Chapter Text
The morning The Stranger came to town was the morning the light fell not-quite-right on the gleaming pearl of New Wirral island. Lonely in the ocean, awash in air of a milky blue tint that was held as still and bracing as breath between teeth, it swelled imperceptibly–anticipatory, but of what?–the ground rising and stirring and groaning softly with the ache of forgotten motions. Within it, something pressed under the skin. Its pressure cracked the ground. Softened like sores left untreated and rotting, the earth bucked and crumbled away in soft black chunks with grass tearing like tangled hair and from under it cold masses budded and rose–
–and just as suddenly, an unseen palm opened and pressed the ground back into shape. Its fingers curled and, finding what it was looking for, gently cradled the figure lying alone on the shore.
“It’s time to go,” it seemed to whisper. “It’s time for us to begin.”
The Stranger awoke.
Immediately, they clutched their stomach and retched a gutful of saltwater onto the sand, clouded with mucus and blood and tasting like a sour wound. They gasped for breath. Salt heaved in their lungs and stung where it rubbed against the cracks in their lips; when they were finally empty they massaged their sore throat, wincing at the long, scratched-up streaks they could feel running down to the pit of their stomach. How much water had they swallowed? Or, better question, when had they even swallowed it?
Why couldn’t they remember?
Why, when they wiped their mouth with the back of their sleeve, was the fabric completely dry despite the waves that had torn their stomach and still now lapped at the back of their heels?
They shook their head in an attempt to clear it. There had to be something inside to uncover, something that would tell them where they were, how they’d landed alone in the sand surrounded by dried beachwood and limpid seaweed strips and pieces of shells as fractured as their own memory. But there was nothing. They were alone, even inside their own mind. The only company they kept was the whistle of wind that curved under their ear and along the line of their jaw towards their chin, lifting it up with the gentle touch of a friend saying, “Look. Come see the world that you now live in.”
The world….
It was dawn and everything was soft. The sandbanks rolling into hills of sweet grass and flowers were sparkling pink with white particles like flecks of glass or snow, above which trees fluttered teal-shaded leaves and bushels of pine that crisped the air with their sharp smell. Undergrowth leapt between their roots. Fresh, spring green, they were filled with babyish curls of new growth and the small heads of newborn anemones already taking on their distinctive star-like shape, mingling with dog rose and daisies in a bed of leaves that intertwined like hands and fingers searching for the comfort of a warm grasp.
Sometimes there’d be a twitch of a petal or the clatter of a pebble tumbling down the side of the dunes. Birds twittered, but there wasn’t once a flash of wings. Insects buzzed in their ears, and yet not a fly came to land on the stinking pool of blood and vomit beneath them. Here they were seeing the world, but somehow they seemed to exist just outside of it, like a hasty scribble etched into the wrong layer.
Really, the only proof they had that this wasn’t some elaborate farce or hallucination was…
…well, there was none.
All they could do was trust their senses as they flooded, renewed, into their body. Lifting their head, they sniffed the air for anything other than brine or blood or plant decay, but the thickness of the odour swamped everything. Even if there was civilization close by they wouldn’t be able to catch scent nor sound of it until they got away from the roar of the sea and its bubbling, crashing, hissing waves. Squinting past the salt that fuzzed up their vision, they glanced around. To their right, the line of beach ended in a wall of craggy cliff rising high enough above the sea to vanish into the thick soup of early-morning fog. Not ideal. To their left, though, it seemed to go out much farther, and in the not-so-distant distance three shapes of a strikingly bold orange stood out against the dimmer, more natural colours of their surroundings. Could they be man-made? A sign that there were people close by, that they weren’t totally alone in the wilderness?
It was worth a try.
The Stranger staggered to their feet and began to drag themselves across the sand. Their body ached as if it’d been pummelled by the waves for hours, a strangely uniform pain that pulsed through their muscles just beneath the unbroken skin. Every now and again they felt something fidget inside them. The twitch of an organ, maybe, the righting of a rib knocked askew. They tried to slow and give their insides a chance to reassemble themselves, but found themself quickening anyway when the objects ahead came into sharp enough focus for them to make out their distinctive, pyramid-like shape.
Traffic cones. Unexciting on their own, but a sign of life.
Just not the kind of life they were expecting.
