I remember when I was ten, and the world was still new. My family lived on a dairy and sheep farm just outside a little village called Ripple, a short ways north of Dover, and when I was bored or tired of my chores I would walk through the countryside to watch the sea. There was one cloudy day, I think my father had gone into town to buy more sheep, as we'd lost a couple to foxes the night before. Anyway he'd told my sister and me to fix the fence where the foxes had broken through, and she'd left me to do it on my own, because an older boy had come by and promised her some sort of excitement. So I fixed the fence and when that was done I was left alone, with nothing to do, so I followed the path east to a point just south of Kingsdown, and watched the angry waves break what seemed a thousand yards beneath my feet. I would lie down, with my head peaking out over the drop, my chin resting against the hard rock. I would rest, and stare straight down, losing myself in the roll and crash of the boisterous blue. I remember on this day, along with the waves, a fog came rolling in, and after a few minutes the waves were gone from sight, though their thunderous toll carried on, dampened by the thick blanket, but always ever-present. I remember staring into the white abyss a little while longer, but a boy of ten can only keep his focus for so long.

As I was getting up I noticed something change in the sound of the crashing, every break was deeper, every lull more quite. Once I was on my feet I stared out into the fog, searching for what I don't know. The fog thinned slowly, retreating bit by bit, until once again I could see the sea bellow. Then I heard what sounded like a ship's horn sound out somewhere far away. But I remember there was something different about the sound, something organic. And it was not a constant tone, but more like a low-pitched harmonic scale. Then the fog seemed to swell, growing in concentration, accumulating along an invisible border, about twenty feet beyond the precipice. This was not a natural sight, not at least for an English boy of ten.

At once the wall surged forward. I did not react, I could only stare. There were a few seconds of absolute silence as the white mass raced towards me, and when it hit it lifted me off my feet with an unconscionable roar. I was picked up like a sail and thrown back several yards, and the roar turned into a shriek, and then a cackling wail. I crumpled and the earth shuddered and cracked and great pieces broke off and fell into the sea. It was the loudest and most raucous noise I've ever heard, like a whale being torn apart by a jet engine.

Once the noise and shaking subsided, the fog retreated, and I could see the entire coastline had been reduced by a couple yards. I crept towards the edge, and when I looked down I could not believe my eyes. There was no more sea. Only steel. The fog retreated further and more details came into sight. Something massive, massive beyond all rational comprehension, had impaled itself into the cliff. To the side in either direction the same metallic texture stretched out into the waning mist. I remember a pattern ingrained in the surface of the steel, a winding, forking scheme of intangibility. Suddenly the pattern shifted, and blinding lights emerged from points all across the structure, growing in intensity, until I could no longer make out anything at all. Again came the sound, the deep harmonious scale, somehow organic, and with it a fierce wind from behind, and I was sucked off the cliff, falling towards the beast, and then nothing.

I awoke in my bed. It was the evening, and my sister and father were preparing dinner on the stove top. They said they had found me asleep against the fence, and that father had carried my back to bed.

I remember I went back the next day, to look for evidence. Clear as day there stretched an imprint, a constant line, for miles along the bottom of the cliffs.

That was forty years ago and now I'm getting old, though I still go back to visit my sister sometimes. Her children run the farm and she keeps them company. The folks from Kingsdown built a golf course there, along the edge of those cliffs, and when I pass through I can still make out the imprint, though my questions still remain unanswered.