The creatures from across the ocean

For Clementine, her family home was a horrible place. The wind-beaten weatherboard cottage sat atop a hill near the seaside, the stretch between their property and the bay separated by thick forest.

Clementine recalled words from the sales pitch by the real estate agent — idyllic and picturesque came to mind — and remembered how incredible it sounded. But the reality was different.

The cottage was rickety and worn, screeching through the night as walls strained against sea gale blown up the hill. The house was always blanketed in fog. The bay water was permanently ice-cold, the sand harsh and the sea foam smelt foul. It was joined to the ocean by narrow inlets that coursed through wild scrub.

Despite many protests from Clementine, her parents insisted they go down to the bay every weekend. They pretended they adored it, feeling obliged to love the reason their semi-rundown house was so expensive. Clementine remembered catching her father sobbing one afternoon in his bedroom through the crack in the door. He choked out something about being conned. That was the moment Clementine decided adults really weren’t as clever, strong and wise as she once thought.

Even though it wasn’t an enjoyable destination in the slightest, the journey to and from the bay was far worse. The trio would take an out-of-the-way route through dense bush, stepping over jagged rock and wildlife that didn’t like to be bothered. It didn’t matter that Clementine wore jeans for the bay trek, she would always come home with cuts and scrapes all over her legs. On one occasion an angry lizard chased them all the way home.

There was a far easier path of course, which is often the case in life. The reasons for not taking the easy option are often stupid, but Clementine believed their reason to be a necessary precaution.

The forest that separated the cottage began at the back fence and extended towards the coast. A path winded through mangroves past open water, and further around to where the bay first spiked and curved into a crescent. The thought of walking through the mangroves wasn’t the particularly scary part, it was what lay beyond the trees.

For Clementine, the ocean was terrifying.

Her parents made sure that she feared the expanse of choppy waves and endless horizons.

She was unable to leave the house without a final warning call to make sure she never entertained the thought of going past the back fence and into the forest. The idea that she might even make it all the way to the beach was never mentioned, because her parents knew they were successful in the fear they instilled in her. The forest, let alone the ocean, was terrifying enough.

Clementine didn’t fully understand the reason for her fear. She was lectured by her parents who in turn were lectured by her family’s television set. Her parents of course believed it to be completely warranted.

From what she could piece together, something horrible came from beyond the horizon with the intention of making it to land. She wasn’t sure of what these creatures were, what they wanted, or what would happen if they actually breached the borders. She just knew that they were a threat.

Night-times were spent sculpting images of the creatures in her head.

Clementine recalled sneaking downstairs one evening to steal glances of a horror movie that her parents were watching. She peered through the posts on their staircase, hoping to catch a glimpse of what might be the creatures from across the ocean. The monsters in the film kind of looked like people, but they appeared to be made of mud. They had hollows for eyes, their bodies oozed and some were missing limbs. When they opened their mouths they resembled toothless old men with chewing gum stuck between their gums. The mud-men emerged from a lake at midnight. The tops of their heads poked out from the surface first, followed by their eyes, their mouths, their torso and their legs. She wondered whether the film might be based on real events.

Clementine would often finish her guesswork by looking out her bedroom window towards the ocean, imagining what her creatures’ emergence might look like. She scrutinised vast sea, picturing the heads, eyes and mouths of hundreds of mud-men rising from the water, trudging towards land. The next night it might have been an enormous tentacled creature writhing and thrashing in the water. Or maybe it was a herd of giant, angry rhinoceroses made from storm clouds, charging across the ocean towards her home.

She tried not to ask her parents too many questions about the creatures, careful not to risk making them upset about their choice to live there.

One day while watching the news, her father bellowed in triumph at one of the stories. Clementine could tell that it was about the creatures, and that some had been captured. Her curiosity got the better of her and she asked a question. She quizzed her father on what happened to them once they’ve been caught, wondering whether it was like the alien shows she’d seen on TV where they’re dissected and experimented on. Her father explained that they’re locked up in a place far away, emphasising that it was necessary and the right thing to do. Her mother took this as another opportunity to warn Clementine about the forest, the ocean and the very real possibility that one day they might make it to shore.

For Clementine, her family home was a horrible place. But despite this, it was her home. If the terrible creatures from across the ocean would ever arrive, she vowed to make sure they knew they weren’t welcome.

On Saturday mornings Clementine would always wake up early to get ready for her family’s weekly trip to the bay.

