Storm

by Nicola Skinner

  How had that happened? Had I fallen out of bed? Had my clothes caught on something? Or could I have ripped them myself, in my sleep?

  That hot chocolate must have been a bad batch.

  A very bad batch.

  Someone should write and complain.

  Exhausted, I let my head droop, and stared in confusion at my lap.

  There were lots of tiny white things sticking out of my thighs, visible through the rips in my jeans. With battered fingers I tried to pull one out, noticing my skin had gone all pale and rubbery, like old yoghurt.

  But maybe that’s just what happens to your skin when you sleep in your own wee for a whole night?

  After a few seconds of effort, one of the white things came out with a sucking pop and I held it in my hand.

  It was a shell.

  THERE WERE LOADS of them, embedded into my skin, sticking out from my thighs. My legs were like those oranges studded with cloves hanging from our Christmas tree downstairs. And you’d think something like that would hurt, but it didn’t.

  That’s because I’m numb with shock though, right?

  ‘Mum? Dad? Birdie?’ I shouted.

  There was no reply.

  They must all be outside, admiring that noisy new lawnmower. I ran to my bedroom window – vaguely aware I hadn’t closed my curtains last night, weird – and looked outside.

  But Dad wasn’t in our garden, mowing the lawn.

  Instead it was three helicopters making that roaring sound, slicing through a sky the colour of wet slate. Their beam lights flickered across the clouds.

  I ran into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Empty.

  I went into Birdie’s bedroom. Empty.

  I drew closer to her wonky, sea-facing window. The view outside was different. The sea looked like an overcrowded bath, filled with damaged toys. There were buildings in the sea. I saw the roof of Birdie’s primary school. At least seven white caravans were in there too, moving up and down in the waves. Here and there were red and yellow boats, snapped in half like crayons broken by a petulant child.

  I hurried downstairs, my gait lopsided from running with one shredded trainer and one bare foot.

  ‘Mum? Dad? BIRDIE?’

  I yelled for them in the kitchen, the sitting room and Mum’s study. But they didn’t come.

  After searching the cottage three times, I had to face facts.

  They’re not here. They’re missing.

  I’ll tell you something else that was missing. Their winter jackets and wellies – they weren’t in the porch. My parka was also missing. The one I’d put on yesterday.

  Had they gone out for a walk before school? Without me, but with my parka? WHY?

  And how quiet it was. Mornings at home were usually noisy, pop songs blaring out from the radio competing with Birdie shouting that she couldn’t find her book bag, and the ancient coffee machine grinding through its first cycle of the day. But this morning, our house was more like an empty beach than a home. A beach at the end of the day – footprints washed clean by the tide, human existence rubbed away.

  Then someone knocked on the front door.

  Phew.

  I skidded on the floorboards in my rush to get there, and then stopped. Why were they knocking anyway? They had keys.

  ‘Hello?’ boomed Mum.

  ‘Anyone there?’ roared Dad.

  ‘Anyone hurt?’ said a third deep voice.

  They did not sound like themselves at all.

  Unsure, I took a few steps away, in the direction of the staircase, and then sank down on to its bottom step. I wrapped my arms around myself. The door went RATTLE RATTLE and a few seconds later broke apart in a pile of large wooden splinters and a tall man who was definitely Not Dad pushed his way through its remains.

  Behind him came a woman who was definitely Not Mum and a shorter man who was definitely Not Birdie. These Nots wore padded waterproof trousers, the ones that make a swishy noise when you move, big fluorescent jackets and hard hats with the words Coastal Rescue on them. I felt a mixture of relief and fear. They didn’t look like thieving murderers. On the other hand, they had just kicked our door in.

  The three of them stood, gathered before me. The grey light that filled the unlit hallway cast shadows on their faces, making it harder for me to see their eyes. I shivered slightly.

  ‘Hello?’ said the woman.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Anyone here?’ she said, throwing anxious, quick glances around the hallway.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said from my step. ‘But my parents and sister aren’t. Can you help me find them?’

