Chapter 11: Floodland
At Wilhelmina's insistence I drove fast, I think I get caught by a camera heading out of London, after that I raced around a blessedly empty stretch of the M25 and then south down the M23 towards Brighton. We could not always see well from within the car and travelling along stretches of well lit highway, but we both noticed that the clouds were thinning and disappearing leaving a clear night sky.
'It's going to be cold,' said Wilhelmina, 'there will probably be a fog by morning.'
'Do you think Selkie's alright?' I asked.
She looked out the passenger side window, away from me. 'I don't know,' she said.
'How will we find her?'
'I don't know that either.'
I drove on in silence. A the glance at the dashboard clock revealed it was exactly twenty minutes to eleven.
'Go left at the A27 just before Brighton,' she said, 'we'll go to Seven Sisters.'
'What is Seven Sisters?' I asked.
'Cliffs,' she said, 'but a powerful place.'
'Why?'
'Because of how they look. They're a monument, but a natural monument, which makes them more potent.'
'Selkie said something,' I said, 'that it's all about people, not about places or things.'
Wilhelmina turned round to look at me. 'She told you that?'
'Yes. Is it supposed to be a secret?'
'You'd think so wouldn't you, what with all the trade in herbs, and dreamcatchers, and spirit sticks, and books about leylines and that rubbish. Actually it's the opposite, those of us who understand used to try and try to explain it, but people take no notice, they like their totems, they want to put their trust in solid things.'
'Are people not solid?'
She looked back out the window, at her reflection. 'Flesh is solid,' she said, 'but a person is more than flesh.'
'I suppose.'
'Mostly,' she said, 'we've given up trying to correct people. Selkie must have thought you were worth telling.'
I smiled to myself and drove on. The roads were mostly empty and soon we made it on to the A27. Wilhelmina, with the help of a road atlas, directed me down the A26, through the town of Newhaven, which seemed to be entirely shut up for the night, along a coastal road through the even sleepier town of Seaford, and then up into the countryside, finally pulling up in the entrance to a very shut national trust car park. I cut the engine and killed the lights. The intense silence of the night penetrated straight into the interior of the car and the darkness drew in about us, hemming us in, kept only inches away from the windows by the small interior light I had turned on. Wilhelmina reached up and turned it off.
'Listen,' she said quietly. We listened. Personally I did not hear a thing. If Wilhelmina heard anything I do not know, after a moment she seemed satisfied and got out of the car. I followed and was immediately hit by a wave of freezing cold air. It penetrated my clothes and tightened itself around my throat. I reached back into the car for my coat and pulled it around me, it was colder here at night than it was in Peterhead during the day. I stamped my feet. Wilhelmina blew into her hands but seemed otherwise unbothered.
'What now,' I asked.
'We go to the Cliffs,' she said, 'pointing down the valley.'
'In theory,' I said, 'there should be a rash of government agents in helicopters around here.' I looked around the sky but saw nothing.
'I doubt that,' said Wilhelmina, already striding off. I locked the car and followed.
I have returned since to that particular point of Seven Sister, they're western most point, at the mouth of the river Cuckmere. Normally the river winds sleepily through a rather picturesque valley, but after over a week of rain it had flooded and in the moonlight all we could see at the bottom of the valley was a vast black slick. The path was under the water, so we picked our way over rough land on the eastern side of the valley, neither of us able to keep our footing in the dark and both slipping frequently in the mud. We struggled on in silence, Wilhelmina leading the way, me shivering behind her.
After some time, and I would be hard pressed to say how long with any degree of accuracy, perhaps as much as an hour, perhaps not even twenty minutes, Wilhelmina stood stock still and put her hand up to indicate me to stop. I stopped, and listened, and heard a splash. I looked down and, my eyes better adjusted to the dark by now, I saw ripples in the dark water beneath us.
Wilhelmina grabbed me and pushed me flat onto the ground, diving down besides me. She put her finger to her lips and then took my hand and interlaced her fingers with mine, and pointed urgently at the moon with her other hand. I looked at it, she held out her free hand so as to appear to pinch the moon between her thumb and forefinger, and then, with one quick movement, flipped the moon around like a coin so that it no longer shone. The effect was immediate, the darkness drew about us, concentrating and strengthening, we black formless shroud dropped down and immersed us. Wilhelmina looked me directly in the eyes, I do not know how, but with no doubt at all I knew she needed me to keep absolutely still and absolutely silent.