This particular Saturday was wild outside; the cottage violently shook from the pressure of high winds and heavy rain. The view from her bedroom was menacing. Purple storm clouds swirled and darkened, lightning flickered across the horizon.

When Clementine looked out her window at night she imagined the terrifying creatures dotting the ocean, but when she looked in the morning it was more to make sure they hadn’t arrived. As she looked out towards the storm she began to think that she was correct with her rhinoceros theory.

Clementine wrapped a patterned scarf around her neck and walked downstairs. In the kitchen her parents were arguing about whether they should give the bay a miss for the week. Her mother pleaded that it was unsafe to go in this weather and they wouldn’t enjoy it anyway. Her father, stubborn and proud, kept repeating that they simply had to go.

When they both noticed Clementine standing there they stopped rebutting each other. Her father picked up his coat and walked out the front door, almost blown over by a gale. Clementine and her mother followed sluggishly. They both found it stupid that he won that argument; in fact they didn’t think that he really had an argument at all.

They pushed through resistant wind and punishing rain, slowly nearing their makeshift path to the bay.

Despite it being a weekly pilgrimage, Clementine and her parents soon found themselves lost. The volume and intensity of the rain had removed any semblance of a path they once travelled on. The wind warped the landscape making sure it was unrecognisable.

The trio huddled together as they were whipped by loose tree branches, none of them with any idea of what they should do.

The weather continued to become more violent.

They had moved towards a tree that seemed to be bracing itself well against the harsh conditions, deciding that it seemed the most likely place for shelter.

The tree was similar to the mangroves that grew beyond the back fence of the cottage, but had a natural bell-curve that seemed ideal for cover from adverse weather. The problem however was that it stood precariously on the edge of a steep slope. Clementine’s parents were conscious of this, both with one arm hugging the tree trunk and the other arm free to hold tightly onto Clementine. The ground was saturated beneath their feet. Her parents dug their heels into the mud to try and stabilise their position.

They stood in the same spot for a reasonably long period of time. Their plan seemed to be working and the tree seemed to be doing its job. Clementine felt safe and trusted her parents to see them through this ordeal. She allowed her body to relax and took solace in knowing they were going to be okay.

She thought she heard a few loud cracks in the distance that sounded different to the storm, and hoped that her home hadn’t toppled over. She pictured her house crumbling at the impact of a crash of rhinos.

Her father said something that Clementine didn’t quite hear, but she knew it was reassuring.

She tilted her head and smiled.

As she did this, the scarf wrapped around her neck loosened and began to slip down the back of her coat.

Without thinking, Clementine let go of her parent’s hands and swung around, catching the falling piece of woven fabric in a moment of triumph.

But because of her rapid movements the earth beneath her feet shifted.

Her heart felt lodged in her throat.

And she fell.

She slid down the slope, quickly gaining momentum, away from her refuge and away from her screaming parents.

The fall was surprisingly painless, as bushes were smoothed over by the rain and laced with soft mud. The trees seemed to be sparse along this particular slope and Clementine was lucky enough to avoid hitting any of them on the way down.

The slide from the top to the bottom seemed to be over within a few seconds.

Once slowed to a stop, Clementine was able to gather herself and survey her surroundings. She was dazed, cold and frightened, but after a few moments she realised where she was.

She had finally made it to the bay.

Sea foam frothed forward as water swelled back and forth, the beach of the bay almost non-existent due to an excess of water.

Clementine looked back up the slope from where she slid down, but couldn’t see her parents. There was no trace of her fall as rain continued to stream down the hill. A return journey was impossible.

She was running out of time, the water rapidly rising.

But she was terrified of the forest, the bay, and the creatures from across the ocean.

Clementine tried to forget about mud-men and rhinos. She tried to think of her parents and the warmth of the fireplace at home.

After a brave gulp and puff of her chest, she waded through waist-deep water past the wild bush that enclosed the bay, towards the path through the forest.

There was barely any rain breaching the tops of the mangroves, but the ground underneath Clementine’s feet was sodden. With each step her feet disappeared into black mud. Pulling them out again was a huge effort, the mud trying to suck them back down like a ravenous living thing.

She decided this was perfect mud-men territory and readied herself for a spontaneous attack. She thought it’d be smart to target the ones with missing limbs first.