  ‘Okay,’ said the woman firmly, and I gave her a grateful smile. ‘There’s a car in the drive, so it’s possible the residents are still at home. I spotted a child’s bicycle in the garden so we could be searching for minors. It’s possible they can’t get to the door, so they may be injured. Let’s find some visual ID so we know who we’re looking for.’

  The two men nodded.

  ‘Right,’ said the woman. ‘Ed, find the fuse box and switch everything off.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Not Dad, the tall man.

  The woman turned to the shorter man. ‘Let’s check downstairs first.’

  ‘But I’ve looked everywhere,’ I said. ‘Three times at least. They’re definitely not here.’

  In spite of that, they hurried off in the direction of the sitting room.

  They’re double-checking, I thought, getting up from my step to follow them. That’s nice, I suppose.

  Off we went.

  ME AND THE three strangers regarded the jumble of blankets and cushions on the sofa, the overturned mugs on the floor, Dad’s newspaper sprawled out on the carpet. I stood awkwardly in the doorway, hoping they couldn’t smell the wee on me.

  ‘I have already checked in here,’ I reminded them, as gently as I could.

  The man and woman said nothing.

  Would it hurt them to reply? I mean, what happened to basic manners?

  On the other hand, grown-ups could get that way when they were concentrating. It was like the sound of children’s voices stopped their brains from working properly, so they’d demand silence when confronted with a knotty problem.

  This happened quite often at school, and whenever our parents were trying to drive to a new campsite and had forgotten a map again. What I was dealing with here was a case of Grown-ups Needing Total Quiet for Their Thinking Time.

  The fairy lights on the Christmas tree went dark.

  The tall man appeared in the sitting room. ‘Circuit’s off,’ he said. He walked up to the fireplace in his heavy black boots and began to rifle through the Christmas cards.

  Hold on a minute!

  On top of being ignored by the other two, this was too much. My throat went all scratchy. ‘Those are private.’

  His hand paused for a moment. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said.

  The three of them went very still, as if straining to catch a far-off sound.

  ‘Very funny,’ I muttered. ‘Point taken.’

  Again, this was nothing new. What I was experiencing here was that old chestnut, Let’s Pretend Our Ears Don’t Work to Teach a Child Some Manners. It was boring, it wasn’t funny, but it was clearly rather popular among the elderly.

  ‘No,’ said the woman, ‘but check the kitchen.’

  Two of them ran off while I stared at the man nosing around our mantelpiece. There were deep shadows under his bloodshot eyes, as if he’d been on the go all night without any sleep.

  Now I thought about it, the others looked pretty bad too. The way they moved had a heavy feel. They needed a couple of early nights if you asked me.

  Tall Man lifted something off the mantelpiece. ‘Come and have a look,’ he shouted.

  The other two ran back, all signs of exhaustion gone, and gazed down at the photo frame in his hands. I smiled when I realised what it was. Our one decent family photo.

  It shows the four of us at a wedding. We’re sitting in a row along a ha
y bale; me and Birdie in the middle, Mum and Dad on either side. We’re flushed, catching our breath between dancing. Mum’s looking straight at the camera and laughing. She’s wearing that emerald-green dress she bought at the flea market in Swanage, red nail polish on her dirty bare feet, eyes all bright and shining.

  The exceptional wonkiness of Dad’s smile, always a handy barometer in letting us know how happy he is, is dialled all the way up to ten. He’s gazing over my head and Birdie’s at Mum, and looks quite handsome, his teeth white in a tanned face, his unruly hair sort of combed for once. Birdie and I have our arms around each other. There are cornflowers braided into our hair. They look like blue stars. Birdie’s eyes are closed and she’s got the goofiest grin on as she nestles into me.

  The three strangers stared at that photo a bit too long. We’re just regular human beings, guys. Seriously. You should see all our other family albums – I look dreadful in those. This was a total fluke.