Another splash came, and then another. From beneath us, moving through the shallow edge of the floodwater, I could just make out a line of figures. Barely shadows under the starlight, shifting silhouettes over the inky surface of the water, the ghostly suggestion of forms. They had all the requisite features of men and women, the right number of arms and legs, that sort of thing, but watching them move, I would swear that these were wild animals, some previously undiscovered species of great ape, malevolent and carnivorous. They travelled with none of the difficulty Wilhelmina and I had suffered, instead they waded through the water as confidently as if it were a paved road.
There was about two dozen of them, travelling wordlessly in single file, from the little I could make out most had long hair and torn and tattered clothing. I held my breath as they walked post, trying to press my body into the sodden earth so they would not see us, Wilhelmina squeezed my hand tight and at first I thought she was trying to tell me something but when I looked at her, moving only my eyes, I saw it was nothing but terror. With only a few splashes, only a few yards away, the Black Goat sect filed slowly but purposefully past as. Then I noticed what had scared Wilhelmina, the added darkness that she had drawn about us was wearing off, it was thinning and dissipating like smoke. I looked down, barely half of the druids had gone past us and all around us the moonlight was penetrating, I could see the yellow of my coat begin to reflect the light. They moved so confidently they must have been able to see in the dark, all one had to do was glance up and they would surely see us.
Then one did. He stopped dead, and the moment he ceased to move I ceased to be able to see him at all, but I had seen him stop right below us and I knew he was there. The last of the druids filed past, skirting around the stationary figure and swiftly disappeared into the night. There was no noise, no movement, nothing but the knowledge that he was standing there in the darkness beneath us. The last of the shroud Wilhelmina had conjured lifted. We could see no better than before but knew we were far more visible to outside observers. Still the druid did not move. I might have thought I had made a mistake, that there was nobody there, but for the fact that Wilhelmina gripped my hand harder and harder. I was not sure if I could feel her trembling or if it was me. I wracked my brain for what I had on me that might be used as a weapon, I had my car keys in my pocket, nothing else. I remembered the speed with which the druid at the nightclub had moved. If this druid came for us, I doubted we would even have time to react before our throats were slit. My eyes began to water. In all honesty I can not tell you if that was because I was holding them wide open without blinking in the freezing cold, or that I was so scared I was starting to cry.
Then he moved. He turned and followed his comrades back up the valley, moving just faster than a walk, he disappeared into the dark.
I let my head drop to the ground, if it was not for Wilhelmina tugging on my arm I would have stayed there.
'We have to follow them?' she whispered.
I did not say anything, but I think the look of horror in my eyes spoke volumes.
'Selkie might be with them.'
My fierce bravado, from earlier in the evening when I had climbed into my car all ready to ride into certain death to save this girl, had all gone. I could, I thought then, still give up and go home. This was still not my fight. I felt no courage, all I felt was fear, but the thought that Selkie was with them scared me even more. I nodded.
Wilhelmina led the way, we retraced our steps slowly and quietly and carefully, not allowing ourselves to slip in the mud. It was too dark to possibly hope to see the Black Goat ahead of us, and they were moving too quietly to hear, so we simply followed the rough path they were headed in and hoped they did not turn from it. My fingers were numb from the cold and already my tread was finding a slight crunch on the ground as the sodden mud was freezing over.
We had not gone far when I heard a sound. I stopped to listen but it had gone. I did not know if Wilhelmina had heard it but she kept going regardless. I started moving more quickly in order to catch up with her but almost immediately heard it again. Again I stopped and listened but heard nothing. It had sounded like a cry for help. I looked back and cupped my hand to my ear, trying to pick it out. I heard nothing. I looked forwards again and Wilhelmina had disappeared. I dared not call to her, not even a whisper, and I was not sure if I could risk running forward to catch her up, I would certainly slip on the treacherous ground and, even if I did not call out, would make more noise than I dared. Even if I could have managed to up my pace enough to catch her up without slipping, I was far less sure of my location than she was and risked heading off in the wrong direction and losing her completely. The path we had followed was not straight, and there were many opportunities to go different ways.
I heard the sound again, it was unmistakably a cry for help and sounded familiar, it took me a second to recognise it but when I did I was certain that it was Selkie.
