As I climbed the steps, sand gritted underfoot like sugar. Low drifts of sand were piled against the walls; patches glinted on the small plateau. Could that sand have made the whole place look encrusted and half-buried? I told myself that it had been an effect of the heat.
Broken walls surrounded me. They glared like storm-clouds in lightning. They formed a maze whose center was desertion. That image stirred another, too deep in my mind to be definable. The place was—not a maze, but a puzzle whose solution would clarify a pattern, a larger mystery. I realized that then; why couldn’t I have fled?
I suppose I was held by the enigma of the village. I knew there were quarries in the hills above, but I’d never learned why the village had been abandoned. Perhaps its meagerness had killed it—I saw traces of less than a dozen buildings. It seemed further dwarfed by the beach; the sole visible trace of humanity, it dwindled beneath the gnawing of sand and the elements. I found it enervating, its lifelessness infectious. Should I stay with Neal, or risk leaving him there? Before I could decide, I heard him say amid a rattle of slate, “This is interesting.”
In what way? He was clambering about an exposed cellar, among shards of slate. Whatever the building had been, it had stood furthest from the sea. “I don’t mean the cellar,” Neal said. “I mean that.”
Reluctantly I peered where he was pointing. In the cellar wall furthest from the beach, a rough alcove had been chipped out of the slate. It was perhaps a yard deep, but barely high enough to accommodate a huddled man. Neal was already crawling in. I heard slate crack beneath him; his feet protruded from the darkness. Of course they weren’t about to jerk convulsively—but my nervousness made me back away when his muffled voice said, “What’s this?”
He backed out like a terrier with his prize. It was an old notebook, its pages stuck together in a moist wad. “Someone covered it up with slate,” he said, as though that should tempt my interest.
Before I could prevent him he was sitting at the edge of the beach and peeling the pages gingerly apart. Not that I was worried that he might be destroying a fragment of history—I simply wasn’t sure that I wanted to read whatever had been hidden in the cellar. Why couldn’t I have followed my instincts?
He disengaged the first page carefully, then frowned. “This begins in the middle of something. There must be another book.”
Handing me the notebook, he stalked away to scrabble in the cellar. I sat on the edge of the slate table, and glanced at the page. It is before me now on my desk. The pages have crumbled since then—the yellowing paper looks more and more like sand—but the large writing is still legible, unsteady capitals in a hand that might once have been literate before it grew senile. No punctuation separates the words, though blotches sometimes do. Beneath the relentless light at the deserted village the faded ink looked unreal, scarcely present at all.
FROM THE BEACH EVERYONE GONE NOW BUT ME ITS NOT SO BAD IN DAYTIME EXCEPT I CANT GO BUT AT NIGHT I CAN HEAR IT REACHING FOR (a blot of fungus had consumed a word here) AND THE VOICES ITS VOICE AND THE GLOWING AT LEAST IT HELPS ME SEE DOWN HERE WHEN IT COMES
I left it at that; my suddenly unsteady fingers might have torn the page. I wish to God they had, I was on edge with the struggle between humidity and the chill of slate and beach; I felt feverish. As I stared at the words they touched impressions, half-memories. If I looked up, would the beach have changed?
I heard Neal slithering on slate, turning over fragments. In my experience, stones were best not turned over. Eventually he returned. I was dully fascinated by the shimmering of the beach; my fingers pinched the notebook shut.
“I can’t find anything,” he said. “I’ll have to come back.” He took the notebook from me and began to read, muttering “What? Jesus!” Gently he separated the next page from the wad. “This gets stranger,” he murmured. “What kind of guy was this? Imagine what it must have been like to live inside his head.”
How did he know it had been a man? I stared at the pages, to prevent Neal from reading them aloud. At least it saved me from having to watch the antics of the beach, which moved like slow flames, but the introverted meandering of words made me nervous.
IT CANT REACH DOWN HERE NOT YET BUT OUTSIDE IS CHANGING OUTSIDES PART OF THE PATTERN I READ THE PATTERN THATS WHY I CANT GO SAW THEM DANCING THE PATTERN IT WANTS ME TO DANCE ITS ALIVE BUT ITS ONLY THE IMAGE BEING PUT TOGETHER
Neal was wide-eyed, fascinated. Feverish disorientation gripped my skull; I felt too unwell to move. The heat-haze must be closing in: at the edge of my vision, everything was shifting.
