by Rob Scott
‘Too many-’ Mark looked beyond the dune. Thousands of people were on the beach. Hundreds of beach umbrellas dotted the strand, a flowing garden of vibrant flowers. The North Atlantic heaved and rolled, its waves crashing in the throaty roar Mark had heard before falling asleep. ‘Jesus, it’s Jones Beach,’ he whispered.
‘Of course it’s Jones Beach, crazy person. Where else would we be today? You didn’t hit your head or anything, did you, son?’
‘Not here,’ Mark stammered, ‘it can’t… no, this can’t be it.’
‘You all right? You need some water or something?’ His father took him around the shoulders. The feeling was reminiscent of every comforting thing he had ever known in his life.
‘Wait, Dad.’ Mark looked between the sand dune and his father. ‘I need your help with something. Come here, it’s not far. Come with me, quickly.’
‘All right, but it’ll be both our butts if we miss lunch.’ Arlen seemed simultaneously amused and concerned at his son’s antics, but he followed Mark up the dune regardless.
‘It’s just up here, Dad,’ Mark said. ‘We need to shove this stone-’
The table was gone.
Out of breath, Arlen pulled himself up beside his son. ‘What is it, sport? Pirates? Cowboys? Not the New York Yankees!’
‘No, Dad, it’s- It’s nothing, sorry.’ He checked the sandy hilltop, then crossed to the marsh side and looked down into the tangle of brush and rotting foliage. Maybe I pushed it hard enough, he thought. Maybe it was sliding a bit and I didn’t notice.
But the marsh had disappeared as well, no humid maw of foetid organic decay, no swamp filled with coral snakes, banyan trees, or mutant tadpoles, just the scrub pine and scraggly brush that lined the boardwalks of Jones Beach State Park.
He was home.
Behind the sea of beach umbrellas, blankets, sunbathers and children digging in the sand with a rainbow array of plastic toys, the roads were crowded with big sedans and slat-sided station wagons. It was the height of summer in New York. Beyond the stone tower in the middle of the roundabout several big trucks turned in to the amphitheatre. There was a concert tonight.
For a few seconds everything was frozen in a sun-baked tableau. Only the breeze moved, brushing sand from his clothes and hair. Beside him, his father was young and strong, a fit, healthy thirty-year-old, the Arlen Jenkins Mark knew only from glimpses of black-and-white memories. Now, with his father’s arm around him and the sea breeze caressing his tired limbs, Mark felt the tension, the anxieties and fears, the anger and especially the hopelessness of the past several months begin, slowly, to seep away. He started searching the beach in front of the Central Mall, looking for his family’s yellow umbrella. It was eight feet across, difficult to miss, even on a crowded beach. His mother would be there, and his sister, and, presumably, a four- or five-year-old version of himself, another Long Island kid digging for China.
‘Can we go back?’ he asked himself.
‘Of course,’ his father answered, ‘getting down off this thing’s going to be a lot easier than climbing up. But you go first.’ He ushered Mark towards the windward side of the dune. ‘I think your mom’s got tuna in the cooler. I do love a tuna sandwich with a cold beer.’
‘I know,’ Mark said, checking once more for the missing table. It should have been there; it couldn’t have disappeared in the two minutes that he was away. Something was wrong, but being home had eased his sense of foreboding until there was just a faint trace of discomfort.
‘Come on, Mark,’ his father said, sliding through the sand, heels first, his beer can in one hand, ‘and after lunch, we’ll go and find some ice cream.’
Mark followed, entranced by the gentle grip of deja vu. As he passed, people talked, radios clamoured, children shrieked, he even heard a dog barking; the summer fugue clouded Mark’s senses and dragged him further from his marsh prison and the Larion spell table.
Gerrold Peterson, his high-school German teacher, sat in a collapsible nylon-web chair reading a dog-eared Gunter Grass novel. He looked old, even here, in whatever year this was: 1981 or 1982. He wore the same buttoned-down short-sleeved shirt he had worn every Friday of every week of every year that Mark had attended Massapequa Heights High School. He lifted his pointed sunscreen-smeared snout far enough over the edge of his book to frown and say, ‘Wie ist die Suppe heute, Herr Jenkins?’
