I opened my eyes in the gloom.
A rocky seashore, swept by lashing wind and spray. Dark clouds pressing
down on the horizon. The sea, hard and angular with jagged ridges, the
colour of a dull knife. My side ached from where a boulder had been
pressing into it.
I winced and looked around me, to see three of my closest friends
picking themselves up in a similar bewildered fashion.
There was Steve, my oldest friend. Craig, a guy I had known at school
for some years, and Candice Brand, the first love of my life. The sex
pot.
"Where are we, Dunc?" said Steve, his voice all but lost against the
angry air.
"I don’t know," I said ? and truly, I didn’t. Didn’t know where the hell
I was, or why I was here with these three people. What the hell was
this? I had no memory of any previous moment. This was as real and as immediate as life got.
I was here, on some desolate shore, looking into the teeth of a storm. I felt the rain. Saw the flickering lightning away over the tableaux of
water. Felt my friends around me, just as scared and shocked by all of
this as I was.
"I’m hungry," said Candice plaintively. She looked like a three year
old in an abattoir, completely shattered. God, I hadn’t seen her for
years. Why was she here with me?
"Well, we can’t stay here!" I shouted. "We have to get to shelter. We’ll
die out here! Let’s just move along this shore until we find something,
or someone."
So, we did. We walked. We stumbled over shards of rock, and closed our eyes to slits against the wind that kept trying to pry them apart and hurl salt into them.
We didn’t stop. We didn’t freak out. How could we do anything except
walk blindly, on and on? We had no concept of where we were or what had happened before we woke up. We may as well have been baby crocodiles, crawling from the yolk, finding our way by pure instinct to the nearest water. For lack of anything better to do, we walked.
After what seemed like hours (it was hard to tell, my watch had smashed against a rock before I ever woke up) Craig wiped his eyes free of water and lurched up onto a small ridge. He pointed away up the shore, into the deepening gloom.
"There! There! A light."
The rest of us topped the ridge and followed him down into a small
inlet. Up on the other side of it, there was indeed a pale yellow glow,
blurry but there, without a doubt. It seemed to float above the shore.
God, at last, something to fix on.
Maybe there was someone who could help us, tell us where we were, when we were.
We ran as fast as we could, staggering almost comically on the
treacherous, slick stones of the beach, that threatened to hurl us to
the ground with cleanly snapped ankles. Soon we found ourselves out of the cursed wind, leaning up against a pale green lighthouse that towered up into the night, impervious to the elements.
It looked like it had been there a long time, and this was backed up by
various graffiti messages etched into the wall:
"Helderberg 1827. Awash on reef, cargo lost,
last known locale German South West"
and
"My name is Diana. If you pass this way, tell me where to find you.
Am going on."
With a deep shiver, I saw there were names and dates and pleas for help,
stretching right around the base of the tower, an uncountable number.
Where were these people now?
Some of the writings were fresh, others
lost under a coating of salt, some just bleeding down the wall like
rust.
"Hurry," said Candice. My three friends huddled behind me, pushing
towards a door, about five feet high, set in the wall.
"OK, OK, don’t push!"
I heaved at the door, and it creaked inwards. Not locked. Maybe someone was here. Inside, silence, but for a distant roar beyond the walls, and the drip of water somewhere high above. The four of us began to climb a long, winding stair, lit by faint flickering bulbs set into the steps, and covered my mesh wire. On the first landing, still no people, but a sign:
ONE WAY
Odd. But we went on. We had to find someone. Anyone.
I almost raced up the last two flights of stairs, driven on to the top,
the others clattering behind me.
Finally, a door with a ribbon of light under it. Not even thinking to
knock, I pushed the handle and fell into the room, wet. Shaky and out of breath.
The others came behind me. As they swept into the room a cold wind
seemed to come with them, and rush around the room, hurling papers off one of the two desks I saw shunted against the wall. Then it died down, and we were there, looking across the room at an old, grizzled guy with a newspaper clutched in one hand, and his coffee in the other. His mouth was an O of perfect surprise.
"Please…” I said, my voice almost a whisper, "we’re lost. We’re lost
out there.
Can you help us?"
The old timer, backed away against the wall, his face a mask of fright,
as if we were some crew of storm demons come down to torment him on a streak of lightning.
His hand was white were it clutched the coffee mug.
I moved towards him, my hand outstretched - clearly we were having
trouble communicating. "No!" he cried, "stay back. Get away!" He was by now almost one with the
wall. Around us, green lights blinked quietly on humming screens.
Outside, the storm hurled spray against the panes.
Somewhere above, a giant light hurled out rays into the swallowing dark. No one moved.
At last, very slowly, the old man moved to a chair on the far side of
the room and sat heavily.
"Why do they keep coming?" he said softly. "When can I go home to my family."
"Look", I told him. " We just want to know where we are. We’re utterly
lost. I don’t even know how we got to this place,"
"None of them do" said the man. "They come to me for answers.
Well, boy, here is the answer you seek. The sooner I tell you, the
sooner you might take your chill from this room and leave me be."
Angrily, he thrust his paper down flat in front of us, and smoothed out
the crumpled front page.
"There is your answer!" He stepped back, and we all crowded around to read the Globe newspaper, dated 16 June, 1993 (some six years back, by my addled reckoning).
RUNAWAY FIRE KILLS FOUR
Port St Johns, Transkei, South Africa.
A runaway fire enveloped a backpackers here early on Saturday morning.
According to the owner, dry weather in the area had led to many bush
fires and uncontrolled blazes in recent weeks. It is believed that a
group of young holidaymakers from Natal were trapped and burnt to death
in the blaze, which started when a bier of paraffin-soaked wood was
toppled during an argument between two of the travelers.
One eyewitness, who did not wish to be named, told this reporter that
"There was no chance. There’s only one door on that damn place, and the
fire spread from the front room.
There was so much smoke I couldn’t see. I managed to smash a louver
window at the back and jump out into the lane. I pulled two people after
me, and the Ozzies (sic) got out through a side window, but those other
four…I think they were drunk. They never made it."
The four dead are known to be
Candice Brand, 18
Steven Drake, 21
Craig Serkis, 22 and Duncan Fine, 22
Below the article, a black and white photograph. The four of us, taken
in Durban one new years. Smiling, and draped over each other with the abandon of youth.
With a dread shock, I realized what we were looking at. An obituary of
sorts.
Around me, the others were pale white. Almost ghostly. Candice gaped at me, a tear running down her cheek (or perhaps it was sea spray).
"You see", said the lighthouse keeper. " You cannot be here. You’re
dead. Dead!"
At the point, the room seemed to close about me in a red haze. I was
suddenly outside myself, looking at my own horrified face. As I
watched, an old-style curlicued border appeared around me, with a legend
stenciled on it:
THE END.
I watched my mouth open, and a scream issued
from it such as I have never heard, a long, anguished wailing against
the impossibility of what was happening. "Noooooo!!" I screamed,
- and was still screaming blue murder when I bolted upright in my bed at home,
drenched in sweat, as the scream hoarsely died away in my mouth.
This was in July of 1999, and I never, ever forgot that dream.
Nor will I ever. It’s etched in my brain.
Do I still have an appointment to keep on that distant
windswept beach one day?
Do you?
No comments:
Post a Comment