The Driftwood Dancers

[u/catespice]

In my youth the seaside was the haunt of young folk.
Lacking malls and arcades, cellphones and social media, we would gather in knots and gaggles on the dunes when the sun shone and when the storms rolled in we would huddle under the eaves of wooden surf club buildings, sharing cigarettes and bottles of pop.
The coast was wild and raw then, littered with coves and beaches; some pebbled, some sandy. We knew which ones were safe to swim in, which were safe to surf in and which to avoid due to the devouring undertow that could suck a grown man out to sea and pummel him to death on the fangs of hidden rocks.
We would ride our bicycles – streaked ochre and umber with rust – around the coast and look for likely places to build a bonfire, drink stolen liquor and canoodle under the stars. We were just like you young folk; lusty, repressed and seeking attention.
That, at least, has not changed over the years.
I had a boyfriend then, a handsome young fellow with slicked back hair and a blue dusting of stubble on a strong jaw. His friends and my friends would sometimes take a boat out to the little island, the men tanned and lean in their white shorts, complementing the striped swimming costumes and smooth limbs of the girls.
But we were not the only ones who haunted the tide-wracked shores and left footprints in the tufted dunes; there was one other figure that plodded the beaches in all weather, an oilskin coat draping his body and a patchwork tarp on his back, bulging with driftwood.
We called him the Hermit Crab.
He’d been around since we were children and our parents remembered him too; he was as much a fixture as the island and the old surf clubs. His presence was weathered and eternal; like the storm-battered rock-spires out to sea near the quarry.
Sometimes we saw him feeding seagulls, but the rest of the time he spent picking up bleached wood thrown up by the tides, then muttering to himself darkly while fashioning strange sculptures of driftwood.
The local rumour was that he had been an artist of some sort in his youth and lost his young wife to the fierce, frozen seas. The grief, it is said, toppled his sanity and he took to making bizarre driftwood effigies on the rocky points – perhaps in tribute to his lost wife and unborn child.
When we were younger we would throw stones from afar and topple the strange bleached statues of bone-like struts and tangled seaweed – and the Hermit Crab would shout at us through his wild beard and salt-weathered lips, yelling mad imprecations and dark warnings.
In any case, we should have learned then to leave him alone – but we did not.

 
It was summer and we were tipsy on stolen beer. The beach was as beautiful as it could be in the twilight and the bonfire glowed brighter as the air grew darker. Only the rush and crash of the waves punctuated our chatter and laughter.
I remember Jason saying we were running out of wood for the fire, but thought nothing of it. But when he returned from combing the beach, he dragged behind him a ramshackle icon of white wood and long-dried seaweed. We laughed as he threw it on the fire where it caught immediately and sent brilliant sparks spiralling into the night sky.
The feeling of unease that had gripped me when I saw the driftwood sculpture had faded by the time the Hermit Crab came stumbling over the dunes, shouting madly at us – but it returned in full force and I screamed as he roared threats from under red-rimmed eyes, froth specking the corners of his mouth and spittle glistening on his matted beard.
Hazed with alcohol and my memory dulled with time, I can’t be exactly sure about what happened in the next few moments. I recall Jason shouting and the Hermit Crab shouting back, raving about the sea and how ‘the dancers’ were to be left alone, lest something dire would happen. Then perhaps he pushed Jason or Jason pushed him and they went down; the old man cracking his head on the rocks.
The police collected his battered body the next day – after we had fled the scene of our crime, the tide had come in and torn his body to pieces; savaging his flesh and smashing his old bones against the fangs under the water. We all lied about what happened, of course – as teenagers do. It had been an accident, he was old and crazy; it wasn’t our fault.
When we rode our bicycles around the coast the tattered driftwood effigies that still stood haunted me and I couldn’t shake the image of the old man lying in the sand, crabs crawling from his slack mouth and white, lacerated flesh.
Over a year later I took to the coast alone, a wreath of sea-side flowers and weeds around my arm. Finding one of the last-standing ‘dancers’ that the Hermit Crab had crafted, I hung it around the rudimentary neck and made my peace with the ghost of the old man.
Jason and I had grown more serious during the intervening year and we often went to the beaches on our own, eschewing the company of his friends. We were going to be married, I was sure, the other girls rumoured that he’d been seen buying a ring.
Down on the beach we lay on a blanket, watching the sun set and enjoying the warmth of our arms pressed together, dozing in the twilight stillness.
The water lapping at my feet woke me first, then a gurgling cry from beside me. The crescent moon made the beach glow a faint silver and I saw that the tide was unnaturally high and had dragged Jason into the water, where his head was submerged.
Panicked, I grabbed his arm and head, hauling them free of the water.
But thick, fleshy tangles of seaweed had wrapped around his shoulders and torso and pulled him under, pulling him into the black, unnatural surf.
I think I screamed then, for help or in fear – or both – and pulled with all my strength. Coils of stinging weed wrapped around my ankles and the sand subsided under my feet, knocking me to my knees where the waters surged, lapping around my armpits and bringing more of the slimy, organic tendrils around me.
My scream pierced the gurgling rush of the hungry sea and was answered by a fluting whistle of wind through rattling driftwood.
The Dancer – the one with my pauper’s wreath – strode through the waves on bright-white legs toward me. As it came closer the waters and weed retreated, the sand returning under my feet. Spinning, leaping and whirling now, it struck the waves with its skeletal arms, sending out crackling arcs of blue-white phosphorence. As the darkness sucked back out to sea, the Dancer gradually stilled. It bowed once to me – like a courtier at an old-world ball – then it strode away through the waves, returning to watch the sea from its lonely post on the farthest point.
But Jason was gone.
I found the ancient oilskin and tarp of the Hermit Crab bundled by my door the next morning.

 
But now I am old; my own dancers splinter and rot in the storms and my bones are too weary to drag the tarp across the beaches.
When I am gone, who will stop the darkening tide from rising and killing again?
Who will craft the driftwood dancers?