BRIAN LUMLEY
The sun was beginning to set as I finned lazily into the shallows, thrust my speargun before me and laid it to rest in six inches of still water, then turned over and sat facing the sea. Removing my face mask, snorkel and fins, I tossed them onto the fine yellow sand at the water’s edge behind me. I wasn’t at all concerned that my things might drift off, carried away by a wave and lost to the current; for this was the so-called tideless sea—the Mediterranean—and I couldn’t possibly lose my gear to surf or current on an evening as calm and still as this one, when the only ripples worth mentioning were the ones I had left in my wake, only now catching up with me and beginning to lap at the beach.
When I had gone into the water maybe forty-five minutes earlier, a handful of people—British tourists—had been leaving, commencing a two-mile trek back to the crowded resort on a jutting promontory that was completely out of sight and sound of this small, cliff-guarded bay. This secret-seeming place was no more than a hundred yards wide end-to-end, like a mere bite—or bight?—that the ocean had sculpted from the bleached-yellow cliffs. With its soft sand and secluded—one might even say isolated—location, its crystal-clear water and sunken rocks that formed a shallow, reef-like bottom no more than sixty or so feet out from the beach, the bay set a scene which conjured a single word: “idyllic.” Little wonder that artists love to paint in the perfect light of the Greek islands, with their dramatic, sometimes lush, sometimes sparse, frequently parched or calcined scenery.
And yet again, as when I had first set eyes on this lonely place while descending the rough-hewn path down the face of the shallow cliffs, I wondered about the absence of commercial activity in what was apparently a virtual haven of peace and quiet. Indeed, I had dreamed of such places—my main reason for coming to Greece in the first place; yes, dreamed of bays such as this, and more especially of the tranquil waters that lapped their shores.
But where was the seemingly inevitable, almost compulsory taverna? Where the stacked sunbeds and parasol sunshades—not to mention the bronzed attendant with his purse and clinking drawstring bag of drachmae? Nowhere in sight! Not a bit of it!
Oh, there had been at least one attempt at some sort of industry, and possibly more than one. The steps down the cliff, for instance: someone had cut them. And there, near the eastern extreme of the bay—where, upon my arrival in the midafternoon, I had settled myself down—that single circular concrete base whose central hole had once accommodated the stem of just such a parasol as now was nowhere evident . . . unless a rusting skeleton cage minus its canopy, half-buried in the sand at the foot of the cliffs, was all that remained of it.
Of course, the resort’s owners might well have discouraged any such attempts by an outsider at building a gainful business enterprise here, especially one that could detract from its own profitability. But then, why not adopt and adapt this place for its own, perhaps supplementing its earnings and easing the crowding on its own rather small beach? There again, as an outsider myself, I had no knowledge of local Greek land rights. It wasn’t at all unlikely that this tiny bay was under some sort of protective government order; why, it might even be privately owned! Then again, being in my own right the proprietor of a small numismatic business in England where I dealt in collectible coins, on the one hand I considered the failure to put this marvelous location to use a lost opportunity and even a waste; on the other—perhaps contrarily or selfishly—I was glad that the bay had managed to stay as it was and exactly as nature intended. At any rate, for the duration of my stay.
No one had told me of this secret place, as I now in earnest considered it; if I had not escaped from the crowd, to wander and explore on my own, I would never have discovered it. But after lunch I had decided to leave the resort, go off in an easterly direction through the scrub, pines, a few brambles and tortured olives—a route which a locally produced chart of the region displayed as a blank, uninspiring expanse of yellow land and azure blue ocean—to see what I might see. And then, if sticking close to the sea, I should come across a way down to a beach or a rocky shelf from which I might swim and fish . . .
. . . which was precisely what had happened.
Earlier, after my first snorkeling swim to check out the scene underwater—especially the reef—I returned to dry land to find a youth (one of the double handful of tourists along the beach) standing near my belongings, looking at but in no way interfering with my equipment bag and other possessions. He seemed particularly interested in my rubber-powered speargun, which I’d left behind while I reconnoitered the reef in flippers and mask.
The spot where I had settled myself, making it my base of operations, was, as I have said, close to the bay’s eastern extremity, where in wilder seasons the ocean had worked to undercut the cliffs. Tumbled from those layered heights, a number of huge flat slabs of rock had half-buried themselves in the sand, where one of them made a fine horizontal bench facing the sea. And it was there, directly in front of this great slab—where some unknown person had planted that previously mentioned concrete anchor for a long-since-disused, dilapidated and discarded sunshade—that the English youth stood waiting for me.
I had seen him earlier as I came down the cliff path. He and another youth of a like age, maybe sixteen or seventeen years, had been trying to drag a great knotted driftwood log—in fact the seven- or eight-foot trunk of what had looked like an ancient, gnarled olive tree—from where it had washed ashore back down the beach to the sea. Hauling first on one end of the log, then on the other, their determined efforts had left a helix-like scar in the sand, like the trail of a monstrously huge sidewinder. Odd, because that had been some fifty or more yards west of my present location, in the middle of the bay; yet now I saw similar scuff marks in the sand right here, just a few paces from where I was gathering up my swim gear.
So, perhaps there had been another old log which I hadn’t noticed . . . but likewise odd that I had failed to notice it when the boys were working on it. There again, I had been chiefly interested in the sea; my thoughts had been centered on what I might find in the reef’s cracks and crannies, the secret lairs of fishes that might be hiding under its shallow submarine shelves . . .
