DANCING WITH MERMAIDS

 Rams Horn in Dorset is one of those small out-of-season fishing towns that seem perpetually locked in sleep.  But scratch the surface and you’ll find a cauldron of love, lust and jealousy. A fantastic world of intrigue, conspiracy, close encounters and alternative therapies. A magical place where people are free to invent and re-invent themselves.

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"Absolutely first rate. Absolutely wonderful" - Ray Bradbury

The River Sheep bubbles from a hole in Dorset and flows ten miles to the sea. In the beginning the river is a path of weeping stones but when it gathers strength it cuts a channel through the ancient chalk and the water is cold and deep. It pushes between hills, soft as the breasts of sleeping women, and floods the road at Drizzle. Beyond the village it rattles through a dark trench concealed by trees, roars into a field of nettles and spits at the cattle who come to drink. It is bright and wild and dangerous. And then, approaching the sea through a cleft in the cliffs, the river staggers, its courage fails and the ground opens up to swallow it again, leaving nothing but a swamp of poisonous mud. Two miles west of the Sheeps Mouth lies the town called Rams Horn. When the summer is hot, and a dry wind blows, the smell of the dead river invades the town and lingers on its narrow streets. The Sheep's ghost becomes a stink, an ooze, a yellow shadow, of unspeakable secrets. It ferments in the blood of those who stand around on street corners and clouds the dreams of those who sleep with their heads beneath the sheets.

Rams Horn is a memory, a lost cause, a carnival of ghosts, an ark of half-forgotten dreams. Sometimes in summer, when the air sparkles with salt and gulls are dancing on the wind, the town seems to lean against the cliffs like a rusting ocean liner, thrown to shore by a storm. The decks are dark with faces, funnels belch sparks and the sound of engines can be heard as far as the mud flats. But when fog rolls in from the sea and smothers the streets, Rams Horn shrinks, phantoms walk the esplanade and the skeleton of Whelk Pier rattles its chains in the silence.

CHAPTER ONE

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