Judith Sharky didn’t want to go out into the storm, but her mother-in-law, Ethel, wasn’t picking up the phone. She stood, lips pursed, jaw clenched, pulling her cardigan around herself as though she already needed protection from the elements. The storm burred down the chimney, knocked the front and back doors in their frames, and rattling the shutters, Ian, her husband, had bolted over the windows.

  ‘No answer?’ Ian asked, testing the lock on the backdoor. Sand dusted his mob of chestnut brown hair, as if he was some ancient relic and not a middle-aged man with, in Judith’s opinion, just the right amount of padding.

  ‘No answer,’ Judith confirmed.

  ‘She’s seen more crossings than anyone else in this town.’ Ian turned away from the door, happy it was secure. ‘I’ll put the kettle on?’

  Judith glared and, simultaneously with their nineteen-year-old daughter, Kerry, shouted at him.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Ian Graham Sharky, are you joking?’

  Clearly he wasn’t, but Ian stopped reaching for the kettle and withdrew his hand as though it was a grenade with a dodgy pin. ‘I should go and check on her.’ He struggled to make this not sound like a question.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Judith snapped.

  ‘I shouldn’t go and check on her?’ Ian looked as though he’d discovered a whole stockpile of unexploded ordnance and didn’t know where to step.

  ‘Dad!’ Kerry said incredulously. She rose from the dinning chair where she’d been tying the laces on her trainers, having read between the lines of her mother’s fruitless telephone call and the howl of the storm. She looked so like her mother, average height, wiry hair—but dark brown rather than salted with maturity, as Judith’s was.

  Judith reached for her coat, remembering how Ethel always grumbled that snakes should never marry stags. But that was one of those things old people say. There were plenty of examples of mixed marriages all over the town. By Herne, even Toby Tunstall had married a snake. And look how that turned out, she could hear the avatar of Ethel grumbling in her mind. The ancient clans counted when it came to a crossing, but not in between, Judith told herself. Mostly, it meant keeping to yourself and locking the door for a day or two until the few chosen for the storm had played their part. After which, the town could bloom once more, renewed from the sacrifice of another crossing.

  This time was different. At the very least, they usually had months. Like swallows, the Lorimers returned, which signalled a long, sometimes year-long, run-in to the crossing. It had never been that they reappeared on the same day as the storm came. Something was very wrong, and Ian wanted to put the bloody kettle on while his mother was alone fending for herself. It seemed that he’d finally picked up on the prevailing mood.

  ‘I’ll get my coat,’ he said.

  He was a good man. Gentle-natured for the most part. Funny, sometimes inadvertently. A good dad to their two children. And Judith still found him easy enough on the eye, but, by Herne, he could be as stupid as a rooster sometimes.

  Their youngest, Jack, came thundering down the stairs. He was sixteen, floppy-haired and as lean and knobbly as a foal. ‘Where ‘ya going?’

  ‘Check on, nan,’ Kerry said, zipping up her jacket.

  ‘Cool,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll make tea.’

  ‘No!’ all three of them shouted.

  Jack froze mid-stride. His gaze slid to his dad for an explanation.

  ‘We’re all going,’ Ian said.

  Jack was bemused. ‘But there’s a storm.’

  His mother’s eyes narrowed on him. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You should phone her,’ Jack said, having not yet given up on the idea of tea.

  Now, Kerry rolled her eyes. ‘If only someone had thought of that.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Jack shrugged behind his bangs and loped towards the kitchen.

  Ian put a hand on his son’s chest. ‘Get your coat, son.’

  ###

  Ethel didn’t live far away. Hers was one of the modest red-brick terraces on Hopkiln Lane. The street ambled away from the woods, parallel to, but four streets back from, the dunes. Judith and Ian’s place was handy for the Stag and Snake, something which delighted Ian more than Judith. This meant they were typically less than a three-minute walk to Ethel’s. Though there was nothing typical about their walk this time.

  All four of the Sharky family leaned into the wind, slogging through the muddy twilight, protecting their eyes. They trudged through sand six inches deep, blown in from the dunes. Ian kept a tight grip on Judith. In turn, she reached back for Jack’s hand, and he for Kerry’s, forming a paperchain of hobbling cripples. When they cut down an alley linking Bobbett’s Yard and Alaric’s Hovel, a clutch of tiles slipped from the roof above. The wind caught and shattered them against the brickwork above their heads, showering clay shrapnel on their heads. Kerry screamed. Jack cursed and Ian brought them to a stop.

  Judith shouted over the wind, ‘We’re nearly there.’

