That drive to the hospital, following the ambulance down the bumpy lanes, was one of the most terrible journeys of my life. Why did Jen have to follow me out there? Why had my stupid, interfering mother even suggested she come out to keep me company?
Something red, fluttering in the hedgerow caused me to shriek and nearly swerve into the opposite lane, but then I realized it was just a plastic bag caught up in brambles, not a shawl. Not the shawl I’d seen as I’d watched that dreadful figure on the cliff.
As I stepped through the door of the old wooden cabin, it felt like saying hello to a familiar friend, one who knew you so well you didn’t have to explain yourself to them. The cabin had been in the family for as long as I could remember, perched on the cliff overlooking the vast sandy beach of Ainscliffe, Dorset. My memories of family holidays were full of happy scenes of playing on the beach, my brother helping me with over-ambitious sand castles, and of collecting shells in buckets to compare with the pictures in the We Spy Beach Life spotter’s book. There had always been laughter, the greasy smell of sun cream, and gritty sand in the cheese and pickle sandwiches Mum handed around. Summers seemed to go on endlessly then, rolling out to the horizon like the ever-changing sea, and that beach had seemed to roll on forever too, back then in my mind as a child.
No one had been here in a long time though. As I creaked the door open, the last rays of winter sunlight on the table tops and chairs revealed a frosting of dust. My first job was a quick clean around, then starting up the little petrol generator in the back shed. When the tiny fridge juddered into life, I unpacked my supplies from the car. So here I was, alone, isolated by choice.
As I set off for a walk along the deserted beach, the wind began to pick up and the first snowflakes started to spiral down. The huge flakes hissed and faded away as they hit the salty sand, and I turned after a while to make my way back to the rickety wooden staircase that wound up the cliff face, my thoughts on hot chocolate. Glancing up at the scudding gray clouds, I spotted a woman in a red shawl up on the cliff above me, standing, watching the thrashing sea. Company I hadn’t banked on.
Behind the cabin lay the woods, an old estate plantation that was still managed for timber. The only people here at this time of year, I’d assumed, would be the estate manager and his family up at the house. I’d seen no sign of activity in any of the other cabins dotted among the trees since I’d arrived. I lost sight of the figure on the cliff top as I concentrated on making my way back up the staircase.
Back at the cabin, I stoked up the wood burner and slipped an Ella Fitzgerald CD into my portable player. It was just getting dark when I heard a woman’s piercing scream outside. It sounded just yards away, on the cliff. I froze, and it came again. Stepping onto the cabin porch, I scanned the line of scrubby gorse along the cliff top, concerned someone was in trouble. I couldn’t see anyone but called out all the same.
“Hello! Hello. What’s wrong? Do you need help?”
I was greeted by silence.
I walked the cliff for ten minutes or so in both directions anyway, peering over the edge. All I could see was the swirling snow and the rolling shapes of the waves pounding the beach below in the gloom. Snow had started to build up against the cabin porch as I stepped back inside to pick up my mobile to call emergency services. For the next twenty minutes, I watched the police searchlights scanning the woods and the beach, feeling a fraud when they reported back they’d found nothing.
“We’ve spoken to the estate manager, and he’s certain no one is staying here except you,” the local constable assured me. “As it’s private land, it’s unlikely anyone else would be here, unless they had access or knew the paths through the wood.”
“Thanks for coming out,” I muttered. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
Alone again, I tried to settle for the evening with a book. Eventually, curled in my duvet from home on a musty camp bed, I drifted into sleep.
I was bitter, and I recognized how corrosive that emotion can be. That’s why I’d come here, to try to heal myself emotionally. Physically I was fine, if you consider a lead dancer with the National Ballet who can no longer dance as fine. The injury had healed well enough, but my career lay tattered on the floor like a ripped up tutu. I’d missed the world tour, my chance to shine across the globe, and acceptance of that did not come easy.
