Read Online The Ottoman Motel by Christopher Currie - Free Book Online

wrapping it in the twine, tying back its claws and legs.
    Three more pots came up, and then the sun, a grey egg poaching in the white morning sky. These early winter sunrises were nothing but one blank piece of paper placed before another. Not that he minded: Tarden’s eyes strayed only to the sea, to the lake and the creeks. Less light was all that winter meant: he didn’t mind the cold. Of course, the other fishers started later each day in winter, complaining about the weather, spending more time drinking.
    He collapsed the pots, threw them back into his boat that he’d anchored just before the rocks. The crabs, nineteen in all, went into a plastic tub. He motored slowly out of the cove and around the bend, making sure no other boats could see him. The cove was his place, and his place only. The rocks and the curve of
its entrance meant it was nearly invisible to someone going past
it, but still, you couldn’t be too careful. No one could know it
was there.
    It was a good twenty-minute journey back to the wharf. He pulled a tarpaulin over the pots and his haul, shielding it from the air and from any prying eyes. He sat back and let the current guide the boat while he reached beneath his seat and took out his aluminium water flask. He took a slug of water and squinted out against the growing glare. He rested his free hand back on the tiller and put his feet up against the side of the tub. He felt the vibrations of the crabs testing their new surroundings, their gentle tapping on the plastic. These were the weaker ones, the ones he hadn’t bothered to tie up. The crabs never grew frantic—never—and this was what Tarden liked most about them. Gracious, graceful creatures. He didn’t like to think too far into their future. Luckily, he had always been able to switch off that part of his brain. For better or worse.
    He felt a dull ache in his finger, the one he had bitten the night before. He studied the ragged quick, noticing that one side of it, near the square edge of his fingernail, had stayed white, almost translucent. His skin was covered with many such strange markings. He had lost count of what they all meant. He thought of Robbie’s arms, his shoulders, somehow untouched by the many imperfections of time. He had not been at home when Tarden left that morning. Nothing new there, he supposed.
    The wharf drew into view and Tarden cut the engine, letting the tinnie drift with the current. He liked to watch the trawlers setting out and returning, wondered if he would ever own such a boat. Probably not in this lifetime, not while his craft was ruled by the bottom line, rewarding speed over quality.
    Tarden watched the shimmer-mirror of the water’s surface and thought of the young lad and his parents. They had seemed like nice people. But still.

The night had come into Simon’s room. Not from the outside, from the black cavity of nature beyond the window, but from within: dark vacant shapes that grew like living things from tiny cracks and overlaps. Dark creatures had crawled, with their rich shadow flesh, along and up the walls. Drawing closer to Simon with each breath he took. They’d entered his eyes—ink stains leaching outwards and in—and when he closed them, they were inside him. His familiar dream demons shrouded themselves in dim cloaks, growing impossibly large, filling every space with fresh edgeless fear.
    Somehow, these shards of sleep propelled Simon into a new day. He cowered in one corner of the enormous bed, sheets and quilt pushed back away from one another. His first moment was a sharp intake of breath. The light coming in the window was wrong: a weak light like a failing afternoon, nothing like what a morning was. Then he remembered the room, the house. His body was itchy without movement. He got off the bed and moved to the seat at the window. He looked out at a beach, sunken down behind sand dunes covered with a spiky grass.
    Tall trees poked up