6
On 27st February I slept. What I have to describe now is what I thought, at least for a time, I'd be free of. It's important because it explains how pressing my behaviour becomes not long after. I dreamt I was flying across an endless expanse of rippling and subtle silvers and blues, shimmering in the moonlight. It wasn't the feeling of a bird or any kind of omnipotence; I was much lower down, much more in tune with the waves, but clear of the surface all the same. It was the ocean, endlessly the ocean. I could breathe it in with ease on the odd occasion I crashed through the surface, not losing any momentum at all in my forward drive, before rising back above. I flew across for some time. Then the light was really very gone, so as only the deepest blue remained, and suddenly there, in the distance, something solid - land. It tumbled up at a faster rate than I seemed to be moving, and I was upon it.
But it wasn't just land. This was an island, definitely, and all along rows and rows of trees stood, trees I had seen of the kind before. Trees that seemed to be withered and dead by every branch, yet even in the darkness I could still see them all dotted with leaves which hung only from every tip of a branch. These leaves weren't the delicate pink I'd seen before. These were a mature departure from that elegance - a deep purple, turning to black where it could. Then there were more trees, endlessly. Row after row with not a branch to tell them apart anymore. And onwards I plunged.
I don't remember when I stopped flying, but I remember landing, and waking. Landing heavily onto my face, so that I tasted metallic blood from somewhere in my mouth, and my cheek was definitely cut. I winced, then clawed (and winced at that too), and then I recognised pebbles, though I couldn't think; there was a roaring in my ears that filled me up, leaving me utterly disorientated. In hindsight, I'm amazed I kept as calm as I did. I was somewhere I didn't know, having no idea how I got there and with all my senses buzzing with interference. Slowly, somehow, I retuned, and regained some sense. And it dawned on me that I now knew what Mr. Inagi had been through.
Slowly I looked around. I was definitely on a beach, definitely at night. It was a particularly violent gale tonight too, such that my clothing was whipping against me in the wind. Next to me was, indeed, a shovel, its handle covered in what was my blood (there aren't many scenarios where this would feel like the least disquieting thing I would be dealing with, but this was one of them).
I remember - quite vividly - resolving not to run, or I might never find out what happened to me. It was a strong desire to investigate, and find the truth, that kept me on that beach for the next hour. Instead I waited for my focus to return, scanning for more signs of familiarity to lock on to. The sea was behind me, thrashing, and I notice the sky - a distinct, separate entity. That gave me some bearing to stand up properly. Then I realised I was higher up this beach, near sand dunes which rippled like the ocean I'd just seen in my dream. Any trace of my footsteps were long gone, but I decided to make my way up one regardless. What I noticed on top of the rolling sand dune nearby was what looked like a tree, then it definitely was a tree, jutting out nearby. Once again it seemed like the best thing to approach.
It was only when I was very close that it dawned on me - that the feeling of familiarity sank in. I was looking down on a tree perched on the edge of a gravelled area - a car park. It was definitely the tree I had seen on the night I first found the artefact, which my car had sunk below - I could see the depression in the gravel now... only, it was more pronounced than ever before, to the extent I doubted I would be able to get my car near it again should I come back. The depressions seemed to be separated, in subtlety distinct indentations.
I found myself back down there, this time with the shovel, digging at the coarse gravel, and an air of d?j? vu started to sweep me. Something about this tree had played through my whole event, a ringing note through the whole symphony. I've finally satisfied myself that if anything was the disorder, the unusual, about my journey the day I found the rock, it could only be this. No dead tree blooms leaves.
As I shovelled back the ground, deeper and deeper until it felt I might root the tree, I eventually hit something solid. At this, I began to try and dig around whatever it was that was blocking my way.
And finally I was face to face with the thing that had sent my life spiralling off course. I was actually quite calm at the sight of it, as if all my emotions had been spent by now. Half unearthed, it sat with a kind of sinister simplicity, something that was so otherworldly yet - here in front of me - so ordinary, a physical thing right there, not an image on a screen or in a memory.
I quickly noticed something was different, though. When I pulled back more of the ground which cloaked the rest of the artefact in mystery, I found roots. In fact, I realised, they were adjoined to one large root which seemed to have opened up, which appeared to have just begun to consume the artefact. Consume, absorb, engulf, really any is applicable, but the sight of it made my mind race through theories about this newly discovered relationship.
