The Clicking
Story featured in Aberrations 2
(2026, Screaming Banshee Press, ed. Chris McInally)
English language
About the Book:
Featuring: Jonathan Maberry, Pamela Jeffs, Pauline Yates, Deborah Sheldon, Julian Carver, Daniele Bonfanti & Valentina Kay, Ian Michael, David Rose, Paul McNamee, Chris McInally & More
Series: Book 2 of ABERRATIONS: A Creature Feature Anthology series, following 2020’s Aberrations
From Amazon:
Sometimes nature can be so…unnatural. Don’t you think?
From de-extinct to previously undescribed species; from genetic mutations to extraterrestrial fungi; these are the things of nightmares. They—and more—await inside the pages of this terrifying tome with eleven stories from some of today’s best speculative fiction writers.
Here it is! The second volume in the ABERRATIONS anthology series from Screaming Banshee Press. A book for hardcore fans of the creature feature subgenre with stories written in the vein of Peter Benchley, James Herbert, and Guy N. Smith.
Do you dare to look inside?
About the Story:
My story — co-authored with Valentina Kay — for this new anthology by Chris McInally and his excellent Screaming Banshee Press is set in the Canary Islands. A trio of adventurous friends explore the abandoned hulk of an unfinished luxury hotel, creaking in the salty wind and sitting between a cliff above a hungry Atlantic and the misty, primeval laurel forest above. And they venture down to the volcanic bubble, an underground lake gaping still just underneath, where a spa was to be built. It did not turn out well at the time — back in the Eighties. At all. How will it turn out today for the explorers?
The Clicking, the first pages:
“That, my friends, was the best fish I’ve ever had,” Giorgio says. Nodding with appreciation, he props his elbows on the rail of the porch—wood chipped and salt-eaten—and takes the bottle of Dorada to his lips, looking at the ocean just a few steps away beyond the beach of dark stones.
Vicente is cleaning the grill meticulously while Eva comes beside him, joining him with a beer. “That’s because the vieja was swimming ten minutes before becoming your parrillada.”
Her swimsuit is drying in the breeze, spread on big rocks, harpoon rifle laid close by next to the wooden door of the cabin—a very basic place, half dug in a natural cave in the basalt cliffs. Her short, curly black hair still glistens wet above her tattooed neck.
Giorgio takes a long sip, and they let the moment sink in, no need for words.
Vicente has finished with the grill. Tall and thin, his blonde dreadlocks stand out against tanned skin, bare-chested over old blue jeans. He dons a torn T-shirt and joins them while rolling a joint.
The cobalt sky is getting embraced by dusk. A turquoise pool in front of them, protected by a circle of reddish rocks in the low tide, shifts towards the sapphire of the gently rolling expanse beyond. Tired, foamy waves break against the low barrier
in constant murmuration.
Vicente passes on the joint. Giorgio grins and passes it on to Eva without smoking.
“So,” Giorgio says. “You were telling me about this haunted place here on the island…”
Eva nods. “Very-fucking-haunted. Perfect for an article in your Just Around the Corner. The Mirador de Punta Quebrada Hotel.”
Giorgio says, “Never heard of it.”
“Of course,” Vicente replies, opening his tapered hands as though to let something fly away. “Islanders here don’t like talking about it. But it’s all there in newspapers; happened back in the Eighties.”
“Yeah,” Eva explains to their guest, “When tourism in the Canaries exploded and investors fell like a school of sharks building eco-monsters all around, turning swathes of coast into resorts and aberrant mega-hotels, before the locals—led by artist César Manrique—began protesting and finally they hammered some sense into politicians just in time to save the islands.”
She receives the joint again and hits it nervously, while Vicente adds in a dark voice, “Unfortunately, some damage was already beyond repair…”
Eva describes one of those scars, carrying Giorgio’s mind’s eye with her hypnotic words in a bird-flight tour. A scar which can still be seen on the east coast of the island, where the primal laurel forest meets dramatic six-hundred-meter vertical cliffs. There, along a winding street now closed (and not shown on maps), the skeleton of a once-to-be dream resort lurks in the vegetation which never really managed to take the place back. Half finished, much of it crumbled, part buried under huge blood-red blocks of rock from a landslide. Raw concrete pillars with broken bones of rusted iron protruding, jagged and twisted, staying solemn like cromlechs as they watch the ocean—always angry down there. Large strips of flattened earth. Large holes like black gouged eyes. Shards of metal and shattered glass. A fence all around, still standing somehow, with signs explaining access is forbidden to all people not authorized. A perfectly finished stone-paved sidewalk which runs on the side of nothing. Two perfectly finished structures looking a bit like lighthouses or berber watchtowers, once painted white, one at the entrance and one in the middle of an empty space.
The whole thing creaking slowly, day by day a little closer to collapsing into the hungry water.
“Okay,” Giorgio says as she falls silent, “I’ll bite.” Takes a long sip of Dorada.
“What happened?”
