The Drowned of Kessock Sands
Crossing a tidal causeway to empty her mother’s childhood home, district nurse Ruth Ancrum encounters the drowned victims of an old storm as the sea retreats unnaturally. Her desperate efforts leave her hands ravaged and cannot save her injured husband from drowning or stop her mother from following her long-dead brother beneath the water. Ruth reaches the hamlet alone, refusing a familiar voice calling her name, while its six lit houses offer no welcome and the tide begins withdrawing again.
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Ruth Ancrum shut the dead car’s door before Gavin could insist on another try. Beyond the mainland track, the sandy causeway ran between shallow pools towards six house lights. Her mother stood facing them with one hand inside her coat.
Ruth held out her palm to her husband. "Leave it. You’ll hurt the shoulder."
Gavin withdrew his good hand from the door handle. His other arm lay strapped across his stomach in its sling. "Can’t hurt it much more sitting in the bloody car."
Late-autumn dusk left little colour on Kessock Sands. Ruth knew this stretch of the Scottish east coast through her district nursing rounds, but she had never crossed to the hamlet. At forty-one, she was making her first visit to the place her mother had left fifty years before.
They had come to empty the end house and give up its key before winter. Now the car had died at the mainland mouth, and the choice was a walk or a wait. Ruth remembered about forty minutes of safe crossing left. The next chance would come in the middle of the night.
She pointed across the sands. "Straight to the stone slip. We’ve plenty if we start now. Forty minutes means until the water covers the low part, not forty minutes to stand here discussing it."
Isobel pressed the key through her coat pocket.
Ruth lowered her hand. "What did you see here when you were wee? You were going to tell me in the car."
Her mother turned towards the causeway. Ruth waited, then stepped into her path. Seventy-three, steady on her feet, perfectly able to hear a question. Isobel moved round her and tested the sand with her shoe.
Gavin caught a strand of dried weed on Ruth’s sleeve. Working it loose with his good hand, he dropped the brittle pieces beside his boot. "Back on the tools by Christmas. Then we’ll get your shelves sorted. Give the books a chance to stand upright."
Ruth nearly smiled. She brushed the last crumbs away and checked that his sling supported the elbow.
Then she took the lead.
Their soles crunched over gravel before reaching sand firm enough to hold only the shallow outline of a heel. Water clicked among stones. Gavin walked beside Ruth, keeping his bad shoulder away from her; Isobel followed close behind. With each dozen steps, the car diminished against the mainland track.
Gavin turned his head towards it. "Could fetch someone back once we’re over. Somebody’ll have jump leads."
Ruth kept her pace short for him. "We’ll deal with that from the house. Tell me if your arm starts pulling."
"I can walk, Ruth."
She let him draw level without answering. He wanted a job to do. She wanted him where she could reach him.
Just beyond halfway, a pool emptied beside her boot.
Ruth stopped with one foot raised. Water ran away from the causeway in thin, quick channels. At this point it should have been almost still. Instead, the channels deepened while she watched, exposing pale shells beneath the brown surface.
Gavin came up against her good side. "What?"
"Keep to the firm bit."
A sucking noise travelled across the flats. Pools farther out collapsed into holes, leaving weed laid flat and shining. Beyond them, the sea withdrew so quickly Ruth could follow its retreat, a dark margin moving away over what must have been a mile of seabed.
She checked the slip ahead, then the car behind. Stone lay nearer.
"Low water’s now. It should be slack. We’ve still got the forty—" She stopped herself and moved. "Come on. Same line."
Isobel caught up, her shoes making soft sucking sounds. She watched the exposed ground to their right.
Ruth followed her attention.
Upright shapes stood where water had been.
At first she took them for posts revealed by the falling tide. Then one lifted a foot. Another raised its head, and the whole uneven line began to move.
Roughly forty people crossed the seabed towards the hamlet approach. Salt-white faces showed above dark oilskins. Some wore jerseys stiff with sand. A woman’s open coat dragged behind her through the channels, though her feet continued at the same measured pace.
Water poured from their sleeves.
Gavin’s good hand closed on Ruth’s coat. "Who the fuck are they?"
Ruth could hear each foot coming free of the mud. No voices reached them. One man turned his face towards the family, showing a cheek pressed flat against the teeth beneath it.
Nineteen fifty-three. The storm year her mother would name, then stop speaking about.
Ruth reached back for Isobel. Her mother’s sleeve passed under her fingers, stiff with cold.
"Stay close. We can get round this end."
Gavin released her coat. "No. Back to the car. Get the doors shut."
He turned before she could catch him, cutting across a newly emptied pool towards the firmer return route. His first step held. His second sank to the knee.
Ruth swung round. "Stop. Keep your weight still."
He tried to pull the leg free. Mud swallowed the other boot, then rose to his thighs.
"Get hold of my belt. Just pull me sideways. I can—"
His slung elbow jerked down.
The strap tightened across his neck. Gavin made a sharp, baffled noise and grabbed his bad wrist with his good hand. Beneath the sling, the operated arm pulled straight, dragging his body lower.
"Fuck. Ruth. Fuck, something’s got—fuck!"
