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wytchcroftPart five: into light…
I dreamt I was remembering.
I was in a room, some sort of office, there was a table and there were bright lights but they flickered and nobody seemed to like them, the people in the room kept their eyes averted from the light or put their hands up against it. The hands – I could see them clearly, fine boned and slim.
But the faces took longer to come into focus.
I wish they hadn’t done that. They were looking at me and their faces were like knives. There was a woman and she was talking to me, words, I couldn’t understand them. But her voice – I was stupid maybe, or sick. That much I could tell.
Words. I tried to make myself nod I tried to look NOT stupid. I don’t know why I cared so much, in the dream. But the woman sighed and shook her head. There was a man, he was laughing, making a joke or something and he smiled at me, it wasn’t a nice smile. I was an idiot. Ok.
Wake up.
I wanted to. I moved a tiny bit, just a bit, I put my arms out. My hands were all blurry, I couldn’t see them properly. I leaned forward and everything swam about, making me dizzy. I put my hands on the table.
Somebody touched them. Slim hands, yeah, of course, so I looked up, made my heavy head move.
Another face, another woman, looking awkward, shiny eyed. I… a mirror I thought. I don’t know, maybe it was but in a dream… no, I don’t know. She looked so familiar, like family, my sister. And she looked worried.
Then I woke up and it was a forgetting.
……………
The ship, the Sea Bird, was bucking with each swell of the Ocean, as a horse will when it scents danger, or when aggravated by the stings of insects and great plumes of spray jetted up and back as the prow dipped into the waves twisting as though the water might drive them off.
The insects though were water borne and metal of metal and engine oil. They were moving alongside rapidly, buzzing with an angry tone despite the howling wind and rain. The speedboats had come from the thick cloud shape that was itself beginning to circle the Sea Bird, a broiling mass that shaped and reshaped itself constantly, sometimes looking like talons, sometimes like teeth, sometimes a fist. And often like a small fleet of large and threatening vessels. Six ships threatening a seventh.
On the deck of the Seabird there were the flickering impressions of a frantic crew, trimming sails, keeping the keel in order, holding onto the wheel for dear life, just impressions, glimmers, ghosts. They had a Captain, he could be heard bawling at them, urging and commanding, cursing and encouraging equally – and in a dozen tongues.
But if the hunting frigates were sometimes kept at bay, the biting small boats were not, they kept alongside doggedly.
There was a young woman, a girl really, leaning down from a rail on the deck and lost almost in the folds of a black waterproof coat that flapped and beat about her like wings, and in synch with the sprawling sails above her.
She was staring at the speedboats and the people in the boats were looking up at her.
As the moon slipped in and out of the flailing clouds the hands of these people could be seen, waving, beckoning, thin hands like talons.
The girl on the Sea Bird did not wave in return. Her hands gripped the rail, gleaming white and hard and the angle of her hat was changing as she seemed to listen to the wind.
But it wasn’t the wind. She could hear voices.
Open your eyes!
Look at us!
Let us up! Let us in!
But she said nothing, her teeth wouldn’t work, her tongue was thick and her mouth refused to open. So she listened.
It’s us! It’s us!
Them, whoever they were. These people were untouched by the wind and rain.
Let us up! Let us in!
Why? She wants to scream, why?
For you! We’ve come for you! Come to bring you home!
And the ship kicks up, kicks out, with its sides, with its back. One of the speedboats slams sideways into a low arching wave, bounced by the hull, a shriek of frustration rising up from onboard.
Listen! Listen to us!
Who ARE you? The young woman tries to think at them clearly and coldly – they can hear my thoughts, they can read my mind.
Who are you? I don’t remember! Why don’t I remember you?
She loses concentration for an instant as a blaring horn erupts from farther out at sea. The shadow ships are closing again. She listens for the captain’s voice but all she can hear from the Sea Bird is the sails gasping and the wood and metal of the deck hissing with splattered water. Keep calm, keep calm, she tells herself, the wood and metal of the deck, Tieck, mahogany, iron, copper, ivory and brass, she thinks, reciting the words she learned in the library books, books that turned into birds, books that sang.
She is interrupted – Of course you don’t remember, the strangers call out, nobody does where we come from, where YOU come from. Stop being silly! Let us up, the voices crowding and overlapping.
