A foreword from Vlad.
Hat spotted this unfortunate fellow blundering around Wintermarsh Street in a highly confused state. As we watched him, it became clear that he was entirely unaware of the presence of others around him, several people bid him a good afternoon as they passed, however he ignored them and kept his thousand yard stare fixed firmly ahead. It was when the Majorettes marched along the street and he passed through them without flinching, I realised he must be labouring under a powerful glamour, there are very few people in possession of this level of power, and I was sure I knew who was responsible for his condition. I resolved to intervene in order to satisfy my curiosity regarding his predicament and the person responsible for it.
Insinuating myself into the time and space his tortured mind had been placed in, I revealed myself to him and gently guided him to my home, where I poured him a good cider brandy and encouraged him to reveal his story to me. He seemed eager to tell his tale to someone who might believe him, and it all came gushing out in a garbled stream of consciousness. It was clear to me, that he had unwittingly become one of Poppy Seagrim’s ‘clients’.
The following is an account of this poor, lost fool’s experience in his own words, (more or less), I have, as is my habit tidied up his grammar, and translated some of his more bewildered ramblings.
When he had finished, I escorted him safely from Wintermarsh Street to make his way back to his life, where he must wait for Poppy to call in the debt he now owes her, which she will surely do at some point, in this life or the next.
Hat spotted this unfortunate fellow blundering around Wintermarsh Street in a highly confused state. As we watched him, it became clear that he was entirely unaware of the presence of others around him, several people bid him a good afternoon as they passed, however he ignored them and kept his thousand yard stare fixed firmly ahead. It was when the Majorettes marched along the street and he passed through them without flinching, I realised he must be labouring under a powerful glamour, there are very few people in possession of this level of power, and I was sure I knew who was responsible for his condition. I resolved to intervene in order to satisfy my curiosity regarding his predicament and the person responsible for it.
Insinuating myself into the time and space his tortured mind had been placed in, I revealed myself to him and gently guided him to my home, where I poured him a good cider brandy and encouraged him to reveal his story to me. He seemed eager to tell his tale to someone who might believe him, and it all came gushing out in a garbled stream of consciousness. It was clear to me, that he had unwittingly become one of Poppy Seagrim’s ‘clients’.
The following is an account of this poor, lost fool’s experience in his own words, (more or less), I have, as is my habit tidied up his grammar, and translated some of his more bewildered ramblings.
When he had finished, I escorted him safely from Wintermarsh Street to make his way back to his life, where he must wait for Poppy to call in the debt he now owes her, which she will surely do at some point, in this life or the next.
FELO-DE-SE BAY.
I became aware without knowledge of how or why I came to be there, that I was shuffling down a lane impetuously carpeted with wild grasses, plantain and dandelions. The day was oppressively hot and still, without the smallest breeze to rattle the seed heads or bring relief from the torrid sun, I had never been to this place before, nor heard of it, yet I knew it to be Gropecount Lane, I was also aware that if I continued on my present course I would arrive at a pond. The pond would be surrounded by woodland, and beyond that, acres of pasture.
Grudgingly, I did not follow the lane to its end, although I was able to see the trees and the welcoming shade they cast, could almost taste the cool water of the pond, feel it on my dusty, sweat coursed skin, instead I veered right, onto another narrow road.
The road was lined on either side by brick terraced workers cottages. High up on the wall of the last house on the left was a cast iron sign, the paint had long since peeled away, but I could discern the raised lettering. ‘Wintermarsh Street’.
I studied each house as I made my way up the street, sunlight glaring from grimy curtainless windows, confounding my tired, gritty eyes. Unruly gardens clambered through cast iron railings, onto the weed choked street.
The small front yard of number eighty eight was different, at its centre stood a fig tree, old and gnarled, but well-tended and heavy with fruit, herbs of many kinds flourished unconstrained, lush and weed free, I recognised Pennyroyal, unusual these days.
