The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Moon Blood-Red, Tide Turning ^{Mark Samuels}

Of course what took place back then wouldn’t have seemed so disturbing had I not encountered her again just over two decades later. At that earlier time, you must realize, there was more of the farcical than the horrible in what transpired, or so I supposed.

I was only twenty-four, and when I think of myself as I was then, I realize how much of a stranger that younger man appears to me now. The memory of his hopes, his dreams, his view of life, all fill me with contempt. He would hate this future self, and regard me as a usurper.

But there are worse fates than regret.

And I believe I discovered one of them.

After a handful of jobs, none of which I particularly enjoyed and each lasting less than a year, I found myself employed at a small publishing house in Fitzrovia, close to its local landmark, the British Telecom Tower. The business specialized in what are termed “acting editions,” which are stage plays that are designed for the use of actors rather than the general reader. The only real difference is that these editions usually contain the likes of a furniture and property list, a lighting plot, and an effects plot, all printed after the play text itself and which are there to assist the director and the stage crew. My activities at this firm were in the department that licensed performance rights to companies who wished to mount productions of our titles, and for some reason (the job had little interest for me), I stayed on.

Perhaps I remained because the other staff were invariably interesting, coming from a theatrical background, and there was a high turnover of them. Aside from the board of directors, who had been there for decades, almost everyone else came and went within a few months. As you might imagine, a large proportion were “resting” actors, and as soon as a new role came up they handed in their notice and disappeared. Some returned and then left again, some didn’t, though I have to confess that only one or two out of the multitude ever achieved anything close to prominence in the theatrical world.

One of these “resting” actors employed by the publishers was a young woman whom I shall call “Celia Waters.” It is not her real name, naturally, but that detail is of no consequence.

We struck up an acquaintance of sorts. It was easy to do so, since the business was quite generous in subsidizing its staff to see performances of new plays that might be suitable for its publishing list. Often too, of course, free tickets were provided to the firm by the playwright’s agents. It was regarded as a staff perk I suppose, since their wages weren’t exactly generous. I accompanied Celia Waters on two or three occasions to shows playing in London, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with other staff members.

One time, after a long evening (a play I have forgotten and post-performance drinks at a pub I can’t recall) I even ended up spending the night back at her flat in Shepherd’s Bush. We didn’t sleep together. I am not sure that either found the other sexually desirable. She was attractive in her own way, slim, petite, with long black hair and by no means without personal charm, but there was no chemistry between us.

And over breakfast at a nearby cafe the next morning she told me she was going to be leaving the publishing firm in a month to take up a part in a brief run of a new play being staged down in Cornwall.

She said it was being put on by a new repertory company rim by a wealthy theatrical auteur.

I can’t say that any of this was of great interest to me, and I asked in the spirit of polite enquiry, though I was genuinely curious, as to where it was going to be staged. There aren’t exactly a large number of playhouses in Cornwall and the most likely venue had already suggested itself to me. I had a Cornish cousin with a cottage down in Sennen Cove whom I visited once or twice a year, located only a mile or so from Porthcumo, the site of the Minack Theatre. Moreover, I was due to visit him when Celia Waters would also be in the area.

“Is it the Minack Theatre?” I asked her.

“Why, yes it I,” she replied. “Do you know it?”

This coincidence of our being in more or less exactly the same place at the same time gave an outside impetus to our continued association. Frankly, when she first told me she was leaving the publishing company I assumed our brief, unconsummated relationship would dissipate of its own accord, as they often tend to do with two people in their early to mid-twenties, neither of whom wants commitment.

I promised that I would come and see her in the play while I was down there, and she was keen for me to do so, presumably with a view to the idea of its being reported on favorably and published by the firm. I didn’t think there was much chance of that, since the business only really took on plays that benefited from a higher profile, but I didn’t voice the thought.

Still, I asked her to tell me about it.

