The Boy from the Sea

by H L Macfarlane

  Through my tear-blurred vision I began reading the titles of the books he was pulling out and working out their subject matter. Greek legends. Celtic folklore of the sea. Welsh river gods. The dark elves of Norse mythology. Japanese spirits and demons. Jinns and other beings from Arabian stories. And that was just the books Lir was immediately placing before me.

  As I wordlessly surveyed the hoard of books, notes and drawings Lir continued to remove from his drawers, his boxes, his shelves, his wardrobe, a sick feeling began to ball in my stomach. Something wasn’t right here. This was too much…stuff. And he wasn’t even finished pulling it all out. It was a never-ending sea of manic interest.

  When finally Lir stopped bringing out all of his things I gulped down the rising bile in my throat. I knew I was looking at something gravely wrong. I just didn’t know what. So I asked the only question I could think of.

  “What the hell is all this?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “What the hell is all this, Lir?” I repeated, when Lir did not reply immediately.

  “It’s research,” he said, as if it was obvious.

  I stared down at the mess of paper covering his bed and floor. Between the books, scrolls and leaflets were drawings in a similar style to the one Lir had been working on in the library back when we first spoke. Some were drawn in pen, some in watercolour paint, others in graphite pencil; all of them contained the same manic, frightful energy of a sea crashing into the shore, even when the subject matter was a lone shark or the regal yet twisted figure of a person I could only assume was some tragic character from one of the plethora of mythologies Lir adored so much.

  “This is…this isn’t a hobby, is it?” I murmured, slowly standing up from the bed as if I meant to back away to the door. But I stopped by Lir’s side, staring at him until he gave me his undivided attention. “This is a full-on fucking obsession. But why? Why are you…what’s the point of it all?”

  He blinked. “To get home, like I already said. To reach my parents.”

  To reach his parents.

  I spoke my unfiltered thoughts out loud, too shocked as I was to do anything else. “They’re dead, Lir!” I exclaimed. “You must know this. It’s important to me that you know this.”

  When Lir laughed and shook his head it was with the amusement of a person discovering their friend believed the earth was flat. “That’s what everyone wants me to think. Of course that’s what you would believe, too. You’ve never known any better. But Aunt Orla knew – that’s why she told me what really happened. That’s why she started teaching me about myths and legends from across the globe. But they’re not just stories, Grace. They’re all bound in a truth nobody wishes to remember.”

  I could only gape at him. He couldn’t be serious. He couldn’t. But the way Lir’s eyes lit up as he ran his hand across a well-worn volume of Norse mythology suggested otherwise.

  In a fit of panic I grabbed a book at random from his bed and riffled through it, landing on a section about offerings to the gods in Ancient Greece. “So you’re tell me all of this is true?” I said, knowing I was beginning to sound hysterical. God, I regretted drinking an entire bottle of wine within an hour. It had all gone to my head, making it difficult for me to think clearly. “Sacrificing alcohol and fruit and – and goats to appease the gods?”

  “People have been sacrificing things to the deities of their cultures and religions for about as long as society has existed,” Lir replied, calm and solid where I was twitchy and upset. He took the book out of my hands and turned a few pages over until he reached a section which was scrawled over in notes of his own handwriting. “It’s a common practice, Grace.”

  “But it doesn’t work!”

  “How do you know?”

  It was my turn to blink at Lir in confused disbelief. “How do I – how do I know? C’mon, Lir, you’re a bloody scientist. How could you possibly –”

  “There’s no empirical evidence that sacrifices do not work,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I keep an open mind about them?”

  “You could say that about anything! Fire-breathing turtles, vampires and unicorns, God –”

  “Exactly.”

  “Lir!”

  “What?!” he fired back, calm exterior shattered in a moment as he rose to his own defence. He loomed over me, making me feel as if he was four feet taller than me rather than four inches. “Why am I not allowed to believe this, Grace? Why am I not allowed to do my own research – it’s clear I’ve done a lot of it – and come to my own conclusions about my beliefs? My parents aren’t dead. They went back to where they came from. A plane of existence or a realm or a world that humans cannot venture into. They were special, Grace. They were different. I’m different. So I’m going to find my way to the place I belong.”

  I forced myself not to immediately retort the way I had done so far. I bit my lip, forcing tears from falling as I absorbed what Lir was saying. “…why haven’t you reached your parents yet, then?” I asked, which was a fairly rational question. There was no way Lir could wave it off.

  When his anger broke and I saw a hint of sadness creep back through, however, I knew it was the wrong question to ask. Without speaking a word he put down the book about offerings and sacrifices and searched through the mess on the floor until he found a small tome entitled Prometheus.

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  Lir returned to my side and gently pushed me back onto the bed with him to listen, then he cleared his throat as if preparing a speech.

  “Prometheus stole fire from the gods to gift it to the humans he loved so much,” he began. “I mean, he shaped them from clay, didn’t he? Of course he loved them. Of course he wanted them to evolve – to build a civilisation. But for that, Zeus punished him. Prometheus was bound to a rock in the sea and doomed to have his liver pecked out by an eagle. Come nightfall it grew back, and the process would start all over again for eternity. He angered the gods by going behind their back and doing something they didn’t want, and wasn’t saved from his tragic fate until Heracles came to his aid. I’ve angered the gods, too, and now I can’t go back home where I belong. I should have followed my parents into the waves. I shouldn’t have sat on the beach, watching them and wondering what was going on. I was being tested and I failed.”

