CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

 

I DIDN'T SCREAM as I staggered down Marine Road. I felt the pain exploding from my bone joints, but from a distance, like a report rather than the real thing. I vaguely realised I'd lost my stick and shouldn't really be able to move like this.

I didn't know, not then, that my jeans were sodden with my own piss.

I reached the intersection of Marine Road and Marine Parade, past the Sandancer nightclub and the amusement arcade. Beyond them were the seafront and the road to the quay. Waves were breaking; I heard them briefly over the roar of blood in my ears.

Not the sea. Not the fucking sea.

One lover betraying you is bad enough. But two is too much to bear. The sea always was my first love. Now that was gone too.

Barmouth was deserted. No sign of anybody. That wasn't right. It wasn't that late. There should be somebody. Somewhere.

Where now?

The police station. It wasn't far.

And tell them what?

The knowledge was in my head, never to be forgotten; it'd been branded into me in that endless moment before I'd - somehow - broken free of Ellen and her 'friends'. I knew the truth now, but even through the terror and the chaos, I also knew it was madness and that to tell a police officer was a short cut to a night in the cells at best, being sectioned at worst.

Home.

The railway crossing was clear. I stumbled across it, past shops and cafes all closed up for the night and right, down Church Street.

"Ben?" Ellen's voice, lilting coyly. A lover's coaxing, now obscene. "Be-en?"

They were coming round the corner, Ellen in the middle, hair wild in the wind and the long black dress flapping round her, eyes aglow. The others followed; Charles and Donna, still holding each other upright as they blundered like drunks over the pavement and the middle of the road; Karl's long gaunt frame, hair flapping loosely, arms stiff and swinging at his sides, hands hooked into claws, and Carrie, a thin, tiny shape, almost skeletal. Dear God, how old was she, how old had she been?

All their eyes glowing.

"Ben!"

I turned and ran. Pain stitched into my side, drove through my poor abused legs, but I had to keep going, had to keep going...

I didn't look back again. Didn't dare. God knew what I'd see. Karl, most likely. My one chance was the physical condition they were in, their shape. They weren't moving fast, not even Ellen. Maybe whatever had brought them back was weakening.

I reached my front door, shoved the key in the lock. My heart battered my chest; I thought for a second it'd burst. That would have been a bloody laugh, after everything else.

The shuffle and scrape of feet. Don't look. Don't look. The lock, not turning.

"Fucking twat!" I screamed at it, and the key revolved. The door gave and I shoved it wide. When I looked back, I saw they were closer than I thought, no more than ten feet off. Lamplight hit Karl's face, or what there was of it. His arms were outstretched, grasping.

I slammed the door shut, turned the key in the deadlock, put the security chain on.

The windows - I staggered to them one after the other. All locked. Hands thumped on the door.

Now I wasn't in flight, the pain hit me. The agony doubled me over. I climbed the stairs on hands and knees, every movement a wrench of pain, all the while promising myself just a little further, just a little further, just a little more.

"Ben?" Ellen was calling through the letterbox. "Ben?"

I collapsed at the top of the stairs, outside my bedroom door. I'd left the DHC in there, on the bedside table. I'd thought I didn't need it anymore. Maybe I hadn't, not then. I'd been drugged on something else. But that was gone now, along with all the other comforting illusions that had accompanied Ellen Vannin. Shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles; they all grated and screeched like buggered hinges every time I moved. Even if I didn't. But I had to move to reach the painkillers.

I lay there, sobbing through my teeth. Mostly from pure physical pain.

Mostly.

"Ben?"

I closed my eyes. For a few precious but horrible seconds, the pain in my body faded away, as the other kind kicked in.

 

 

THREE-QUARTERS OF THE planet are ocean. At least, they were back then. God knows what the proportions are now.

We've used it since we first came down from the trees. It's fed us for thousands of years. We've learned to travel across, over, even below it.

But it can't be trusted; it isn't our home. You can drown in a few inches of water; it's home to creatures that kill with a bite or sting, or just plain devour you. And the sea itself. We can't even drink salt water. It's as difficult and dangerous to explore as outer space. You need breathing gear and protective suits just as you would in space, and even then, you're only one mistake away from death. Or worse. I'd forgotten that and look what it'd cost me. It had mauled me like a cat toying with a mouse, then left me for dead. Bored with the new toy. Forgotten me.

So I'd thought.

How many didn't get away? Shipwrecks, drownings, suicides? Storm surges, tsunamis? How many dead?

When I was at school, somebody told me that ghosts were formed like this:

Emotion is a form of energy. Brain activity is electrical; thoughts are like tiny lightning bolts jumping around your brain. Something bad happens - something violent or terrifying, something traumatic (oh yes, I knew long words like that when I was eleven, I thought I was clever and knew everything, but of course I knew fuck all) and there's a huge storm of that energy. You used to hear words like 'thought patterns' in science-fiction books. I'd always visualised bright imprints on the retina, afterimages left by intricate jumbles of electrical bolts, strange curlicues like Arabic writing or cuneiform.

