The Ravenglass Eye

by Tom Fletcher

Genres: Fantasy; Horror

Synopsis

A malevolent power is on the prowl - and it's hungry for death. Edie is a barmaid at The Tup in the small town of Ravenglass. So far, so normal. But when she is caught in a freak earthquake she develops a strange new power - 'The Eye' - which allows her glimpses of other worlds and mysterious events. At first Edie passes her visions off as nightmares, but when a murdered body is found, she realises she has seen this death before - and that her visions are real, after all. Mankind had better hope that Edie finds a solution to the murders soon, because it's more than just the influence of 'The Eye' that has entered the world. A power far more malevolent has been released, and that power is hungry for death.

Release date: September 27, 2012

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 205

Sample

PART ONE

 

Dearest Edith,

I hope to God this letter finds you well. It is one of my greatest fears that something should happen to you while I am out here; it would be a cruel trick of the kind that some of us have come to expect from this world. I miss you terribly, which is only right and proper but by Hell it is difficult.

I will tell you the minimum about my life out here, because in all truth it is as miserable as you might expect. Everybody is tired and pining for their loves. And everybody is scared. But I have met some good men, and we keep our spirits up by talking about coming home. Imagining this all to be over, and us seeing all of your pretty faces again. Not only seeing your face, but knowing that it won’t be for just a short while. After this, Edith, we will never spend a night apart again, not if I have anything to do with it.

As I say, I don’t want to write about the war – the mud and the blood and the weapons. Suffice to say, I myself am well and able to write you, and as long as I can write to you, then I shall.

I want to tell you about the place I grew up in. I have told you before of the fondness I feel for my home – the little village of Gosforth. But it makes me feel better to write about happy times I spent there and thereabouts, and perhaps it will cause you some comfort also. It helps to remember what we are fighting for, I find. In a way. Of course the world changes fast, but that is one of the most appealing aspects of Cumberland – it feels unchanging in a lot of ways.

South of Gosforth, there is a valley called Wasdale. We – my brothers and sisters and I – used to go there on our bicycles when we were young and swim in the clean, fresh lake of Wastwater. I remember hot summer days when the sun was truly bright and the paths were dappled in light beneath the tall old trees.

Sylvia was always looking after us because she was the oldest, and she would have a picnic in her basket. Just cheese sandwiches, more often than not. And when we got to the shore of the lake we would be so hot from the summer sun that we just ran right in, splashing around like children. Well, of course we were children. I forget myself. The sun shone down on the shores of the lake, and the water looked so blue, and the mountains around it were so vibrant, covered in green grass and purple heather. There was a little island we could wade out to – just a large, smooth rock, really – that we called Seagull Island. On the far side of Seagull Island the water was a lot deeper and we could practise our diving. People say that Wastwater is a bottomless lake – you can believe it when you’re on its edge.

I would like to take you there, Edith, and go swimming with you. Just the two of us …

CHAPTER ONE

Phillip is sitting at the bar, having eaten his Cumberland sausage and mash, and he is on his second Black Sheep. For some reason I find it difficult not to observe him. Every time the kitchen door swings open I steal a glance, assess his position in the bar, his drunkenness. The truth is that he fascinates me. His brown hair, slightly too long, like a shell around the back and top of his head. His red cheeks. The beginnings of jowls. He is not fat – just saggy. He looks older than he is, I think. And I think he is in his late fifties. He wears this strange, plasticky green coat literally all the time. I have never seen him out of it. It looks very thick and hot and rubbery. It’s always a bit grimy, too.

Maria is darting around behind the bar, ignoring Phillip as best as she can. She has a hard frown on and her movements are cold and brisk. She retreats into a very businesslike place inside of herself anyway when the pub’s busy, as it is tonight, but even when it’s quiet she’ll try to find something to do that means she doesn’t have to talk to Phillip.

It’s Friday. All of the contractors who live here during the week have gone back to wherever they came from for the weekend, but the locals come out in force on a Friday.

I plate up two vegetarian chillis and a well-done steak and put them on the small stainless steel worktop to the right of the mammoth cooker.

