Tide of Souls, page 27
So I'd thought.
How many didn't get away? Shipwrecks, drownings, suicides? Storm surges, tsunamis? How many dead?
When I was at school, somebody told me that ghosts were formed like this:
Emotion is a form of energy. Brain activity is electrical; thoughts are like tiny lightning bolts jumping around your brain. Something bad happens - something violent or terrifying, something traumatic (oh yes, I knew long words like that when I was eleven, I thought I was clever and knew everything, but of course I knew fuck all) and there's a huge storm of that energy. You used to hear words like 'thought patterns' in science-fiction books. I'd always visualised bright imprints on the retina, afterimages left by intricate jumbles of electrical bolts, strange curlicues like Arabic writing or cuneiform.
Those patterns get thrown off, and they soak into the surroundings. An imprint. Like a snapshot of the soul. The same way sound, converted into electrical impulses, imprints a cassette tape. Waiting for something - the right kind of mind, a sensitive enough mind - to trigger it, connect. To complete the circuit. Heat energy is absorbed from the surroundings and converted, to make the recording run. This was why people who witnessed hauntings almost always reported a sudden drop in temperature.
A sort of tape recording basically. But, possibly, with some rudimentary life, or consciousness of its own.
Later on I was told that, scientifically speaking, this is total bollocks.
But what if it's not?
And if - just if - it's not:
How many deaths in the sea? Over millions of years, how many lives ended there, in terror and agony - and rage, at the ending of your life - while others live?
Why me and not you? Why you and not them?
Millions? Billions?
How can every molecule of that vast, rolling deep not be tainted?
Water evaporates and is carried away. Haunted lakes, rivers, streams... but it all returns to the sea in the end.
Last thoughts, fears, suffering, all flying back and forth. Isn't that all a mind is?
The sea is vast, but not infinite. Sooner or later there had to be a tipping point. Perhaps it was the sheer volume of deaths. No one event, no bolt of lightning in a castletop laboratory, just... that.
The sea is alive. It wasn't before, but it is now. It's awake, and all it knows is wrath and terror, agony and rage.
When I nearly drowned the sea reached out to claim me - the eyes, coming out of the darkness, the faces. Another mind, another soul. Because that was the worst of it. One mind - one single, planet-wide brain - and it was alone. Enough to drive anyone insane.
And Ellen... what was Ellen?
The Deep Brain - I had to call it something, and what better name than that? - was just becoming aware when it nearly took me. It had been... absorbing me. Taking me into itself. But awake now. Its mind had touched mine.
For the first time, it knew a living mind.
It knew something other than rage.
It was not alone.
But then I'd escaped, with my life if not much else. Back to dry land and stayed there for good. How could it reach me? The sea is governed by time and tide, the moon. It has no arms, no legs...
Only it does.
How many souls in the deep?
How many bodies drifting on the tides?
It had used them. Made them more fitting for its purposes - in Ellen's case at least, it made her pass for a living woman. And sent her out.
But it was young and new, its strength limited. It had sent out a few emissaries, to look for me. It could sustain the deception, for a little time.
So many millions, billions of others in the world. So many others drowning every day, but they died and were taken and were lost. They just added to its strength, became part of it.
It had no-one. Nothing to make it complete. So out of all the billions, on the earth, the sea had come for me and me alone.
It had wanted to seduce me. But it couldn't sustain the deception. Maybe didn't want to. Wanted me to know where I was really going. And like any clumsy, untried, inexperienced suitor, it had revealed itself badly.
I began to laugh, rocking to and fro on the stairs as Ellen called my name.
I'd once heard a song called Marry The Sea.
I laughed all the louder.
"Ben? Ben?" Ellen's voice calling through the letterbox. Outside, I heard hands thumping on the windows. "Ben, let me in. You promised. You said you'd go with me. You said you loved me."
The oldest and most painful one of all: you would if you really loved me. Never promise you'll do anything for a loved one, because sooner or later they'll demand the one thing you just can't do.