  Beneath the shield of his forearm, Ian checked the way they’d come. It was further to go back than it was to go on to his mother’s, and so he set his shoulder to the storm once more. They turned onto Alaric’s Hovel and didn’t notice the swaying shapes shuffling through the sandstorm at the opposite end of the road. Judith cast a glance that way, but sand stung her eyes, and she winced away without seeing. Another turn and they were battling up Hopkiln Lane.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The street funnelled the storm with greater ferocity. Judith wondered if they’d done the right thing. No doubt the storm had knocked out the phonelines, which didn’t exactly provide the clearest signal at the best of times. She’d taken her family out as the vicious tempest set to work. She tried to comfort herself: they’d probably knock on Ethel’s door and the old lady would usher them into safety with less than subtle gibes at what kind of parent would take her family out during the crossing. Maybe, but Ethel was getting doddery in her old age. Recently, she’d lost her keys more than once and nearly burnt the house down with a chip-pan fire in the spring. Fortunately, Jack had been there to stifle the flames with a wet tea towel. Judith would risk the casual acidity the usurper wife often had to endure. For more than one reason, on this occasion, she would hate being right.

  Ian was the first to the door. Judith watched through slitted eyes as he raised his fist to knock. There was no answer. The wind buffeted them as they shuffled their feet, tightening their grip on each other. Ian banged harder. He shouted too, but whatever he called out was snatched from the air. After the third unanswered knock, Judith reached for her spare key. It meant letting go of Jack’s hand, awakening a gnawing panic in the pit of her stomach. Ian took the key. He made a couple of attempts to stab it into the lock, as the sand and wind coursed around them. And then they were filing in one after the other, coughing and shaking sand from their hair and brushing it from their clothes.

  ‘Mum?’ Ian called.

  Judith joined in, ‘Ethel, it’s only us. We tried to phone.’

  But for the noise of the storm outside, the house was quiet.

  ‘You two check upstairs,’ Judith told the kids.

  Jack bounded up two steps at a time calling for his nan. Kerry climbed more slowly after him. The house creaked around them; Judith didn’t like this one bit. Standing in Ethel’s tiny front hall, the gnawing in her stomach grew.

  Ian ducked his head into the front room. ‘She’s not in there.’

  At the back of the house, the second door off the hall led to the kitchen. It lay opposite a small cupboard under the stairs, where Ethel stored everything from her vacuum cleaner to feather dusters. Cut to fit the angle of the stairs, the oddly shaped door lay ajar. Blackness lurked beyond. Ethel would never leave it like that. Everything had its proper place in the old woman’s home. It shouldn’t be open. And yet it was.

  It could be another example of Ethel’s fraying faculties. That was probably it. Not a thing to be pleased about, but better than the alternative. The storm had come. Things in Hernshore weren’t quite so normal. She shook off the ill feeling. It was just a cupboard door left open by a forgetful old lady. Judith knew there was nothing except a mop and dustpan inside. That didn’t stop her from wanting to shut the door as quickly as possible. Ian gave her a look she didn’t acknowledge and went through to the kitchen.

  The light was off, bringing the twilight inside. The back door rattled on its snib. Judith flicked on the Bakelite switch, stuttering on a florescent strip, mirroring the electricity in the storm outside. A meal, half-eaten, lay on the kitchen table. Judith tutted. Water pooled on the floor between the table and the cooker. She hurried over, snatching the tea towel from where it hung over the radiator, and bent to mop up the mess. A glass lay on its side next to the dinner plate, and Judith recoiled at what was there. Ian saw it too.

  ‘Herne’s balls!’

  ‘Ian!’

  ‘Sorry, but… what is this?’ Disgusted he pushed the plate with his finger, unsettling the worms coiling in the rotten sausage meat. Under the smell of fried pig fat, a sickly-sweet rancidity. Mouthwatering and nauseating. The thin white worms, as fine as hairs, twisted and writhed in the meat and over the plate’s greasy smears and on the soiled knife and fork.

  ‘Did she eat this?’ Judith said, knowing Ethel had.

  ‘Fletcher!’ Ian said darkly.

  ‘No, not Grundig.’

  ‘He’s a snake, isn’t he? And he’s the only butcher in the town.’

  ‘You’re a snake too,’ Judith said.

  Ian didn’t soften. ‘I know that.’

  Judith couldn’t believe it. They’d grown-up with Fletcher. Not that she’d tell Ian, but she and Grundig had once, and only once, fumbled in a wheat field when they were teenagers. A butcher’s apprentice, he was good with his hands even back then. Always a jocular man, ready with smile and cheery word. It was true he was a snake, same as Ian, same as Ethel. But it was undeniable, he was the town’s only butcher, and the meat was tainted with wyrms. The storm was here. The dots weren’t hard to connect.

  She tried to remember the last crossing. She and Ian had been newlyweds, a few years older than Kerry was now. They’d spent the crossing in this house with Ethel. Doors locked. Lights off, reading by a hissing storm lantern, ignoring the moans and screams, barely audible over cracking thunder and the rush of sand. And then it was over. Hernshore awoke, cautiously stretching its limbs and yawning back to reality. The nightmare had passed and would soon fade into the background. A thing best half-forgotten. A bright yellow sun had been blazing in a blue sky, and together, stag and snake, they had swept the sand from the streets and helped neighbours fix broken doors and windows. After which there were the funerals. Townsfolk first. No privilege to either clan was given. Last, it was Lord Jonathan Lorimer they put in the ground, wrapped in a shroud of ivy and placed inside a wicker coffin. Life went on… until the next time.

