“Do you have it?” he said.
One of the two men who had joined him, a dour farmer named Prayter, handed over a brown paper bag. Webster reached inside and removed something white: a clerical stole. One had gone missing from my laundry basket earlier in the week, and I had been driven almost to distraction trying to guess what might have happened to it. Now I knew.
Webster picked up his lantern. Instantly, his face was illuminated, but it seemed to me that I saw regret there, or so I now hope, in light of what was to occur later.
“It has to be done,” said Prayter. “It’s the way of things.”
Webster nodded. “There will come a time when it will no longer be possible,” he said. “Soon it will be too dangerous to continue.”
“And what then?” asked the third man, whose name I did not know.
“Then, perhaps, the old gods will die,” said Webster simply, “and we will die with them.”
He picked up the stole and he and his companions walked down to the beach. There they dug a hole in the sand and placed the vestment within before carefully filling in the depression once again. Then they returned to the village.
I stayed where I was for a time, until I was certain that they would not return, then followed the path that they had taken down to the shore. It was the work of only a few moments to find the little mound they had left, beneath which lay the remains of my church garment. I stood there for a time, uncertain of how to proceed. I believed in God, my God, and yet images from my troubling dreams came back to me, and the deaths discovered by my predecessor, and Prayter’s reference to “the way of things.” I was terribly afraid, and prayed for guidance, but none came.
And so, feeling that I was betraying the very faith that I had so ardently defended to Webster, I began to dig with my hands until I found my stole. I removed it from the hole, shook the black sand from it, and was about to make my way back to the rectory when I turned and refilled the hole once again. As I did so, I became aware of the sands gently drifting around me, forming shapes and patterns that to my troubled mind appeared almost purposeful, and I redoubled my efforts to disguise my excavations.
For the rest of the night I did not sleep, but mulled over what I had seen, and what I had heard.
The next day, I rose early and made my way into the village. I bought some bread and cheese, then stopped by Webster’s inn as he was making his preparations for the day. He found it hard to meet my gaze, but I gave no indication that I recognized his unease.
“I was wondering,” I said, “if I could trouble you for a cup of tea? I must confess, I feel a little weak this morning, and in need of something to fortify me for the walk home.”
Webster grinned.
“I could give you something stronger than tea, if you like,” he said.
I declined his offer.
“Tea will be fine,” I said, and watched as he disappeared into the kitchen behind the bar in order to heat the water. He was gone for only a couple of minutes, but in that time I did all that I needed to do. From the pocket of his jacket, which always hung on a hook behind the bar, I removed a worn white handkerchief, praying to God to forgive me as I did so. Then, once Webster returned, I sat with him and drank my tea, maintaining a pretense of normality while fearing throughout that he might sniffle or sneeze, causing him to search for his handkerchief. When I was done, I offered him money for the tea, but he refused.
“On the house,” he said. “Just to show there are no hard feelings.”
“None whatsoever,” I said.
I left him, and took a walk upon the beach. Only when I was certain that I was unobserved did I get down upon my knees and commence digging a hole in the coarse, dark sand.
I did not sleep that night, so that when I heard my name being called I was almost expecting the summons.
“Mr. Benson, Mr. Benson! Wake up!”
Webster was below my window, a lamp in his hand. “You must come quickly,” he shouted. “There is a body on the seashore.”
I left my bed, pulled on my clothes and shoes, and descended to the door, but Webster was already running ahead of me by the time I got it open. I could see the light bobbing as he moved across the grass toward the sands themselves.
“Come on,” he cried. “Hurry!”
I paused and drew a stout birch stick from my umbrella stand. I liked to carry it when I walked, enjoying the feel of the bark on my hand, but now its weight and heft offered me a kind of reassurance. I followed Webster’s light until I stood at the edge of the dunes looking down on the beach. Where the waves were breaking, a black bundle lay. It looked like a child’s body. Perhaps I was wrong to doubt Webster, and there really was someone hurt or dead. Laying aside my fears, I stepped onto the strand. The sand felt soft and yielding, and my feet sank unpleasantly into it to the depth of about an inch. I began to walk. Ahead of me, Webster was beckoning, calling me closer, but the bundle at his feet remained unmoving, even when I knelt down beside it in the light and probed gently at it. Slowly, my hands shaking, I drew back the damp black cloth that covered it.
Beneath the cloth was hair, and a muzzle, and a long pink tongue. It was a dog: a dead dog. I looked up to find Webster’s light beginning to recede from me as he tried to leave me alone on the beach.
“Mr. Webster?” I said. “What does this mean?”
I was about to stand when I was momentarily distracted by a stinging sensation against my face. I brushed at the spot, and my fingers came away with a coating of black sand. All around me, the grains were moving, shifting. Shapes rose and fell, forming columns that held their shape for an instant before disintegrating into dark clouds that fell back upon the beach below. They might almost have been human, except that they were strangely hunched, their features almost hidden beneath thick folds of hair. I thought I discerned horns emerging from their heads, warped and twisted growths that appeared to curl around their skulls, ending almost at their necks. The whispering began and I understood that it was not language that I had heard in the past, but the movement of the sands, the individual molecules brushing against one another, reconstituting themselves in strange configurations, briefly uniting to create, for a moment, ancient, lost forms.
Now Webster was running, making for the safety of the dunes and the raised stone slab that rested on the promontory, his light held high before him so that he might not stumble on seaweed or driftwood. I followed him, my progress arrested by the strange, spongelike quality of the terrain. Behind me, I sensed a form rising high and then sand was filling my eyes and mouth, like fingers clasped suddenly across my face. I spat and wiped at my face with my sleeve, but did not look over my shoulder or stop running.
Ahead of me, Webster was tiring. I was closing on him, but I would not reach him before he gained the dunes. I waited, narrowing the gap between us by another five or six feet, then threw my stick with all the force I could muster. It struck him firmly on the back of the head and he fell awkwardly to the ground, the lamp tumbling away from him and the oil it contained igniting on the beach. In the sudden glare I saw his eyes grow wide and staring, yet he was looking not at me but at what lay behind. He tried to rise but I caught him a glancing blow with my foot as I leapt over his prone form. He fell again, and then I was approaching a steep rise, my feet sliding in the lighter sand of the dunes. I clutched at a patch of marram grass, drew myself up, and looked down on the black sands.
“You can’t escape,” he called. “These are the old gods, the true gods.”
He stood and rubbed the sand from his clothes. He appeared wary of the approaching forms, but not fearful.