I had asked the youth if there was anything I could do for him and found that I was correct: he told me he had seen my speargun as I came down the cliff path and was interested. So I had shown him the safety catch and explained how the gun was loaded, then unloaded it and put it down under my towel: out of sight, out of mind. And finally I had asked him about the party he was with—how had they found their way here?
They were a two-family party he told me, neighbors back home in England who sometimes vacationed together. A local taxi driver at the resort had told them about the little bay, how it was a nice place to picnic—but it wasn’t a good idea to stay too late, not on an evening. It was a very “special” place, and lonely. And he’d heard it was frequented, on certain rare occasions, by “foreigners.” Which was all he would say about it; but he had also asked them not to tell other tourists about it: the resort might lose money, while an overly talkative taxi driver could find himself unwelcome there, unemployed and losing money of his own!
Well, that was okay: they certainly wouldn’t mention this place to anyone else; unfortunately this was to be their last day here. Bright and early tomorrow morning they would be gone, off to the airport on the far side of the island and back home to spend the rest of a doubtless dreary summer in England.
And that had been that. The lad had set off back along the beach to where his party was camped beneath a nest of sunshades they had obviously brought with them, and I had been left on my own to eat an orange and my egg-and-tomato sandwiches and drink a small warm beer straight from its bottle. While I didn’t have the luxury of a sunshade, at least there was some shade cast by the layered cliffs looming on my left . . .
That had been then and this was now. Still dripping brine, I gathered up my things and headed up the beach toward the huge flat rock where I had left my equipment bag, towel and small heap of clothing. And that was when I saw my uninvited guest.
The way his black robe, a cassock, probably—it was hard to tell in the gradually failing evening light, with salt water dripping from my hair and forehead into my stinging eyes—but the way that robe was spread out voluminously all around him on the great rock bench where he was seated within arm’s length of my property, well, at first glance I had understandably taken him for a priest from the island’s Orthodox Greek church. Until, moving closer, I quickly discovered my mistake—that in fact he was simply an aging, possibly eccentric local.
“Hello there!” I said, taking my towel and backing away as I began to dry myself.
Nodding his large head, he replied in a cultured but paradoxically guttural, phlegmy-sounding voice, “And a good evening to you, sir.”
And with that . . . well, that was it. It was in that voice, in the air, in the sudden absence of the previously congenial atmosphere. What had been—whatever it had been—was no more. Now I was just a little cold inside; I thought I felt a shiver in there, and I wondered what in the world there could be in a mere presence and its voice that could do that to me.
Still backing off, my legs came up against a smaller flat-topped boulder, which caused me to sit down abruptly facing the stranger. And suddenly wary, I let my flippers, mask and snorkel fall to the soft sand and stood my speargun on its pistol grip close to hand, leaning it against my seat.
As for possible reasons for my nervousness, they were several. For one thing, I had remembered what that taxi driver had told the tourists: that it would be inadvisable to picnic or party here in the evening; that the little bay was somehow special; and that odd, foreign folk were known to sometimes frequent the place.
My first thoughts on that had been: But weren’t the majority of guests at the resort, including the British, foreigners of a sort? And now I thought: Ah! But then there’s foreign and there’s foreign . . . a term in common usage which might also mean outlandish, alien or simply peculiar. And right now “outlandish” appeared to fit this uninvited one just perfectly.
As to why that was so, and some of the other reasons for my apparent nervousness:
There was this smell that I hadn’t noticed before; a smell which seemed that much stronger in the stranger’s immediate vicinity. It had been more than noticeable—I might even say unavoidable—when I had approached him closely to reach for my towel: the smell of the dried-out, weedy tidemark on a shore at low tide . . . the shore of an ocean that has a tide, that is.
Then there was his overall look, his decidedly odd appearance. His unseen body would have to be gross, even obese, under that flowing, all-enveloping cloak, cassock, mantle . . . whatever the garment was; gross and probably unwashed, which might possibly account for the smell. And as for his face—
—but his face was in the shade of a hooded extension to the rear of his cloak, that dark garment which I now saw seemed to have a purplish tint in the oh-so-slowly failing light. And despite that, out of common decency—which is to say, in consideration of what this poor fellow must recognize as the anomalies of his own weird features, and be embarrassed by them—despite that, for this reason I hesitated to study his face for too long or too intently, still I found it fascinating. And to my own discomfort I felt compelled to stare at it.
“I seem to have disturbed you,” he observed in that guttural swampy croak of a voice. “You didn’t expect to come across me here. Well, I apologize for my . . . presence. But this is a place—one might even say a private place—which I sometimes enjoy to visit. And so, just as I would seem to have, er, interfered with your privacy, so you have interfered with mine.”
Before I could reply—perhaps to protest, possibly to excuse myself, but in any case failing to find the right words—he shrugged, which caused his cloak to gently billow or ripple, its purplish tints flaring up and momentarily intensifying, and went on: “But no harm done, and in a little while I shall be on my way. A pity, really . . .”
“A pity?” (That he would soon be moving on? Not from where I was sitting!) But what he had said was true enough: this lost, lonely place had seemed very private—to me as well as to him—but now even its ambience was lost, its genius loci, its spirit-of-place; and strangely, it felt like and was more surely his place now, no longer mine at all.
“Yes,” he said, nodding—scowling, I thought, though his expression in the shade of his cowl was difficult to interpret—and squirming under his billowing cloak as if uncomfortable, agitated or disappointed. “A great pity, for I think I might have enjoyed a little conversation. I note that you are an Englishman and, I would hazard a guess, decently educated? In recent decades I have only rarely come into close contact with men of any learning whatsoever. Men who might more readily understand and marvel at a life—an existence—such as mine: its origin, various stages of mutation and evolution before . . . before it engendered the likes of me. And its mysteries, of course.”