Ruth dropped onto her knees on the shell bed. She caught the belt and hauled, but his shoulder moved before his legs did. A thick clunk came from under his coat. The smooth slope beneath the shoulder seam collapsed into a hollow, and a hard swelling pushed out below it, near his armpit.
His mouth opened wide enough to show the fillings.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck. My arm. My fucking arm."
Ruth braced one palm among the shells and reached farther down his belt. "Good hand on me. Here. Push with your feet."
He caught her upper arm. She leaned back with all her weight.
Shells slid beneath her supporting hand. Broken edges entered the heel of her palm, and she felt skin lift as her hand scraped backwards. Gavin came towards her an inch. She put the other hand down and dragged again.
A strip peeled from the base of her fingers. Blood ran into the shell fragments. She could feel grit against the exposed flesh, sharp and separate, while Gavin’s weight pulled her forward.
She hooked both forearms beneath his good arm and fell backwards.
Mud released his legs with two heavy sucking blows. He landed across her knees. His bad arm hung long and wrong, the sling twisted round the wrist. He tried to gather it against himself and screamed.
Isobel knelt beside him and covered his mouth.
"Don’t let them hear which one is hurt."
Gavin shook beneath her hand. Ruth could see his nostrils working, mucus shining on his upper lip. Beyond Isobel, the white faces continued inland. Whether they had heard, whether they cared, Ruth could tell nothing.
She pressed her bleeding hands against Gavin’s coat and pushed herself upright.
"Up. Good arm over me. We have to move."
He struggled onto one knee. Ruth took his weight through her shoulder rather than her hands. Trying to close her fingers sent pain into both wrists.
"Put it back. Please. Just put it back."
"Can’t here. Feet under you."
Together they got him standing. Isobel rose without help, wiping her palm down her coat.
A boy stood several yards away.
He wore a fisherman’s jersey, its neck stretched loose above a white throat. Perhaps sixteen. Sand packed the sockets of his eyes. When he blinked, grains spilled down his cheeks and lodged at the corners of his mouth.
Ruth tightened her elbow against Gavin’s ribs.
The boy opened his mouth. "Isobel."
Her mother stepped towards him. "Calum."
Ruth knew the name. Her mother’s brother, lost in the storm. The boy’s face supplied nothing she could use: no warning, no way past, no reason he should still have that young mouth.
A roar reached them from behind.
Gavin’s weight shifted as he turned. Ruth turned with him and saw the returning sea.
A steep face of water advanced across the bare ground, folding over itself without breaking flat. The car vanished behind it. Foam rushed along the channels on either side of the causeway, reaching ahead of the main wall.
Ruth dragged Gavin towards the gap between the nearest drowned and the foot of the slip.
"Stone. Now. Mum, follow."
His boots dragged. Every jolt brought a low, closed-mouth cry. The dislocated arm swung against his thigh, and she could spare neither hand to support it.
Calum remained beside Isobel. Ruth reached for her mother’s sleeve and caught only wet cloth before it slipped through her damaged fingers.
"This way."
She had to turn back to Gavin.
The lowest stone lay one long step above the sand. Ruth drove her knee onto it and pulled herself up on her forearms. Gavin’s good hand left her shoulder so he could reach the stone.
Water struck him behind the knees.
He folded forward, and two white figures closed beside him. One took his injured arm above the elbow. The other caught his good upper arm and drew him straight.
Gavin’s boots lifted from the sand.
Ruth lunged down from the stone. Her fingers struck his good hand, skated across wet knuckles and failed to close. Raw flesh touched raw cold. She reached again, chest scraping the stone, and missed.
"Ruth. Get me. Get—"
The water rose to his mouth. He thrust his chin up, coughing foam, while the figures held him upright. His bad shoulder stretched lower under their grip. Ruth could see the hollow above it even through his soaked coat.
He tried to breathe and took water instead.
His face went under without his body falling. Through the brown surge she saw his eyes open, his mouth working. His good forearm strained upwards between the hands holding him. Five spread fingers broke the surface.
Then those went under too.
Ruth moved her knee towards the lip of the stone. Water struck her chest and drove her back. She pressed her forearms down, held herself there and drew the knee up beneath her.
From the stone, she called once. "Mum!"
Isobel stood waist-deep a few yards away. Her coat lifted round her. Calum offered his hand.
Her mother walked to him.
Ruth pushed up onto one elbow, but Isobel had already taken the boy’s hand. Water climbed between them and Ruth. Her mother’s face disappeared first behind the surge, then her shoulders. Calum’s white forehead remained visible beside her until both were covered.
Ruth waited with her mouth open.
Neither came up.
Another wash filled her coat and the pocket holding her phone. She crawled to the next stone, dragging the wet weight of herself by her elbows. Her palms left thin red marks that the water immediately removed.
The key remained in her mother’s coat. No house to empty now. No arm to settle into its sling.
She tried to close her hands. Her fingers stopped halfway.
From far out, at about the midpoint of the crossing, a familiar voice called, "Ruth."
She kept her mouth shut.
Above the slip, the path rose towards the same six lights. Ruth climbed with her hands held away from her coat, placing each foot before lifting the next. No door opened.
Behind her, water began sucking down between the stones again.