For your own safety, I urge you to listen to this story whether or not it’s the month of August or the tide is hiding the unknown, or it is in plain sight. Look across to Sunny Sands. It may be a fine summer’s day and families are building sandcastles or splashing in the sea…or perhaps a cold winter’s day with only dogs and their owners playing while the tide is far away. Or perhaps the tide is coming in, driving sun worshippers closer to the arches, snatching dozing sunbather’s belongings and… swallowing up the rocks. Ah, the rocks. Whatever the weather, beware of those slimy rocks in the corner. Nothing remarkable, you may well think. But please reserve judgement until after you’ve heard my tale. Then, listener, you can make up your own mind. But do not say you have not been warned.
That summer’s day the world was out of sorts. The seagulls were squawking-crazy, flocking on the harbour arm before swooping over Sunny Sands, and starting the whole business again.
The tide was all wrong too. It was tsunami far out, like a monster had sucked the sea away. Low tide usually stretches to the beginning of the harbour arm but it had doubled its distance to the lighthouse. Perhaps, I wondered, my memory was playing tricks on me? Perhaps 10 years of city living had changed my perception around distances and it’s always been that far out. I swore not, though, and started panicking. Perhaps that’s why no one’s here, I wondered? There’s a tsunami coming and they’ve all fled inland. There’s no one to warn me. Except Cally, though she’s vanished too.
And then there was the sky. It looked like it was auditioning for one of those Scandinavian misery-fest dramas. The sea and sky an interchangeable grey with the faintest tinge of yellow. I scrunched my eyes shut and opened them several times. It made no difference though. The light was all wrong and I wondered if it was the start of a migraine.
OK, so I admit it. I had a hangover. Not the tight iron band squeeze of a migraine. But it was more than a hangover and I’m telling you this because I want you to be familiar with the warning signs.
I wasn’t so lucky. No one told me although they knew. All of them. But it’s not too late for you. So please. Listen carefully and trust no one in this God forsaken town.
I told myself to trust my judgement. I was born and raised here for 16 years. The light always had an otherworldly feel to it, gifting the landscape more colour and depth than anywhere else I’ve ever been. But it was like the air was full of dust, the remnants of a fire but without the sickly burnt smell. It felt unclean too, almost like looking through stale vase water. I took off my glasses, thinking they were grimy, misted up or both. But after wiping them on the hem of my dress, there was no change, except it had grown darker. The sun, wherever it was, had had enough and was off to bed, leaving behind an early dirty dusk protest.
I checked my mobile to see if the signal had returned. It was infuriatingly intermittent. One moment, it’s fine. The next, you’re cut off, or receive a text from your provider welcoming you to France. With my arm held high in the air as if the signal would appear from the sky, I ambled back towards the harbour arm where we’d spent the previous night drinking cider and reminiscing. I was surprised to hear from Cally. We’d been best friends at secondary school. Even became blood sisters, an innocent ritual that took place on top of a huge slug of a rock known affectionately as Old Herbert on Sunny Sands. He was our very own Jabba the Hut, us his Princess Leias voluntarily spilling our blood over his gruesome head. There was even a stupid legend saying Old Herbert came alive every 100 years to demand one of the town’s own. A kind of payback for all the sea creatures the fishermen harvest from his territory.
One day, our history teacher caught us comparing cuts in class and sent us to talk to the counsellor about our supposed self-esteem issues. Soon after, Dad was posted to Germany. We wrote letters for a while but then lost touch. I went to university and Cally stayed at home working for her father and brothers, all fishermen. Ten years later, she contacted me out of the blue, via Facebook. Recognised my picture, apparently. Haven’t changed one bit, she lied. Neither have you, I lied. Come for the Bank Holiday weekend. You wouldn’t recognise the town now. The rotunda and ferries have gone but, hey, we have an art festival every three years. The whole town’s full of weird sculptures. And it’s the Harvest Sea Festival soon. Remember how you were crowned Sea Queen for three years running? You’ve got to come! It’s always such a laugh.
And it was. We spent Saturday watching her brothers win the trawler race and the new Bishop blessing the fisheries, in between visiting our old haunts. We ended up at the newly refurbished harbour arm with her extended family. They treated me like a long lost daughter, refusing to let me buy a single drink, helping me to drown my sorrows about my recent break up. I can’t even remember getting back to Cally’s. I must have passed out and didn’t wake up until 5pm. Cally was nowhere to be seen. I assumed she’d popped to the shops. But by 7pm and after several dozen calls to her switched off mobile, I gave up waiting. When I left her flat, near the harbour, everything was eerily quiet for a Sunday evening. No cars. No day trippers. No dog walkers. No scrounging cats. Only seagulls fussing.
I took my phone from my pocket and winced. The plaster on my wrist was hanging off and the cut was oozing. Stupid of me, I know. For old time’s sake, said Cally, as we drunkenly clambered onto Old Herbert’s mollusc-covered head and she passed me the knife. It felt wrong. It’d always felt wrong, to be honest, but Cally was always so persuasive.
I gave up flailing my arm around trying to get a signal as the bile suddenly hit the back of my throat. I steadied myself against a seaweedy wall and the nausea gradually passed. I needed to eat and peered across at the harbour car park, relieved to see lines and lines of cars. Beyond I could just make out stick-like figures, either strolling along, or sitting at picnic tables. I felt my body relax as I remembered Cally saying how it’s the place to be at weekends, to the extent where the rest of the town was deserted. I jolted as my mobile buzzed in my pocket. A message at last.
