by Greig Beck
He was almost past it, and a glimmer of hope started to flicker in his chest. But the huge eyes continued to stare at his flailing arms and must have found them irresistible, as a warm rippling effect ran over its skin color—satisfaction, delight, or hunger? Ben might never live to find out.
To Ben’s horror, it started to descend, and he was going to be trapped in its element. He wasn’t far enough along, and he glanced at the rocks and knew it’d be hard to pull himself out of the water quickly here. So, instead, he wedged himself in amongst the boulders, feeling oysters and barnacles slice into his back. He ignored them, gritted his teeth, and pointed his spear outwards.
“Come on!” he yelled in defiance.
The massive octopus began to clamber down and at the water line, stopped, and spread itself out like a parachute on the rocks. Colors flashed and rippled on its body, and the lead tentacles touched the ocean water, coiling back as though being scalded.
To Ben, it looked like it couldn’t decide what to do. Then, instead of coming in, it lifted itself and began to slide across the rocks at the water line. Horrifyingly, the boneless creature flowed like some sort of glutinous liquid—straight toward him.
Jesus Christ, it’s going to drop down right on top of me. Ben eased out of his shelter and was about to start swimming again when the ocean exploded around him.
Something like a submarine launched itself from the depths beside him. Ben’s eyes were so wide with panic, they nearly bulged out of his head, and his sudden, sharp intake of breath was mostly seawater.
He spluttered and thrashed as the biggest thing he’d ever seen in his life surged up on the rocks to grab at the bulbous head of the octopus. It was shining gray-black with a triangular head as big as a truck that split open to be nearly all mouth and full of tusk-like teeth.
Ben thought it might have been some sort of colossal whale ancestor but discarded that thought as he remembered mammals didn’t even exist yet. Then he saw flippers and a long reptilian flattened tail thrashing behind it as it brought itself up higher onto the rocks so its jaws could snap the more than thousand pounds of octopus from the breakwater.
With a muscular flip, the colossal body was gone with a massive surge wave that threw him against the rocks. He clung there, feeling stars pop in his head from shock.
Now he knew why the octopus wouldn’t go in the water, and also why the plesiosaurs had vanished. This thing must have been patrolling the shoreline. He looked back up to where the octopus had been, and he coughed water. Nothing remained. He turned back to the ocean.
Thanks, he whispered, and scrambled up onto the rocks, and then quickly over the breakwater to the lagoon side in case the great beast came back feeling like some human dessert.
He sunk down to sit, resting his back against the stone. He sucked in deep breaths, willing his heart rate to slow.
“How was your day at the office, dear?”
He started to laugh, but then a wave of nausea wracked him, and he began to shiver. Shock, he knew, and he screwed his eyes shut.
“Hold it together, buddy.” The sound of his own voice reassured him. “We’re still here,” he said softly. “Just you and me.”
He slowly opened his eyes and stared at the calm lagoon. It seemed like an oasis compared to the ocean now. And even better, the previous owner had just been violently evicted, so it was finally all his.
Ben contemplated spearing a fish now that the pool belonged to him, and he hefted his spear, but his hand shook so violently, he knew he’d never hit a thing.
He blew out a long breath and looked up toward his cave on the cliffs. The small flying pterosaurs darted in and out as if nothing had happened. His mouth pulled into a lopsided grin.
“Sorry, guys, looks like eggs are back on the menu after all.”
*****
Ben watched from his cave mouth perch for many days, still shaken by the octopus attack. He saw the huge sea creature cruising up and down along the coast, its dark shape just visible when the sun was low, as the massive paddle-finned leviathan stayed just below the surface.
After a few days, it had vanished, and then in the next, the plesiosaurs were back.
“That’s a good sign,” he said, eyes still on the water.
Ben sucked in a deep breath and once again headed back down to his lagoon. He’d spent his time fashioning a long length of twine from a strong fibrous and elastic vine. At one end, he had carved a hook from a large seashell, and finding half a fish carcass on the tide line, had used it to bait his hook.