On this house, the frames of the sash windows were bright with fresh white paint, the glass gleaming, curtains hanging crisply inside. I found myself at the gate, the front door was solidly constructed from pitch pine without a slot for post, no glazing panel, and no button to press for a bell. The gate swung silently inward, and with only the briefest hesitation, I took the few short steps required to reach the door.
I reached out intending to grasp the brass head of a man composed of leaves and flowers, presuming the ‘Green Man’, to be a knocker. Before I could do so, the door opened, and I was confronted by a tallish man, a little over six feet, with a hook nose and kind, grey eyes, his head crowned with an unkempt shock of crinkly grey hair. He stepped aside to allow me access.
‘She’s in the garden.’ He said. It seemed I was expected.
I walked by him, through a short hallway into a comfortable lounge, the house glowed with the rich honey patina of polished pine floorboards, two ancient, voluminous leather sofas loomed against the walls, and in the centre of the room hunkered an old sea chest, probably elm, dozens of books were stacked on its gnarly surface.
Stepping through what seemed to be simply an opening in the wall, lacking as it did an actual door, I entered a garden, beneath my feet, red bricks laid in a herringbone pattern, and everywhere lush green foliage, ferns of every description, interspersed with palm and banana, and scrambling through all of this, sweet peas of staggeringly bright colour and indescribable perfume, Jasmine too.
I continued through this spectacular garden as it stretched before and above me to the limit of my vision. The brick gave way to grass, thick and lusciously green, sprinkled with daisies that in no way detracted from this billowy lawn, their delicate nodding heads only added to its irresistible draw. I resisted the urge to kick off my shoes to feel the cool softness beneath my feet, and between my toes.
My eye was drawn to a massive Gunnera, perhaps twenty feet tall, and twelve across, before this mighty plant squatted a simple bench composed of two tree stumps with a plank of polished oak laid across them.
I found her there, or as I now believe, she allowed me to find her there, perched on the bench, a young girl around nine years of age, wearing a simple yellow summer dress with straps over suntanned shoulders, on her feet, which did not quite reach the ground, she wore unlaced converse all-stars without socks. Her hair was strawberry blond, long and wild, but radiating health, freckles danced across her face. She smiled at me.
I found myself in the presence of someone, something so beautiful, it was almost incomprehensible to me, she radiated kindness and innocence.
Her smile filled me with joy, stripped away my petty internal conflicts, obliterated all ego, and bestowed upon me a peace I had never known. Her green eyes held me, and in their depths I saw wisdom and power, they seemed to be the eyes of someone older. Far, far older.
She asked me a question.
‘I never got to go sea fishing with him’.
Poppy, that was her name I believe, Poppy Seagrim, raised an arm, pointing further down the garden as she smiled encouragingly. I wanted to ask her how I knew her name, but words eluded me, instead I found my feet and set off toward an impenetrable barrier of firethorn which was alive with bees. The hedge swept from the right, seeming to join with another composed of holly and cotoneaster bordering the left hand side of the garden. As I drew nearer, I saw that where the hedges met, there was an arch of old red brick set at an angle, effectively concealing what might lie beyond.
I stepped through to find myself at the top of a set of worn stone steps, the air tasted somewhat like the ocean, salty yes, but with a metallic, chemical quality, synthetic, like ‘essence of ocean,’ conceived perhaps, in a laboratory by a perfumer basing his creation on scientific formulae rather than any actual experience of the real thing. One more step revealed the bay below me.
A small cove surrounded on all of its steep sides by thick woodland, the steps that were my vantage point, the only obvious access. Scanning the beach, I saw it was composed of uniformly sized and shaped white rocks, about the width of a man’s splayed hand, packed tightly together like cobbles which gleamed in the moonlight. On the shore, the ocean, a muddy green hue reminiscent of the colour of the water that may be seen leaking from the rock near tin mines, moved unnaturally silently back and forth, giving the appearance of some vast, breathing thing, rather than the more familiar tidal effect, and here, the rocks rubbed against one another, clicking and chattering. I spotted a small boat, old and constructed of timber, white paint flaking on its hull, it looked more like the kind of thing that belonged on a pleasure lake rather than the open ocean.