WHEN THE PATTERNS DONE IT CAN COME BACK AND GROW ITS HUNGRY TO BE EVERYTHING I KNOW HOW IT WORKS THE SAND MOVES AT NIGHT AND SUCKS YOU DOWN OR MAKES YOU GO WHERE IT WANTS TO MAKE (a blotch had eaten several words) WHEN THEY BUILT LEWIS THERE WERE OLD STONES THAT THEY MOVED MAYBE THE STONES KEPT IT SMALL NOW ITS THE BEACH AT LEAST
On the next page the letters are much larger, and wavery. Had the light begun to fail, or had the writer been retreating from the light—from the entrance to the cellar? I didn’t know which alternative I disliked more.
GOT TO WRITE HANDS SHAKY FROM CHIPPING TUNNEL AND NO FOOD THEYRE SINGING NOW HELPING IT REACH CHANTING WITH NO MOUTHS THEY SING AND DANCE THE PATTERN FOR IT TO REACH THROUGH
Now there are very few words to the page. The letters are jagged, as though the writer’s hand kept twitching violently.
GLOW COMING ITS OUT THERE NOW ITS LOOKING IN AT ME IT CANT GET HOLD IF I KEEP WRITING THEY WANT ME TO DANCE SO ITLL GROW WANT ME TO BE
There it ends. “Ah, the influence of Joyce,” I commented sourly. The remaining pages are blank except for fungus. I managed to stand up; my head felt like a balloon pumped full of gas. “I’d like to go back now. I think I’ve a touch of sunstroke.”
A hundred yards away I glanced back at the remnants of the village—Lewis, I assumed it had been called. The stone remains wavered as though striving to achieve a new shape; the haze made them look coppery, fat with a crust of sand. I was desperate to get out of the heat.
Closer to the sea I felt slightly less oppressed—but the whispering of sand, the liquid murmur of the waves, the bumbling of the wind, all chanted together insistently. Everywhere on the beach were patterns, demanding to be read.
Neal clutched the notebook under his arm. “What do you make of it?” he said eagerly.
His indifference to my health annoyed me, and hence so did the question. “He was mad,” I said. “Living here—is it any wonder? Maybe he moved there after the place was abandoned. The beach must glow there too. That must have finished him. You saw how he tried to dig himself a refuge. That’s all there is to it.”
“Do you think so? I wonder,” Neal said, and picked up a shell.
As he held the shell to his ear, his expression became so withdrawn and unreadable that I felt a pang of dismay. Was I seeing a symptom of his nervous trouble? He stood like a fragment of the village—as though the shell was holding him, rather than the reverse.
Eventually he mumbled, “That’s it, that’s what he meant. Chanting with no mouths.”
I took the shell only very reluctantly; my head was pounding. I pressed the shell to my ear, though I was deafened by the storm of my blood. If the shell was muttering, I couldn’t bear the jaggedness of its rhythm. I seemed less to hear it than to feel it deep in my skull.
“Nothing like it,” I said, almost snarling, and thrust the shell at him.
Now that I’d had to strain to hear it, I couldn’t rid myself of the muttering; it seemed to underlie the sounds of wind and sea. I trudged onward, eyes half shut. Moisture sprang up around my feet; the glistening shapes around my prints looked larger and more definite. I had to cling to my sense of my own size and shape.
When we neared home I couldn’t see the bungalows. There appeared to be only the beach, grown huge and blinding. At last Neal heard a car leaving the crescent, and led me up the path of collapsed footprints.
In the bungalow I lay willing the lights and patterns
to fade from my closed eyes. Neal’s presence didn’t soothe me, even though he was only poring over the notebook. He’d brought a handful of shells indoors. Occasionally he held one to his ear, muttering, “It’s still there, you know. It does sound like chanting.” At least, I thought peevishly, I knew when something was a symptom of illness—but the trouble was that in my delirium I was tempted to agree with him. I felt I had almost heard what the sound was trying to be.
