The Whitby TRAP – preview chapters

The east pier is broad as a sandstone tennis court and hundreds of metres long. Sarah has walked its length many times, and crossed the new bridge linking to the pier extension that juts out into the North Sea opposite its sister on the west pier to form a beetle’s mandibles against the waves.
    Compared with the pier, the bridge ahead is wafer-thin, taut as a high wire act, tough as a spider’s web. Crossing it above the heaving water is exhilarating.
    But right now, crossing the pier, she is apprehensive. Why does she feel that tonight the pier is not a bulwark to the sea? Tonight, it takes just a thimble of imagination to see the waves are not moving towards the pier but passing beneath it, as if the pier is the deck of wide tanker floating far from land.
    Sarah breathes deep the salt air; the restless sea gives her wings.
    She says nothing of this to Amy who is walking with her eyes glued to the floor, watching her every step, clutching Sarah’s arm as if at any moment the wind might scoop her up and toss her into the harbour. Her leather trousers are soaked through and will stick to her thighs like Velcro when she tries to get out of them later on.
    ‘Why are there all these square holes?’ Amy asks. ‘Look! Cut into the rocks. Why would someone do that?’
    Sarah doesn’t tell Amy that they are Lewis holes carved into the huge blocks to enable them to be hoisted into position when the pier was created. Nor does she tell her that they are the nests gouged out the solid rock by sandstone petrels, diminutive birds with the toughest beaks in the world. Amy doesn’t want to know why the holes are there; she simply wants to talk, to know she is not alone.
    Sarah leads Amy to the lighthouse and the two women sit in silence on the steps, looking back across the harbour at the town, its houses cradled between the cliffs like eggs in a nest. The pink noise of the sea cocoons them, soothes them.
    The rain eases. The breeze wanes. A dog barks and headlights sweep up Khyber Pass, across the harbour, the vehicle hidden from view.
    ‘Do you think he found Derek?’ Amy asks.
    ‘They met at the rugby club, didn’t they?’
    ‘I wouldn’t want him to get lost. He’d already had a few when he left.’
    ‘Stephen says they hardly see each other at work.’
    ‘Different departments.’
    ‘Forgive me for asking, Amy, but what do you do? For a job, I mean.’
    ‘I’m having a year off. To sort out the curtains and things.’
    Sarah doesn’t really know how to respond. What can you say to someone who sees picking curtains as a meaningful way to pass a year?
    ‘That’s why I am so hot on décor,’ Amy continues. ‘It’s a gift, I suppose. And a lot of work, obviously. Derek says he trusts me to make sure everything is tasteful.’
    ‘There’s only three or four pubs on Church Street,’ Sarah says.
    ‘I hope they do traditional Surrey bitters. Derek is very particular.’
    ‘Amy, you are two hundred and fifty miles north of Surrey. The pubs will not be selling London beer.’
    ‘Maybe we should be getting back.’
    They all arrive back at the cottage at almost the same time.
    ‘That’s lucky!’ Derek says, his words echoing up and down the street. ‘We were about to knock the door down!’
    ‘Shh,’ Sarah says.
    ‘Oi, fancy running up and down the Abbey Steps, Sarah? Stevie always says you have plenty of energy, if you know what I mean.’
    ‘Please, love,’ Amy pleads.
    ‘It’s the north, Amy! Nobody minds shouting on the street. It’s part of the culture.’
    Sarah opens the door and ushers them all inside. Stephen’s face suggests that he has had enough of Derek for tonight.
    ‘Where’s the booze, babe?’ Derek walks into the dining table, sending the place mats to the oor. ‘Whoops-a-daisy.’
    ‘I think it’s time for bed,’ Amy says, steering him back toward the hall.
    ‘Need the john. The old can-a-rooney.’
    ‘It’s downstairs.’
    ‘What’s the point of that?’
    ‘It’s just the way it is, Derek,’ Stephen says, in a voice that betrays his fading patience.
    Derek staggers down the steps.
    ‘Bloody light’s gone!’ he shouts at the bottom.
    ‘We know,’ Stephen says. ‘I’ll sort it in the morning. There’s a torch on the last step.’
    A loud bang. Stephen and Sarah exchange glances. Amy shrugs apologetically. Muffled garbled singing drifts up from the basement.
    ‘A thousand quid deposit,’ Stephen mutters. ‘If he breaks anything …’
    ‘He’ll be all right in the morning,’ Amy suggests. ‘Just a little nervous, that’s all.’