The Stranger came to an abrupt spot as the traffic cone closest began to quiver. Its base lifted up like a flap on a jack-in-the-box and from within it two large, almond-shaped claws emerged, guided by a sickly green flame of an eye lit up with a supernatural intensity. The creature stared at them, motionless. They stared back. Was it intelligence they saw in that glimmering, bulb-like eye? Or was it aggression clacking along those sharp, ridged claws? They couldn’t quite tell, but either way they didn’t like it when the creature began to creep towards them.
“Greetings,” they said. “Get out of my way.”
As if in answer, the creature’s eye flooded a nasty-looking red.
“Fine. If that is what you wish.”
The Stranger felt no fear. They felt only a taunt coiling within themself, a building of pressure forming knife-like tips where their teeth and fists clenched. They could kill it. They knew they could, felt the instinct bite hotly into their palms and along the length of their fingers as they–
“Hey, stranger!”
The call of a human voice startled The Stranger out of their trance. Their head jerked up towards the top of the sand dunes where a woman stood at the peak of the rocky crest, her hair flashing a brilliantly autumnal colour so similar to the traffic cones and yet so much more pleasant set against the cool ocean blue of her eyes as they washed over them. With ease she leapt down and swept across the sand, in one fluid movement pulling back her leg and swinging it hard, crashing into the crab-like creature. The force of her sent it flying in a beautiful arc into the sea, a trail of froth following it down into the depths. Satisfied, she turned around to face The Stranger.
“Would you say your aesthetic is more spooky or sweet?”
“I, ah…what?”
She laughed. Then, giving them a once-over, she said, “Let’s say sweet, shall we?” and slung her backpack down around her shoulders into the crook of her arm, rummaging through it with a pinched look of concentration. “It’s got to be in here somewhere…a-ha!”
The Stranger could only stand in stunned speechlessness as the girl tore a headset from her bag and slotted it over their head with such practised ease they could’ve believed she did this every day. Without speaking she jammed it with a cord connected to a small plastic-looking box she shoved into their hands with a certain ceremonious bravado. She took a step back to admire her work.
“Alright! It fits you perfectly,” she declared. “I hope you like your new form! You kind of have to. We’ve got company.”
From over her shoulder, The Stranger saw that two more creatures had emerged from a dark cavern of earth formed by roots tangling over a cliff of grass and sand. They must’ve intruded upon a nest. But, then, if they were only defending their brood they might be able to calm them if they kept their distance. They took a step back.
The girl stepped closer.
“Just watch and learn.”
From around her neck she drew her own headset, wielding it upon her brow as one would wield a dagger in the hand. She took a breath…
And began to sing.
“When you’re feeling low, oh…” Her voice swelled within her chest, and when it slipped past her parted lips it did so quietly enough that The Stranger could only just hear her. Each word lingered in the air as if it possessed its own gravity. They carried such harmony, carried her, her feet lifting until they no longer touched the ground, that they cloaked her body in a transformation that blossomed in scattered light and static. “You can take my hand, I’ll show you to the gold”
Wings burst from her spine.
“plated”
Her hair twinned together, white horns to crown her head.
“finish line!”
The girl, or whatever she’d become, burst from her lighted cocoon. Her arms had vanished into broad, cream-white wings that beat with a terrific power and propelled her through the air with acrobatic grace. As she spun above the creatures, dodging their claws that snapped and pinched at the delicate tips of her wings, The Stranger saw that they were each carved with a drum-like pattern and beat in time with her every movement, emitting a harsh blare matched only by the one that sliced past her mouth into her long, lashing tail. They nearly didn’t recognize the tune, the same one that she was singing before. Shredded by her fangs as it lunged past her mouth, her music was volatile enough to make the creatures recoil and shrink into their shells in pain.
“Come on!” she gasped as she swung down towards The Stranger. Landing beside them she prodded their hands where they still held the little box. “All you have to do is press play. It’s easy!”
Looking closer, they realized that the thing was teethed with multiple different buttons that ran along its top. Right below their thumb was the tell-tale triangle. They looked at it, looked at the girl, then looked back to it again.
“...I am not sure I want to.”
She let out a high-pitched whistle of what The Stranger took to be disbelief. “Would you rather be torn apart by crabs?”