“Well,” she said, “it’s all rather a mystery really at this point. We have had some formulaic rehearsals for the last couple of weeks here in a space above a pub. It’s all very ritualistic. But definitely cutting-edge and experimental.”

It sounded awful. Like something a group of students obsessed by Berkoff would try and put on.

Over the next few weeks I saw next to nothing of Celia Waters. We didn’t work in the same department; she was in the showroom on the ground floor and I was up on the second floor in the licensing department anyway, but we exchanged pleasantries whenever our paths crossed. I felt as if we had already disengaged from one another.

One day she wasn’t there at all. A director told me she had quit a week earlier than planned and had already gone down to Cornwall.

“Actresses, eh?” he said.

Back then even female actors themselves used the term.

I will admit that I didn’t really feel anything much about her having left early and without telling me. My only worry was whether or not I was still obliged to keep my promise to go and see her in that play at the Minack. I knew she was primarily interested in my being there for her own reasons, to the benefit of the play itself, but I decided to delay the decision until I was down in Cornwall myself.

Perhaps the most grueling thing about deepest Cornwall, if you are traveling from London, is the train journey itself. For some reason—and I had never shaken it off, despite several trips there—I had the feeling that it always took longer than one might reasonably expect from looking at a map. After four hours one gets to Exeter in Devon and from there one soon crosses the Tamar into Cornwall and imagines it can only be another ten or twenty minutes more to Penzance. It’s not, it’s another hour. And it’s this last hour that’s the most trying, because it seems so unexpected, as if the region itself extends time to fox outsiders. Of course one recognizes it’s an illusion, but it’s no less disconcerting even when one admits the fact. My cousin had an apposite phrase he would often use in jest and whose use he solemnly advised me marked out a true Cornishman. It was, when asked to do a thing, that a Cornishman would reply that it would be attended to “dreckly” which means not attended to directly at all, but rather in one’s own good time. I suppose, too, that this warping of time was brought to mind most noticeably when one returned to London from Cornwall, because it then seemed that everyone and everything in the metropolis rushed around insanely to no useful purpose.

After two days spent at the cottage in Sennen Cove, occupying my time with walks along the beach, cycling along sunken lanes to little villages like Sancreed and drinking in coastal pubs where Cornish fishermen still grumbled darkly into their cider about “English settlers,” my thoughts were turned again by an outside agency to Celia Waters.

It was while drinking in the local pub, The Old Success Inn, I noticed someone had posted up a flyer on its noticeboard which advertised a play and its performance dates at the Minack. The thing was shoddily produced, being a black-and-white photocopied sheet of A5 paper with what looked like a still from one of those 1920s silent German Expressionist films at its center. It was bordered with Celtic latticework. The cast were listed, amongst whom, was, of course, Celia Waters. And I now learnt the title of the play for the first time: New Quests for Nothing. The writer, director and producer was listed as one “Doctor Prozess.”

The first night was this evening at 7:30 p.m.

I looked at my watch. It was just after five.

I ordered another scotch and soda, trying to make my mind up whether or not to honor my promise.

By 7:25 p.m. I was seated at the Minack Theatre, rather the worse for drink. I had stuck to scotch and soda, with only one beer in between, so as not to fill my bladder during the play and perhaps suffer the awkwardness of having to wander out mid-performance in search of the public conveniences. But I wasn’t really used to drinking spirits and, one packet of crisps aside, the booze had worked on an empty stomach.

I had been to the Minack for the first time last year but the unique nature of it as the setting for a theatrical show impressed me just as much on this subsequent occasion. The venue is an amphitheatre carved into the side of a cliff with incredible views of the Atlantic stretching to the horizon. Huge gulls whirl and twist in the air currents, their cries echoing against the boom of the waves crashing on the rocks far below. And as the sun goes down one is hard pressed to keep one’s attention on events on the platform stage right at the bottom of the tiered open seating.

