Sea Change

by Francis Rowan

  He could hear the sea rolling in onto the beach, and as he walked his breathing fell into a rhythm with his stride and with the waves, and his thoughts calmed and after a while he was not thinking anything else at all, just walking and breathing, feeling the cool air on his face and the trodden-down earth of the path under his feet. After a while he stopped, and thought returned. I've come quite a way, he muttered, and I've no idea where I am. I suppose the path just leads on along the cliffs until the next village, so it's not like I can get lost, but I don't want to go that far. I don't even know why I've come this far. But it's beautiful up here, I love the space. He stood for a minute, drinking in the night, feeling alive. Then he turned and walked back the way that he had come.

  One of the stones beside the path grew and moved and whispered to him.

  "Now you come crawling to me," it said.

  John stopped where he was. The stone moved again, and John could see that Elias was standing on the far side, leaning against the rock. In the darkness, John could not tell where the stone ended and Elias began.

  "You run, you run like a little child, and now you come to me."

  "Yes," John said, because he could not think of anything else to say. The path in front of him disappeared into the night. To his right, a few steps away, the ground dropped away at the cliff edge, thirty metres or more to the rocks below. To his left—to his left there was something that was once a man, and now was something else entirely, although John did not quite know what. He was very frightened.

  "I do not ask people a third time, John."

  "No."

  "Twice I have asked you for your help. An old man, frail as sticks, and you a healthy boy, and you insult me and run away. You are a lucky child, John. Lucky because you have the gift, or this would have all ended when you refused me the second time."

  John thought of the mist, the draining of colour and life from the world, and swallowed hard. "I know."

  "It is because of your gift that I did not pursue you straight away," Elias said, "and I was right because now you have come to me of your own will. And that is better.”

  John nodded, but went hot with a sudden excitement. He's lying, he thought. I know that he was lying when he said that was why he did not come after me. Why's he lying? John kept the excitement from his face, and simply said, "Yes, I have come to you." Why didn’t he come after me? What is that he would lie about rather than tell me? He may have the power to fight off death but that doesn't make him wise, it doesn't mean that he can see inside me, know my mind. He's too obsessed with himself, he's vain. And I need to play to that. "I thought—I thought that maybe I could get something I wanted," he said. "In return."

  Elias laughed, and it was like the sound of twigs breaking under foot on a forest floor.

  "I knew it. Everyone has their price. What is it, boy? I am not unfair. Name it. But be warned: if you ask an unreasonable price, I may be insulted once more, and you will make me draw on my power to show you what I do when insulted, and you do not want that. So think carefully, boy."

  That's it, John thought. 'Draw on my power'. That's why he didn't come after me straight away when I escaped from the mist, never mind his boasting, he was weak. Whatever keeps him alive, whatever keeps him from death, it costs him, and it cost him to attack me like that, and for a while afterwards he was too weak to do anything else.

  "Well, there is something," John said, stalling. What? Then he recalled his first conversation with Elias. Use his words back to him, he thought. He is vain, he will like that. And John went to speak, and it was only then that it really struck him: say the wrong thing now, and you are dead. It made the words die in his mouth, he stammered and coughed. And if you don't say anything, he will know that there is something going on anyway, he thought. And then you will be just as dead. Or worse. So make it good.

  "I want power," John said.

  "Go on."

  "I want power over those who hurt me. The ones who, who insult me or hurt me. The ones who made Alex..."

  "What he is now. Shall I show you what he is now, John?"

  "No! I—I can guess. But that's all I want. Power to make their lives a misery, so I don't end up like him."

  Elias laughed again. "Yes, you have your price. But on the first night I called you, I promised you just that, and you ran. Too proud, were you? Above such things? And now, here you are, grovelling in front of me. Well, I will grant you your price. And maybe more. You might be an apt pupil and servant, taught right."

  "What is it I have to do?" John asked.

  "It is a simple task, and even you should be able to do it. I need you to retrieve an item for me. You find it, get it, bring it to me. That is all. Simple. A child could do it. And indeed, a child will."

  "So what is it? You have so much power, why can't you get it?" Careful John, he thought. That was meant to be flattery but it sounded like sarcasm.

  "Nothing more than an old stone, that is all. A not particularly valuable piece of polished jet, like many that this area has produced over the years. But one of value to me, to those who study such things. Which is why I wish to possess it. It has...value to me."

  He's lying again, John thought. Or at least, not telling me the truth. I know what he wants, now.

  "It is up on North Cliff, where the land has slid away. I could not tell where it was for so long, so long, but the earth has moved and now it has come closer to the surface, it is closer to the air, and I can feel it. Oh, how I can almost taste it. You will feel it too, that is how you will find it. You can call it to you. That is why I picked you, John. Because you have this gift, you draw on a power that the slow, dull herd do not even know exists. I’ve known that you were coming, John, I could smell it on the air. It is a rare gift that you have, and one that you must put to my service. And straight away. If the land slips again the jet will fall into the sea and be much harder to retrieve. Not impossible, but much more effort. More time. Much more time, and that is something that I cannot afford. This is why I have had to return here from—the places that I wander. You will get it for me soon, and you will bring it to me without anyone else seeing it or touching it."

