Sea Change

by Francis Rowan

  "John,” the voice said again, and this time John saw where it came from. Sitting on the low wall of a cottage garden was an old man. At least, John thought that he was old because of the sound of his voice, and because of the way his shape was shrunken and slightly twisted. He could not see him properly because the garden wall was overshadowed by the cottage and was even darker than the rest of the alley. And because everything seemed much darker than it had, just a minute before.

  "Don't be afraid, John," the man said, and the way he moved his arms as he spoke made John think about the way that spiders walk.

  "How do you know my name?" John asked, and he hated the way his voice wavered.

  The old man ignored the question. "I am here to help you, John. To give you something. And to take some other things away."

  "What? What things?"

  There was a sigh from the shadows, and it was like the sound of the sea pulling back over the shingle. Fingers of mist reached out and touched John’s cheek.

  "You are troubled, boy. The things that have happened to you are still with you."

  How do you know all this? How do you know me? What do you want? But John could not make the words come out. He stood frozen in the alley, wanting to run, not able to move. The mist curled around him. It smelt of rotting seaweed and dead leaves.

  "You must help me," the old man said. "You have to get something for me that I cannot get for myself. Do this, and you will prove you are not the coward you fear you are. You don't want to be this—" John felt rather than saw the old man gesture towards him with long fingers—"nervous boy, jumping at his own shadow. It is your choice. You could become so much more. Or...you could become so much less. Like your friend Alex."

  It was the name that did it. How could this man know about Alex? The name unfroze John, gave life to his legs again. There was a coldness in the old man's voice that belied his promises, that made them seem false and hollow. But how did he know Alex’s name? The old man spoke again.

  "You do not want that John, because Alex is not happy now. Not happy at all.” There was a rustling sound, which John thought was a laugh. “If you are in doubt as to whether you should help me or not, I could bring him to you, and you could ask him for yourself."

  That was enough. John ran, skidding away around the corner, lungs burning for the breath that would not come. Something had changed in John's world, and nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  He ran, legs burning, lungs burning, arms flailing, left then right then left again, not looking where he was going, just running, running. A couple of times he nearly fell, skidding on a wet step, tangling through a stack of lobster pots, but he kept his balance and kept on running.

  Eventually, he could not run any more, and he stopped, in the middle of a dark alley that smelt of wet stone. He looked behind him, but there was no-one there. He had not heard the old man chasing him, he was sure that no-one as bent and thin as that could have kept up with him, but still he looked behind. As he got his breath back, John realised that he didn't have a clue where he was, and again he felt the hot hand of panic gripping deep inside him.

  He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to force the fear down into a place where he could control it. It's only a village, he thought. It's not that big. But he remembered how he'd got lost in the twists and turns of the alleys that afternoon, and now it was dark and around any corner might be that angular figure, sitting in the shadows, speaking in its quiet dry voice. John turned and retched into a corner, sickened by fear and by the run, but nothing came up. He wiped a hand over his mouth and straightened up, but then stopped, in the middle of the motion, half-bent at the waist, frozen.

  At the end of the alley, standing perfectly still, was a large black dog. It looked at John. He stayed completely still. It was the dog that he had seen before, he was sure of it. Maybe it was just allowed to roam the village at night, he thought. Or maybe it was the old man's dog, sent here to find me, to track me down, to leap snarling at me and—but the dog turned around, and walked away around the corner, making no sound but the gentle rattle of its pads on the stone.

  John waited for a moment or two, but it did not reappear. He walked around the corner, and there in front of him, stood the dog. It looked at him, staring up into his eyes in the way that a dog should not.

  "Good dog," John said, his voice broken and hoarse. "There, boy."

  The dog took a step forward.

  John took a step backward.

  "No boy, go home. Go on, go home."

  The dog took another step forward. John did not dare run again, even if he could have found the energy. He was sure that if he ran the dog would chase him. Still facing it, he backed away, heading back down the alley the way that he had come in. The dog stood motionless and watched him move. After a while, John reached the corner, and he turned and headed out onto a narrow street. Which way was the sea?

  The buildings seemed to tower all around him and he could not get his bearings. He could hear the gentle crash of the waves, but the sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. Then above the sound of the sea he heard a click click click and saw the dog again, not coming out of the alley after him, but trotting down the street towards him. It must have gone round the far end of the alley and made its way round, John thought. This made his mind up for him, and he walked away, looking back over his shoulder every pace or two. The dog stood still in the middle of the street, watching him. Its coat was as dark as the night. The next time he looked, it was gone again.

  Deep breath, deep breath. John chanted to himself, the words losing all meaning but providing comfort in their repetition. He kept his gaze straight ahead as he walked, not wanting to look at the shadows on either side of the road, for fear of what he might see in them. Then a shadow appeared in front of him, the dog back blocking the way. A passage led off to the right a metre or so in front of it. He could have walked around the dog, the street was wide enough, but its presence filled the road in a way that its body didn't. There was no way that John was going to attempt walking past. That left only two options: go back the way that he had come, or risk the narrow passage, the passage that was so dark that John could not see more than a little way into it.

