‘Go back!’ I cried.
Water swirled into my mouth, choking me.
The ghoul’s hand slapped down on the rock, shifted… and clamped on Mary’s ankle.
She never made a sound as the creature dragged her down into the sea. The water bubbled around them. She was trying to swim and the frenzied thing tore at her. Three or four other ghouls had come up to the break in the reef; they stood there, staring down at the ghoul in the water — and the woman. I stroked to the rocks beyond the gap and hauled myself out, gasping. I looked into the gap from my side of the break and the ghouls looked in from their side and in the water between there was blood.
Mary’s face turned to me.
She pleaded with her eyes, silently.
She reached out towards me and my hand went out to her, but she was too far away. She was closer to the other side. The ghoul had gone under now and Mary was alone in the turbulent gap. She twisted violently, trying to kick off from the rocks, but she had drifted too close. The ghouls reached down.
She still made no sound, even as their hands closed over her and they drew her up onto the rocks. I would have shot her, of course… but I had lost the rifle. Mary was on the flat rock. She kicked spasmodically with one leg. The ghouls bent over her, slowly, solicitously, as if they had rescued her from drowning… bent to her, as if to give the kiss of life…
I thought I saw Mary amongst them today.
I was watching through the binoculars, a group of them were milling about by the rotting swordfish and one looked rather like Mary. But I stopped watching. I didn’t want to know. I only want to know how much longer it will be, how many days or weeks I must sit here in my grey tower, rooted in the sea and rising towards the heavens. Not much longer, perhaps. They don’t seem as frenzied now, they don’t even fight amongst themselves when they make contact. I wonder if the madness is wearing off… if they are recovering some human instinct… or simply wasting away, weakening and dying? I hope it was not Mary I saw. When I looked later, most of them had gone. One was dead — lifeless, at least. The body had burst open and a length of intestine had uncoiled. I saw a seagull land on the ghoul’s shoulder and dip its sharp beak into the gruesome cavity.
The gull’s head came up and it seemed to shudder, as did I. Larsen’s words came back to me. If a dog or a rat got at one of the bodies… Again the gull’s beak dipped; the plumed throat pulsed. Above the patrol boats the sky was clear and blue. The seagull was sated. It poised, wings lifted, then bore itself away.
David Case was born in New York but for the past few decades has lived in London as well as spending time in Spain and Greece. His acclaimed collection The Celclass="underline" Three Tales of Horror appeared in 1969, and it was followed by the novels Fengrijfen: A Chilling Tale (1970), Wolf Tracks (1980) and The Third Grave, which appeared from Arkham House in 1981. More recently, a new collection entitled Brotherly Love and Other Tales of Faith and Knowledge was published by Pumpkin Books. Outside the horror genre, Case has written more than three hundred books under at least seventeen pseudonyms, ranging from porn to Westerns. Two of his short stories, ‘Fengriffen’ and the classic werewolf thriller ‘The Hunter’ were filmed as — And Now the Screaming Starts!(1973) and Scream of the Wolf (1974), respectively. ‘Pelican Cay’ was originally going to be published by the late James Turner in an anthology he planned to edit in the mid-1980s for Arkham House entitled Summoning the Shadows. When the horror market changed in America, the book was shelved and Case’s powerful novella languished in a file for many years until its publication here. ‘I wrote “Pelican Cay” in a seedy hotel in downtown Chicago,’ remembers the author, ‘but had lived in the Florida Keys before that, which inspired the atmosphere and setting. The Red Walls, or maybe Doors, was an upmarket place when I was there, but there were plenty of tales from when it was the haunt of shrimpers and salad girls (girls who signed on shrimp boats but didn’t necessarily make salads). A fella was drowning his sorrows there once and, morose, said he would commit suicide if he dared. They hanged him from the rafters. My favourite: thirteen shrimpers are standing at the long bar. A guy runs in with a shooter and shouts “This is a stick-up!” The shrimpers turned around and twelve had shooters, the other had a billhook. The bandit says, “I guess I’ve robbed the wrong place.” But he bought a round of drinks and they let him go.’