“Well, no. I suppose not.” They heaved a sigh. Remembering their feeling from before: sharp, ready, hungry to fight, to win, they held fast to it and squared their thumb against the button they swore trembled in anticipation.
They pressed play.
In an instant their entire body was swarmed by a hot, fuzzy sensation like heated sandpaper jarring along the surface of their skin as their body contorted into a shape that at once felt alien and much, much too small, their insides pressed to the point of rupture. Their ears twisted. Their intestines liquefied, sloshing in the fizz of their crystallized stomach. Their vision dwindled away to a pin-prick dot growing smaller and smaller and then vanishing completely, leaving them to stumble blindly and cry out in search of anything familiar, finding only wrongness.
Go back!” they moaned. “Make it go back!”
A wing came to touch their back, making them shudder. It was surprisingly soft, velvety, even, and soothing despite it all. “Hey, it’s ok. You’ll get used to it in a few moments,” the girl assured them. “It’s always hard the first time.”
“Hard” felt like an understatement.
But little by little she was proven right. Their insides shrank to fit their new container, and when they drew their hands–now weirdly stubby-fingered–away from their face, they realized that although they could no longer see, their sight had been replaced with an entirely new sense. It was as if they could feel everything. They knew exactly where the air parted around the creatures as they scuttled towards them; if they wanted to they could lunge and tear their sharpened teeth into their flesh, feel it splinter against their tongue…
But not yet. They were still getting used to their shape, patience and restraint were key. Testing the waters, they honed in on the location of the second creature and bolted towards it, following the instinct that unfurled in their gut to dodge the slash of their brought-down claws and spread power through their own opened paw, smashing it against the crab’s perfectly target-shaped eye. It reared back with a furious rapid-fire clicking. But before it could retaliate, The Strange sensed a shift in the air’s currents and leapt away just in time for a vicious slice of wind to crash into the creature in a fantastic up-kick of sand and shattered plastic. By the time the debris settled the creature had retreated back into the cave where it had come with its partner following it close behind.
Mercifully, this was enough for The Stranger’s new form to let them go. They went lax with relief as their old shape reformed, then laxer when they realized just how exhausted the transformation had left them. They could hardly keep themselves upright. For the first time they realized how pitifully thin their clothes really were, as the morning fog sunk in and dampened them and they were wracked by such a terribly violent shiver it nearly swept them off their feet.
Meanwhile the girl, seemingly used to the weather, stretched easily back into human shape and tossed a satisfied grin The Stranger’s way.
“That was brilliant! You’re a natural at this.” She stuck out her hand and seized theirs in a shake that was certainly meant to be friendly, but in that moment felt like enough to rip their arm clean off. “I’m Kayleigh, by the way. And you must be freezing! Come on, we’ll get you back to Harbourtown and into some warm clothes. It’s not far. And besides, the walking will warm you up.”
Without further explanation she turned and began to climb deftly over the steep sandbank, leaving The Stranger to scramble hurriedly behind before she vanished from sight over the crest.
Overhead, the sky was lightening with the rearing of the sun’s head over the horizon. It burnt away the last lingering strands of fog that wrapped around the skin-sticking cotton of The Stranger’s clothes and speckled everything in beads of warm yellow light that slipped through the leaves, down their cheeks, through their fingers, to dapple the pencil-thin path carved into the forest floor. Each time they touched the girl-Kayleigh’s-hair it ignited like a torch. Burning steadily, she was easy for The Stranger to follow even as their mind began to swim above it all, their feet scratching mindlessly over the undergrowth. They could have been walking for seconds They could have been walking for hours. Unaware of anything beyond the vaguest sense of their own body moving, they hardly noticed when the trees thinned out into a plateau cut by a short river easing out into the sea, or when the dirt beneath their feet turned to the rusted metal of old shipping containers, then to sheer cobblestone, then…
The Stranger stopped.
Blinked.
Came back down to earth.
“I…I do not understand.” They could barely force the words beyond their cut-raw throat. They trembled along their tongue and between their teeth and clattered to the ground like hard stone when they finally dropped from their mouth. “Where am I?”
Kayleigh said nothing. Her smile sweetened with a reluctant sadness and she beckoned for them to follow, and all The Stranger could do was walk with her into the town that had risen up from what had seemed like infinite wilderness.
