The Sky Below

The rain plays an uneven patter on the glass, half a melody tapped out over the swelling white noise of the breaking waves. No more a refuge for wandering thoughts and peaceful vacancy, we of this new world hear in it none of the old comforts. With every splatter and splash, our walls wear thin. Day by day, refuge of any kind diminishes and the only peace to be found is to walk out into the squall and join the rest of them in glistening silence.

As for vacancy? Who knows. It feels like they stare still, but I cannot in all honesty say whether the sense of being watched stems from my own imagining or a more horrible truth; that their inanimate gaze is not truly empty at all, and that my future is to join them in frozen vigil over what once was. A multitude of statues in lament’s barren gardens, without sin or virtue, remembering the stories we tell our children. Stories of the world as it was before, as if it in some way might steel them or bring them solace in the face of the world yet to come. Stories that shall not be told to children of their own. They shall have none.

—

The tides changed. We don’t know when it started. Nor how, and most certainly not why. But it must have, at some point, and then at some other, later point, we noticed. They would come in, they would go out, and beneath them they brought something new; inch by inch, the sky below became visible. It made no sense. It was impossible. But it was also there, for all to see.

At first, absurd tales came back from divers and others who had cause to work at depth beneath the seas. The stories were so fantastical and garbled that everyone else – so rational and informed, jaded to conspiracy in this age of nonsense – dismissed them. Even when they became more frequent and consistent, the population at large wrote them off as a hoax or some sort of delusion, perhaps caused by poor air or some other environmental contaminant. It was only when it reached our shores that we accepted it, and by then it was too late.

At the lowest tides, the encroaching truth could be seen. A thin sliver of wet glass, growing as it did over weeks and months to eat the beaches and climb the cliffs. Once it had crept far enough, you could walk out onto it and look down into the clear depths as if standing atop a giant marble. Light would penetrate far enough that you could see great bubbles and imperfections, eventually fading out into an indistinct horizon, like a hazy sky below your feet.

On it crept, until the high tide marks of the world formed a boundary between the world as we’d all known it and the world yet to come.

It was not long before we saw them. Weeks, maybe months – I don’t remember. Perhaps still not recovered from our prior disbelief, there was a strange sense of inevitable acceptance, undercutting the panic and confusion. From the distorted fathoms of the horizon within the earth, shapes began to emerge; indistinct at first, but gradually becoming all too clear.

Gigantic forms of what looked like cut glass sculptures slowly hauled themselves upwards. Their movement could only be tracked in increments, never observed directly. Strange limbs and misshapen heads, elongated hands ending in huge, inhuman digits. They would grow from blurry blots on the very edge of distinction, day by day revealing more about their varied and horrible anatomy as they rose closer and closer to the surface world. Our world.

In the final days, their bizarre, alien faces coalesced into focus through the marbled lens through which they crawled. Perhaps it would have been better if they’d been twisted in hate or hunger or fear. Harrowing still, of course, but somehow better than the inscrutable blankness they bore; sometimes a hint of sorrow, of curiosity, of patient unknowable intent, but never more than that.

I must stop here and point something out; around all this utter weirdness, the breakdown of the laws of nature as we thought we knew them, life otherwise went on pretty much unchanged. The world adapted surprisingly quickly to it all and in the day-to-day much of it was forgotten about as life went on. Especially for those far from the coasts, whose only real exposure was to watch this strange science fiction play out on the news or social media. It was only after they broke through that the end really began.

—

At first, grasping hands rose like rocky outcrops amongst the waves. Tides crashed between dimly lucent knuckles. Driftwood piled in the nooks of aberrant elbows. They appeared and they were just there. Nothing more.

Over a matter of weeks, they would seemingly haul themselves up beneath the cover of the tides, becoming more exposed with each passing day. At first, the curved arch of those many-jointed fingers, then long, ill-proportioned limbs, until finally their wrongly-sculpted skulls and uneven shoulders could be seen amongst the breakers, lying as if gasping in silent exhaustion from their climb from however far below.

