Harrison Dodds Daley

The Arrival

‘Greeting stranger, and welcome.’ The creatures, shaped like men in the vaguest sense, were far from human.

‘Hello,’ said The Stranger, ‘I was afraid there wouldn’t be anyone else here. And, um, where is here, exactly?’

The creature in the middle was the only one to speak for it was the only one with a mouth. ‘This is our home. Would you like to come ashore?’

‘No, thank you, I’m quite alright in my boat,’ said The Stranger, all too aware of the rows of teeth in the creature’s large mouth, ‘and what— uh, who might you be?’

‘This is Me and that is I.’ The creature pointed to the one’s on its left and right respectively. Me had great, satellite ears and I had huge bulbous eyes. Together, the trio held the features of one large, terrifying face. Separately, each incomplete face was a nightmare.

‘And what may I call you?’ asked The Stranger.

‘I am Myself, of course.’ The creature smiled a predator’s smile, wide and sharp.

‘Of course,’ The stranger tried his best to return the gesture. ‘Oh, where are my manners, my name is… I - I don’t remember.’

‘Well, I Don’t Remember, what are you doing in the ocean, all by yourself, on that tiny little boat?’

The Stranger scratched his head, chuckled. ‘You know, it’s funny, I’m, I’m not sure.’

‘Tell us, I Don’t Remember, what brings you to the island, our home, without a paddle no less?’

‘I think I was wandering and just, sort of, drifted here. I suppose I’ve been just, sort of, drifting my entire life.’

The creature named I furrowed their brow, Myself drew their lips to a line, and together they frowned.

‘Perhaps you were looking for something,’ said the creature, ‘it is easy to lose one’s way when looking for something.’

‘Yes!’ said The Drifter, ‘Yes, that was it. Looking for something, something very important.’ He scratched the back of his head furiously. ‘What was it again?’

‘Come, friend, many treasures wash upon our shores. Perhaps we can help you find yours.’ The creature’s hand was massive, its fingers crooked, its skin was soft and warm, and its smile no longer seemed so menacing.

*

The sun blazed without restraint in the ocean-blue sky. Treasures dazzled like stars in the sky-blue ocean. Waves washed ashore precious stones and artifacts. The sand sifting between their toes glistened like diamonds, for it was, millions of billions of diamonds. They captured the shape of their stride, held the memory of their passing before and gifted the proof of their existence to the lapping tides – more treasures for the ocean depths.

The creature “I” led them along the beach, one hand shading its eyes.

“Me” clapped, skipped and pointed.

‘There is something ahead.’ said Myself. The Drifter wondered how they knew without, you know, eyes.

‘We see what I sees,’ said Myself, as if answering The Drifters thoughts, ‘just as we hear what Me hears.’

Thirty paces passed before The Drifter could make out the shape of what caught the creatures’ interest. Sometime later, they crowded the object that had excited Me.

‘What is that?’ asked The Drifter. A large hermit crab stood feeding on the spawn of younglings emerging from the sand beneath it.

‘A parent, tending to its young.’ said the creature.

He watched the crab, safe in the conche it borrowed from the sea, snatching its unsuspecting children claw over claw and shovelling them into its tireless jaws. Naked and unprepared for the outside world, those younglings never stood a chance.

‘Right you are.’ he said

‘Do you have parents?’ the creature asked.

The Drifter looked for their answer across the ocean but found only the horizon. ‘I don’t know.’ he said.

‘Perhaps that is what you are searching for?’

‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘no I don’t think it is.’ He drifted to a pile of riches the ocean had deemed unworthy of its chest, reached into a pile of precious minerals and pearls, and picked a small, green, plastic triangle. It thrummed at his touch. Its vibrations signalled joy, promised adventure and excitement. A warmth spread over him like a calming breath. With a flurry of his fingers, the triangle danced up and down his knuckles; he knew its weight and shape with a casual familiarity, like a wedding ring or a promise. He didn’t know what he held, but he felt as though he had run into an old friend.

‘We see you found something.’ said the creature upon The Drifter’s return. They huddled tightly around the hermit crab which had grown tremendously. With no more children to devour, it scuttled about the sand looking for a new home, the conche was breaking under the strain of its bloated size.

‘Yes,’ said The Drifter, ‘I’m not entirely sure what it is but I think there’s more to it, and I think I would like to find out what that is.’

‘Then we shall help you,’ said Myself, ‘There is always more than there seems.’ The creature palmed the crab. Its shell crunched as long twisted fingers pried it open. Their puckered lips grimaced as they slurped out the meat, whilst the other two writhed in muted pleasure.

‘And they,’ said the creature, juices dripping from its chin, ‘they eat what Myself eats.’