Soft with sunshine, tiny houses cozied up in winding corridors that carried them from the forest into a flat and greenlees grey, only the occasional hedge or bucket of wilted lilac allowed to penetrate this play at civilization. Still, they were the only life The Stranger could see. In the abandoned early hours of day it was only the relics, the rust-chewed bicycles strewn by the lawn or the cup of coffee left to wear out its steam on a cold park bench, that gave them any sign at all they weren’t the only ones left, that there was life here filling up all these strange and empty spaces.
And oh, how strange they were.
With each step The Stranger became more and more aware of the ways the houses changed all around them. Laundry lines strung them together. It was a string of time that seemed wholly absent. On one plot there was a house of stone with a thickly-thatched straw roof, on the next a house glittered with scales so richly blue they could’ve been pried off the very surface of the ocean Another held a dome of bright terracotta. The next, chunks of brick each six feet wide and a slightly different shade of green. Each new house skipped and jarred along without any rhyme or reason to the differences between them, no one seeming older or newer than the other, no sliding scale or gradient of design. Instead it seemed that they had simply cropped up like different breeds of flower, their locking roots making a town where there otherwise would have been nothing, but dirt.
And all the while, Kayleigh remained silent. She kept on walking without once looking back. It wasn’t until the town opened up in the grand central square that she slowed, coming to a halt before a massive building gutted out from the underbelly of a stranded ship. She lingered by the door, her eyes guilty, her smile frighteningly wry.
“This is Harbourtown,” she said with the voice of someone with so much to say and so little desire to say it. “It’s in New Wirral. This whole island, I mean, it’s called New Wirral. It’s not like any kind of island you might’ve known before. It’s…” She bit her bottom lip–hard enough, The Stranger thought, to draw blood–and as if she’d sunk her teeth into their own artery, their head began to churn with a horribly sickening feeling. “...special.”
Every other word fell clean away. They heard nothing, felt nothing beyond the sensation leeching up through the ground, their legs, their lungs, a stirring, an awakening.
Something was moving underground.
All at once it turned over and shook the earth and The Stranger staggered for balance in the storm of world-breaking and the horrific howl that filled their ears and head, no, was coming from their ears and head, a sound that could not be heard, but felt in the core of themself rising up and up from the depths from the darkness consuming everything leaving nothing in its wake but
a long
and lonely
emptiness.
The Stranger awoke.
Again.
At least this time they didn’t retch. They stared blankly up at a grey-green ceiling that was the colour of choppy waters, but flat and unchurned and wholly, thankfully, still. Instead of sand they lay on a mattress. Where there was once water there was only a warm, thick blanket. Blinking slowly to clear the last bit of grit from their eyes, they glanced around the room covered in bloated midday sunlight and pushed themselves upright, wincing at the unpleasant twinge of pain in their lower back.
“Careful, now. We don’t want you fainting again.”
They startled at the sound of a new voice. A woman was standing by their side, cloaked in a telling white smock with a stethoscope rung around her neck and a clipboard in hand, tilted slightly towards them as if to catch their symptoms like a trawler dredging up fish. The Stranger could tell she’d been there for a while; the undersides of her eyes were smeared with blackish-blue exhaustion and strands of unkempt hair were slipping down her face where they fell from her drooping bun, half-done-up and spiked with frizzing ends. Still, her gaze was sharp. Her lips, the bottom one stuck out in thought, were held together in a line as straight as her back to make a figure that would have looked strong, imposing, even, if not for the way she placed her hand on their shoulder, easing them gently back onto the bed.
As they lay down they caught a glimpse of Kayleigh from behind the woman’s back. She was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, across from a bed it didn’t match quite right and beside a dresser made from a completely different wood. She must’ve brought it from somewhere else. And given the deep worry creases that pinched her features and the white flush of her knit-together knuckles–all of which vanished when they met her eyes and she gave a weak smile–she must’ve been sitting there for quite some time.
“Hey,you,” her voice quivered when she spoke. “I’m glad you’re awake. You had us going for a while there.”
“I took the liberty of performing a physical examination while you were unconscious,” the Doctor interjected, running her finger down her clipboard. “I found no visible wounds or abnormalities. Unfortunately, there’s only so much I can do with the tools available to me, so I must rely on you to self-report any additional symptoms you encounter. Nothing is too small to not be worth mentioning. Understood?”
