As promised, here is your short story for Halloween 2017...
The Meaning of a Life
The meaning of life had eluded Greg Williamson. Despite his 45
years on this earth, he had failed to find a satisfying answer. A successful
career and two failed marriages had not even hinted at a meaning to a life that
felt devoid of rhyme or reason. After his sister died Greg had taken an
immediate decision. He had driven, alone, to the coast. To think. To retreat.
To survive.
Nature hugged him as he drove there. It was a contrast to his city
life which seemed full of angular, straight lines and laptop screens and
rectangular pop-up adverts. Here everything was curved or else twisted. Here,
the rules were different.
He parked at the top of a cliff. There didn’t seem to be anyone
far below on the secluded beach. And there were steep steps leading down to the
beach. It was a lucky find – to find an area in which there were no other
people. Most of the tourists were at the popular destinations and few people
went on holiday at the end of October.
Dusk was coming. Greg looked across the sea and saw only dark
clouds.
“There’s a storm coming,” he said aloud to himself. But his inner
storm was also at its height and Greg knew it. Down to the beach it was pebbles
rather than sand. He followed the call of the sea. Wrapping his coat tightly,
Greg looked at the shells which had been washed ashore. There was a large
jellyfish which had been washed aground too long to live. Some kind of shiny
black tar could be seen between the pebbles. The dull, wet sky seemed to
permeate his body, to saturate his skull. The cold winds seemed to blow right
through him as if he was not even there. As if he were invisible and his life
had no meaning. He looked out across the grey sea and despaired.
His mind gripped hold of the name of the beach - Smugglers Cove – and the childhood fantasy
of adventure and hidden treasure made him feel a little better. He would walk
the beach, storm or no storm. He would clamber across rocks to the left, across
bladderwrack seaweed and explore. And maybe the exploring would change his
state.
I suppose he had never expected to go out quite so far. I suppose
he had never intended to go across the barnacle encrusted rocks and explore
quite so many miles of coastline. But it was like a siren song inside. As the
winds buffeted his body, he felt compelled to continue. He was, as he had always
wanted to be, in the moment and out too far. Certainly not waving. And going
back was a worry which was boxed in a clam at the back of his brain.
When he reached the cave entrance it seemed to be a place of lost
dreams. Dusk now. Total dusk, when the strangest things can happen.
The cave seemed to have always been there, its dark opening like a
mouth willing to swallow him. He explored. The cave itself felt bitterly cold
and austere, but it provided some shelter from the wind. The waves outside
approached and seemed to warn: ‘Curiosity killed the called.’
There was no smuggled treasure to be discovered. There were a few
bottles and rusty cans and in one corner a pile of paper which looked
suspiciously like toilet paper. Someone had scratched a name and date into one
of the cave walls: ‘John – ‘10, 10, ....’. The year had been
eroded.
He sat at the entrance, his back to the darkness and he looked
across the sea to the approaching dark clouds. There were no moon or stars to
be seen, no crack in the aluminium greyness of the merciless sky. Greg had felt
the workdays eating into him. He had felt his life passing by and he felt
guilty that he had let his life pass by without really living. His dreams
seemed to have dissolved like mist. They seemed only delusions now. Like the
American dream. Like the British dream – one of money and possessions and a
happy family and two and half children. Watching TV alone was not enough. He
would watch celebrities climbing mountains or visiting strange exotic places.
He would watch the famous discover their family trees. He would watch ordinary
people doing extraordinary things and sometimes he would wish it was him. When
he received the news of his sister, his reaction was immediate and he had
driven to the sea without even packing. And the storm grew closer.
Greg’s mid-life crisis was like an intoxicating poppy flower which he had carefully watered and fed. It was not a case of
wanting to buy a motorbike or make love with beautiful women. His crisis was
that he wanted to know the meaning to life and why he was put on this earth. He
had accomplished so little. Neither his words nor his deeds had forked any
lightning in the hearts of others. No thunder from his intentions had shaken
the needy into a places of safety.
“I like you for that Gregory.”
Greg jumped at the voice. It had come from behind him. From a
darker entrance deeper inside, further down into the throat of the cave. It was
not an internal voice. There was even an echo which took
place outside the cave of his own skull.
“It’s impossible not to like Gregory Williamson. Well… not quite
impossible, but I like you anyway…” said the voice from a distance, the echo,
rebounding from the cave walls and the inside of Greg’s head.
