Part Two - Margaret

Her eyes opened, and with bland, animal calm she found herself clothed, curled on a dirty floor and in great pain.
Tiny bits of carpet-litter had worked their way into her hair and clothing. Clumps of carpet-hair threaded between her fingers.
She waited for thoughts to come.
To tell her where she was, tell her who she was, tell her what to do.
White sunlight filtered through lifeless old curtains. Dangling. Limp. Pain in her leg. This rotten leg. Ought to chop it off and be done with it. All of the operations, the leg brace, crutches. “Strengthening and lengthening”. Rubbish. Should have chopped it off when she was a girl.
The thought subsided, she forgot again and was content to lie there, breathe, feel pain. Watch the light through the curtains for a long, long time. Minutes. An hour. Longer.
Then the alarm clock rang, and she remembered everything. Everything, it all came back to her. It was time for her to go to work.

One of Shona’s children stood pointing a pistol at her.
‘Blam blam,’ it said.
Margaret frowned. She edged the gate open, squeezing past it and onto the footpath.
The child said: ‘Blam, you’re dead.’
Then, as if annoyed with her failure to comply: ‘You’re dead you crazy _____.’
Margaret turned back to it.
‘What was that?’
She stepped closer to the child.
‘What was that you said? I’ll t–’ Her voice quavering. “I’ll tell your mother”. Unlikely.

No question of the child being disciplined, she thought, fumbling the headphones out of her bag, limping, slipping them over her ears. No question of it. After all, where had it learnt the word?
(“Who were you speaking to?” “Oh I was speaking to that crazy _____ downstairs”)
But the face had alarmed her. The expression in its eyes, one of basic hatred.
She shivered, tucking the headphones’ cord into her empty pocket.

Faces alarmed her. All faces did, she decided. The faces of the people here, sharp-nosed, dead-eyed. They swung about like weapons, swung up to the windows, eyeing the world outside like rifles pointing.
So many people in this city. Surely more now than when she was young. More people cramming the pavement, they seemed a particularly large throng today. Clogging the traffic. Slowing the bus as it inched along Lambton Quay.
Babbling into their phones. ‘No mate I couldn’t get through, I can’t get through to her. No mate the network’s overloaded. Lucky I got you, mate. No mate. Can’t see anything from here. Nah, I’m on the bus mate.’
Of course you are on the bus, we can all see that you are on the bus.
She closed her eyes and blocked out their din. The headphones helped. She imagined music, songs from the records she owned.
Then on the footpath, pushing through the milling bodies, a wave of them flowing the other way, pouring out to sea. So she imagined that she was alone.
Seasons of gasoline and gold
Wise men fold
Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground...
One of the girls said:
Margaret pulled off her headphones.
‘What are you listening to?’ the girl asked.
Margaret shrugged, put the headphones into her bag and the bag into her locker. There were other voices, other conversations to distract:
‘So freaky. It was just, I don’t know what it was. Is. It's still there, I was down there. But like I’m covering Julie tonight, so like I had to come back. But everyone’s there. Like everyone.’
‘Gutted.’
‘So gutted.’
Conversations in another language.
'What do you think it was?'
'Last night,' one of the girls said to her. The same girl, talking to her again. Normally the girls didn't talk to her. This one was small, as young as the others no doubt but with the meekness of one even younger.
'I'm sorry?'
'For Land's End I mean.'
Margaret checked the schedule. Land's End was the film, her film. She hadn't known it was finishing.
'I guess you'll be pretty stoked, eh. Can't be too much fun doing cinema checks on that every night.'
'It's popular,' said Margaret. 'I expect they'll change their minds.'
The girl seemed confused.
She said: 'You know you don't have to always do the same movie. You can talk to them and swap over.'

Margaret said: 'It's very popular. I think they'll keep it running, at least for another week.'
She looked around. The audience were coming in. A little soon, she thought. She limped along her aisle and swept the last of the popcorn under the seats.
Surely they would keep it on for another week. It had only been running for... she tried to think.
'Excuse me,' she said, brushing past a patron.
There weren't many of them, but that wasn't the film's fault. They had thought it would be a busy night at the cinema, it usually was, but the customers were scattered here and there as if a bowling ball had swept the middle of them away a minute before. Everyone at the waterfront. Some party, some event or other.
Not many at all, perhaps two dozen in total.
She hovered around the door, uncertain. She had other cinemas to clean in the complex, and possibly she was meant to man the snack counter later. She couldn't remember.

