Enormity

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Enormity Page 12

by Nick Milligan


  A minute passes and the glow of the light catches something. Land. I lift the motor, so as not to damage it and the blades chop at the surface, carrying me the final twenty feet until I’m beached. The material beneath my raft looks like sand. I gently lean over the edge and run a gloved index finger through it. Then I pick some up and let it fall through my hands. Sand. Or something that feels a hell of a lot like it. I marvel at it as if I was discovering the granular substance for the very first time.

  I roll over and lie for a few minutes, assessing my situation, still breathing on the oxygen. My heart pounds. My body aches all over. All that’s visible in the raft’s spotlight is more sand, stretching into the darkness. There’s a very slight slope. Ocean. Salt water. Beach. It’s all familiar. Eerily familiar.

  With adrenaline still pumping through me I get to my feet, take the travel pack from the raft and step, delicately, on to the beach. I pull the light and compass from the front of the raft and I also bring the small motor, which I could use as a weapon. I’m going to head up the sand, away from the water. I should destroy the raft, but right now it is my only transport should I need to escape to the safety of the open ocean. I start my journey, leaving the raft to the sound of crashing waves.

  After fifty metres the sand becomes riddled with small grass shoots. Vegetation bursts beneath my boots. I squat down, running my glove across the tops of the grass stems, inspecting the flora. Some have small black flowers. Despite their colour they appear radiant and healthy. As I continue onward, the grass thickens and soon the sand is barely evident. I wave the light around me, feeling more scared with every step. A few more metres reveal a line of trees. Trunks erupt from the earth in large numbers, thick like a forest. I shine the light upward, amazed that I can’t see the top of the foliage.

  I feel like I’m on Earth and the sensation lulls me into a sense of security. For a moment I question whether I haven’t, somehow, found my way home. Through some improbable series of events, I’ve defied time and space and returned to my corner of the universe. But I know that’s not the case.

  I approach the treeline, peering into the darkness. It’s ominous. I stand, staring and listening. There’s no other sound besides the surf behind me and an occasional insect-like chirp.

  I could wait to see if the dim light returns, but I don’t know exactly how long it might take. I step slowly into the forest, staying alert. My muscles and bones ache. I’m sure I’ve cracked or fractured some of my ribs, as my chest throbs more painfully with each breath. Adrenaline sends electricity through my body and it crackles in my ears.

  Putting one foot in front of the other I move through the trees, which are thick and close together. I’m knee deep in swaying undergrowth that brushes against me, almost weightless. Grass and weeds. I hear a squeaking sound somewhere to my right, like the noise a rodent might make. Pointing my torch toward the disturbance, I see nothing. Just the floor of a forest flowing between tree trunks.

  I stop to touch the bark of the tree to my right. It’s hard and rough. Very normal. Very familiar. It crumbles against my glove, which is covered in small shards when I pull it away.

  I feel something brush against my foot. Jumping, I reel my leg away. I frantically wave my torch. But there’s nothing there. I breathe deeply on my oxygen, locked to the ground beneath me. If I don’t move, I’m invisible. But I doubt that. I don’t know this place. The very air around me could harbour an unseen threat. The trees themselves could be allowing me to idle by before they reshape and come alive. Before they take me by each limb and ease me into pieces like freshly baked bread.

  I take a deep breath and continue, this time with more urgency. I hear more squeaks, shrill and sharp as I proceed. But I ignore them, brushing past tree trunks, and my torch peels back the intense darkness with each painful step.

  The trees part and I step into a clearing. I stay very still, examining the wash of torchlight in front of me. I’m a quivering lighthouse in a space suit. In front of me stands a giant gate. A high fence on either shoulder stretches into the distance. The gate itself appears to be made of iron and is three times my height. Maybe even twenty feet high. Beyond it is an assortment of upright slabs and metallic fencing. Small, rectangular pillars of concrete. It’s a graveyard. Just as it would look on Earth.