The Island

The island was not what he had hoped for. A drifter might lose their way in the deep blue of its surrounding ocean, then perhaps fall for the allure of its sparkling beaches. He might even board its shores expecting a relaxing paradise. He would be wrong. The island was a jungle, and they were forced to make their way through cutting branch and bush, through snagging roots and vines. Forced to wade through sludge and swamp and thick humidity.

The drifter marched at the front, pushing through an endless stream of foliage with stabbing thorns and poisoned edges that caused rivets of blood to run and itchy rashes to rise on any patch of skin he left exposed, but it was the little green triangle that led them. Pointing the way from within The Drifter’s hands, the triangle guided them through the jungle on a path one could not see but feel and, whenever The Drifter diverged from the path, the triangle would vibrate in a frequency he somehow understood, guiding him back.

‘Extraordinary,’ said The Drifter, ‘it’s like a compass. If we had a map we might be able to figure out where we’re going, maybe even how long it will take us to get there.’

‘Spoken like a true explorer.’ said the creature.

“The Explorer”. He liked the sound of that. It rung of adventure and heroism, and it made sense, what was a drifter if not a lone explorer? He stepped into the title, draped it over his shoulders and zipped it up to find it didn’t quite fit; a little long in the sleeves, a bit broad in the chest. A hand-me-down he wasn’t quite ready for, but he wore nonetheless. He thought they made him look bigger. He felt taller in its fabric. His back was straighter His chest more proud. The Explorer, a title that put some extra purpose behind his steps as he lead his three strange companions.

He was an explorer, of that he was sure. He had seen an entire world outside of the island – although he couldn’t remember it – it was how he knew he didn’t like jungles, and how he knew there was something terribly wrong with this one. A jungle is a biological catalyst, teeming with life large and small: birds hoot and caw unseen among the leaves, predators haunt the shadows, primates scream alarm from the branches, every beautiful flower is the home to chirping insects and hissing snakes. Yet, as The Explorer pushed past a giant blue and white orchid, nothing was hidden between its petals, it was just a flower. Birds didn’t sing in the sky, snakes didn’t fall out of branches and monkeys didn’t warn of jaguars. It was silent and empty, save for The Explorer and his companions, and the distant smell of burning.

‘Do you smell something?’ said The Explorer.

‘We smell nothing.’ said Myself.

‘It smells like,’ he sniffed the air, ‘smoke.’

‘We smell nothing.’ The creature replied.

The Explorer found that hard to believe. He turned, wondering what kind of game they were playing, and noticed something he should have noticed sooner; in the middle of each face, above one mouth, beneath one set of eyes and between one pair of ears, were three empty spaces where a nose should be.

Although only one of the creatures bore eyes, all three seemed to be staring right at him.

‘We smell nothing.’ The creature said one last time.

‘Yes, my apologies. I didn’t mean to offend.’ Myself offered a hollow smile, and onwards they went.

Contrary to common sense, the triangle guided them towards the smell of smoke. Ignoring every survival instinct The Explorer had, it pulled him forward and embalmed him with a sense of urgency that only grew stronger as the smoke grew thicker.

They approached a clearing in the jungle ahead. Eager for the open space, he quickened his pace but was pulled back by his companions, hiding behind a line of bushes.

‘What is it?’ asked The Explorer, a little annoyed from his rough treatment, but didn’t let it show. The creature I held tight onto his arm and pointed to an undulating black tower dancing in the wind.

‘The smoke? What about it?’

The creature pointed to the clearing again with three quick stabs of its finger. Beneath the pillar of smoke stood a pyramid of glass that reached high above the trees. People poured out of a square opening in the edifice.

‘People!’ said The Explorer, ‘real, human people.’

The people were dressed immaculately: identical black suits, black ties over white shirts and black shoes polished to a sheen. For so many of them, they moved with remarkable organisation, like the multiple bodies of one mind, carrying large boxes to burning pyres dotted about the clearing. Each pyre was overseen by an exceptionally large person. The smaller ones would dump their items into the flames and return to the pyramid without a word. The scene bore the weight of ritual sacrifice, yet happened with the systemic efficiency of an ant colony.

It was disquieting, to say the least, people didn’t behave like that. Then again, The Explorer couldn’t remember any people to compare, and the green triangle was quite clear about where it wanted him to go next.

I tugged on The Explorer’s arm as he tried to move, their monstrous eyes had a scared, childlike quality.

‘Don’t worry,’ said The Explorer, feeling a need to console them, ‘I’ll be back.’ He pulled himself free and made his way among the bustle of smoke and suits.

‘Excuse me,’ he called out, ‘pardon,’ ‘hello,’ and ‘sorry,’ but the suits went about their business as if he wasn’t there.

‘Excuse me.’ Keen to get someone’s attention, he wondered into another’s path, the suit bumped into him, their dropped emptied onto the floor. The knock had hit him with de ja vu, he had a sense that he had been in this position before, that he knew these people, or at least some like them.

