After all the weirdness of the day, the night brought its own creeping worry. A sudden rain storm pounded down and flooded the gutters, the wind whispered through the walls, and the shadows of the night spied in through the windows.
I didn't trust the weather now.
I huddled on the sofa with my books and my laptop, and all the lights on everywhere in the house. I kept expecting a knock at the door; either Lady Selkie, with her seashell blade and a thirst for vengeance, or the Horseshoe Men, with some tough questions about my involvement with a sea monster.
My brother and I had said our unsentimental goodbyes. He punched me in the arm, and I told him not to shoot himself in the foot. Mum had to drive him to Chatham, which left me alone in the house.
Instead of studying like I was supposed to, I wasted the evening looking up anything and everything I could find online about what I'd seen. I looked up the Horseshoe Men, and found nothing. I looked up sea monsters, and searched for the names of the people I'd encountered, and all I found were stories about mermaids and sirens and sea nymphs; a selkie, it turns out, is a sort of magical seal-person.
Then I looked up how to protect myself against magic. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I thought it made sense to prepare myself in case they ever came back.
Most sources agreed that iron was a good deterrent, and horseshoes were popular. If the Horseshoe Men were real, that had to be where they got their name.
I searched the house for any iron objects I might use, but we didn't have horseshoes, and even our cookware was aluminium. Danny had left behind some weights that might be iron, but they were coated in thick rubber. Mum's tools were carbon steel, so I didn't know how effective they would be.
The only one thing in the house that looked like it might be real iron was something I wasn't meant to touch.
Dad's dagger.
The dagger was a seven-inch blade that lived in a velvet-lined case on a bookshelf in the living room. Its silvery surface shimmered with rippling white lines.
The dagger was a replica of a Roman weapon, a pugio—a soldier's knife with an hourglass-shaped blade. A gift from his regiment. If my memory was right, Dad's dagger was made of meteorite iron, and worth a lot of money.
We weren't supposed to touch it—not just because it was expensive, and not just because it was dangerous, but because it was Dad's.
His name was engraved on the handle. "Douglas Frazer."
I took the case down from the shelf and opened it up. I picked up the dagger and weighed it in my hand.
It was heavy. The heaviness made it reassuringly real.
I ran my thumb along the blade. The edge was sharp. The point was narrow and cruel. A man could do a lot of damage with a weapon like this.
I put the blade back in its case.
It wasn't right. It wasn't me. I didn't know how to wield a dagger, and I didn't want to know. I could never imagine using it, even against someone like Lady Selkie, and even if my life was in danger.
The wind blasted hard against the windows, and one of the windows blew open with a crash, sending the curtains kicking up into the room.
I put the case back on the shelf and crossed to the window.
But then I heard a whisper at my ear, and I felt a fingertip brush against my neck.
I spun around.
There was no-one there.
I stood very still and listened, and I heard a faint tinkling sound, like a wind chime.
My mind was playing tricks on me. Knowing that magic was real didn't mean that every shiver down my spine and every sound at the edge of my hearing was something magical.
I leaned over to close the window, and I heard the bells again.
Out on the street, a little old man stood across from the house. Beside him was a cart with two big wheels at the front and two long handles at the back, and on top of the cart was a scaffold lined with ringing bells. The man wore a broad-brimmed hat that hid his eyes, but he looked up at me and flashed a smile that looked too big for his face.
The bells stopped.
I slammed the window shut and closed the curtains, and I checked the locks on every window and door in the house.
Maybe I had good reason to be paranoid.
* * *
Everything looked better in the morning. Another lovely spring day, as if it had never been night and the world had never been strange.
"Are you feeling better this morning?" Mum asked over breakfast. She thought I was anxious about my exams, but my studies offered a cold firm rigour that was almost reassuring compared to everything else I had to worry about.
"I'm all right," I said. "I was thinking...never mind."
Mum peered at me through her horn-rims over the top of her laptop.
"Thinking what?"
If there was one thing mum understood, it was rigour. If the world seemed strange and alien, she knew how to assert certainty. Mum was always certain.
"Mum...do you know anything about magic?"
Mum laughed. "Do I know anything about magic? Don't be daft, Ben. I was a box jumper for three summers. You know how I met your dad."
A box jumper was a magician's assistant, and Mum had been one when she was a few years older than I am now. She was the woman who got sawed in half. I had seen pictures of her with her brown hair dyed blonde, all dressed up in black shorts, fishnets, and a shimmering bodice. Horrible.
My dad was not the one who sawed her in half. Dad was a talented amateur who did card tricks for his fellow soldiers. The two of them met when they both performed at a big dinner for a retiring general.
"I don't mean conjuring, I mean..."
I was about to say 'real magic', and I caught myself just in time.
Mum didn't like it when I got funny ideas in my head, which was why she'd steered me away from studying arts subjects and towards boring subjects, like advanced mathematics and business. She was an accountant now, not a box jumper. She lived in a world of spreadsheets and numbers, a long way from sequins and doves.
"I mean folklore," I said. "Do you know anything about folklore? Like the Jack-in-the-Green, and the May Day parade?"
Mum narrowed her eyes. "Folklore? What are you talking about, Ben?"
"I'm wondering where it comes from," I said.
Mum looked back down at her laptop screen and resumed typing.
"Ignorance," she said. "People like to think that there's something bigger in the world than the sun and the seasons and the tides, so they invent ways to talk to them, so that they can beg those things for mercy. It's ignorance and fear and desperation. There's no such thing as magic."