While he was speaking—his choice of words and subject leaving me more or less bewildered, making little or no sense in the context of a first meeting and the customary initial discourse between total strangers—I had found myself once again drawn to look at the peculiarities not only of his face but his entire person. For I had begun to form the vague fancy that, head to toe, this unfortunate man might be horribly deformed . . . Why else wear that grotesque, stifling garment if not to hide from view a yet more unseemly body?
But his face, his face!
For now as then, when I was trying to avoid looking at him too openly or curiously, still I find myself shrinking from describing him or . . . or it. By which I mean his face—I think. For even the memory is disturbing.
However, it was a long time ago, and time and the healthy mind have ways of reducing or entirely eliminating the unthinkable or unbearable. And so I shall persevere.
His head, despite being large, appeared rather small in comparison with the outward-flowing vastness of the shoulders that must lie directly beneath it under his cloak; and the ugly face upon that head bore a flattish nose, little or no chin worth the mention, and eyes that were more than slightly protuberant. As in many fish species, those eyes in their deep-sunken orbits bulged unblinkingly and the leprous, flaky, grayish-blue flesh around them was deeply pitted. His neck at both sides—or as much as I could see of it where the cowl failed to shroud it—was scarred by deep parallel creases or horizontal, gouge-like flaps. I believe that at the time I thought they were cicatrices, resulting from tribal or cultish acts of self-mutilation. That at least was my initial impression—in support of which there was the tortured flesh of his cheeks.
For from his cheekbones under the orbits of his eyes down to his mouth, and from his lower lip down to that round blob of an atrophied chin, further evidence of this self-abuse seemed indisputable. It was there in the form of eight coiled bas-reliefs, somewhat similar in design to the tightly wound fossils of common ammonites.
Then there was this unfortunate creature’s froggish mouth, with fat yellowish lips so long they almost reached the sides of cheeks which in turn supported a pair of stunted, distinctly rudimentary ears, again mostly in the shade of his garment’s cowl. A disk of metal—an earring of sorts, depending on little more than an inch of golden chain from the meager lobe of the underdeveloped or deformed ear on the right—glinted dully with each slightest motion of its bearer’s head.
As for the rest of him, his limbs and presumably prodigious body: all was hidden beneath the peculiar tent-like canopy of his strange garment . . . a circumstance for which I felt unaccountably, or rather not yet justifiably, thankful.
But however I had tried to hide my revulsion of his looks and especially his smell—for it was becoming increasingly obvious that those loathsome waves of stench were indeed issuing from him—he had not failed to notice my reticence. As a direct result of which:
“You find me repulsive!” he choked, coughed, finally spat the accusation out. “I am too unlike for your tastes . . . is it not so?”
“Why, I don’t even know you!” I protested. “You’re a complete stranger and we’ve barely spoken. I haven’t said more than a word or two to you since finding you here.”
“But you have looked at me—and in such a way!” His cloak trembled with the agitation or restless anger of the figure beneath it.
“Then if I have somehow offended you,” I replied, “though I assure you any such offense was unintentional, I am sorry. And as for the matter of the disturbed privacy of this place: that can very quickly be put right. You say you’ll be leaving soon? Please don’t trouble yourself, for I’ll be leaving even sooner—indeed right now!”
“Do you deny that you have gazed at me? And such an intolerable examination at that?” His words were thick as bubbles on a black swamp, gurgling from that awful mouth. “‘No offense intended,’ you say . . . which is not to say that you don’t find my . . . my changeling countenance unnatural, unpleasant, even hideous to your inalienable land-born eyes!”
I was on my feet by then, moving toward him. And why not? Even if he intended me harm, I didn’t actually fear him; I felt sure he would be incapable of any sort of rapid physical exertion; he was—he must be—simply too huge under that purple-rippling cassock-like cloak. Besides which, I wasn’t closing with him directly but more properly reaching for my belongings, that little heap of casual clothing and my equipment bag where I had left those items on the huge bench-like slab of rock . . . items which to my discomfort I now saw were closer to him than I had previously thought, and much too close for comfort.
Then, holding my breath rather than suffer the full extent of his dreadful smell, as I took up my things and backed away again, I saw the golden glinting of the disk dangling from his shrunken ear where his swiveling head as it followed my every move was causing it to sway. Being that much closer now, I recognized the earring’s distinctive style and recalled where I had seen jewelry of its like before. And in that same moment I remembered what little I knew of its somewhat esoteric origins.
But then, before I could further gather my thoughts on that subject—as I once again took my lesser seat opposite the other and began to dress myself—the oh-so-peculiar stranger leaned toward me in what was an aggressive, almost threatening manner to babble and cough a further guttural accusation:
“What? And is my aspect so fearsome . . . so fascinating . . . so freakish, then? You continue to stare at me, damn you!”
Well, of course I did, keeping an at least wary eye on him! And indeed, who wouldn’t have? But now I saw what I hoped was a way to more surely excuse myself, a way to “explain” my obviously unacceptable interest in him, and protested:
“But it isn’t you! And I’m very sorry if you find my curiosity disturbing and offensive. It’s simply that I’m fascinated by the earring or pendant, that ornament you’re wearing in your ear. It’s that, I’m sure, which has caused me to seem so disrespectful!”
