The famous Dorset Jurassic coast was no stranger to a storm.
Seagulls cawed and fought against the whining wind while sea spray and rain soaked the sleepy seaside town of Weymouth as it had done for centuries, as it would continue to do until the end of time. Danger followed the coastal paths along the cliffs, a few visitors dared to sneak a peek over the heart-stopping drop in the hopes of witnessing sea foam explode against the chalk but the threat of being thrown off the edge by a strong gust of wind drew them back. Even during England's cold summer spells tourists came from all over the world to see the prehistoric natural wonders, the tumultuous drop was half of the coast's allure.
Jane Cole wiped her dripping face and turned up the volume of her tatty Walkman, praying that the rain would be kind to her music player. She shoved it further into her coat pocket and dragged her foot along the pavement, her skateboard finally gathering speed. The wind whipped her cheeks harder as she flew off but she didn't care, she had grown to love it's ferocious kisses. With Frankie Goes to Hollywood blasting in her ears, she took in the scenic view of the town behind the cliffs that she (unfortunately) called home and sighed.
She fucking hated it here.
The dank orphanage, a faded salmon painted structure that looked ghastly both up close and from afar, stuck out like a sore thumb on the green hill west of the town, sandwiched in between a long abandoned retirement home and a cow farm that stretched beyond the valley. It looked just as horrible as the children that lived inside of it (Jane always thought it was rather fitting that Coles Children's Home was neighbours with a field full of cow's dung) with its peeling rickety fences and unseemly front garden littered with broken toys. It was no secret that the whole town despised the unsightly orphanage, the local council had received several complaints over the years from bitter locals, but nothing compared to everyone's distaste of the orphans themselves.
Jane didn't blame them, she hated them too. The orphans that came from the home were a nuisance to everyone they met, they constantly caused trouble for the locals and their anti-social behaviour gave all the kids a bad name, Jane included. She loathed being a Coles kid with her entire being.
Jane gasped and quickly skirted around a young couple holding hands, spitting out a hurried "Sorry!" as she zoomed past and almost knocked them sideways.
Whenever she could, Jane was out on her skateboard. Her hobby started out as a lie, with her finding a skateboard at the beach one day after school and using it as an excuse to spend time away from the home to practise. Once she got a good handle on her footwork, however, she was never seen without it which sadly led to her discovery that the skateboard was rather useful in other ways — it made for a decent shield against the rocks that the other kids threw at her.
Despite the chipped paint and the dents made by stones, Jane thought her skateboard was most likely the coolest item she owned.
The wind only grew worse when Jane arrived at Poor Man's Point (a nickname the townspeople came up with due to the collection of homeless people that revered the privacy of the coves hidden at the cliff's feet) and she shivered in relief when she found it deserted. Poor Man's Point was a local tourist attraction, a natural phenomenon where two of the cliffs came together to form a stone plank that many thrill seekers used as a diving board. It was a mere two hundred feet drop into the ocean which was enough to make the stomachs of even the bravest of jumpers cramp.
Jane came here most weekends, she found solace in the seagull screeches and rustling tree leaves that surrounded the peak of the cliffs. Locals to the area hardly ever visited the attraction which was enough to earn it's title as Jane's favourite place.
Rubbing her frozen hands in the hopes of gaining back feeling, Jane shuffled over to one of the many benches and plonked herself down. Her stomach did a small kickflip of its own when her skateboard rolled towards the drop, but she quickly snatched it up and hugged it to her chest. She would be furious with herself if it tumbled off the cliff — the walk home would take over an hour! Ah well, Danielle isn't working today so it's not like anyone would notice if I broke curfew.
With the Walkman still blaring, Jane fumbled around in her paint-splattered backpack and scooped out the instant camera that she received last Christmas by the only saving grace in her life; Danielle Greene, a carer at Coles.
