The Summer by the Sea /lit/

To my darling wife.

I want you to know that I do not plan to abandon you, and that we will be one again. When you married me you knew my mental health was prone to the occasional lapse, resulting in sleepless nights. Then there are the days where conversing with me feels like the light has gone, but I’m just about working, with the real me having left for somewhere else. And I know at times, it must have been a frustration to accommodate my reluctance to visit the coast, this reluctance that bordered on psychosomatic phobia. Especially during such beautiful summers, like the ones we’ve had these last few years. I told you that reluctance was due to some trauma at the sea. I have not told you the whole truth of what happened. It was twenty years ago when I was a child.

It was the summer and I was a young boy just turned 10. My parents both had full time jobs and without school struggled to dedicate time to care for me, so during the summer they left me with my grandparents during the school holidays. My grandparents had spent their retirement in a comfortable cottage near the coast, and of course being the only child of my parents I was showered with attention. Like before those summers in past years, they were filled with visits to coastal game arcades, cycling around the promenade, visits to the nautical museums. Then warm evenings eating fattening meals of fish & chips, wrapped in old newspaper; and fending off tribes of ferocious seagulls and cunning sparrows that ruled the sea front, attempting to claim all food they saw as in their domain.

Each morning was a ritual and with the exception of stormy days, near the cottage was the beach that I would swim in. Just before breakfast, before the beach goers arrived, Grandad would take me to a little esplanade which jutted out directly onto the sea. He would sit in his favorite seat and read the newspaper, I would run down the esplanade and jump off, diving into the cold salt sea a few feet below. There I would swim until I exhausted myself and became hungry, Grandad would have been done with his reading and we would walk back home for breakfast. Then the day would commence with some of the activities I had mentioned early, but it was the evenings when we would visit the pub that stuck with me.

My grandparents spent their evenings in an old pub called the Nautilus; it wasn’t a big town pub, but a little one with a crowd of regular residents, mostly all retirees. The pub was decorated with fishing nets, taxidermy fish in cases, harpoons and a squid-like chandelier which always unnerved me; one day I swore I saw it move. The biggest joy from our visits to the Nautilus  was Uncle Harry. He wasn’t really my Uncle so to say, but a long term friend of Grandad and even remembered my own dad when he was little. He was the landlord of the Nautilus, but Uncle Harry was also a diver, something he learnt in the royal navy and kept up as a hobby in his retirement. He would often go out to sea and go diving to catch fish, sometimes he would kill squids, or even bring back eels and lobsters. Uncle Harry was full of stories of shipwrecks, sea monsters and lost treasures which got more entertaining the more he drank, eventually breaking out into old navy songs with my grandad, until Nan would tell them both off the moment the songs turned to the subject of women.

But Uncle Harry fueled my love for the sea, got me eager to swim more and even brought me a snorkel and goggles one year with the promise of going diving when I was old enough. Myself and Grandad even joined him a few times on his fishing trips. I still fondly remember that white curly hair, short trimmed sailor’s beard and his wild eyes full of energy even in his twilight years. One night in August before my grandparents left the Nautilus, Uncle Harry was getting his diving gear ready and he was also setting up his new underwater camera. When Grandad inquired into his plans, he told us he heard from shipping radio that a school of whales was seen in the North Sea and one of them for some reason had headed inland and would come close to our coast line by the break of dawn. He planned to get pictures of it. Myself and my grandparents wished him luck, then as we left I tapped on the windows to give Uncle Harry my customary salute before I went home. He grinned and saluted back.

It was the last time I saw Uncle Harry.

The next day started as it did with the early morning ritual. Grandad took me to the esplanade, as he sat down at his bench I shot off like a torpedo towards the sea. He stood back up again and shouted at me to stop but it was too late as I dove from the esplanade into the water. But I was met with something other than the sea; it was stained the same dark red of a slaughterhouse floor and from head to toe I was covered in blood. I remember screaming, letting the waves pull me under, and in my panic swallowing a great quantity of that blood. I became sick and started to feel faint, and likely would have drowned if not for Granddad who had by now rushed into the sea to carry me out.

I remember being taken to the beach showers to wash off the blood, but it had already stained my skin and for a few months there were still red stains across my body. I was sick, shaky, faint and sobbing non-stop, while my Grandad found a payphone to call for emergency services. Soon I was in an ambulance, a softly spoken dispatcher wrapped a blanket around me to stop my shivering. They said I was in shock, but they wanted to do a few tests to make sure I was okay. By the time all their tests were done, and some vomiting, the doctors assured me and my grandparents that I was only suffering from shock and a bit of nausea from the ingestion of blood, but was otherwise fine and should get some rest.

