It was almost full dark, the sun gone; you would barely know it was day.
Instantly I was soaked to the skin. The rain was colossal, unbelievable, not single discrete points falling through the air but simply a wall of water, everywhere. Then there did come a flash, shocking white light, illuminating the world—I saw the pier in X-ray relief, the house to my right, a skeleton structure, pale in the darkness; even the grass behind me and the grains of the wood under my feet, the eyes, the whorls, all flooded with light, monochrome.
And—
Black again.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four—
Boom.
The thunder didn’t roll over me, like people say, it detonated around me, seeming to come from just outside my ears, punching me, shivering my foot on the slippery pier, making me lunge forward to keep my balance, shaking now with cold too, the water plastering the clothes to my skin.
“Well, this was a smart move,” said the voice.
I ignored it. I kept on moving, slowly, treading oh so carefully, the soles of my Converses sliding on the treacherous surface. The ocean boiled beneath me, frothing, leaping, as if excited to finally let go of everything it was pretending to be. As if letting out the predator within.
One plank.
Two planks.
Three planks.
I did it like that, three at a time, counting again and again.
FLASH.
The whole world lit up, full black and white, contrast whacked up to maximum, and then went black again, and three seconds later, the explosion of thunder shook my eardrums again.
I kept going.
One plank.
Two planks.
Three and then I was there. Waves were crashing into the woodwork below me now.
I was at the end of the pier, or at least the end of the walkable pier, because the rest was in the ocean, bare struts, the walkway that was held up by them long since fallen into the water and washed away.
I looked down into the shifting murk. Water was still falling from the sky, baptismal, epic in its scale, the day pretty much midnight black now, lightning occasionally floodlighting everything, this whole stage for … what?
What was I doing here?
“A very good question,” said the voice.
And then I saw it.
I looked down, and there in the water was a white shape, and I leaned closer. My toes were over the edge of the wooden structure, and for a second I thought of Paris standing at the edge of the pier, just before your truck arrived below, and how she thought we were playing Dare, how she thought the game was to get close to the edge, to play with death, and I’m seeing Paris in my mind’s eye, losing her balance, nearly falling and then—
FLASH.
I was seeing Paris below me. Her face, looking up at me through the water, it was her body down there, floating, I knew it; her hair was billowing around her face, haloing it, her beautiful black hair framing her skin, the paleness of it, spreading around her, and her eyes were looking up at me but seeing nothing.
Boom.
I was so startled—though not afraid, never afraid of Paris—that I took a step back, and the plank cracked beneath my foot, and then the whole thing must have been rotten because the next one along broke too, and then there was a creaking that I heard even over the thunder that was just echoing out of the sky, fading, and the pier fell away beneath me, and I was weightless, just for a moment.
Then
I
fell.
And as I fell, I twisted, or something, I had no sense of the orientation of my own body or what had collapsed, whether it was just part of the pier or all of it, or even if I was facing down or up, and anyway the important thing is my head smashed against some object, hard, I mean smashed hard and the thing was hard too, and stars burst out of the storm-curtained sky, where there was nothing but rain clouds, and I blacked out.
And then I was in the freezing water, plunging under, feeling it enveloping my body and head, my eyes half-open so the world was suddenly darkness and bubbles.
I tried to swim up to the surface, but I was too weak, and my head was nothing but agony now, a sensation in place of an object, a sensation of gripping, vice-like pain.
My eyes were still open though, so I could see up through the thin layer of water that was going to drown me—it doesn’t take much water to drown you—and I could see that the clouds had tattered, just for a second, the wind whipping open a vortex in the sky, exposing for a moment the glow of the half moon and the icy sparkle of the stars.
I looked around me. Half the pier was gone, and I was in deep water. I turned toward the beach. But it wasn’t a beach.
Why didn’t I check when I started?
Behind me, the ocean smashed into a tumble of rocks, which lay between me and the yards of the houses, a barrier of rubble.
I dived down, looking for Paris, eyes open and searching through the murk, but I couldn’t see her, and I couldn’t hold my breath either, and I had to push myself back up to the surface.
How was I going to climb out over those rocks?