Sea Change Read Online Free PDF Page A

dog stood motionless and
watched him move. After a while, John reached the corner, and he
turned and headed out onto a narrow street. Which way was the
sea?
    The buildings
seemed to tower all around him and he could not get his bearings.
He could hear the gentle crash of the waves, but the sound seemed
to come from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. Then
above the sound of the sea he heard a click click click and saw the
dog again, not coming out of the alley after him, but trotting down
the street towards him. It must have gone round the far end of the
alley and made its way round, John thought. This made his mind up
for him, and he walked away, looking back over his shoulder every
pace or two. The dog stood still in the middle of the street,
watching him. Its coat was as dark as the night. The next time he
looked, it was gone again.
    Deep breath,
deep breath. John chanted to himself, the words losing all meaning
but providing comfort in their repetition. He kept his gaze
straight ahead as he walked, not wanting to look at the shadows on
either side of the road, for fear of what he might see in them.
Then a shadow appeared in front of him, the dog back blocking the
way. A passage led off to the right a metre or so in front of it.
He could have walked around the dog, the street was wide enough,
but its presence filled the road in a way that its body didn't.
There was no way that John was going to attempt walking past. That
left only two options: go back the way that he had come, or risk
the narrow passage, the passage that was so dark that John could
not see more than a little way into it.
    Maybe this is
what the dog wanted, John thought, maybe it had done its job,
herding me along, and at the end of that passage would stand an old
man, as dry as sticks, with a voice like poisoned honey. But the
dog seemed calm, and there wasn't the suffocating atmosphere of
menace that he had felt when he spoke to the old man, a dense fear
that sucked all the life from the air. The dog sat still, watching
him.
    "You want me to
go down here," John said. "But I don't know why you want me
to."
    It did not
move.
    "I could walk
back up the street."
    The dog sat,
and stared. It dawned on John that even if he did go back, sooner
or later he would turn a corner and there it would be again,
sitting there, waiting for him. He either had to confront it now
or—he turned and walked straight into the passage, his throat
tightening, his stomach a roil of heat and acid. The walls
narrowed, the passage darkened, and then it turned and suddenly
there was light again, and John walked out from in-between the
walls and onto the road a few metres from his sister's house. He
looked back along the passage, but the dog had not followed him. He
ran the last few steps to the house, up the long steps, and then as
he turned the door handle and pulled open the door onto a beautiful
light and warmth, John turned back to the street and quietly said,
"Thank you." He did not see anything, but he thought that he heard
the distant click of claws.
    Laura was still
wrapped up in her accounts. She said thanks to John for posting her
letter without really raising her head. John sat on the sofa in the
small living room, legs curled up into himself, arms wrapped round
them, wondering whether he was going mad. Everything inside the
house was sharp and real, everything that had happened outside was
blurry, like a dream. The rough fibres of the cheap cushions on the
couch scratched at his skin. The air smelt of garlic bread, and the
perfume that Laura wore. He could hear her at the table, the
scritch scratch of her biro on paper, the tap of her fingers on the
calculator, an occasional puzzled muttering. Then he would think
about what had happened that evening, and there was a wall of glass
between him and the events, like a half-remembered dream, a story
that he had once read that had really happened to somebody
else.
    He could not
just sit there, but neither could he think