I know why you’re here. Skip your pleasantries, don’t bother with your name. I don’t care. Sit down, and don’t interrupt.
It was thirty years ago, summer of 1984. James was a friend of mine; he was a friend of everyone. There wasn’t anyone in Port Selena who didn’t like him. Such a charming bloke, the cornerstone of the community, you couldn’t help but smile whenever he walked into the room. So, you can imagine how much of an impact it made when he went missing.
One day, he didn’t show up to work and hadn’t notified the boss. My coworkers brushed it off, but I was on edge. James wasn’t the kind of guy to blow off work on a whim. I spent the day worried that he might have hurt himself or had a family emergency.
On the walk home I asked his neighbours if they had seen him; they hadn’t. I rushed home and called his mum, she hadn’t heard from him all day. I immediately turned back and sprinted out the door, leaving the phone dangling by the cord. I arrived at his house and pounded on his door, calling his name. The silence following my desperate shouts was all too loud. By that point, I had already discarded my rationality and decided to break down the door.
The moment I stepped into his house, I felt a change in the air. All the lights were off, the curtains drawn. I treaded carefully, a voice in my mind telling me that something was wrong in this house. I climbed the creaky stairs and reached the second-floor hallway, spying the door to his bedroom slightly ajar. I crept up to the old wooden door, turned the knob and peeked inside to see… nothing.
It was strange, I’m not sure what I was expecting to see. I knew I didn’t want to see my dear friend’s corpse, but at least that would have given me closure. Instead, I saw his room completely pristine. No signs of struggle, not even an imprint on the bed; like he had never lived there.
I don’t think my words could describe the depths of the uniquely horrid feeling of discomfort I felt in that moment.
The news spread quickly. Port Selena was very tight knit, and someone vanishing overnight sent shockwaves through the town. A town wide search effort was started. The last anyone had seen of James was him walking along the beach at sunset. I lost count of how many hours we all spent combing the shoreline. We looked for anything that could give us the slightest hint as to what’d happened, but we found nothing.
After a long while, everyone gave up. They decided that James had been swept out to sea by a rogue wave and simply moved on with heavy hearts.
But not me. I knew he wouldn’t be taking a stroll if the conditions were drastic enough for rogue waves. Not my James.
I never stopped looking. Every day, as soon as I got off work, I would spend hours pacing up and down that beach. I held onto hope that someday, somehow, I would find the truth somewhere between those grains of sand… And I got my wish.
One day, during twilight, as the sea was swallowing the sun, I heard something. A voice, singing an old song, drifting across the beach from an old pier.
I followed the voice and crawled under the pier, the smell of rotting wood and brine churning my stomach. It was coming from behind a pile of small rocks – an alcove. Or that’s what I thought. I moved the moist rocks aside to reveal the sound wasn’t coming from an alcove, but a cave that stretched deep into the earth.
Before caution could cross my mind, I heard him. It was James, he was the one singing. Despite the distance and echo, I could tell it was him.
I scrambled through the entrance and sprinted into the depths. I cried out his name over and over, our voices melding together to create a cacophony in the echoing passage. I kept running and running as James’s voice became louder.
I sprinted around a warped corner but tripped over myself from the rapid turn and stumbled through the entrance to a cavern. No, it wasn’t natural, it was an atrium crafted by human hands. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Such a marvel of ancient stonework had been under our little port this whole time and no one ever knew.
I walked on the water covered stone path towards a large temple at the back of the atrium. Lining the path were several stone pillars etched with symbols unlike anything in recorded history – a language long forgotten. I arrived at the partially eroded steps and began ascending them, getting closer to the temple.
Strewn across the steps were all manner of ancient items. Tattered robes, rusted lockets, illegible scraps of parchment, and a golden lyre that somehow hadn’t lost its lustre. If the items were abandoned or offerings, I did not know.
I paid no heed to the artifacts, though; I was focused solely on my dear friend’s voice.
I reached the top of the staircase. And, lying on a stone altar just outside the temple’s entrance, was the truth I had been looking for.
I saw James. I saw him sing. I saw that he was no longer human.
…
What? You want to know what he actually looked like, what was inside the temple? Well, I won’t say. I won’t let myself sink any further into the abyss.
But you, I can’t control you. You know what pier I’m talking about; you know where on the beach you can find it. You can retrace my steps and cross the line I was too afraid to cross. I just ask that you know exactly what it is you want to gain from dredging up something that should stay buried.
It’s getting to be about twilight now.