“The things that Gregory has been through… so very much. We should
look out across the sea and watch the waves crashing and breaking in the coming
storm and it would remind us of eternity. It would make us feel very small. We
would be unable to look at the horizon then, and instead gaze down at our
feet…”
After the word ‘feet’ there came an edgy laugh which sounded as
hollow as the cave. As hollow as his head.
“Hello!” shouted Greg deeper into cave. “Who are you? How do you
know me? Have you followed me?”
He felt safe though. A strange bliss seemed to envelope him, more
intimate than the sea and the horizon which spoke of eternity. The storm and
the darkness made him curious. There was no fear. A kind of peace caressed him
in that moment, like the soft wing of an angel.
And the air was full of the smell of salt and seaweed and
something else which he couldn’t put his finger on. He wanted to go further. He
wanted to go further than anyone else. And the crashing and breaking of the
waves as the tide came seemed to have an atmosphere of their own. ‘Curiosity
killed the called.’
“Hello!”
But there was silence still, apart from a strange ringing in his
ear as if the pressure had changed or someone had clashed ancient swords at the
side of his head.
Then there was singing. A hum, a childhood nursery rhyme. “Row,
row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.”
Greg’s curiosity overtook him and he walked deeper into the cave
and the last of the dusk light showed a fork ahead. The cave seemed impossibly
deep. It seemed labyrinthine. He followed the singing and soon most of the
light was gone. The voice of the sea became a whisper. He had to feel along the
cold rock and soon he saw something sitting on a rock further inside. At first
he thought the dark outline to be some kind of stalagmite. He gasped as the
silhouette moved.
“What do you want to know Gregory?” said the voice.
“Hello,” replied Greg finally.
Greg wondered how the stranger could have
known his name.
“Do you want to know how we know your name?” asked the voice. “We
have been expecting you and we know the question you will ask and we know the
answer to that question – the question which had been burning in your heart for
years. Ask it and we shall answer.”
So Greg thought frantically of what that question might be,
because doing so seemed to be his only escape. And then he remembered…
“What is the meaning of my life?”
Soft laughter.
“It is well that you have asked what the meaning of your life is
and not what the meaning of life in general is. And now we shall tell you what
the meaning of your life is… it is this. You were born to come here and you
were born to be in this place at this time. There can be no meaning without a
creator who created both you and us. And so the meaning of your life is quite
simple: You are here to be our supper.”
Then bliss left and fear came. It was a horror for Greg and no
kind of answer. It would have been no kind of answer for anyone.
“I’m sorry? What are you doing here? Who else is with you?” said
Greg thinking he must have misheard.
He fumbled for his mobile. And clicked the torch app and suddenly
the owner of the voice was lit up. It was a merman in
reverse. It was a merman but it was not a merman. It had the legs and midriff
of a man but it had the torso of a huge fish. It was wrapped in seaweed as if
the seaweed were a clothing. There were no feet, simply a tail where the legs
joined. The head seemed normal, apart from the mouth. Part of the back could be
seen and barnacle ridges formed there. On the front there were mussel shells
clasped to the creature’s scaly chest.
Greg was horrified and he would have raced from the spot if the
strange merman in reverse had not spoken to him with a voice which sounded
like the eternity of the sea.
“The meaning of life is like the sea. When you look at the sea
from the place that the river and estuary flow, it seems only to be the sea, of
no relevance to you, something to only be aware of. Hardly even important. But when you are in the sea
itself, when you are no longer fearing it, when you have passed the boundary
between land and water, when you flow into the sea you feel it all around you.
You feel it all and you know that it is forever and that it is beautiful and it
becomes a compensation for the sufferings of dry land and the saltless river
which led you there. But you have to follow the river to the sea. We have been
waiting for you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Greg. “What are you? That’s no answer. That
answer sounds like bullsh…”
And then he suddenly realized that the mouth of the merman in
reverse was not that of a merman but the mouth of a tiger shark. The
teeth so sharp. A mouth which gaped open, its jawbone disconnecting to widen its maw like a snake. And then there was a lurch and suddenly the creature met the
place where Greg stood frozen. He dropped his mobile and in the darkness the
great sharp mouth opened and suddenly there were no questions left in Greg’s
head to ask because he had no head.
And the others came to feed too.
And the vast ocean, outside the mouth of the cave, the
body of this strange soul, welcomed its new guest with a whisper... ‘Curiosity
kills the called.’