Mitchell slouches through from the bar a moment later, his arms full of dirty crockery that he’s collected from the tables. Mitchell is the Chip Bitch. It’s his job to make sure that there’s always chips ready, to assemble the starters and desserts, to sweep up and wash up, that kind of thing. Everyone’s been through the Chip Bitch rite of passage – it tends to be the first job for everyone around here. He’s a nice boy, if dopey. But then show me a fifteen-year-old boy who isn’t dopey.

‘Two chips with those,’ I say, pointing to the food. ‘The cyclists in the far corner.’

‘Aye aye, Edie,’ he says, saluting. ‘I think we’re taking off.’

I nod, turning back to the cooker as he shovels chips into bowls. I think we’re taking off is what Mitchell says when it’s starting to get really busy. The time between now and the serving of the last meal of the night will more or less just disappear completely, and I won’t remember any of it.

We stop serving food at nine so I’m out in the bar myself by half-past. Mitchell’s still doing the washing up, but he’s paid by the hour so I don’t feel too bad.

The Tup is an old pub, and a good one. Maria’s always getting guest ales in and keeps a good range of whiskies behind the bar. There’s an open fire. Soft upholstery. Wooden beams adorned with horse brasses. One thing I don’t like is the taxidermy – foxes, pheasants and squirrels in glass cases up on the walls – but they’ve been there since before Maria bought the place and I don’t think she’d feel comfortable getting rid. The place could do with a good jukebox, but maybe the regular clientele wouldn’t agree. I’ve got my stereo in the kitchen, and a collection of reggae CDs given to me by the previous chef who was ditching all of his stuff to go and live on a houseboat. He lived in the caravan before me so I can’t imagine he really owned that much.

When Mark showed me around the place, he gestured at the CDs. ‘What West Cumbria needs,’ he declared at the time, ‘is a bit more black.’

I wasn’t sure what to make of that then, and I’m still not sure now. I’ve never forgotten those words, though. I don’t know why.

When the pub is busy like this you can’t talk to Maria. And you can’t ever say that you’re talking with Phillip, either – he just listens in to other people’s talk, and then snarks at them like a nasty old dog that can’t help itself yapping. So I talk to Don, who’s sitting next to Phillip, which is unfortunate, but then this is a public house, after all, and like Grandma used to say, trying to avoid people you don’t like is a kind of cheating.

Don is a small, hunched man with a droopy nicotine-stained moustache and big red veiny nose. Like Phillip, he has his tea here at every night.

‘How’s Mags doing, Don?’ I ask.

He purses his lips beneath the moustache and shakes his head. ‘Same as ever,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I think she’s making a bit more sense, or she’s a bit happier, but then she … it goes away again. I don’t know if I’m helping her. I’m thinking of getting her – y’know. Having her moved somewhere.’

‘I’m sure she appreciates what you do for her. Looking after her. Taking her Unsworth’s custard tarts.’

‘Aye! Them’s about the only thing that’s sure to get a smile out,’ Don says. ‘But I don’t know if I can do it, lass. It’s hard. She can’t even get out of bed any more. And I don’t know if she knows me all the time, y’know.’

‘I’m sure she does,’ I say.

‘Thanks, Edie. I hope so. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s best for a body.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘it is.’

‘Another perfect steak tonight, mind,’ he says as if that wasn’t a non-sequitur, and he raises his pint to me.

‘I’m glad you liked it.’

Don has steak every night, well done, with chips and peas. He finishes the pint and puts the glass down on the bar. ‘I’ll see yer tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I’d better get back to ’er indoors.’

‘Goodnight, Don,’ I say. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Night, Don!’ Maria shouts.

Phillip doesn’t do or say anything until Don’s gone. And then he speaks. ‘Mags isn’t ill, you know,’ he says in a low voice, ‘she’s just a hypochondriac. A drama queen. It was all before you came here, Edie, but she used to pretend to be a clairvoyant or a medium or some such, all glass beads and incense and all that nonsense: shouting fits and wailing and speaking in tongues. People fell for it, of course, because people are morons. Used to call her the Eye. If you’re being kind you could say she was a madwoman, but really she was just a charlatan, and a highly-strung one at that.’

