by Gary Fry
His grandson—innocent Paul—was now caught up in the vision, suspended amid entanglements formed by those dark, wriggly, ropelike entities. Jack was alarmed by the sight, but couldn’t be certain he saw a number penetrating Paul’s body, feeling around inside him, seeking the main elements that constituted his being. Were they tweaking his skeleton, nudging vital organs, even snaking north for his brain? The final possibility—the way this chimed with another aspect of Jack’s recent experience, his frustrating experiences with written text—propelled him forward, across the broken languages of the beach, and then…
At that moment, his heart drumming and palms sweating, he emerged from sleep and found himself in his familiar bedroom, daylight pushing through the thick curtains to one side. He thought he’d yelled out, because there was certainly a reverberation of sound, but might this exist only in his mind? He’d surely shouted to prevent those things from violating his beloved grandson…but he could now at least reassure himself that the latest events had just been a frightful dream.
Jack screwed up his eyes, combating wakeful exhaustion, and then reopened them.
And that was when he spotted the shapes on both sides of his window.
There were three or four of them, each seeking to conceal itself in the room’s carpentered corner, as if aspiring for order in a naturally crooked world. One or two nearly achieved this act, forcing their flimsy, curvaceous bodies—which resembled little more than outrageously extended fingers—into squared postures and assuming the contours of the junction formed by two walls and a ceiling. Then Jack switched his gaze to the others on the far side of the curtains and observed a less successful attempt at either assimilation or mimicry. These blackish strands tried and failed to fit in, their frames incapable of matching up to the right-angled bends. They resembled spiders, arthritic with old age, attempting to bend ridiculously long legs into convenient niches.
The Squigglies, Jack thought for no reason at all, but then reshut his eyes, imagining fragments of his nightmare had stolen into reality, just as the entities from another world had snuck through a veil separating this coastal region from their realm of otherness…but that was a foolish thought, worthy of the dementia Jack suspected he’d been suffering from. He should combat it in whatever way possible, and after knuckling his eye sockets, forcing pain to eliminate pain, he looked again at his upper bedroom corners, preparing to admit he’d finally lost his mind.
But he saw nothing at all. The walls and ceiling were deserted, their surfaces unaffected by marks or smears or any other signs of interference. It was as if nothing had ever been there, a conclusion that was, Jack admitted with a mixed feeling of relief and fear, eminently possible. Was he sick, after all? And were his symptoms exacerbating?
Moments later, however, he heard another sound that might decide the matter once and for all.
It was Paul screaming.
And the noise wasn’t coming from beyond the wall to Jack’s left, the one without the window that gave on to the spare room. It was coming from directly up ahead—the front of the bungalow.
The part that looked onto the beach.
7
“Paul? Paul, what’s wrong?”
After reaching the kitchen, in which he found the boy standing at the closed doorway, Jack felt less unsettled from what he’d only imagined overnight. Yes, this had just been a dream, prompted by all his troubling experiences lately: fear about illness; the cones on the beach; and the invasive creatures in his room that morning, which hadn’t been anything of the sort. He’d simply been hallucinating; that happened, even in the absence of organic damage. It was nothing to worry about—at least, not yet; not when he had his grandson to deal with.
When Paul didn’t immediately respond, Jack took his shoulders and gave him a rigorous shake. At first he suspected the boy was also half-asleep and suffering a similarly disturbing nightmare. Jack knew the old wives’ tale about the danger of waking someone while sleepwalking was nonsense, and roused Paul roughly, in the hope of freeing him from whatever terrors he’d conjured in his mind. And if he reported these as identical to Jack’s, what should be done? But they’d handle that problem only if they needed to. The most important thing was getting his grandson settled again.
When Paul turned slowly to look at Jack, his eyes were wide open. Sleepwalkers didn’t always wander without visual awareness, but even so, the boy looked as if he’d been wide awake while crying out, fully alert but rendered inarticulate by shock. Then Jack switched the direction of his gaze and refocused his attention: maybe the cause of the scream was something Paul had seen outside.
