His name had been called from an inner distance and one that took form inside his imagination as a grey and misted space at the edge of his mind. He sensed the drab emptiness was entirely without borders and reached much further than he was glimpsing.
Tasting hormones of terror in a dry mouth, he emerged from behind the shrubbery. Moving his legs was too conscious a manoeuvre.
The stranglehold of the moment abruptly passed and the figure was nowhere to be seen. Not on the water, the sands, the promenade, or in the park behind the beach.
Seb gathered up his things and jammed them inside his rucksack, managing to lose his hat in the process, which slipped down the back of the bench. He was too tense to regroup his wits but restrained himself from breaking into a run. Instead, he followed the serpentine path into Round-ham Gardens, the beauty spot on the headland.
And that was the first time that he didn’t linger to admire the blue expanse of the bay. Distant Torquay was ever a mosaic of white buildings, built over the hills and cliffs, an instant dreamy transport into the Mediterranean. But to hell with the view. Hurrying through a row of pines, their long trunks curved and harrowed for years by the wind, Seb made haste towards Paignton harbour.
Even if the man had been intent on engaging with him, scaling the cliff-side paths behind Seb would have been an impossible feat in the time it had taken Seb to get this far, but he still repeatedly glanced over his shoulder to make sure that he wasn’t being followed.
Hatless and harried, as he moved out of the cliff-side gardens, his mind cast about for an explanation for the irrational sensation. He feared an early onset of dementia, and the worst kind of end that he had imagined for himself. Secondary terrors skimmed over schizophrenia and other hallucination-prone disorders of the mind.
Or had he actually seen a man standing in the water? The same man twice?
He was shaken enough to consider that there was something unnatural about the figure. Perhaps the impossible had been achieved during that strange possession of his mind upon the cliffs; he was even close to believing in the presence of the supernormal. The very subject that had made his name as a writer for so many years. The paranormal had allowed him to become that rarest of writers too: one with a good living. But, regarding the numinous, though he had curiosity and fascination in abundance, he had no faith. Uncharacteristically eager to immerse himself into a crowd, he ran from Paignton harbour to a place he rarely went: the Esplanade.
Unencumbered by family and a confirmed bachelor – having thrown the towel in on all that by thirty-six, fourteen years gone now – the seafront and its attractions had never been designed for him. But the holidaymakers at the tail end of the Easter holiday did not share his reticence. It wasn’t yet May, nor ten in the morning, but due to the warm spring there was already a large gathering of retirees, young families and groups of prospecting teenagers on the front.
Seb mingled amongst the beach blankets, windbreaks and small tents on the beach and hurried across the shoreline in the direction of Preston Sands. Cutting up and onto the Esplanade by the pier, he was engulfed by the fragrant haze of fried sugar and hotdog onions, then beset by the incessant jangle of the arcade’s dark interior. As if he’d forded back across the river Styx and rejoined the living, the assault on his senses was joyous.
He picked up a polystyrene beaker of sweetened coffee to calm his nerves and moved past the shrieks and hurdy-gurdy jingles of the small fairground, pitched beside the adventure playground on the green. Feeling protected and even invigorated by the noise, the very electricity and energy that was relentlessly maintained by a giant pair of throaty speakers, Seb moved to the outskirts of the scene to where the strollers and the stream of cyclists thinned. He found a bench facing the sea and slumped upon it.
Tall white hotels lined up behind his seat. The Lodges, Houses and Palaces still clinging to their Victorian identities. Their cosy familiarity served as a strong arm placed about his shoulders.
Sipping his coffee, Seb made a call to Becky. Recent events had suddenly brought forward one of those times when his need for company, intimacy and affection exceeded his desire for solitude. He’d forgotten what it was like to be intimidated. Yet, in the cliff-side gardens, he’d felt more than merely intruded upon, he’d come away feeling threatened.
As if superimposing itself upon the new scene about Seb, the watcher on the shore’s black shape continued to stain his thoughts while he fumbled with his phone. A sense that he was still within the figure’s orbit would not abate.