Ben swung it back and forth a few times, before tossing it out as far as the line let him. His goal wasn’t to catch fish, but to draw out any more lurking octopus. He trawled his bait for days but attracted nothing but fish bites.
It was as he hoped—from his diving days, he knew the big cephalopods were territorial and rarely tolerated their own kind; even mating was over in a matter of moments and then the males had to make a break for it to avoid being eaten by their paramour.
Ben lifted his chin and took in the sea air, swelling his chest and then letting it out slowly. He sucked in another one and this time, let it explode out as words.
“This lagoon is mine,” he shouted, and the cliff walls echoed it back at him in a chorus of agreement.
He felt the sun already hot on his chest and face, and he waded into the clear cool water, took one last look around, and dived.
He opened his eyes below the surface and was once again surprised how well he could see in the glass-clear water. Large fish came to check him out, and he picked at shells on the bottom, examining them, before surfacing and flicking back long hair. He wiped his face, blinking a few times, and couldn’t help the smile breaking out on his face. It was, invigorating.
He moved quickly back to the shallows and turned, feeling his neck tingle, and then he spun—nothing followed him. No large shadows crept forward to try and ambush him. No massive leviathans that were all teeth, or bulbous bags that flared red with plate-sized eyes and eight crushing arms, watched from the depths.
But schools of fish did. He waded up onto the sand and retrieved his spear, and the next time a silver torpedo closed in on the shallow water, he stabbed down, skewering it.
Ben wasted no time gutting and cleaning the fish, and then tossing the bloody remains into the shallows, where they were immediately gorged upon by the fish’s kin. He wanted them to get used to seeing him close by, and also used to thinking when they did see him, it meant feeding time rather than death.
Days passed. Ben felt his strength and good spirits returning with each moment of this idyllic life. Sunrises were clear, clean, and magnificent, and his personal lagoon was usually always replenished after the high tide let water gush through the breakwater that acted like teeth, allowing in the fish, but keeping out the larger predators.
After one particularly high full-moon king-tide, Ben awoke to see the recognizable fin of a shark cruising in his lagoon. The age-old creatures had been around for 400 million years, so he kind of expected he’d see one sooner or later.
From his lookout cave, he could see down into the lagoon, and judged the predator to be only about eight or nine feet in length. But it was squatter and more barrel-shaped than the streamlined modern sharks he knew and would have probably weighed in at about 500 pounds.
Though it was a big fish, Ben didn’t think it would be much of a problem. “I can share.” He nodded to the creature. “You stay in your side of the lagoon, and me in mine, and we’ll a-aaall be friends, okay?”
The sudden surge in the lagoon and a few seconds of thrashing that ended in bloody spray meant the shark had already begun its hunting.
Ben waggled his finger at it. “But listen up, buddy. You eat all my fish, and you’re toast, got it?” He grinned, quite liking the company.
Over the coming days and weeks, Ben would spend his evenings down on the lagoon’s water line, talking to his shark. When he had caught his own fish, and cleaned them, he’d always thr
ow the remains to ‘Ralph,’ named after a beloved dog from his youth.
It didn’t take long for Ben to start speaking to the shark. First, just saying hello, in the mornings, but soon, he was having long conversations with the shark about his fears and his hopes, and basically anything that came to mind.
Oddly, it felt good to talk to someone, even if it wasn’t another person. Ben fiddled with a shell as he watched the shark.
“I bet you’re surprised to see me,” Ben said, watching Ralph glide close to the sand. “I know, I know, I shouldn’t even be here. In fact, you shouldn’t be seeing me, my kind that is, for another 100 million years, give or take a million.”
He dug his toes into the sand. “How did I get here? Long story, Ralph.” He chuckled. “Oh, you’ve got nothing but time, you say.”
So Ben told Ralph about finding the letters between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his great, great grandfather, the original Benjamin Cartwright. He told him of his friends who came with him; all funny, happy, enthusiastic, idealistic, and fatally naïve.