Mark didn’t answer. Hurrying to keep up with his father, he caught sight of Jody Calloway, looking as she had when Mark had known her in high school. Jody, trapped in the taut young body of a fifteen-year-old, was in a bikini and playing volleyball with some friends. Mark thought he would slip past her unnoticed, but Jody tossed the ball to him, smiled an alluring grin and waved him over. She was every bit as sexy as Mark remembered, as buxom as a woman, yet still as thin as she had been as an adolescent. He was nearly twice her age, but he toyed with the idea of taking Jody up on the offer; if this was a hallucination, the sex would be sandy, perverse and exciting, a far cry from the clumsy fumble they had shared behind the columns in the Schonbrunn Gloriette.
‘Of course, that’s a felony,’ Mark told himself. He rolled the ball back and waved. Maybe next time, he thought. Jody’s body, like Herr Peterson’s old shirt, would remain unchanged in his memory for ever.
‘You’d better move along,’ a familiar voice warned from nearby. ‘That girl is too young for you now, soldier.’
‘Who’s that?’ Mark searched the beach. His father was disappearing into the throng; there wasn’t time to waste.
‘I’m over here.’ The reply came from several places at once.
‘Brynne?’ he said, hesitantly, ‘Brynne, where are you?’ He turned a tight circle, praying one of the beachgoers would transform into the attractive knife-wielder.
‘I’m here.’ She was behind him now, closer to the water.
Mark took a last look at his father and ran for the surf. ‘Brynne!’ he shouted, ignoring the irritated sunbathers. ‘Brynne! Where are you? Please, Brynne, wait!’
‘I’m here, near the waves.’
‘I can’t find you!’ Mark jogged into the foam. ‘Brynne?’
A young girl in a bright yellow bathing suit kept pace with him. She couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. She had a head of rowdy curls that blew hither and yon in the breeze. ‘Do you want to watch me swim?’ she called as she splashed into the breakers.
‘What? Who?’ He was only half-listening.
‘Who? You, silly,’ she cried and ducked beneath a rolling wave. When she popped up, she brushed the hair from her face and said, ‘I can do the scramble!’
Mark moved along, still searching the myriad faces for Brynne. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ he said, ‘but you shouldn’t talk to strangers. This is Long Island. Where’s your mother?’
‘Watch this!’ she shrieked, paddling excitedly towards Galway, but fifty yards out, she ducked beneath the surface, then emerged again and turned back towards the beach. She made a halfhearted attempt to stay calm, paddling and kicking tenaciously, then disappeared again.
‘Hey!’ Mark stopped. ‘Hey, kid! Hey!’ He ran a few steps up the beach, pointing and calling, ‘Anybody know that little girl? Anyone? Out there, in the yellow!’ A few sunbathers heard him, lifting their heads and looking around, but no one replied, and no one went in after the girl.
‘Ah, shit,’ Mark spat. ‘Shit and shit. I don’t have time for this.’ He kept an eye on her while shrugging Redrick’s tunic over his head. She was in the throes of a panic attack now, clearly drowning in the undertow. ‘Brynne,’ he called into the crowd, ‘stay here. I’ll be right back.’
He sprinted into the waves, diving over incoming breakers and towards the struggling child.
Milla ran until the waves reached her waist. She dived beneath an incoming breaker, holding her breath and paddling furiously for deeper water. The ocean here was icy and rough and her body felt like it was being stung with a thousand prickly needles. When she finally went n
umb, it was worse, because then it was nearly impossible to get her arms and legs to keep going. She was cold and scared and she sank twice before giving up and casting a spell to warm the water. She knew she shouldn’t use magic here; they’d all told her she mustn’t, but it was too cold to go on otherwise. Beyond the breakers a man struggled, drowning, flailing and shouting for help.
‘Look at me, Hannah,’ Milla said, but she wasn’t sure anyone could hear. ‘I’m doing the doggy-scramble.’ Her tangled curls matted on her head in twisting coils; she kicked her way towards the drowning man.
‘Hold on,’ Milla shouted to him, ‘I’m coming.’ The water was still rough, but at least it was warm now. Alen and Hannah followed, swimming through cold waves, trying frantically to catch up. Milla didn’t wait for them. So far, none of the others seemed to realise she was swimming out to greet them.