That made the decision easy. I looked one last time to see if I could see Wilhelmina but there was not a hope, and then I turned and headed in the direction of the call. It was hard to tell in such absolute darkness but I think a fog was already beginning to form, I could still see my hand in front of my face, but not much else.
Moving back down the valley again, away from the druids, I risked walking a little faster. I slipped often, and blundered frequently into pools of rainwater so that soon my feet and lower legs were soaked and I was shivering constantly. I heard Selkie call sporadically and even though I was certain I was heading in the right direction she never seemed to get any louder. The cries were little more than yelps of distress, I only ever made out one actual word, it was 'help.'
On hearing this I redoubled my efforts. I dashed forwards at a half jog and immediately lost my footing, slipped over, and ended up sliding down a nearly sheer drop. I have been back since, and believe that the slope I fell down was at least thirty feet high, but at the time it could have been ten times that. I slipped, skidded, and slid in the mud, tumbling down into the dark. I felt myself cut my hands. I shouted out in surprise and sudden panic. For what seemed like minutes I fell until finally landing with a loud splash into waste deep freezing cold water.
I panicked for a moment, thinking that I was drowning, before I managed to find my feet and stand up. A sharp pain shot through my right ankle and I immediately collapsed back down. I tried again, putting weight on it gingerly, it hurt like hell but I could stand on it. I did not have a lot of choice. It was walk or wait there till morning. I groped about blindly in the darkness but found nothing. I remembered that the moon had been behind me when I fell. The drop had obviously taken me further down into the fog and the moon was not clear, but I could still just make out its aura and I moved towards that, swiftly coming to the steep incline that I had fallen down. I tried to pull myself up and out of the water but it was too steep and too slippery and I could not. There was no climbing back up. I leant against the mud, trying to get my breath back and ignore the cold. I reasoned that I had been heading towards cliffs and if I was going to stumble about in the dark it would be wiser to do it on the valley floor, flood or no flood.
I heard Selkie call again, much louder and clearer this time. I started off wading through the water towards the call, keeping close to the edge in case it became possible to climb out. I could feel the cold begin to weaken me now, the soft mud at the bottom of the water sucked hard at my feet and my teeth were chattering constantly and noisily. Despite sticking to the edge of the lake the slope got steeper and at one point it became too steep to stand on and I had to swim, coughing and spluttering and swallowing water for about twenty feet before I could stand again. My progress was agonisingly slow, it was taking me hours just to go about half a mile.
I started talking to myself, I recited every Pink Floyd album in order, I named the people who worked in my office, out loud I listed the recipe for a few favourite cocktails and then described to the darkness how to make the perfect lasagne in great detail, right down to how much nutmeg to put in the cheese sauce. I heard Selkie again and tried to shout back but my voice croaked and died. I was loosing it fast and I knew it.
'Hypothermia,' I told myself in the manner of a lecturer, 'kills more shipwreck victims than drowning. Even in warm waters like the Mediterranean. What happens is that you panic, your heart rate goes up, and you literally pump all the heat out of your body. But,' I said, raising my voice and punctuating it with a sweeping gesture of my hands to make sure that the water and the fog understood this very important point, 'there have been cases of people surviving for hours in water barely above freezing. A fisherman had his boat sink off the coast of Norway, and with nothing but his oilskins and a life jacket, he spent six hours in the water and swam to the shore. The only reason he survived,' I paused for effect, 'he did not panic.'
I waded forwards into a wall, a rising rampart of earth at right angles to my path. I stopped and addressed it. 'Funny thing was,' I said, 'nobody believed him and he actually volunteered to spend another six hours in a tank of ice-water to prove he could do it.' The earth did not laugh.
Selkie called again, from directly behind the wall. I had to go over it, I had no idea how far it would stretch, how long a detour it would take me on if I followed it around. Come what may I had to go over. I groped about, the fact it formed a corner with the rising valley side to my right meant I could just about get enough grip to climb up, I barely had enough strength left, but I went for it. I dug my hands deep into the mud, gripping clumps of it, and slowly, silently but for breathing heavily with the effort, I slithered out of the water and up the bank. I hit the top and collapsed flat on my stomach. I was coated head to foot in mud, I was soaked to the skin, I was bleeding from several small cuts and grazes, and I was more tired than I think I had ever been before.