When my mobile rang on the Friday morning, I didn’t answer it, knowing it would be Mum, again. “Why don’t you come home for Christmas with us? How can you be all on your own in that old hut during the festive season?” We’d had all these conversations over and over until I was tired of them, sick of the well-meaning advice from my family, just craving peace to get my head together.
After breakfast, I wrapped up to go for a walk through the woods. That’s when I heard the woman again, wailing as though racked with the most terrible distress, the shrieks drifting eerily through the trees. It was a bright winter’s day, watery sunlight spearing down between the oak and birch to set the wet ground steaming. Soggy, skeletal leaves clung to my boots as I plodded among the trees.
“Hey, anyone here? Do you need help?”
It was a ridiculous question, I realized. Obviously, someone was here. I caught sight of a figure flitting ahead of me, darting though the sunbeams and trees, and I thought I saw a flash of red. Maybe it was the woman I’d seen on the cliff in the red shawl, someone who liked to walk here and deal with their troubles in their own way, in solitude, just as I was doing? I suddenly felt uncomfortable about trying to intrude into their misery, so I turned back, content to leave it alone.
Later that afternoon, I took a drive into town, back along the rutted track past the estate house, and a tall, blond, thirty-something woman flagged me down as I passed the gate. Pulling up, I wound down the window.
“Hi, you must be Sally,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m guessing you’re the estate manager’s wife?”
“Yes, Alison. I hear you had an encounter with our legendary Banshee the other night.”
“Banshee?” I asked.
“Yes. The screaming.” She seemed a little uneasy as she said this.
“Ah, that. I was worried someone had fallen down the cliff face and was in trouble, but the police didn’t find anyone,” I explained.
“No, they said as much,” Alison replied quietly.
I sensed she was uncomfortable about broaching the subject, and I became curious.
“So what is the Banshee?”
“Local people believe the woods are haunted by an evil spirit. It’s said to have been responsible for a number of deaths over the years, a child found in the woods that had run away from its mother, then a couple of walkers only last year discovered on the cliff path. Every time there are unexplainable deaths, people say they hear the screaming and wailing. I’ve never heard it myself, although my husband thinks he has. He’s really into local folklore though.”
She laughed nervously, as though suddenly embarrassed at what she’d just said.
“Well, my family never mentioned any rumor of it, I don’t think, when we came here on holidays. Maybe they just didn’t want to scare us kids,” I shrugged.
I started to wind up the window, hoping she’d take the hint as I was keen to get to town and investigate the cafes and bookshops.
“If you need anything, just knock,” she offered, smiling and gesturing back toward the house.
“I will, and thanks.”
I revved the old Renault forward over the muddy ruts to continue my trip to town.
Driving back after a pleasant afternoon browsing the shops, a poetry reading session caught my ear as I flipped channels on my car radio. A languid voice murmured, as though intending the lines only for the ears of some intimate confidante.
From dark nights and broken dreams, new ideas can grow,
Unfurling as fresh leaves in spring, new paths to be trod,
Inspiring new-born forms to flow.
I found the words deeply moving, having b
een through dark nights and broken dreams myself lately, and my anger and despair had clouded and blackened my thinking. Usually a positive person, I resolved myself to sit down when I got back to the cabin to think my situation through rationally with notebook and pen. After all, I had other skills besides dancing, hadn’t I? I was only twenty-five, and there was plenty of time to build a new career.
I sat enthusiastically scribbling notes until the sun started to sink into the ocean, turning the sea beyond my window to shades of gold, cerise, and finally deep violet. A sea mist started to roll in as I put together some supper from my deli purchases of the afternoon, olive bread, cheeses, and local cured ham.
Then the horrible scream came, loud and piercing, as though just outside on the cabin porch. Unnerved, I peered through the window, my first thought being that it was the distressed woman from the woods again. Then I thought of the tale Alison had told me that afternoon but scolded myself for my silliness. Bogeymen and ghost stories were just the stuff of local tourism. But when the second scream came, it dawned on me there really was something eerie and unnatural in the noise, as though wrung from the vocal chords of something inhuman, something from some other dimension.
