No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

thundering against the cliffs. When I did get there—
    Well, I held back from driving quite as far as the barrier, because only a little way beyond it my headlights had picked out black, empty space. Of the three houses that had stood closest to the cliffs only one was left, and that one slumped right on the rim. So I stopped directly opposite Garth’s place, gave a honk on my horn, then switched off and got out of the car with my carrier-bag full of gifts. Making my way to the house, the rush and roar of the sea was perfectly audible, transferring itself physically through the earth to my feet. Indeed the bleak, unforgiving ocean seemed to be working itself up into a real fury.
    Then, in a moment, the sky darkened over and the rain came on out of nowhere, bitter cold and squally, and I found myself running up the overgrown garden path to Garth’s door. Which was when I began to feel really foolish. There was no sign of life behind the grimy windows, neither a glimmer of light showing, nor a puff of smoke from the chimney. Maybe Garth had taken my advice and got out of it after all.
    Calling his name over the rattle of distant thunder, I knocked on the door. After a long minute there was still no answer. But this was no good; I was getting wet and angry with myself; I tried the doorknob, and the door swung open. I stepped inside, into deep gloom, and groped on the wall near the door for a light switch. I found it, but the light wasn’t working. Of course it wasn’t: there was no electricity! This was a ghost town, derelict, forgotten. And the last time I was here it had been in broad daylight.
    But…Garth had made coffee for me. On a gas-ring? It must have been.
    Standing there in the small cloakroom shaking rain off myself, my eyes were growing more accustomed to the gloom. The cloakroom seemed just as I remembered it: several pieces of tall, dark furniture, pine-paneled inner walls, the old grandfather clock standing in one corner. Except that this time…the clock wasn’t clucking. The pendulum was still, a vertical bar of brassy fire where lightning suddenly brought the room to life. Then it was dark again—if anything even darker than before—and the windows rattled as thunder came down in a rolling, receding drumbeat.
    “Garth!” I called again, my voice echoing through the old house. “It’s me, Greg Lane. I said I’d drop in some time?…” No answer, just the hiss of the rain outside, the feel of my collar damp against my neck, and the thick, rising smell of…of what? And suddenly I remembered very clearly the details of my last visit here.
    “Garth!” I tried one last time, and I stepped to the door of his living room and pushed it open. As I did so there came a lull in the beating rain. I heard the floorboards creak under my feet, but I also heard…a groan? My sensitivity at once rose by several degrees. Was that Garth? Was he hurt? My God! What had he said to me that time? “One of these days the postman will find me stretched out in here, and he’ll think: ‘Well, I needn’t come out here anymore.’”
    I had to have light. There’d be matches in the kitchen, maybe even a torch. In the absence of a mains supply, Garth would surely have to have a torch. Making my way shufflingly, very cautiously across the dark room toward the kitchen, I was conscious that the smell was more concentrated here. Was it just the smell of an old, derelict house, or was it something worse? Then, outside, lightning flashed again, and briefly the room was lit up in a white glare. Before the darkness fell once more, I saw someone slumped on the old settee where Garth had served me coffee…
    “Garth?” The word came out half-strangled. I hadn’t wanted to say it; it had just gurgled from my tongue. For though I’d seen only a silhouette, outlined by the split-second flash, it hadn’t looked like Garth at all. It had been much more like someone else I’d once seen—in a photograph. That drooping right