Steven pulled up just short of the waves. It was happening, now. The sand and surf blurred, melting into a bluish-beige canvas. ‘Shit, this is it,’ he shouted. Alen and Hannah were already in the water. Milla was paddling out past the breakers; why, Steven had no idea, but he needed them all back. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, not with three of them in the water, for Christ’s sake. What the hell was going on?
The elderly beachcomber appeared suddenly, tugging gently at his sleeve. ‘It’s time, Steven Taylor,’ she said. Are you ready?’
‘What?’ He nearly lost his footing in the wet sand. ‘Who are you? How do you-? Mrs Winter?’
‘Hello, Steven. I’ve been waiting for you to get back.’
‘What? Mrs W? You can’t be here; this isn’t right. What are you doing here?’ Despite the waxy backdrop that had been Jones Beach State Park, Mrs Winter, the woman who owned the pastry shop next to the First National Bank of Idaho Springs, was standing there, in sharp focus and looking at him expectantly. ‘I don’t understand,’ was all he could manage to say.
‘I’m here to see you through this,’ she said. ‘Now, pay attention.’ She gestured with a bony finger, out past the place Milla was determinedly swimming towards.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ he asked, bemused.
‘Exactly what you came here to do, Steven.’ Mrs W spoke as if the answer was obvious. ‘Close the Fold. You can do it.’
Knee-deep in roiling grey surf, Garec shouted over the wind, ‘There! Steven, Gilmour, look!’
A muscular black man rose from the water until he was chest-deep. Apparently oblivious to the cold, he studied the length of sand. He didn’t look like he was treading water to stay in place; it was more like he was sitting on something, a pedestal, maybe, or a submerged bench. His arms hung calmly at his sides; he was obviously waiting for something.
As Steven felt the magic rise, he tried to remember everything Gilmour and Alen had taught him about the ash dream. The sea blurred beyond recognition; but Milla’s tiny form, still swimming, remained. She paddled towards the newcomer, shouting to him and reaching out, but all the while, the man – Mark Jenkins, presumably – ignored her.
In a moment, Steven understood why.
Three rips, the ones he had come to expect, formed in the paraffin backdrop, just as they had in Idaho Springs, and again in the glen when he had faced Nerak. The irregular edges were like ragged tears in cloth. The ocean rolled and broke, lapping steadily at the beach, until it encountered one of the tears. Then it simply ceased to be.
Inside the first of the jagged rips, Steven saw what could only be Welstar Palace. Stark and forbidding, sitting atop a short rise above the river, the great keep stood sentinel over a massive military encampment. Alen and Hannah’s descriptions had not done the place justice. Steven was glad he had never reached it. Thousands of shadowy figures stood in patient formation, division after division, all awaiting their lord’s summons.
Inside the second rip, Steven saw what he expected: a mirror image of the state park, complete with him, Gilmour, Jennifer and Garec. The Ronan bowman was running up the beach, his feet kicking up sand as he hurried towards the Central Mall. Through the Fold and from over his shoulder, Steven heard Gilmour shout in stereo, ‘Garec, wait!’
‘I need my bow!’ came the disembodied reply.
‘There’s no time! Come back!’
Steven didn’t know whether Garec heeded Gilmour’s call because he was distracted by what he saw through the third tear. It stood to reason that one opening in the Fold would show one’s origins, while the second would reveal a destination, an adjoining room a world away. However, nothing had prepared Steven for what was behind the third. It showed Mark, standing over the spell table, calling forth all manner of dangerous-looking magics, swirling amalgams of creativity and destruction. Leaning into his work, Mark’s arms disappeared to the elbow, buried in Ages of accumulated mysticism and knowledge. When he drew them forth, the power of the Larion Senate spilled over the sides in dazzling waves of energy.
Mark was on a sandy hilltop, like a dune, flanked by a forested vale so thick with tangled trees and underbrush that it was impossible to see within, even by the light of scores of braziers emitting clouds of treacherous black smoke.
That’s it! Steven thought. That’s how he poisons them. It’s the smoke.