What? All of a sudden one of her hands jerks free from the rail and she shoves it quickly into her jacket. She tries to make her feet move but they don’t work.
If I don’t remember – if nobody can remember how can YOU? There! Her foot moves an inch.
But the people on the boats below are implacable. We can remember because Suri went where you went – only she came back with memories for us, and you didn’t come back at all. If you come back now – we can give you memories, but you must hurry – they don’t last forever and we’ll need too feed again soon, because the memories will have gone – if that happens, if you stay here where it WILL happen, then you’ll never remember, never ever remember, anything, or any of us.
The moon splashes light across the metal of their eyes and then darkness returns.
She slides her feet sideways just a little more, her head turns looking down at them, wiling them on.
The voices in her head are not stopping. Turning away simply angers them.
Looking for the captain? And where is he? Where is your captain? I don’t see him, is he invisible? Does he walk with the crew - the rest of the ghosts infecting this ship? He’s not helping you is he? He can’t, do you even know who he is?
He’s not MY anything.
Have I touched a nerve? Is that a crush? Are you in love –with a phantom?
Twisting things just makes you sound stupid.
Don’t listen to Harry – he’s an idiot. Listen to me now… you captain is vile and cursed, he is the Flying Dutchman – he s doomed. You don’t have to be! Come back to your old life, come and share the memories Suri found.
The girl looks up.
“Suri?” she says out loud, then thinks it. I thought – I thought that might be me that name, me…
No.
Then who am I???
A dead girl, that’s what you are. Dead - dead - dead – like the pecking of a gull.
But the ‘dead girl’s feet are definitely moving now, one foot then another. What? She asks anyway, keep them busy, keep them distracted – she has to cut her thoughts off.
You went to get the old man’s memories for us – but he killed, you killed you with the light. The old man, with the light, he was filming you.
A burning light. Maybe… maybe…
Suri knows, they tell her. She had to go next. But SHE didn’t fail us. SHE didn’t end up a pile of dust and a smear on a photograph, a blur in a film – THAT’s what you are! Just a blur, caught, trapped – like the cursed Dutchman here. This is purgatory – don’t you understand??? No where – nothing – forever without end. If you don’t come back – you’ll be stuck here!
And her feet begin to move faster, she takes her other hand off the rail, half turning. There ahead and raised up on a base – is the spotlight, used for guiding visitors or the life boats or for those poor souls fallen overboard.
Then how are you here, she asks quickly - and why?
Magic – it took a lot to get us in but we did it for you, you may be stupid but you’re one of us – understand. Now come back!
Magic. A word, just a word. Don’t think about it just accept it like everything else, the Sea bird, the captain, books that turn into birds, the library… Now she is beginning to appreciate – to really feel – what the singing books have done for her, filling her ears and her mind with information, an education, memories, fresh memories.
She hears the people on the boat screeching hungrily. THAT’S what they want! It’s a cold flash of truth.
NO! they babble quickly at her, that’s not so – we want YOU, we want to help you…
“I don’t need your help!” she yells out loud and runs for the light, her head ringing with the sounds of the strangers’ angry cries. She skids on the slippery deck but her hands grab the pole like stem of the lamp keeping her upright – just. Heart pounding she hits the large button that switches on the light and clasping the sides of the reflective dish that the bulbs are housed in she tilts it downwards and onto the speed boats below.
For just a second she can see them clearly and directly and caught by the light, wailing and fluttering like moths. Dark figures, no real features at all, like a child’s drawing almost - or a photographic negative she realises at last… but they are no longer the faces from her dream, no, something else entirely. She can see now among the twisting outlines one face unmoving and staring brightly back, two blank eyes and a gleaming white smile forgotten since she first leapt onto the Sea Bird.
And then, as if a hammer had smashed into ice, they explode into jagged glassy fragments hurled up by the wind and tossed back down into the water, for a moment Mari can still see a crazed white smile floating in the surf.
The desperate speed of the Sea Bird means the brittle pieces of the shadow people are quickly far off and invisible in the night but Mari can feel them, she feels them and she knows the broken shards are rapidly forming together again.
They are coming in fast a blur at first and then shaped into gulls, there are snapping beaks caught by the moon’s faint glow, a moon less bright by far than the smouldering red of their eyes.
The girl turns and runs.
