Kook

by Chris Vick

  But as the wind got faster, screaming in the air, I began to think there was no safe place any more. The sky was darkening by the second, full with rain and mist and cloud.

  No safe place, no shape to the waves, no order. Chaos was in charge. The sea was rising into hills. Ten feet high. Twenty. Not breaking, but heaving up and down. Seesawing. And the wind was screaming like a million drowning sailors, slowly becoming one voice: a throbbing, deafening hum.

  A wave came out of the gloom. Not breaking, but big. Really big. The wave took me high, right to its top. At the peak I saw down a corridor, through the rain and mist. It was like the storm was letting me see, just for a moment. Torturing me.

  Waves. Lots of them. Ugly, twisted and massive. The whole horizon was rising up. An army of lines of water was stretching either side, as far as I could see.

  What had got me hadn’t been a freak set. It had been a taster. The storm was just getting started. And these waves looked like they might break. Like they might kill me.

  I bobbed around, waiting. I couldn’t even see in the direction of the waves for more than a couple of seconds. I wouldn’t have any warning when they hit.

  Then…

  The first giant loomed out of the rain. I gasped. Hyperventilating. Shocked with fear.

  But I rode up, up… up and over the first.

  And the second. Pitching down, riding up. I clung to the idea that they weren’t breaking, so all I had to do was hold on to the board. Up and over, down, into the pit. Up and over.

  Inside my head I was saying, Here we go again, with every wave. I couldn’t think straight then. Not of getting away, not of Jade, but only of the wave, in that second. Surviving it. Waiting for the next one.

  I clung to the board, tighter and tighter.

  “Here we go,” I said, out loud. I couldn’t hear, but I said it, over and over, through lips that were getting number, and slower by the second. Somewhere in my panic-seized mind, I knew I was getting dangerously cold. From the inside, from the core. I could see my gloved hands gripping the broken board. But I couldn’t feel them.

  “Please. Please,” I cried, praying for a break from the madness.

  I was sick, throwing up seawater, and foul-tasting bile. Again and again. Dizzy. Sick. Repeating. The storm was relentless in its hate and violence. Punishing me for being stupid enough to take it on. And all the time, I was heaving, up and down, up and down. It went on. And on.

  After a while I got angry. Really angry. Because each wave was torturing me. Big enough to make me think it was the last one – that I’d lose the board, give in to the cold, get smashed under and not come up – but not big enough to finish me off. The storm was keeping me alive, but with no hope.

  “Come on then, you bastard!” I shouted. Do it, I thought. Go for it. If you’re going to try and kill me, just fucking do it! Give me your worst hammering.

  The wind dropped. Just for a second. Like the storm was listening.

  “Come on then,” I shouted.

  Then it answered. With a wave.

  A wave? A wall, eating the sky. Caving over me.

  The sky vanished.

  I didn’t even try to dive. I clung to the board.

  It hit me. Grabbed me in its fist and pushed me deep and fast into black hell.

  I LOST THE BOARD. The storm pushed me into the silence, beneath the rolling anger of the wave, to a place where there was nothing.

  It wanted to keep me there. I knew that.

  I felt, or heard, a wave rumble over me.

  My arms were twisting and flailing, trying to swim.

  Currents like an invisible octopus were snaking around me. And the more I tried to swim, the tighter they pulled.

  I tried to swim up. I couldn’t. Another churning monster landed on top of me. It pushed me down again, deeper this time.

  I was down. A long time. My lungs were singing with the ache of not breathing. My head was becoming a block of ice. My face stinging sharp with the cold.

  A crushing weight was on me. I had no air left.

  Panic rose up my neck and into my brain.

  If I was above the surface, I was alive. No matter how bad it got, I was alive.

  Down here I’d die.

  My heart was beating fast; I was fighting with every muscle, trying to swim, arms windmilling, using my air up. Fighting the storm…

  …and losing.

  Fear was rising like sick. Impossible to fight.

