by Tom Anderson
Again?
Apparently, I can’t admit there was any problem with what I did. That’s a tough one – since I don’t really think there was. Nobody got hurt, did they? Still, though, might have to just swallow my pride soon and say there was something wrong with it, just to get out of here. Out of this place of pillows and disinfectant that’s meant to make someone like me ‘better’ but only really makes things worse.
‘Seeing things,’ says Dr Wentloog, ‘can be very frightening if you don’t understand why or how it’s happening. That’s why it’s so important to share what’s going on in your version of the world.’
Fine. You believe that if you want, Doctor.
I’ll believe my eyes if you don’t mind.
Chapter 5
With her stay-at-home plan, Gaby was onto a winner as far as school went. There was me, racing again towards that gate with only two options – be on time and have to sit through Reg, or be late and get into trouble – while she just stayed away whenever things weren’t quite right for her.
It was two more days before she showed back in school, and by then she only had to get through Friday. I was getting my stuff out in History when I saw her walk through the corridor.
We were doing the Vietnam war and Mr Lloyd was playing with my initials again, which I didn’t like since it drew too much attention – especially in the light of what I’d been putting up with this week. Instead of ‘LLJ’, which was the correct letters for me and something I didn’t mind people using sometimes, he’d been calling me ‘LBJ’. To make people learn, he claimed.
‘LBJ was the president who took America into Vietnam,’ he kept saying. ‘Lyndon B Johnson! Luca’s initials are close enough for us to remember it by.’
Then he’d look at me and say, looking too pleased with himself each time, as if it was his first mention:
‘And anyway, Luca, you’ve got another US President in your name too. Lincoln! The guy who founded the whole America project! That’s a lucky surname to have. I have to make do with one half of the only Welshman to become prime minster – Lloyd-George. David Lloyd-George. Wanna swap?’
I never, ever replied with words.
And this never, ever stopped him.
‘DLG… Not got the same ring to it as LBJ eh?’
Especially when they’re not even either of our names, I wanted to tell him – except that would surely attract more interest than anyone should ever take in me.
I’d started sleeping okay again since my bad day with the Gaby and the Joe Poundes thing. My sleep patterns had been something that made my parents worry a lot – especially since the even worse days from like a year ago or so. So whenever I slept bad now the most important thing to do was not let them find out about it. Whenever I got slammed by the thinkies at night, I had to use the private option of earphones and good music to get through – and not anything that might let them get scared about me again.
That was why I figured it would be best to hold off until the weekend to next look at the shoreline by night. That way I could lie-in both the morning before and after going. As always, on Sunday there would be no consequences of being up so late. If I looked tired one morning in the week, it might lead to tough questions, especially from my mum. My dad wouldn’t notice whatever state I was in.
Still, best to play this one safe.
Saturday night it was, then. The night when my mum and dad always locked themselves into the front room and watched terrible films from the eighties or nineties with a bottle of rum – so they’d never notice what I did then anyway.
I went up early and dressed myself in black jeans and a dark blue hoodie. I pulled a brown hat over my head and even thought about whether to try and smear my face with something, too. This was the best I could do for some form of night-mode camouflage. If ghosts could see at all, then they’d have to strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of this kid.
My mum was coughing as she hobbled up to bed about one-ish, and then I could hear Dad snoring and swearing in his sleep from the couch below. The door to the living room was open, and he’d probably follow up soon. I waited a bit more, drifting in and out of super relaxation. I was pumped about where I was going, but chilled enough not to be in a rush. I’d go when it was right.
She must have dropped the heating before heading up, because I could feel the air in the house starting to freshen, the old radiators clicking in the dark as the metal changed size and shape in the cooling night. Outdoors, I heard a car roll in and out of our street, its door opening and slamming shut again. Two a.m.
I gave it another half hour and still my dad wasn’t budging, so I slipped down the stairs and past him. That was the sketchiest bit – every step had to take my weight gradually so it didn’t creak. There was stale smoke settling in the living room from his roll-ups, and their bottle of rum was two thirds drunk. He had a leg hanging off the sofa and had pulled the throw my mum got from India off from the back cushions and down over himself.
I looked at him for a little while and watched. Best he’d ever look. He wasn’t thinking of anything – you could see it in his face – and whatever dreams had made him curse were gone too. I wondered if he’d last the night or get cold and head upstairs.
Even if he did, he wouldn’t check on me, anyway.
I slipped out, dropping the key into my hood pocket and threading it through this little piece of elastic that was attached to the inner lining.
Everything was empty. The streets were doing nothing but waiting for morning. The air was tight and cold, and the ground felt hard as I jogged gently towards the bottom of my street and slipped under the canopy of bare branches that formed the path to the shore.
It had been dry all week, and there was only a slight breeze. Patches of swollen, round cloud were lit side-on by the moon, now only half as bright as it had been when I came down here on Monday night. The shore was exactly the same distance as before, even though it was now the other side of the tide. Incoming, instead of dropping back.