Peeping round the curtain, I saw a figure standing about twenty meters away on the cliff, staring directly at the cabin window. The gathering dusk and sea mist partly shrouded it, but I was able to make out a white face, long straggling dark hair, and what looked like a red shawl clutched around the shoulders by white, skeletal hands. It was wearing, bizarrely, what I thought was an old print dress in a sixties style and flat red pumps. The eyes appeared as dark pits, and the mouth hung open in a silent O, as though about to emit another bloodcurdling shriek. Something about it, the way it stood, the lolling head on a neck too long for a normal person, gave me the chills. But I was fascinated, mesmerized by it, and somehow I found myself walking toward the door, about to open it and go outside. As I reached for the latch, I suddenly checked myself in horror. What was I thinking? Instead, I bolted the door and retreated to the window to sneak another look out, wondering if it could see me silhouetted by the lamp light.
The figure stared silently at the window for a minute or two, as though weighing something up, before taking a few steps backward to hurl itself over the edge of the cliff. It didn’t drop with gravity like anything of any weight, but seemed to flutter for a moment like a handkerchief caught up by a breeze, the red shawl flapping around its shoulders, before it vanished from view, dropping just like the gulls that swooped over the cliff edge to wheel above the waves. I let out a small shriek of my own.
Shaken, I sat up most of the night, terrified it would return. What would have happened if I’d opened the door, had not shaken off the glamour it had cast over me for that brief moment? A terrible feeling of dread consumed me, and as soon as the sun rose I started packing up the car to leave, cutting my break short. My rational mind was desperate to try and make some sense of what I’d seen the previous evening, but whatever it had been, I just couldn’t spend another night alone here.
I’d just switched off the generator when I heard the whine and pop of a scooter pulling up outside. Walking back round the side of the cabin, I found my younger cousin, Jen, standing on the porch, grinning like a demented Cheshire cat, her hair spilling wildly from under a woolly hat. At twenty-two years of age, she still insisted on wearing cartoon T-shirts better suited to children. Today it was Deputy Dawg’s visage, distorted almost beyond recognition over her massive DD chest, peering from under her padded jacket. Jen and I didn’t have much in common, and she’d grated on me with her selfish, attention-seeking dramas over the years. Jen had been responsible for much of the family troubles in the past, stirring and tittle-tattling, running back and forth between family members, and I didn’t really encourage her friendship.
“Jen,” I tried to sound bright. “What brings you out here?”
“Aunty Sal said y’ might need some company, so I hopped on me scooter.”
Her shrill, put-on “cool kid in the hood” accent jarred on me like sand paper.
“I was just about to leave actually.”
Her face dropped like a kid whose lolly had just been taken away.
“But I’ve come all this way to see y’,” she huffed.
“Come on in then,” I offered. “I’ll put some coffee on.”
I tried not to show my irritation as her eyes scanned the hut like a nosy shrew. Another hour before setting off wouldn’t hurt, I guessed.
“Aunty Sal said you were staying out here over Christmas,” Jen rattled on. “So why are y’ packing up to go home? Bit too cold for y’?”
I gritted my teeth at her braying laugh and felt foolish, unable to give the real reason, that I’d been scared like a kid by a supposed phantom.
“No, just stuff to do at home,” I forced myself to reply politely. “Sugar?”
“Yeah, two please. Any biscuits?”
Deputy Dawg’s inane toothy grin challenged me across the cabin as we made small talk, mostly me listening to Jen’s endless moans about her boyfriend, her friend who wasn’t her best friend any more, and the new manager at work. As usual, it was all about her. I don’t think she even asked me how my ankle was doing. When she finally finished her coffee, I rose and suggested we lock up as I was keen to head back to the city before the snow got heavier. Large flakes had begun to drift down again outside, and that was the best excuse I was able to come up with.