How’s your head? Thought I’d let you sleep. Come down to the champagne bar. Hair of the dog!
I straightened up. Everything was okay. No one was hiding from me. I was hungover and my brain slow to react, that’s all.
I texted to say I was on my way, my fingers as slow to respond as my brain. I vaguely recalled a conversation last night, snippets of it now drifting away like a dream; Cally telling me a friend, or was it one of her father’s friends, had invited her to lunch at the champagne bar in the old lighthouse.
I half crawled up the stairs to the iron railway bridge spanning the sea and leading to the old harbour station on the arm. Its rails had been ripped up and replaced with neat tarmac paths and gravel flower beds sprouting scrappy plants trampled by night time revellers. I eyed up half a dozen seagulls, sitting on benches, who in turn were eyeing me up for chips and ice cream. Up ahead, two cormorants, watched my progress from the arm’s entrance gates. One of them swooped down and landed in front of me, spreading its raggedy wings as if trying to bar my way. I stepped towards it and it flew back to its mate.
Once through the gates, the wind began to pick up, its icy little fingers finding their way down my neck and I pulled my flimsy cotton jacket around me, shivering and remembering how cold it was last night when the sun went down. I glanced back at Sunny Sands. From this new perspective, it looked like Old Herbert has crept several hundred yards closer and I assumed the tide must be coming in now. But when I looked out to sea, I couldn’t work out what was going on because the tide was still out as far as the lighthouse. And when I scanned the harbour arm, I noticed it was completely deserted. I stared at it for several moments, trying to will people out of nothing and when not a soul appeared, realised the sea wind on the harbour arm must have bullied everyone inside. I pushed open the door to the former train station’s waiting rooms, abandoned in my day, but now tastefully renovated and converted into restaurants and cocktail bars.
I made my way along the corridor, listening for signs of life but the only sounds I heard were my own footsteps and my stomach rumbling at the thought of the fish and chips I ate last night; the beer-battered cod was to die for. I peeked through each restaurant window. But they were all closed, despite the tables covered with crackers, party poppers and balloons, set up for a celebration of some sort.
I carried on to the champagne bar, the tables and chairs outside empty, the door locked, lights off. As I looked through the little glass door panel, I heard the sound of a chair being scraped across the floor and a scuttling noise as if someone was hiding inside. Bunting dangled from the ceiling and dozens of sparkling champagne glasses sat atop the tables, one of which was wobbling slightly, setting the glasses tinkling. I glanced around me, expecting Cally and her family to jump out and shout ‘surprise.’
‘Cally?’ I shouted into the silence.
In reply there was a sharp rap on the window behind me. I span round, smiling, thinking it was Cally or one of her brothers playing a trick on me. But there was no one there, except a seagull, standing on the windowsill outside, looking so smart like it’d washed and ironed its feathers for the imminent party inside. It tapped the glass with its shiny beak several more times and flew off.
I looked around me urgently, trying to work out where Cally was and where all the people I saw earlier had gone. Perhaps there was another exit I didn’t know about, I wondered, spinning around trying to find it. But I felt so sick and hungry, I couldn’t think straight and stumbled back along the corridor and out into the open, listening to the waves hit the pebbly beach on the other side of the harbour arm, making their shh sound. I wanted to tell them to shut up – there was no one but me to silence. But I wished there was because the silence was overbearing and, if I’d had the energy, I would have run straight back to the train station and got the hell out of there. I peered across the Channel, hoping at least to see flickering lights of cargo ships ploughing back and forth. But there were none. And when I looked beyond, even France was hiding.
A yelping disturbed the quiet and I followed the sound. A large black dog was on Sunny Sands running in small circles. I peered down, trying to work out what it was chasing and where its owner was. But as I drew closer, I could see he wasn’t playing. It looked as though the dog was trying to escape its tether; one of Old Herbert’s jagged teeth. The dog’s desperate whimpering cut through me like the wind. It wasn’t unknown for dogs to be abandoned, or even killed and dumped on the beach and I clambered down a rusty ladder to the beach below.
In the twilight, it seemed as if Old Herbert had crept closer, almost like he was moving. And as I watched him crush the dog, I realised, I was right. He was moving. Raising his ginormous head, Old Herbert’s seaweed nostrils flared wide as he sniffed the air and slithered towards me, the sand beneath him slurping and sucking, rocks crashing around him like there were more monsters lying beneath about to burst through. I glanced back at the ladder, wondering if I could reach it in time, or to try and escape across the beach, and as I did so, caught sight of hundreds of men, women and children on the harbour arm, silently watching. And when I looked back, Old Herbert’s slobbering jaws had become the sky and cheering filled the silence.
Listener. I came back to warn you. Just you. Look behind you…
THE END
Meet the author: Michele Sheldon
Michele’s short stories have won and been shortlisted in many competitions and published in a diverse range of magazines and anthologies. She has also written two children’s books, The Mystery of the Missing Fur (And Far More Mysterious Mysteries) and The Stone of Surinam. Her plays have been performed at Dover Castle, Chiswick Playhouse, Chapel Playhouse and Folkestone’s Quarterhouse, and last year she wrote and produced her first short film, The Beast of Romney Marsh.
Michele’s story is read by Louise Burgess. As well as being a writer, Louise is a regular performer at Hand of Doom Productions story nights and has also performed in comedy sketches, plays and improv shows.
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