Ghost On The Coast

It was a foggy October night.

Ten modern gas lamps lit the bookshelves acquiescent with a counterfeit-cosiness. The weak sun waved its lamenting arm goodbye from behind the horizon and the blue frown of early night began to fall outside. Accompanied by only the titter-tatter of the plates on my tray (to be washed through the night in the dishwasher), mauve silence settled over the café. 

The little building overlooked the seashore, a beach of white sands which stretched its wide-open arms far beyond where the eye could follow. A mini library and coffee-bar combined, the cafe was called ‘The Warren’, as in the rabbit hole, because of its placement atop a verdant hill on the Western side of the beach.

A unique scent of books, sea salt and chamomile tea drifted out of its fraying doors during the warmer months, inviting vagabonds and sea-dogs of all kinds to take shelter from the world in the little hillside bohemian hollow.

This evening, I was very alone.

As I wiped down the chairs, a thick blanket of beach-fog crept up to the windows. It stood around in pillars outside, and I thought the strange, vertical clouds looked like creatures of mist who longed to come in and melt away. With my face close to the glass, I peered between the mist-people and hovered over the wild landscape, listening to the dull roar of distant waves. On stormy nights, the thunderous batter of sea-rain against the sea-stacks could shock a sensitive nervous system into reverence. 

Tonight, the crescent-shaped shore lay silent and ghostly and strange, as though it belonged to another moon.

Fogging the glass up with my breath, I had the uncanny sensation that I was merging with the mist-creatures. They lingered so charmingly on the outside of the building, pressing themselves eagerly up against the glass, cold and drenched in the silence of their own sullenness. 

I found that I was listening for a voice that I knew would not speak, waiting for the arrival of a person that I knew would not come. 

As the clock struck another hour, I felt that I should step out of this place.

The switch was stiff under my finger as I shut the electricity down; the hood on my raincoat snagged when I took it off the hook; the lock dripped wet in the door with the turn of the keys; each granite step slipped under my feet as I made my way down to the beach.

I think now, dear friend, that these aforementioned inanimate objects, which held in them the very essence of reality, were trying to keep me back, to keep me locked in.

Down the green-grey steps I scuttled, half scared, half elated, entirely lucid. The graceless wind tangled my hair and something urged me to get to the shore. I was being pulled to it, like a tide being dragged by the moon. At the shore, the fog did not stand in tall, ovular columns. There, freshness rolled in with each curve of the granite waves, spreading mist evenly across the vastness of the whole, entire ocean. 

Did I know why I was running?

Thorns dragged at my skirt, but I pulled it away, tearing holes in the cotton which gaped as dead eyes gape. In my urgency at turning a corner, my hand smacked against the cobbled wall which ran alongside the lofty staircase. I scrunched my fingers tighter, hoping, absent-mindedly, that the self-imposed pressure would alleviate the sting. It did. On and on I hurried, my own breath an orchestra of wind-instruments in the caverns of my ears. When my feet finally found the chilly and unstable sand, fragile ankles gave way beneath me. 

For a moment, I was blind. 

Broken seashells tore off the skin on my knees, but still I lurched toward the invisible shore. 

The sky had lost all of its light and no lamps shone along the seawall. 

The fog choked out the stars.

Darkness swallowed every inch of the world before me, but I could hear the sea. I knew where to go.

Step by step, I approached the black, swirling waters of the infinite, hypnotised by the velvet mystery of all things.

The tepid water rolled over my toes (still encased in their leather shoes) and I snapped my head up with a sudden rush of confusion. 

Why had I come here?

I shuffled backwards - away from myself - and tripped over my own laces. 

There appeared a light upon the horizon (which was now level with my eyes). I knew it to be the bright, white lantern of a lone fishing boat, coming home from across the bay. Closer and closer it moved, and, as I watched from the water’s edge, the tinkling shallows tickled my fingers and licked my legs. Mesmerised by that blinding white light, time passed, and I did not realise the sea-foam had begun to gather at my waist. I panicked, trying to scramble to my feet, but I was stuck. 

Feeling around with my hands in the water, salty bubbles gurgled in the darkness as I frantically tried to set my body free. Spray hit my face, grit stung my eyes, but I did not find a tangle of seaweed, nor fishing rope or even a pile of rocks. The realisation dawned on me: I had become submerged in the sand, and the weight of the whole beach sat atop my calves.

The light was close now and I thought that the captain could see me in his glare. A river ran from each of my eyes, dispersing back into that ocean from which they came. I pulled my hands out of the muck – the beach would not swallow them too – and I waved as an insane person waves. In the rush of water and wind (or was it the blood in my ears?) I heard a buzzing sound coming from the light and prayed that it was the revolving rope of a tugboat, ready to pull me out.

But it was not a tugboat. 

It was a bee.

The insect landed on my nose and in its wispy voice said to me: “Wait.”

The bright light disappeared and I craned to see the vessel in the dark, but there was nothing to find. Water rushed over my breasts and neck, filled my nose. It pulled at my arms and I felt them sway to the motion of the waves like strands of kelp. The surface of the water lapped over my eyes, and brought to me on its inky current a tiny skull. 

As the little bone danced above me in the ripples, my entire body dissolved into tears. 

It was ivory and beautiful and human. 

The child I had lost.

I knew now why I had come.

I heaved one last sigh and turned my back on the universe’s cruel laws. 

Back to the Earth I gave the soul that had animated me for a time; that gossamer thing, which I’d borrowed to digest the floating strings of karma some other being had created but which had been unfairly arranged to shape my life. 

Used. Pointless. Sad.

And on it would go.

So I dropped my bones to the seabed. 

Disentangled my atoms.

Let the coast swallow me up.

But I would not be erased completely. 

The world would know what it had done.

How long had it been?

The crimson light of morning set fire to the sea while the dawn slid back her curtains. North’s chill winds had fled, replaced by a warm breeze from the South. 

In my hiding place, I felt the spin of the planet as it turned obediently on its axis; how many times it had rotated, I’d lost count. 

I felt the rumbles and groans that came from deep within the Earth, vibrating through secret channels and erupting into floods of lava somewhere out of sight. I heard the whispers of the clustering shellfish that smothered my head, stinky, their shells as sharp as knives. 

Did I have a head?

Day after day, the sun rose and fell. 

Year after year, I felt the rub of the wind bend and smooth me.  

A billion waves crashed against me; a trillion broken seashells scratched at my knees, knees that were no longer there. My hands were frozen rigid, as they had been when I was alive.

I waited and waited, and waited still.

It was a foggy October night.

I, fossilised and insistent, finally realised that the little ivory skull had been my own.

My creative inner child who had been stolen by the world, almost turned to stone, but mine again now.

I rose from the darkness and found myself back in The Warren. No mist-people lurked, for they had been set free to glide over the sea.

Bunnies. Bees. Blue.

I opened a book and began to write.