Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories

“Don’t tell me,” Lewton said through his open window. “Pugh wants us to pick up the scrag ends?”

“No work for us up there,” Sharon said. “That’s only for the big boys.”

“Probably nothing to do anyway. Just come over the FR that McKellan’s lifted one of the asylum security vehicles. He’ll be halfway down the A470 by now.” Lewton pondered and shrugged. “Alright, no worries … see you later, Shaz.”

As expected, on returning to town Sharon copped for three jobs straight away. Routine calls had been backing up while the emergency on South Shore had been occupying the airwaves. The first was a complaint about a bunch of yobbos playing football against someone’s front door, the second was criminal damage to a car, and the third a burglary. They each took her progressively deeper into what was known as the ‘Back End’ of town, where blocks of scabby flats and rows of run-down terraced houses alternated with boarded-up pubs, sex shops and tattoo parlours. This was the sort of seedy district that the holiday programmes rarely focused on. Not that St Derfyn Bay featured very regularly on holiday programmes these days. Who actually came to the seaside for a holiday in the twenty-first century? Perhaps there were one or two, but Sharon rarely saw them.

When she was a little girl, the town’s seafront, which followed a slow, gentle curve of nine miles all the way from North Shore to South Shore, had seemed magical to her with its array of whitewashed, neatly-aligned hotels and guesthouses, its nautical-themed pubs and cafes, its theatres, casinos, pleasure palaces and amusement arcades, all done up in rainbow-hued neon. The neon was still there, loops of fairy lights suspended above the prom. The prom itself was a pleasant enough stroll on a nice sunny day, but there was more litter around now than Sharon remembered, while a lot of the hotels had closed or been given over for the use of the DHSS. Sharon was only twenty-four, so in truth things probably hadn’t been a lot better when she was a child – she certainly had no memories of the so-called golden age of the British seaside – while the close proximity of Lowerhall Psychiatric Hospital, a glowering edifice of black brick, originally constructed as a prisoner-of-war camp during the Napoleonic era, had always cast something of a shadow. But she never recalled St Derfyn being quite as down-at-heel as it seemed to be at present. The town’s former pride and joy, the Jubilee Pier, was still in use, but the pastel blue and pink colours with which it had originally been painted had long flaked away, leaving it a drab, skeletal grey, while the assortment of joke shops, puppet shows and postcard stands that had once made it such an attraction had long gone. Now there was only a tea-room at the end of it, and usually a bunch of desultory, middle-aged fishermen perched on the barriers, most of whom would be lucky if they caught anything other than a pair of dirty underpants or a used condom.

In actual fact, neither the beach nor the sea were in a particularly grubbier state here than anywhere else along Britain’s west coast, but in poor weather, which seemed to be the rule rather than the exception these days, it made a bleak picture. It was difficult to imagine that Bubbles still lived off this coast. He was the mythical sea monster who’d supposedly been tamed by the original Derfyn back in the age of the Welsh saints, and had allegedly been sighted a few times since, on several occasions during the 1950s as a mass of bubbling turbulence several hundred yards offshore; investigating scientists had later explained this as harmless natural gases escaping from the seabed, but schoolchildren had preferred to think of it as their friendly local sea monster blowing bubbles. The name had stuck and he’d become a mascot for the town in its heyday, his smiley crocodile head omnipresent everywhere, from the hoardings of fish-and-chip shops to balloons being sold on the sands.

Of course, Bubbles was a name from the past now. Much like the town itself.

Once Sharon had dealt with the burglary, she emerged from the Back End and was dispatched to a drunken dispute on the prom itself. She attended this scene with some minor trepidation, but she didn’t expect the worst. It was midweek, and so was unlikely to be the usual story of a visiting stag party falling out with a posse of local cowboys. In fact, when she got there it turned out to be three retired men arguing about a disputed bowling score from earlier that afternoon. As soon as her white Opel Corsa complete with its Battenberg flashes pulled up, the anger drained out of them, and with all parties advised (and sent home with tails between legs), Sharon was at last able to concentrate on her real plans for this evening.

When she checked her phone, she saw that Detective Sergeant Geoff Slater had beaten her to it, having texted her over half an hour ago. His message read:

Circus on South Shore – North Shore seems a plan.