“My earring?” he gurgled, leaning back to regain his previous posture. “This golden bauble of mine?”
“Gold?” I repeated him. “Is it?”
He at once narrowed his eyes—but before he was able to reply I quickly went on: “But of course it is! Indeed, since it’s the same as other pieces I’ve seen, including a few items I’ve been fortunate enough to acquire for myself, then it must be gold—well, gold of a sort—albeit impure and strangely alloyed stuff.”
“Stuff?” He in turn repeated, and finally nodded. “Well, yes, but exceptionally rare stuff—I can assure you of that! And you’ve seen similar pieces? You even own some? Oh, really? Well, now you’ve interested me and must tell me more. And if I have seemed a little too brusque or overly aggressive, perhaps you’ll forgive me? But let me explain that among my own people, while I admit to being, how to put it: a deviation?— yes, even among my own—a changeling of sorts, still to them I am completely acceptable. Which tends to make me very sensitive to the gauche opinions of certain ill-bred others and causes me to shy from them. And because I value my privacy so highly, I occasionally come to this favorite place of mine where I’m unlikely to come into contact with anyone else—especially toward evening, as now. But even so, my privacy cannot always be guaranteed, as witness your presence here.”
“Ill-bred others”? A rather poor choice of words, I thought. Or there again, perhaps apt when applied to himself. For I now found it not in the least unlikely that—physically, at least—he might well be the product of just such ill or impure inbreeding. But on the other hand, which is to say mentally, he appeared highly intelligent, despite that in his reasoning he seemed oddly wandering, and in his discourse more than a little obscure. (But of course, while I was given to think and consider such things, I hardly intended—or dared—to communicate them by allowing my uneasiness to get the better of me, perhaps becoming too obvious; for with regard to his strange appearance he had already made his sensitivity to the reactions of other, presumably normal persons perfectly clear—and anyway, common decency alone would forbid my showing signs of revulsion.)
So once again I tried to appease him. “I quite understand the value you put on your privacy,” I said. “Why, I’m a private person myself, which is why like you I find this place so very much to my liking.” (Which had been true enough—until now, at least.) “But, you see, my interest in coins and medallions, especially when they’re minted in precious or rare metals, is almost an obsession. In fact I’ve made it both my hobby and my work; it’s how I earn my living.”
He suddenly stiffened, sat up straight and seemed to gaze far out over the reef. And: “Look at that!” he said. “Directly behind you, out there! Are those dolphins I see in the bay?”
I at once turned, looked and saw nothing: just a splash in the water, maybe, where a fish—but only a very small one—might have jumped and soared aloft for a single moment. So I narrowed my eyes, squinting in order to focus more intently on the calm surface out beyond the reef. And still there was nothing to be seen . . .
But there was something to be felt!
I felt it on the towel that covered my thighs where I had draped it for modesty’s sake while removing my swimming trunks and pulling on my shorts: the soft thump! of something landing there. And I immediately snatched my head around to see what it was, never for a moment thinking it might be the ornament from the stranger’s shriveled ear. But that’s exactly what it was: the golden medallion on its inch of fine chain.
Then as I switched my gaze to the man himself, I saw the disturbed motion of his robe: purplish ripples spreading over its dense, singular surface. So then, it seemed I wasn’t alone in my concerns about modesty. But still I had to ask myself: What harm would there have been in letting me witness the action of hand and arm as he plucked the ornament from its anchorage and tossed it into my lap? Why the obvious red herring—the pretense and distraction—of a nonexistent leaping dolphin?
And then there was another thing: from what I could make of it, there were no openings in his robe, which appeared to be fashioned in a single piece. More truly like a monk’s cassock, it lacked buttons or an overlap in front; neither were there sleeves nor any visible armholes! But while I would later remember and think of these things, at that time my interest was more especially centered on the medallion.
It was indeed of a kind with those two or three items I had managed to collect over the years; it had the same silvery luster. But I had long since had my specimens tested and there was nothing of silver—or platinum, or any other easily identifiable alloy—in them. As for the ornament I now held in my hand, trying to keep it from reflecting the odd beam of failing light: for all that it was scarcely two inches in diameter, still the intricacy and marvelous quality of its almost cabalistic, minuscule designs—not to mention their otherworldly, often as not sub-aquatic themes—imbued it with an appearance that was in short completely weird and indeed alien. And these were the qualities which had attracted me to this anthropologically esoteric strain of art in the first place. Even as they continued to attract me now.
The craftsmanship, as I have mentioned, was of an amazingly high quality. But despite that it looked stamped, almost to the “proofed” degree of fine precious-metal coinage, still the otherwise undeniable beauty of its reliefs was spoiled by their depiction of awesome, indeed sinister monsters. This was hardly surprising: the specimens in my personal collection were adorned in a like fashion with grotesque ichthyic high reliefs where lesser fishlike or batrachian figures—including several that appeared to be hybrid varieties of both types—were not only extraordinarily humanlike in their postures and attitudes but were also very bizarrely attired in late eighteenth- or nineteenth-century-styled clothing! These lesser figures were pictured as the servitors, even the worshippers, of greater, far more horrifically alien beings or creatures.
As for the source of such ornaments and the queer alloys from which they were fashioned, who could say with any degree of certainty? Among my friends back in England were several so-called experts who at various times had hazarded opinions that ranged from Cambodia or perhaps Papua New Guinea to the South Sea Islands, in particular Hawaii; yet despite my contacts abroad I knew of no outlets in such foreign parts and had purchased my own specimens from salesrooms and numismatic sources in towns in the English southwest, which is to say Exeter in Devon and Penzance in Cornwall.