  Ian was at the back door, which rattled in its frame.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Judith felt cold, even though her brow was slick with sweat.

  ‘Mum’s not here.’

  Something else was nagging at her. The meal was obviously very wrong. Ethel not being here was very wrong. But there was another thing missing. She looked around the floor as if the answer might materialise.

  ‘Have you seen Hubert or Clara?’

  ‘The cats?’

  ‘Yes, the cats,’ Judith snapped back.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Ian said, but then Jack screamed from upstairs.

  Ian and Judith exchanged a look—for a fraction of a second—before they bolted out of the kitchen. They found Jack on his knees in the bathroom puking in the toilet. Kerry was beside him, fist in mouth, eyes wild, staring at something in the bath. The bottom of the avocado-green bath was splattered and smeared with blood. At its centre was a tangle of sausages, which at first, Judith thought was more of Fletcher’s rotten batch. But no, these weren’t on a plate, with a side of buttered bread and baked beans. They were tangled links, overflowing from a matted fur-bag of bones that had once been Ethel’s ginger tom, Hubert. His head had been twisted too far around, glaring at the side of the bath, as if he couldn’t bear to see his insides spilling form his belly.

  A whimper spilled from Judith’s mouth.

  Ian turned away and headed for the stairs. ‘I’ve got to find mum.’

  Judith couldn’t look away from the charnel mess. The storm was death, a blood sacrifice made once every generation for the next generation’s peace and prosperity. And she’d led her family out into it. That slapped her back to her senses. Kerry had backed against the wall, tears in her eyes for the family pet. Jack slumped against the bath, so he didn’t have to see.

  ‘You two, downstairs. Lock the front door. Close the curtains and wait for me and your dad in the front room. Do not make a sound. Kerry, Jack, do you hear me?’

  Startled, Kerry blinked at her mother but nodded slowly.

  ‘Good. Do it now,’ Judith said, and hurried downstairs ahead of them. The wind burred around the house, causing the letterbox to slap on a squeaky hinge. Alighting on the bottom step, the dry warm wind hit her, tainted with minerals and salt. The kitchen door stood wide open.

  Steps quickening to a run, panic rising, she cried out, ‘Ian?’

  Sand blew in through the door yawning wide, choking the air and dusting everything. She reached the threshold to the yard, which was little more than a walled in square of paving slabs and clutched the doorframe. The kitchen light was a blunted haze in the dust of the storm, but there was enough to make out Ian, in the middle of the yard, hands outs, approaching something slowly. Ethel was on her knees, her back to them, hunched over, her frail shoulders working, head shaking side to side. Ian was side-stepping, trying to get a better view, calling to his mum over the storm, but nothing could be heard over the howling wind. Time thickened to a slow ooze of horror.

  Ian halted. Ethel’s agitated movements ceased. Her head twitched up, as if hearing her son, which was impossible, such was the roar of the tempest. The old woman turned. Ian took a step away. He should have taken another. He should have turned and ran, but he didn’t. His mother’s face and neck were ragged with fine scratches, and the blood around her mouth and soaking her blouse was almost black in the gloam. Supine in her hands, she held her other cat, black and white Clara, belly torn open, one hind leg still feebly kicking.

  Ian took a step towards her.

  ‘No!’ Judith cried. The storm snatched up her warning and threw it away.

  Ethel bared her teeth in a hiss and lunged at Ian, dropping Clara. Ian caught the little old lady by the shoulders, but as he did, she took a bite of her son’s wrist and tore out a mouthful of flesh. Ian screamed and let go. Judith took one step down as the old woman, now freed, pounced, and sunk her teeth into his chest. A crash and scream came from the front hall, and torn between two terrors, Judith chose her children. Ian wrestled with his mother, who worried at the wound in his chest like a rabid animal.

  The front hall was the culmination of a lifetime of bedtime stories. Monsters crawling out from under the bed and out of the wardrobe. Nightmares come true. The whisper of memories, rushing like blood in her eyes. In the time of the crossing, wyrmals come knocking. The storm and its revenants were coming through the front door.

  At first, Judith couldn’t comprehend why her daughter was smiling ear-to-ear, especially as the smile wasn’t on her face, and from it a silken scarf of red unfurled down her front. Nor did she understand why Jack was on one knee at the bottom of the stairs holding his arm, while his hand was incongruously resting on the telephone table, with a cleaver behind it. But then she saw that connected to the cleaver was fat but powerful hand, from which grew a hairy forearm in turn connected to a man. A man whose skilful hands had once relieved her of her bra in a wheat field, and which now had come to relieve her of her children in the crossing.

  Grundig Fletcher stood bare-chested. His face and body were covered in blood, but that was patinaed with a grimy film. When he pulled the meat hook from Kerry’s back, she fell to her knees. As she pitched forward, Judith lunged for Jack, hauled him to his feet, his stump spurting blood. She dragged him toward the back of the house on primal instinct. Fletcher could have swung for her but grinned maniacally instead and stood aside to let the horde of wrymals with their nacreous eyeballs push through the open door.