Fun Land could be fun tonight.

Fun Land, St Derfyn’s once-famous amusement park, was a good choice for three reasons. Firstly, as it had been closed since 2003, no-one went there anymore, apart from the odd tramp or drug addict, so privacy was nearly always assured. Secondly, thanks to the Diffwys and Cadair Idris massifs lowering over the north end of the bay, it was a radio black-spot; few messages were deliverable to or from North Shore without chronic interference, so if Comms called her or Sergeant Pugh wanted a meet, she’d have plenty reason not to immediately respond. The other reason of course, as Slater had said, was that with South Shore the current focus of attention, North Shore would be quieter than usual – and it was quiet at the best of times.

There was no better personification of St Derfyn and all its problems than Fun Land. As Sharon drove up there, the quality of the buildings on the seafront declined, the faded guesthouses giving way to derelict shells. There were still kiosks and cafes on the sea wall, but they were more like rabbit hutches, sealed up with wire mesh and corrugated metal. A couple had even been torched, as had Captain Flint’s Tavern, the last pub on the last corner before the gates of Fun Land. As a child, Sharon remembered it teeming with customers – usually dads and granddads, whetting their whistles while mum and grandma took the nippers into the amusement park. Now its red-brick Georgian edifice was black and scabrous, its famous mullioned glass windows, what remained of them, hidden behind a fence of faceless wooden slabs.

There was plenty of opportunity for Sharon to leave the car at the front. There were no parking restrictions because, as a rule, no-one wanted to park, but it seemed a risk – it would be just like Pugh to make a pointless drive-by and ‘catch her shirking’. Instead, she cruised down a side street towards the park’s rear, its south boundary delineated by an eighteen-foot wrought iron fence. Only darkness lay beyond this, the relics of rides and attractions visible as shadowy, shapeless outlines.

Fun Land had once been a huge draw for tourists from South Wales and the Valleys, but mainly from the English Midlands. While Rhyl catered for Liverpudlians, Blackpool for Mancs and Morecambe for Scots, St Derfyn had found itself inundated each summer by Brummies, but the amusement park had eventually closed as part of the general downturn in fortunes suffered by the British seaside. By the 1990s fewer and fewer people were visiting it, and an increasingly rough crowd spoiling the atmosphere for families had led to the introduction of an entry fee, which had killed off even more custom. As a result there was under-spending and so dilapidation set in. A succession of miserably wet summers was the final straw, and even the ubiquitous Bubbles, who’d featured on billboards all over the park, and had walked around it every day in June, July and August, an actor enclosed in an ingenious rubber sea monster suit, complete with a bubble-blowing machine installed in his grinning, crocodilian snout (the bubbles emerging from his nostrils), hadn’t been able to reverse that. When Fun Land had finally padlocked its ornate scroll-iron gates for the last time, there’d been a promise that new investments would be found at some point, and a revival project put into motion – hence the lack of demolition work – but there was no sign of that yet. Rumours abounded that the site was now for sale, but if so, no-one wanted to buy it.

To its rear there was an open space about the size of two football fields. This had formerly been a car park, but was now a wasteland of gravel and cinders. The odd forlorn structure remained: an abandoned caravan; a roofless brick shack that had once been a public lavatory. Geoff Slater’s motor, a white Toyota Esprit, was also there – sitting unattended next to Fun Land’s rear fence.

Sharon surveyed it through her headlights. It was tempting to park up alongside it, but again there was a worry that someone might happen along – not necessarily Sergeant Pugh, but maybe one of the other patrols. Then the idle tongues in the office would really wag, even if she hadn’t had something going with the tough, handsome detective. In many ways Slater was a good catch, but she’d told herself again and again that it was a mistake to get involved with a married man. The moral issue nagged at her, not to mention all the practical day-to-day frustrations inherent to being ‘the bit on the side’.

She depressed the accelerator and veered away. On the face of it, it seemed a bit pointless parking elsewhere – what matter if they were one yard apart or a hundred? It would still be obvious they were here together. All she could do was park the Corsa out of sight, so she pulled up leeward of the derelict toilet block, hoping that it would mask her from the road. She switched the interior light on and briefly assessed her makeup in the sun-visor mirror. She was a good-looking girl and always had been. There was something of the feline about her: green eyes; delicate, diagonal brows; a small, sharp nose; pink lips. Whenever she took off her ridiculous uniform-hat and unpinned her black hair, it fell in a lush wave to her shoulders. Oh, she had lots going for her, except that she didn’t have Geoff Slater. Not totally. Not yet. And this was something they had to sort out tonight.

