Along the Darkening Coast Read online

2

  This parade of hazy darkness and wondering and waiting came to an end the following morning when Sussex Police took charge. Crude torches and police car headlights were replaced with high-beam floodlights until the sun rose and police tape took charge. My father took me home, as I was far too drowsy to drive.

  Back home I slept - through the day, through mum's calls to come down for dinner. When I woke, it was already dark again. The blinds on my windows were not fully shut; it left the streetlight free to dance across my room. I huddled in the corner of my bed, because in my dreams I had seen them all. The son of the councillor, on the rocks, his niece crying for him to come back to shore. A man with a grey-black goatee, watching the water sink away, his dog barking at his feet. In another there was a woman, her appearance not that unlike mine with her shoulder-length black hair, stumbling on something rough in the sand on a morning jog. And still another man, this one striking a rock whilst in a rowing boat. Each was hazier than the last, the oars of the boat barely wisps of smoke in the last vision. But there was still something more. A ghost of a man, so indistinct I could make out no features, on a canvas of haze I barely decided to be the sea and the sand and the sky.

  I made my way across the room, to the desk where I laid the note Landen gave me. Strewn neatly across the note were four names: Takeshi Inagi, Jayson Kahn, Emily Lau, Jack McCormack. Takeshi and Jayson had contact details. The remaining two had notes, as if Landen had been trying to piece together enough information to find them.

  All night I let the events of the last 24 hours play with my mind, and I kept coming back to these four names. Jayson. Takeshi. Emily. Jack. I decided the following morning to check out the house at Beachy Head - listed under Takeshi's name - and to stay awake through the day this time.

  And so began a phase which would spiral beyond anything I could have expected. I wanted to gather information, to learn more about what exactly the rock was, and what the other four people might know. I think it was a critical moment in my life. Now my world was full of questions and investigations. I searched the local paper's online database for anything involving the coast that sounded out of the ordinary, and meanwhile I waited for a date to go down to Beachy Head.

  Two days later I returned to the shorefront where I had found the rock. I asked my mum along to accompany me, as I knew she was deep in a novel and this time I needed to be with my own thoughts. My car crunched up the gravel path just as before, only on this occasion I parked on the other side, avoiding the sinkhole that had opened below my car before. I took my second chance to inspect this sinkhole, now in the daylight. The road was littered with the occasional slate tile, and a few of these were cracked in the hole - no doubt under the weight of the tyre - and the gravel was depressed, but otherwise there was nothing unusual which I could see down there. Straightening up, I was faced with the trunk of the tree that had guided me back to the car that night. This time, I gave it a little more attention. It was after all magnificent, in a gentle sort of way. It was dead, yes, but I don't know, I felt a little impressed with it. The constant roughness of the wind from the unforgivable English Channel... Now that I had been down on the sand during one of its more chilling torrents, I could appreciate anything that faced it day after day. Its roots ran deep to rebut such onslaught. More impressive, still: I inspected its branches and found leaves on the lower ones. Unravelling them from their coil, they were beautiful in a delicate way, with the faintest tones of pink, pale like cherry blossoms.

  I had been hoping to get another good look at the artefact, but there was no chance, in the end. Those officers stationed insisted it was an investigatory scene, and wouldn't let me approach. But I could see it, from where I stood. And somehow it was more chilling in the daylight, as if it were more real, cast in real light, not some shadowy horror from the darkness which would never reveal itself to the sane minds in the sun. Yet here it stood.

  The artefact just sat, out of reach now. Apparently tentacled, apparently alive, apparently clad in fine engravings too precise for the claws of nature, and that was all. I could do little more for now. A week later I passed my driving test. I turned my attention to the people who had seen the nightmare too.

  Along the Darkening Coast | Jamie Campbell