I slowed my steps as I got near the beach and the steam coming from my mouth was allowed to catch me up. There was the same even rhythm of the sea licking the shore. In the darkness it was amplified, so you could hear the little round boulders popping and clapping together as they were dragged in and out of the tripping shorebreak. Each time, the grumbling stones were drowned out by the fizz of the water mixing sand on sand, as it sloshed up to the rocks beneath my feet.
I looked to the moon, further across the sky than before, and then gazed down and tracked its glinting pads of light across the dark surface. A billow of cloud slipped gently across, turning the ocean glimmer off, before gently twisting the dial back up again as the shining crescent emerged again the other side. With the breeze scratching the surface, the moon’s half-light was skipping and shaking softly, a column of silver stretching across the ocean to the blackness beyond its horizon.
I didn’t have to wait very long. Ten minutes, or maybe fifteen, but that was all. The first head broke the surface right in the middle of that column of moonlight. Just like it had done last time.
It was travelling the same pace as before. Again, I noticed a gentle current forming on the surface, which turned darker as more water started running off the object that was causing it. The head came up slowly enough for there to be a little bit of time when I wasn’t quite sure if this was really happening again. As if there was an extra finger of rock, or a forgotten mooring post beneath the high tide line, all I could see were moonlit rings of broken water. It took a little bit of time for the black in the middle to form enough of an outline for me to make out its movement, but then there it was, no doubt about it, rising steadily outwards and towards land.
His shoulders were up and out of the water, and then I could make out the clothes again. Like before, his hat was totally unmoved by the water draining off, and the jacket kept its shape too. The white out
line of his shirt beneath let me see his waistline as that also came up out of the sea. The wake he’d left in the water was tracking outwards, a mini pulse of diagonal lines growing away from him as he walked – and then, straight behind, in the same place exactly, was the darkening spot as the second head started to push up from below.
The intervals were perfect. This time, I was already sat back against the same cold rock as before, and I’d reminded myself of things to look out for and learn. I wanted to count it all up. Check there was the same number, check the distances between them and the times.
The lead figure had his first footsteps on dry land now, while the one behind him was a head and shoulders shuffling forward. The incline of the beach here was super shallow and it must have been a gap of ten or fifteen metres between them. I watched the water running off the trousers, which were tucked into high socks, like last time. There were little pieces of seaweed – a dark green confetti stuck to his shirt and face – and a small patch of silt running with the water out of his jacket pocket, as if he might have filled it with sand which the ocean had now partly lifted back out.
His expression was the same, too. It was blank beyond blank, and yet I could see the focus of his eyes, trained perfectly ahead to where he was walking. His stare was on the land ahead, exactly as your eyesight would catch it if you were looking forward, and he seemed to have no need to watch for obstacles underfoot. His steps were so slow, so steady. As he passed me I watched his feet, somewhere inside those softened, soaking boots of his, carefully feel out what was under them before padding firmly downwards, pressing the ground away with each stride forward.
One… two… three… four… five… I started counting in my head from the exact moment he was level with me, as close to even seconds as my memory would allow. Nine… ten… eleven… twelve. I made no noise, but just gently nodded my shadowed chin forwards with each tick-tock in my mind. Twenty… twenty-one… twenty-two… He was nearing the middle of the dune behind as the second figure followed across the sand. Keeping the count, I looked back out to sea where the third one was now rising, shoulders and armpits up and out of the nightime oil.
It was thirty-two seconds. Each was exactly that time-lag apart. I tried it over and over. This made the whole procession well over ten minutes long – from the first showing of the first, beret-capped head, to the moment when the nineteenth man’s heels carried him over the dunes and towards the streets behind.
I’d promised myself I’d do this, and now was the time. I wanted to try and find out where they were going, so as soon as the last one had gone from sight I ran, with the softest steps I could, after them, hunching low so that they couldn’t see me. Not that they were likely to look back, mind.
I made my way to the top of the first dune and stopped right where I was. I didn’t need to go any further.
Down, below me, in a deep trough of sand, they were moving, and I saw exactly where they were going. There were three left, and one of them was half gone from sight.
The moonlight was shimmering across the flats of sand in the middle of this dune with nearly the energy that it had been jumping on the sea surface. Right on the edge of the most silver patch of ground, a steep cliff of sand-bank rose out of the dune, well over head-height. Its top was lined with dangerously balanced grass, with roots dangling off the ledge and leaking soft sand back down. The men were walking into the dune, disappearing face-first into the wall of sand.
Two left.
I lay and studied them. The last but one kept his pace – exactly the same strides as on his way over here. As he neared the rise of sand before the ledge his legs started to sink into the ground as if something were gently pulling at his heels. Then, without changing speed or movements in any way, he stepped on and through the wall of cold, hard sand as if he were walking through a waterfall. Then he was gone.
