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

Michael on the left cheek. Michael staggered backward and fell over, rolling down the side of the dune and landing on his back, winded. Up above him he saw ragged white clouds, and seagulls.

    Sean shouted, ‘You’re a feckin’ eejit, do you know that? You’re the biggest feckin’ eejit I ever knew! I wish to God that my da and my ma had never took you in, you gimp!’
    He stalked back toward his tunnel, but as he did so it collapsed, with the same soft thump that Michael had heard so many times in his dreams.
    Sean stood in front of the dune with his arms spread wide. ‘Now look what you’ve done! Now look what you’ve feckin’ done! I spent all feckin’ afternoon digging that hideout and that’s it!’
    He kicked at the sandy depression where the tunnel had been, and then he came back down the dune and stood over Michael and kicked him in the hip. ‘Gimp,’ he repeated, and then he started walking back along the beach towards the hotel.
    Michael sat up, dabbing at his cheek with his fingertips. His eye was beginning to close up already. But he turned and watched Sean shrinking smaller and smaller and thought: I saved him. I hate him but I did the Christian thing and I saved him, even if I made him so angry. I don’t need God’s forgiveness any more. I don’t need Sean’s forgiveness either.
    He hadn’t felt such inner peace in years. He closed his eyes and the wind gradually died down and the sea whispered softer and softer. Soon there was absolute silence, except for the surreptitious ticking of a clock.
    Somebody laid a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Michael? Michael? You must have fallen asleep. Come on, Michael, we have to get to Togher before seven.’
    He opened his eyes. He was sitting in a brown leather chair in a gloomy oak-panelled room, lined with bookcases. Through the windows he could see that the clouds were deep grey and that it was raining.
    He looked up. Father Bernard was standing over him, smiling.
    ‘I must be working you too hard,’ said Father Bernard. ‘Maybe I should let you have a day off. Maybe we should both take a day off, and do some fishing. The salmon are running in the Blackwater.’
    Bewildered, Michael turned his head. Beside him, on a side table, there was a half-empty cup of milky tea and a copy of Bethada Náem Nérenn , the lives of the Irish saints, open at the life of Máedoc of Fern, with a thirty-cent-off coupon from Valentino’s the pizza parlour as a bookmark.

    ‘I’m sorry, Father. I must have dropped off.’
    ‘Never mind. But we should be making haste now. We don’t want to be late for the needy of Saint Arran’s, do we?’
    ‘No, Father.’
    Michael stood up and brushed biscuit crumbs from the front of his soutane. He couldn’t think why he felt so disoriented. He couldn’t remember coming into the library or where he had been before. He couldn’t even remember getting up this morning.
    ‘How’s the eye?’ asked Father Bernard.
    ‘The eye?’ Michael reached up and touched his left eye. It was swollen and tender, and it felt greasy, as it if had been smeared with butter to relieve the bruising. ‘I don’t know. Better, I think.’
    Father Bernard laid a hand on his shoulder and steered him across the room. On the panelled walls around the door frame hung several hand-coloured engravings of fish. A salmon, a gurnard, a John Dory and an ugly-looking tropical fish with staring eyes and feathery spines. Pterois miles , the devil firefish. Michael was sure that he had seen this before. Not just here, in the library, but somewhere else, although he couldn’t think where. A house, somewhere in the city. A bedroom, where somebody else was sleeping beside him.
    But then Father Bernard steered him out into the corridor and out through the front doors and into the rainy street outside, where his old blue Honda was parked.
    He climbed into the passenger seat and the doors slammed and he forgot where he had seen the devil firefish before, for