Filed To Story: Wild Dark Shore Book PDF Free by Charlotte McConaghy
With no warning at all there is a man in the tiny bathroom with me. We stare at each other, shocked by the other’s presence. I have seen this man before, I think I have dreamed of him.
As he takes in the state of me his expression changes. There are no clothes but the undies. There are bandages, but these are half unraveled. One breast is covered, the other hangs out. He is not looking, he is turning to go. “Sorry.”
“Can you help me.” I am dismayed at the break in my voice.
Slowly he turns back. His large hands unroll the remaining bandages until I am revealed. It’s both worse and better to see what’s beneath. Strangely, the damage has been contained to my left side. Some of the wounds are deep chunks of flesh either gone or sewn back onto me with clumsy black stitches. Others are shallow grazes. There are dark, sickly bruises blooming in a few places. It is frightening to see so much damage.
I sink onto the closed toilet seat and rest my head in my hands.
“It’s just a body. They either hold on or they don’t.”
I look at him.
“Yours did,” he clarifies.
“It doesn’t feel like it has.”
“And yet here you are, though you should be dead.”
This man, whoever he is, is looking at me, at my body in pieces. He has seen me come apart, tried to put me back together again.
“Who are you?” I ask.
He looks surprised to be asked the question probably hovering on his own tongue. He is very tall and his chest and shoulders are wide, but he is quite lean, his strength sinewy. He looks nothing like his son, who is fair; this man has dark, short hair, a short beard, and dark eyes. There are deep lines around these eyes and wind marks on his cheeks. “Dominic,” he says, his voice rough as though he doesn’t much use it. “Dom. Who are you?”
“Rowan.” I watch for any sign the name rings a bell.
“Where’d you come from?”
Where did you come from. Meaning, what are you doing here.
I tell him I don’t know.
I eat a little, take more painkillers, and then sleep again, but this time it is different, it’s unburdened by fever or dreams, and when I wake I know the worst of the illness has passed. The wounds will take longer to heal but the pain of them feels less overwhelming. Mostly it is a deep muscle ache, a sense that my body has taken a battering and needs to move slowly for a while. I borrow some clothes from the wardrobe, pulling pants and a jumper carefully over the bandages that will need changing again soon. I need to find the kitchen-I’m famished.
Downstairs I take in the lighthouse with clearer eyes. The cozy lounge I slept in but did not really see sits in the main circular area of the building and has the dark-green velvet couch, bookshelves, a thick furry rug. There is a fireplace all boarded up in favor of an electric heater. Everything looks very old, as if nothing has been replaced in a long time. I step into the adjoining kitchen to be met by a wall of light. Above the sink is a long, wide window. It faces the sea, though this is really only a smudge of gray in the distance, down beneath the fall of the hill we sit atop. The sight of it sets my insides rolling and I think I will be sick.
I feel for the chair behind me and sink into it, breathing through the nausea.
“Sea legs.”
“Jesus Christ.” I spin around, clutching my chest in fright. There is a boy, another one. He’s sitting at the long timber dining table.
“Sorry,” he says.
He is tall like his dad, blond like his little brother. I’d pictured all three kids around Orly’s age, but this boy is a teenager, and so was Fen. He has a couple of textbooks open in front of him, and a giant bowl of cereal he’s working his way through.
“You lot are all the same,” I accuse. “Lurking around.”
He has a spoonful.
“You’re Raff then?”
A nod. “Takes a while for your body to forget being on the boat.”
“When did I get here?”
“Week ago.”
One week. I’ve lost days, somehow, lying in bed, mostly unconscious. Many things have likely happened during this week, but still there has been no mention of a boat, or of Yen, and I guess I know what that means. The pit in my stomach opens again.
“Can you point me to a bowl of that?” I ask, of his cereal.
Raff unfolds himself from the chair-he is much taller than I realized, his head automatically ducking for lights and doorways. He returns with a big jar of muesli and a carton of long-life milk, then passes me a bowl and spoon to make my own. I wolf it down, I can’t get it into me fast enough, it is the best thing I have ever eaten. The boy watches me. “Feeling better then.”
I finish the bowl and make myself another.
Raff points at the coffeepot on the stove, and I nod, and he makes me a strong dark coffee that sets half the world right. As I sip he doesn’t try to make conversation, just gets back to his textbooks. He is slow, meticulous. His finger moves beneath each line, lips silently mouthing the words as he goes. I notice him going over the same line half a dozen times before he moves on. I crane my neck to see what the subject is, and make out
Year 9 Standard English. He looks a lot older than year nine.
“You’re doing distance ed?” I ask him.
Raff nods. “Summer holidays now but I’m already behind.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“Eight years.”
I stare at him. “You’re kidding.”
He stares back. He is not kidding.
My eyes travel around the little room, the cluttered but very clean kitchen, and through the arched doorway to the old-fashioned lounge. It feels warm and lived in; there are home-drawn pictures stuck to walls
and art and craft supplies scattered in one corner, half-finished projects in another. A Lego sculpture takes up half the living room. The normal detritus of children. But there is little modern tech-I can’t see a television or a computer, no speakers for a sound system, no
phones. Maybe I haven’t looked closely enough, but from where I’m sitting now, the lighthouse could belong to another time. Another world entirely. I think of the fathomless sky above and the gaping black space around this little building, I think of the days it took me to get here, on an immense and lonely ocean. I think of eight years. Not unreasonable for an adult wanting solitude, wanting wildness. But for teenagers? I can’t wrap my head around what the isolation might do to them.