I had plenty of room to myself, with only one other person on the same row, and he was some fifteen yards away. I counted around thirty people inside, dotted here and there, which made for an atmosphere very much like the venue being empty given its large capacity. There was no buzz of conversation from the patrons before the show began, no rustle of programmes being consulted, and no real sense of anticipation whatsoever.

The effects of the bracing sea air and the half hour walk to get from Sennen Cove to the Minack had finally begun to sober me up when the four actors entered the arena and began their performance.

They were all in formal black tie and tails, as if at a dinner party, both the two men and two women. It was very difficult to tell them apart. They were also all caked in white face-paint with dark circles marked around their eyes and with their scalps closely shaven. I only barely recognized Celia Waters.

When she had described the play to me as an experimental piece I realized it had been an understatement. After some fifteen minutes of watching and listening to the actors I was still at a loss to know what was going on. Their dialogue was risible and incoherent, wandering from one subject to another with no definite purpose, and full of allusions and references that were never explained. They acted the piece in the stylized, melodramatic manner of the silent films of the 1920s with grand gestures and overwrought expressions. I wondered whether, quite deliberately, as with Brecht, the intention was to alienate the audience.

In my case, all I felt was a sense of profound depression and boredom. Eventually the dialogue even began to repeat itself, with one refrain in particular cropping up time and time again:

Well, this same farrago went on for another hour and a half, without any interval and by now the sun had set and the moon had risen. Most of the audience had simply got up and left by this point, and were probably demanding refunds at the box office.

I would have left too, but for the natural, outside event that accompanied the play. I imagine that this performance had been carefully scheduled by the auteur behind New Quests for Nothing to coincide with the phenomenon. I hadn’t known of it in advance, and indeed, I cannot say I saw the event reported in the press thereafter, but it certainly occurred. I am convinced I did not imagine it.

A lunar eclipse was taking place and gradually the moon turned blood-red as it passed through the Earth’s shadow.

During this event the actors fell to their knees, arms raised aloft, and started chanting gibberish.

I watched for another five minutes and then left just as the eclipse began to finish. I had no idea whether or not the play continued, but I didn’t want to see it through until the end. Nor did I want to have to run the risk, afterwards, of having to speak to Celia Waters about it. As I have said, there was scarcely anyone now left in the audience, and there was a chance she may have noticed me sitting there, having kept my promise to attend.

I returned to London the next day, having cut short my trip. My cousin in Sennen Cove advised me, some weeks later, that the play had been pulled after that one performance and had caused something of a rumpus locally as an obvious attempt at a publicity stunt. Eventually, the actors had to be physically removed from the stage by the management, for they carried on with the thing even when the theatre was completely empty.

Another play was hastily scheduled at short notice by the Minack to fill the gap; something by Alan Ayckbourn I believe.

I never heard anything further about New Quests for Nothing or “Doctor Prozess” over the years. Though for some reason I half-expected it to turn up again at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

But I did encounter Celia Waters again, twenty years after the events I’ve already described.

By now I had long since left the play publishing business and taken up employment in another field altogether, working for a small property development agency situated in north London. One of our clients, who owned a number of derelict properties in Cornwall, but who lived in London, contacted us for a feasibility study on the erection of three new houses on a place about a mile or so from Sennen that had been, during the 1970s and 1980s, a “surf village” called “Skewjack.” People would bus over from it to the sandy beach at Sennen Cove. The place had been closed for decades, although a cottage on the site was still occupied and was rented out to a tenant who also acted as nominal caretaker for the grounds. No maintenance duties were required, but simply an on-site presence to keep the chalets and other buildings free from the likes of squatters or arsonists.

I hadn’t been down to that part of Cornwall since that last trip, twenty years earlier. My cousin had emigrated to Australia six months after my visit, having met, fallen in love with, and hastily married a young woman from Sydney who had been on holiday in this country.

