by Michael Kelly

I couldn’t explain the tentacle. Or the rope.

A forlorn beach on a drear December day. Gray. Overcast. An electric charge in the still air. A weird alien drone in my sleep-addled head.

The hard winter-packed sand. Just me and the stranger.

And the rope.

It wasn’t there, and then it was. Like the stranger.

Someone else, too, now, far in the distance; a small shadowy and hunched figure coming from the cold, dark ocean. A swimmer? This late in the season? A few stray gulls screech madly and lift from the ground at the figure’s approach, a furious flapping of wings as they vanish into the haze.

The rope.

The stranger gets the idea to pull it down. No matter how hard we tug, though, the rope won’t budge. It resists our attempts. It is thick and slightly slimy, cold, fibrous and rubbery at once, with scattered raised nubs, or braids, and an odd grayish color. At first it was difficult to even tell if there was a rope. It blended in with the gray day, the beige beach, the dark wedge of verdigris that was the endless ocean and its deep mysteries. The rope hung from the flat winter sky, its oddly tapered end coiled limply on the windswept beach, the rest of its length taut and stretching upward, breaching the gray canvas.

Me and the stranger found it at the same time. Each walking toward the other on the quiet beach, slight nods before passing—my nod just an attempt to hide under my hat brim—and when our heads came up, there it was, between us, the rope. The suggestion of something hanging there in the air. It wasn’t there, and then it was. We squinted. Blinked. We saw it. And the more we studied it, the more certain we were. Then we felt it, of course, both of us reaching out tentative, grasping its rough surface, our hands touching. We both giggled at that—at the hands touching as much as the discovery of the rope. I don’t know why. It felt like a different kind of discovery. I can’t explain it.

I couldn’t explain the tentacle, either. I’d seen it earlier, washed up on the beach, gray and limp and dead. Severed. Curled and suckered. It filled me with a strange gloom and despair. And I thought of that show I’d watched alone one quiet night in my tiny apartment about cephalopods. About how smart they were. How they used tools. How they used camouflage to mimic their surroundings. What one of the show’s researchers said stuck with me: “They are the closest we will likely come to witnessing an alien intelligence.” They suggested that cephalopods might be more self-aware even than humans. Perhaps that would explain my melancholy upon seeing the dead tentacle.

A faint droning reaches my ears, carried across the vast expanse of the ocean, strange and unknowable.

I look down the beach. For help, perhaps. Or an explanation. The dark figure is still far away, a roundish blur now, but much closer. They’d made up a lot of ground. They’ve seen the rope, surely, and are hurrying to investigate.

I wave toward them. They can help. But help with what? I wonder. “Hey,” I yell. “Come here. Look at this.”

The stranger starts yanking on the rope. Now there is a peculiar low rumble. Not of thunder, but of … whirring? A crab scuttles across my feet, wet from the water and its stygian depths.

“Unh!” grunts the stranger.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“It’s some sort of trick,” he says, tugging. “Has to be. How do you explain it? Ropes don’t just appear out of thin air.”

“Um,” I manage as the stranger pulls on the rope, and I start thinking I need to leave. Go home. Then, a thrumming noise. Something mechanical, perhaps, moving. I can’t tell if the sounds come from the leaden sky, the deep ocean, the ground beneath my feet, or my head. But it only reinforces my inclination to leave.

“Do you hear that?” I ask.

“Give me a hand,” he says.

So, we both tug as hard as we can, our hands rubbed raw as they slip on the peculiar material. The rope won’t give. Our hands rest, touching once again. I pull back, breath hitching.

How do you explain it? The rope wasn’t there, and then it was. We saw it. Faint, at first, yes. Then we felt it. The two of us. Me and the stranger. We circled it. Eyeing it. Inspecting it. A mystery. But one that doesn’t need to concern me. Not really. I could go. I should go. Back to my apartment to hide from the world’s ills and secrecies alike.

“I like your hat,” the stranger says, eyes locked on me.

“Wh—”

“I’ve seen you before. On the beach.” He’s smiling. “A lot.”

I shuffle back another step. “I … like your scarf,” I blurt.

“I’ve a whole closet of them. It’s good to bring them out.”

I really should go, I think.

Down the length of sand, the indistinct form of the person is nearing. Their arms are flailing like one of those manic inflatable things in front of car dealerships. Is it some sort of powerwalking? Or perhaps they’ve seen us and are trying to get our attention.

“Hey,” I call again, waving back.

Behind the advancing shape, along the thinning horizon, the sky and ocean and beach blur into a taupe-gray paste, like a smudged watercolor painting. My eyes glisten with tears. I’m crying, I think, for that lifeless tentacle, and for this beautiful and dying world.

“You okay?” asks the stranger.

I wipe my eyes. “Just some sand,” I say.

Then the stranger gets the idea to climb the rope.

“I’ll go first,” he says.

I turn and squint, my eyes following the line of rope up, up, to where it disappears into the stretched gray muslin of sky.

“Why?” I ask.