  I opened my mouth and breathed a cold shock of water into my lungs.

  I had to fight my own body then. My chest was wobbling, forcing me to breathe water. I had to conquer it. If I tried to breathe, I’d drown, quickly. So I forced myself not to breathe. To hold on.

  My eyeballs were freezing. My face was numb.

  I was swimming, struggling. Flailing.

  Going deeper.

  Deeper.

  There were no waves above me now. I was in blackness and silence.

  No, I thought. Not now. Not here. Not me.

  Please.

  Darkness was waiting for me. A cave. Silent and patient.

  There was nothing left of the world. I was somewhere else.

  I stopped swimming, stopped fighting, trying to think. Forcing myself.

  Don’t be a kook.

  Think.

  I had a flashback of the day tombstoning, with G and Jade. Jade’s voice, “You can hold your breath a long time. Don’t fight. Don’t use up your oxygen.”

  All that training. All that holding my breath. For this?

  I heard a voice, deep inside me… Sure and certain.

  Stop fighting. Hold on.

  I might die.

  Hold on.

  I reached down, took off my leash, because the board was caught in the havoc and was dragging me. I let go. I let go of hoping.

  It wasn’t up to me now. I was in the grip of the storm. It might let me live; it might kill me. There was nothing I could do.

  I didn’t swim; I let the water take me.

  I went deeper, further, under.

  I sealed off my mouth, my throat. I closed them to the sea trying to get in. I put my arms across my chest.

  I counted. One, two, three…

  Kept on counting. Focused on that.

  Twenty…

  Thirty…

  The fear was rising in me again, trying to make me breathe water. I wrestled it. Struggling to get control.

  Count. Count. If you can make thirty, you can do another thirty.

  I started again.

  One, two…

  Twenty…

  One, two, three, four…

  Impossible.

  Only ten, go to ten. Just ten seconds at a time.

  One, two, three, fooooour…

  Just five.

  One…

  Two.

  I stopped.

  The darkness was coming. I was inside myself. As deep as I was in the sea, I felt no cold. I had no body.

  I was half dreaming, almost asleep, but with clear, strong thoughts.

  Hold on.

  I could die now.

  I went to a rave. Lights flashing, an ocean of arms.

  Mum and Teg, unpacking boxes at Grandma’s house.

  I rode that wave. A lot of waves. Surfing with Jade. Blue walls.

  We had sex. Her fire-lit body in the mine. Her eyes.

  I am dying now.

  Please let her live.

  Darkness.

  …

  …

  Jade on the tor, holding her hand over my mouth.

  “Hold on, Kook. You can do it.”

  …

  …

  Nothing.

  Where was I?

  A star in the endless night. A dying light.

  *

  Then… hands pulling and pushing me.

  And voices. Far off, but dead near. And clear.

  Dad: “Come on, Sam; it’s only water.”

  Jade: “Go on. Go on, Kook.”

 
; I felt her hands. I felt her arm around me. Her hair washing against my cheek. I felt them.

  “Someone’s gotta make that mag cover, Kook. All those waves, Sam. Someone’s gotta ride them? Come on. Come on.” The way she said it, the way she always said it when she wanted me to do something. To jump off a rock. Take a smoke. Ride a wave.

  “Come on, Sam,” said Jade. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”

  I WAS SHOCKED awake by cold and light. Coughing water and air.

  I moved my arms, my legs. They were numb with cold, but moving. And swimming. My chest was convulsing; I was gasping air, fighting half to suck air in and half to cough water out.

  I puked. Blood was running down my nose, into my mouth.

  Around me was swirling, violent, chaos. But not hell. Hell was in the deep, in the silence.

  I felt pain. Pain was good. The pain of making arms and legs move in the frozen sea.

  I was alive. Wind and cold and stinging rain were life. Down there, beyond the voices and the dark, was death.

  The storm hadn’t killed me. But it was still full-on raging. The wind was shrieking. The rain was whipping-harsh. Froth was choking me.