After arriving in Penzance (the last leg of the journey as interminable as I remembered it to be), I took a cab from the station in order to reach the remains of Skewjack surf village. We were almost at Land’s End before it turned left off the A30 into a lane. One more left turn, then ahead for a few hundred yards and the vehicle parked at my destination. I told the driver to wait for me. I didn’t think my business there would take more than twenty minutes at most to conclude. This was simply a preliminary evaluation.

I had telephoned ahead and the occupant of the cottage came out to meet me as soon as he heard the taxi pull up outside.

He was a man in his early thirties, quite tall, very thin, with long blond hair and a goatee. Back in the doorway of the cottage I could see his partner, a woman around a decade younger than he was. She was red-headed and looked like something out of a Rossetti painting. From the way they dressed, the two of them struck me as arts and crafts types, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they made a living selling pottery or jewelry to tourists at Penzance market.

“Brian Kelsey,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

He stuck out a hand and I shook it.

“I won’t keep you long,” I said. “I just need a quick look around.”

“Redeveloping the old place are they? Been like this for ages now I reckon,” he said.

“Possibly. I imagine it wouldn’t happen for another year, if ever,” I said.

“Don’t bother me and my girlfriend if they do,” he said. “We’re off to St Ives in a few months. Make more money up that way we will, I daresay.”

“What do you do?”

“Sculptures, small ones. Heads mostly. Hand crafted. Want to see? Have a cup of tea beforehand?”

I shook my head.

“Wish I had the time, I really do. But as you can see I’ve got the taxi waiting and this is all a bit of a rush. Can you just show me around the grounds quickly?”

He looked at me steadily. It wasn’t an unfriendly stare, but I could tell he didn’t really like what I’d just said.

“Oh yes, I see, you’re a busy man. Well, let’s get on with it then.”

He set off and I followed.

What was left of Skewjack surf village only covered a few acres.

Its series of holiday cabins, shop, reception, and bar/discotheque were all half-derelict and the pathways and grounds overgrown with weeds and brambles. Some of the roofs had collapsed into the cabins and mold had taken over the interiors. The drained, kidney-shaped swimming pool was choked with rubbish.

It seemed to me that the first thing would be to get a quote as to the cost of demolishing the buildings and clearing the whole area. I was making mental calculations when Brian Kelsey said: “Got some tenants here, you know. In the cabin right just over there, behind the old reception building.”

“Tenants? What tenants?” I said.

He grinned sheepishly.

“Four old tramps. I warned them off at first, but they kept corning back.”

“You mean squatters?”

“Call them what you want. Anyway, they never did anyone any harm. They mind their own business so I ended up leaving them alone. Live and let live. Turns out all my predecessors did likewise the same as I did in the end,” he said.

I didn’t reply.

“Let’s go and take a peek. It’s quite a show, believe me. Why not see if they’re at home?” he said.

I followed him as he rounded the reception area building and onto a path beaten through the brambles.

After several yards we stood outside a lone cabin. Its exterior paintwork depicting multi-colored sun-rays was peeling away. The entrance door hung off its hinges. There was a single dusty window, half-covered with a filthy curtain that was little more than a rag.

“Keep your voice down,” he whispered, putting a finger to his lips.

He crept up to the window, peered through it, turned and beckoned me after him.

When I got close enough, I could hear indistinct voices muttering to one another from inside the cabin. And then I looked through the window myself.

There were four people in there, huddled together in the semidarkness. They were dressed in crumpled, torn dark suits. Their scalps were either bald or shaven, the dead-pale skin pockmarked by craters and sores.

Three of them had their backs to me but I could just make out the face of the fourth, a woman, much older now than when last I’d seen her. She was facing me but staring vacantly into the distance with black-rimmed eyes.

Celia Waters.

I heard a snatch of dialogue: “The fear of masks removed…”

And then I turned away, and hurried back along the path, making straight for the taxi.

Kelsey was at my elbow.

“It’s the same old thing all the time with them,” he said. “Over and over again. Like the tide coming in and out.”