How to disappear completely

How to disappear completely

The wind gently whipped against Zennara’s face; it wasn’t a gale yet, the tendrils wrapped around her, twisting strands of her hair around her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes as the pressure intensified. She loved this moment, the tempest seemed to slip under her skin as she dissolved completely.

*

200 miles away a girl woke up with a start. Her hair was hopelessly knotted and the smell of salt settled around her. She pulled a comb from the bedside table and began to patiently detangle her hair.

A familiar problem now. The dreams had started almost a month ago. A woman with sea green eyes standing on a grey pebbled beach as the wind whipped up around her and then she, Kate could feel the wind underneath her skin as the woman disappeared completely.

She sighed and gave up on her hair. Maybe she would deal with it later. She grabbed the notebook by her bed and closed her eyes briefly, trying to remember every detail. There were pebbles but also some sand by the shoreline. The sun had been low in the sky ‘afternoon?’ She scribbled down. The cliffs - they had an odd folded look. As if someone had taken the rock when it was malleable and stretched it. She had once seen a video of someone pulling molten sugar to make humbugs and she thought it looked a little like that.

She tapped her pen against the paper; well it was more of a clue than she’d ever remembered before. Of course there was no reason to believe that the beach was a real place. She surreptitiously brought the back of her hand up to her mouth - it tasted like salt.

She ought to be getting ready for work; instead she got up and made a tea, then retrieved her laptop from the living room and went back to bed. ‘Folded rocks uk’ turned out to be surprisingly useful. The first result was for a place called ‘Millook Haven, ’ apparently popular with the geology crowd because of its unusual zigzag rock formation. It wasn’t exactly the right place, but something about it looked so familiar she thought it had to be close. She looked at some more pictures, different parts of the coastline and felt a strange tingle of recognition. She eventually settled on a small beach that didn’t appear to have a name. It wasn’t just the dream, she felt she had been there - perhaps her parents had taken her there when she was a small child.

She drummed her fingers against her laptop and checked her watch. Given that, at this point, she would be horrendously late to work anyway it made more sense to call in sick and if she wasn’t going to work…

Two hours later she settled herself in the window seat of the train. It wasn’t busy - heading down to Cornwall on a Tuesday. This train would only take her as far as Exeter. Then she had to get a bus, then walk or get a taxi. It was already almost 11 o’clock so it looked like she would be suffering from a two day illness. She pulled out her phone and started searching for cheap hotels in the area.

The journey dragged, she tried to read but she couldn’t settle on anything. She put away her kindle and slipped in her headphones; that wasn’t much good either, for some reason the headphones made her very aware of the sound of her heartbeat rushing in her ears. This made her feel faintly nauseous. Or maybe that was just the jolting of the bus she had now transferred to. Two hours on a bus; she watched people get on and off listlessly as they drove past moors and small towns, heading gradually closer to the sea.

It was afternoon by the time she arrived at a small victorian seaside town. It was quiet. It was autumn.

She padded around the streets searching for something that looked familiar. It was just a holiday town, pasty shops, ice cream and souvenirs. She walked across a beach; the tide was out and it was wide and empty.

‘I should be at work’

She said to the wind.

She could have moved on to Millook. She had checked a map. It wasn’t far away, but instead she booked a night in a B&B. It was old fashioned. The carpet was a deep plush pink and the curtains were patterned with an overblown floral print but you could see the sea, a deep grey line through the window. She’d had to pay extra for that.

She lay down on the bed but the sense of restlessness and unease that had propelled her all day had her up on her feet again. She walked through the town, over the cliffs, past a sort of watchtower, here she hesitated gazing north west. There was a smudge on the horizon and once again she felt that tingle of recognition. Had she been here before?

She walked on, the sun was setting now and she knew she should head back. She stopped undecided. What was she doing here? In that moment she felt utterly and completely lost. Like her life was collapsing towards some small unknown point.