At the front of the boat, the pointy end, a man stood, his back to me, gaze fixed on the liquid horizon.
I started down the stone steps, worn smooth at the centre by countless footfalls, allowing myself a nervous smile. The man on the beach is the reason I refer to the prow of boats as the pointy end, he was at one time a boat builder, and my deliberate ignorance amuses and infuriates him in equal measure.
Stepping onto the beach, taking care to place my foot on the dome of the rock, instinctively avoiding the places where the cobbles touched (step on a crack, break your back), the first rock gave slightly under my weight, causing a coarse grating sound like cold steel drawn across granite. The man standing at the side of the boat turned at the sound, grinning, and I returned his grin with one of my own, picking my way carefully toward him, closing the distance between us wordlessly.
I did something then that I rarely do, I hugged him. Tight. I held onto him longer than I usually might. He made no comment about this, simply hugging me back, it is easy for him, he is free and easy with his man-hugs, unembarrassed by public displays of emotion, it is one of the things I admire most about him.
Finally, I let him go, and carefully placing each foot, stepped back to look at him, he appeared unchanged since our most recent day out, surfing at Puttsborough just two weeks before, his black hair, flecked with grey seemed a little wilder than it was then, a couple of days stubble added to the laid back look.
He nodded at the boat. ‘Want to catch some fish?’
Shoving the boat into the water, we jumped in. He looked out to sea once more as the boat turned about and began to silently push through the water, seemingly following his gaze.
For some reason, despite everything that had happened up to that point, which I had accepted without question, this unsettled me.
‘How the hell are you doing that?’ I asked.
He grinned at me.
‘There are certain perks.’ He said.
‘Worth the price?’ I asked, instantly regretting the words, concerned he might think I was judging him, and wrestling with my own guilt, having convinced myself that if I had paid more attention, been a better friend, I would have seen the signs, helped somehow. Prevented him from doing what he did.
For several long moments we carved through the dark water in silence, I was transfixed by the mercurial reflection of a fattening moon.
‘When did it get dark?’ I asked him, something to break the silence.
He shrugged, and his big ass grin had returned, my thoughtless words forgotten.
‘It hasn’t.’ He said.
He was right, the sun had plunged beneath the still horizon, however the cloudless obsidian sky was pinpricked with the brilliance of billions of stars, and the light of the gibbous moon illuminated the seascape with steely light.
I noticed the absence of artificial illumination on the now distant shores, no window panes glowed, streetlights did not glare in their uniform rows, the sweeping lights of vehicles could not be seen.
The boat drifted to a halt and, I peered over the edge.
Into the abyss.
He handed me a pre-baited rod and we both aimed them at the flat, green-black water, our lines disappearing into the infinite blackness. I began to wonder what we might hook, what might be down there, in that profound, dark ocean.
He got a bite, snapped his rod back.
The rod arced alarmingly, line singing as it tightened, throwing off tiny droplets of water. He began to reel in his catch as I watched the spot where his line plunged into the darkness and saw movement below. The surface rippled and something breached, a frantic flashing body captivated me, silver, green and blue reflected the moonlight as he yanked the panicked fish on board.
‘It’s a mackerel.’ I said, oddly relieved.
He shot me a look.
‘What’d you expect, The Kraken?’
‘RELEASE THE KRAKEN!’ I bellowed in my best doom laden Lovecraftian voice.
He dropped into a squat, worried, haunted eyes darting in all directions across the surface of the ocean.
‘You shouldn’t say things like that here.’ He whispered.
I swept my eyes over the dark water that surrounded us, joining him in the bottom of the boat, suddenly overwhelmed with dread.
‘Sorry.’ I whimpered, ‘I didn’t know.’
I stared at him, horrified at my stupidity. He kept the look of concern on his face for a full five seconds before collapsing in a fit of childish giggling.
‘Yes, very mature’. I said, relieved.
We both grinned idiotically, as I felt a tug on my line. Instinctively, I whipped back the rod.
In a short time the bottom of the boat was covered with thrashing fish, I could not help but pity them.