Roughly twenty-six years old, Danielle was the youngest support worker at the children's home, and she was the only person in the world that liked Jane. She wished that was an exaggeration but it really wasn't. Danielle was very kind with a pretty pointed face and a rather thick Welsh accent, something Jane had spent the past two years trying to imitate. She seemed to be the only one at Coles who took notice of Jane's creative hobbies — who took notice of Jane at all, to be honest — and she bought Jane a cheap instant camera to experiment with. Jane had never received a gift before Danielle turned up, she had never been more protective of anything in her whole life. Jane smiled and felt Danielle's old Walkman in her pocket. That was her second most protected gift.
The threatening grey clouds swirled with the wind out above the ocean, the waves were violent and clashed with itself rolling over and over towards the deep nothingness beyond. Jane shuddered, traumatised by the mere thought of the water, by how heavy the ocean could be when you're panicking, and her chest seized as though she was back in its deadly depths.
She almost drowned twice in her life, twice she had been dragged into the water by the kids who made her life a living hell and each incident haunted her to this day. But still, she shoved the dark thoughts from her mind and allowed the camera to soak in the beautiful bittersweet sea view. It was impossible to avoid the ocean when living in a seaside town.
Whenever Jane immersed herself in something creative her focus tunnelled and she ignored her surroundings. She never noticed how easily the hours slipped by and she subconsciously blocked out the group making their way up the paths that zigzagged up the cliffs, their rattling bikes in their hands.
The gang of girls were older than Jane by a couple of years. They were a bunch of teenagers who should've known better than to bully a vulnerable girl younger than them, but adolescence was a fickle thing and the thought of ruining Jane's day was too sweet to resist. They spotted the oblivious girl a mile off, the patched green coat and frantic camera flashes they had come to despise stood out against the growing darkness, and they agreed to their new change of plans with matching menacing smiles.
The leader of the teenagers had been waiting for this opportunity all summer long, how could she say no to this?
It wasn't until the white beams of a lighthouse further down the coastline started to blink that Jane noticed the time. It was always hard to tell what time of day it was when a storm was in town. It was the middle of July yet summer decided to miss this year completely, substituting warm sun streaked evenings with rain and bitter winds that never died down. They were in the midst of a perpetual storm and it had not stopped raining for almost three weeks. Jane didn't mind the rain but there were only so many depressing ocean pictures she could take!
The Walkman clicked and switched off, the CD whirling to a stop inside her jacket. Jane put the camera down on the bench and pulled her headphones off, and the booming waves and wind roared on. With her hair whipping around her, she scrambled around in her bag for another rattling CD case but something in the corner of her peripheral caught her attention. Her stomach plummeted and her mouth suddenly became very dry.
"Oi!" Someone shouted behind her, their yell carrying with the wind. It was too dark to make out any faces but Jane didn't need a torch to know who it was. Did they stalk her here? She couldn't catch a break.
Instead of looking up, she carried on searching for something loud and energising to boost her sudden mood dip.
"Oi!" They shouted again. "You deaf?"
"It's Sunday, the holy day, the Sabbath —the day of rest!" Jane shouted back, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Have a day off, love!"
"Piss off freak!"
Jane sighed and dropped the bag on her lap, taking a deep calming breath. It's ok, she's doing that on purpose, don't rise to it.
The antagoniser was starting early today, usually the f-word came halfway through their petty fights, when her bullies got physical and her taunts had gone too far. She looked towards the four people approaching her, four bike lights flashing menacingly at her through the darkness trying to be intimidating, but she could only snort at their attempts. This might have worked a few years ago but Jane had gotten used to her bully's tactics as though it was her sixth sense, even taunting them to get a little more creative with their oppression. With a lifetime of torment under her belt Jane had heard every swear word and slur come out of the girl's mouth and it was beginning to get a little boring.
"Come on guys, I bet there's another lonely girl out there looking to be bullied, it's not fair on them if I hog all of the abuse, is it?" she asked, deciding to go with Danielle's various 80s hits album. She clicked it into place just as the group arrived, giving her a chance to see their faces in their bike's dying lights.