  And then I realised none of them was smiling. Just like that, the whole house changed. Like a drop of paint falling into water, sadness stained the room.

  The woman pressed her lips tightly before releasing them again. ‘We might be looking for a family then. One man, one woman and two young girls.’

  ‘Er, you don’t need to find two,’ I said. ‘Just one? I’m right here. It’s my little sister

  that’s miss—’

  And then

  my voice

  tailed off.

  Because I’d finally realised.

  Although you guessed a few chapters back, didn’t you?

  THE TRUTH DANCED in front of my eyes like it was written by a sparkler on Bonfire Night, teasingly incomplete, almost too bright to look at, fading to nothing at the end.

  But could it really be true? I mean, what were the chances?

  The three Coastal Rescue people ran upstairs, calling out in quick, clipped voices.

  I staggered after them in a daze, as my brain began to sift through things. To test my theory, I sneaked up behind them on the upstairs landing and screamed as loud as I could.

  Nothing.

  Zip. Zilch. Not so much as a shudder.

  The shorter man went into Birdie’s bedroom.

  ‘This might hurt,’ I said, and tried to kick him on his backside.

  He needn’t have worried. My foot stopped just short of his swishy trousers, as if some invisible barrier protected him. He didn’t even turn around.

  Gasping, I ran to the upstairs bathroom and stared at the mirror above the sink. Staring back was something stormy, strong and tempestuous – but it wasn’t me. It was one of Dad’s seascapes that hung on the wall opposite.

  I waved my battered hand in front of the mirror. Nothing.

  One final test.

  Taking a deep breath, I hurled myself down the stairs, making sure to bang my head against the banisters on the way. Didn’t feel a thing.

  I sat at the bottom of the staircase and dealt with the facts. I hadn’t woken up in wee. I had woken up in seawater.

  Now I remembered what that dog had barked at so desperately. What we’d tried to run from. Suddenly, in one dreadful moment, it all came flooding back to me. As it were.

  At the beginning, when we saw the wave from our window table, the fear had come in quite slyly, like it was stapled on to the end of a joke. The wave was still quite far away, just by the end of the jetty, and that was surely as close as it would come.

  Plus people in Cliffstones moved slowly; nothing was done in a rush. That was the Dorset way.

  So at first, we didn’t even think about escaping.

  We’d just looked for a while. Gazed, while it gathered itself together, quietly, stealthily. We’d watched it. What we hadn’t realised, of course, was that it was also watching us.

  Glossy as a blackberry, the sea had pleated and rippled against itself, and then it had risen, a sea monster made of the actual sea, and as it built itself up into this new, nightmarish height, it seemed to say, ‘Bet you didn’t think I could do this!’ And then it no longer looked anything like the sea I’d known all my life – the paddling, running in and squealing sea, the bright blue crabbing sea, the postcard sea of our summers.

  This was a different, alien sea. This was the sea beneath. The one that made you shudder and snatch your hand out when you glimpsed it from a boat.

  It was only when the wave went over the jetty, instead of around it, and tipped the people right into itself in a horrible gathering, like a malevolent mother folding children into her skirt, that the stampede inside the restaurant began, even though it had been too late by then, of course.

  Mum and Dad reached for us and we ran to the door but there was too much of a crush. Dad picked up a chair and threw it at the window and we’d scrambled out of that, cutting ourselves on the glass in our rush to escape.

  I looked at the nicks on my hands. Ah.

  But even when we were scrabbling out of the Crab Pot, even then, some disbelief lingered. The sea – our sea, our friend – would surely realise its mistake? Would drop back down to a less threatening height? And somehow it would stop oozing towards us, would slink back, shrink back, to a safe spot beyond the harbour wall, back where it belonged, saying in a watery and very sorry way, ‘Whoops! My bad! Don’t know what I was thinking of! Here’s the people I swallowed earlier – do have them back, and let’s pretend this never happened, shall we?’ and we’d all gasp with relief and go about our day.