‘Funny thing is, I’m not really that keen on fish, you know, to eat.’ I said.
‘Me neither.’
We began to throw the fish back into the sea, watching as their metallic, glowing bodies returned to the deep.
‘Nigel wouldn’t approve of this.’ I said. ‘He would never have thrown back that Narwhal he caught in Hamilton stream.’
He laughed hard and loud at this reference to a mutual friend, who is prone to bouts of exaggeration. Nigel had never purported to have landed a Narwhal at Hamilton stream, that was my own fiction, but I think he did once claim to have had a fight with a Mountain Lion.
As we finished releasing the fish and packing away our gear we reminisced about old times. Floating on the flat calm depths we recalled our time as friends, every memory eliciting a laugh or a smile. I will forever be grateful for that time, keep it close for the rest of my life.
The boat began to move, altering its course, ploughing back the way we had come under unknown power. We reached the shore much too soon, and the boat grounded, pushing up on to the rocks, fully out of the water.
We jumped out, me forgetting about my ‘step on a crack’ rule. I did not want to because it was all happening too quickly, but I hugged him, sensing it was my final opportunity, something was pulling me away from him, toward the stone steps with the brick arch at their summit.
‘You can’t can you?’ I asked nodding toward the steps.
He moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘It’s impossible for me’.
Inexplicably, I found myself at the foot of the steps with no memory of covering the distance, I attempted to take a step back the way I had come, but was forced back by an excruciating pain like a thousand needles in my feet.
‘See you Tim.’ I said, raising a hand, impossibly, I was more than halfway up the steps to the brick arch.
‘Goodbye old friend, thanks for coming.’ He returned the wave, turning it into a cheesy salute.
With strength I did not know I possessed, I forced my feet back down a step, it hurt like hell, but I had to do it.
‘Are you happy?’ I asked.
‘I can’t tell yet, don’t know what this place is, or what happens next, but the shit storm that was in my head is gone, I have peace for now at least’.
He is gone.
I was at the top of the steps, the sounds and smells of the cove diminishing as my treacherous feet returned me to the brick arch. I turned my head for one final glance at the bay, and wished I had not, because I saw something no living eye was meant to witness. It was a glimpse that can have only been the briefest moment, however it seemed to last far longer, as if time stood still, if time exists in that dreadful place, and it will be seared onto my memory forever.
The ocean, if it had ever been there was gone, leaving a vast landscape of gleaming white rocks. Where the water had been was a vast canyon, the sides of which were beginning to collapse, rocks working loose and clattering downward. The whole landscape was now shuddering rhythmically as the rocks began to turn, row upon row stretching from the foot of the steps to the horizon, each rolling around one hundred and eighty degrees. Accompanying this phenomenon was a tumultuous, hollow tock-tock-tock sound like death’s own pendulum, killing time, quickened to a frantic flurry as it must sound to the condemned man in his cell, tearing away the final seconds of his life in shreds as he awaits his appointment with the gallows.
Each rock face was exposed, revealing its true nature, not rocks at all, but skulls, billions of them, stretching for an unimaginable distance and to unknowable depths, no longer gleaming white, but grey, splintered, and putrescent with decomposing flesh and hair. They chittered against one another restlessly, the landscape rippling with their fitful agitation, sightless eye sockets glaring at nothing, nasal fossa unable to scent my fear, yellow, broken teeth grinning savagely.
The rippling landscape began to undulate and then to surge, skulls bouncing and clattering in every direction, and on the spot where the boat stood, the skulls began to form an unstable mound, piling upward ever higher, forming a bone mountain from which skulls tumbled steadily. From this awful dome burst a leviathan of colossal proportions, a grotesque chimera of a Megalodon and a blue whale that would dwarf both of those creatures, its immense mouth opened impossibly wide, swallowing several tons of skulls topped by the tiny boat in a single gulp.
A short time before, I had been concerned I might encounter The Kraken, and if I had not been gripped with fear, I might have laughed at the thought, this creature would have gobbled up a dozen Krakens like calamari vol-au-vents.