Rachel Madden sneered down at Jane, her highlighted blonde hair shoved into two pigtails with little blue butterfly clips framing her fringe. She was the worst of them all, the leader, the one whose face Jane had memorised once out of fear but now out of hatred. She lived at Coles with her, she was the only other child who had been there as long as Jane and she knew how hard it was growing up as an orphan. And yet, instead of trying to sympathise with Jane, being civil with her, or even giving her the decency to leave her alone Rachel made it her personal goal to make Jane Cole's life a slow, agonising nightmare.
"Where is it?" growled Rachel, stomping to a stop beside the bench, and Jane could only blink back in response.
"Huh?"
" Where… Is… It..?" Rachel repeated, slowing down each word to emphasise her dissipating patience. She flashed her teeth with malice, and Jane struggled to come up with an answer.
What the hell is she on about?
"Wha—?"
" WHERE IS MY SISTER'S BLANKET, FREAK?! I KNOW YOU HAVE IT!"
Oooh… Jane swallowed to moisten her mouth and she fought the urge to crack a small smile. Ooh fuck, it was her sister's!?
She knew where the only momento Rachel had left of the little sister she hadn't seen in years was, and a single bead of sweat escaped Jane's brow when she remembered watching the blanket drift away with the tide days ago. It was a total accident, she didn't mean to throw it into the ocean but the vicious clifftop winds thought very differently and the blanket was whipped from her loose grip and into the abyss. She hadn't wondered where it came from, she didn't think twice that it might have been Rachel's, but now she was cursing herself for her own ignorance.
Besides, it was Johnny's fault — one of the other Coles kids — that the freshly charred blanket he set fire to was likely lost in the English Channel, not hers. He was the one who planted it in her backpack for her to find, framing her for a crime he committed. She didn't technically steal it, he did, but that wouldn't matter to Rachel. The truth never mattered when Jane was involved, she'd always be Rachel's default punching bag.
"Er," Jane kept her tremors to a minimum but she didn't know what to say, "ask Johnny?"
"I did and he told me how he saw you messing about with it — defiling it," Rachel deepened her snarl to emphasise her fury, "so I'm going to ask you one more time, bitch… Where is my sister's blanket?"
Jane's eyes darted towards the ocean and clicked her tongue, debating whether she should throw her towel in early and risk fleeing the scene. She knew it wouldn't work, the rest of Rachel's gang were circling her bench like a pack of hounds sniffing out their next meal. The only realistic escape route was her jumping over the edge of the cliff but she didn't particularly fancy ending up as a splattering of viscera for the seagulls to peck at.
"My guess is it's somewhere near France," Jane whistled, "depending on the current this time of year—,"
THWACK!
"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
Prickly stars invaded Jane's vision as she fought against gravity's pull to stay upright. Rachel's fist connected with her right eye and an acute throbbing began to trickle down her face.
"It was an accident!" Jane yelled back, blindly reaching for her belongings as the girls closed in on her.
"LIAR!" roared Rachel as her skin grew blotchy from her increased fury, and she snatched Jane by the collar of her coat. It wasn't a secret that Rachel suffered from anger issues stemming from her own dark past, but quite frankly Jane didn't care. It wasn't her fault Rachel couldn't control her emotions, she wasn't the only one plagued by a life of instability and she was sick to death of her using it as an excuse whenever she got caught using Jane as a means of release.
"Get off! You're a fucking psycho," Jane grunted, struggling to release Rachel's grip. Rachel was larger than most girls, she towered over everyone in her class and she loved to use her height as an advantage, especially against Jane who was considered small for her age.
The girl gang oohed at her response and Rachel cocked a brow, almost amused by her frosty insult.
" I'm a psycho?" drawled Rachel, daring her to speak up again, "me?" She yanked Jane closer, forcing her to her feet so she could see the icy tongues of fire in her blue eyes. "Say that again, I dare you."
" You're the one everyone's scared of," piped up the red head beside Rachel, Beverly Goldman. Jane knew her from school, she was just as mean-spirited and unpalatable as her best friend, all of her friends were. She too was wearing butterfly clips in her red curls, and Jane suddenly noticed that the four girls were practically identical. They looked like some sort of cutesy Lisa Frank cult, and she found it rather ironic that their angelic appearances contrasted with their awful personalities.