  Maybe this is what the dog wanted, John thought, maybe it had done its job, herding me along, and at the end of that passage would stand an old man, as dry as sticks, with a voice like poisoned honey. But the dog seemed calm, and there wasn't the suffocating atmosphere of menace that he had felt when he spoke to the old man, a dense fear that sucked all the life from the air. The dog sat still, watching him.

  "You want me to go down here," John said. "But I don't know why you want me to."

  It did not move.

  "I could walk back up the street."

  The dog sat, and stared. It dawned on John that even if he did go back, sooner or later he would turn a corner and there it would be again, sitting there, waiting for him. He either had to confront it now or—he turned and walked straight into the passage, his throat tightening, his stomach a roil of heat and acid. The walls narrowed, the passage darkened, and then it turned and suddenly there was light again, and John walked out from in-between the walls and onto the road a few metres from his sister's house. He looked back along the passage, but the dog had not followed him. He ran the last few steps to the house, up the long steps, and then as he turned the door handle and pulled open the door onto a beautiful light and warmth, John turned back to the street and quietly said, "Thank you." He did not see anything, but he thought that he heard the distant click of claws.

  Laura was still wrapped up in her accounts. She said thanks to John for posting her letter without really raising her head. John sat on the sofa in the small living room, legs curled up into himself, arms wrapped round them, wondering whether he was going mad. Everything inside the house was sharp and real, everything that had happened outside was blurry, like a dream. The rough fibres of the cheap cushions on the couch scra
tched at his skin. The air smelt of garlic bread, and the perfume that Laura wore. He could hear her at the table, the scritch scratch of her biro on paper, the tap of her fingers on the calculator, an occasional puzzled muttering. Then he would think about what had happened that evening, and there was a wall of glass between him and the events, like a half-remembered dream, a story that he had once read that had really happened to somebody else.

  He could not just sit there, but neither could he think of anything that he wanted to do. In the end he just told Laura that he was tired, and was going to bed, because he could think of nothing else to do, and because the comfort and security of his bed was the only sanctuary he could think of. When Laura looked up and asked if he was all right, he thought about telling her. Then he tried to form the words in his mind, and he knew how ridiculous it would sound, so he just mumbled something about being tired out after so much walking that day, and that he was going to go to bed and read. She smiled at him, said, "I'll try and not disturb you when I come to bed," and went back to her work. John creaked up the stairs to bed, but he did not sleep.

  He twisted and turned, hands clutching at the duvet, pulling it tight around him, keeping out the world. Every so often he pulled back the edge of the curtain and looked out. He saw nothing except an empty street, but the night itself felt charged with fear and menace. Every time he looked, John vowed, that it was the last time. He was afraid of what he might see. But then after a few minutes he would feel temptation rising, a desperate need to look out of the window and to reassure himself that there was still nothing there. Although he was afraid of what he might see, he was also afraid of what he might not see, moving through the night, moving soundlessly along the street like the endlessly restless sea.

  He heard the old man's last words in his head, he heard the offer to bring Alex to meet him, and he was back in that ordinary corridor, on that day that started just like any other ordinary day.

  As John was thrust face first into the darkness of his locker for the third time, hands grabbing him by the hair, shoving at his back, he heard above the jeers of Parker's little gang the sweep and thud of the door to the outside opening and closing.

  Please let it be a teacher, he thought. Please, please, please. But it wasn't, because the hands did not immediately let go and dust him down, patting him apologetically like friends having a laugh, and also because John knew life never turned out that well. He was held in suspension, while the new arrival was considered.

  "Get lost freak," Parker said. "Can't you see we're busy?" Laughter.

  "I want to get something from my locker." It was Alex. Oh, you idiot, John thought. Go, now. But another part of him thought: stay, stay. Let it be you, not me.

  "I need to get somefing fwom my locker," Stevens said in a baby voice. Titters. "You heard, get lost, mentalist." Hands still held John pressed into his locker, but it was almost casual now, their attention focused elsewhere.

  "Shut up." Parker. His voice was low, silky, sent shivers down John's spine. "He says he needs to get something from his locker. So let him get it." Silence.

  Then there was a shuffling of feet, as Parker and the others let Alex past. Silence again.

  Then there were light, hesitant footsteps. Oh, you idiot, John thought, Alex, why do you always bring this on yourself when the rest of us spend all our time trying to avoid it? For a moment, John was almost brave, and drew breath to shout to Alex to run. But he still felt the hands on his back and tangled in his hair, and he could still see nothing but the grey metal of his locker, inches from his face, and he resented Alex. He had the chance to get away, the chance that John didn't have, but didn't take it. He wanted this to happen, so let him get it. So John bit his lip and tried to breath quietly, become part of the furniture, become irrelevant.

  They let Alex walk to the end of the corridor, where his locker was. Then John was banged into his locker one more time, hard, he heard Parker say, "Run away, little boy, this doesn't concern you," and the hands let go and there were footsteps, lots of footsteps. John stepped back into the light, skittered towards the door to the world outside. Alex was standing at the end of the corridor, his locker not even open yet, defiant, staring at them all. Then he turned his stare onto John. He was not pleading, was not begging for help, did not even look scared. Instead, he just gave John the stare. The same stare he gave everyone. The same stare that everyone hated. The same stare that got him into situations like the one that he was now in.