I dug more. More around those other depressions. I found more. More artefacts of the kind I'd just unearthed, only these were in various states of consumption by their own sets of tendrils, so that the fifth and final that I found had virtually disappeared deep into the heart of the tree's underground mass. I could see no clear view of it other than the bulge it left in the root matter which had swallowed it. Two were in not much better shape, very much on their way to disappearing, but I could see the pulsing of the striations in their bodies where the roots had not grasped them. Pulsing of much more rigour than any I'd seen on that beach or in my dreams. The remaining two, including the one I was presuming to be mine, had apparently only just begun to be consumed.
I dug around more, but my shovel only yanked at roots now. After a bruising effort of work and analysis I began to see a pattern that suggested to me that still other artefacts had been consumed in the past, perhaps many. Warped, gaping canals of roots suggested more consumption events were left sitting there collapsed and lifeless. Then I ran along the beach, and found nothing - the artefact that me and my father had found was definitely gone.
This was it. Here was the explanation to the trance Mr. Inagi - and now I - had found himself in. We had buried the thing we both found before, and had done so in our sleep, without knowing. There was more to take from this. Five artefacts. It could only be surmised that Jayson, surely, must have buried his too.
The sight of the least entombed of them made me sick. Rhythmic pulsating of a sickly kind of music. Too much. I'd finally had enough. A burst of anger erupted and I brought down the head of my shovel on the mass. I tore at the nauseating matter. When I was sure I had smashed it apart, I started on another. Only my shovel could not penetrate the tangle of roots to get any clear hit on the rest. All were too far gone along the stage of consumption. When I was finally panting, I caught sight of the lurid pulp of my own ruined artefact. Something inside me turned over; I threw down my shovel and never looked back.
My own descent into a haze of lost agency welled up in me a new pressing desire to talk to the last contact I had yet to meet - Emily Lau. I was drawn to her for information, but why with such intensity as to make me seek her to no end, I can't really explain. I guess worry was the biggest factor. Endless nights of sleeplessness and days feeling like a dream. I have never been able to sit on something so naggingly unresolved, so undetermined.
Remember that this whole event is framed around my slow approach to the university life I'm submerged in now. I didn't have anything substantial in terms of money at all, but I did have an overdraft on its way, the activation of which was grinding its way through the banking pipe work. When it came, I booked a flight to Hong Kong. I appeal to the reader to understand that this was the most substantially impulsive decision I've ever made, devoid of sense or attention to the consequences. I never even told my parents I was going there, as to me this would only be an impediment, a move I view now to be wholly irresponsible. But before I left, I paid once more a visit to Jayson, to press him aga
in - it was inescapable that his artefact was there with the rest of ours.
Jayson, however, continued to insist. Being an extraordinarily mild day, he had invited me into his garden this time; a cosy space (even with the bare branches in mind) - at odds with the rigorous order of Mr. Inagi's plant and pavement parade. And here insist he did. How could this ever be? There were no reports of anyone else finding what we had. Then, an avenue seemed to open up in my mind. What did Jayson have different from everybody else?
'Jayson, what happened when you touched the artefact that time?'
'What happened? Nothing. I didn't notice anything. Why?'
And then she appeared from the conservatory, more vivid than any ghostly likeness. The girl with the pigtails who'd appeared everywhere I felt uncomfortable stepped into the garden with a dog so fluffy it didn't appear to have legs, and everything about her was unthreatening. I was visibly shocked, but Jayson didn't seem to notice.
'Your sister was involved in you finding your artefact, wasn't she? Did you notice any odd behaviour from her since?'
'My sister? Yes, she was involved. She was the one who found it. I was mostly worried about getting her safely to shore at first, but then? I just couldn't stop my curiosity to see for myself. My sister rarely lies and doesn't exaggerate.'
At least on the surface, my questions were all being answered. Deeper thoughts of where the artefact came from and why it was making us fall into trances eluded me, but I knew there was likely little chance Jayson Kahn or Mr. Inagi were going to have any answers. With Jayson's blessing I crept beside Laurie as she played in the garden and asked her for her story. She had indeed done what I had pieced together was the root of our woes, and been the first to touch the artefact, who's discovery all this time had been ascribed mainly to Jayson. And it became clear to me that in that action I brought upon myself everything bad that happened to me, and here, now, this has come to be my single biggest regret. Laurie skipped away apparently happy as could be, and I went on awash with worry and fret.
Along the Darkening Coast | Jamie Campbell
Along the Darkening Coast Page 6