ONE
'Right then, boys, who's up for a little jaunt round the Bay?'
It was Steffan who'd spoken. Toby looked at him, then glanced at the flushed faces around the glass-laden table. Not for the first time he found himself wondering whether a single one of his new friends – if that was really what they were – felt as dislocated and as. . . well, homesick as he did.
Like every other first-year, Toby had been at Cardiff University for about four weeks now. Four weeks of partying and drinking and meeting new people. Yet, despite it all, he still found himself trying to shake off the notion that he was an outsider, that he didn't fit in. Everyone else seemed to have cemented themselves quickly and easily into student life, so why hadn't he? Though he would never have admitted it to anyone, he badly missed his mum and dad, and his mates, and all the familiar things and places back in Leicester. He missed his girlfriend Lauren, too, even though they'd decided to cool it a bit now that they were going off to different universities. God, he even missed his annoying little sister, Jess, and her obsession with MSN.
What's wrong with me? he thought. Why can't I just enjoy myself? Why can't I just let myself go?
Maybe it was the people. Maybe he'd fallen in with the wrong crowd. Sports Management attracted all sorts, but because of his room-mate, Curtis, he'd found himself stuck with the hard-drinking rugger-buggers. Toby had never thought of himself as a party pooper, but he just didn't see the point of getting blotto every night. It wasn't even as if drinking with this lot helped him loosen up; in fact, the more raucous and obnoxious his new friends became, the more he found himself retreating into his shell.
'What do you mean by a jaunt?' Curtis asked now. He was a Londoner, and wore his hair in short, beaded dreadlocks. He was tall and worked out a lot. He wore white skinny-fit T-shirts to emphasise his rippling muscles. The guys sometimes called him Audley because he looked like Audley Harrison, the boxer.
Steffan grinned, stood up and delved in his pockets. He was big and solid too, though not as toned as Curtis. He was from Newport, and because of his local knowledge he'd pretty much appointed himself leader of the group. Nobody else seemed to mind, but Toby wasn't keen on Steffan. He found him arrogant and sarcastic and, despite his own homesickness, he couldn't help finding it a bit pathetic that the guy had chosen a university only a mile or two up the road from where his parents lived.
Steffan held up both hands. In one was a set of keys, in the other what looked like a black credit card.
'What's that?' asked Greg. He was a thick-necked Scouser, and he was so drunk that he could hardly keep his eyes open.
'These are the keys to my uncle's yacht,' Steffan said, jangling them, 'and this is the security fob that'll get us into Penarth Marina, where he keeps it.'
'Your uncle's got a yacht?' said Curtis in disbelief.
'Twelve-metre cruiser,' said Steffan smugly.
Stan, who was tall and rangy and had had football trials with QPR and his local team, Southport, shook his head, lank hair flapping like rat's tails across his face. 'How the other half lives.'
'What's he do then, this uncle of yours?' asked Curtis.
'He's a butcher,' said Steffan.
'Get lost!'
'Not a word of a lie. Got a meat-processing plant up in Merthyr, hasn't he? Makes a fortune from pies and sausages and that.'
'Does he know you've got the keys to his yacht?' asked Toby.
Steffan sneered. 'What do you think?' Then he shrugged. 'Not that he'd be bothered, mind. Long as we don't wreck it, he'll think it's a laugh, us taking it out for a midnight jaunt. He was a bit of a lad himself, in his day. Still is, I reckon.' He jangled the keys again. 'So what's it to be, boys? Who's up for it?'
Curtis glanced briefly round at the group, then nodded. 'Yeah, I'm in. Like you say, it'll be a laugh.'
'Me too,' said Stan. 'I ain't never been on a yacht before.'
'Greg?' said Steffan.
Greg raised a hand and waved it drunkenly. 'Yeah, whatever.'
Before anyone could ask him, Toby pushed his chair back. 'I think I'll give it a miss, guys, if you don't mind. I'm really tired and—'
Immediately there was a storm of protest.
If it had been good-natured banter, Toby might not have minded. But their comments were nasty, bullish, scathing. Steffan in particular made it clear that he thought Toby was not only snubbing them, but voicing his disapproval at the same time.
'Think you're better than us, you do,' he said.
'No, I don't,' said Toby.
'Yeah, you do. You think we're a load of idiots, just cos we like to have a laugh.'
'I didn't say that.'
'You didn't need to. You're like an old woman, all pursed lips and hoity-toity.'
Before Toby could respond, Stan said, 'I reckon he's just scared cos he thinks he'll get in trouble.'
Then they were all making chicken noises and flapping their arms like wings, and in the end Toby found himself tagging along just to save face. He trailed miserably in their wake as they crossed the Cardiff Bay Barrage to Penarth. He watched them shoving and jostling each other, giggling like kids on a school outing, and he felt more like a pariah than ever, even though it was they who'd insisted he come along.
He half-hoped they'd get some trouble at Penarth Quay, half-hoped the security fob would not be enough to grant them access to the Marina. But Steffan simply swiped the card, tapped in his uncle's security pin and they were through. The night-shift guy manning the Marina Office even waved to them as they passed by.