It was the evening when we finally got home; the local news revealed it was a beached whale which had died along the coast that spread the blood across water and beach. A lot of police came in to stop beach goers that day and the government told everyone it was a hazard to public health, the blood had stained the beach and nobody was even permitted on the esplanade to get a look. When we went to the Nautilus hoping to find out if Uncle Harry had got some photos we found it open but no Uncle Harry, the barmaid said she had tried to call him, but could not reach him even on his special satellite phone when he went out to sea.

We went home quietly dejected after the day's events. Grandad chalked it up to Uncle Harry getting drunk on his boat, but even then and even now I knew Grandad didn’t believe what he said to himself, and a saddened demeanor followed him that night. Despite it all a morbid curiosity overcame me and I needed to see this beached whale. The events of that day had left me fatigued and I was quickly able to drift asleep, but my night was horrible and was wracked with nightmares. I felt myself sinking into the sea, I felt an ache across my arms and legs like a thorn but I don’t know where and all my movement was sluggish. The light from the surface began to fade as I started to sink into the depths, a trail of dark smoky blood was billowing from me, blocking out the surface until I saw a boat just above the water; with tremendous force I started to reach for it in a desperate bid to stop myself from drowning but I awoke before I reached the surface. It was half an hour before the sun would rise and so I got dressed and put on my little camo jacket Nan had bought for me in the market and set off with my grandad’s bird watching binoculars.

I wanted to see this beached whale.

I still vividly remember how peaceful everything was that day, the sky a dark purple haze slowly mixing with orange as the sun slowly started to rise. My small size let me slip through holes in fences and bushes, and eventually I found myself on the old lighthouse hill which overlooked the beach. With glee I inched forward on my belly crawling through the bushes until I could see the whale. It was a huge blue whale, some 90 feet long, it blocked off almost an entire section of the beach. With my binoculars I finally caught a peek at the whale, and that's when I finally decided to avoid the sea.

Bleeding profusely like a bloody crater, across ribs and back some 20ft in width. This wasn’t an injury like that of a shark bite or collision with a boat. I could see the indents of brutal savage teeth, and its eyes, dear god my love, its eyes had been ripped away, with only black bloody sockets remaining. When I saw this something stirred in me, I felt the taste of blood in my mouth again. And that's when I heard it for the first time. A low rippling moan from the sea. Initially I thought it was fear and the rush of such a gruesome sight getting to me, but then I saw the police and workers clearing up the blood turn to look at the sea. I ran from there as fast as I could and as I ran that noise echoed in my head.

When I finally returned home, and stowed myself back into bed, I hid beneath my cover holding my pillow over my ears. All I could hear was the echo of that moan ringing out from everywhere. Eventually I must have cried myself to sleep only to be woken up an hour later by Nan trying to comfort me. We didn't go to the beach for the rest of that summer; even after everything was cleared I didn’t want to. The search for Uncle Harry went on for a few months, until one day they found his mangled boat washed up in pieces across the shoreline. He was presumed dead, and after his funeral my grandparents stopped visiting the Nautilus.

That next summer with my grandparents I spent as far away from the sea as I could, until I was in my mid-teens where I was able to care for myself. I remember one last visit when I was 16 for Grandad’s funeral; he asked for his ashes to be scattered at sea. I found myself falling into a nervous breakdown which my family thankfully attributed to grief and did not know the real reasons as to why. When his ashes were scattered a storm had rolled in, and between the low rumble of thunder I heard that low rippling moan. Thankfully my Nan now resides with my aunt, as far away from the coast as possible.

As soon as the events of that summer began to fade in the blur of childhood memory, one summer in my 20s I was plagued again by the sound, and soon was wracked with dreams once more in the dark depths with mournful cries and screams, and I began to recognize that taste from the blood drenched sea again, culminating into a night of screaming and fits. My parents rushed me to the hospital and I was checked through by doctors, but in the end they attributed it to stress from my university studies.

That same night a fishing ship just off the coast had disappeared without a trace, only for parts of it to wash up on shore, mangled and without crew, a few days later.

I have tried to hide it, but you have been nothing but a godsend in comforting me during my restless nights. I tried to attribute it to stress in the hopes you would not suspect anything but the nature of those dreams have changed. I’ve come to accept it as part of me and the mournful cry has become a calming song, the dreams come back and that familiar taste too, but no longer do I sink into some dark abyss.

I stand on the sands of that beach looking down and I see myself looking back.

We will be together again, my wife.