  I was retching.

  Lungs fluttering, convulsing.

  Keep going, I said. Just keep going. Keep swimming.

  I was fighting the storm, fighting my body, fighting to stay awake. To stay alive.

  In the clouds I saw a face. A huge, ugly, sagging face. Angry, but raging blind.

  “Thuss noooot real!” I slurred with a mouth that could hardly move with cold.

  I kept swimming.

  Then I saw ahead of me. A huge, shapeless darkness. The heart of the storm, some dark beast coming to take me back down.

  No. Not real.

  It was rock. An island.

  I came to. Awake.

  I swam towards the island. Used the last of my strength. I put it all into one push.

  The sea was throwing waves at a small bay of rocks. A wave washed me in. I put my arms over my head, into a ball again. I bounced over the rocks, swept along by a wave. Then I stood, chest deep. Just ahead of me, only feet away, was a rock. I could hold on to it if I could just…

  The wave sucked back into the sea, trying to pull me with it. I swam, trying to go to the rock, but getting pulled back.

  Another wave rushed me along, and smacked me into the rock. My head banged. Pain exploded inside me. A bomb of pain.

  Stay awake. Awake.

  I wedged a leg between two boulders. When the sea rolled back, I stayed with the rocks.

  I pulled my leg up, and grabbed a ledge.

  I climbed, pushed, struggled to get my legs and arms up and over the rock, on to another. Then another. I pulled and pushed and climbed till I was beyond the waves, above the sea. I was breathing now. Puking and coughing.

  Sea out. Air in.

  Warm blood rivered down my face and into my mouth. Feeling it was knowing I was alive: I was glad of it. I looked down at myself. Half my wetsuit was missing. Torn and shredded. I was cut all over from the rocks. I got to the top, on to flat land. I stood. Fell over. Threw up. Nothing came out. I stood again. I stumbled forwards and saw…

  A shadow in the rain. A figure. I staggered towards it.

  The shadow had a shape.

  It was a girl. A naked girl. Standing, staring at me.

  “Jade!” I shouted.

  I ran, shaking violently. She was there. Standing there, still, looking at me.

  I fell again. Got up again.

  I ran and ran, to where she had stood.

  There was no girl. No Jade. Nothing but rain and sea spray and shadows.

  “Jade!” I span around, searching in the rain and darkness. I looked at the raging sea. Then back at the land. Looking for her.

  I saw the ruin of the lighthouse then. A grey square in the mist.

  A hunched figure stumbled out of the dark of the doorway, running towards me. There were others behind.

  It was Rag.

  I fell on him. I grabbed his shoulders.

  “Jade…” I shouted. He shook his head. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  “Where is she?” I said.

  He looked at the ground.

  “Where is she?”

  He spluttered, choking on words like I’d choked on water. Trying to breathe. Drowning.

  “She’s…”

  “What?”

  “She’s gone, mate… She’s gone.”

  MEMORIES GOT LOST.

  Flashing lights. The thunder of the helicopter’s engine. An oxygen mask forced on to my face. The wetsuit being cut off my body. A silver blanket.

  That was all.

  Then the hospital room. A blur of blue and white. Walls and screens and nurses’ uniforms.

  I don’t know how long.

  Then…

  My hand was being squeezed. I slowly focused on who was doing the squeezing. Mum was by my bed, holding on to me, hard, like if she let go I’d slip away.

  Slowly, I noticed things. A drip running into my arm. Pads on my chest, with wires running off them. A can of coke on the bedside table. And by the table, the nurse, leaning over me.

  “How are you feeling, Sam?” said the nurse. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. But I nodded. Okay. “Sam, you’vebeen unconscious a long time. You’ve had a serious knock to the head. You’ve lost some blood. You’ve broken ribs too. We’re giving you painkillers. They’ll make you feel quite woozy and …”

  “Jade?” I whispered.

  A memory. Fighting Rag, to get back in the water. Howling. Like an animal.