    Twenty minutes later both couples have retired to their bedrooms and the cottage is dark. No one has noticed the rectangular rip in the wallpaper in the corridor beside the bathroom. Sarah has noticed the smell, like melting animal fat, but for want of a better explanation has decided that the source must be Derek. She will wash and disinfect the bathroom floor in the morning.
    ‘They’re saying sunshine from 8 o’clock until around 10.’ Stephen is in bed checking the weather on his phone.
    ‘Maybe we can go for a walk and leave them a note.’
    ‘We can’t just ignore them. We invited them.’
    ‘You invited them, Stephen.’
    Stephen sighs, puts his phone on the bedside table and switches off his bedside lamp. ‘Night.’
    He is snoring after just a few seconds. Sarah envies him. It will take her an hour to get to sleep. It always does, worrying about the morning. Is everything organised? Did they bring enough food for sandwiches? Is the front door locked?
    The light from the street cuts into the room above the curtains, casting a thin stripe across the ceiling. If they were in the other bedroom, she would have the curtains open and the window too. They aren’t as close to the water’s edge as they were in the hotel at Robin Hood’s Bay where the waves lulled them both to sleep but she knows the night air will be full of sound.
    Abruptly the streetlight outside cuts out. More lightning. Another power cut. Sarah hopes it comes back on quickly before the cottage cools down.
    In the basement the smell is thickening. The air tastes of hot meat and the wallpaper is becoming greasy.

CHAPTER 3

By the time Derek staggers drunkenly downstairs to empty his bladder, sometime after 2am, the basement is in a curious state of flux. The only light source is a faint blue wash spilling through the frosted glass of the bathroom window that gives onto the alley beside the house. Derek stands to urinate, his shoulder leaning against the wall, his back to the open bathroom door, his head throbbing.
    Out in the corridor behind him the wallpaper continues to rip, a whispering hiss like a skater etching a groove on a frozen lake. Wisps of mist emanate from this jagged line, curling, drifting, folding. Thin tendrils of smoke probe the lacklight.
    Searching for something.
    The groove rises then turns then turns again until, all at once, it becomes a panel of ripped paper that curls and buckles to reveal behind it … a door. A door that is opening for the first time in two hundred years. Dark voices whisper hoarsely in the shadows beyond the door. Metal grinds over metal and someone stamps his boots against the cold.
    Derek is almost done. He catches sight of himself, a shadow in the dark monochrome reflection in the mirror over the sink. The mother of all hangovers throbs the tendons of his neck. Why has he drunk so much? Why does he always drink so much? Why is it so bloody dark?
    The air stinks. Has he pissed himself? That’s all he needs. Smells like a fat fryer but nastier. He fills a cupped hand with cold water from the tap and drinks it. Tastes weird. How can something as boring as tap water taste different depending on where you are? What he would give for a pint of Dorking’s nest H2O.
    Footsteps in the corridor. Shit, he forgot to close the door.
    ‘Out in a minute,’ he calls.
    A last handful of water, splashed across his face this time.
    He crosses the bathroom, each step rattling the vertebrae beneath his skull. On the threshold into the corridor a wide rough hand slaps him full in the face, muffling his cry. Other hands grab him and pin his arms behind his back.
    ‘March him out lads. If he squeals run him through.’
    A gnarled hairy face thrusts itself in front of Derek. ‘You’ll not try anything stupid.’
    The other man’s breath is fetid. He raises a lantern to peer up into Derek’s eyes. Dirty smoke rises from the flick fluckering flame. Burning grease in a saucepan.
    Derek is so drunk he doesn’t even register that he is being pushed towards a door that wasn’t there moments ago. He does glance up the stairs and shake his face free from the limpet hand over his mouth, but before he can shout for help he feels a blade at his throat.
    Out in the alley, Derek’s hands are pulled behind his back and tied together. He shivers, he isn’t wearing shoes. He is in the clothes he had on when he collapsed on the bed; shirt and trousers. He can see his breath.
    Four men, two of whom are carrying old-fashioned lanterns. A pungent smell. Not the smoke stink of the lanterns, something else. A weird blue glow hangs by the back of the house.
    ‘Move.’
    They’re walking along behind the houses and then down narrow irregular steps down towards the harbour. Muddled-headed, Derek complies, assumes that this is all part of some stupid festival stunt or a Whitby initiation thing. That’s why they’re in costume.
    And if Stephen … oh, now he gets it. It’s Stephen and his stuck-up wife Sarah! They’re behind this. It’s all ‘matey, join us for a perfect weekend in t’North’ while secretly organising the mother of all humiliate-a-thons.