Checking she had her mobile and all her ‘appointments’ – her cuffs, baton, CS canister and torch – she climbed from the car, replaced her yellow ‘high visibility’ coat with a normal black anorak, and attached her radio to its lapel.

She locked the vehicle up, and walked around the toilet block towards the Toyota. It seemed odd that Slater wasn’t here, waiting for her. She reached his car and peeked inside; from the blipping red light on its dashboard, it had been secured properly.

Peering across the windswept waste, nothing stirred – just a few rags of litter tossing on the sea-breeze. She pulled on her leather gloves as she looked to the fence. An explanation as to why Slater had chosen this exact spot suggested itself; at some time in the past a couple of railings had been bent apart, presumably by kids, and there was now sufficient space to slide through. Not that she had any idea why Slater would actually have wanted to enter the park. She fished out her phone and keyed in a quick text.

Where R U?

There was no immediate response, which there probably wouldn’t be given the poor reception in this area. She pocketed the phone, and approached the gap, sliding through it shoulder-first and emerging in a passage between two sheds, at the far end of which a rubbish bin lay overturned, disgorging a mass of refuse so old that it had coagulated into a solid mass. Sharon stepped gingerly around this, and entered the park proper. As her eyes hadn’t yet attuned, its variety of once brightly coloured attractions was still a clutter of brooding, featureless structures. The breeze stiffened, droning between wires and girders and loose sections of clapboard, which tapped in response. To the west, she could make out the high gantry of the Crazy Train.

There was a creak directly behind her.

She spun around, torch in hand, beam flicked on full.

The loose shutter creaked again on the shed to her left.

A sign overarched what had once been its open frontage. The jolly crimson paint now turned to grey, read: Hoopla. She glanced at the shed on her right: Buffalo Bill’s Shoot ’Em Up. A rifle range. The frontage to this one was still open, tatters of blue and white striped awning hanging down over it. Again, the question bugged her: what was Slater up to? Had he got wind that she was after some kind of commitment from him? Was he playing a stupid trick? Overhead, the moon slipped out from the clouds – a reduced oval, but it cast a welcome silver glow, embossing the tarmac footways snaking between the attractions, though of course it created deeper shadows too, blotting out some buildings entirely, cloaking the black, throat-like alleys between them.

When Sharon suddenly heard a shrill clarion call, she almost jumped out of her skin. Swearing, she retrieved the phone from her pocket. The return text said:

Here. Where R U?

“For Christ’s sake,” she murmured, keying in a quick response:

Where is here?

Need a location

While she waited, she walked. She’d last been in here as a young teenager, and possessed no real knowledge of the park’s layout, so she ambled in a vague northerly direction, trying always to keep the open sky over the sea on her left, though as she had to turn a few corners to do this, it soon became confusing.

She eased the volume down on her radio. She hadn’t heard anything on it for quite a while, most likely because of the mountains; if not for that, she was certain the incident on South Shore would have kept the airwaves busy. But even so, she didn’t like the idea that a sudden burst of static might announce her presence. This was a habit she’d fallen into while making night-time property checks; it was far better to catch the felons in the act than alert them you were coming. Of course, at this moment she wasn’t trying to stop anyone doing something they shouldn’t – it was the other way around, she thought guiltily.

She passed the Flying Teacups on her right and the Surf Rider on her left. They were grim relics of their former selves: jibs hanging, cables trailing. From what Sharon could see, any attempt to regenerate the park in the future looked doomed to fail. Everything she saw here was broken, begrimed, gutted. Where the Dodgems had once collided in time to a coordinated dirge of all the latest pop songs, silent emptiness yawned under a rotted iron pagoda. The billboard on top of it had once advertised the latest shows at the Fun Land Emporium; now it hung charred and soggy. In fact, arson looked to have been the sole reason anyone had visited Fun Land in the last few years. Though the lower section of the Downhill Racer was caged off, its main tower had been reduced to blackened bones, while a flame-damaged effigy of Bubbles wearing a scarf and bob-cap and holding a pair of skis, which had once stood on top of this, lay on the footway.