" You're the one who can't hold a friend to save her life!" Beverly continued, "I heard that no one even looks at you let alone goes near you since the crow accident. What sane person wants to be friends with a freak who plays with dead animals?"
"It wasn't dead!" Jane seethed, rattled by the horrid memory, "it was just injured. It's not my fault everyone in that school is blind and dumb!"
"You keep telling yourself that, witch," sneered the third girl, a spotty teen with a pixie cut and glasses too large for her small face, "that bird was nothing but a pile of bones until you worked your little voodoo charms on it. It's fucking weird."
"That's not the only strange thing she's done," Rachel encouraged the taunts with a wicked grin, and she shoved Jane back down onto the bench, "is it?"
The roaring of the wind helped Jane centre herself and she straightened her collar with a firm tug, refusing to twitch. The stabbing in her eye was fading but she felt the tenderness of her forming bruise as she scowled up at Rachel.
"I haven't got a clue what you're talking about."
"Aww, don't get shy now," Rachel cooed, baring her teeth, "let me jog your memory! Remember what Connor caught you doing in the bathroom? With the hairbrush?"
Something more powerful than fear washed over Jane and her gut knotted itself. The eyes of the girls sneering down at her grew hotter, she swore her face was burning from their intensity. Connor was another Coles kid, a sixteen year old boy who intended to move out and join the army in the coming months, and she couldn't wait for him to leave. The memory of him barging into the grotty bathroom and catching her levitating her hairbrush was still too painful for her to think about… her ribs were still fragile from his many kicks.
Don't, Jane, don't think about it. Don't rise to her bait. Jane told herself furiously, repeating the quiet mantra to stop her hands from shaking.
"You're just making shit up now, nothing happened. Connor lied," Jane spat out her fable with force. If she said it enough times then it would be true, it had to be. She wasn't weird, she was normal. I'm normal, they're lying.
"The only liar around here is you…" Rachel snarled, her voice deeper than the rumbles of thunder culminating above their heads. They could barely see each other now, only the flickers of their bike lights kept them safe from the descending night.
"Did you seriously come all the way up here to tease me?" Jane wondered, attempting to change the topic as a means of calming the anger flushed in her veins. "Do you lot have nothing better to do than bring up old gossip? What sad little lives you all live, I almost feel sorry for you."
"Ha! You're the one up here with a camera, what are you doing? Taking pictures of the hobos, you perv?" scoffed the fourth member of the cutesy cult, a girl wearing a bright yellow rain mac. Her narrowed eyes caught sight of the instant camera poking out of the lips of Jane's backpack and she went to snatch it–
OH HELL NO!
"HEY!" Jane shouted, triggered by her sudden movement, and she went to smack the girl's hand away when Rachel seized her wrist in a vice-tight grasp.
"Good idea, Lisa," Rachel smirked, her icy glare never moving from Jane's freckled face as the girl named Lisa stole her precious camera, "an eye for an eye, that's only fair, right?"
The thought of her camera breaking made Jane's heart lurch but it didn't compare to the overwhelming shame she would feel telling Danielle why she didn't have her favourite treasure anymore.
"I told you," Jane struggled to keep her voice from wobbling, "I didn't mean to lose your sister's stupid blanket, it was an accident."
She winced as Rachel twisted her wrist, threatening to snap it. Jane froze, wondering whether she should have kept her mouth shut.
"It wasn't an accident, it's never an accident when it comes to you, freak," Rachel breathed, breathing heavily from the rage surge pummelling through her, "you know how much that blanket meant to me — YOU KNEW IT WAS THE ONLY THING I HAD LEFT OF RILEY AND YOU FUCKING THREW IT AWAY LIKE IT MEANT NOTHING!"
"OH GIVE ME A BREAK!" Jane screamed back, attempting to yank her aching wrist from her viper grip, "IT'S JUST A STUPID PIECE OF FABRIC! GET OVER IT ALREADY!"
