Page 17 of The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales

Régis coughed. ‘I didn’t know you then. Look, I really don’t feel so good. The sooner you get that sheep out of the way, the sooner we’ll be home.’

With a spurt of irritation at the self-pity in his friend’s voice – he was the one who deserved sympathy, not Régis and another of his spluttering colds – Gaston jumped down from the cart. He chased the sheep out of the way, then looked up at his friend.

‘Come on then,’ said Régis, ‘let’s get back.’

Gaston shook his head. The breeze made the frayed bottoms of his trousers flap about his ankles.

‘You go. I don’t want to talk to anybody.’

‘I’ll get into trouble.’

‘I’ll only be in the way. They’ll be pleased I’m not with you.’

‘I can’t leave you. Mme Martin said.’

Gaston shrugged. ‘Tell them I made you. You couldn’t stop me.’

The two boys stared at each other, then Régis nodded.

‘All right,’ he said. After a pause, he added: ‘I’m sorry. I mean, I know they weren’t . . . well, they were still your parents.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t be long.’

‘I won’t. You go.’

Régis clicked his tongue and slapped the reins across the horse’s flank, then the axles rumbled as the trap pulled away into the November afternoon.

Gaston waited until his friend was out of sight, then struck out across the fields and along the coast to where the gulley ran down to the beach. When he drew close, he saw bundles of hazel twigs set ready for the Festival of St Colomban that night. He didn’t care about that. He just wanted somewhere to sit on his own for an hour or two. He carefully picked his way down towards a place in the rocks where a shallow cave had eaten into the cliff face. He went as deep into the calm gloom as he could and sat very still, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms around his knees. Outside, the drizzle began to fall and the sky was stormy. Gaston’s eyes clouded over and he wondered how different life would be now he was completely alone.

When Gaston awoke, at first he had no idea where he was. He was lying on his side, using his right arm for a pillow. It was dark now, but he realised he wasn’t particularly cold.

He yawned, stretched, then realised he was hungry. He hoped there would be a good dinner at Régis’s house. Then, he remembered. First, about his parents and the accident. Then, coming hard on its heels, that tonight it was the Feast of St Colomban so there would more than likely be no supper.

Gaston felt with his hands across the floor of the cave. He found the niche in the wall – a natural rupture in the rock – where he had secreted a few special things: the skull of a pheasant picked clean by birds and insects, a bone so big that it must have come from the carcass of some great whale. He knew them by touch and they comforted him. There was also a beautifully built nest containing three speckled eggs from the cliff. It was Régis who’d persuaded Gaston to climb down the cliff face and steal them, even though the curate had visited their classroom to explain that the roosts were protected by law and should not be disturbed.

Outside the cave, Gaston could now hear the waves and the wind beginning their night-time complaint. The sound, echoing gently about him in the cave, sounding more like human voices now. He rubbed his hands across his face. It reminded him of how his grandfather used to stroke his brow with his hard fisherman’s hands, dried out by salt and wind. They had been happy then. But then he died and his parents, rather than living as they had before, spent the inheritance on drink and visits to the town. Gaston imagined his own hands hardened by toil and wondered if the same thing would happen to his heart.

A trick of the tide brought a wave crashing in through the entrance to the cave. The water seemed iridescent, bringing light into the hollow, illuminating the rock like a wavering white flame. Gaston sprang to his feet, suddenly frightened. He tucked his shirt into his trousers, doing up his father’s patched summer jacket to the throat, placed his treasures back in the niche in the rock and went outside. He didn’t want to be trapped by the tide. He didn’t want to put anybody out and he didn’t want Régis to be in trouble for not having taken care of him.

The sight that awaited him drove all domestic thoughts from his mind. The sea seemed turned to glass, smooth as a millpond without a ruck or ripple on its surface. Even the edge of the surf was still, like a wavering line drawn in chalk across the wet sand. The air was tense and still with no sound of wind.

He had never known the sea to behave in this way.

There was a noise from the path above. Gaston stepped back into the shadows and stared up. He saw a line of men and women, all adults, walking in silent and single file down the gulley towards the beach. In the strange, flat light of the glistening surface of the sea, he saw each carried one of the tight bundles of hazel under their arms.

As he watched, they stacked them in a pile, twice the height of a man, and then formed a semicircle behind it, facing the shore. There were perhaps twenty-five of them, each wrapped in dark cloaks with deep hoods.

Then, as if there had been some signal, the water began to break and to shudder. Gaston peered out into the flickering darkness and saw the sea was now starting to shift and slip and slide. Something was emerging from the waves, a human form walking slowly but purposefully up onto the beach. The shape – it was impossible to tell whether man or woman – was wrapped in a cloak that seemed to be woven entirely from dancing ribbons of flame.

As the first figure broke through the shallows, another followed, then another, each trailing seaweed from their ankles. They dripped with brine that hissed and spat and billowed up about their faces in a mask of steam. And still they came, all striding with the same steady, purposeful gait, until some fifty or sixty of them were standing on the beach, treading from foot to foot, marching on the spot, turning this way and that. They began to murmur, their plaintive sound an echo of the sea and the wind on the shingle, their voices growing louder and louder.

He glanced at those who had lit the bonfire on the far side of the semicircle, not sure if they too could see these ancient inhabitants of the drowned village or if he was the only one.

He knew he should remain hidden, but he could not help himself. He felt drawn to them. The unexpected movement attracted their attention. Six or seven of the drowned figures turned towards him. At first, they were still. Then they were floating across the sand, holding out their hands. Gaston stepped back. They smelt like last week’s catch trampled in the bottom of the boat. They smelt of death, and yet Gaston was still drawn. He could feel the warmth of the flames that seemed to engulf them. Then thin fingers were gripping his wrists and his elbows and his neck and pulling him in to the heart of the throng.

Gaston knew that he should be terrified, but instead he felt welcomed, weightless and supported, as the creatures carried him up the beach to the bonfire. Immediately, all movement ceased. Gaston hung suspended between two worlds. He could move neither forward nor back. And he somehow knew that the visitors from beneath the sea were waiting for some kind of signal.