A short distance on, she accessed a timber boardwalk, which thudded loudly as she strode along it. This was partly due to the empty space underneath. It was one of the unusual features of Fun Land that, to facilitate drainage of the autumn rains or spring melt-water from the heights of Diffwys and Cadair Idris, numerous channels had been tunnelled underneath the park, leading eventually to the sea. Back in 1920, during construction, the park’s original designers had made a special feature out of this: the Fun Land Marina had been built. This was a deep, octagonal harbour, about sixty yards in diameter, into which numerous of the drainage channels discharged, their vents carved into dolphin heads or the mouths of tritons and sea gods, but more importantly, from which motorised mock-Venetian gondolas would take paying guests out along the so-called Royal Canal for a ride around the bay, calling eventually at the Jubilee Pier, where they would ascend via a special stairway decked in a red carpet, then walk about for a bit and presumably buy a different brand of candyfloss from that on sale in the park.

Sharon crossed over the Marina via an arching metal footbridge. Rather to her surprise, the tide lapped against the aged pilings below. If nothing else, she’d expected the Royal Canal to have bogged itself up by now, but apparently not. There were even a few boats on view, though most looked like hulks banked in silt. As she reached the far side, a second clarion call announced that she’d received another text from Slater.

Haunted Palace

“What?” she groaned. “What the bloody …”

A voice she didn’t recognise replied to her.

Sharon turned, surprised. The bridge arched away through moonlight. No-one else was standing on it.

“No-one,” she said.

The voice replied again, apparently mimicking her.

It was a long half-second before she realised she was hearing an echo, probably from underneath the bridge. Even so, for the first time her thoughts strayed away from what she wanted to do here onto whether or not this was a good idea.

Despite the moonlight, everything was so black and still. On all sides, the jumbled silhouettes of gantries, domes, wheels and monorails blocked out the horizon, reminding her how deep inside the park she was. She wouldn’t easily be able to find her way back, and in addition she was now expected to locate the Haunted Palace. Enough was enough. Rarely in this relationship had she and Slater spoken to each other on their own mobiles; they didn’t have a particular rule about this – it was just that texting was simpler. But now she called him and waited impatiently while the number rang out – until it switched to voicemail.

She rang him again, and again. On both these occasions it switched to voicemail.

So it was the Haunted Palace. Bloody great! Snatches of childhood memory recollected dark tunnels, staccato lights, booming laughter. Not the most salubrious venue for romance.

Not that she felt like giving him any.

She pivoted around, finally spying what looked like a set of battlements protruding above the Pancake House, and sidled towards them, glancing over her shoulder as she did – again she thought she’d heard something, though it was probably another echo. She zigzagged through a labyrinthine section, which had once been nicknamed the Shambles because it was basically a market filled with novelty stands, ice cream vendors and the like. It also contained the Gobstopper, an attraction that had freaked her out a little even as a teen. It comprised a row of clown heads and torsos – minus limbs – mounted on metal poles, each with a gaping mouth to serve as a target. Contestants stood behind a counter and pelted them with hard wooden balls, the idea being to get as many as you could through the open mouth of your particular clown and down into its belly. With each clean hit, the eyes would light up to the accompaniment of bells, whistles and hysterical ‘Daffy Duck’ giggles. Sharon had thought it an odd-looking thing even back then; she’d never been able to shake off an impression that the dummy clowns were screaming – and even now as she walked past the row of de-limbed figures, still sitting motionless under their canvas awning, she fancied their ink-black eyes were following her.

When she emerged in front of the Haunted Palace, it was initially no more than a gothic outline in the gloom, yet in that strange way of long-ago familiarity, it all seemed so recognisable. It was easy to recall the wild screams as one car after another shunted its way up the access ramp and vanished through a pair of huge, nail-studded doors. The Palace itself was mock-medieval, sponge rubber and fibreglass doubling as heavy stonework, but when she shone her torch at it, she saw that it had decayed badly. Its griffins and gargoyles had dropped off, and fissures had snaked across it, exposing the framework underneath.