Strange Shores

1

He no longer feels cold: instead, a curious heat is spreading through his veins. He had thought there was no warmth left in his body but now it is flooding into his limbs, bringing a sudden flush to his face.

He is lying flat on his back in the dark, his thoughts wandering and confused, only dimly aware of the borderline between sleep and waking. It is terribly hard to concentrate, to grasp what is happening to him. His consciousness ebbs and flows. He doesn’t feel unwell, just pleasantly drowsy, visited by a procession of dreams, visions, sounds and places, all familiar, yet somehow strange. His mind plays odd tricks on him, shuttling back and forth between past and present, through time and space, and there is little he can do to control its shifts. One minute he is sitting at his mother’s hospital bedside as she slips away; the next, he is plunged into the black depths of winter and senses that he is still lying on the floor of the derelict farmhouse that was once his home. But this must be an illusion.

‘Why are you lying here?’

Raising his head, he perceives a figure standing in the doorway.

A traveller must have found his way into the house. He doesn’t understand the question.

‘Why are you lying here?’ the traveller asks again.

‘Who are you?’ he answers.

He can’t see the man’s face, didn’t hear him enter. All he can make out is his silhouette. The man keeps repeating the same needling question over and over again.

‘Why are you lying here?’

‘I live here. Who are you?’

‘I’m going to stay with you tonight, if I may.’

Then the man is sitting beside him on the floor and appears to have lit a fire. Sensing the warmth on his face, he reaches towards the blaze. Only once before has he experienced such intense cold.

‘Who are you?’ he asks for the third time.

‘I came to listen to you.’

‘To listen to me? Who’s that with you?’

They are not alone; there is an invisible presence beside the man.

‘Who’s that with you?’ he asks again.

‘No one,’ says the traveller. ‘I’m alone. Was this your home?’

‘Are you Jakob?’

‘No, I’m not Jakob. Extraordinary that the walls should still be standing. The house must have been well built.’

‘Who are you? Are you Bóas?’

‘I was just passing.’

‘Have you been here before?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Many years ago, when there were people still living here. Do you know what became of them — the family who used to live here?’

Now he is immobile in the dark, unable to move for the cold. He is alone again: the fire and the derelict farmhouse have vanished. He is shrouded in freezing darkness, and the warmth is leaching from his face, hands and feet.

Again he hears a scraping noise.

It is approaching from some remote, cold distance, growing ever louder, accompanied by piercing wails of anguish.