A Scavenging of Gulls

Seagull with spread wings, alighting on a rock

For Kevin, who has the patience of several saints put together.

He said she’d get used to the screaming but she didn’t.

A few hours, a day or two tops, he said. He’d lived here all his childhood, and the shrieks that curdled her blood were like a lullaby to him. It was strange, how calm he was now they were here. As if finally owning the place had laid all the ghosts he carried to rest. She was used to his lightning changes of mood, his temper that crackled like a firework, to vanish just as quickly. His fitful sleep, broken by moans. But that first night, when fear woke her like ice water, straining her ears to make sense of the high keening, she’d found him snoring softly, fathoms deep asleep.

“Liam! Liam wake up!”

He’d barely stirred. She’d shaken him again, hissed in his ear, but he just snored on, and by then she’d remembered where she was, heard the calm, rhythmic beating of the waves on the rocks below. She’d padded over to the window and pulled back the heavy curtains, shivering in the thin draught that knifed its way through cracks in the old sash window. In the spray-smeared darkness, white phantoms swooped indistinctly across the bay. Seagulls.

Next morning, Liam called her a townie fool for thinking they slept at night, like normal birds. Seagulls were a rule to themselves. She should like them, he said. They were rebels, like her. Then he pulled her onto his lap and kissed her, his mouth warm with coffee, and she forgot to be afraid.

But she couldn’t get used to the screaming.

The next day, he was busy in the shed. Now the cottage was his at last, it needed mending. Shona tried walking on the beach, but the desolate beauty amplified the screaming of the gulls, the bay a bowl holding their sharp, echoing cries like shards of a secret that wouldn’t let go.

“I’m driving into town to buy groceries – do you want anything?”

He appeared at the shed door grinning, grease across his cheek, his hair standing in powdery tufts. “Town, she calls it! Someone’s in for a disappointment!”

“There is a supermarket, right?” Everything was so different here, it wrong-footed her.

“Sure, if you can call it that. Just don’t get your hopes up. Baked beans and bread they’ll have all right, but nothing fancy.”

“Do they have wine?”

“Of course they do! How’d you think we survive here without the drink to keep us warm?” He wiped his hands on his jeans, and stepped towards her. “Though I’ve a few ideas myself.”

Reluctantly, she pulled away from his kiss. “I’d better get going. Wouldn’t want to miss all the good stuff.”

“The good stuff’s here,” he growled, but she pushed him back towards the shed.

“You’ve got work to get on with! I want this place like new when I get back.”

“Is that right, Your Highness? And what do you plan to do with it when I’ve restored it to its former glory?”

“That’s up to you.” She took his hand. “Is it strange being back here? After… everything?”

“It is.” He squinted at her, lightening the words with a dismissive grimace. “A ghost around every corner, you know.”

“One in particular?”

“Aye. Maybe.”

They both fell silent, and there was nothing but the crying of the gulls. Then, he brought her hand to his lips. “Be off with you, milady. Your faithful servant will have your palace shipshape when you get back.”

“A shipshape palace?” She mocked, but he was already swallowed by the shed’s darkness.

The supermarket turned out to be a glorified corner shop, all chocolate bars and tinned soup. She managed to scrape together a few veggies and some frozen sausages for dinner, but Liam was right about the booze. An entire wall of it, tucked away at the back; every variety of hard liquor she could think of, six brands of beer, two shelves of wine. She selected one bottle each of red and white. On the way to the cash till, on an impulse, she added a tub of ice-cream to her basket, and a pastry to eat on the way home.

It was a mistake. She’d barely left the shop when the first gull swooped, its beak snapping for the paper bag that held the Danish. Shrieking, she jumped backwards, almost dropping the groceries. Swearing loudly, she dashed for the car, as more birds circled, jabbing in, trying their luck. Fumbling for the keys, she threw the shopping bags on the back seat. As she straightened to open the front door, the first gull dived again, pecking hard at her fingers.

“Get lost!”

She hurled the pastry across the street, paper bag and all, and scrambled into the driver’s seat, slamming the door so hard the bottles on the back seat clinked. In reverse, the car sped away from the massing gulls as if scalded.

“Enjoy it, you bloody parasites! I hope it chokes you!”

The birds diminished to white rags in the rear-view mirror, and her heart gradually slowed. Her hands, on the steering wheel, shook.