The last went by, and for a nano-second something in me – maybe even something confident enough to have a voice – said, Follow them! Do it! NOW!
But I didn’t listen. I mean, you can’t wade into a dune of packed sand and mud, and roots and sharp grass, can you? Not if you’re normal. Not if you follow the rules we live by.
So I did the next best thing, and retreated back to the sea.
Watching it, settled back to its normal movement, I waited as the shimmering reflection from the moon evened out. Gaps in the cloud were letting a few stars pop up to shake weakly in the black over my head. One was much brighter, but it never seemed to stay out for long. Just keep looking, I thought. Try to understand it more tomorrow, or on Monday, during daylight when the impact of this stuff would be nowhere near.
Anyway, did I have the courage to wait more, to see if they’d return to the ocean before dawn?
* * *
There was no sound but the sea, and I let my thoughts float with it. Keeping totally still apart from breathing, I closed my eyes for two waves at a time, and then opened them for two. When closed, I’d listen to the noises the shingle pebbles made getting crunched around by the water, and I’d try to make out single stones. I kept guessing at their direction, where the tide was taking them on their journey. I wondered how long it took them to get broken down to sand. How small a grain had to get before it stopped getting worn down, stopped getting any smaller. It seemed as if each stone had a musical note it could make. During the spells when my eyes were open, I’d try to make out a little pebble through the dark, and see if I could match its movement to a noise. After a while, eyes closed again, I started being able to hear when one stone rolled along, knocking others out of its way – and then when it came into contact with a bigger one itself, and had its own note drowned out.
The first noise to break this was a stirring in the dune grass, off to the east – the other side of me to where the men had gone. A fox stepped out onto the shoreline, and fixed its gaze on me. It recognised life, but knew right away I was too big. There were several foxes living in the marshes around town, I knew that. Maybe they only headed towards streets in the night. He probably saw the same things down here as me – the freedom, the safety from bigger, badder humans. Now, here I was messing up his plan. He looked at me for five repetitions of the dredging shore-pound, and then – a little boulder coming into contact with a bigger one – he shot away.
The sounds of the night filled back in – the emptiness, the swishing, smashing of the sea filling my ears in the absence of enough light. The men came back about twenty minutes later, just as the first bits of birdsong hinted sunrise was around the corner.
I couldn’t tell you which one was in the lead, but it wasn’t the one who’d been first up the beach when they were going the other way. Him I would make out every time, because I’d got to study him closely, twice, now. It had been the same man coming out of the water first both times – but now, heading back, the steady procession was led by one of the others.
Had they come from the dune-ledge? Had they strolled out the ground like they had from the sea? I didn’t want to move along the line to try and find out – even though it was almost certain they’d seen me by now. They had to have done. My pathetic cammo outfit, realistically, was only to hide from adults, crimms or tramps and to feel less visible, anyway.
Still, I tried to stay as concealed as I could.
I took a close look again at each set of feet. They were stepping on ground they seemed to know off by heart. The boots were drier now, but still looked soft, like the seawater had turned them into soggy socks or worn slippers. Their eyes were gazing straight out to sea, so they were making no attempt to watch their steps. It was as if the feet were feeling out where to tread but without pausing, apart from to push up, away from the ground again with the right sized stride to make everything constantly move at one speed only.
The men were still perfectly in line, too. Same interval, same speed.
I watched the new one who was in the lead. His steps seemed to bec
ome even more uniform once he was on the sand, counting down the footprints left until the shore licked at his toes. Now his movements became slightly more laboured under the weight of the water pushing into him. Once his knees were under, the strides suddenly looked oddly small – all I could see were thighs pushing through the surface, until his waist was under. Soon the sense that he was stepping at all was lost for good. Now only his torso moved with a perfect, even slide, further beneath the dark liquid. His jacket tails floated for a moment before getting pulled under by the body they were attached to. His hair, curling down past his ears, washed itself straight, as the ocean came around his face. Then, beret hat still attached, his head sunk and left only that little plume of disturbed water – the same mark on the surface that had told me when they were about to emerge earlier.
Following him, the rest of the group rolled by, each set of feet entering the ocean just as the head of the one before was about to go under. And again, I counted them. Thirty-two seconds apart. Sixteen men, then seventeen, then eighteen. I didn’t want to lean up over the rock and turn my head to watch them coming over the dune, so it was only a guess how many would pass. Eighteen, and then a gap.
I froze, pinned back to the rock I had leaned on. Dawn had started bleaching the sky out to the east. There was birdsong in the dunes. It was still dark for a bit longer, but the moon, low on the other horizon, was only a pale yellow. It was losing its power as a different source of light started to spread.
Nineteen.
The last one was the leader from the other times. I recognised him sure as you could ever be of anything. But, for some reason, he was more than a minute behind.
My breath almost stopped, I was trying so hard to keep quiet as he passed.