The beach was smothered in a sea fret, with the same crisscrossing winds from last night rifling back and forth across its foggy expanse. Nevertheless, amid the horizon-limiting smog and a light gray drizzle accompanying it, Jack could observe what Paul had already noticed: the miniature city carved into the sand.
His mouth wide open, silenced by astonishment, Jack reached for the key in the lock and then released the door. After stepping outside, with his equally quiet grandson in dutiful tow, he advanced along his garden path to the concrete plateau on which his property was located. He recalled the sketchy, sticklike shape Paul had pointed out on Google Maps, situated near his bungalow on the front lawn. Jack glanced briefly to his right, examining the spot once occupied by what they’d both hastily decided had been an uprooted tree, bare of foliage, casting a long shadow… But what if it hadn’t been a tree at all? What if this region, where reality was thin and possibly lay cheek-by-jowl with another world, had been blighted for years? And what if those things he’d spotted in his bedroom that morning—
But he refused to pursue these possibilities. There was too much to observe up ahead to give them proper consideration.
The beach had been transformed into a cocoon of warrens and gullies and curves and bowls and smooth arches. The entirety was crafted from sand, each intricate part of its one-hundred-yard square dimensions sculpted with impeccable precision. From where they stood, Jack and Paul could see along a number of meandering passageways, overhung by sandy crossbeams and towers. Whenever a corridor gave on to a room, it was curved and capacious, like great sleeping quarters hollowed out by some meticulous animal. There were many rooms, all jostling for position amid tapered spires and more cones, each pointing to heaven as if again indicating the source of this sprawling revelation, this physical paean to an alien race.
But should the source, Jack wondered, be located elsewhere? Was the true location of these invasive beings neither up, down or in any other direction? Jack tried imagining where a cone might be pointed to suggest a world behind this one, or inside it, or maybe even through it…but his attempt was an abject failure. It was a geometric impossibility, of course; the mind—at least, the human one—boggled at the task, just as Jack’s—and Paul’s, to judge by his continued silence—remained numbed by the sight ahead.
All thoughts of documenting this incredible phenomenon relegated to a triviality, they paced down the stone steps in a daze, holding hands, as if this basic contact could defend them against such a primal force. There were no seagulls in the area, Jack observed; other than the wind—which persisted with whistling howls, racing to and fro across this small cityscape, scudding fine grains of sand off the tops of its towers and cones—there was no movement at all in the area, nor any sound other than the threatening sea, sneaking back along the coastline, with ruthless eradication in mind.
Whatever entities had created this spectacle had clearly done so before the last high tide. Jack paced forward, tugging Paul with him. After stepping into a gulley shaped by delicate scoops, they began pacing along it, striding over occasional archways, squeezing between tapered peaks. The city at its highest point was shoulder high, but most reached only Jack’s knees and the boy’s hips. On closer inspection, tiny etchings could be seen on some parts, each surely denoting languages unknown to man. Jack recalled another aspect of his dream overnight, the way the whole beach
had been transformed into innumerable letters. Had this been a presentiment, a preparation for what he must face today? And had Paul suffered similar frightful imaginings in his own sleep?
His beguilement wearing off a little, Jack decided to comfort his grandson, to make sure the boy was okay. He turned to face him, reluctantly glancing away from more of the weird makeshift territory, and asked, “This is all a…a bit more impressive than what we saw yesterday, isn’t it, Paul?”
The boy nodded automatically, perhaps realizing his granddad had decided little could be achieved by empty reassurances, the kind many adults used in the company of children. This thing was here, no question about that, and they must accept it, no matter how difficult it felt.
“It’s freaky,” Paul eventually replied, but his young mind—possibly like Jack’s older one—retained enough plasticity not to shut out the implications. “I think it’s aliens from another world, Granddad. Like in my book. I think they’ve come to…to…”—the boy struggled with the next word, the way Jack had lately done with many, but then he had it— “…to communicate.”
