Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

The old man was gaining ground. I could not separate my own noises from his. The woods rustled with footfalls, cracking branches, panting tongues. I could not feel my body. It was just a moving husk. And then somebody stepped in front of me from nowhere, and I clattered hard into his chest, skittling him backwards. I fell onto him, rolling, my knees in his ribs. He grabbed for my boot, but I slipped away.

I was bruised and winded, scratched and muddied. I did not glance back. The trees started thinning. I could smell the sea. It loomed in my view. And I came to the edge of the ridge at some pace, just managing to halt, with dirt and shingle and pine cones spilling forwards and down.

It was not a sheer drop. The steep beginnings levelled out into a beach of rocks, washed by the Marmara. I had nowhere else to go. There was down or there was backwards. ‘ Dur! ’ Ardak was behind me. Ender, too. Their faces were glossed with so much sweat. Shirts torn and bloodied. The old man had no shoes on. He was holding one in each hand. ‘Where can you go?’ he said, gasping for air. ‘Why? Why run?’ He hacked up some mucus and spat. ‘Is OK. Is OK. You be still.’ And the two of them inched closer: dog-catchers in the park. Ardak clutched his ribs. ‘Where can you go?’ the old man said. Backwards would not help me. Only down.

I darted left.

‘ Ugh. Sen delisin. ’

They did not rush after me.

Evergreens lined the escarpment ahead: a twist of overhanging trunks that would help me get down. I kneeled, the roll of canvas bending, scuffing on the ground, and groped over the edge, grasping for a branch. The sea buffeted the rocks below. It hissed and it churned. I was not sure the branch would hold me. But Ardak and the old man were now strutting towards me. I let it take my weight, planting my feet on brittle stone and moss. I winched myself down, branch by root by branch, until there was nothing left to grip and I had to just release my hands and pray for a good foothold. Letting go, my boots pinched at the rock and then collapsed.

I skated down the escarpment, turning, twisting, and I felt a quick, hot pain in my shoulder. It was more like a very long scrape than a fall and it happened so fast. Settling at the bottom, shaken, beaten, wounded, I had an overwhelming sense that I had not survived, that my soul had left my body somewhere on the slope. Then came a rush of victory. The deepest relief. The searing, knifing realisation of the pain in my right shoulder. I wanted to pass out, but my heart would not let me. It was shuddering with adrenalin and shock. And somehow I knew that I needed to get up, because the old man and Ardak would be standing on the bluff, searching the rubble for my body. Soon they would be coming down the slope with the rowing boat on their shoulders. They would heave me into it. And what then? I would not let my injuries count for nothing. I forced myself back to my feet.

The canvas had snapped off me. I panicked, scanned the breaking waves, the rocks. I nearly buckled at the thought of losing it. My knees started to give. But then I saw it hanging by a string, a few yards up the shore. It had snagged in the jutting weeds upon the scree. One layer of plastic was shredded, the tape was scruffed at the edges — overall, a decent state. Better than mine.

I peered up: no Ender, no Ardak, no anything. Just the ghost-thin sunshine and trees against the sky. I could hear nothing but the wash of the sea behind me. Every movement of my head drove the pain in deeper. I had shattered my shoulder or dislocated it. My arm was limp and useless. I trudged in the direction I assumed was south, cleaving to the shoreline until the waves quietened, lapped, and I reached the chain-link fence and the warning posters: DIKKAT KÖPEK VAR. There was no other way across the bay. I had to swim for it.

The water took me, a step at a time. It was not as cold as I expected. The salt stung my wounds. I tried to swim with the canvas raised aloft in my good arm, but I did not have the power in my legs. The pain was so bracing, so endless. Coiling the string around my wrist, I let it trail behind me, not quite floating, not quite sinking. I knew I could not hold my head above the water for too long, so I kicked until the strength went out of me. Soon, I felt the current grasp me, flip me, seize me. It was not as sudden as I thought.

Then I blinked and I was face-down on the gravel in the dark. My mouth was parched, agape. There was so much brine inside my throat I had to sick it up. I gulped in air and it jolted me. The barbs of pain returned, but so much worse. I crawled forwards on one arm. The canvas roll was gone from my wrist: burning where the string had been. I could hardly see my own hand before me. The only light came from the moon, a row of houses in the distance, and a clutch of yellow spots across the sea. I was drenched and cold. It seemed that I had washed up in the bay. I was on a sort of beach — mostly rubble underneath me, broken shells and flotsam. It grazed my knees as I crawled through it. I was praying. For my canvas roll to rear up in the dark, to brush against me. But nothing did. I lay upon my side and hoped the pain would snuff me out.

Only the wind was gusting stronger; it bullied at my ears till I sat up. I heaved myself onto my feet again, getting my bearings. The black outline of a jetty to my right. High banks of trees on both sides. The shore a perfect crescent in between. And, behind me — I swivelled to look. Behind me a pale dirt road. Level ground. I staggered to reach it. There were chunks of concrete to step over, driftwood. What I thought was a bare pine tree in the blackness was, in fact, a telephone pole — I followed the bellying wires above my head.

The far side of the road was skirted by a wall. I ran my hand along it, scraping through the dark. I kept on going, like MacKinney told me to. The agony in my shoulder was enough to bear; I could not grieve now for the mural. In the morning, I would search for it. The sea could not take everything.

I hustled on. The road curved right — north-east? It was hard to orient myself. Then, born from the darkness, I saw a low white building and a vacant lot with chain-link fencing. Getting closer, I saw decimated palm trees. I saw another jetty, ladders and stairways leading into solemn water. I saw a hundred or more deckchairs and sun-loungers stacked up into columns, parasols folded and propped in a huddle. I saw a payphone with a hooded cubicle outside the fence, a tiny light glinting above it.

My shoulder stung as I limped over. I leaned myself against the payphone hood. The receiver was intact. The wire was attached. The line was operational. I dialled 100 and waited. Clouds shuffled across the moon.

‘ Hello. Operator. How can I assist you? ’

‘I need Victor Yail. It’s 46 Harley Street, London.’

‘ Do you have the number, madam? ’

‘You’ll have to look it up.’

‘ There’s no call to be rude. ’

‘I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Just connect me, please.’

‘ Huh! ’

Soon, the trilling noise. My arm was dead. I could not keep from shivering.

‘ Hello. Dr Fleishmann’s office. ’

‘Victor Yail, please. Hurry.’

‘ I’m afraid it’s Dr Fleishmann’s clinic this evening. Can I ask what it’s concerning? ’

A frantic bleating sound rose in my ear. I realised it was asking me for money. So I let the phone hang while I rummaged in my pocket for a coin. I found the boy’s jeton. It seemed to slot in perfectly, rattling in the guts of the machine. But it did not stop the bleating.

‘ Hello? Miss? ’