“I killed them,” he said, staring trance-like at the fin as it slowly cut the water in front of him, always moving, but staying close to the shoreline. Ben was sure he could see it roll slightly every now and then, so it could keep one black bead-like eye on him.
“No, not really, but, if I had used an ounce of sense, I may have made sure we were all better prepared…or better still, didn’t come at all.”
He gave Ralph a crooked smile, and then sighed. “Anyway, this gateway sort of thing opened on the plateau, between your world, I mean, time, and mine. Happens once every ten years.” He looked up. “My girlfriend, Emma Wilson, got away.” He grinned broadly. “But she’s coming back for me. And when that damned gateway, or portal or freaking door, or whatever the hell it is, opens up again, I’ll be there, front and center.”
The shark came up real close, its snout seeming to lift from the water. Ben shook his head. “No, Ralph, I’m sorry, but I can’t take you with me.” He laughed and tossed the shell out into the center of the lagoon. The shark spun away to investigate the splash.
Days came and went like that, and to begin with, Ben regarded their relationship as something akin to that of coaxing a wild wolf into your camp—there was wariness, but also a mutual respect. When Ralph was hunting, Ben stayed out of the water. And in turn, when Ben was in the shallows trying to spear a fish, Ralph usually stayed away, cruising along the deep end of the lagoon.
Once he had cruised in a little too close and got pushed away with the butt of the spear. After a while, the stout shark seemed to get it and remained out in the deeper parts of the enclosed rock pool. In fact, as if in payback for the scraps Ben tossed him, there were times when Ralph seemed to herd the fish toward Ben’s waiting spear.
Some days, Ben spent his time out at the breakwater, on the rocks, leaning on his arms and looking out at the huge sea beasts, or up and down the coastline. Northward, he could see the jutting landmasses that might have been headlands or perhaps islands in the far distance. He knew his home was up there somewhere, and often wondered what it would be like now—perhaps miles of shallow coastal estuaries, foreboding swamps, or vast plains of grasses, and forests of weird trees that looked like 50-foot-high Q-tips.
Ben was about to turn away, when he noticed something else. It was in the far distance and in near to the jutting shoreline. But oddly, it looked square against the horizon.
He frowned; other than geologically, nature didn’t really do squares or geometric shapes. If he had been back in his own time, he wouldn’t have given it a second glance, as he would have immediately known what he thought it was—a sail.
“Insanity, or a solitude-induced hallucination?” He laughed softly as he watched the thing. It seemed to tack away and finally vanished from sight. He continued to stare for many more minutes, but there was nothing bar some humidity mist rising from the ocean’s surface.
“Wasn’t a sail,” he said softly.
But Ben kept looking for the square, while in his stomach he felt the leaden heaviness of longing and homesickness. When he had finished for his day and turned, Ralph was always cruising back and forth behind him. “I thought I saw…nah, nothing.” Ben saluted. “Night, big guy.” And headed for his cave.
Like clockwork every evening, Ben marked off more notches on the cave wall, always carefully keeping track of his calendar. He knew it would take him many weeks, and maybe even months depending on what he faced, to return to his plateau. But he had years to go just yet.
There was time to enjoy his paradise, and over his many years, he had found so few safe havens such as this that he shouldn’t rush to leave it.
There were still dangers here, and from time to time, he spotted two-legged hunters patrolling the tide line. They rarely hung around for long and avoided the water, seeming to know that in those depths things waited that were even more fearsome than they were.
As the sun was going down one evening, Ben felt the change in the air pressure, and noticed the horizon was filled with a wall of clouds, like a dark tsunami bearing down on him.
Storm coming, he thought, and made a mental note to secure his items in the cave, and sleep well back in its depths that night. It meant sucking in more of the pterodon shit, but at least he’d stay dry.
“Hello?” Ben squinted. “What’s that?”