III
Next day Neal returned to the deserted village. He was gone for so long that even amid the clamor of my disordered senses, I grew anxious. I couldn’t watch for him; whenever I tried, the white-hot beach began to judder, to quake, and set me shivering.
At last he returned, having failed to find another notebook. I hoped that would be the end of it, but his failure had simply frustrated him. His irritability chafed against mine. He managed to prepare a bedraggled salad, of which I ate little. As the tide of twilight rolled in from the horizon he sat by the window, gazing alternately at the beach and at the notebook.
Without warning he said, “I’m going for a stroll. Can I borrow your stick?”
I guessed that he meant to go to the beach. Should he be trapped by darkness and sea, I was in no condition to go to his aid. “I’d rather you didn’t,” I said feebly.
“Don’t worry, I won’t lose it.”
My lassitude suffocated my arguments. I lolled in my chair and through the open window heard him padding away, his footsteps muffled by sand. Soon there was only the vague slack rumble of the sea, blundering back and forth, and the faint hiss of sand in the bushes.
After half an hour I made myself stand up, though the ache in my head surged and surged, and gaze out at the whitish beach. The whole expanse appeared to flicker like hints of lightning. I strained my eyes. The beach looked crowded with debris, all of which danced to the flickering. I had to peer at every movement, but there was no sign of Neal.
I went out and stood between the bushes. The closer I approached the beach, the more crowded with obscure activity it seemed to be—but I suspected that much, if not all, of this could be blamed on my condition, for within five minutes my head felt so tight and unbalanced that I had to retreat indoors, away from the heat.
Though I’d meant to stay awake, I was dozing when Neal returned. I woke to find him gazing from the window. As I opened my eyes the beach lurched forward, shining. It didn’t look crowded now, presumably because my eyes had had a rest. What could Neal see to preoccupy him so? “Enjoy your stroll?” I said sleepily.
He turned, and I felt a twinge of disquiet. His face looked stiff with doubt; his eyes were uneasy, a frown dug its ruts in his forehead. “It doesn’t glow,” he said.
Assuming I knew what he was talking about, I could only wonder how badly his nerves were affecting his perceptions. If anything, the beach looked brighter. “How do you mean?”
“The beach down by the village—it doesn’t glow. Not anymore.”
“Oh, I see.”
He looked offended, almost contemptuous, though I couldn’t understand why he’d expected me to be less indifferent. He withdrew into a scrutiny of the notebook. He might have been trying to solve an urgent problem.
Perhaps if I hadn’t been ill I would have been able to divert Neal from his obsession, but I could hardly venture outside without growing dizzy; I could only wait in the bungalow for my state to improve. Neither Neal nor I had had sunstroke before, but he seemed to know how to treat it. “Keep drinking water. Cover yourself if you start shivering.” He didn’t mind my staying in—he seemed almost too eager to go out alone. Did that matter? Next day he was bound only for the library.
My state was crippling my thoughts, yet even if I’d been healthy I couldn’t have imagined how he would look when he returned: excited, conspiratorial, smug. “I’ve got a story for you,” he said at once.
Most such offers proved to be prolonged and dull. “Oh yes?” I said warily.
He sat forward as though to infect me with suspense. “That village we went to—it isn’t called Lewis. It’s called Strand.”
Was he pausing to give me a chance to gasp or applaud? “Oh yes,” I said without enthusiasm.
“Lewis was another village, further up the coast. It’s deserted too.”
That seemed to be his punch line. The antics of patterns within my eyelids had made me irritable. “It doesn’t seem much of a story,” I complained.
“Well, that’s only the beginning.” When his pause had forced me to open my eyes, he said, “I read a book about your local unexplained mysteries.”
“Why?”
“Look, if you don’t want to hear—”
“Go on, go on, now you’ve started.” Not to know might be even more nerve-racking.
“There wasn’t much about Lewis,” he said eventually, perhaps to give himself more time to improvise.
“Was there much at all?”
“Yes, certainly. It may not sound like much. Nobody knows why Lewis was abandoned, but then nobody knows that about Strand either.” My impatience must have showed, for he added hastily, “What I mean is, the people who left Strand wouldn’t say why.”
“Someone asked them?”