And if that was true—if the strandlike creatures Jack had perceived in various ways these last few days had come to make contact—what were they trying to say? Jack looked around again, at more of their amazing sculpture. If it was indeed a city like the one the things occupied elsewhere, was it presently the right size or rather a scale model? In fact, was it a habitat at all? Jack had assigned this interpretation at first glance, perhaps as a way of making sense of it and to avoid losing touch with reality. But in truth, might the elaborate mass of turrets and tunnels be something other than a place of residence? Might it function in a manner beyond the ken of conventional human thought?
Entertaining this open-minded suspicion, Jack continued to lead his grandson to the heart of the new landscape. At least six feet of sand had been transformed: dug up, reshaped, skimmed to perfection. Beyond the extensive carving, the rest of the beach was smothered in more of that sea fret, but Jack believed he could see through this veil and directly onto a predictably flat plane of beach. Farther north, in the opposite direction, the fog made the town of Whitby look as faded as a painting left too long in the sun, with hints of property rendered gray and sketchy. Then he looked back at the area around himself and Paul.
The shapes and patterns nearby appeared to gravitate in a hypnotic way toward the center of this section of the beach. Passageways headed in that direction, while towers leaned slightly, subtle suggestions of a purpose. Jack continued pacing, trying to limit damage caused by his movement. Both he and Paul were unable to prevent all impact, however, and more often than Jack felt comfortable with, cones toppled to become scattered stretches of formless sand. He wondered whether the things that had built this incredible place were hostile… Could anything capable of creating such a beautifully haunting sight be antagonistic?
Once more, Jack grew aware of the quiet of the place, a perception even the distant, splashing, all-consuming sea was unable to mar. There was no sign of life anywhere, not even a solitary seagull; these beach bullies were clearly fearful of an imminent attack.
“I don’t like it,” Jack said, only half realizing he’d spoken aloud. “It’s too…silent, somehow. Too empty.”
“But, Granddad, look over there,” the boy replied, pointing a thin finger at a mound where sand had coalesced in a particularly striking monument. Standing at Jack’s head-height, it bore tiny portals and strange doorways, each dragged down its slick sides with curiously symmetrical exactitude. It was garish and baroque, like a Middle Eastern temple denoting terribly punitive gods… Jack felt queasy merely examining the thing.
Nevertheless, he knew Paul was right: something did appear significant about this part of the sculpture. It occupied its heart, and looked grander than the rest, like some eminent dignitary’s palace in a fine principality. As Jack and his grandson drew closer, unwittingly knocking down countless cones and many smooth sides of passageways, more of that weird writing came into focus, and despite the boy’s dyslexia and Jack’s recent difficulty with literary comprehension, neither was ever likely to interpret this as anything other than gibberish. The letters marching up each side of the monument in greater profusion than anywhere else represented a rich language, with curlicues, umlauts, graves and flourishes. Jack felt bewildered observing this mass, but then snatched his glance away to what the boy had just noticed: a chamber carved out of the thick wedge of sand that constituted the bottom, the foundation on which the elaborate edifice had been tenuously built.
It was a display area, surely…and the thing offered up for the scrutiny of observers nearly emptied Jack’s stomach with involuntary haste. He immediately recalled the chicken he and Paul had consumed yesterday, how its fractured carcass had looked demolished, as if unforgiving birds had been on the make, stripping it bare of flesh and meat. The thing rested flat on the makeshift ledge wasn’t quite as garish, but in some ways that made the image worse.
As Paul turned away and buried his head in his granddad’s arms, Jack couldn’t resist a final glance at this makeshift presentation area.
A seagull was set upon the sand, its multiple parts divided from all the others. Here was its beak, and there the skull; nearby was the legs, and beside them the wings. Its torso had, like the rest of it, been stripped of its coating of skin, so that it resembled a craggy rib cage, with nothing inside. All the internal organs were placed at the back of this arrangement of seagull parts: a heart, a liver, a kidney, and many other glistening pieces; one might even be the poor creature’s brain. The whole had been neatly severed into its essential features, as if in an attempt to work out what magical force held it together… And had its mutilator, despite such drastic experimentation, failed to understand that profound mystery?