There was something else in the distance. Coming down along the coast and in close to the shoreline, he spotted what looked like a huge fallen tree, just floating. It was hard to make out clearly, and as the sun set, he began to lose sight of it.
“Damn,” he breathed. At first, he thought it might have been the sail again. But, even now, he thought that was his mind playing tricks on a fatigued and lonely mind. He squinted, concentrating. It had to be a tree stump, and he kinda hoped it would float all the way down to him and wash up during the storm—he could certainly work with the wood.
He rubbed his red eyes. “I’d give my left testicle for a good pair of field glasses right now.”
Then it was gone. Ben sighed and moved further back into his cave as the angry clouds swallowed the light.
The storm hit a few hours after dark in an explosion of furious wind and rain. At first, sleep was impossible as the thump of huge waves against the cliffs was like the beat of a titan’s drum. Outside, lightning forked, thunder cracked, and he could only turn his back and pull some of the large leaf fronds he had gathered up over himself to stop the wet wind rushing in at him.
Ben’s body made a small barrier to the storm’s fury and a few of the small pterodons came and nestled in close to him. He almost regretted eating so many of the little guys’ eggs. Almost. And they still stank terribly.
Regardless of the thunderstorm, Ben managed to catch a few hours sleep, and when he woke, it was to the sound of his flying roommates greeting the dawn with their usual squawks and chirrups as they headed out to skim the surface of the ocean with their toothed beaks to catch sprats from the surface, or to go and pick at the lines of debris washed up after the storm.
Ben sat up and rubbed his face, and then pulled his beard flat. He let his hand run down its foot-long length, and then glanced at his knife-tipped spear. He had promised himself he’d scrape the beard away when he set off back to the plateau, and would, even though he didn’t relish the idea of scraping his face with the now chipped and rusting blade of his former hunting knife.
Ben eased forward, keen to see what damage the storm had inflicted on his lagoon, and the first thing he noticed were the tracks on the sand—massive and strange—like someone had beached a boat in the night. The drag marks had to be at least 20 feet wide, and on each side, there were footprints, or rather, claw prints, and each as large as a manhole cover. He’d never seen anything like them.
He crawled further forward until he was at the lip of the cave mouth and rested on his hands and knees following them. They came from the ocean well down the beach, and then whatever it was, was dragg
ed all the way along the sand toward his line of cliffs. The deep gauges finished at his lagoon, where they vanished.
The sun wasn’t fully up, and it was still too dark to make out anything in the water, but he swallowed, feeling a knot begin to form in his stomach.
“Hey, Ralph, did you have any company last night?” Ben asked softly. It looked like some sort of large dinosaur had patrolled the beach in the dark. But as the sand was so churned up, and also many of the tracks obliterated by the downpour, it was hard to determine where the thing eventually went. Or even, if the tracks were leading to or from his lagoon.
Further down along the beach, there was no sign of anything larger than a few pterodons squabbling over something in amongst the weed.
He stared out at the horizon for a few moments, and as the sun rose, he watched the light slowly go from a blush in the distance to creating a golden highway along the vast blue ocean. His lagoon was still in the shadows and remained an inky black. But it looked calm and mostly untroubled by the storm, save for some debris floating within it.
Might be something he could salvage, he thought. Ben strapped his spear to his back, grabbed up his fishing line, and began to scale down. He walked along the sand, feeling a slight chill against his chest from the morning breeze.
“Ralph, you there, old buddy?”
The water of his lagoon was calm, but not pond still. There were swirls and bubbles popping, and some sixth sense kept Ben from going to the water’s edge this morning. He let his eyes run along the entire surface and was confused that the fin of the shark wasn’t there somewhere.
“You went home?” Could Ralph have been washed out in the storm? Ben wondered. “Most likely,” he answered.
Ben leaned against the only rock on the beach, perhaps a massive piece of sandstone that had broken off the cliffs a thousand years before. He laid his line on top of it and turned back to the water. Still no fin, and his friend not being there depressed him.