As the creature reached the apex of its leap, its cavernous maw closed, and it rolled its massive black eye toward me, foolish as it sounds now, it appeared to hang in the air studying me, cataloguing me, filing me away in its memory, and with no words, it seemed to say, ‘I will see you again.’
I saw the yellowish vessels in its sclera, heard a click as the nictitating membrane drew across the eye, and as its massive body arced and finally began to drop, its pectoral fins spread wide as if in anticipation of an embrace, I saw the muscles shifting beneath its scarred flesh, scars presumably gained from aeons swimming through an eternal abyss of human bone. It hit the ocean of death head first, its massive bulk easily displacing the crust of bone, its body disappearing beneath the surface leaving the towering tail fin, which lingered for a moment, bending over forward briefly before righting itself, as if bowing, or perhaps waving au revoir, then in a final clatter of human bone, it was gone.
Finally, I was able to force the muscles in my neck to relax and allow my head to face forward, I walked through the brick arch, not into Poppy’s garden, but on the street outside her home.
Wintermarsh Street remained apparently abandoned, the houses standing empty, their gardens exuberant with weeds. I stumbled to the gate of number eighty eight. The garden had been commandeered by a mob of invasive weeds, they had strangled what was once a beautiful fig tree.
I became aware without knowledge of how or why I came to be there, that I was shuffling down a lane impetuously carpeted with wild grasses, plantain and dandelions. The day was oppressively hot and still, without the smallest breeze to rattle the seed heads or bring relief from the torrid sun, I had never been to this place before, nor heard of it, yet I knew it to be Gropecount Lane, I was also aware that if I continued on my present course I would arrive at a pond. The pond would be surrounded by woodland, and beyond that, acres of pasture.
Grudgingly, I did not follow the lane to its end, although I was able to see the trees and the welcoming shade they cast, could almost taste the cool water of the pond, feel it on my dusty, sweat coursed skin, instead I veered right, onto another narrow road.
The road was lined on either side by brick terraced workers cottages. High up on the wall of the last house on the left was a cast iron sign, the paint had long since peeled away, but I could discern the raised lettering. ‘Wintermarsh Street’.
I studied each house as I made my way up the street, sunlight glaring from grimy curtainless windows, confounding my tired, gritty eyes. Unruly gardens clambered through cast iron railings, onto the weed choked street.
The small front yard of number eighty eight was different, at its centre stood a fig tree, old and gnarled, but well-tended and heavy with fruit, herbs of many kinds flourished unconstrained, lush and weed free, I recognised Pennyroyal, unusual these days.
On this house, the frames of the sash windows were bright with fresh white paint, the glass gleaming, curtains hanging crisply inside. I found myself at the gate, the front door was solidly constructed from pitch pine without a slot for post, no glazing panel, and no button to press for a bell. The gate swung silently inward, and with only the briefest hesitation, I took the few short steps required to reach the door.
I reached out intending to grasp the brass head of a man composed of leaves and flowers, presuming the ‘Green Man’, to be a knocker. Before I could do so, the door opened, and I was confronted by a tallish man, a little over six feet, with a hook nose and kind, grey eyes, his head crowned with an unkempt shock of crinkly grey hair. He stepped aside to allow me access.
‘She’s in the garden.’ He said. It seemed I was expected.
I walked by him, through a short hallway into a comfortable lounge, the house glowed with the rich honey patina of polished pine floorboards, two ancient, voluminous leather sofas loomed against the walls, and in the centre of the room hunkered an old sea chest, probably elm, dozens of books were stacked on its gnarly surface.
Stepping through what seemed to be simply an opening in the wall, lacking as it did an actual door, I entered a garden, beneath my feet, red bricks laid in a herringbone pattern, and everywhere lush green foliage, ferns of every description, interspersed with palm and banana, and scrambling through all of this, sweet peas of staggeringly bright colour and indescribable perfume, Jasmine too.
