiday and I’m digging in the sand. What else are you supposed to do on a seaside holiday?’
    Michael stepped up to him and tried to grab the piece of driftwood away from him but Sean hit him on the elbow with it, hard, right on the funny bone.
    ‘If you don’t want to help, then you can bog off. I mean it. And if you try to do that again I’ll drop you.’
    Michael stayed where he was, rubbing his elbow. He had got into fights with Sean dozens of times, and Sean had always beaten him, because he was a year older and at least a stone heavier. He should have turned around and walked away and left Sean to the fate that was waiting for him, but he knew that he couldn’t.
    Sean dug and grunted and dug and grunted. Michael sat down on the side of the dune while the sun began to sink and the cloud shadows fled across the beach. Eventually Sean came crawling out of the tunnel, sandy backside first. He scrabbled sand out of his hair and said, ‘I’m a genius! The greatest hideout digger ever known! All I have to do now is make it a bit more wider. Talk about The Great Escape !’
    ‘No, Seanie!’ Michael shouted, standing up again, but his voice was snatched out of his mouth by the wind, and Sean was already elbowing his way back into the tunnel.
    In three long leaps, like an astronaut walking on the moon, Michael bounded across the side of the dune and seized Sean’s ankles, twisting his fingers into the laces of his rubber dollies so that he couldn’t get himself free. Sean bellowed, ‘Let go of me, you gowl! What the do you think you’re feckin’ doing? Let go of me!’
    Sean struggled and twisted and kicked at him, but Michael held on to him and tried to drag him backward. He wasn’t strong enough or heavy enough to pull him more than a few inches, but in the end, Sean grew so furious that he struggled his way out of the tunnel himself, and stood up, and punched