“Okay, I can take a hint,” Jen sniffed. “But I want to just take a quick walk to the point first. I’ve not been out here for years, and I wanna see the old haunts where we all used to play. You comin’?”
“No thanks, I’ll just finish packing up the car,” I replied. “Be careful on the path. The snow’s getting heavier.”
“I will.” She shrugged on her puffer jacket. “Won’t be long.”
I watched my cousin heading off along the cliff path toward the point where the lighthouse stood, hunched into her coat, bobble hat pulled down over her ears. I waited an hour, but Jen did not return from a walk that should have taken her no longer than twenty minutes at most. Concerned that she may have fallen and was lying hurt in the snow, I pulled on my own coat and set off to look for her. I walked to the point and past that, calling Jen’s name, as the snow swirled thicker and the icy North Sea pounded the beach. The cliff path was deserted, and I peered hopefully every now and then over the cliff edge to check she wasn’t down on the beach instead. No one was on the beach, not even an intrepid dog walker. As I turned back past the lighthouse, its red and white finger stark against the snowy sky, that blood chilling, inhuman scream slit the air.
I froze and peered nervously behind me, back to where I thought the sound had come from. It had not been Jen’s voice. A figure was walking purposefully toward me along the path. The falling snow partly concealed it but even from a distance, I was able to make out the red shawl and the unnaturally long neck, the dark pits of eyes and straggling dark hair. I lost the last shreds of my nerve and fled. Glancing back just once, I realized it had stopped following me, but I still kept running, my ankle thankfully holding up. Once locked safely inside the cabin, I called emergency services to report my missing cousin.
“She should have been back ages ago, and I’m scared she’s fallen and is hurt,” I stammered, not voicing my real fear, that Jen was alone out there on an empty cliff with something fearful, something unnatural. I felt ashamed now for abandoning my cousin and fleeing, wrapped up in my own instinct of self-preservation.
Courage bolstered by the noisy arrival of a police car and rescue team twenty minutes later, I ventured out to explain what had happened and watched them set off along the cliff and beach. The team leader asked what Jen had been wearing, and I struggled to remember. All my panicked mind could conjure up was that stupid Deputy Dawg T-shirt. I was sure that something dreadful had happened to her, something connected to that awful figure, and I cursed myself for letting her go off alone.
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The police found Jen’s body half a mile down the coast, broken on the rocks below the cliff. I wasn’t allowed to see poor Jen at the hospital. A policeman explained that she’d tumbled over sharp rocks and it was best I didn’t. He said there would have to be an autopsy as there was possibly foul play involved.
“Foul play? You mean someone pushed her over the cliff?” I nearly said “something,” but who would believe me if I voiced my growing suspicion?
“Did you see anyone on the cliff top or in the area today?” the policeman asked. “Anyone wearing something red?”
“Red?” My stomach knotted into a tight ball.
“We found your cousin clutching a torn piece of red wool, maybe from a scarf or something similar. It could be from her attacker’s clothing if she tussled with someone.”
Or perhaps from a red shawl, I thought, with growing horror.
About the Author
Steph has been a keen reader, writer, and artist since childhood. Originally from the suburbs of London but now living in Bristol, U.K., she works part time as an administrator and spends her spare time writing. Steph’s previous incarnations have included council parks gardener, magazine editor, and web designer. Her dark fiction stories range from tales set in dystopian realities to ghost and horror. Her publishing history includes several short stories and a novella, accepted by notable indie publishers Dark Alley Press, Grinning Skull Press, and Almond Press. Competition wins include the Dark Tales March 2014 international competition and an honorable mention in a Darker Times horror/dark fiction 2013 competition. Steph has a website—stephminns.weebly.com—where you can read free stories, interviews, and reviews. She’s also a member of the Stokes Croft Writers group, which runs free story-telling nights in Bristol bars, called Talking Tales.
Phoenix
J. S. Watts