Those patterns get thrown off, and they soak into the surroundings. An imprint. Like a snapshot of the soul. The same way sound, converted into electrical impulses, imprints a cassette tape. Waiting for something - the right kind of mind, a sensitive enough mind - to trigger it, connect. To complete the circuit. Heat energy is absorbed from the surroundings and converted, to make the recording run. This was why people who witnessed hauntings almost always reported a sudden drop in temperature.

A sort of tape recording basically. But, possibly, with some rudimentary life, or consciousness of its own.

Later on I was told that, scientifically speaking, this is total bollocks.

But what if it's not?

And if - just if - it's not:

How many deaths in the sea? Over millions of years, how many lives ended there, in terror and agony - and rage, at the ending of your life - while others live?

Why me and not you? Why you and not them?

Millions? Billions?

How can every molecule of that vast, rolling deep not be tainted?

Water evaporates and is carried away. Haunted lakes, rivers, streams... but it all returns to the sea in the end.

Last thoughts, fears, suffering, all flying back and forth. Isn't that all a mind is?

The sea is vast, but not infinite. Sooner or later there had to be a tipping point. Perhaps it was the sheer volume of deaths. No one event, no bolt of lightning in a castletop laboratory, just... that.

The sea is alive. It wasn't before, but it is now. It's awake, and all it knows is wrath and terror, agony and rage.

When I nearly drowned the sea reached out to claim me - the eyes, coming out of the darkness, the faces. Another mind, another soul. Because that was the worst of it. One mind - one single, planet-wide brain - and it was alone. Enough to drive anyone insane.

And Ellen... what was Ellen?

The Deep Brain - I had to call it something, and what better name than that? - was just becoming aware when it nearly took me. It had been... absorbing me. Taking me into itself. But awake now. Its mind had touched mine.

For the first time, it knew a living mind.

It knew something other than rage.

It was not alone.

But then I'd escaped, with my life if not much else. Back to dry land and stayed there for good. How could it reach me? The sea is governed by time and tide, the moon. It has no arms, no legs...

Only it does.

How many souls in the deep?

How many bodies drifting on the tides?

It had used them. Made them more fitting for its purposes - in Ellen's case at least, it made her pass for a living woman. And sent her out.

But it was young and new, its strength limited. It had sent out a few emissaries, to look for me. It could sustain the deception, for a little time.

So many millions, billions of others in the world. So many others drowning every day, but they died and were taken and were lost. They just added to its strength, became part of it.

It had no-one. Nothing to make it complete. So out of all the billions, on the earth, the sea had come for me and me alone.

It had wanted to seduce me. But it couldn't sustain the deception. Maybe didn't want to. Wanted me to know where I was really going. And like any clumsy, untried, inexperienced suitor, it had revealed itself badly.

I began to laugh, rocking to and fro on the stairs as Ellen called my name.

I'd once heard a song called Marry The Sea.

I laughed all the louder.

"Ben? Ben?" Ellen's voice calling through the letterbox. Outside, I heard hands thumping on the windows. "Ben, let me in. You promised. You said you'd go with me. You said you loved me."

The oldest and most painful one of all: you would if you really loved me. Never promise you'll do anything for a loved one, because sooner or later they'll demand the one thing you just can't do.

"Ben, it won't be like the others." Her voice was hitching. There was a clotted noise in her throat. "You'd become part of me in full. We'd be one. Isn't that what love is?"

What could she know about love? She must know something, I supposed. She'd have to, to do this.

"Please. Don't leave me on my own."

Something thumped at the window at the end of the landing. I turned and looked. Karl. He'd climbed up, clung on. He had spread flat against the window. His eyes glowed through at me.

"Ben? Ben?"

I didn't answer.

"Alright, then!" Her voice had a dull, cold finality, worse than any scream. "We're going. We can't stay longer, and we can't take you by force. It has to be of your own accord. But if that's the way you want it, fine. I can live without you, and I won't always be weak. I'm growing stronger all the time." She paused. I wouldn't look at the window, but a dull green glow spilt from it across the landing.

"The icecaps are going, Ben," she whispered. "They'll melt, all of them, and they'll cover all the earth. And when they do, I'll take everyone. It'll be soon. Sooner than you think."

The green glow vanished. Downstairs, the letterbox banged.

And the house was silent.

 

 

I STAYED THERE all night and through into the morning. The agony got worse and worse. Finally, somehow, I made it to the bedside table and took the pills.

When I could walk again, I went downstairs. I opened the front door; the wood was scratched and scored.