The path was visible because of light filtering through the gaps of the mangrove trunks. Every time there was a flash of lightning the streaks of light would pulse, casting shadows of twisted branches through the hollow. When the lightning struck, Clementine’s vision of the path was extended.

As she progressed further she noticed that the trail eventually turned left, which she assumed would take her back up to the cottage. Near the turn there was a glow of crimson through the gap in the trees that gained intensity the closer she came to it.

As she neared the bend in the path Clementine could finally see past the trees, realising what was creating the glow.

On the water a shattered boat had burst into flames. Pieces of debris floated towards the shore, buffeted by the storm.

A second boat, much larger than the first, bobbed away from the wreckage. Silhouettes of people stood against the railing at the rear of the boat. They were carrying rifles.

It took Clementine a few minutes to process what had happened.

At first, she thought that some local fisherman had been caught in the storm and were being rescued. But she had never seen fisherman on this ocean.

Her parents made sure that Clementine knew this was a bad place.

The creatures had finally come. And thankfully, they had been captured.

Clementine turned to her left, readying herself to leave the scene behind and return to her parents. She thought of how worried they must be and wondered whether they had organised a search party. She half expected to start hearing helicopters flying overhead.

Her father was going to be ecstatic once he found out that the creatures were captured before they had a chance to get to her. She pondered whether they would have cooked her before they ate her. She pictured herself sitting in a large pot, up to her neck in a simmering broth.

Each step that Clementine took had added haste, as she came closer to exiting the forest and arriving home. Beyond the trees she could see grass, and beyond the grass she could see angry skies.

Halfway through the last part of the trail, she came completely to a halt. There was a rustle in the trees to her right and she could feel a pair of eyes boring into her skull.

She took two steps forward and the creature in the trees mirrored her. She had come so close to making it through the forest, but she knew that her luck had turned. Despite the second boat, something must have made it to shore.

Clementine had no doubt that this was a creature from across the ocean. But its movements were far too stealthy, far too precise for a mud-man, a storm rhino, or a tentacled monster.

She had let her guard down and now she was going to be eaten.

She slouched to her knees and began to sob.

In the corner of her eye Clementine could see the figure shifting closer to where she knelt in the mud.

She refused to turn and look, preferring to face her fate with her eyes looking forward.

Knowing that it was highly unlikely, she willed her parents to come sprinting down the trail to see to her rescue. She broke this thought off after realising that their arrival would also see them most likely facing the same fate.

This was a monster after all.

There was a faint touch on Clementine’s shoulder. She shuddered, and then shrank back from where the contact had come from.

The hand retracted.

Clementine shook uncontrollably, tears streaming from her eyes. What she didn’t expect to hear was the creature sobbing in reply.

Clementine slowly turned her head to the right. She decided she would look at the creature. Maybe it was mocking her; maybe it was genuine and needed help.

No matter the reason, Clementine knew that she had nothing left to lose.

She lifted her eyes and saw the creature for the first time.

She saw no scales.

No hollow eyes.

No tentacles.

And no horns.

What she saw was a boy, a little older than her, with tousled hair and a dirty face.

He was different to Clementine.

His skin was far darker than hers and his eyes were a piercing hazel. He wore strange clothes. Clementine thought he looked like he belonged in Aladdin.

He looked in shock.

Clementine tried to guess what his age might be but she was thrown off by his eyes. They made him look far older than what she imagined he actually was.

She tentatively extended her hand to the boy and asked him who he was and where he was from.

He took her hand and stood up, pulling Clementine up with him.

He embraced her in a way that she had never experienced. It wasn’t the hug you give someone when you say goodbye. It was a hug of desperation.

He replied to her question in a language she had never heard. Clementine knew that they wouldn’t be able to speak to each other, but understood that he was begging for help.

Clementine smiled at him and led him up the trail towards the cottage.

She recalled all the things she had heard her parents say about the creatures from across the ocean.

She remembered her fear at what they might do once they arrived.

Clementine couldn’t wait to tell her parents that they had been so wrong. She imagined the conversation in her head, and pictured her parents travelling to the place where they were all locked away to make their captors release them. She wondered if she might get a medal.

For Clementine, her family home was a horrible place. But she realised that for all its faults, there may be far more horrible places across the ocean.

She wondered if the boy she walked with was running away from mud-men, storm rhinos or tentacled monsters. But Clementine now knew there was no threat to her ocean, and she counted herself lucky.

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