With regard to the latter: that should not be considered especially surprising, for in the day there were indeed “Pirates in Penzance,” and examples of their booty—the foreign plunder they brought back with them from many a blood-soaked voyage—may still be discovered, albeit increasingly rarely, at small-town auctions, or for sale in antique curiosity shops across the counties of the far southwest . . . always assuming of course that one knows where to look.
Moreover, in comparatively recent to modern times there has been no lack of legitimate eighteenth- and nineteenth-century commercially venturesome seafarers, ensuring that ports such as Plymouth and Falmouth have been ever astir with vessels returning from afar full of foreign produce. And among the crews of those vessels were those who came home with other than typical goods—even a few who brought back to British shores “companions” in the form of dusky tropical-island ladies, some of whom were as “wives” to their sailor “husbands.”
According to rumors passed down the decades by word of mouth from old salts—tales that may still be heard to this day in certain wharf-side taverns—at least a handful of these kanaka women were known to have worn outlandish, cold but seductive golden jewelry.
That stories such as these were not so much rumor as factual, reasonably accurate contemporary reports and accounts had always seemed self-evident to me, which my personal possession of those several aforementioned items had, to my satisfaction, amply served to corroborate.
And now, as I gave my attention to the stranger’s earring, all such facts were passing in short order through my mind; so that it was probably my expression as I handled the thing—an expression that displayed less of surprise or amazement than of definite familiarity, perhaps strengthening in the other’s eyes my claim of ownership—which decided the course of the rest of this unconventional encounter.
For now it seemed he accepted all that I had said, though so far there had been little enough of that, as a result becoming far more conversationally reasonable. And thus:
“Interesting, are they not?” he said, all signs of enmity gone as quickly as that from his voice and attitude. “The tiny reliefs on the disk, I mean.”
“Very,” I agreed, albeit stumblingly. “Indeed fascinating . . . if less than entirely unique.” Then, remembering his alleged sensitivity, I hoped that I had said the right thing. But I need not have worried.
“Apparently”—he nodded—“for I note from your expression that you have indeed seen such before; which is to say the several items that you profess to possess. But may I inquire where you obtained them? Not that I doubt you, you understand, but it may perhaps explain something of how an Englishman such as yourself comes to own such . . . well, such rarities . . . not to mention your obvious interest in them.”
I saw no harm in answering his inquiry, and so as I finished dressing and bundling my things, without making a meal of it I told of my beginnings: my young, earliest years as a math teacher in a school in Newquay; my interest, living so close to the sea, in all aspects of oceanology, but more as a hobby than a career; my later obsession with numismatics that came with my father’s lifelong collection of precious coins and medals when he had passed on, and which in my early thirties replaced teaching as my career of choice. And yes, indeed there had been just such coins or medallions as the earring among the many hundreds of items the Old Man had left to me.
More, I went on to speak of my discoveries and theories—mainly the lack of such—regarding the source of these peculiar, oddly repellent yet fascinating ornaments: that I believed they had arrived in England around the 1820s and ’30s along with the South Sea Island women; and finally I described as accurately as I could remember them the samples in my collection and how and where I had come across them.
Then, when I was done, he who had remained silently attentive in the ever more swiftly deepening dusk—the sun having by then gone down behind the rim of the cliffs at the western curve of the bay—at last cried out, or rather choked, gasped and gurgled:
“Ahhh! In the southwest! But of course! Taken to England by . . . by my people. It all fits, yes. But the only thing that doesn’t fit is you yourself! I mean, why your obvious affinity with these golden baubles? For that is all they are—or were—to them that fashioned them. But you don’t have the eyes for it, or the chin, the lips—the general otherness—that results from the changes. Nor for that matter do you seem to have the additions—or, to your way of thinking, the ‘anomalies’—necessary for any sort of prolonged . . . of prolonged survival out there! So that for your part the connection must be circumstantial, entirely coincidental, including your coming here. Quite remarkable!”
I had no idea what he was talking about—or perhaps only the faintest idea, as yet half-formed in the back of my mind—and made as if to rise. For coming to me from nowhere I sensed a need more urgent than any I had known so far to be away from that no longer idyllic place, and from him, both of which were suddenly and utterly alien to me. But while the urge to depart was very strong, so was my . . . my desire to know whatever else there was to know, which I had not yet learned or understood.
In any case, before I could get to my feet:
“Ah, but wait! Don’t be in such a rush!” he said. And his words, while gutturally formed, sounded at least reasonably normal when compared with what had gone immediately before, as he almost visibly attempted to exert a measure of control over himself. And in the next moment, as I surrendered to my natural curiosity and remained seated—for I still couldn’t allow that I was in any way actually threatened by the other, whether he was entirely sane or indeed suffering from some kind of sorely disordered intellect—he said:
“Perhaps to explain something of my own presence here, which I had mistakenly thought might in some way apply to you also, perhaps I should relate . . . perhaps I might tell you a story, yes? One that I heard a long time ago and which has for origin those same counties of southwest England where you say you discovered your own—er, should I call them exotic, even though they are scarcely that to me?—but your own specimens anyway. And then, in payment for your patience, your audience, you must allow me to make you a gift of the one you hold in your hand, hopefully to enhance your collection.”
And before I could protest or immediately offer to return the thing:
“No, no!” He shook his head. “For when my . . . my story is done you may be sure I shall feel compensated for the bauble, if only by virtue of your company for a few extra minutes.”