  "And what if I didn’t,” John said, nervous that if he seemed too willing, Elias would realise that something was wrong. "I'm not here for long. I could leave. Get away from you."

  "You think?" Elias said, and John felt very cold, and very afraid. "Maybe. Maybe not. But the others? Your sister. The boy and girl. The sea took their father." He laughed, and it was the sound of rats scrabbling under stones. "I could make it take them too. You will do as I ask. Because you know I tell the truth."

  "But—I don't understand. If it's so important, why can't you just get this thing for yourself?"

  "You do not need to understand. You just need to obey. There is a reason I cannot take it from where it rests. It needs someone with your gift, with what you have. And if anyone else touches it to take it from there, it will lose everything that makes it important to me. Do you understand? No one else must touch it until you have taken it from where it lies. Once you have broken it from the earth, I can have it. But no-one must touch it before you have done this. You hear me? You hear me?" Elias's voice had risen until he was almost shrieking.

  "Okay," John said. "Don’t worry. No-one else will touch it. I won't even let them see it. But what about when I touch it? I can't get it for you if I can't—"

  Elias leaned out from the stone until he was near to John. John could smell decay, like the rot of seaweed, and something else, something that he had never smelt before and that he could not describe because it was less a smell, more a colour, no, an absence of colour. John could smell the darkness.

  "That is why I will pay your price. You have the gift, John, power of your own, no matter how small. You are like me. There is much I could teach you. You could study under me and have more power than you have ever dreamed of, John. I could show you things, things that you have never seen before. Places that you have never been to, p
laces that you never could go to, all that could be open to you, to travel between the light and the dark, the day and the night, the land and the sea, this world of yours and the others. Get me it, John. Get me the jet stone, and I shall take you on a journey that is like nothing you have ever imagined. Would you like that, John? Imagine, spending your life knowing that your grave is your end. Whether it be early, from some illness or an accident, or late into old age, that is all there is, no more, darkness. Now imagine knowing that it need not be the end, that you can go on, go on for hundreds of years. You have a gift, John, and you could learn. I could teach you so much. Get me it, John. You have three days. Get me the jet, let no-one else touch it, bring it to me, and do as I say. Then I shall show you the world, John. My world.”

  "Okay." John nodded. Elias leaned even closer in, until he was nearly touching John, close enough that John should have been able to feel his breath. The smell of rot and dark places was overwhelming, and John felt as if he were going to be sick. He's going to touch me, John thought. He's going to touch me and I could not stand that. John was about to take a step backwards, when Elias stopped moving. John could see his face clearly in the moonlight. From a distance, he might have passed as an old man, but close-up John could see that the skin hung wrong upon his face, that when he spoke his mouth barely moved at all. It was like watching someone operate a puppet. Elias sniffed.

  He stared at John, and John could not meet the gaze from those eyes. There was life in them, but also something more, or maybe something less. Elias sniffed again, like a dog catching a scent. Then he muttered some words to himself, and at first John thought that he could not hear them properly, but then he realised that they were not in English, and did not sound like any language that he had heard. Elias leaned forward, sniffing again deeply, as if the words that he had spoken had been the key to opening a world of scent. John recoiled, thought to himself, what is this, what is he doing? Then Elias spoke.

  “Liar!”

  "No—I mean—I'm not—"

  "I smell it on you. You lie to me." Elias reached up an arm and his hand came towards John, twisted fingers like bunched sticks moving to take hold of him. John was frozen for a second and then instinct punched through his fear and he was ducking under Elias's hand, running off along the cliff path.

  "Liar!" Elias shrieked. "You dare! Boy, you dare lie!”

  Chapter Twelve

  John kept running, not daring to look back. The shouting carried on, Elias's voice was pure rage. "You lie! I smell it on you!"

  Then he went quiet, and John's stomach twisted hot inside him. He glanced back over his shoulder. Elias was not chasing after him, just standing in the middle of the path, head bowed, one spindly hand reaching out to touch the standing stone as if he were making a connection of some kind. John got the distinct impression that Elias was talking, not to him, he could not hear a word, but the old man was talking to someone. Or something.

  Then, all around John, the grass began to rustle. It sounded as if a hundred snakes were writhing alongside the path. Twigs and tufts of grass whipped round and round as if they were caught in a whirlwind. John skidded to a halt on the path, scared that Elias was creating a wind that would push at him, forcing him closer and closer to the edge of the cliff that was only a metre away, closer to the long dark drop down to the beach.

  The grass still shivered and whirled, and the sticks still danced, but John felt nothing. He slowed and looked back. Elias was still by the stone, hands now weaving around each other as if he were trying to untangle thread. John started to run again, and the rustling receded for a moment or two, but then grew louder. The path rose up, and as he reached the top John saw the warm lights of the village, dotted in the hulking embrace of the bay. They seemed like a very long way away.