‘I know the stories, Phillip, but she’s mentally ill. And anyway, there’s no reason not to feel sympathy for her or Don.’

‘It’s her own fault she’s not well. Lying in bed all day? No wonder she’s so fat. It’s a wonder the bed can hold her. She needs to get up and do some exercise. That might sort her brain out a bit.’

‘Saying one thing after another isn’t the same thing as making an argument, Phillip. Just stop—’

I’m saved from having to talk to the dick further by the front door banging open again and John Platt Senior blowing in out of the wet. He clumps over to the bar and lays his gnarled old hands out on the sticky wood, apparently oblivious to the tacky puddles of spilled beer. But then he probably can’t feel anything as insignificant as spilled beer with those hands. They are like two root vegetables, yanked up from the soil and not yet washed. His nails are thick and brown with dirt and his skin is as tough and tanned as the leather of Maria’s old jacket. Water runs off his threadbare blue baseball cap and down over his gaunt, ageless face. He wears a grubby green boilersuit and wellies. He brings with him the particular smell of cow muck and hay and horses.

‘Double whisky please, Maria,’ he says. He takes off the baseball cap and only then do I see that his hands are shaking slightly.

Maria pauses almost imperceptibly – it’s not like John Senior to drink, is why – but doesn’t question him.

‘I’ll have a whisky and lemonade, Maria, please,’ I add. ‘While you’ve got the good stuff down.’

Phillip holds his nose behind John’s back and wafts his free hand in front of his face. He always does this when John Platt comes in. He explained once that it’s a joke, because John smells of cowshit, but he doesn’t understand that nobody else really sees it as a joke. Another thing that Phillip doesn’t understand is that even if John does smell of farms, it doesn’t matter.

‘Alright, John,’ I say.

‘Edie, lass,’ he replies, nodding at me.

‘Alright, John,’ Phillip says.

‘Right,’ John says, but he doesn’t look at Phillip.

Phillip pulls another face and drinks deeply from his pint.

‘It’s been a while,’ Maria says.

‘Aye,’ John says. ‘Been busy.’

‘Busy on the farm?’ Phillip asks, clumsily slamming his glass back onto the bar.

‘Aye,’ John says, frowning briefly, still not looking at Phillip.

Then silence. John is never that talkative, but tonight, what with him drinking, and his hands shaking, the silence feels less like just silence and more like waiting. I mean, as if the silence is a prelude to something important, or something bad.

Maria places the whisky on the bar. ‘You’re drinking, John,’ she says eventually.

‘I am tonight, lass, aye.’

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

‘Oh,’ he says, a deep sound, a weary sound. ‘Found something right nasty over on the farm.’

Maria finishes dispensing the lemonade from the ‘fizz tap’, and holds the glass out to me. I’m looking at John, waiting for him to elaborate, and Maria’s looking at John too, and for a long moment she just holds the whisky and lemonade and it’s hanging in the air, and then I remember to take it off her.

‘What was it?’ I prompt him. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Oh, aye, I’m right,’ he says. ‘Just a speck worried, like.’

‘What did you find?’ Maria asks.

‘Found th’ dog,’ John says, and falls silent again. He lifts his glass to his mouth but his hand is shaking so much that he has to put it back down again. ‘Th’ dog,’ he says, ‘all spread about. Pinned out, like, slit down the middle and pinned open.’ He shakes his weathered head. ‘La’al Girt. Poor old girl.’

‘Oh no,’ Maria says. ‘Oh, John – what happened to her? Who would have done that?’

John just shakes his head again. The deep creases in which his eyes nestle fill with moisture. He roots around in the inside pocket of his boilersuit and withdraws a clutch of Polaroid photographs.

‘Nice to see that not everybody is in mindless thrall to modern technology,’ Phillip says. John ignores him, but I meet his eyes and give him a look and Maria shakes her head at him. Phillip shrugs.

John places the pictures face down on the bar. ‘Don’t look if you’re squeamish,’ he says.

Maria puts her hand out and then withdraws it again. ‘John,’ she says, ‘what do you mean, split down the middle? Pinned out?’

‘Oh aye,’ John says, ‘some bugger’d done it, like. Gullet to arse. Skin peeled off to the sides and pinned down, like a tarp.’

