Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [266]
The channel and the bay it fed into both were virtually waterless. The River Kent was a mere leapable creek at that point. The water of the bay was nonexistent. She had sufficient time to make the crossing, she reckoned, as long as she took care. She knew how to do that. She had a walking stick to help her and even if she hit a patch of the quicksand for which the bay and its surrounds were notorious, she knew what to do should she become caught in it.
What she hadn’t counted on was the fog. While she’d seen it far to the northwest of Arnside, and while she knew the likelihood of its advancing towards shore, what she hadn’t understood was how quickly it was going to roll in. And roll it did, like a diaphanous barrel of immense proportions that silently rumbled forward, inexorably, swallowing everything in its path. When it reached her, Alatea knew in an instant that this was more a pestilential miasma than was it mere fog because she understood that this substance brought with it a deadly danger. What began as a vapour— nothing more than a hoary veil that was cold and damp but still not impossible to navigate— within moments became a grey drapery so thick that it felt to Alatea as though her eyes were playing tricks upon her for the simple reason that she could not see and this seemed impossible because it was daylight, but other than the fact that the sun was out somewhere rendering visible the colours of her boots, her anorak, and the fog itself, she could see nothing at all. There was no depth to her vision. No width. No height. There was only fog.
She’d had no choice but to turn back for Arnside, which was closer than Grange-over-Sands. But in less than five minutes she’d stopped moving forward because she no longer knew if it was forward that she was moving.
There were sounds that should have helped her negotiate the route back to her home, but she couldn’t tell where they were coming from. The first she heard was the train crossing the railway viaduct, which spanned the Kent Channel from Arnside and ultimately carried passengers onward to Grange-over-Sands. But she couldn’t make out whether the train was going to or coming from Grange-over-Sands, and further, she couldn’t even tell in what direction the railway track lay. According to her reckoning, it should have been to her left if she was on the route back to Arnside, but it sounded as if it was coming from behind her, which would mean she was heading out to sea.
She turned to correct her course, then, and began to walk again. She hit a puddle, sank up to her calf, and quickly pulled back. Someone shouted in the distance somewhere. She couldn’t tell where the shout was coming from, but it sounded close, and this was good. She turned towards it and resumed her progress.
A tractor roared. At least it sounded like a tractor. But it was directly behind her— or so it seemed— so that would be the best route to shore. She turned towards it. She called out— “Hello? Hello? I’m here. Over here,” but she heard nothing in reply, only the tractor’s engine, and it seemed to groan and strain, as if the machine was pulling an inconceivably heavy load.
And then a horn honked. Yes, she thought, that way was the road. Only, the road seemed to be where the sea was supposed to be and if she went in that direction, she’d be lost, surely. She would wander among the little hillocks of sand, through the puddles, and ultimately she’d stumble into a scour, where the waters of the bay did exactly that: scoured out the sand to form a trough upon which sand resettled in a new form that was too much liquid to bear the weight of anything other than the smallest bird. And then she would sink.
She stopped again. She turned. She listened. She called out. In reply came the cry of a gull. A moment later the air seemed to part for an instant with the sound of a gunshot or the backfire