"Ben, it won't be like the others." Her voice was hitching. There was a clotted noise in her throat. "You'd become part of me in full. We'd be one. Isn't that what love is?"
What could she know about love? She must know something, I supposed. She'd have to, to do this.
"Please. Don't leave me on my own."
Something thumped at the window at the end of the landing. I turned and looked. Karl. He'd climbed up, clung on. He had spread flat against the window. His eyes glowed through at me.
"Ben? Ben?"
I didn't answer.
"Alright, then!" Her voice had a dull, cold finality, worse than any scream. "We're going. We can't stay longer, and we can't take you by force. It has to be of your own accord. But if that's the way you want it, fine. I can live without you, and I won't always be weak. I'm growing stronger all the time." She paused. I wouldn't look at the window, but a dull green glow spilt from it across the landing.
"The icecaps are going, Ben," she whispered. "They'll melt, all of them, and they'll cover all the earth. And when they do, I'll take everyone. It'll be soon. Sooner than you think."
The green glow vanished. Downstairs, the letterbox banged.
And the house was silent.
I stayed there all night and through into the morning. The agony got worse and worse. Finally, somehow, I made it to the bedside table and took the pills.
When I could walk again, I went downstairs. I opened the front door; the wood was scratched and scored.
It was early in the morning when I went back to Marine Road. The sun was rising over Dinas Oleu, which I knew now I would never be able to climb again. The sky was clear blue, soft pink near the horizon; the air was crisp and cold, the first snap of the incoming winter. The tang of coalsmoke hung in the air, and the long, mournful cries of gulls echoed in from the sea. They were the only sound.
There was a sign in the front window: AR WERTH. For Sale. The front door was slightly ajar. I nudged it open.
A thick, foetid smell washed out of the dim hallway to greet me; I pulled my sweater up to cover my mouth and nose. A thin buzzing sound. Flies.
I found a light switch and pressed it, but nothing happened. The buzzing came from the front room. A small, thin figure slouched on the sofa, head hanging forward and down.
Carrie.
She was alone in the room. Flies crawled on one dangling hand; it was bloated and badly discoloured. The hair that hung and hid her face was matted and dry. The stench hit me even through the sweater. Gagging, I backed out of the room.
The kitchen door was open. Some light came through the window in the back. Flies were buzzing in there too.
A small dining room adjoined the kitchen. A chair lay on the floor. Charles and Donna lay beside it. I recognised the stained, faded print dress Donna wore. There wasn't much else to recognise. Charles was little more than bones and ragged clothes; Donna was badly bloated and in the throes of black decomposition. The carpet around them was badly stained.
The house was bitterly cold. I moved back. I needed to get out. Away from the house, before I was discovered here. Away from Barmouth. Away from the sea.
But I needed to know.
I went up the stairs. There was dust everywhere. A few footprints and marks, but otherwise no sign anyone had been here in months, even years. In the empty bathroom, something dark and wet filled the toilet bowl, flies swirling above. I didn't inspect it any closer.
There were three upstairs bedrooms. I checked the one next to the bathroom first.
Karl lay sprawled on the bed. He looked quite recently dead. No bloating. His eye sockets were empty though. And there were the holes in his face. His nose half-gone. Eaten, I guessed, before he came back.
The other two bedrooms were empty.
I found no trace of the woman who had called herself Ellen Vannin.
I left Barmouth that night, and booked into a B&B in Manchester. While I was there, I wrote down what had happened. I had to try to make sure of it. I knew I wouldn't be believed, that it was the end of my career. But what was I supposed to do?
Wrote it, typed it, emailed it out. To the University and to a friend who worked in a government ministry.
And then I looked for a new place to live, cheaply, out of sight and mind. A place to hide, far from the sea I'd used to love.