I continued through this spectacular garden as it stretched before and above me to the limit of my vision. The brick gave way to grass, thick and lusciously green, sprinkled with daisies that in no way detracted from this billowy lawn, their delicate nodding heads only added to its irresistible draw. I resisted the urge to kick off my shoes to feel the cool softness beneath my feet, and between my toes.
My eye was drawn to a massive Gunnera, perhaps twenty feet tall, and twelve across, before this mighty plant squatted a simple bench composed of two tree stumps with a plank of polished oak laid across them.
I found her there, or as I now believe, she allowed me to find her there, perched on the bench, a young girl around nine years of age, wearing a simple yellow summer dress with straps over suntanned shoulders, on her feet, which did not quite reach the ground, she wore unlaced converse all-stars without socks. Her hair was strawberry blond, long and wild, but radiating health, freckles danced across her face. She smiled at me.
I found myself in the presence of someone, something so beautiful, it was almost incomprehensible to me, she radiated kindness and innocence.
Her smile filled me with joy, stripped away my petty internal conflicts, obliterated all ego, and bestowed upon me a peace I had never known. Her green eyes held me, and in their depths I saw wisdom and power, they seemed to be the eyes of someone older. Far, far older.
She asked me a question.
‘I never got to go sea fishing with him’.
Poppy, that was her name I believe, Poppy Seagrim, raised an arm, pointing further down the garden as she smiled encouragingly. I wanted to ask her how I knew her name, but words eluded me, instead I found my feet and set off toward an impenetrable barrier of firethorn which was alive with bees. The hedge swept from the right, seeming to join with another composed of holly and cotoneaster bordering the left hand side of the garden. As I drew nearer, I saw that where the hedges met, there was an arch of old red brick set at an angle, effectively concealing what might lie beyond.
I stepped through to find myself at the top of a set of worn stone steps, the air tasted somewhat like the ocean, salty yes, but with a metallic, chemical quality, synthetic, like ‘essence of ocean,’ conceived perhaps, in a laboratory by a perfumer basing his creation on scientific formulae rather than any actual experience of the real thing. One more step revealed the bay below me.
A small cove surrounded on all of its steep sides by thick woodland, the steps that were my vantage point, the only obvious access. Scanning the beach, I saw it was composed of uniformly sized and shaped white rocks, about the width of a man’s splayed hand, packed tightly together like cobbles which gleamed in the moonlight. On the shore, the ocean, a muddy green hue reminiscent of the colour of the water that may be seen leaking from the rock near tin mines, moved unnaturally silently back and forth, giving the appearance of some vast, breathing thing, rather than the more familiar tidal effect, and here, the rocks rubbed against one another, clicking and chattering. I spotted a small boat, old and constructed of timber, white paint flaking on its hull, it looked more like the kind of thing that belonged on a pleasure lake rather than the open ocean.
At the front of the boat, the pointy end, a man stood, his back to me, gaze fixed on the liquid horizon.
I started down the stone steps, worn smooth at the centre by countless footfalls, allowing myself a nervous smile. The man on the beach is the reason I refer to the prow of boats as the pointy end, he was at one time a boat builder, and my deliberate ignorance amuses and infuriates him in equal measure.
Stepping onto the beach, taking care to place my foot on the dome of the rock, instinctively avoiding the places where the cobbles touched (step on a crack, break your back), the first rock gave slightly under my weight, causing a coarse grating sound like cold steel drawn across granite. The man standing at the side of the boat turned at the sound, grinning, and I returned his grin with one of my own, picking my way carefully toward him, closing the distance between us wordlessly.
I did something then that I rarely do, I hugged him. Tight. I held onto him longer than I usually might. He made no comment about this, simply hugging me back, it is easy for him, he is free and easy with his man-hugs, unembarrassed by public displays of emotion, it is one of the things I admire most about him.
Finally, I let him go, and carefully placing each foot, stepped back to look at him, he appeared unchanged since our most recent day out, surfing at Puttsborough just two weeks before, his black hair, flecked with grey seemed a little wilder than it was then, a couple of days stubble added to the laid back look.