  I gently push on the gate and it moves. Unlocked. I hesitantly point the torch, peering through the bars to see if anything is hiding behind the wall. But there’s only grass and a field of headstones. The night around me is enveloped in silence. All I can hear are my long, deep breaths on the oxygen tank.

  The stone blocks that sit next to each other are a variety of shapes and sizes, each of them chipped and cracked, like rows of gnarled teeth. Weeds, moss and grass have invaded their faded skins. The rusted, skeletal remains of metal fencing shoot from the ground. I step forward into the rows, inspecting the worn stones.

  The first stone says, ‘Richard Edwards 2156-2185. Dearly missed and always loved.’ English. Remarkable. I stare at the numbers for a long time. Four-digit years. If this seemingly ancient, decaying headstone was erected in the year 2185, then I’m far beyond that date. Many hours have ticked over this grave.

  The next headstone in the row is covered in a climbing vine. I pull back the leaves to expose the inscription. The name is mostly worn away, but the numbers are ‘2156-2195’. I breathe deeply on my oxygen.

  From somewhere to my right I hear a noise that pierces straight through me. It’s a twisted scream. A howl projected from the lungs. Anguished and desperate. The sound turns into a strangled moan, deep and guttural. The death cry of some lost soul, alone in the endless dark.

  Too frightened to move, I turn my head just enough to see something standing near me. Perhaps only ten feet away. The humanoid shape has wide yellow eyes that reflect the feeble glow of my torch. The presence of this creature paralyses me. It howls again, glaring at me and trembling. Maybe it’s excited. I look at it, hoping it can be placated. My eyes traverse its height. It’s more than a foot taller than me. The long, spindly limbs and torso are covered in black fur. When it howls a third time, black lips peel back to expose rows of jagged teeth. Then it salivates, its wide, yellow eyeballs locked on me in anticipation. The boat motor hangs from the back of my pack, but I won’t have time to use it.

  As the creature hesitates for another moment, waiting for me to move, I decide that I have no choice. I break into a run, darting between the rows of gravestones. Immediately I sense it move to chase me. I wave the torch about in front of me, weaving my way through the closest gaps. Behind me the night becomes the sound of claws on stone. Its enraged growls feel so close that I prepare for its sting.

  In front of me appears a large shape. Something the size of a small house or shed. As I race between gravestones, I see that it has a broad wooden door. I charge, lower my shoulder and hit it with the full weight of my body. It crashes open and in a second I have thrown it shut behind me. I catch a wooden slat on the back of the door with my bobbing flashlight and pull it across. My pursuer crashes into the door, but the slat keeps it outside. It claws and wails in anger, throwing itself against the entrance. I stand back, grabbing the motor and pulling the ripcord. It springs to life, whirring and buzzing. Almost instantly the attacking sounds cease. I listen intently, but hear nothing. Just the sound of the motor sawing through the deathly silence. After a minute I turn it off. The quiet continues.

  Still drawing on my oxygen, I collapse to the ground. Like a goldfish next to its tank. Exhaustion tightens around me like a fist. Miscellaneous pain spreads throughout my torso. Rolling on to my back, I point the torch around the inside of my fortress. It’s tiny. Some sort of workshop. Tools hang from the walls, all of them familiar. Shovels. Pitchforks. Saws. Mallets. Wrenches. Next to me is a bench that’s covered in a white sheet. The roof and walls appear to be made of wood. The floor is dusty and hard, grey like concrete.

  Many hours pass as I lie on the cold floor. I fall in and out of sleep, ba
rely able to move. I don’t hear the creature again, hoping the sound of the motor scared it far away. I draw deeply on the oxygen. Once. Twice. Something doesn’t feel right. Inspecting the gauge, I feel a pang of panic. The tanks are empty. I draw deeply on the mask again, but it offers nothing. Calming myself, I acknowledge that I can still breathe. That I’m ok. I pull the mask from my face.

  I sit up. Mottled light creeps through the room’s only window, which is encrusted with an incoherent layer of grime and dust. I get to my feet and inspect the tools that line the walls, each hanging in their delegated positions. An array of aged, well worn utensils. All familiar in shape. All recognisable.

