It takes Seth a moment to realize he's on the floor. He doesn't remember lying down, but he's
cramped and stiff, like he's been there for hours.
He sits up. He feels lighter.
Like he's almost empty.
The weight from the dream feels like it's in the room somewhere, and he's distantly aware of it, but
of himself, he feels –
Nothing. He feels nothing.
He gets to his feet. The sleep has returned some of his strength. He flexes his hands, rolls his neck,
stretches.
Then he sees that small beams of sun are pouring through the cracks in the blinds.
The rain has stopped. The sun is back out.
And he promised himself a run, didn't he?
Keeping his mind clear, he changes into a pair of shorts and one of the new T-shirts. His sneakers
aren't proper running shoes, but they'll do. He debates whether to take one of the bottles of water but
decides to leave it behind.
He skips breakfast. He's barely eaten in the last day and a half, but there's a purpose in his chest
that feels like it's feeding him.
It's the same purpose he felt when he went down to the beach.
He lets the thought slide through his head and out the other side.
There is nothing this morning.
Nothing at all.
Nothing but running.
He goes to the front door. He doesn't shut it behind him.
He runs.
It was cold, possibly below freezing when he left his house that afternoon, having meticulously
cleaned his room without really knowing why, without somehow even really being aware of doing
it, just getting everything in its right place, neat and tidy and final, so nothing was left undone.
His mother had taken Owen to therapy and his father was working in the kitchen. Seth walked
down the stairs to the living room. His eyes caught that horrible painting by his uncle, the horse,
in terror, in agony, but stilled, forever, watching him go, watching as he closed the front door
behind him.
It was a good half hour walk to the beach, the sky threatening snow but not delivering. The sea
that day wasn't as monstrous as it often was in winter. The waves were shallower, but still
reaching, still grabbing. The beach as rocky as ever.
He stood there for a moment, then he started to take off his shoes.
Seth runs toward the train station, leaving footprints in the drying mud, his legs creaking and groaning
from lack of this kind of use. He turns up the stairs between the blocks of flats, heading to the station.
His first sweat is on, the drops stinging his eyes as they drip from his forehead. The sun is blazing
His first sweat is on, the drops stinging his eyes as they drip from his forehead. The sun is blazing
down. His breathing is heavy.
He runs.
And as he runs, he remembers.
He runs faster, as if he might escape it.
There was sand there, between the rocks, and he stood on a little patch of it to remove first one
shoe and then the other. He set them carefully together, then he sat on a rock to take off his socks,
folding them and tucking them deep inside his shoes.
He felt . . . not quite calm, calm wasn't the right word, but there were moments, moments when
he wasn't focused on the precise folding of his socks when he felt almost faint with relief.
Relief because at last, at last, at last.
At last, there didn't have to be anymore, didn't have to be anymore burden, anymore weight to
carry.
He took a moment to try and shake off the tightening in his chest.
He breathed.
Seth leaps over the ticket barrier at the train station and pounds up the steps to the platform. He
doesn't look at the train as he heads for the bridge over the tracks. He hears nothing from the boar, no
doubt sleeping away a hot day in the confines of its den.
Up the steps, across the bridge, and down the other side.
He took off his jacket, because that seemed right, too. He was only wearing a T-shirt underneath,
and the wind stung his bare arms. He shivered more as he folded up his coat and placed it on his
shoes.
He felt present there, but also separate at the same time, as if he was watching himself from a
height, looking down on a shoeless, coatless boy, staring at the sea.
Like he was waiting.
But for what?
Whatever it was, it never come.
And then, "I'm ready," he whispered to himself.
He found, to his surprise, with a sudden upsurge of grief that nearly knocked him flat, that he
was telling the truth.
He was ready.
He began walking toward the sea.
He leaps over the gate at the other side of the train station and out the far exit. He pounds down the
incline toward the first main road, wincing at the strain on his feet, but his muscles seem to be
awakening, returning to the memory of themselves, returning to the memory of running –
He takes the first running steps into the destroyed neighborhood.
Everything around him is dead.
The cold of the water was shocking, brutally so, even in those first steps, and he couldn't keep
himself from gasping. A wave of gooseflesh marched up his arms, the thin black hairs standing
almost vertical. It felt for a moment as if he had already started to drown ankle-deep in five inches
of water.
He knew then that if the water didn't get him, the cold would.
He forced himself to take another step.
And another.
It's so quiet, all he can hear are his footfalls and his breathing. In this first street, everything's been
flattened, so there's only blackened ground reaching out on either side. He kicks up clumps of ash into
the air, some of it drying now in the sun and making a trailing cloud.