He nodded at the boat. ‘Want to catch some fish?’
Shoving the boat into the water, we jumped in. He looked out to sea once more as the boat turned about and began to silently push through the water, seemingly following his gaze.
For some reason, despite everything that had happened up to that point, which I had accepted without question, this unsettled me.
‘How the hell are you doing that?’ I asked.
He grinned at me.
‘There are certain perks.’ He said.
‘Worth the price?’ I asked, instantly regretting the words, concerned he might think I was judging him, and wrestling with my own guilt, having convinced myself that if I had paid more attention, been a better friend, I would have seen the signs, helped somehow. Prevented him from doing what he did.
For several long moments we carved through the dark water in silence, I was transfixed by the mercurial reflection of a fattening moon.
‘When did it get dark?’ I asked him, something to break the silence.
He shrugged, and his big ass grin had returned, my thoughtless words forgotten.
‘It hasn’t.’ He said.
He was right, the sun had plunged beneath the still horizon, however the cloudless obsidian sky was pinpricked with the brilliance of billions of stars, and the light of the gibbous moon illuminated the seascape with steely light.
I noticed the absence of artificial illumination on the now distant shores, no window panes glowed, streetlights did not glare in their uniform rows, the sweeping lights of vehicles could not be seen.
The boat drifted to a halt and, I peered over the edge.
Into the abyss.
He handed me a pre-baited rod and we both aimed them at the flat, green-black water, our lines disappearing into the infinite blackness. I began to wonder what we might hook, what might be down there, in that profound, dark ocean.
He got a bite, snapped his rod back.
The rod arced alarmingly, line singing as it tightened, throwing off tiny droplets of water. He began to reel in his catch as I watched the spot where his line plunged into the darkness and saw movement below. The surface rippled and something breached, a frantic flashing body captivated me, silver, green and blue reflected the moonlight as he yanked the panicked fish on board.
‘It’s a mackerel.’ I said, oddly relieved.
He shot me a look.
‘What’d you expect, The Kraken?’
‘RELEASE THE KRAKEN!’ I bellowed in my best doom laden Lovecraftian voice.
He dropped into a squat, worried, haunted eyes darting in all directions across the surface of the ocean.
‘You shouldn’t say things like that here.’ He whispered.
I swept my eyes over the dark water that surrounded us, joining him in the bottom of the boat, suddenly overwhelmed with dread.
‘Sorry.’ I whimpered, ‘I didn’t know.’
I stared at him, horrified at my stupidity. He kept the look of concern on his face for a full five seconds before collapsing in a fit of childish giggling.
‘Yes, very mature’. I said, relieved.
We both grinned idiotically, as I felt a tug on my line. Instinctively, I whipped back the rod.
In a short time the bottom of the boat was covered with thrashing fish, I could not help but pity them.
‘Funny thing is, I’m not really that keen on fish, you know, to eat.’ I said.
‘Me neither.’
We began to throw the fish back into the sea, watching as their metallic, glowing bodies returned to the deep.
‘Nigel wouldn’t approve of this.’ I said. ‘He would never have thrown back that Narwhal he caught in Hamilton stream.’
He laughed hard and loud at this reference to a mutual friend, who is prone to bouts of exaggeration. Nigel had never purported to have landed a Narwhal at Hamilton stream, that was my own fiction, but I think he did once claim to have had a fight with a Mountain Lion.
As we finished releasing the fish and packing away our gear we reminisced about old times. Floating on the flat calm depths we recalled our time as friends, every memory eliciting a laugh or a smile. I will forever be grateful for that time, keep it close for the rest of my life.
The boat began to move, altering its course, ploughing back the way we had come under unknown power. We reached the shore much too soon, and the boat grounded, pushing up on to the rocks, fully out of the water.
We jumped out, me forgetting about my ‘step on a crack’ rule. I did not want to because it was all happening too quickly, but I hugged him, sensing it was my final opportunity, something was pulling me away from him, toward the stone steps with the brick arch at their summit.
‘You can’t can you?’ I asked nodding toward the steps.
He moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘It’s impossible for me’.
Inexplicably, I found myself at the foot of the steps with no memory of covering the distance, I attempted to take a step back the way I had come, but was forced back by an excruciating pain like a thousand needles in my feet.
‘See you Tim.’ I said, raising a hand, impossibly, I was more than halfway up the steps to the brick arch.
‘Goodbye old friend, thanks for coming.’ He returned the wave, turning it into a cheesy salute.
With strength I did not know I possessed, I forced my feet back down a step, it hurt like hell, but I had to do it.
‘Are you happy?’ I asked.
‘I can’t tell yet, don’t know what this place is, or what happens next, but the shit storm that was in my head is gone, I have peace for now at least’.
He is gone.
I was at the top of the steps, the sounds and smells of the cove diminishing as my treacherous feet returned me to the brick arch. I turned my head for one final glance at the bay, and wished I had not, because I saw something no living eye was meant to witness. It was a glimpse that can have only been the briefest moment, however it seemed to last far longer, as if time stood still, if time exists in that dreadful place, and it will be seared onto my memory forever.
The ocean, if it had ever been there was gone, leaving a vast landscape of gleaming white rocks. Where the water had been was a vast canyon, the sides of which were beginning to collapse, rocks working loose and clattering downward. The whole landscape was now shuddering rhythmically as the rocks began to turn, row upon row stretching from the foot of the steps to the horizon, each rolling around one hundred and eighty degrees. Accompanying this phenomenon was a tumultuous, hollow tock-tock-tock sound like death’s own pendulum, killing time, quickened to a frantic flurry as it must sound to the condemned man in his cell, tearing away the final seconds of his life in shreds as he awaits his appointment with the gallows.
Each rock face was exposed, revealing its true nature, not rocks at all, but skulls, billions of them, stretching for an unimaginable distance and to unknowable depths, no longer gleaming white, but grey, splintered, and putrescent with decomposing flesh and hair. They chittered against one another restlessly, the landscape rippling with their fitful agitation, sightless eye sockets glaring at nothing, nasal fossa unable to scent my fear, yellow, broken teeth grinning savagely.
The rippling landscape began to undulate and then to surge, skulls bouncing and clattering in every direction, and on the spot where the boat stood, the skulls began to form an unstable mound, piling upward ever higher, forming a bone mountain from which skulls tumbled steadily. From this awful dome burst a leviathan of colossal proportions, a grotesque chimera of a Megalodon and a blue whale that would dwarf both of those creatures, its immense mouth opened impossibly wide, swallowing several tons of skulls topped by the tiny boat in a single gulp.
A short time before, I had been concerned I might encounter The Kraken, and if I had not been gripped with fear, I might have laughed at the thought, this creature would have gobbled up a dozen Krakens like calamari vol-au-vents.
As the creature reached the apex of its leap, its cavernous maw closed, and it rolled its massive black eye toward me, foolish as it sounds now, it appeared to hang in the air studying me, cataloguing me, filing me away in its memory, and with no words, it seemed to say, ‘I will see you again.’
I saw the yellowish vessels in its sclera, heard a click as the nictitating membrane drew across the eye, and as its massive body arced and finally began to drop, its pectoral fins spread wide as if in anticipation of an embrace, I saw the muscles shifting beneath its scarred flesh, scars presumably gained from aeons swimming through an eternal abyss of human bone. It hit the ocean of death head first, its massive bulk easily displacing the crust of bone, its body disappearing beneath the surface leaving the towering tail fin, which lingered for a moment, bending over forward briefly before righting itself, as if bowing, or perhaps waving au revoir, then in a final clatter of human bone, it was gone.
Finally, I was able to force the muscles in my neck to relax and allow my head to face forward, I walked through the brick arch, not into Poppy’s garden, but on the street outside her home.
Wintermarsh Street remained apparently abandoned, the houses standing empty, their gardens exuberant with weeds. I stumbled to the gate of number eighty eight. The garden had been commandeered by a mob of invasive weeds, they had strangled what was once a beautiful fig tree.