The Stranger swallowed painfully. Their throat felt swollen and raw, it was a struggle to push out so much as the few words: “Who are you?”
“My name is Dr. Pensby. It’s my job to look after the health of the island’s residents.” She gave them a brisk nod before turning her head over her shoulder. “Kayleigh, I trust you’ve made arrangements for our new resident.”
“They can stay here as long as they’d like. Clémence says she doesn’t mind, not as long as they pay her some business every now and again.” She grinned a bit at this. “I think she’ll like the company.”
“Good.” The Doctor licked her thumb and flicked through a few pages’ worth of notes. “I recommend at least a day’s bedrest. Your fainting spell isn’t an uncommon reaction, but I’d rather it not happen again if we can help it.
“Reaction?” they echoed. “Reaction to what?” The uncertainty that had been building like a heavy sediment in their stomach bulged sickeningly up the back of their throat. Their eyes darted from Dr. Pensby to Kayleigh, who guiltily averted her gaze. “What are you telling me?”
Kayleigh bit her lip. Again. The Stranger could see her jaw grind as she worked it.
Dr. Pensby fixed her with a pointed stare. “Did you not explain it to them?”
“I tried to!” she exclaimed. “They fainted before I could get to that part.”
“What part?”
“Uh…all of it.”
“Kayleigh!”
“I know, I know. They need to hear it. I just really hate this part.”
She rose from her seat and came to sit on the bed beside them. Her body was stiff, seized by the desire to keep her mouth shut and her teeth fixed firmly to her lip. The Stranger watched her sink into resignation, bending her spine, her shoulders hunched, each slow breath taking a little more of the tension from her body until she could finally face them with pure and open honesty.
“Do you remember what I said before? About us being on an island? Well–geez, I’m never good at explaining this–it’s…there’s no way to leave. The people here have been searching for centuries and they’ve still come up with nothing. They’re stuck here. We all are. I’m sorry.”
…
The Stranger took it in.
‘Stuck’
Trapped. Penned in like animals.
Siphoned off from their world to rot in this stale-water gutter.
Shouldn’t that make them hopeless?
Shouldn’t that make them angry?
Lying there in bed and in terrible truths, they waited for the wellspring of emotion that would have burst for anyone else, for doubt to come in, for grief to wrack them with fits, for anything, anything at all, to crack the leaden ooze that filled their chest and killed whatever nerve endings were meant to make them leap up and scream or wail or even just float there in the swimming sunlight and ache so fiercely it made their bones tremble in their skin. It would have happened to anyone else.
But they were not anyone else.
“Okay.”
That was all they had to say.
“Oh…” Kayleigh frowned. She and Dr. Pensby exchanged an unsubtle glance, the meaning of which The Stranger couldn’t quite pierce, but knew instinctively they did not like. “I mean, oh!” Her teeth crashed together in a forced grin of relief. “Okay, then. I mean, it’s a lot to take in, so don’t feel like you have to be fine with everything right away. It’s a process. Like learning how to ride a bike, if that bike was an island filled with monsters that want to kill you.”
“Kayleigh,” Dr. Pensby reigned her in with a hand on her shoulder before turning to The Stranger. “We’ve all been in your position before. This isn’t something that’s easy to accept, hell, there are some of us here who still haven’t accepted it.” She shook her head as if to dislodge that final comment; she’d begun to grimace the moment it left her mouth. “...We’ll leave you to get some rest.”
The “we” seemed to surprise Kayleigh, but she followed the Doctor regardless. With her hand on the door and one foot outside she shot one last smile–a real, genuine smile–The Stranger’s way, finally looking once more like the bright beacon of a woman they’d met out on that long, lonely beach, the one who’d pulled them all the way to shore. “Come meet me at the Gramophone Cafe when you’re up to it, alright? The coffee’s on me. Well, the first one, anyway.”
And with that, they were alone.
Back to staring at the grey-green ceiling.
The Stranger closed their eyes, losing themself for a moment in the creature comfort of a blanket and the monotonous wrrr of the ceiling fan above. So they were trapped on this island. So there was no exit in sight. So they might think they’d gone mad, ironically enough because they hadn’t gone mad. It didn’t matter. No, it didn’t bother them at all.
One thing did, though.
It was strange they’d never mentioned it: the movement still roiling deep within the bowels of the Earth.
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