4
Next, I found myself outside a cut of suburban houses, all down the street their front gardens exploding with the withered skeletons of flora. In front of me there were three attached houses - bushes and trees flanking behind them, hedgerows cradling them from the street. I took a step forward, and three sets of security lights exploded on, only the first house's light flickered, sometimes dying altogether for a few seconds before buzzing back to life. This was where I had come to find Jayson Kahn's house, and I was looking for the next person on the list.
I walked up the neatly-laid path - the one that led to the middle house. The cold wind which had whipped my windscreen all through the drive had gone altogether, and now there was silence and flickering. But then, floating across into the dead dark which the broken light had momentarily left, I saw it again. The girl with the pigtails, disappearing as quickly as she was there. At some point I decided that I could leave faster if I pressed on, and so I continued.
I knocked. This time there was almost no delay before an answer, and a slim woman opened the door, an apron tied around her.
'Hmm? Can I help?'
'I?' I didn't actually know how to ask. Last time I was faced directly with the man listed on my note. 'Is Jayson Kahn there? I was wondering if I could have a talk with him.'
'Oh? Are you a friend?'
'Not exactly. Friend of a friend?.'
'Well, Jayson's on a university fieldtrip at the moment. Near Edinburgh, actually. He'll be back down in two weeks.'
I couldn't keep a sense of disappointment out of my voice as I thanked what was probably his mother. I learned so much from Takeshi, and now, nothing.
Once again I was back in my car, listening to the radio crackle, deciding what to do. Thumbing the note, thinking. I could wait here by the coast, wait for Jayson. Or meet him in Edinburgh, somehow. Or I could start on the other two. On the note Landen left me, I had two names. I also had details of two newspaper columns under each name, and some other scribbles too about the time each person had stumbled across their rock. Jack had been the first one of us all to find his. It's only natural that that would draw me towards him.
But when I finally tracked down Jack, he was dead. I asked for the newspaper issue that held the column about Jack from the local newspaper agency. The store clerk handed me a paper dated to 15th August 2015. There was actually no mention of a rock, statue, thing, anything. Just that he almost drowned when the canoe he was in toppled. I don't know why Landen never pieced it together, but I went to a rowing club in Cooden the next day. There, one of the rowers told me that Jack had died three months ago, kayaking in Australia where he had moved permanently, it turned out.
Emily Lau, the final name on the list, was an initial disappointment, too. From her last workplace, it transpired she had returned to Hong Kong for the medium term. Now waiting for Jayson Kahn was the only thing I could do.
Along the Darkening Coast | Jamie Campbell