It was early in the morning when I went back to Marine Road. The sun was rising over Dinas Oleu, which I knew now I would never be able to climb again. The sky was clear blue, soft pink near the horizon; the air was crisp and cold, the first snap of the incoming winter. The tang of coalsmoke hung in the air, and the long, mournful cries of gulls echoed in from the sea. They were the only sound.

There was a sign in the front window: AR WERTH. For Sale. The front door was slightly ajar. I nudged it open.

A thick, foetid smell washed out of the dim hallway to greet me; I pulled my sweater up to cover my mouth and nose. A thin buzzing sound. Flies.

I found a light switch and pressed it, but nothing happened. The buzzing came from the front room. A small, thin figure slouched on the sofa, head hanging forward and down.

Carrie.

She was alone in the room. Flies crawled on one dangling hand; it was bloated and badly discoloured. The hair that hung and hid her face was matted and dry. The stench hit me even through the sweater. Gagging, I backed out of the room.

The kitchen door was open. Some light came through the window in the back. Flies were buzzing in there too.

A small dining room adjoined the kitchen. A chair lay on the floor. Charles and Donna lay beside it. I recognised the stained, faded print dress Donna wore. There wasn't much else to recognise. Charles was little more than bones and ragged clothes; Donna was badly bloated and in the throes of black decomposition. The carpet around them was badly stained.

The house was bitterly cold. I moved back. I needed to get out. Away from the house, before I was discovered here. Away from Barmouth. Away from the sea.

But I needed to know.

I went up the stairs. There was dust everywhere. A few footprints and marks, but otherwise no sign anyone had been here in months, even years. In the empty bathroom, something dark and wet filled the toilet bowl, flies swirling above. I didn't inspect it any closer.

There were three upstairs bedrooms. I checked the one next to the bathroom first.

Karl lay sprawled on the bed. He looked quite recently dead. No bloating. His eye sockets were empty though. And there were the holes in his face. His nose half-gone. Eaten, I guessed, before he came back.

The other two bedrooms were empty.

I found no trace of the woman who had called herself Ellen Vannin.

 

 

I LEFT BARMOUTH that night, and booked into a B&B in Manchester. While I was there, I wrote down what had happened. I had to try to make sure of it. I knew I wouldn't be believed, that it was the end of my career. But what was I supposed to do?

Wrote it, typed it, emailed it out. To the University and to a friend who worked in a government ministry.

And then I looked for a new place to live, cheaply, out of sight and mind. A place to hide, far from the sea I'd used to love.

 

 

I CHOSE A village in north-east Lancashire, where there was no sea and hardly any people; I rented a static caravan and I drank and I drank. I wanted to kill myself, and put a knife to my wrist more than once, but I could never quite do it. So I drank instead, not caring about what it did with my medication. I was probably hoping the combination of the two would finish the job I couldn't. But my body seemed far more capable of absorbing the punishment I was doling out than I'd thought.

Through those years, whenever I was sober, I would hear the sound of the sea. And voices. Hundreds, thousands, millions of voices, calling my name. A murmur that rose and fell like the sound of the waves, till they couldn't be told apart, but growing steadily, relentlessly louder.

An incoming tide of souls.

There were rains, of course, and storms. Floods, too. At first, I'd been afraid, but after a while I dismissed them. False alarms.

But then the rains came and didn't stop. The floods got worse. The TV stations started going off the air, one by one, the remainder broadcasting old light comedy. When they're showing old episodes of Morecambe and Wise and it's not even Christmas, you know something's badly wrong.

And the sound of the sea grew louder.

When I heard shouts and screams in the distance, I ventured out into the rain and squinted down. Below, I could see where the waters had come in, and suddenly the sea, the voices, the souls, were louder than ever before.

I went back inside as the first shots rang out. The Deep Brain was testing its strength, and that of the defence. If the villagers put up a good enough fight, it would fall back, for a while. But sooner or later, it would come in force, and it wouldn't stop. And it would, most especially, want me.

Rain drummed on the caravan roof. In my head, the sea-sound was deafening. And the voices. All the screaming dead, all those last moments, caught like voices on tape.

It was when I heard a woman's voice say, loud and clear in my ear, as if it was next to me, "Ben?" and visualised Ellen, Ellen naked with her arms outstretched, and remembered her face, that last time I'd really seen it, that I decided I could do it now - and better had, while there was still time.

I lay down on one the divan with a bottle of whisky and drank most of it. It made the voices and the tide fade away, made sure I wouldn't hear Ellen's voice again. With the Dutch courage from that I could do it, and I wouldn't even feel what I was doing to myself, but I blacked out almost the second I cut into my left wrist. My next memory is of lying on the Chinook's deck, and Robbie McTarn standing over me.