'Here it is, boys,' Steffan said a couple of minutes later. 'What do you think?'
As one, they goggled in drunken disbelief at the craft bobbing sedately on the water before them. The yacht was elegant and immaculately maintained. Constructed of gleaming white fibreglass, it had a single mast, plenty of deck space and a sizeable central cabin area. Even Toby couldn't help but be impressed, though the prospect of his drunken companions taking such a beautiful – and no doubt hideously expensive – vessel out on the water filled him with dread.
'This is so sweet, man,' exclaimed Curtis, laughing and clapping his hands.
'Bleedin' amazing,' nodded Stan, awestruck.
'Do you know how to drive it?' Toby asked nervously, and again Steffan shot him a look so scathing that Toby decided that, starting tomorrow, he would find himself a new set of friends.
'Course I do. Nothing to it, is there. I mean, it's not as if we're going to encounter much traffic.'
The boys all sniggered at Toby's expense. Steffan leaped from the jetty to the deck, staggering a little.
'Well, come on then, gents. Climb aboard.'
One by one they stepped across the divide between jetty and deck. Greg, the drunkest of them, took a few tottering steps sideways and fell over. Toby laughed along with everyone else, but anxiety still gnawed away inside him. Steffan unlocked the door that led down to the living quarters.
'There's beers in the fridge, a bog at the far end, and there's even a bed for everyone, if you fancy a little lie down.'
Curtis descended the steps into the saloon, shaking his head in gleeful wonder. 'Man, I do not believe this,' he muttered. 'This is the height of luxury.'
'Only one rule,' Steffan said as Stan and Greg followed Curtis below decks. 'No throwing up down there. If you want to puke you do it over the side.'
Toby hesitated a moment, contemplating whether to join his friends. Then he turned away and walked over to lean on the metal guard rail which edged the perimeter of the deck, deciding that he couldn't stand another minute of their drunken banter. He stood on the seaward side, looking out over the black water, the chill winter wind ruffling his hair. He wondered what Lauren was doing now. She was at Durham University, and the last time he'd spoken to her, almost two weeks ago, she'd told him she was having a brilliant time.
'Feeling a bit dicky, are we?'
Steffan asked the question as though it was a failing. Toby half-turned to face him.
'No, just fancied some fresh air,' he said.
Steffan snorted, and headed towards the small wheelhouse, which contained the engine controls and navigational equipment. Toby sighed and turned back to gaze over the black water. Blades of reflected moonlight flashed and sparkled on the crests of the swells; tiny waves lapped against the hull. From the saloon floated snatches of throaty, ragged laughter. With a low rumble the engine started up, and then the yacht was moving, sliding out from its berth, heading into the Bay, like a vast and elegant marine creature released from captivity.
It cut through the water with barely a ripple, and within a few minutes they had left the lights of Cardiff Bay behind. Gradually Toby started to relax. It seemed as though Steffan knew how to handle the craft after all. Maybe this wasn't going to be the disaster he'd envisaged.
He breathed in the sharp, salty air and looked up at the moon. He wondered whether any of the guys below decks were talking about him, asking where he was. It still felt weird leaving home, cutting the apron strings. Ridiculous though it seemed, it hadn't sunk in that that was what he'd done until Mum and Dad had said goodbye after getting him settled into the poky room he shared with Curtis in one of the university's halls of residence. Oh, he would go home for Christmas, and even the odd weekend, but as far as living permanently with his parents was concerned, that part of his life was now over. He supposed when he graduated he'd find a job and get his own place somewhere. He'd been looking forward to his independence for a long time, had thought how great it would be to be answerable to nobody but himself – but he had to admit that the sudden reality of it had come as a bit of a shock.
Toby was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn't notice the bank of fog until they were almost upon it. He glanced up, then stepped back from the rail in sudden shock. For a moment he'd thought they were about to hit something solid, a grey concrete wall stretching across the ocean. Certainly the fog seemed as straight and unbroken as a wall. It was weird the way it seemed to just sit on the surface of the sea like a barrier or something.
If Steffan in the wheelhouse had noticed the fog, he didn't seem perturbed by it. The yacht surged forward without faltering, and moments later the fog had swallowed them up.
Toby shuddered. There was an acrid smell, like sour milk or bad breath, and the fog itself had an almost oily texture to it. Tendrils coiled around him like the ghosts of eels. He remembered an old movie about a guy in a boat who starts to shrink after passing through a weird kind of mist out at sea. Stupid, of course, but it made Toby hope that he wasn't inhaling anything poisonous.
He couldn't see more than a few metres in any direction. He hoped Steffan had sonar or radar or something up there in the wheelhouse. If some other vessel loomed out of the fog now, they wouldn't see it until it was too late. Toby listened, but heard nothing except an eerie silence. Rather than feeling relieved, however, he was suddenly struck by the awful notion that he was alone on the yacht, that Steffan and the others had gone, spirited away by something lurking out there in the dark depths of the ocean. He half-turned, intending to make his way to the wheelhouse, so desperate for human company that he was even prepared to put up with Steffan's contemptuous remarks. And then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the fog was gone.