Jack recalled his recent ruminations about the way language functioned as an indivisible whole, with meaning emerging through a combination of individual parts: letters, words, sentences, paragraphs… Was that how nature worked, too? Was that how everything functioned? He recalled the blackish strands, like fragments of objects, feeling around the corners of his bedroom, seeking to mimic the proximate territory, the carpentered conjunction of walls and ceiling. They’d failed on that occasion, perhaps just as they’d failed here. The deceased seagull, its many separate parts left exposed to the unforgiving world, resembled little more than savage remains on a dissector’s block, specimens awaiting name tags.
Just then, another aspect of Jack’s nightmare returned: the way the ropey violators had grabbed hold of Paul and tried feeling inside him, possibly searching for the parts that made him tick, his mind chief among them… Then Jack was running, back along the beach with the boy in tow, uncaring of how many arches and miniature rooms he destroyed in the process. As his legs kicked out at the intervening sand, he sensed movement below ground, which may or may not be slippage underfoot.
The Squigglies, he thought again, and despite the comic nature of the word, this notion terrified him. He pictured only dark, finger-thin entities probing around his home. But when he finally reached the bungalow, he hurriedly entered, along with his grandson behind, and finally turned to lock the door.
There’d be no self-indulgent snaps with the digital camera today; on this occasion, Jack must call the authorities—exactly who, it didn’t matter.
Sure anyone would be interested in witnessing something so uniquely bizarre.
8
But he was disappointed.
His first call to the police was attended to patiently, but by the time he’d completed his description, the officer who’d taken the call had expressed only sympathetic skepticism.
“Okay, sir, I’ve made a record of your comments, and I can assure you that, once we have someone available to pay you a visit, we’ll send them straight over.”
Once someone was available? Jack knew from experience the most crime likely to have occurred on a midweek autumn morning near Whitby was somebody dropping litter
or assaulting a domestic animal. In any case, if police waited their usual several hours before visiting, the sea would have reached the spectacle, washing it away like so much flotsam and jetsam.
Nevertheless, Jack thanked the officer and then dialed the next number on a short list, this one belonging to the local newspaper.
Again, he received a compassionate response, but no indication that anyone was likely to arrive soon. What was the matter with everyone, Jack wondered? Was it that he spoke in an old man’s voice? He doubted that; he was only in his sixties, far from decrepit or senile. Maybe, then, it was the nature of his story, which, despite its otherworldly aspects, he’d tried keeping intriguingly plain.
“It’s huge. No person or even team of people could have executed it. Besides, we haven’t—that is, my grandson and me—we haven’t seen anybody in the area for days, not even hikers. Basically, we can’t explain it. It’s…miraculous.”
And that was true, wasn’t it? Since reentering the bungalow, Jack and Paul had drifted around, doing commonplace things, attempting to reinsert themselves into everyday life, from which they’d been jolted with such stark randomness. The boy had even resisted pursuing his observations on the Internet. There was no shortage of cranks online, and perhaps, even at such a tender age, he’d anticipated being frightened by some of the more outlandish potential interpretations of the spectacle outside his granddad’s home.
By the time Jack had called the lifeboat office (“Is anyone in danger, sir? If not, I’m afraid I’m unable to authorize the use of limited resources when someone might be in need of them at any moment…”), the sea had already begun lapping against the lower parts of the sculpted miniature cityscape. Then an hour later, as Jack and Paul stood side by side at the kitchen window, watching the tide move closer with irrepressible force, the thing was erased altogether, that central monument tumbling, its ritualized victim (an interpretation of the dismembered seagull Jack hadn’t entertained earlier, and for good reason) borne off in a frenzy of manic wave and urgent undertow.