  John saw where the noise was coming from. It was not getting louder, it was getting closer. Moving along the path towards him, picking up speed, was a spinning, shifting shape, leaves and grass and sticks and stones coalescing, becoming something vaguely man-shaped and yet not quite like a man. As it grew, it lost the fragility of its component parts and changed, became more solid, but still something constantly shifting and moving, rustling and creaking and cracking.

  John was terrified.

  He ran faster, feet slipping and skidding on the path, but still the thing pursued him, a terrible shushing rustle that sounded like claws scrattling on stone, that sounded like arms reaching, like the way he thought the Wild Wood sounded when he read Wind in the Willows as a small boy, and could not sleep for hours after because of the thought of the trees, reaching, stooping, trapping.

  He ran faster, faster than he even knew that he could, but his legs were tiring and his lungs were burning and the rustling was getting louder and closer. He dared another look over his shoulder, and realised that he could not out-run the thing behind him. The cliff-top path went on for hundreds of metres before it reached the village, and he could not run that far, not this fast. He was tiring already. To his left was scrubby moorland, full of dips and straggling plants to trip the unwary. To his right was the sea, a rolling expanse of water that John knew was a place that something made from plants and sticks and Elias's dark magic could not go, but the sea was at the foot of the tall cliffs, and the cliffs might as well have been mountains, so the sea that John could hear breaking and crashing might as well have been an ocean on the far side of the world.

  Then he realised where he was. In front of him the path sent off a spindly offshoot, barely visible in the moonlight, that looked as if it disappeared over the edge of the cliff. But John recognised it, remembered it. It was the path down to Hob's Hole. And beyond Hob's Hole, there was the beach. And beyond the beach, there was the sea. As he reached the path he flung himself off to the side, not wanting to give any warning to the thing behind him, hoping that he might confuse it, not even knowing if it could be confused, could see, could think. He also hoped that he was right, that it was the path, because at the speed he was running, he did not know whether he would be able to stop if it were not. The ground gave way and for a moment he felt the great space in front of him, a brief, blind rush of terror, and then he was running down the side of the cliff, on a path no more than a metre wide, half-running, half in flight.

  The path was littered with loose earth, and with small chunks of rock that had fallen from the cliff face. Several times John sent one of them skittering off into space, and each time it reminded him of how far there was to fall—and how far still before he reached the foot of the cliff. From above he heard an angry rustling scuffle, like two dogs fighting in the undergrowth. John slowed but did not stop, and as the path curved he looked back and saw that the thing was following him still, moving down the path like a whirlwind of debris blown along by a gale.

  A few steps further and he knew that he could not reach the bottom of the cliff before the thing behind him caught him. His breath was gone, his legs were starting to become jelly, and although adrenalin had taken him this far, it could take him no farther. The rustle grew louder, until it sounded as if someone were running through deep autumn leaves just behind him. John stumbled, nearly fell, and put on one last turn of speed that took him around a corner of the path and, for one more moment, away from the thing that followed him. To his right, black against the dark rock of the cliff, was Hob's Hole. Without a thought he ducked in, feeling his way along the wall until he was a few steps away from the entrance.

  I've just trapped myself, he thought, but he knew that he had no alternative. Trapped in the cave, trapped on the cliff path, it did not really matter. He pressed himself back against the cold stone as a shape whirled past the mouth of the cave, heading on down towards the beach. John realised that he had been holding his breath since he had been in the cave, and his chest felt as if it was on fire. He took a couple of slow, shallow breaths, trying hard not to make any noise.

  He thought that if the thing, whatever it was, was down on the beach, maybe he could make a run for it bac
k up to the cliff top. But he knew that this was foolish; he was exhausted and would find it a struggle to walk up the path, let alone run up it. The thing might just be out of sight around the corner, and it would catch him within seconds. At the top of the cliff was Elias, and for all John knew he was coming down the path now, coming to see what his creation had left of its victim. There's nothing I can do, John thought, but hope that I was right, that this thing can't cope with the rocks and shifting stones of the beach, that it will fall apart into the dead things that it was made from. Then there was a sound outside the cave, and all of John's hopes were dust.

  It was moving slowly now, the thing, as if it knew that there was no hurry, that there was nowhere else that its prey could go. It paused at the entrance to the cave. The dark shape looked like a man, but John knew that it was not.

  The thing quivered into the cave, moving slowly, and then it halted. It reached out a crackling arm and extended one twig finger. The finger pointed to one side of the cave, moved to the other, back to where it had started, then back in the general direction of John, moving slowly from side to side until it came to a halt pointing directly at him, like the needle from a magnet settling slowly on north.

  John backed away a step, scraping along the rough damp rock behind him. The thing shivered forward, finger still extended. John kept backing off, hoping to draw the thing far enough into the cave that there would be room for him to dodge past it, to sprint out and away, but he knew that it was a forlorn hope. The thing followed him, slow now, tracking him around the curve of the cave wall. After another pace, John felt rock on two sides of him, and knew that he had reached the back of the cave. Behind him, was rock. In front of him to one side, the slowly advancing thing. In front of him, to the other side, the blackness of the Hole itself, like a pool of ink amidst the shadows of the floor.