……………………….
Out at sea – six large moving shapes that could be ships, or clouds or simply a fevered mirage seem to pause amidst the torrential rain and wind and the raging sea, seem to hover a moment and then with renewed angry force they bare down anew on the brittle outline of the sailing vessel ahead. As they do so angry torrents of lightning flash and flare between them – thunder howls out into the void.
Far away from all of this is the oil tanker Argonaut IV, in the cramped and semi rusted interior of the bridge, captain Pritchard stares at the distant plodding horizon and reaches for a cigarette pulling one out from his top pocket. It’s an instinctive action. Pritchard is a sober man and modern in outlook – but he has been a sailor now for many years and he has seen such sights before. He barely nods his head and his navigator gets on the blower to the engine room. There is no way in hell that Pritchard will steer a ship towards THAT and he hopes to God that no/one else does either.
………….
Her feet ringing as they hit the dryer metal of the passageway Mariana hurls herself forward, her hands over her head to ward off the dreadful chatter and scream of the gulls. They are pecking at the glass of every porthole she passes. Her eyes flick to the left and the right. A nightmare hall of mirrors each window – flick! She turns and sees her reflection – flick! And the dipping raking beak of a gull – flick! She can’t stop herself from looking at each one in turn. Flick! Her eyes catching the cracking of the glass – but still, her face and the burning eyes, flick! Her features distorted. Flick! And the next, one by one, like turning the pages of a book or staring at a strip of film. Yes. And with that thought she gathers her self, a force of will that draws on her strength forcing her body to the maximum, sprinting now away as the windows smash and the gulls fly in, their murderous mouths caterwauling a victory and a hunger.
Just – one – more – door. She throws it open and ducking her head from the violent birds, flings herself inside the library.
The library.
Turning over as she hit the floor she had time to suck in a grateful suck of air then she sprang to her feet. She was so glad the library was here – nothing on the ship was entirely trustworthy in that way.
She had time to rest her painful eyes on the comforting sight of the books – and then gulls came through. They were laughing and scratched at her, falling on the books as if plucking at fish.
A volume was flung into the air, its pages ripped. Hands outstretched Mariana caught the book, hoping to use it to batter the gull scraping at her hair. Her eye was caught by the page into her fingers. It was a book of myths and legends – and the page was headlined in large red letters, The Flying Dutchman. She had no time to read – but there were names in bold type and they leapt up at her; Van der Dekken, Van Dam, Bernad Fokke, Captain Falkenberg.
And so it goes, she thought. Her knees were buckling now, her strength finally beginning to go, tiredness – the fatigue of fighting the storm, the gulls. The emotional intensity of it all – made her weak at last. Her eyes were blurring, she couldn’t see properly – but perhaps that was a good thing.
Finally she pitched forward, her fatigued fingers dropping the book and the attempt to ward off the gulls. She pitched forward, face first and down into the carpet with a heavy thud. Heavy enough to disturb the volumes around her because the flutter of their lifted pages and the rising of the leather covers was the last thing she saw.
………….
“Wake up sleepy head!” said a voice.
It’s hard enough to reply when awoken unexpectedly, even more so when your mouth is buried deep into the carpet of a floor in a room you haven’t had time to recognise yet, but I tried anyway. I managed some sort of noise.
It made the owner of the voice chuckle, a throaty sound and not malicious. My head ached, my fingers when I moved them experimentally felt stiff and reluctant, my legs were wobbly as I got to my feet. I was still wearing my coat and my feet were still in my lucky old boots.
I could hear the sea coming through the window of the passage outside and the chirrup of a bird singing away in its cage. I knew where I was now. And I knew the broad figure gazing at me somewhat wryly.
Captain Falk.
I think I must have reacted – because his eyes seemed to acknowledge some thing, some signal, some change in me. “Yes…” he said slowly. “My accent is Dutch.”
I nodded stupidly, still clearing my head and looking now around the room – it was a litter of half open books as though someone had run amok or a great wind had had blown in and thrown the paperbacks around. Even some of the lager hard volumes had fallen from the shelves.
But not a one looked damaged.
There were feathers on the floor near me, long feathers seagull grey.
I looked back at the Captain. “A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing,” he said, smiling again in his curious fashion. “Well– and how do you feel this morning huh? I must say, despite the, er, storm, last night, I expected to hear you singing in the kitchen or splashing in the tub.”