“I want to see what’s up there,” the stranger says. “It’s a sign. Why else would this be here? It’s for us. Our discovery. Don’t you want to know why? Aren’t you curious?”

I’m not. I’ve never been. I am mostly content with my quiet, lonely life. I want to leave. Go back to my tiny apartment and my tiny world. Back to safety. Safety, I think. From what? My dark thoughts? No. That’s why I come to the beach.

Looking up. “It’s too far,” I say, wondering how I can best make my escape.

“It’ll be okay,” he says, soft, and, “I’ll come back for you.”

Then the stranger is clambering up the rope, only to keep sliding back down. He takes off his scarf and makes a harness that he uses to shinny up the slick rope, legs bowing in and out, pistoning up, up, his olive-green galoshes struggling for purchase, but inching ever upward. A regular Boy Scout.

“Ha,” he says, glancing down at me, face beaming with excitement. “Look, look. I’m doing it. I’m really doing it.”

“Yes,” I say. “You are.” And I almost wave and yell encouragement to him. Because he is doing it. He’s climbing the strange rope with a childlike glee and fervor. Happy. Truly happy. And for a brief moment his infectious attitude shocks me awake, passes through me like an electric current and I want to follow him up the rope into that great unknown. Follow him anywhere. Take a chance for the first time in a long, long while. But the moment quickly passes.

The air vibrates, hums. Another crab scurries across my feet. Dozens, actually, tumbling out of the ocean. They’re as much a mystery as this rope.

The stranger is inching upward. Every few feet he stops to catch his breath, look down. “Come on,” he says, panting. “Join me. We’ll make it a date.” And even from here I can see his smile.

A date? My body tingles and my face flushes.

“Come on,” he says again, the stranger. “This could be your lifeline.”

Your lifeline. What does he know? What does he suspect? Could it really be my lifeline? I wonder. Could it save me from my drear existence?

Down the beach the other stranger is much closer. I blink. What I thought were arms are … I don’t know. They are too fluid and long and prehensile. Whatever it is, it’s closing fast.

I stumble back, look up. “Oh, hey—” but my voice dies in my throat. I don’t know his name. And a small sob wracks me, a sadness in my bones. What was I going to say? Hey you, help me, I’m in trouble? When was the last time I helped anyone? But it doesn’t matter as all I see are his legs disappearing into the gray ether.

I blink again, my eyes wet. Something drops from the sky, lands near me. The scarf. His scarf. A gift, I think.

The thing on the beach is nearing. My heart knocks wildly. I turn, look the other way. A long and desolate stretch. I could sprint to the pier, I think. But a glimpse back demonstrates that that would be ill-advised. The thing is quick. Too quick. And there’s the crabs—hundreds of them, fleeing.

So I grab the scarf and begin to pull myself up for the first time in a very long time.

The thing is below me now. I scramble up the rope. There is an electric hum in the air. I pause to catch my breath, slow my heart. The thing below is bulbous and tentacled. Soft-bodied? An octopus of some sort? Breathing air? Its tentacles whip and try to gain purchase on the rope but keep slipping. I cackle madly at that. I don’t know why. Like many things, I can’t rationalize it.

Breathe.

I always came to the beach to think. To breathe the briny air. To shake my dark moods. But maybe I’m just back in my apartment, all alone, and this is all a bad dream. It has to be.

I close my eyes. Breathe. A whirring, somewhere distant, like a hatch opening and closing. I open my eyes. And I see them everywhere—ropes, cast from the gray skies, waiting, expectant. Shimmering from brown to gray to black. I’m still clinging to this one. And below me is something tentacled, perhaps of this world. And more of them emerging from the ocean, full of fish and crabs and an insatiable, unending hunger.

They are the closest we will likely come to witnessing an alien intelligence.

I look up. It’s flat and gray. A blank canvas. My heart kicks once, twice. I’ll find him, I think. I’ll learn his name. And he’ll learn mine.

The ropes hang from the sky. Lifelines, perhaps. Waiting for us to make a choice. I begin the climb. As I edge up the rope the sky lightens, the gray cloud cover dissipates, and I see them then, the ships. They are matte black, oblong cubes, like tall doors. Like holes punched in the sky. And I hear them. Whirring and thrumming as ropes fall from their black and infinite maws. Then something green falls past me and I look down to see a galosh tumbling to the beach, immediately lost among a sea of tentacles.

Now my hands are sticky. There’s something trickling down the rope and oozing over the exposed skin of my clutching hands. Blood.

The rope glimmers and turns a mud brown color. The raised nubs are now fleshy pink suckers. Like little mouths.

I look down. They teem and mass on the beach.

Aware.

Intelligent.

And no longer with any need to hide.

Up or down, I think. I can’t stay here, in the middle, hanging on for dear life. Always in the middle. Always hanging on.

Up, I decide. There’s someone up there. Someone who said they’d come back for me.

There’s the matter of the blood, though.

But maybe it’s not all lost. Maybe there’s still time. Maybe I can still save them. Save myself.