Maria puts her hand to her own mouth, her face pale. ‘Oh John,’ she says, again, her voice muffled by her hand. She gestures to the Polaroids. ‘Did you take these?’

‘Aye,’ John says, ‘for the police.’

‘Have they been out?’ Maria asks.

‘Aye,’ John says, ‘they came out today. Millom lads. Took their own pictures in the end.’ He pauses for a moment, then continues. ‘Said they’ll look inter it, but we all know that Girt’s just a dog.’

‘But still,’ Maria says, hands fluttering over the still-downturned Polaroids, ‘the way it’s been done – they must be interested in that.’

John shrugged.

Maria measures John another whisky and puts it in front of him.

I pick the pictures up from the bar and look at them, holding them close to me so nobody else has to see them if they don’t want to.

The first one is just a photo of Girt’s head. I have seen Girt before, running around the fields when I’m out walking: a skinny mongrel sheepdog, black and white, a friendly dog. In the slightly discoloured photo (I think John’s Polaroid camera probably dates back to the sixties or something, when he was younger, if not actually young) it looks like Girt is lying on her back, the back of her head against the ground, her jaws open. Her eyes are open but only the whites are visible. Her tongue hangs out of the side of her mouth as limp, wrinkled and discoloured as a damp dishcloth.

Below her bottom jaw, you can just see the beginning of an open wound, but there the photo ends.

I wrinkle my nose.

The next photo is more disturbing. It’s taken from higher up and shows Girt’s whole body. As John explained, she has been slit open from just below her jaw down to between her hind legs. Horizontal cuts have been made across the torso and stomach, enabling panels of skin to be pulled over to the side, exposing the ribs and stomach muscles of the dog. Some of the ribs are missing and the stomach muscles have been forced open too, so the interior of the chest cavity is visible. It’s empty. The skin that has been pulled over to the side has indeed been pegged to the ground with something.

‘Oh God,’ I say, my throat tight. ‘These are disgusting.’

The next photo shows a close-up of one of the pegs; it’s one of the missing ribs. It’s covered in dried blood and a thin layer of something white. The skin through which it has been driven is all bunched up and rough around the edges. It looks torn, as opposed to cut neatly. Black and white hair sticks out from underneath it.

The next photo is from higher up still; from John’s full height, I imagine, as he is quite tall. This shows all of Girt, plus the ground around her.

She lies in the middle of a big circle of scorched ground.

I put the photos back down. There are others that I can’t look at. ‘Did you find her organs as well?’ I ask.

John shakes his head. His big hands are trembling more violently. I’m a bit shaky too.

Maria looks uncertainly at me, and then picks the photos up and goes through them herself. I watch her face as her expression darkens.

‘Excuse me?’ a bald, bearded man shouts from further down the bar. Maria looks up at him, puts the photos down, puts her hand on John’s hand and then leaves to go and serve the guy. Phillip snatches the photos up, shuffles them rapidly and then puts them back down without saying a word.

John downs his second double whisky. His hands are shaking less now. ‘John asked if you’d come over on Sunday for the burial,’ he says quietly to me. His son is also called John.

‘Oh,’ I say, ‘if you like – I mean, if it’s not an imposition. I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘Tell Maria thanks for the drinks. I’ll leave the money with you.’

‘They’re on us,’ I say, but he shakes his head and puts a pile of pound coins on the bar. I pick them up and force them back into his hand. Phillip watches us with a look on his face that is something like disgust. John puts the coins on the bar again. I pick them up, but this time he’s moved away. He puts his cap back on and waves as he leaves the pub.

Just me and Phillip left now, for the time being.

Outside, a sound like thunder starts to build, but it’s not thunder. It grows louder and louder; a roar that sees a couple of drinkers put their hands over their ears. It’s a wonder the glasses aren’t moving across the tables as the volume peaks.

I’m always amazed the stuffed animals don’t fall off the walls. The sound, a fighter jet, screaming across the farms and the fells, fades away. They often pass over, on training manoeuvres or something I don’t know. They’re one of the aspects of this place that don’t quite fit. They’re like giant angry metal birds, something from another world, another time. But there are a lot of things around here that. . .