And now there was no way out but to sit still and listen, and suffer his stench, as the light in that cliff-shadowed bay grew dimmer by the minute and the air cooler but no less vile; until after a longish pause—I assumed to gather his thoughts—finally he continued:
“There was in Cornwall a young man who loved the sea. An orphan, found as a babe on the shore where the tide could not reach him, he had grown up on the charity of others until, in recognition of his superior intelligence, he secured a grant which permitted him to attend a university. There he obtained excellent grades that guaranteed him later work in a suitable occupation—as a theoretical physicist—which in turn made him completely self-reliant.
“He lived alone, earning a more-than-adequate living from his work, and just like you spent much of his free time beach-combing or swimming, but mainly thinking, which I am sure you will appreciate is the way of men of his persuasions. And in a bay similar to this one—though more dramatically in keeping with the craggy Cornish coastline—he would don his mask and snorkel to go exploring on and just below the surface of the water. Which is where any comparison with yourself would seem to end.
“One day, a little further out at sea and in deeper water than usual, while observing a great but entirely harmless basking shark, he failed to notice the storm that was suddenly brewing as the wind picked up and the sky began to darken over. By the time he became aware of the danger the waves were beginning to throw him about and his swim-fins were inadequate against powerful surges and a tide driven by the wind.
“Well, to cut a long story short, he quickly found himself in trouble; indeed he was sure it was the end as his strength gave out and his lungs filled with brine, and he began to sink beneath an increasingly turbulent surface . . . and the land so seemingly close and yet so far away.
“And then for a while no more . . .
“Except it wasn’t the end but in fact the beginning of a very different life—or existence!
“He regained consciousness in a fisherman’s ancient cottage, in a tiny village close to the Devon-Cornwall border, where he was tended by just such a dusky female—the fisherman’s wife—as your research shows was brought to England from the South Sea islands all those many years ago as the common-law ‘wife’ of a sailor . . . or she was at least descended from such. And in time it transpired that this was indeed the case, mainly because of the evidence which was apparent in the . . . well, shall we say the nature? . . . in the nature, then, of her son; which at first seemed anything but natural in the opinion of our very slowly recovering protagonist.
“But enough of that; rather than slow the story down, let it suffice to say that this lone child of the fisherman and his exotic wife was a changeling creature, not so much a freak as a mutant, and less of a mutant than a protean . . . But there again, even that is not entirely correct, for the word ‘protean’ is more the definition of an ability to assume different shapes, while the youth of the story had no such ability but was fixed in his changeling guise or form.
“And if I may for a moment digress: as a man of learning, indeed a teacher, I am sure you will recognize the source of that word ‘protean.’ It derives, of course, from ‘Proteus,’ the name of an ancient Greek sea god with the power to readily change his shape to whatever was desired. Ah, those remarkable Greeks and their yet-more-remarkable mythology! But which sea god were they in fact referring to, eh? The Philistine sea god Dagon, perhaps? Or possibly something much older than him? For, like the Romans, they were inclined to adopt willy-nilly the so-called gods of other lands and civilizations. Or was this Proteus some even greater power: one that Dagon himself might have worshipped, for example? And despite the name they’d given him, was he really so variable, so instantly inconstant? Or was that in fact his skill in . . . well, in bringing about changes—sea changes—in others?
“But there, I must relate the tale as I, er, heard it, and not get too far ahead of myself. And, to return to the subject of the only gradual recovery experienced by our protagonist—not to mention the constant care, peculiar physiotherapeutic and other esoteric treatments provided by the fisherfolk, or more properly the fisherwife—here was a mystery indeed. For apart from his near drowning, before being rescued and taken aboard the fisherman’s boat, details of which he recalled little or nothing, he did not appear to have suffered any especially threatening injury. In short, from the moment he regained consciousness he seemed entirely intact, if weak from prolonged inactivity, but in every other respect ‘as sound’—as they are wont to say—‘as a bell.’
“So why, then, all of this dusky lady’s tremendous efforts on his behalf? And why had he not been visited or seen, and his treatments overseen, by a properly qualified physician? But on the handful of occasions when he thought to ask such questions they were never satisfactorily answered—at least, not for quite a long time . . .
“But it was not too long a time before certain changes began to manifest themselves, when at last his nurse, the dusky lady of the house, became more voluble as to his specifics.
“She did not wish to shock or frighten him, she said, but now that his condition was—how to put it?—in flux, it was time he knew the truth: that he hadn’t merely nearly drowned in that storm but had very certainly drowned; in short he had been dead, albeit recently so, when her menfolk snatched him from the raging sea. Thus her first efforts on his behalf were performed in order to revitalize him . . . She had quite literally brought him back to life!
“Well of course he found that difficult to believe. He was a learned man of science, albeit mainly theoretical, but metaphysics was not within his scope! On the other hand, however, the changes I have mentioned—subtle and not-so-subtle alterations in his physical being—were similarly incredible however self-evident. Indeed, and if he was not losing his mind, they were utterly impossible. And yet they were real!
“But the dusky lady, this descendant of a heterogeneous people from far foreign parts, was also able to explain at least something of these transformations: knowledge or understanding that had been passed down to her by her ancestors. For it was in her blood, her very genes—which were not entirely human! It was why her son was the way he was, though he would and did pass for human: a throwback, however malformed! And the freakishness that our protagonist had noted in him corresponded in part, if only a small part, to greater changes that he could sense were even now taking place in him!