I lay for a moment and listened, I head a rushing sound, a watery crash, I heard waves, I heard the sea.
I stood up. The fog was thick but seemed to have a faint luminescent quality to it, so instead of absolute darkness I now stood in a white blur. I decided this was a good sign.
'All movement,' I told myself out loud, 'is movement forwards.' I walked. The earth rampart became gravel that crunched as I walked on it, and then I tumbled forwards fell down a loose shingle slope. There was no doubt, I had climbed over the sea wall and was now on the beach. I stopped and listened but heard nothing. I tried shouting but my voice croaked. I punched myself in the chest. 'Come on you bastard,' I said, and tried again, this time forcing out a shout of 'Selkie.'
She answered 'help.'
'Selkie,' I shouted again.
'I'm in the water.'
I stumbled forwards. Hitting the edge of the water where the gravel turned to slimy pot holed rocks, I caught my foot and immediately fell, cutting my hand badly this time and banging my shin hard. I went forwards over the difficult rocks on my hands and knees. The waves were not high but I could not see them coming and the large ones hit me full in the face giving me a mouth and eyes full of salt water.
'Marco,' I shouted.
'Polo,' Selkie answered.
'Marco.'
'Polo.'
'Marco.'
'Oof.'
I put my hand my hand down directly on her belly. I found her face and leant down close so that we could finally see each other.
'Hello,' I said.
'Hello,' she answered.
'Imagine meeting you here?'
'They tied me down,' she said, 'and the tide's coming in.' As if to make her point a wave washed over her, submerging her head completely. She coughed and spat out the water.
I fumbled and groped under the water and found one rope tying her down at the neck and another tying her hands behind her back. My fingers by now were numb and it was all I could do to find the knot, let alone untie it. I tried and tried. But I could not get a grip on it and my skin, soft from the water, slipped against the rope.
Another wave washed over her. 'Any time you're ready,' she said through the coughs.
'I don't suppose,' I said, 'that you would have a penknife on you.'
'Unfortunately,' she said, 'I seem to have mislaid my handbag.'
Another wave washed over her. 'Oh god Mitchell,' she said, 'hurry.'
'My keys,' I said, 'and, struggling with my numb fingers, pulled my car keys out of my pocket. I took the largest one and tried to saw at the rope with it, but it did no good at all. Selkie was shivering so hard her whole body was shaking. 'Don't panic,' I said, 'if you panic you might die.'
'Is that so,' she said.
I tried wedging the key into the knot but it was done up too tight.
'I really am beginning to dislike your old friends,' I said.
'Me too,' she said.
'Can you not just, you know, magic yourself free?'
'No.'
I tried to think of something. Another wave washed over her. She looked up at me and her eyes pleaded with me to save her and I did not no how. In desperation I just grabbed the rock she was tied to and tried lifting it. It moved, not very much, but it moved. I felt around the edge of it, it was about four foot long and she was tied roughly to the middle of it, it tapered slightly above her head.
'Okay,' I said, 'Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to wedge one end of this rock up and then we're going to slide the rope over the top of it.'
'Okay,' she said.
Frantically I groped around for another free rock. I found one, lifted the top end of the big rock up, and propped my free rock underneath it. I groped my hands under and found the rope.
'Ready?' I said.
'Do it,' said Selkie.
I pulled hard on the rope, effectively dragging her up by the chin. She screamed in pain and I stopped. 'Do it,' she shouted and I pulled again, hard. I shredded my fingers against the rock. Selkie writhed and tried to wriggle backwards. The rope struggled and twisted towards me. I stopped to let Selkie breath.
'I don't want to strangle you,' I explained.
'Just do it,' she spluttered, coughing.
I pulled again. I heard Selkie fight for breath. And then suddenly the rope came loose as the rock it was tied around tapered. Quickly I pulled it back and off then end. Selkie slumped backwards and I held her by the shoulders and pulled her shuffled forwards so that I propped her up on my knees.
'Thank you,' she said, looking up at me.
'Come on,' I said. Dragging her to her feet and holding her whilst she still had her hands tied behind her back. 'Lets get out of here.' We stumbled out of the water and onto the beach where we both collapsed on to the shingle and I picked at the knot tying her hands until it finally came loose.
'With an name like Selkie,' I said, 'you should have just swum away.'
'I need my skin,' she said.