  Going by Lir’s clean and practised words it was evident that he well and truly believed this, and had thought it over hundreds – perhaps thousands – of times.

  He continued, more manic and undone with every word that left his lips. “Aunt Orla died because she didn’t believe. I was wrong to take her with me at the time. She died because of me: I know that. I accept that. If I’d only gone by myself then…then…” Lir pressed the heel of his hand against his right eye and wiped away a tear. He let out a long, shuddering breath. “But it doesn’t matter now. I tried to go back alone so many times when I finished high school and it never, ever worked. So I went searching for answers, and it became clear I had to give something up to the gods so they would help me. But nothing’s worked so far! No matter what I do I can’t do it. And I –”

  “Wait.”

  For a few seconds I didn’t elaborate on the reason for my interruption. My brain was playing catch-up with all of the information that had been offloaded on me in such a short space of time.

  Animal sacrifices to Greek gods.

  “You killed my cat,” I whispered, certain. “You killed Tom. You sacrificed him to your – your gods.”

  A pause. And then: “He wouldn’t keep quiet!” Lir said, so easily admitting to the murder of my pet that I recoiled from him, intending to back away once more to the door. But Lir grabbed my wrist to stop me from leaving and fell from the bed to kneel in front of me. He turned his face up to me, eyes pleading and desperate. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I really didn’t. I wasn’t going to sacrifice him. But he wouldn’t keep quiet. You’d have known I was outside your house for days before I finally had the guts to knock on your door.”
r />   “You killed my cat!” I screamed at him, once more trying to break away from his grasp. Yet his grip was strong as steel, and when I tried to stand up Lir pulled me to the floor, instead. I couldn’t stop crying. “You killed my cat. You killed my –”

  “Because I love you!” he keened, stroking my hair with his free hand even as I sobbed and sobbed. “I loved you long before the first night we slept together. I just wanted to be close to you. But the cat wouldn’t be quiet.”

  I could hardly breathe. “W-why didn’t you just talk to me, then?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I never went about killing your pets, Lir!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing my forehead and my cheeks and my lips because I no longer had the strength to fight him. “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t make up for what I did. Killing your cat was wrong; I knew it in my heart as soon as I did it. I should have told you what I’d done at the time but I was so afraid you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. And I…Grace, I need you. I love you. Please don’t leave me. Please, please…”

  It was Lir who was crying worse than me now, head bowed against my chest as he clutched at my arms to stay upright. “I want to go home, Grace. I want it so bad. I want to see them. My parents. I want you to meet them. My dad would adore you, Grace; he loves boats just like you and your dad. If I can go home then we can finally be happy. Everything will be right. Everything will be complete. Will you help me? Please, Grace. Help me. Help me.”

  Lir was trembling. I was trembling. I was furious and upset and so deeply disturbed by what I’d learned.

  I knew it wasn’t just my cat he’d killed in his quest to return home.

  But I loved him. I couldn’t turn that feeling off even now, faced with what Lir really was.

  I didn’t know what else to say but, “Yes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  To say I had not slept all night was an understatement. I spent my time watching Lir, instead, who in contrast to me slept more soundly than I’d seen him do in weeks. Everything we had discussed in his bedroom, if it could have been considered a discussion at all, had clearly been weighing heavily on his mind. Now that he’d told me what was going on – what he wanted, what he needed – it was as if he could finally exhale and relax.

  I doubted I’d ever be able to feel that way again for the rest of my life.

  Lir was sick, of that much I was certain. He needed help. And I gladly wanted to give him that help before his behaviour deteriorated any further. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to help him.

  “You’re very fidgety today,” Lir said from his position on the couch, flitting through a magazine on fishing that had been left on the coffee table for us by the owner of the cottage. He watched as I paced into the kitchen and threw open the fridge only to immediately close it once more, returning to the living room to stare out of the sizeable bay window that took up much of the sea-facing wall. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m…not really,” I admitted, not looking at him. “Last night was a lot.” Understatement. “I just need some time to adjust.” Another understatement.

  I heard Lir sigh from behind me. We’d spent the entire day like this: me pacing and him sighing. “I guess I should have expected that. I should have told you about everything sooner.”

  I wondered how I would have felt if Lir told me about his parents when we first got together. His aunt. His reasons for obsessing over the sea. His complete and utter psychotic break that he evidently wasn’t aware of whatsoever.

  “Come sit with me, Grace,” Lir said when I didn’t respond to his last comment. It felt as if I was going through the motions of walking over to sit down beside him rather than actively choosing to do so, but it got me to where he wanted me to be nonetheless. Lir put down the magazine he was reading and took my hands in his, a genuinely excited smile on his face. “Everything will change when I get home. I’ll see my parents again and they’ll see how worthy I am to be part of their world as well as this one. And –”

  “Lir –”

  “And then they can come back here to meet you!” he continued, too overwhelmingly eager with his own delusion to take note of the unsure expression on my face and the rigidity in my hands. He leaned towards me so close that his breath, warm and tasting of lemon, fanned across my lips. “Or I could bring you to meet them. They must have been so tired of the human world to leave it when they did.” Lir nodded, firm in his decision. “Yeah, I should bring you to them. That makes so much more sense.”