“For the ungainly youth was certainly a kind of reversion, one that showed some of the characteristics of an earlier developmental type. A throwback, yes . . . but to what? To those monstrously alien creatures on the disk that I have given you? Or, if not them, to their protean creators, then? For that disk is nothing less than a sample of several items which the dusky lady would later entrust into the keeping of our horrified protagonist . . . !”
Horrific, yes: a fitting description of this extraordinary, indeed incredible story. And now, as its narrator paused to take great gulping, wheezing, powerful emotional breaths, I became aware of his growing agitation: the way he seemed to wobble where he sat, like some enormous, freshly set jelly. Then, as I tried to gather my own more-than-mildly-disturbed thoughts, he said:
“But look, it’s getting late and we must go our separate ways . . . soon. For though I promise that I shall not keep you too much longer—and I can see how very eager you are to be on your way—still the tale is not yet told. Not in its entirety . . .”
He was of course right: the shadows in the little bay were almost visibly creeping now, and likewise my flesh as the—the person?—opposite me, where I sat shivering, prepared to continue the telling of what could only be his own fantastic story; a tale which I had no doubt he believed in every detail, despite that it was obviously the figment of a warped imagination.
And because of that, and also because of the disturbances which now appeared to be affecting him physically—the way the movements of his gross, still-unseen body caused his cloak to heave and shudder with some deep inner passion as he swayed from side to side and began to toss his awful head, and the way his glutinous voice had been growing more and more coarse and phlegmy—because of these things I once again made as if to rise.
For I needed to be away from there, from that once but no longer idyllic place, that strange Greek bay, and away from him, both of which were now so utterly alien to me. But my legs were weak—from the swimming or the chill of a perfectly understandable dread that had risen in me, I couldn’t say; probably from both. For by then I more than fancied I was in the company of a raving madman, and in a way that I could barely explain to myself I found myself hoping that this was so! But I tripped as I attempted to rise, stumbled and at once sat down again. And, helpless to stop my jaw from falling open, I gaped in frozen astonishment, completely petrified as the changes in my stranger’s weird appearance continued to take place, evolving more monstrously yet.
I had seen motion in that robe or cassock, that garment of his, before—seen it move when he seemed angered or agitated—but now its entire surface was moving, rippling like the small waves on a pool when a pebble strikes the water. The color of the ripples was a translucent purple similar to the faded pastel shade or living flush that I had seen in certain jellyfish, in the ichor of various tropical conches, and in the fascinating color-changing displays of cuttlefishes . . . as if in some fantastic way the garment was reacting to its owner’s excitement, his passions! But as for what those emotions were doing to the man himself:
Beneath the robe’s cowl—which was also horribly mobile, fluttering away from the stranger’s face as if trying to turn back on itself—his great head was a mutable mass of blurred, vibrating flesh. His eyes, bulging even further from their sockets, glared at me as he leaned forward; and it dawned on me that I had not once seen those eyes blink! But the rest of his face . . . those pulsing slits, or overlapping flaps of flesh in the sides of his neck . . . the wobbling and apparently boneless blob where a chin should be . . . his obsolete nose and rudimentary or atrophied ears . . . and worst of all his cicatrices—or those coiled bas-relief shapes which I had assumed were cicatrices—which appeared to be twisting and twining, pulsing and throbbing, shrinking and bloating! It was all far too much, too terrifying. And the thought occurred that I was actually looking at an alien, a thing from some far world—which in a sense he was—or at best something that might once have been a man! And:
“Ah, see!” He burst in on my thoughts and nightmarish conclusions. “You are doing it again! I can see it in your face . . . your fear . . . your intense loathing! But myself, I knew no fear or horror when I saw that poor, faltering youth . . . that stumbling travesty that a handful of local dimwits believed was some sort of retard or imbecile, for I felt an indisputable kinship! His mother, dusky descendant of strange islands and liaisons that she was, she had seen it in me, too . . . she had known immediately, instinctively, that my blood was the same as hers, the legacy of an elder race . . . It was why she had saved me with her cold saltwater massages, her eel and octopus oils and myriad other exotic balms, potions, poisons and even prayers to the protean gods of ocean.
“But alas, she told me in her own blunt and uncultivated, mainly unschooled fashion, in order to save my life and revitalize me, she had found it necessary to accelerate my . . . my transformation. Unfortunately, in so doing she had overstepped herself, had gone too far. And now there was no going back.
“I tried to deny what she was telling me; I was and always had been a wholly human being, a man, I told her . . . until she inquired: Had I known my parents? No, I was obliged to answer; I had been found in the wild, wrapped in seaweeds and abandoned on a beach at the tide’s reach. ‘Ah!’ she said then: abandoned by my mother, or perhaps my father, or possibly both, who had known . . . known what they had brought into this world and couldn’t face it, and perhaps in their way had hoped the sea would take it back where . . . where I belonged! For this dusky lady knew that she was not the only being from distant lands—not the only one come down from ancient stock—who walked the sands at England’s ocean’s rim and felt not only the tide’s surge but also the surging of her changeling blood.
“But I asked her, what of me now? And what of your son who goes to sea with his father to lure the fishes?
“‘He can go no further,’ she replied. He had to remain as he was, where he was, suffering the loneliness in silence. For he was incomplete, ill-equipped, and if he tried to take to the sea it would kill him. But as for me—
“Yes, I again urged her. What of me?