I chose a village in north-east Lancashire, where there was no sea and hardly any people; I rented a static caravan and I drank and I drank. I wanted to kill myself, and put a knife to my wrist more than once, but I could never quite do it. So I drank instead, not caring about what it did with my medication. I was probably hoping the combination of the two would finish the job I couldn't. But my body seemed far more capable of absorbing the punishment I was doling out than I'd thought.
Through those years, whenever I was sober, I would hear the sound of the sea. And voices. Hundreds, thousands, millions of voices, calling my name. A murmur that rose and fell like the sound of the waves, till they couldn't be told apart, but growing steadily, relentlessly louder.
An incoming tide of souls.
There were rains, of course, and storms. Floods, too. At first, I'd been afraid, but after a while I dismissed them. False alarms.
But then the rains came and didn't stop. The floods got worse. The TV stations started going off the air, one by one, the remainder broadcasting old light comedy. When they're showing old episodes of Morecambe and Wise and it's not even Christmas, you know something's badly wrong.
And the sound of the sea grew louder.
When I heard shouts and screams in the distance, I ventured out into the rain and squinted down. Below, I could see where the waters had come in, and suddenly the sea, the voices, the souls, were louder than ever before.
I went back inside as the first shots rang out. The Deep Brain was testing its strength, and that of the defence. If the villagers put up a good enough fight, it would fall back, for a while. But sooner or later, it would come in force, and it wouldn't stop. And it would, most especially, want me.
Rain drummed on the caravan roof. In my head, the sea-sound was deafening. And the voices. All the screaming dead, all those last moments, caught like voices on tape.
It was when I heard a woman's voice say, loud and clear in my ear, as if it was next to me, "Ben?" and visualised Ellen, Ellen naked with her arms outstretched, and remembered her face, that last time I'd really seen it, that I decided I could do it now - and better had, while there was still time.
I lay down on one the divan with a bottle of whisky and drank most of it. It made the voices and the tide fade away, made sure I wouldn't hear Ellen's voice again. With the Dutch courage from that I could do it, and I wouldn't even feel what I was doing to myself, but I blacked out almost the second I cut into my left wrist. My next memory is of lying on the Chinook's deck, and Robbie McTarn standing over me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The footpath is steep, but that's not so bad, as I'm on the downslope. Trouble is, it's uneven, chunks of stone threatening to turn my feet as I go. Not easy with a limp.
Before the flood, the air was fresh up here. High above the world, far from the cities, et cetera. Oh, you'd catch a whiff of those nice agricultural smells, like silage and cowshit. But there'd be the smell of grass and fallen leaves too, wildflowers, new mown hay, all depending on the time of year.
Not anymore. After the flood there was a constant stench of sewage and decay, from everything in the water. That began going in the last week; the air was fresh again, the wind with a hint of saltwater. Yes: the sea I fled from has truly come to find me.
The smell's changed again now. I breathe through my mouth as I wind my way down, between the ranks of the walking dead. For most of them, that green mould, or whatever it is, has arrested the decay. But not reversed it. Even a fresh corpse needs some time in the deep, being charged up with whatever powers the Deep Brain possesses, to develop that protective coat. So I get the smell of the dead, along with the stink of that green stuff. I don't know what the hell it is - maybe I would have once, back in my old life with more brain cells left to play with - but it smells like the bottom of a drained pond.
They turn and look at me as I pass. There is nothing on their faces. Slack and empty. I'm used to seeing that now. On the faces of the living and the dead.
Smoke still rising in the distance. Beyond that, far down, lies the open water. I keep walking. And no-one moves. There is only the silence. The cold hard wind blows keen across the fell. And I walk on.
I spent the first night after the flood in an upstairs room at the farmhouse the soldiers commandeered. When I woke, I could still hear the sea-sounds. I went to the bar and got to work on the first available bottle. People glared at me at first; finally they just ignored me as best they could.