An unsettling silence fell upon the group and Jane instantly knew she fucked up. The girls surrounding them inhaled sharply, exchanging winces as they waited for their leader's reaction. She fully expected Rachel to bend her hand backwards until the bones snapped under her pressure, she anticipated her to scream until her throat tore — but no. More silence, heavy, concentrated silence. Rachel stared at her as though she had been slapped across the face, and Jane felt the spikes of adrenaline rising to the surface like soldiers marching into battle in the dead of night.
Waiting for the bomb to explode. Waiting for the eye of the hurricane to pass.
But the storm raged on and the silence was no more. A small part of Jane, although she didn't know how small, had been waiting for this moment all her life.
"Rachel, I…" Jane could barely hear herself, "I'm sorry I—,"
Rachel exploded.
"YOU'RE DEAD, CUNT!"
Jane hit the ground with enough force to blur her vision, the jagged gravel tore into the back of her skull and she swore she felt the hot ooze of blood warm her scalp. A flurry of fists pounded into her face again, and again, and again and again—
"THEY SHOULD'VE DROWNED YOU IN THE SEA THE DAY THEY FOUND YOU!"
She couldn't breathe. Rachel leapt on top of her, pinning her down to stop her from writhing. The cold winds barely touched her anymore, all she felt was her bully's white-hot knuckles pummelling her within an inch of consciousness. Jane was surprised she was still awake, the agony in her face was unmeasurable.
"Go on Rachel!"
"Knock her teeth out!
The audience to her demise didn't care for her, not one bit. The heartache consumed her chest just as much as Rachel's kicks, her ribs bowed and cracked as did her hopes of surviving the attack. Not one of the faces peering over her cared that she was hurt, not a single one of them would mourn if she died today.
Jane didn't want to admit it but she wished for death. She wanted her life to fade from her body, she craved the sweet release that was imminent. Twice she had brushed shoulders with Death, and she prayed this third meeting would be their last.
I'm ready… Please… take me away from this hell…
"NOT EVEN AN EXORCISM WOULD CURE YOU FROM YOUR SICK HEAD. YOU'RE A DISEASE!"
"Do it!"
"Let's see if the witch'll float, third time's the charm!"
Drunk off her own fury, Rachel climbed to her shaky feet and spat at the broken girl beneath her, her entire body quaking. Jane attempted to blink the blood from her eyes but the redness seeped into her vision, blurring the faces of her demons glowering from above. Her chest was concaving, her nose was more than broken, and her feeble attempts to move her numb limbs made the audience laugh harder.
But suddenly she was moving, the sounds of gravel crackling beneath her confused her already mushed brain and Jane assumed the worst was over. Was this what it meant to die? Was she drifting away from her body?
Rachel hauled Jane from the floor like the master of a puppet whose strings had snapped. The wind played with Jane's hair and the flyaways stuck to the blood like flies on glued paper. The hiss of the ocean was louder here, wherever here was.
As though her body was preparing for its last moments, Jane's vision corrected itself to give her one last look at the pathetic, unimportant life she lived. Rachel was inches from her face, as though memorising the mangled features of the girl she loathed with all her heart. Feeling jumped back into her legs but her stomach hurtled down to get feet — she couldn't feel the floor.
"Beg," Rachel whispered, panting as though she had run a marathon, and she stretched her arm out further over the edge of the cliff, "beg for your life."
The English language was meaningless, she couldn't find the words.
"Rachel," Jane rasped, using the last of her energy to grasp the hand holding her over the edge of what felt like the end of the world. She couldn't see the ocean anymore, but she could hear it. An unseen threat swooshing and clashing against each other, each wave more powerful than the last.
"I said — beg…"
"Do it," Jane spat, mantled by the suffering her body had been put through, "they'll know who did this… Danielle will know—,"
"Greene doesn't give a shit about you, she gets paid to like you," Rachel spat, her voice low so only Jane could hear, "no one will give a damn what happened to you… you're always up here with your silly little skateboard… now beg for your life, witch…"
The howls of the storm meshed perfectly with the jeers of the onlookers, both of them manic from the anticipation of what was about to happen.