“The woman who wrote the book. She managed to track some of them down. They’d moved as far inland as they could, that was one thing she noticed. And they always had some kind of nervous disorder. Talking about Strand always made them more nervous, as though they felt that talking might make something happen, or something might hear.”
“That’s what the author said.”
“Right.”
“What was her name?”
Could he hear my suspicion? “Jesus Christ,” he snarled, “I don’t know. What does it matter?”
In fact it didn’t, not to me. His story had made me feel worse. The noose had tightened round my skull, the twilit beach was swarming and vibrating. I closed my eyes. Shut up, I roared at him. Go away.
“There was one thing,” he persisted. “One man said that kids kept going on the beach at night. Their parents tried all ways to stop them. Some of them questioned their kids, but it was as though the kids couldn’t stop themselves. Why was that, do you think?” When I refused to answer he said irrelevantly, “All this was in the 1930s.”
I couldn’t stand hearing children called kids. The recurring word had made me squirm: drips of slang, like water torture. And I’d never heard such a feeble punch line. His clumsiness as a storyteller enraged me; he couldn’t even organize his material. I was sure he hadn’t read any such book.
After a while I peered out from beneath my eyelids, hoping he’d decided that I was asleep. He was poring over the notebook again, and looked rapt. I only wished that people and reviewers would read my books as carefully. He kept rubbing his forehead, as though to enliven his brain.
I dozed. When I opened my eyes he was waiting for me. He shoved the notebook at me to demonstrate something. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said without much effort to sound so. “I’m not in the mood.”
He stalked into his room, emerging without the book but with my stick. “I’m going for a walk,” he announced sulkily, like a spouse after a quarrel.
I dozed gratefully, for I felt more delirious; my head felt packed with grains of sand that gritted together. In fact, the whole of me was made of sand. Of course it was true that I was composed of particles, and I thought my delirium had found a metaphor for that. But the grains that floated through my inner vision were neither sand nor atoms. A member, dark and vague, was reaching for them. I struggled to awaken; I didn’t want to distinguish its shape, and still less did I want to learn what it meant to do with the grains—for as the member sucked them into itself, engulfing them in a way that I refused to perceive, I saw that the grains were worlds and stars.
I woke shivering. My body felt uncontrollable and unfamiliar. I let it shake itself to rest—not that I had a choice, but I was concentrating on the problem of why I’d woken head raised, like a watchdo
g. What had I heard?
Perhaps only wind and sea: both seemed louder, more intense. My thoughts became entangled in their rhythm. I felt there had been another sound. The bushes threshed, sounding parched with sand. Had I heard Neal returning? I stumbled into his room. It was empty.
As I stood by his open window, straining my ears, I thought I heard his voice, blurred by the dull tumult of waves. I peered out. Beyond the low heads of the bushes, the glow of the beach shuddered toward me. I had to close my eyes, for I couldn’t tell whether the restless scrawny shapes were crowding my eyeballs or the beach; it felt, somehow, like both. When I looked again, I seemed to see Neal.
Or was it Neal? The unsteady stifled glow aggravated the distortions of my vision. Was the object just a new piece of debris? I found its shape bewildering; my mind kept apprehending it as a symbol printed on the whitish expanse. The luminosity made it seem to shift, tentatively and jerkily, as though it was learning to pose. The light, or my eyes, surrounded it with dancing.
Had my sense of perspective left me? I was misjudging size, either of the beach or of the figure. Yes, it was a figure, however large it seemed. It was moving its arms like a limp puppet. And it was half-buried in the sand.
I staggered outside, shouting to Neal, and then I recoiled. The sky must be thick with a storm cloud; it felt suffocatingly massive, solid as rock, and close enough to crush me. I forced myself toward the bushes, though my head was pounding, squeezed into a lump of pain.
Almost at once I heard plodding on the dunes. My blood half deafened me; the footsteps sounded vague and immense. I peered along the dim path. At the edge of my vision the beach flickered repetitively. Immense darkness hovered over me. Unnervingly close to me, swollen by the glow, a head rose into view. For a moment my tension seemed likely to crack my skull. Then Neal spoke. His words were incomprehensible amid the wind, but it was his voice.