The lights went down.
The audience watched in silence, blue light washing across their faces.
There was a car and inside were four young people, they were trying to find a party or a rock concert. They were lost. For the thirty fifth time they drove down a road and there was a gate and a skull “KEEP OUT”. And her boyfriend drove backward and you thought that would be the end of it but there was a trap and the tyres burst. And they walked through the woods where more skeletons hung and you knew that even though they were scared they were in worse –
The film stopped, very abruptly. At the same moment, the lights went up.
Margaret blinked. The audience muttered, rustled.
'Whew,' said one patron nearby, a young woman. She laughed.
Then the alarm went off.

Part Two - Robin

It was a thing with the sky, a great pulsing mass of light shining behind the blueness, and flat glare from the sea, and a solemn peal of sound: “I AM.”

Robin turned her head away and squinted at the footpath. This, perhaps, was what it was like having a migraine. “OK,” she said, “you guys, it’s time we went back and met your Mum.” And they turned and walked back along the waterfront walkway, her face averted from the throbbing light of the sky, and her children running around yelling. At Oriental Beach they had to stop and look for Alex’s lost train, and a man walked into the sea.

She stood there for a moment, trying to believe she’d just seen through her squinting sore eyes a man in a suit, with business shoes, and a leather satchel walk into the scudding foam and slick oily waves, straightly as an automaton. Then she stood there for another moment, in existential dither, waiting for someone else to go and rescue him.

No-one else was there, no-one else was going to dive into the sea ahead of her.

“Fuck,” she said.

So she hauled off her winter coat and gave it to Robot, and unhooked the sling and gave Aroha to her older sister, and awkwardly yanked off her sneakers and hobbled into the water after him. It was monstrously cold. The waves which had looked so placid on the shore fought against her, smashing into her face, and tugging at her feet; but for that one brief moment when she first got her hand on the crazy guy’s collar and she felt warm, as if bathing in a tropical sea, and smelled sweet spices, and heard the humming whisper of something: “i am. i am i am i am.” She felt the soft caress of something around her ankle and jerked her foot away.

“Come on, you fucking idiot!” she yelled at the guy. He flinched, and looked surprised, as if he didn’t know how he happened to be in the sea, and how dare she lay her hand upon him. She tugged his collar harder, and grabbed his arm with her other hand and started pulling. It was going well until a sudden sneaky wave ripped her feet out from under her and she tumbled yelping into the water.

He pulled her up and the two of them staggered, thoroughly wet, onto the gritty sand of the beach, to a gang of cheering children. “It’s not,” she said, shivering, “like you have to just go do crazy stuff like that. There’s, there’s Lifeline and people you can talk to, and doctors can give you pills to stop you feeling so sad.” She blinked and looked up at the man, familiar in his sodden clothes. She reached out a hand (forbidden) to wipe the hair and sand from his face. “Oh. You’re that guy.”

He pointed, gasping, at the sea. “Can’t you hear them?”

“Can’t you hear the mermaids singing?” she said vengefully. Robin draped her coat over her shoulders against the chill of the whipping wind and shuddered. The guy’s lips were blue and his face was a ghastly shade of pallor. “We need to get warm.”

She gathered up the kids and limped up the stairs back to the walkway, hobbled across the road to one of the little cafes that tucked themselves along the coastline. She didn’t look back to see if he was following her, but by the time she was at the counter ordering hot chocolates the door opened behind her and he staggered in. “I’ll pay,” he said.

“You don’t have to –” she said, and checked the card in her pocket, “you don’t have to, Noel.”

“No, no, I got you wet, it’s the least I can do.”

Robin made a face and dumped her stuff by the table. Christie was flattened against the window peering out at the sea, but the light from the window was still making her wince and the paracetamol in her bag hadn’t kicked in yet. She pulled out her phone and made a call.

