Following the shoreline. A long path along a ridge, mostly straight with a slight curve bearing off to the right. The path is raised slightly a few metres in from the water, the area between covered in marshes. Small, twitching birds flit in and out of these marshes, the tiny twitching movements catching her eye every so often, making her blood pumpo with the small bursts of adrenalin, until she realises they are just harmless birds. The birds are the only living thing she has seen. The path stretching into the distance, out to sea, the marshes - all empty. Behind her, too, she knows this is empty. Everything is empty except for the fucking birds. She's never liked birds and now at the end of the world, they'll likely be her final companions. Typical.
The temperature is very low and there's a layer of frost over everything, thick along the path, delicate on the tiny marine plants, whose alien features are made gentle by the glittering silver of the frost.
A broken fence ahead shimmers with ice, its bleached wood like white bone, sharp flashes of light catch on the icy metal catches. The fence hangs out over the ridged path, above the small drop to the marshes, leading nowhere. She feels caught in a loop in which she isn't really awake, or even alive, walking the path of pergatory in a repetitive sequence. A slight panic at this thought prompts her to scan the landscaoe around her again, a way off of this bloody path. Where is the ferry landing point?
In her memory she can see it. A hut stood on the edge of the water, a comforting light falling out in a beam across the planks of wood, the music apilling from the transistor radio, jangled and tinny. Nina Simone, My Baby Just Cares For Me. George Michael, Careless Whisper. Otis Redding, Dock of the Bay. She can almost see the ghost of Pete Saxon and his son Oliver, yelling to one another and throwing greetings to her. Oliver, with his hat set jauntily, and a cigarette at the corner of his mouth. Thought it made him look like Paul Newman. Pete, with the mug of tea, always stapled to his hand, regardless of what he was doing.
The image fades. It was never there. There is nothing here, Pete and Oliver are gone. There's just her, the path, the forst and the fucking birds.
Across the water, the mist is so thick it hides the island she knows is hunched down out there. The frost deadens everything, the mist places a shroud over it. She remembers reading Narnia and for the first time understanding there is a malign quality to snow.
She crunches onwards, ignoring the cold ache in her feet and hands. A short while later the marshes end and the land between the sea and the path is covered in fragments of cement. She steps onto one of the pieces of cement and sees that at sporadic points there are holes, deep squares cut out of the cement, filled with stagnant water and shapes underneath. Her heart begins to thud and her skin prickles. She feels a strong urge to make sense of the twisted metal shapes under the water, and a desire to be back on the path where she feels safe. At first she cannot make out what they are and then she recognises plastic, rusted metal and rotting wood. The simple everyday shapes, crushed and compressed in these strange holes in the marshes fill her with an inexplicable dread. A creeping sensation over her face and neck as she's being watched. Hackles rise at her neck, but she keeps her eyes firmly on the watery holes, thinking, illogically, that the dark shapes will not regroup whilst being observed. She realises that the holes go deeper, running under her feet. The thought of more twisted things in the holes beneath her is what finally pushes her back on the path.
Following the shoreline.
No comments:
Post a Comment