  I turn to face the workbench in the middle of the room. Underneath the sheet are various unintelligible lumps. I gently lift one side of the stained, yellowish cloth and peer underneath. There’s a bone. Unmistakable. I drop the sheet back and step away, feeling my heart race again. I now have a desire to get out of here. The growing daylight outside will make the wilderness safer.

  But curiosity becomes me and I pull back the entire sheet, letting it fall to the floor. A skeleton. Femur, carpals, ribs, spinal column, shoulder blades. A skull. A very human skull. It sits on its jaw, straight up, facing the shed’s entrance. I notice a hand is missing, as well as parts of the left arm. It’s as if someone’s piecing together a jigsaw, with sections missing. A shed project. But whose shed?

  I return the sheet and venture to the caked window. Around its edge are what appear to be spider webs. Which means spiders. But I can’t see any. With my gloved hand I wipe at one of the panes, the muck smearing but thinning enough to create some transparency. Placing my face near the glass I can see the graveyard continues into the distance. Beyond it is more dense forest. In the cemetery’s centre, perhaps only one hundred metres away, is a building. Its high, pointed roof is scaled with weathering tiles. A church.

  Chapter Six

  Today’s newspaper says that an abnormally large shark was seen at the beach near my house. It cleared the water pretty damn quick. Guards closed off the waves to swimmers. Another girl has gone missing and it’s believed she was last seen at the beach. Authorities refuse to comment on whether she was taken by the shark.

  Another story says that severed limbs were found in a motel bathtub on the other side of town. They belong to an adolescent female. Fingerprints have not determined who the limbs belong to. It’s harder to blame that one on the shark. If the shark even exists.

  On page six is a story about a giant pharmaceutical company that has recalled their entire line of popular sunscreen. It’s been discovered that long-term use of the product is carcinogenic.

  Laurie is over. Her parents have gone away for the weekend. Apparently her friends have been pestering her to throw another party. They want to hang out with me some more.

  “If too many people know you live here, would you have to move again?” asks Laurie, who is sitting on the opposite lounge, mucking about with one of my acoustic guitars. She’s wearing a simple white singlet top and a pair of small denim shorts.

  I glance up from the paper and shrug. “Don’t know. Maybe not. I can’t be bothered moving again.”

  “There’s lots of security here,” says Laurie, as she strums a chord. It clangs in disharmony and she grunts softly in frustration.

  “There is,” I reply. “And if someone scales the outside of the building, they’re welcome to come in for a drink.”

  “Someone would!” says Laurie. “My friends are nearly considering it.”

  “Send them up,” I shrug. “Your friends seem nice.”

  “Really?” asks Laurie, incredulously.

  “Yes, they seem… observant.”

  “How come you never reply to my phone messages?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I send you messages and you never reply.”

  I think for a moment, then quickly realise that Laurie probably has Norman’s number. Norman isn’t turned on all that often. I should probably give her my new number.

  “I got a new number,” I say. “The other one leaked online.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” says Laurie. “Must happen a lot.”

  “Yeah, you should delete my old number.” I pull out my mobile phone and tell her my actual digits. “Of course, you have to keep that a secret.”

  “I didn’t give your old number to anyone,” she replies.

  “No, of course. I trust you implicitly,” I smile.

  On the next page of the newspaper is a picture of a girl. She’s gone missing. Lower down is a grid of small images, each the size of a postage stamp. All photos of missing girls.

  In an eerie coincidence, Laurie asks, “It says in the newspaper today that you and your band know the girls that are missing.”

  “It says lots of things in the newspaper,” I reply.

  “They’ve all been to your concerts,” adds Laurie, focusing on the arrangement of her dainty fingers on the guitar neck. “Apparently some of them work for your record label?”

  “Lots of people have been to our concerts and many women work at the record label.”

  Laurie stops and looks up at me, smiling. “You sound so guilty.”

  “What do you mean?” I scoff. “I don’t sound like anything.”

  “Aren’t you worried about them?”

  I fold the newspaper and throw it on the floor at my feet. “What would your parents think of you visiting me?”