Later on, there was shouting in the distance. Gunfire. A few minutes later, McTarn came in, and he brought a woman. She was in her late twenties and tallish, with chestnut hair. She was half-soaked and shivering, too, but you could tell she might be pretty, or more than that, under it all. Everyone was staring at her. McTarn reached out to steady her, but she pulled away.
"I'm fine. I'm fine. I don't need any help. Which way is the toilet, please?"
McTarn pointed. When she'd gone there were sniggers, a few laughs. Taking the piss. Uncomfortable.
Over the past few years there'd been plenty of time for brooding. And I'd done a lot of that, about Ellen Vannin. She had, literally, been made for me. Soft. Alluring. And in the end, submissive. A little coy and teasing, but... she'd asked for nothing. Just come along and given things to me, done things for me. Wanted nothing for herself. So what did that say about me?
The bed-hopping, the never settling down... I understood now it was not because I had nothing to give, but because I wouldn't give. Oh, I told myself, and anyone who'd listen (less and less of them as time went by) I wanted to get married, settle down, but in the end all these women wanted things from me. Under the outdoorsy adventurer I played at, there was just a scared little boy who didn't want to get hurt again. That was who Ellen had been made for.
When I saw her - Katja - for the first time, I saw a woman who was the complete opposite of that.
When she came back from the toilet, a few minutes later, face scrubbed clean and hair scraped back, she didn't tell anyone anything. No effort to charm or flirt. I didn't understand why, not then.
I don't believe in love at first sight. It wasn't love. Not then. I just saw someone and realised I wanted something from her. Not sex. Just a pair of arms to hold me, to take the weight off my shoulders, soft hands to stroke and soothe the pain away.
I huddled down, away from the probing, demanding stares of all these people expecting me to pull some miraculous rabbit out of the hat. McTarn barking at me, spitting out his rage. I flinched from it; it added to the voices, calling.
And then I heard Katja saying "Please don't."
The sounds in my head subsided a little, as I heard her talking to McTarn that low voice, that accent. So gentle and so soothing. The sea-sounds, the voices, were louder. I wanted to tell her. Warn her. I didn't know how. It hurt when I tried - the voices rose to a din.
Say something, Ben. You have to say something.
"They're calling me," I said to her.
She looked over at me, studying me. Those great dark eyes. "Who?"
"The voices. The souls. All the dead."
They roared. I gulped down whisky, refilled my glass. Pain stabbed behind my eyes. It faded when I drank.
"Go on," she said. It was a whisper. Soft as snow.
I shook my head.
"Please?"
"Can't."
"Why?"
"Hurts."
She sat there, waiting. I didn't want her to go. I started talking about the diving accident. And anything else I could think of. Maybe I could slip sideways onto the subject, tell her before the voices could realise and scream.
She listened; of course she did. In case I said something useful. Because she needed to be useful too. Be an asset, and not just a pretty face. There were too many men here, too much testosterone. Too much potential for things to turn ugly.
As it got dark, she walked me back to the caravan, up the dimming footpaths. I was very drunk. We didn't speak much.
I slumped on the divan. Katja sat on the one opposite. She smiled a little at me. Like at a pet, I thought.
"Will you..." I asked. "Will you do something for me?"
Her face lost expression. "What?"
"Just hold me." Her eyes narrowed. Shit. "I don't mean - not sex, I don't want sex." Although I wouldn't have said no. "I just want someone to..."
She pursed her lips. Thinking it over, calculating the odds. "All right."
She knelt beside the divan, held out her arms. I rolled into them.
Drifting off to sleep; cool fingers stroked my brow.
The two farmhouses. The scene of the last attempt to hold them off. Bullets have chipped the walls and the windows are shattered. Scorch marks. Scattered remains of people. Ours, theirs, it doesn't matter now. Gnawed bones, torn fragments of clothing. A group of them crouch over four or five dead sheep. One tears at a severed leg. Another lifts a tangle of intestines, looped around its fingers like a bloated, slippery cat's-cradle and tries to bite through it.