  That was going to happen, any second.

  Any second.

  Once the four of us had struggled out of the broken window, we ran.

  Dad, grey with fear, attempted to gather up Birdie in his arms as we stumbled along the pavement, trying to dodge the scrum around us, but it wasn’t a smooth movement and she bobbed awkwardly in his arms, her face one terrified question mark. Over Dad’s shoulder, her eyes met mine and I tried to say sorry, but my mouth was all twisted, and the wave was so close and so loud she wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

  Mum gripped my hand in hers as we ran, making strange sobbing noises.

  The wave was now just outside the harbour wall, just a few paces away.

  It will turn back, I thought.

  But it didn’t turn back. It charged.

  Leapt over the wall with greedy, outstretched, frothing, white fingers. Shut the little dog up for ever. Ripped hands out of hands, people from people. And that had been that. The bruise I’d always been told to admire had turned into a bruiser and finished us right off.

  I couldn’t remember coming back from the Crab Pot because I hadn’t come back.

  Not alive anyway.

  I was dead. I had drowned.

  I held my fingernails up to my face. I hadn’t bitten them off. They’d been ripped off. I took in my ragged clothes, shredded trainers, those shells sticking out of my legs. Now they made sense. Born by the sea, died by the sea. Exit: me.

  And if Dad had been with me right then and there, he’d probably have made it all about Art, by saying something meaningful in that philosophical way he had. Something like: ‘Well, Franks, really that’s got a bittersweet symmetry when you think about it’ or ‘Maybe we do always return to the source of our own beginnings.’ But he wasn’t with me and anyway he’d have been wrong.

  I wasn’t a work of art. I wasn’t a thought-provoking allegory.

  I was dead.

  Well, technically, I was dead-ish.

  I WAS DOING pretty well for myself, as far as death went. This was death with added features. I could still walk. Talk. Waggle my fingers in front of my face. The only thing I couldn’t do, apparently, was communicate with the living. Or feel physical pain where pain should be. It was a strange sensation, not having to breathe. My lungs didn’t work. My chest didn’t rise. I was just rawness, stunned with bright shock.

  I closed my eyes and listened, numb, as my brain whispered questions. Questions like: Why had only I come back? Was I a ghost? A spirit? A ghoul? If I was dead, was I meant to call
my body a corpse now? I stared down at myself and shuddered. And then thought: Does it matter what I call it? I had died. We had died. The shock of it shrieked through me like a forest fire. My brain whispered: What happens now?

  But, most importantly of all, where were the rest of my family? And how was I meant to fill in the time until they came back?

  Because they were coming back, right?

  Right?

  After a while, the rescue crew appeared at the top of the staircase. I automatically moved to the side of the step I was sitting on, but then a dreadful thing happened. The woman walked straight through me.

  It was a sickening sensation. It was like being squished and shoved by a herd of water buffaloes. As her body moved through mine, everything I thought should remain in one place, like my lungs and kidneys and all those other delicate organs that shouldn’t, as a rule, be messed about with, shifted to the side to accommodate her. I felt like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed.

  And worse than all of that was the flavour it left in my mouth. Urgh, the taste.

  Have you ever tasted human flesh?

  Actually, don’t answer that. Let’s just assume the answer is no. Long story short, it’s nothing like chicken. It’s disgusting. I tasted muscle and fat and blood and also some hastily digested bacon and eggs that were roughly twelve hours old. A mouthful of body.

  I tasted other things too. Emotions. Traces of thoughts. Sorrow and grief and fatigue. It was like something wet and cold crawling across my tongue.

  She emerged out of me with a small but audible squelch. And then, because I hadn’t moved from the step, it happened AGAIN.

  And then ONCE MORE JUST FOR FUN.

  Once they’d all had a go, I wanted to be sick. The sour aftertaste of three humans mingled on my tongue.