And there they stayed, in varying degrees of birthing, neither fully above nor entirely below the hard, glittering surface. The bay below the village had one; a pale blue-ish giant, like some cross between an early human foetus, a long-limbed reptile, and something distinctly piscine in aspect. It had one gangly arm stretched up what once had been the beach, its four-knuckled fingers limply curled, while its bulbous head rested on its other forearm as if dead or soundly asleep. The one time I got close enough to look, its eyes stared from what appeared a flabby, asymmetrical face with distinctly fish-like lips and partially formed nose. I did not return to inspect it further.

More time passed and no reports of further emergences came. This was perhaps a year after the very first sightings, making it a little over two years since the sky below first saw the light of the one above. The coasts had become very quiet now, with holiday-makers preferring to seek their respite in places far enough removed from this burgeoning nightmare that they may forget it for a time. We who continued to live along the shores tended to stay inside, venturing out only when needed. This saved us, to some extent, from the rain.

The rain which was cold and had a bite like no other. The rain which told us this was more than a strange reordering of the world. The rain from which you could not get dry, because every drop stayed with you. And you with it.

The first footage was horrifying. We quickly learned to not watch, or watch with the sound muted to save the screams echoing long into the stagnant silence of each night.

At first, the streets and buildings starting to glitter, as a fine layer of glass formed on them with each raindrop, hard as diamond and painfully cold to the touch. And in those streets, between those buildings, people struggling to move forward, each step growing more arduous as they slowly buckled and collapsed, their blood seeping out between cracks in their hardening skin or gushing from the ragged, flayed soles of their feet as they tore them from the shimmering ground that sought to claim them.

Quickly, although not soon enough, the visceral horror was replaced as the affliction sank into them, turning their flesh and then bones to just more pale glass, shaped in whatever terrified, desperate pose they’d succumbed. A process that took hours, although how many varied by the intensity of the rain; a light shower brought survivable agony to those not properly prepared for it, but a downpour meant death regardless of any attempt to cover up and stay dry.

So, first the world itself shrank, the land alive and the sea a sloshing, swelling desert. Then it grew smaller still, our freedom limited to simply how far you could travel between weather fronts. When the sky was clear and blue, people would gather outside just to feel the air and spend time together in relative safety. At the first cloud on the horizon, all but those with great enough need would scuttle back to their homes and shelter until all risk of rain had passed.

The only reason there was no war over resources was because it wasn’t practical. No armies could survive a downpour, no tanks roll across borders with tracks frozen and turrets forever locked in place. Any violence was local, family against family, the spoils of war another day’s rations or better shelter.

By the time this had passed, we had learned that groundwater was safe – nobody knows why, even now – and everyone who could do so was digging wells, installing generators, setting up indoor farms to grow and breed whatever food they may. In the cities, it was a disaster and most died. Maybe all; we haven’t heard from anyone more than a few hours away in nearly three years now. No help is coming, nor will there ever be.

Still, with the knowledge of those who farmed and built and repaired for a living, the rural areas have done better. Whatever tiny proportion of the world is still left alive can be sustained, should things continue as they are. Whether they’d wish to for long is another question, but not one of significance – things will not continue as they are. The walls grow thin. Eventually we will run out of material to shore them up with. Then the soil will grow icy and transparent, our crops brittle and lifeless, and there will be nowhere left to hide.

That will be the final shrinking of the world, with only one freedom left; wither away amidst the groans and misery of those close to you, find some other way to leave on your own terms, or walk out into the rain and become another sculpture among many.

Some have chosen that last already. They believe they go to join some greater whole, a world spirit or aetheric consciousness beyond mortal bounds. Or they simply stop caring and capitulate with a fate they see as inevitable, either in life or in death.

Truth be told, the screams are quieter now. People know to stay still, letting the all-cleansing waters do their work, choosing to become dignified monuments to their own demise. During the heaviest storms, last words are carried on the wind, whispered eulogies that a keen ear can pick out between the rumbling, crashing tides of above and below.

We who remain note each new addition, seeing familiar eyes looking into eternity without recognition or purpose. Each day there are more, and each day I wonder on what they see, if anything at all. If I see them as mournful reminders of this dreary, doleful fate, how must they see me?

Time will tell. But for now, the walls grow thin, and there is work to be done.