‘You could go home’

She said allowed, to herself. The sound of her own voice was reassuring. She touched the canvas of her jeans, the plastic of her anorak on which sea spray or small drops of rain had accumulated, a strand of her own hair. She turned and headed back towards the B&B with its safe pink-tinged cosiness. Once she made it inside and back into the down of the bed she realised she was freezing. Her toes were like ice and the cold seemed to have reached inside the bones of her legs. It took her a long time to thaw, once she did she fell asleep almost instantly and dreamed of nothing except the crashing of waves against a rocky shore.

The next day she woke up suddenly as if someone had softly called her name. She briefly had the strange impression of being inside a shell. Then the memories of the previous day downloaded and she remembered why she was here in this soft-pink room.

She almost laughed, it seemed so silly now. And she was going to miss another day of work, it wasn’t like her to be so impulsive. She would walk round to the beach and see if it was the place from her dream. Just to satisfy curiosity, and then she would head home and hope no one had noticed that she’d disappeared for two days.

She dressed and packed quickly. She was thinking of a meeting she had missed and a report she needed to finish. She skipped the breakfast portion of her B&B, she was impatient now. She hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders and set off along the coast path with quick feet. She was heading in the opposite direction to last night and she found she didn’t have far to go. However, the path down to the little beach seemed to have been smashed up by some storm. It dove a little way down the short cliffs and then dangled abruptly, moving into a pile of smashed rocks and boulders. She hesitated a little, she wasn’t much of a hiker. She pulled off the backpack and tucked it behind a rock, checked her phone and purse were safe in her pocket and began to edge her way down. The going wasn’t too bad, it was uneven but there weren’t any large drops and she clambered down without too much difficulty.

It was another grey day, the horizon flat and sullen against the sea. The wind was beginning to whip up and it blew the crashing surf into her face. She turned to look at the cliffs and yes, they had that folded, almost marbled appearance. She frowned, it wasn’t quite right. Maybe if she was a little further away and a little more to the left. She turned and sighed, spars of brown rock stuck out into the sea. More scrambling.

It was harder than the path, the rocks all slanted steeply to one side and in places they were coated with a type of vivid-green seaweed that had all the traction and hold of polished ice. She crouched, picking her way through the tangle of stone and water. At a certain point she became aware that the tide was rising; she tried to quicken her pace, not knowing exactly how high or how fast it might rise.

She looked back frequently trying to judge the place. Here, it must be just about here.

She looked back brushing the salt drenched hair out of her face. Surely this was it? She waited for a moment feeling stupid. She had to admit to herself that she had been expecting, well, something. She breathed out slowly and put her hands against a tall outcrop of rock to steady herself. Well there was no point in staying here staring out at the sea, she moved to start picking her way back up the cliff but she was jolted back almost immediately. Her hand was caught, was it stuck in a crack in the rock? She turned to look at it but she could see her hand, flat against the rock’s surface. She tugged on her arm but nothing, it was as if she was welded to the stone. She felt a little flutter of panic, the wind was getting stronger and the tide was rising. She pulled away again and scanned the beach, it was strangely empty. She wasn’t that far out of town. She scrabbled for her phone one handed, but the wind was rising around her, whipping her hair in front of her face. Somehow she couldn’t find the pocket, her free fingers flailed desperately, it felt as though she were dissolving. It was getting strangely dark as if the rock was looming over her and she saw for an instant a smiling face, the ghost of sea green eyes.

A minute later Zennara flicked the hair from her face. The wind was just a breeze now. She stared down at her arm - what a marvel it was to be embodied. To feel the spray on your skin and taste the salt in your breath. She bit down hard, filling her mouth with blood and laughed exuberantly. The girl hadn’t known how to enjoy it. Still, she thought, beginning to make her way back to shore with graceful, fluid steps, she would learn.

The gale seemed to have stopped all at once. Kate felt strange, she must have fallen down. She tried to put out a hand but she couldn’t move. Was she paralysed? She tried to scream but she didn’t seem to have a mouth. But somehow she opened what couldn’t be eyes. She tried to look down but everything seemed petrified, all she could see was the sea, stretching off in every direction.