And that was that. Mum did not look up from her laptop again. She worked on her spreadsheets and slurped her tea.
"I'm going for a run," I told her.
"All right dear," she said. "But don't neglect your books."
* * *
I returned to the Harbour Arm and watched the waves tug at the shingle on the beach. Seagulls wheeled overhead, and sunbathers reddened on the stones, and the smell of brine filled my lungs. This was normal, and normal was okay.
If Mum was right, and magic didn't exist, what had I seen on the beach? What were Selkie, and Éven, and the monster?
And if Mum was wrong, and magic was real, how could I hope to make sense of anything anymore?
I picked up a stone and threw it at the water. I'd never worked out how to skip stones, but I was more interested in seeing if a hand would snap out of the sea and grab it.
The stone hit the water and sank.
If she was still out there, was she still dangerous? Was she caught up in a current, or dispersed through a thousand drops? And where were the dead men that I'd seen tangled in her phantom chains?
Where did dead men go, in a magical world?
I wouldn't find any answers by staring at the sea
I walked back to the beach.
And I stopped in my tracks.
The little old man was there. The little old man that I'd seen in the street the night before.
He stood between me and the lifeboat station with his cart of bells in front of him. He wore a beaten brown coat with a slick shiny hide. Tattered edges of knotty grey cardigan stuck out from his collar and sleeves.
The sight of him was as alarming in daylight as it had been at night, perhaps because the daylight didn't quite reach him. He was murky. A shadow hung around him.
"Who are you?" I called out. "What do you want?"
The brim of his hat still covered his face, but I could see his wide, bright smile, and I knew that he was looking at me. He stooped and opened a door on the side of the cart.
A black cat bounded out and scrambled across the stones towards me, and I stumbled back. The animal was skinny and scruffy, and looked like it might have diseases.
The cat skidded past me towards the shoreline. It hissed and scratched at the sea, pouncing and retreating as the waves washed in and out.
A few sunbathers reacted with alarm at the sudden appearance of a wayward stray, and I was relieved to know I wasn't the only one who could see it. A couple of children raced along the beach to pet the animal. It arched its back and let out a distressed mewl. Although the cat had no collar, it had something else around its neck; a sprig of flowers in a paper cone.
One of the mothers ran over and shooed the cat, and called for the kids to stay away.
The old man whistled, and the cat let out another miserable yelp and ran up the beach and back inside the cart. The old man shut the door, smiled at me, and trundled on along the promenade.
One of the sunbathers looked up at me with a sympathetic smile.
"You looked like you were going to jump out of your skin," she said.
"I thought that cat was going to attack me," I said.
"Now, why would that cat want to do that?" she asked. She said it in a tone that implied I should know the answer.
"I...have no idea."
The stranger was a dark-skinned young woman, sitting on a rainbow towel and dressed in a bright red sarong dress and a broad-brimmed straw hat that was held in place with a scarf. She hid her eyes behind red plastic sunglasses. Her feet were bare, but a pair of wedge espadrilles stuck out of her crescent-shaped rattan bag, next to a bottle of sunscreen and a romance novel with a bare-chested hunk on the cover.
She took off her sunglasses and scanned up and down the beach.
"Do you live here?" she asked. She had a soft and low West Indian accent.
"I do, yeah."
"Have you always lived here?"
"I was born here. Do you need directions?"
She stood up and offered her hand. "My name is Grace De Souza," she said. She was taller than me, with a long, narrow frame, and she was as beautiful as a fashion model.
"I'm Ben," I said. I shook her hand.
"Yes, I know. Ben Frazer. I need you to come with me."
"Excuse me?"
She slid on her espadrilles and gained another half-inch on me.
"We're not going far. There's a pub over there." She pointed towards the tall black net sheds, or beyond them to the pubs that lined the road. "I'm told they do a very good fish pie, if you're hungry? I suppose it's a little early for lunch."
I looked her over for any signs that she might be one of them. But I didn't know what I was looking for. Her teeth looked normal. She wasn't carrying a dagger. Her wrists weren't bound by a silver thread.
"How do you know my name?"
"I'm a mind-reader," she said. She laughed and pulled her wallet from her bag. A bundle of charms rattled from a keychain loop; a golden turtle, a conch shell, a rabbit's foot, and a tiny clothes-peg woman.
Her ID confirmed that she was indeed Grace De Souza, and offered a title; 'Civilian Liaison, Horseshoe Division'. There was a photograph of her smiling face, stamped with the same horseshoe insignia that I had seen on the big guy's uniform.
Grace De Souza was one of the Horseshoe Men.
I hadn't imagined it all. I hadn't dreamed it.
I didn't know whether to be relieved or nervous. I thought they might come for me; I wasn't prepared for them to come for me in espadrilles and a sarong dress.
"I'm with the government," said Grace. "We need to talk to you about a national security matter."
"Am I under arrest?" I whispered.
"We only want to talk to you. You have nothing to worry about."
"What if I say no?"
Grace shrugged and put her sunglasses back on. "You should do exactly as you feel." She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "If you say no, I'll tell the Admiral that you said no. But...they won't send me next time."
I watched her walk away across the beach, and I thought about what that meant.
"Who will they send next time?" I asked.
Grace looked back and smiled. "Come with me now, Ben, and you never need to find out."
* * *