  I got up abruptly.

  “I need some air,” I said. “You’re right. I’m restless. I need to get rid of all this excess energy.”

  “Why don’t we go for a jog?” Lir suggested, making to get up from the couch. “We don’t have anything for dinner. We could go to the shops and –”

  “I’ll go by myself,” I said, too quickly. I grimaced at the hurt expression on Lir’s face. “Sorry. I just…”

  He sighed again, drooping his head in understanding. “Need some time. Okay. I get it.”

  Now I felt terrible. I forced a smile on my face. “I’ll pick up some wine or something. I probably just need to relax for the evening and then I’ll be fine. Have you seen my phone?”

  “Your phone?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t been able to find it all day.”

  Lir frowned. “Go get changed and I’ll look for it in here.”

  I dutifully moved through to the bedroom and changed into my jogging gear, twisting my hair up into a bun and furrowing my brows at my pale face in the mirror. I’d thought I’d been developing a tan thanks to all the lovely spring weather we’d been having but I looked stark and sick.

  If I was going to help Lir I had to buck the fuck up and sort out my head.

  When I passed through the living room again Lir chucked my phone at me, which I only just caught with clumsy hands. “It was down the back of the couch,” he said. “Could you get some painkillers at the shops? I think I’m getting a headache.”

  “Of course,” I replied, forcing myself to bend down and kiss his forehead before grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and a couple of bags for the shops. “I won’t be long. Love you.”

  Lir beamed at the words. “I love you, too.”

  For a while I genuinely did exactly what Lir suggested I do: I ran. The three and a half months of solid exercising I’d completed this year meant that I actually could run now, rather than struggling to breathe after barely five minutes of jogging. I relished the sea breeze blasting my face as I traversed the waterfront and the pounding of the tarmac beneath my trainers, making absolutely sure to keep my mind as blank and steady as possible. So long as I focused on putting one foot in front of the other over and over and over again I could drill any and all thoughts from my brain.

  I was empty. I was still. I was nothing.

  Twenty minutes later I reached Campbeltown Harbour. The jetties were fairly devoid of people given that the weather today hadn’t been that great, but now that the sun had finally come out to drench the early evening in warmth a couple of children came to sit by a yacht tied to the pier, legs swinging as they devoured rapidly-melting ice cream cones. Their chins were sticky with the stuff, and when a man appeared from the yacht to warn them to keep clean – lest their mother find out he ruined their appetites before dinner – I couldn't help but laugh.

  Eventually I came across a bench and sat down, breathing heavily and wiping my brow of sweat. I guzzled down most of the contents of my bottled water. Then I stared at the horizon as the sun bled ever closer towards it until spots of darkness clouded my eyes and I had to blink a dozen times to remove them. Dread and peace fought within me, one second turning my stomach to lead only to leave it dizzyingly empty the next. Something about this particular moment felt like the calm before a horrible, inevitable storm.

  I pulled out my phone to call Josh.

  I had a missed call from him dated at four o'clock this afternoon in my call
log. Strange, I thought. There wasn't a notification to say I had a missed call. I checked to see if he'd left a voicemail before calling him back, and though I had no new messages I had a saved one, when that morning I'd had none.

  I didn’t like this at all.

  My hand was shaking as I played the voicemail and lifted my phone to my ear. The call was abuzz with noise, like wind whooshing past the receiver and the roar of an engine. “Grace,” Josh’s voice said, in a panic that set my teeth on edge and trailed ice down my spine. I straightened on the bench, keeping my eyes on the sun even when it began to blind me once more. I didn’t want to keep listening to the voicemail simply from the way Josh said my name.

  I had to.

  “Please pick up the phone as soon as you can. The police are looking for your boyfriend in relation to that student who was killed on campus,” he said, and I choked. “They want – Grace, they think he did it. I believe them. Ever since you asked me about the attacks I knew you had some suspicions about them. It’s because you thought Lir might be responsible, right? God, please pick up the phone. I’m heading to Campbeltown now: your parents gave me the address of where you’re staying.” A pause. A sigh. “Please, please get away from him, Grace. You aren’t safe with him around. I’ll get there around six to pick you up, okay? Just…don’t do anything stupid until I get there. I love you. If you want to shout at me for saying that out loud then stay safe until I can take you away from him. I love you.”

  When the message ended I kept my phone held to my ear, listening to the automated voice on the other end asking if I wished to play the message again or delete it. I couldn’t process what I’d just heard, but part of me…

  Part of me had expected it, too.

  Finally, with what felt like enormous effort, I wrenched my phone from my ear to check the time on the screen. It was quarter past six. My phone clattered to the ground, an ugly crack spreading across the glass the second it hit the tarmac. I barely had the wits to pick it back up and shove it in my bag before I bolted away from the harbour.