FOREST OF THE LOST

PART TWENTY SEVEN

50.

Terrence has come to take up a position where he can stand behind a short brickwork wall and look out at the sea where it extends out beyond the horizon. He is thankful he doesn't have any sort of desire to go any further towards that water on this occasion. As he gazes out, he sees what he would imagine to be a relatively large pirate like ship out close to that horizon; it is so far out that it is more miniature like than anything else.

There are three other boats out on the sea all of which are a lot closer to shore than they are to the much larger miniature ship and one of these boats is making its way to shore and Terrance watches it coming in.

The waves too come in thick, fast, and heavy and they crash against a high and lengthy rock formation that Terrence stands above and on the dry side of. Seagulls hover and dive, risking it all for whatever the waves may bring crashing into those rocks. How odd it is that with all the birds he had observed within the park, none of them had been seagulls.

He is lost in this moment; his mind is blank. For the first time in a long time, he has no focus, there is nowhere he needs to be, he has nowhere to go, not just yet anyhow. There is no compulsion to find anything, nothing to strive for or to attempt to achieve. It soon will be pointed out to him that there is somewhere Terrence needs to be ... somewhere he promised to give himself to.

Deep down he knows this, and in all honesty, he has come to feel indifferent to it. There is no fear, dread or want. If it is to be then it is to be. To his left a man approaches and Terrence does not hear or see this occur. An acknowledgement is only made when this fellow to the left-hand side of Terrence begins to speak.

'It sure makes you feel good to be alive, doesn't it?'

'What's that?' responds Terrence turning his head.

Terrence is surprised by a couple of things in this moment. The man to his left takes in a deep breath through his nose and breathes out through his mouth.

'The cool fresh sea air, it is good for the lungs you know. There are those who would swear by it that it will go a long way with easing the common cold.'

'Really, is that so?'

'It is. And as long as you don't succumb to harm then it might even add a few years or so to the average life span, not that either of us know anything about average.'

The man standing next to Terrence so happens to be Cecil Lynch, not exactly the same Cecil Lynch who Terrence had come across in the town park but the same man none the less. Cecil's impact or moment of disappearance within the town park occurred in 1997 when he was sixty-four years of age. With his release he had been returned to 1997 and now on a bright September afternoon in 2017, Cecil is a healthy eighty-four years old and is as capable of getting around by himself as any eighty-four-year-old still with a healthy demeanour can.

If anything, Cecil can pass for being years younger, a possible positive effect of going through what he had. Seeing Cecil and seeing that he is older but looking well are the two things which had surprised Terrence though if he had had thought about it, then it shouldn't really have surprised him at all.

Terrence had known that Cecil had got out despite having come across him twice more within the park after Cecil's release had been shown to him. It also would have been known or at least suspected that Cecil's release would see him back in 1997 so it would be obvious and clear that if Cecil still lived in 2017 then he would of course be older than what he had been in 1997; still, in 2017, Cecil does indeed look well.

'So, you remember?' asks Terrence, a rhetorical question but one he was compelled to ask.

'That place affects different people in different ways, we both know this'. Cecil himself now looks out towards the seemingly endless waters. 'Many people will pass through it many times and not experience anything odd or strange at all. Others will go in there one time and may never come back out.'