Rounding the corner to the coast road, a sudden thump made her slam on the brakes. The gull flapped up against the windscreen, and she screeched louder than it did as its beak hammered the glass, trying to get in. Panicking, she floored the accelerator, swinging around bends, the bird still on the attack. It swooped away, as if done, only to divebomb again, and again. She screamed at it incoherently, turning on the wipers. For a moment it fixed her with one furious, rage-filled eye, then flapped off, as if she’d hurt its dignity. She almost smiled.

Then screamed again, as it barrelled into the windscreen so hard the glass cracked.

Careening across the road, she jammed the steering wheel down hard, a split second from hitting the tiny tin fence that that guarded a sheer drop off the cliff.

Panting, she swerved into a dip in the roadside so overgrown with brambles she had to climb out through the passenger side. On shuddering legs, she stumbled to the front of the car. The bird was a mess of blood and feathers, the glass spiderwebbed by its impact. Half-weeping, she found a fallen branch to knock it to the ground, then crouched staring at it, unable to make sense of its sudden silent calm, after all that fury. She drove the few miles back to the cottage still shaking.

Even the broken windshield didn’t nudge Liam from his nonchalance. “Insurance will cover it” he shrugged. “They’re used to it around here.” Shona refilled her wineglass with faintly trembling hands. That night she clung to Liam in her sleep, her dreams all blood and screaming.

She drove slowly to the village’s one garage the next morning, flinching at every flicker in the mirror, glaring at the road through a mosaic of almost-shattered glass. Liam was right; the mechanic was so used to replacing windscreens he’d be done by the time she’d had a long lunch. Just needed to give the glue time to dry.

“Seagull, you say?”

She nodded. “Suppose you get that a lot?”

“Aye.” He sucked his teeth. “But it’s a bad business, though. Bad luck.”

“Why?”

“Ah, superstition, mainly. Folk hereabouts are funny about killing seagulls. Say they’re guides, see. For lost souls. Each bird has a soul to guide to the afterlife. So, if you kill one…” he shrugged. “Like I said, superstition, old folks, mostly. Go and have your lunch before the rush starts.”

Rush, indeed, she thought later, picking at the last forlorn shreds of a greasy bacon sandwich, and sipping tea long cold. She’d counted exactly three customers since sitting at the tiny window table, and one of those seemed to be related to the woman who functioned as waitress, chef and local news outlet in one. Shona had overheard so much gossip between mouthfuls she felt like she knew most of the villagers personally.

“He’s back, then?”

A dropped tone, a furtive glance swept over her. She sharpened her ears.

“Aye. Brought a woman with him.” The waitress’s voice was little more than a whisper. Shona felt her skin flush.

“Does he think folks have forgotten?”

“Sure, it’s been ten years. Some have, right enough.”

“And some haven’t. Won’t.”

Shona stood. She wanted to scream at these fishwives, set them straight. It wasn’t his fault! He was just a kid! It was an accident! Instead, her heart hammering, she gathered up her bag and coat, and slammed out of the café, the bell tinkling wildly behind her.

She was so angry, she didn’t know she was heading for the cliff path until she got there. The breeze was ice on her face, its knife-sharpness a comforting edge to her rage. This is where it happened. She’d never been here, but she knew. Knew the story, Liam’s version of it. The darker one the locals told.

They say she fell.

And if you believe that, I’ll tell you another.

They never got on.

The old man’s a recluse now. Never see him.

Sure, what would you say to him if you did?

Do you reckon he knows?

Hard to say. Not sure how much he knows about anything, these days.

Liam used to have a half-sister, Jemma. They didn’t like each other, fought like cat and dog, Liam said. But that didn’t mean what people whispered.

He’d never have pushed her. Never.

Shona had imagined it so many times she could see it, clearer now than ever, standing in the place where it had happened. An argument, heated to boiling point in the small cottage kitchen, one of them bursting from the door to cool off. The clifftop path, beckoning. The other following, to calm, to apologise. Or to carry on the argument.

It was windy, Liam said. Spitting rain. The path, crumbling, slippery.

Someone hurrying, someone running to catch up. Didn’t matter who was who. She could imagine it like electric needles in her fingers, in her feet and calves – the moment the path had given way. Reaching for an outstretched hand a breath too far to catch.

The image came without her wanting it to, and she knew. His hand wasn’t grasping, but pushing.

The gull dived.

Shona threw her arms over her head on instinct, stumbling backward, and then she was falling into cold space, with the roar of the waves and the cries of the gulls all around her.

They found her body that evening, chewed up by the rocks’ teeth, spat out by the tide.

Above the heads of the searchers, the seagulls circled, screaming.

 ©FK Marlowe, January 12th 2026