I scowled. “You shouldn’t listen when I’m in the tub.”
“You mean like a spy?” His eyebrow raised, “God girl we can hear you half way round the ship!”
I had to smile at that – in fact some of my old self was flowing back into my veins and eventually getting to my brain.
“I’m still here.” I said, which sounded more idiotic than the thought behind it.
Falk nodded. “So it would seem. We are stuck with you. Yes? Well, I suppose you are stubborn – they couldn’t do much about that.”
My head stopped filling with consciousness for a second and flooded instead with the unsettling images of shadow, men and birds. But, yes, here I was. “No.” I said it cautiously, as I felt at my hair and scalp gingerly. “I guess they couldn’t hurt me after all – and they couldn’t force me to do anything, they wanted me to go back.”
Falk looked unsurprised. “Uh-huh. Maybe they’ll try again sometime too.”
I didn’t like that but I wasn’t frightened either. “They’re not real though,” I said firmly, “They can’t hurt me – they’re not real.” I looked at the captain. “Are they?”
“They are not,” he agreed. “They are creatures of shadow and spite, a nail in rotten wood.”
I knew that, but it was good to hear someone else say it. Even if it was… he waited patiently for my obvious question. “But you’re real?”
The Dutch man seemed to consider this, “Hmm,” he said. “On Wednesdays I like to clip my toe nails before I walk the ship, my feet will complain otherwise. The cook feeds me liverwurst as a treat and it is hot and peppery and I eat too fast and get heartburn. So the crew will not notice, I fill my pipe and go up on deck and smoke it which is not easy in the wind, but almost certainly they will not hear me burp.” His eyes looked at me levelly even if his voice was still lightly humorous.
“Real enough.” I smiled as best I could.
“And you Mari?” He gazed on steadily.
My turn to ponder, to say things at last that need to be said, well then, I would say them and be done. “For me there are no Wednesdays anymore, but I like to read when I can, I like to listen to the sails take the westerly breeze and blow it right back. I like to sing in the bath and there are rips and calluses on my hands because I still haven’t found the gloves to fit me. And I have a pet bird that I thought was a book… well, perhaps it was.”
Falk’s eyes flashed.
“Perhaps it is,” I say, correcting myself. The Captain nods approvingly. “And perhaps I should learn to smoke, yes?” I say it with a toss of my head. “A pipe, like you?”
The Dutchman scowls. “Do this and I will feed you to the fish.” He jabs a finger in mock anger. “And not the big fish that will eat you easy – but the small ones who…” he shakes his head.
“I am not such a child,” I say it quietly, “on the inside.”
Falk acknowledges this with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “When you have heard the laughter of time… who can say?”
Together we have moved into the passage way, my stomach s beginning to want food. But first he turns his face and stares out to sea. I can follow his gaze across the great dark expanse, dark even now in the welcome daylight, to the line of the horizon as level and as black as ink - and laugh as it erupts suddenly in wild plumes of spray and a porpoise flings its vastness up into the air and down again with a tremendous splash. I turn to see what Falk’s reaction is but he has begun to move down the passage.
I start to move then too – and in the opposite direction. His stops and calls to me. “Where are you going now?”
“To throw my boots into the sea.”
THE END.
Special thanks to Yu for direct inspiration.
this was redrafted a number of times, a very difficult chapter, i may still tinker with it.
...but i do hope this made some sort of strange sense in the end. If it didn't then here's an excuse I've prepared:
http://wytchcroft.livejournal.com/49478.html#cutid1
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Date: 2008-12-28 02:41 pm (UTC)realy - thanks a lot. so good. so sound. so full of sea and storm and fears and relief.
thanks again.
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Date: 2008-12-28 05:56 pm (UTC)and encouraging my efforts! :))))
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Date: 2008-12-29 03:36 pm (UTC)This line was amazing... "A dead girl, that’s what you are. Dead - dead - dead – like the pecking of a gull."
That's a poem waiting to happen, my friend!
Your stories are amazing- really. They are so full of detail and your imagery, well, your imagery is so vivid even I can picture everything happening!
Well done, my friend- truly.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-29 05:36 pm (UTC)It has a happy ending at least:)
Honestly - your encouragement has really helped!