“Yeah, Claire? Hi, how’s it going?”

A wad of paper towels landed on the table. The suicide guy had sat down in front of her and was wiping the water off his face with them.

“I know we were going to meet on Willis St, but can you come and get us?”

The two boys had joined Christie at the window and were pointing at something excitedly. Robin put the phone down with a guilty thud, a reminder of too many bailouts before. “Look,” she said, “I know you’re lonely, but there’s other things you can do.”

“I wasn’t trying to. Um. Hurt myself. There are things in the water.”

Robin rolled her eyes. Robot said: “Do you think it’s a giant squid?” and she looked at the window – all the other patrons, and the waitress were plastered against the glass.

“OK, so maybe there’s something in the water. Like dolphins or something.”

They both shut up then, and sipped their hot chocolate until Claire breezed in, looking well groomed. Robin slunk out the door clutching her pile of wet clothes. Then she stopped, dropped the soggy mess in the boot of the car and walked back into the cafe. She scribbled her number on one of the paper towels. “If you get depressed again, call me, OK?” She glared at the man, at Noel, “this is not me hitting on you, you get that?” and stalked out again.

It was only later, when she was warm from a shower, and in pyjamas eating fish and chips and ice cream; later when she turned on the tv to watch the 6 o’clock news, wondering if there really had been dolphins in the water; it was only then that she got scared. On the tv (reporting live), the wharf had collapsed. All the people were in the water, and there was something in there with them, and the people were screaming.

i am.

Part two - Adam

Part two - Adam

Adam pressed the ‘end call’ button a smidge too early, the customer had another question that they’d just thought of and Adam had cut them off. He felt guilty but not motivated enough to call them back and find out what the problem was.

There was a lot of noise coming from around the corner, he turned and saw the entire advertising team and half the HR people gathered along the windows, looking out and talking loudly. Sarah caught him looking and craned her neck to see past him.

‘Must be dolphins in the harbour again,’ she said. Adam checked the time: 2.07, it had only been an hour since he got back from lunch but his boss was out smoking another cigarette. He could take a quick break.

‘What’s going on?’ he said to one of the girls from the advertising team, they all looked the same and he could never remember their names. ‘Dolphins again?’

‘Nah, it’s out there see? Past the marina, a dark shape under the water.’

Adam looked past the marina, at the choppy waves and didn’t see anything. The girl, who might have been called Natalie, was watching his face. ‘D’you see it?’

‘No,’ Adam said, but just as he said it his eyes located a dark blotch in the water, ‘oh, yeah.’ It was big, kind of like the purple shadows he’d seen whale watching in Australia a few years back. The dark shape appeared to be right under the surface of the water, it wasn’t a clear shape though.

‘No one knows what it is. It’s not surfacing like whales do, and it keeps disappearing and then reappearing in other places, really fast,’ another of the advertising girls had said this. Adam glanced at her, and thought her name might be Bonnie. He looked outside again, the waterfront was packed with people. They lined the retaining wall, some of them out on the rocks, there was a field trip full of children, probably on their way to Te Papa, all staring at the ocean.

‘I’m going down there after work,’ possibly-Bonnie said.

‘Me too,’ said maybe-Natalie. They both looked up at Adam, expecting him to say the same thing. Adam didn’t want to agree though. Something about that indistinct shape, and the way she’d described it as disappearing and reappearing made his stomach churn. He had a very bad feeling about it, but he didn’t have a good reason for that, and he didn’t want them to think he was weird.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, instead, his voice low and non-commital, ‘I’ve got to get back on the phones.’

At five pm the office emptied faster than usual, everyone was going down to the waterfront to stare into the sea. There were radio stations down there, even the news crew had driven up to do a piece with the dark shapes in the background. It had been established now that there was more than one of whatever-it-was. Adam’s stomach had stopped churning and evolved a hard, tight lump of tension. He left when Sarah did, and was carried along with the flow of people in the stairwell. He found himself joining the crowd. It was hard to find a place near the water now, but the festive mood of the crowd meant newcomers like himself were being allowed through, given a space where they could see what was happening.

