Twenty-three

Twenty-three

Gardner arrived at the beach house late that night, fell into bed and slept until the dawn. True to his habit, he arose immediately, prepared the coffee pot, turned it on and then set out for his morning walk.

The breeze coming off the ocean was fresh and cool, so much more refreshing than the more humid mornings he was used to. He wandered down to the water and began to walk along the beach, skirting the edge of the tiny waves that rolled across the sand and then returned, hissing, to the sea.

In the distance, the sun was peering over the edge of the ocean, and its light brought every imperfection in the sand into stark clarity. Up ahead, Gardner could see that something had raised little ridges of sand that now sent long shadows across the beach. As he approached, he could see that these ridges were the result of shallow trenches dug into the surface. It was as if someone had been writing on the beach with a finger dragged into and along the sand.

Now that he was standing directly above the writing, he could see that it was the number twenty-three inscribed in the beach. He stood for a while, puzzled by the significance of such an apparently pointless act. Was it some sort of secret message?

He imagined a spy creeping down on to the beach from cover, writing his message and scrambling away to disappear in the dunes. Frogmen came swimming from the ocean, submariners paddling in rubber dinghies on to the beach, to read the numbers and then slip back into the dark waters.

Two lovers came holding hands down to the beach, inscribed their lucky numbers together, symbolising their union, then turned and went laughing away into the night.

A lone beachcomber wandered along the shore, stopping briefly to create his inscrutable and sandy declaration to the world before continuing his solitary course.

It was strange and unsettling, an apparently meaningless message to an unknown recipient. Gardner resumed his stroll by the water’s edge, pondering on the matter.

And then he saw more of the messages. There were lots of them, spread out along the beach, some in groups and others alone. Suddenly Gardner was seeing whole gangs of spies, parties of lovers and beach bums. What had started as an interesting mystery was becoming an insane conspiracy.

All of the messages declared the number twenty-three to the heavens. He counted them and came to the conclusion that there were twenty-three. This was becoming ridiculous.

Gardner hunched his shoulders and continued his walk at an increased pace.

But he could not stop thinking about the messages. All that day he pondered on their meaning. He tried to immerse himself in the laziness of a vacation by the ocean but kept returning to the conundrum.

He still had no answer in the evening. He ate a simple meal out on the porch, gazing up at the myriad stars in the night sky. For a few hours he dozed in the chair, free at last from the mystery in the sand.

When he awoke, it was late. The moon had risen and the night quite clear, so he decided to walk a while on the beach. He plodded once again through the dunes.

As he reached the shore, he realised that the sands were covered in small, dark shapes as far as the eye could see. They were outlined sharply in the moonlight and cast dark shadows at their sides. Gardner approached, wary of this strange phenomenon.

He reached the nearest two shapes and saw that they were crabs, large ones, each with one huge claw and another, smaller one. They were moving around each other in strange patterns, every now and then dipping a claw into the sand. It seemed to be some sort of mating dance, for he realised that there were always two crabs involved together and all repeated the intricate pattern of the first couple.

Now he could see that the dipping claws were drawing lines on the beach. Their dance was producing a pattern, a pattern that Gardner could read. It read twenty-three.


Word count: 697
For No Dialogue Contest, September 1 - 7, 2023
Prompt: Twenty-three.