  It drilled to the core of John and said: I know you. Said: I know what you are going to do now. Said: I know everything. Said: I don't care.

  John hesitated by the door, forgotten as a different drama was played out. Stevens turned and half-saw him there, said, "Hey", as if to attract the attention of the others, but they were moving in on Alex now, a circle tightening, constricting, fists twitching, and Alex's body cowered but his eyes still stared. Stevens gave John an unmistakable look: we'll have you for afters, and John thought we don't even need words any more, only glances and stares, and then his nerve broke and he crashed through the door and out into the gorgeous fresh air, so cool and clean. He ran around the old block, over to the other side of the school, and straight into a figure that bounced him off and said, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  John stood, chest heaving, staring at Mr. Allison. The man was shaped like a barrel, taught geography and games, smelt of BO when the weather got warm, and supposedly had been sent out of the army because he'd had some kind of breakdown.

  "Well? It's not a damn race track. If you put in as much effort on the sports field you might not end up last all the time. Slow down boy, slow down. Catch you running like that again and I'll have you doing laps of the pitches for an hour after school, see how much you like running then."

  I could tell him, John thought. I could tell him and he would go over there and stop it. But then what would follow would be as inevitable as the sun rising. One of Parker's wannabe altar boys would see the teacher coming and grab their chance to ingratiate themselves by warning the others. The boys would stop whatever they were doing to Alex, and by the time Allison walked in, there would be nothing but studied nonchalance and the sound of Alex crying. Alex would not tell the teacher what had happened. Others would stay silent out of fear, but Alex would stay silent because he viewed the teachers in the same way that he viewed Parker and his friends, the same way that he viewed everyone. Parker would explain that Alex had fallen, had an accident, and Allison would rant and rave and maybe get them running cross-country until they were sick on their trainers, but unable to prove anything, he would be powerless.

  And then they would come looking for whoever had told the teacher. They would take each moment of pain that they had experienced and pay it back ten times over. It was inevitable. A fact of nature. How the world worked. John knew that there was no escaping it.

  "You look like a goldfish, boy, standing there, opening and closing your mouth. Too much time in front of your X-Box, not enough time out exercising. Got something to say boy, or are you just blowing kisses?"

  John shook his head, looked at the ground. Mr. Allison walked off, trailing a wave of sweat behind him. In the locker corridor, things happened.

  John took the long route around the back of the science block, and into his classroom. No one stopped him on the way. After an hour of English, he had two hours of biology. Alex was in the same biology set as him, but he was not in the class. He was not in the class, he was not in the school, for after Parker had finished with him, he had picked himself up off the floor and walked away, out of the corridor, out of the yard, out of the school altogether.

  If the old man could bring Alex to him, John did not want to meet him. And if the old man could do such things, John did not want to meet him again either. He curled up under his duvet, and thought to himself over and over again: he's just some weirdo out to frighten me, just because he says such things doesn't mean that he can do them, it's nothing, it's nothing. But at t
he same time, a voice inside him said: but how does he know? And what does he want?

  Alex did not come back to school that day, and he never would again, because he walked home, fed his fish, and then walked back out again and jumped from the road bridge above the river, a tiny figure dropping through the air like a dying crow, visible for a moment and then lost in the turning eddies of the black water that flowed towards the sea.

  In the early hours of the morning the rain came, tapping on the window like liquid fingers, and eventually, without meaning to, John slept.

  Chapter Five

  When John woke in the morning the events of the night before seemed less frightening, and John wondered how he had let himself get into such a state. He was spooked by the atmosphere of the village, so different to the boxy houses and ordered streets of home, and when he ran into the local nutter, an unpleasant old man who enjoyed scaring children. His sister must have told someone in the village about why he was coming to stay with her, about what had happened at school, about Alex. John knew how villages worked, they were just like a school: one person told another something, in confidence, and then before the sun had gone down there were only a handful of people left who didn't know about it.

  The old man had heard the story. There would have been no problem identifying John as a stranger, just look how Simon had immediately done the same thing. One of the drawbacks of living somewhere like this, John thought. It is beautiful, and I can feel apart from the world here, but everyone will know everyone else's business.

  When he thought about how he had curled in bed, terrified, John felt embarrassed. With the brilliant light of morning streaming through the gap in the curtains and making the dust dance golden in the air, the events of the night before seemed distant, from another time, about another person. Maybe he should speak to his sister about the old man, John thought. Trying to scare a child like that, there must be something wrong with him. What else might he want? Could he be dangerous? But John knew that telling Laura about the old man would involve pointing the finger of blame at her—how else could the old man know about what had happened at the school if it hadn't been for her talking out of turn? Although John hated the idea of his past being spread all around the village, he didn't have the heart to say so to Laura, and he knew that she would realise, knew that her face would crumple in pain and embarrassment for him, and he didn't want to see that.