"Witch," Jane repeated, barely audible over the sounds of her shallow breath. The word sounded foreign coming from Rachel and her friend's mouths, but it resonated when it came out of her own. "Freak… Demon… Devil…" The chorus of words that had been used as weapons against her for her entire life spewed from her lips as though they held power she knew not. An unfamiliar force was growing deep within her chest and it dug its roots into her soul, as though prying out a long forgotten fragment of her that lay hidden for years.
Witch, freak, demon, devil. Witch… WITCH… I'LL SHOW HER WHAT A WITCH REALLY LOOKS LIKE!
For a moment Rachel froze, a spasm of fear flashing fleetingly over her pink face, but it was soon replaced with pleasure when the arm holding Jane out began to shake.
"Aw well," Rachel tutted as though sorely disappointed in her victim's lack of fight, "it was nice knowing you—,"
"Not so fast, Madden," Jane fought for the scraps of what was left of her courage and used them for all they were worth. She forgot about the sea raging beneath her and the two hundred feet drop. Rachel hesitated, and her friends finally fell silent.
"Oh?"
"Oh," Jane snarled, cracking the drying smears of blood with a cruel smile, and she shakily raised her arm as though condemning the quartet to a life full of misery and regret. "You want me to be a witch? I'll show you a witch —ARGH!"
Power blasted from Jane's chest, pure, cosmic power. Dark power . The Jurassic coast trembled under the might of the tiny girl's outburst and the four bullies shrieked as tendrils of magic lashed through the air towards them. The instant camera shot out of Beverly's hands, shooting up into the sky like a small firework flashing sporadically as it captured the last moments of Jane's life.
"WHAT IS SHE DOING?!"
"RACHEL, DO SOMETHING!"
All of a sudden, Jane flew. Rachel released her grip and pushed against her chest, forcing her over the cliff, over to her death. Limbs flailing and heart hammering, Jane tried desperately to grab onto anything to save her. Her mind was still reeling from the magic outburst as gravity pulled her towards the treacherous black water below.
This was it, this was the last time she would fall into the sea and she knew she would never return to the surface. Jane always suspected her life would end like this and she finally looked Death in the face and smiled, nothing but peace in her mind. There were better ways to meet her end, she supposed, drowning was firmly at the top of her list of worst ways to die…
MY LOVE… OH HOW I'VE MISSED YOU…
The moment her body broke the sea's surface was when nature fought back. The water began to foam angrily, spitting and growing as though Jane was made from peppermint sweets and the sea was fizzing soda. As the strong current pulled her body down, bubbles hissed and shot upwards, loud and furious and finally alive.
Their hollers came first. The four girls cowering atop the cliff stared at the bubbles in fright and latched onto each other, tears and snot pouring down their faces from paralysing fear as they continued to panic.
The waves transformed and two gigantic black hands shot towards them, white sea foam hissing against the cliffs like red hot pokers in snow. Water slapped the cliff's head and the ocean's hungry fingers found their victims. The hands engulfed the girls, two in each palm, and pulled them roughly away from the cliff, washing them out into the air before dragging them into the dark depths of the ocean. Their shouts died out as sounds of thunderous waves replaced them.
The water disappeared as quickly as it appeared, trickling back down to its home below the cliff and taking the skateboard and racing bikes with it. Poor Man's Point fell silent for the first time that evening with only the rustling of the trees that circled the attraction filling the sad sea air. Echoes of the girls' screams rode the wind out to sea, drowning their cries for help like the girl they had sentenced to death.
PLONK!
Jane's camera crashed onto the grassy surroundings, the plastic casing popping open as its corners collided with the floor. It lay there still for a moment as though it were waiting for a signal. Then suddenly, it whirled to life for the final time.
From its lips came its last picture — four girls screaming in the grasps of two enormous ocean hands.