“Well,” Vicente says, “As Evita was saying, it was a time for sharks…”
Eva nods as he trails off and looks far into the ocean, eyes lost as though to spot them. Or maybe seeing reflections of the past they are evoking. She takes up the word, “And one of the biggest of them was an investor from Cantabria, Jorge Maria Cabrera. He was the guy behind the Mirador de Punta Quebrada project; already owned half a dozen JMC hotels in Tenerife, and wanted to be the first to exploit here too. Well, story goes, that as they were digging the foundations, they ran into a volcanic bubble.”
“A volcanic what?” Giorgio asks, right eyebrow inquisitively lowering.
“A bubble. Like a cave,” she says. “You know these islands are volcanoes.”
“Sure,” he shrugs.
“When they erupt, lava flows like rivers, and as it solidifies, it forms all sorts of tunnels and caves. A bubble is just what it sounds like, an empty subterranean space.”
“Okay, cool. Like in Lanzarote…Jameos del Agua, right?”
“Exactly,” she nods appreciatively, a glance to Vicente whose attention has come back to them, their eyes meeting in the slightest of pauses. There must be some nice memory between the two of them at Jameos del Agua. She continues, “And just like there, there was an underground lake here too. So, our JMC is overjoyed: he thinks of equipping his resort with the definitive tourist attraction: a spa built down there, one you could reach by an elevator right from the hotel hall, equipped with lighting, heating and all that. Of course, he couldn’t give a fuck about the guests already living down there: tiny crabs—an endemic species.”
“You’re shitting me,” Giorgio half-laughs.
“It’s true. Luckily, the whole thing came out before he could destroy the ecosystem. There was a local artist, Jose Carlos Pereira, a friend of Manrique’s, who led the locals into protesting against the project. It wasn’t easy because he was a very rich, very connected man, and several local politicians had…interests in the job getting done. But finally, they had the Cabildo put the construction into standby. At least, it ordered to do so, but as it seems our JMC just told his workers to get on working by
night, in spite of it all. He was pretty confident in his small army of lawyers, it seems.”
Vicente chimes in, “Prick.” And puffs a white cloud of smoke up toward the by-now dark sky.
Eva continues. “Sooo, things got pretty hardcore and, long-story-short, Jose Carlos Pereira and a group of protestors somehow managed to break into the construction site, rappel down into the bubble and barricade themselves inside with supplies: full-
on occupation strike mode.”
Vicente corrects, “Actually, Evita, it’s a strike if they were workers of the place.”
“Well, you know what I mean,” she dismisses him with a wave of her hand and the jaguar tattooed on her arm makes a strange dance.
Giorgio opens his arms. “Okay. I guess shit is about to happen, right?”
“You guessed right,” she nods. “Because a chunk of the fucking mountain came down and buried them alive.”
“Fuck.”
Eva delivers the next twist with clear satisfaction, “Their bodies were never recovered. They were under millions of tons of rock weakened by the digging itself.
The place was shut down. And JMC vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Yes. Poof. Never showed up again,” Vicente confirms. “Fled the scene of the crime. I mean fuck responsibility, right? Probably gone from Europe completely, no one really knows. Everybody forgot the whole thing…or wanted to. Until, a few years later, the stories began…”
Giorgio nods with a knowing face. “Let me guess, strange noises and lights by night.”
Vicente smirks, pats him lightly on the shoulder. “Spot on, man.”
Eva tells, “People heard voices carried by the wind, laments. The ghosts of the buried alive, of course. They kept their distance. Not everybody, though. Kids are curious. And in ’95, three kids who got too curious never returned.”
“Whoa,” Giorgio is captivated now, eyes glinting. “Shit gets real. I can’t believe I’ve never heard about it before. This is my territory exactly.”
Eva and Vicente know that well, of course. They managed the Spanish edition launch of one of his most successful books, Echoes, a few years ago. That’s how they met and became friends. Back when they worked super hard as a busy marketing agency, Giorgio’s publisher was their biggest client. Before they happily decided to fuck everybody off. Giorgio among the very few exceptions.
“Well,” Vicente says, “They didn’t exactly think it may be good publicity. Tourism, you know. Locals are very good at keeping secrets.”
“Anyway,” Eva continues, “More people disappeared in the following years: a local hunter, a goat shepherd—”
“That couple of trekkers, too, and—”
“Yeah, right, and two Guardia Civil who went looking for them. Even a guy who came from London back in 2003 with two assistants and a lot of equipment to record the voices of the ghosts.”
“EVP, yeah,” Giorgio nods.
“Well, they joined the choir it seems,” Vicente says, looking at a giant moon emerging up the cliff like a golden air balloon, “Because they never made it back to their hotel.”
Eva recounts that, after the London Ghostbuster, one night there was a roar, more rocks came down. And nobody had vanished since then; as though the ghosts went back to sleep. People go there from time to time. These days it’s industrial archaeology. Take some photos for their fucking Instagram. Seems safe enough.
“You’ve never been there?” Giorgio asks.
“Nope,” she says. “We were waiting for the right guy to explore. What do you
say?”
“What do you think?” he grins, showing all his white teeth.