  I tried to lift my head. Pain rushed through my chest. But it was dull, thudding. Distant, somehow. Like a storm heard through thick walls.

  “How much pain are you feeling? On a scale of one to ten,” said the nurse. “Ten being the most you have ever felt.”

  “Jade?” I said, to Mum.

  Mum’s eyes were hollow with darkness and fear. She forced a trembling smile.

  “Sam,” she managed to say, before she started crying. “You’re… going to… have to be very brave, Sam.” She choked on her words. Just like Rag had.

  I turned my head away, stared at the wall.

  Everything was cold and white and silent.

  THAT COLD WHITE SILENCE was there the whole time. When the morphine wore off. Under the sound of trolleys and nurses’ chatter. Under the wind and rain, as the tail of the storm swept through the days and nights.

  It never left.

  I waited for news. Every day. Every minute.

  But there wasn’t any. She was gone.

  I didn’t cry. I didn’t howl. I was just numb.

  *

  Mum stayed at the hospital with me. She even slept there.

  While she was at the hospital, Tegan was at Grandma’s.

  Mum and Grandma were strange in how nice they were with each other. I thought it was for my sake at first, but then I guessed Mum and Grandma had had to deal with each other a lot. Something had happened between them, because there was no arguing or point-scoring now.

  A day before I left, they visited me together.

  “You’re coming to live with me,” said Grandma.

  “All of us, Sam,” said Mum. “We’re moving in with your gran.” She put her hand on Grandma’s arm.

  “You see… I’ll be around a while yet,” said Grandma, smiling.

  Her cancer had gone into remission. She was headed down the same road as before, and it ended in the same place. But the disease had slowed right down, even stopped getting worse. For now. The doctors couldn’t explain it. All their scientific knowledge couldn’t make sense of it.

  I was pleased – course I was – but I couldn’t feel much of anything at that point. Even that news didn’t really get through the numbness, through the slow and steady horror of Jade not being there. But I did think it was a good thing we were going to live with Grandma. I wanted to get out of that blue and white hospital room. It was a prison cel
l by then.

  Then I thought of Bob, and Tess, alone in that tiny cottage. And I felt like shit.

  “There’s plenty of room,” said Grandma.

  “Right,” I said.

  “You won’t be going to school for a bit, while you… adjust,” said Mum.

  I knew what she meant by ‘adjust’. To life without Jade.

  I guess she meant ‘grieve’. But I didn’t. Not then.

  That silence was everywhere still. I couldn’t feel anything. At first I thought it was the painkillers. I was on heavy ones. Morphine. Other shit too. But in the gaps between them wearing off, and taking some more, it was still there.

  It was like I was in a dream. I surfed through it. Numb. More numb than I’d been in the freezing waters.

  *

  They let me out a few days later.

  Outside, a light grey sky. An endless slab of cloud blocking the sun.

  We drove along the seafront. Whole sections of the promenade lay on the rocks below.

  In front of one shop a wall of sandbags had been ripped apart. The bags lay half open. Trails of wet sand covering the road, all the way down to the shore.

  A car was on the beach, its windows smashed, half submerged in water. It seemed no one had cleared much of the mess up yet. Like the whole town was still in shock after the storm.

  We parked up at Grandma’s house – our house.

  Grandma opened the door. I saw there were boxes inside. A professional moving company must have done it because all the boxes were the same size and neatly taped up.

  Teg came to the door. She looked at me, cautious at first, checking to see how I was. She hadn’t visited me in the hospital.

  We hugged. Gently, softly. I think she’d been warned about my ribs.

  We went inside.

  “Would you like some tea?” said Grandma. “Watch some TV? Check out your room? Some toast maybe?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t want anything.

  “Think I’ll go upstairs,” I said.

  Maybe there was something I wanted. To be alone.

  My room was Dad’s room. All his stuff had gone. Even the charts on the wall.

  My stuff was in there now. In boxes. I opened them all, had a look inside. All my clothes and books, neatly packed.