When he arrived at the waterfront and peered down into the water, Adam’s sense of balance disintegrated. He watched as a dark shape appeared right in front of him, just a couple of metres away and he felt himself falling forward. He was tipping towards the water, even though every fibre of his body was screaming out against it. Just before he actually fell he caught himself, took an awkward half step forward to regain his balance and cried out.

Wildly, Adam turned and pushed his way back through the crowd, the other people were looking at him now, thinking he was weird. Just like back in school, he thought to himself, when you wouldn’t stop telling people about your dreams. It was hard to get through the throng. Adam walked straight into someone in his eagerness to get away.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Adam said, trying to dodge past the guy. There was no room to get past and the panic he was feeling made Adam angry rather than shy. ‘Look, can you get out of my way?’ It came out much louder than Adam was used to talking. The guy had long hair and was wearing punkish clothes that Adam associated with a student, or someone from Aro Valley: check shirt, leather bracelet, a T shirt with a band logo on it, heavy boots. He looked at Adam but his eyes were faraway, unfocussed. His pupils were huge, like some kind of cartoon character, and he didn't react to Adam's words.

Adam’s need to get away from the ocean was greater than his sense of politeness. He could still feel the pull of whatever-it-was, and that scared him. He grabbed the guy by one shoulder and turned him so that there was space to get past. The guy flinched as if Adam had hit him, but Adam didn’t notice, he just kept pushing through the crowd and out. Behind him the guy cocked his head to listen to something that no one else could hear and then hunched his shoulders and moved closer to the water’s edge.

Once Adam was clear of the mob he started running, heading inland. He ignored the traffic signals and dodged around cars, the traffic was much lighter than it usually was at rush hour, but the streets were packed with parked cars. Inland, he thought, got to get inland.

Part Two - Seth

Bed wasn’t cutting it. The bath had been hot enough to drive the chill from Seth’s muscles and the curtains were drawn tight, but he couldn’t sleep. Achingly tired but wide awake.

Seth gave up, got up and made toast. Flicking on the waterproof radio that was suction cupped to the wall above the sink Seth let the buzz of background noise drown out the voice in the back of his head. It had been there since he’d woken up, whispering away, sometimes too distant to make out, sometimes so close he’d had to fight the urge to look over his shoulder. It had kept him from sleep with its insistent words.

“Up, out, into the world.”

He was up now, damnit, but the voice hadn’t shut up. Eat toast, get dressed, get back out into the world. Maybe that would do it.

He probably shouldn’t have taken the acid. He’d heard all the stories about people walking off the top of buildings or eating broken glass or doing some other self-destructive idiot thing while high, but then he’d met a lot of people who’d taken acid and had a good time. He hadn’t met any of the dead people.

“Not yet,” the voice whispered.

Seth turned up the volume on the radio. It was shaped like a flower, bright yellow and green plastic, and sounded terrible. Its sole virtue was that it resisted the damp and the mould and the splashes from the sink. The DJ was talking about the weather and the harbour, rabbitting on long enough that Seth eventually tuned in to the words.

“…the water, not exactly glassy out there and a few more clouds than we like to see but I’m telling you it’s the best…”

Whatever that DJ was taking sounded a lot better than the after-effects of Seth’s night. He fumbled the lid back onto the peanut butter and began chewing his toast thoughtfully, walking out into the hall and pulling his boots on.

“…dozens of people down here at the waterfront watching the waves, a couple even daring to…”

They’d be giving away prizes soon, no doubt. Show up at the station’s broadcast van and win a free t-shirt. First five women to swim topless win a CD. Seth could just about hear the foam coming out of the DJ’s mouth.

“…this thing waterproof? I’m not gonna get electrocuted, am I? If I’m gonna go, I guess live on air is the way to do it…”

Seth left the radio blaring as he stepped out of his apartment. In the relative quiet of the building’s grimy staircase the whisper came to him, gentle this time, placated.

“Up, out, into the world.”

It sounded so happy that Seth couldn’t help whistling to himself as he headed down the hill into the valley. A walk through town would be just the thing.