The tears, suspended above the breakwater, moved together and melded into one amoebic laceration, now a gaping hole in the fabric of the world. While Steven watched, the rip moved backwards, coming to rest on the water and swallowing the muscular black man.
‘Do it, Steven,’ Mrs Winter said, ‘before it’s too late.’ She was still at his side and Steven wondered for a moment why he hadn’t seen her when he peered back at himself through the Fold. Was she truly there? Was she some figment of his imagination, a phantom born of his fear and anxiety?
‘Do what?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know how to get inside the dreams. I’m not ready.’
‘Don’t you worry about their dreams,’ she said. ‘Fantus is taking care of that. You close the Fold. You know how. You could paint the damned thing yellow if you wanted.’
Who is this woman?
He decided to start with the black man on the submerged pedestal. Perhaps blasting him into submission might throw off-balance whatever it was Mark had planned.
But the man was gone. And so was Milla. When Steven checked back, he saw Alen swimming clumsily to where the little girl had been; he disappeared into the vacant rip in the mystical canvas. He tried to shout, but Alen had already vanished. Jennifer waded into the surf and started pulling on Hannah’s arm, dragging her daughter back to the beach. It looked like Hannah had given up; perhaps she had seen Milla sink beneath the surface, or even disappear inside the Fold. He could see she was shivering and sobbing, inconsolable. Her mother held her tightly across the shoulders as the freezing waves continued to lash at them from behind.
What’s happening? Steven thought. This is mayhem. I don’t even know where to start.
‘Think, Steven,’ Mrs Winter said, as calmly as ever, ‘think. You know how to do this, but you must act quickly.’
The place where the conjoined tears fell was changing, no longer waxy-blue and beige; now the area was grey, mottled with dabs of black, dark blue and forest green. But it wasn’t the colour change that worried him, nor the fact that the rips had joined one another and now spread out like some sorcerer’s blanket – my mother’s old coverlet. What worried Steven was how rapidly the area was growing, and why. In only a few seconds, the hole had stretched nearly the length of the boardwalk. He could smell it now: dank with decay and death, and sweet, like gangrene, a magic tunnel to pestilence and who knew what monsters and atrocities.
The stone-faced black man had disappeared, but as the Fold tore ever wider along the Long Island coast, there remained a disturbance where he had been: a figure, like a man, but formed of sea spray, foam, and some of Mark’s dangerous black smoke still stood there, nearly invisible, but there, nonetheless.
It’s him, Steven thought, that’s who’s directing all this. He opened the Fold, an
d I stood by and watched it happen.
The first regiments appeared in a line beyond the break, an inhuman wave, twenty thousand-strong and spread out, shoulder-to-shoulder, over several hundred yards. Their faces bore a mixture of pleasure and pain, of awareness and blissful ignorance. Some could clearly understand what they were doing, where they were and why they had been transported to another world, while others could scarcely recognise even that they were chest-deep in the sea. Some were covered with open sores, or had obviously broken bones and dislocations, even amputations. There was clear evidence of rampant infection, bacterial and viral, but the invasion force ignored all of it. There were some who hooted, chuckled or even roared with laughter; they were trapped somewhere in their lives where life had been hilarious. Others wailed, sobbed or screamed in anger.
But though different memories had them ensnared, they all trod through the breakers, this wall of indefatigable warriors, following the same orders: deliver the milled bark; enslave the populace and await the master’s arrival. A second rank followed the first and before the front line had reached the beach, a third emerged from the depths.
Gilmour was sitting cross-legged in the sand, his eyes closed in concentration. He didn’t see the first of the warriors as they splashed up the beach.
For Mark, there was nothing like swimming, nothing that made such intense physical demands of him. While he was a New York state champion on the surface – the butterfly, the crawl, the backstroke – he lived for those days when he could dive into the inhospitable waters off the Long Island coast. He had grown up training in a pool, but he and his friends learned early that the real test came after their competitive meets, when they would gather on this very beach to discover who was truly the island’s strongest swimmer. The race, from Point Lookout across the bay to Rockaway and back, was the unsaddling of many swimmers; Mark had seen too many brazen students, some foolishly emboldened by alcohol, setting out boldly, only to find themselves giving up the fight and being hauled into the trailing rescue boat for the ultimate row of shame.