‘Very sorry, let me help you with that.’ He grabbed a few of the fallen items at a time (small metallic discs in clears plastic casings) and helped stack them neatly back in their place.

‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ said The Explorer, ‘what is it that you’re doing here?’

The suit continued to repack their box.

‘I don’t mean to pry it’s just, well, I’m new here and this all seems rather odd to me.’

The suit refilled their box as quickly as they could. They didn’t deem to look at The Explorer, not until he, thin on patience, withheld the last disc from their grasp and The Explorer finally saw what they really looked like.

Their face seized his gaze. Their ears were a mound of flesh that drooped like melting wax, rising and falling like the waves. Their nose was a mass of shifting patterns – a barcode one moment, an algebra equation the next. Their mouth a stream of letters, of cascading punctuation that he heard as clicks and hisses. But it was the eyes that held him, two violent scribbles in midnight ink that writhed and wriggled in their sockets.

He dropped the case. It cracked and opened when it hit the ground. The disc leapt out, rolled free of its prison and wobbled to a stop in the dirt a few feet away. The Explorer awaited retaliation – an angry word, a jabbing fist, an unhinged jaw that tore his head from its neck – but even as the suit barged passed him to retrieve the disc, he felt no animosity, they were simply taking the shortest route to their destination. The suit threw their box into one of the burning fires then was lost in the crowd of doppelgangers.

They were identical. Any individuality in their faces was lost in the changing patterns of their features. All physical differences between sexes were hidden beneath matching suits. Sure the big ones, the ones overseeing the fires, looked different to the rest – if only in their hulking size – but then they were clones of each other.

An overseer watched him with warping eyes so black they seemed to absorb the light of the flames. They were the only one that seemed to notice him, and now that they had, their gaze refused to let go.

Against the triangle’s wishes, he returned to the bush where his companions awaited him, no matter what was in that pyramid, he was not going to take his chances with these things, but when he got there they were gone. He was sure it was the same bush, he had taken a straight line towards the pyramid and back, but there was no sign of them. He called out for them as loud as he dared and got silence in return. They had abandoned him, without even his memories to keep him company.

Now what? He severely doubted he could survive a jungle where the only living things were the three monsters that abandoned him and these suited and booted husks of human beings. The only one who knew their way around the island was the triangle, and there was only one place it wanted to go. The Pyramid, seemingly constructed from a single piece of glass, was a thing he’d quite like to turn away from, but the triangle was unrelenting on that.

The Explorer had to admit he was intrigued to find out what the triangle was leading him to, hopeful even that it was a clue to who he is, and most of all, he was terrified of what might happen to him inside that pyramid.

He was out of options.

As soon as he stepped out of the bushes, the overseer’s eyes were on him, he felt them follow him to the mouth of the pyramid. He kept his head down as he entered, and didn’t dare to look back.

*

The Explorer marched somehow undisturbed by the swarm, their clicks and hisses droning as they infested the pyramids cavernous halls; they smelt of sweat and something else, something ancient yet familiar. Something desperate.

The air was electric. Fluorescent light bulbs buzzed overhead, stuttering pale yellow light across dark faces and stained laminate floors. The triangle pulsed incessantly in his palm, no longer guiding but demanding, each vibration more urgent than the last.

Doorways passed by, portals into entire worlds. Some were small where metal discs encased in plastic squares lined the walls and formed aisles ten feet high. Some rooms were large, filled with rows of chairs descending to a distant stage, the red curtains drawn open, a spotlight shined onto a microphone stand. Others were mere storage, they held boxes of small rectangles, rolls of film, large discs in thin card packaging, with illustrations or photographs and often the word “vinyl” stamped on the front. Mainly the rooms were empty, stripped bare before he arrived, or infested with suits moving with the tireless duty of worker bees.

Deep in the belly of the pyramid, where the rooms were few and the suits presence scarce, he passed a door that caused the triangle to vibrate so hard his entire arm quaked.

The room was a bottomless abyss. In its centre a stone island cut to a perfect pentagon towered out of the ocean of darkness. At his feet swung a rope bridge that stretched the distance between him and the plinth.

‘Not here,’ The Explorer told the triangle, staring into the pit that surely lead to the centre of the earth. ‘You must be mistaken.’ But the triangle pulsed with insistence. Across the bridge, a beam of light descended from the heavens to illuminate a small object standing on the plinth. Even without the triangles vibrations his heart thrummed with yearning.

The bridge rocked under fear palsied legs as The Explorer made his arduous crossing. He kept telling himself it wasn’t much further and yet time passed, boards creaked, and the end seemed no closer. He felt years rack his body. His hair greyed, arthritis settled in his knuckles that gripped the ropes with terrified fervour. He looked up from his feet and saw he was only halfway across. He took a deep breath and tried not to imagine himself falling into the void beneath him.