  “Well, let’s see,” smiles Laurie. “I’m an impressionable twenty-year-old girl. I’m their darling daughter. Their only child. And, for all they know, I’m a virgin.”

  “A predatory virgin,” I say, slightly under my breath, leaning toward the coffee table to pour myself a scotch.

  Laurie rolls her eyes and continues, ignoring me. “You’re a 35-year-old rock star. A renowned bedder of the opposite sex. I still have a poster of you on my wall.”

  “For dart-throwing,” I say, reaching for the ice bucket.

  “It faces my bed,” says Laurie, strumming the open strings on the guitar.

  “I’m aware,” I say, dropping three ice cubes into the golden elixir. “But if they knew the Laurie I know, they’d be damn more worried about me.”

  Laurie strums the guitar again, as if to mock me. She pulls a face that I sometimes make on stage when I’m improvising a solo. Somewhere between concentration and ecstasy.

  “Wow, you really know how to handle that thing,” I say, pointing at the instrument.

  Laurie strums a random chord and it clangs. “Teach me how to play something.”

  “Like what?” I say.

  “I don’t know! Anything.”

  I laugh to myself. “Ok, bring it over here then.”

  I lie back on the couch and open my legs so that Laurie can sit between them. She perches on the edge of the sofa and leans back into my body. I show her some chords, moving her fingers to the correct strings. Once we repeat the sequence of chords a number of times, I show Laurie the rhythm she needs to strum with her right hand. Within five minutes she’s playing something that resembles ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’.

  My cheek is close to hers. I watch her face, masked in concentration, her eyes moving from hand to hand, sliding with her fingers up the neck. I kiss the bare skin on her shoulder.

  When Dylan knocks on my apartment door, Laurie and I are still on the couch.

  “Who’s that?” asks Laurie, panicking. “It might be my parents.”

  “Aren’t they away?” I ask.

  “They’re supposed to be,” she replies.

  “Go hide in my bedroom,” I say, and Laurie dashes down the corridor.

  I swing open the door and am greeted by an unexpected guest. “Random visits,” I say to Dylan. “This is one of your best.”

  “Do I need an excuse to see you?” he asks, with a big grin. He seems under the influence of something. Booze. Drugs. Society.

  “Early afternoon drinks?” I inquire, as he pushes past me into the apartm
ent.

  “I just felt like being…” he says, trailing off. He starts opening cupboards in the kitchen, probably looking for my drugs.

  “Now’s a bad time, Dylan,” I say.

  “Really?” he asks, opening more cupboards. His t-shirt is matted to his back from sweat. He’s wearing faded jeans and his feet are bare and dirty. Dylan’s short blonde hair is pushed down on his head, sticking to his scalp.

  “Really,” I say. “I wouldn’t lie to you, sweetheart. Come back later. Stick to the booze. Pass out somewhere.”

  He grabs an unopened bottle of scotch from my kitchen counter, twists it open and takes a long swig.

  “Did you see the paper today?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Can you fucking believe it?”

  “Well, remember,” I say, walking over and taking the scotch from him. “When you swim in the ocean, you’re entering a shark’s home. You take that risk.”

  “What?” asks Dylan, reluctantly giving up the bottle. “No, I mean the girls. The missing girls. They think we’re responsible? They think we’re killing girls, man.”

  “No, they don’t,” I say. “They’re just pointing out that many of the girls were last seen at our concerts.”

  “Girls all go to our concerts,” says Dylan, wiping his forehead. I sip on the scotch and give him back the bottle. “Girls fucking love us, Jack. They fucking love you.”

  “They love you too,” I say.

  Dylan laughs, loudly. “They love me Jack, because they love you. They worship you,” he adds.

  “They worship the music,” I say. “It’s all about the music.”

  Dylan shakes his head, grinning, acting like I’m a real laugh riot. “You just don’t know,” he says, still shaking his head.

  “Dylan, take a fistful of painkillers and mellow the fuck out,” I say. “I have company. You are currently embezzling my fucking company. We’ll spend some quality time soon.”

 

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