He turns his gaze forward again.
Toward Masons Hill.
His feet – almost blue with cold – went numb as they stepped from rock to rock. Each new shock as
he waded in deeper was like a knife slicing into him, but he pressed on. The water reached his
knees, his thighs, darkening his jeans to black. There was a long shallows, but he knew it deepened
suddenly a little farther out to depths that had to be swum. He also knew there was a current, one
that would take an unsuspecting swimmer and smash them into the rocks that loomed down the
beach.
He was so cold now that it felt as if his skin had been dipped in acid. A larger wave splashed
across his T-shirt, and he couldn't help but call out. He was shaking uncontrollably and had to
force himself to keep moving forward.
Another wave came, larger than the last and he almost lost his balance. Another followed that.
He wouldn't be able to stand for much longer, his feet and toes gripping hard on the submerged
rocks, the tide pulling forward and back. He readied himself to let go, to plunge in, to begin the
swim out into the farther cold, out into the terrible, terrible freedom that awaited.
He was here. He had made it this far. There was so very little distance left to go, and he was the
one who had brought himself here.
It was almost over. He was almost there.
He had never, not once in his life, felt this powerful.
Down another street, the concrete frames of some houses are still standing, though burnt through,
inside and out. Not just houses, but storefronts and larger structures, too.
All blackened, all empty, all dead.
His throat is burning, and he thinks he should have brought water. But the thought is fleeting and he
lets it go.
Masons Hill remains firmly on the horizon, and that's all he needs.
He feels empty. Emptied of everything.
He could run forever.
He feels powerful.
Then a wave, larger than any before, engulfed him, plunging him under the freezing water. The
cold was so fierce it was like an electric shock, sending his body into a painful spasm. He was
afloat, twisting underwater, narrowly avoiding cracking his skull on an outcropping.
Coughing, spluttering, he broke the surface as another wave crashed down. He surged up again,
his feet scrambling for purchase, but the undertow was already pulling him out fast. He spat out
seawater and was thrust under by another wave.
(He fought; despite everything, he was fighting –)
The cold was so enormous it was like a living thing. In an impossibly short time, he was unable
to make his muscles work properly, and though he could still see the empty shore in the seconds he
had above water, it receded farther and farther into the distance, the current pushing him toward
the rocks.
It was too late.
There was no going back.
(He felt himself fighting anyway –)
Seth picks up his speed, his breath starting to come in raking gasps, pushing the memories away, not
letting them take root.
I'll make it, he thinks. I'll make it to the hill. Not far now.
Another street, and another street more, empty buildings all around, reaching up like tombstones,
his breath getting louder in his lungs, his legs growing weaker.
I'll make it. I'll run up to the top –
Here is the boy, running.
Here was the boy, drowning.
In those last moments, it wasn't the water that had finally done for him; it was the cold. It had
bled all the energy from his body and contracted his muscles into a painful uselessness, no matter
how much he fought to keep himself above the surface –
(And he did fight in the end, he did –)
He was strong, and young, nearly seventeen, but the wintry waves kept coming, each one
seemingly larger than the last. They spun him round, toppled him over, forcing him deeper down
and down.
He doesn't think about his final destination as he runs, not in words. There is only intention. There is
only a lightness.
The lightness of it all being over. The lightness of letting it all go.
Then, without warning, the game the sea seemed to have been playing, the cruel game of keeping
him just alive enough to think he might make it, that game seemed to be over.
The current surged, slamming him into the killingly hard rocks. His right shoulder blade
snapped in two so loudly he could hear the crack, even underwater, even in this rush of tide. The
mindless intensity of the pain was so great he called out, his mouth instantly filling with freezing,
briny seawater. He coughed against it, but only dragged more into his lungs. He curved into the
pain of his shoulder, blinded by it, paralyzed by its intensity. He was unable to even try and swim
now, unable to brace himself as the waves turned him over once more.
Please, was all he thought. Just the one word, echoing through his head.
Please.
Please, he thinks –
There is the sheer drop on one side of Masons Hill. He can see it in the distance.
Fifty feet down to concrete below –
Please –
The current gripped him a final time. It reared back as if to throw him, and it dashed him headfirst
into the rocks. He slammed into them with the full, furious weight of an angry ocean behind him.
But it didn't make him free.
He woke up here.
Here where there is nothing.
Nothing but a loneliness more awful than what he'd left.
One that is no longer bearable –
He is nearly there. One last turn. One more long street, and he'll reach the base of the hill.
He turns a corner –
And in the distance, far down the road in front of him, he sees a black van.
And it's moving.