Toby swayed, momentarily disorientated. What the hell was going on? A second ago he hadn't been able to see more than a metre or so in front of him, yet now the sky was clear again, the glittering stars diamond-sharp, the unveiled moon edging the curves and contours of the deck in hard white light.
He consoled himself with the thought that maybe this was normal; that maybe it was some common seafaring phenomenon; that maybe, as a sailor, you'd be used to this kind of thing happening all the time. Perhaps the best thing was simply to shrug it off, accept it as one of countless strange quirks in a world that was full of weirdness. He turned to settle himself once more against the guard rail when he heard pounding footsteps behind him. Looking round he saw Steffan approaching across the deck, a scowl on his face.
'What the hell's going on?' the Welshman demanded.
For a moment Toby thought he was being accused of something, and then he realised that it was a rhetorical question. Steffan all but threw himself against the guard rail, glaring at the sea as though issuing it a challenge.
Hesitantly Toby asked, 'How do you mean?'
Steffan glanced at him. 'Bloody navigation's gone haywire, hasn't it?' He swung round, then did an almost classic double take. 'This is mad,' he muttered.
Toby followed his gaze. At first he wasn't sure what he was seeing, and then all at once it struck him.
The lights of Cardiff Bay, although still some distance away, were bright enough not only to delineate the shape of the shoreline, but to highlight details of many of the buildings clustered at the water's edge. The effect was undeniably attractive – the pattern of lights coalescing to bathe the land in a welcoming glow – and yet this particular view should not have been visible at all. They had left the lights of Cardiff Bay behind them some time ago. Toby himself had watched them dwindle and wink out, until all that was left was a vague orange haze, like a distant fire on the horizon.
'What do you think's happened?' he asked.
'I don't know, do I?' snapped Steffan. Then his face changed from anger to an almost boyish confusion. 'It's impossible, that's what it is.'
'We must have turned round in the fog,' said Toby.
'We haven't.'
'But we must have.'
Steffan's lips curled to deliver some harsh rejoinder, but at that moment Curtis, Stan and a dazed-looking Greg came pounding up the steps from below.
'What's that noise, man?' Curtis demanded.
Steffan turned irritably. 'What noise?'
'I think we've hit something,' Stan said.
Steffan's face flushed, the heat rising up from the collar of his pale blue polo shirt, suffusing his ears and cheeks. 'Course we haven't,' he barked. 'We're out in the middle of the Bay, you daft sod.'
'Well, something was scraping against the bottom of the boat,' said Curtis.
'We all heard it,' added Stan.
'Could've been a shipwreck or something,' Curtis suggested.
'A shipwreck?' Steffan's voice was a strangled croak. 'What do you think this is? Pirates of the bloody Caribbean?'
Curtis's brow furrowed, and he was about to respond when they heard a deep, steady pounding beneath their feet, followed by a more irregular series of thuds and bangs. They all looked at each other. Steffan's face was puce now, his eyes all but popping out of his head.
'What the hell was that?' said Toby quietly.
Stan had wandered across to the side of the boat and was peering over the guard rail. 'Er. . . boys,' he said.
'What now?' barked Steffan.
'There's, er, something in the water.'
They all crowded up to the guard rail to look. Toby saw a dozen or more dark, spherical objects bobbing on the gentle black swells, which rose and fell around the yacht.
'What are they?' asked Curtis. 'Seals?'
'Maybe they're lifebuoys,' said Stan.
Toby caught a flash of movement to his left. He looked around just in time to see a grey hand reach up over the side of the deck and curl around the lowest rung of the guard rail.
He stepped back on to Greg's toe, his mouth dropping open. Stan had seen the hand now too. He let out an incoherent croak and pointed.
Toby had time to observe that the hand was wrinkled and pitted, that strips of flesh were hanging off it like rags.
Then he saw the hand tighten and haul the rest of the body into view, and suddenly it felt as though the air had been wrenched from his lungs.
The creature must once have been human, but now its face was a hollow ruin. Wriggling white eels poured from its empty eye sockets and gaping mouth, spattering on the deck in writhing clumps. The creature's clothes were nothing but colourless tatters, its ribs showing between the rents in its saturated grey flesh. It turned its head towards them, and Toby had the feeling that it could see – or at least sense – them, despite the fact that it had no eyes.
The boys clustered together instinctively, like sheep menaced by a wolf. Toby heard Stan muttering 'shit' over and over; he heard someone whimpering like a child – he thought it might be Steffan. He himself was silent, his mind numb with disbelief; he actually wondered whether he might be dreaming. He looked to his left, and saw another corpse hauling itself over the side of the boat. It was a woman this time, her face purple and bloated, her floral-patterned dress covered in slime. Then there was a noise behind them, and a child scrambled crab-like onto the deck, dripping weed tangled in its hair, the wound in its throat so severe that Toby could see its spinal column through it. Within moments the yacht was overrun, the dead swarming up out of the water from all directions.
With nowhere to run, Toby squeezed his eyes tightly shut and thought of Lauren.