“‘You are even further, much further down the road to the sea! And if you would survive you may not stay here. Before you are seen to be . . . to be different, you must move on. For there are places in all the many oceans that are suited to you, as you are destined to be.’
“And she also told me of a place she knew of in the middle sea, a place that was deep and completely unknown to men, whose dwellers would accept me while I lived out my life . . . the oh-so-long life that she had bequeathed me. Thus I came here to complete my change. And now the tale—my tale, as I am sure you know—is told.”
With which he arose and approached me. But when I say that he “arose,” that hardly says it all. For while he had been telling me his story, during all that time he had not really been seated, or only half so. No, he had been merely resting, leaning against the slab of fallen rock, which now became apparent as he straightened and stood a little taller, but not too tall, before slithering toward me.
Still frozen as if hypnotized, incapable of any meaningful movement of my own, with my mouth gaping, trying to utter some incoherent thing, but lost for words and failing, I sat there with my equipment bag over my trembling knees, my impotent speargun still propped against the rock; impotent because I just couldn’t find the strength to reach for it, and I didn’t want to disturb this mad creature any more than he or it was already disturbed.
“But see”—he coughed the words out as, bending a little, he thrust his face close to mine and enveloped me in that awful rotting-weed foulness—“even now I cannot help myself . . . I am still drawn to this land that calls to me mockingly yet is forbidden to me. For I cannot—I may not—stay here in your world, in this world, which men accept as their birthright. For my world is out there . . . out there in the deeps!”
“I—I—” I somehow managed to gulp, almost choking on that pointless stuttering and in effect meaningless repetition. But:
“No, no—don’t you ‘I—I’ me!” he blurted. “Say nothing—but only watch! For while I have told you all, even paying you to listen, still I have proved very little. The proof lies in what remains. And so farewell . . .”
With which he smiled—if I may call what he did with his hideous face a smile—and I saw that the teeth behind his fat fish-lips were small, razor-sharp triangles like those of a piranha! Then, gurgling with mad, viscous, sobbing laughter, finally he turned away.
At last, capable of movement, I did as he had requested of me, turning my head to follow his movements as he squirmed away from me and made for the now sullen sea. And just exactly as he had stated, the proof was there in what remained.
He squirmed, yes, and I then saw how completely mistaken I had been. I had thought that he wore some kind of cloak or cassock. Wrong, for his all-enveloping, purple-tinted canopy was in fact a part of him: a mantle, most definitely, but in no way an article of clothing. It was more properly a mollusk’s mantle—the flexible outer-layer or “skin” of an octopus’s or sea snail’s protective sheath. And its hood, drawn back so revealingly now, was a part of that sheath; while beneath the hood a misshapen head . . .
. . . was frog- or fishlike, a bulging warty blob . . . and the neck with those throbbing gill-slits . . . and that face when he turned his head to look back . . . those eight tightly coiled raised markings which I had believed were cicatrices or self-inflicted scars, except they were no such thing but twelve-inch, suckered tentacles, writhing as they now uncoiled! But the worst came as his mantle lifted like a skirt, shaking itself to be rid of the damp, clinging sand at the sea’s rim . . . the sight of his huge, bulbous, however truncated body, itself supported by—but I simply can’t say by how many—fat, blue-black tentacles like a great convulsing nest of rubbery, alien snakes. And above what passed for lower limbs, the purple-glistening softness of upper parts, with never a sign of normal human arms!
I saw all of that, and also the trail left by the heaving propulsive contractions and expansions of those massive nether members: the way the sand was sculpted into a swirling, zigzag pattern, much like the earlier impressions those youths had made in dragging the weathered limb of a waterlogged tree back down to the sea—and exactly like the track this creature had carved into prominence on leaving the sea to make his way here while I was swimming!
And now finally he was returning to the sea, leaving me alive, entire and uninjured, however shaken and in doubt of my own five senses. But then, at the very end, there came the occurrence that brought everything else I had experienced into horrific focus, burning itself into my brain so intensely that I know I shall never forget it. It was simply this:
That as this protean thing sank into the water, he turned and waved a last farewell. But how, with no arms to wave? The answer is this: that he waved with his terrible face!
I do not remember escaping from that place, climbing the cliff-hewn path and returning to the resort, but my dreams have been inescapable. Perhaps I should have hurled that golden medallion into the sea, but I did not. Along with the other specimens in my collection, the thing has this unmentionable attraction all its own. And it seems possible, however much I try to resist admitting it, that there is a reason.
For now I ask myself these questions:
What involuntary impulse—what images of a weird paradise—had drawn me to that lonely bay in the first place? And what was it in the monstrous being’s tale that continues to haunt me despite that I refuse to accept its relevance? For the fact is that while I grew to adulthood in the keeping of loving, watchful parents, they were not my natural parents. Having been adopted from an orphanage, I had no knowledge of my real mother and father, though the man I had called Father had once told me that he was the brother of he who sired me. So much he told me, and then no more. But keeping in mind such an alleged relationship, then there are those coins he left me, those now sinister disks with their own fateful attraction. Did he perhaps inherit them from his brother, my real father?
Moreover, despite my nightmarish experience in that little Greek bay, I still have this love of the sea and dream of deeps I can only describe as Elysian, however alien.
But there, none of my fancies or fears may be real, and in both heart and mind I strive to convince myself that I was born of and for this earth, the ground under my feet, and not the surging ocean. At times I feel certain of this, yes—
But still I know that for the rest of my life, no matter how long, I shall continue my daily ritual of examining myself—my entire body head to toe—oh-so-very, very carefully . . .