    They’re probably in the cottage laughing like drains.
    Well, he will not give them the satisfaction of shouting out. Let them worry. Let them end up dialling 999 when he doesn’t reappear and then get sued for wasting police time. Teach them a bloody lesson.
    A painful kick in the back of the thigh brings him back to the here and now.
    ‘Shall we truss him up like a turkey?’ a rough voice laughs behind Derek.
    ‘Tar and feather the bugger!’ said in a strange accent.
    At the bottom of the steps a rowing boat, piled high with boxes and barrels, is waiting in the rippling shadows. In it sits a scruffy girl with large dark eyes and thick curly hair poking out from beneath a black tarpaulin hat that is several sizes too large. Maybe nine years of age, she holds a lantern and looks deadly serious.
    The men bundle Derek aboard. He stumbles, cracks his head against something and ends up face down spluttering in a puddle of dirty harbour water as the boat is pushed away from the steps into deeper water. One after the other the men scramble aboard and the boat slip slides the liquid darkness, its momentum juddering to the rhythm of the oars.
    Derek struggles to understand the conversation – the accents and the vocabulary leave him at a disadvantage – but he does learn that they are heading towards “the ship”, that they “lose the tide” in an hour, and that there is a “good breeze out on the drink”. He feels the cold in his feet and hopes that the entertainment is soon brought to a close. Though it pains him to admit it, the whole thing is very realistic and is clearly well organised but, if he catches a cold, or worse, he will sue.
    The harbour is dark, there must be a power cut. Presently the boat bumps up against a second vessel; a hollow thump of wood against wood. Thick ropes and a net drop from above and the boxes and barrels hoisted aloft. Without addressing him directly, the crew manhandle Derek onto the net and he is lifted into the air and dumped unceremoniously onto the deck of a ship and there’s that pungent smell again coming directly from the planks under his nose. Suddenly it comes to him; tar. The smell of road repairs. Everything stinks of it.
    A rat peers at him from the shadows beside a hessian sack.
    ‘Does someone want to tell me when this bit of fun finishes?’
    No one is listening. The men scramble aboard and the boat is lifted up out of the water with the young girl still in it. Low voices are exchanged, there must be twenty people busying themselves on the deck, shifting stuff around, tying boxes down.
    Derek has had enough. ‘Hey! Hey!’ he shouts. ‘Yes, you with the hair. Untie me and take me to the organiser. Right now.’
    He feels the vibration of the planks behind him but before he can roll over, his wrists tied behind his back, a hand grabs his face from behind, pulls open his jaw and stuffs a rag into his mouth. The smell of tar is overwhelming and Derek starts to gag helplessly.
    Running footsteps. A screeching hinge as a hatch opens on deck.
    ‘Quick lads, haul anchor, lower the sails, man the boats and haul us away,’ hisses a new voice. ‘We must be gone or we’ll be grounded!’
    Derek’s shouts have not passed unnoticed on the shore. A distant voice starts to shout. ‘Pressers! Bastards are back! Wake up, wake up!’
    The ship comes alive as some of the crew race up into the rigging to attend to the sails, while others lower two boats into the water. A chain rattles. The anchor is hauled up. Ropes are dropped and attached to the boats, and the crew, six in each boat, pull their oars to drag the ship into motion.
    The noise grows on the shoreline as half a dozen locals gather to hurl insults at the ship. Stones are raining onto the deck and Derek finds himself dragged quickly, on his back, to the safety of an overhang.
    The ship approaches the constriction of the harbour jaws to a raucous chorus of jeering from the piers but now the sails catch the edge of the wind and start to ll. The boats, no longer needed, come alongside the ship and the men scramble back aboard doing their best to dodge missiles, mainly stones, from the pier.
    ‘Heave men, heave!’
    Water drips beneath the keels as the rowboats are lifted out of the harbour. A man shouts as a rock catches him on the temple and fells him. Two women rush out from beneath a tarpaulin to grab the victim and drag him to safety.
    Now between the harbour jaws, the ship starts to ride the swell, rocking and yawing in the waves. In seconds the ship escapes onto the open sea. Cheers erupt around the ship; they have made it by the skin of their teeth.
    Amy sits up in bed and wonders where Derek is.
    Utterly bewildered by unfolding events and hidden from view in the shadows of a tarpaulin, Derek falls into a drunken slumber on a wooden ship sailing out of Whitby.
    It starts to snow.