I never really loved the digging. Too much like hard work, I always used to say, and I’m not a young man anymore. So generally, if the finds aren’t near enough the surface for me to just pick them up, I’ll leave them be. Sometimes, though, you just can’t help yourself. You need to know what’s under there, so you get down on your knees and dig, dig, dig.
Last Saturday was like that. I hadn’t thought it would be, really. My knees had been acting up all week because of the damp, and I was mainly going out for the walk, rather than looking for any particular finds. To be honest, I was in two minds about taking the metal detector at all; it’s not exactly a lightweight piece of equipment. Back when I lived in London I always used to do mudlarking down the Thames. Wandering through the low tide with nothing but a bag, my eyes and a pair of thick gloves. I miss those days, without the weight of the detector. Without the need to dig.
I don’t even know why I took it. In the end, that stretch of beach is hardly virgin territory for hobbyists like me, and it’s usually been picked perfectly clean. So you can imagine my surprise when I started to pick something up just before Smeatons Pier.
It was almost dark by this point, and the cool salt air of St Ives harbour blew a fine spray of sand against my cheeks. It stung slightly, but not in an unpleasant way. Bracing, I think the word is. It was peaceful, quiet, and I was lost in my own thoughts, staring out over the darkening ocean, when the metal detector interrupted, breaking my trance.
I pulled out my little torch and shone it at the spot, looking for the telltale glint. But there was nothing but sand. Whatever it was must have been buried. I was debating with myself whether to leave it be when the detector barked again, more insistently. I hadn’t found anything else that day, so I sighed, pulled out my small, metal spade out of my bag, and started to dig.
It was only a minute or two before I saw it, a hint of gold-plated metal amid the coarser gold of the sand. A watch. The face was cracked down the middle, and the hands were frozen at four nineteen, but other than that it seemed to be in rather good condition. Not a bad little find, I remember thinking, as I started to clean the sand from around it. And uncovered the wrist it was still attached to.
I think I screamed. I must have cried out in some way, but nobody heard me, as there was no-one to hear but me. I cleared away a bit more sand, just to be sure of what I was seeing, and quickly revealed a stiff, unmoving hand. The flesh was icy cold and discoloured, so I was certain its owner must be dead, but it didn’t appear to have begun decomposing. I lowered myself slowly to the ground, trying to collect my thoughts, considering the thing I had just discovered with my clumsy, reckless digging.
I wanted to call the police immediately, but I don’t have a mobile phone, and it was a little bit of a walk to the nearest phonebox. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking when I tried to stand up, so I sat there for a while, my torch shining on that lifeless hand, trying to compose myself enough to go get help. It was an odd thing, that hand. The fingers were bent and bloody, and the nails had been chipped and broken. From the looks of it, the damage had happened before its owner had passed away.
Then I noticed something else in the sand next to it. Something protruding ever so slightly from the sand I’d already disturbed. It didn’t seem like part of the body, and I found myself reaching over to try and pull it up. It slipped out of the sand easily, eagerly even, and I didn’t even need to dig.
It was a book. The cloth of the cover had worn away, and it was still wet from the seawater that covered the area at high tide. I expected it to be a useless lump of wet paper mush, fused together and unreadable, but when I pulled it open the pages came apart easily. There was a label at the very front, but the ink had run and I have no idea what it might have said. So I turned to the first page.
It was very strange. It was just the one word, solid capital letters in a small, neat typeface at the very centre of the page. It said ‘DIG’. I took that to be the title, and turned to the next page. ‘DIG’. Exactly the same. The third page. ‘DIG’. The fourth page. ‘DIG’. Dig, dig, dig, dig.
Holding it hurt my hands. You know the way that if you say or read a word over and over again, it starts to lose all its meaning? To just sound like a jumble of noises or unrelated letters? Well this was the opposite. Every time I read it, it was like the meaning of the word became more solid in my mind. I knew what it was to find your meaning buried in the earth, to claw your sense from under the sand and mud and soil, to dig.
I had almost completely unearthed the body when the police arrived. Apparently a late-night jogger had spotted the scene, and called them. They believed me when I explained to them how I had found it, though they were none too pleased that I had so thoroughly ruined what may well have been a crime scene. I don’t think it was, and one of the friendlier officers later told me the man had probably dug himself too deep a hole in the beach, and it had collapsed on him when the tide had come in. A tragedy, but not unheard of. They still weren’t pleased with me, though, and once they had my statement I was sent on my way. The book was in my bag, and they didn’t ask to look inside, so… I kept it. I probably should have mentioned it to the police, but they were very rude. I understand now, of course, that they were simply irritated that I had robbed them of their opportunity to dig.
Perhaps they sensed it, that need inside of us. Above us, you see, there’s only the sky, the infinite, a void of space and emptiness so incredible that to think of it in detail is to overwhelm the mind. But down, down into the earth. Through the many layers of this globe, this sphere built and crusted upon a single, beating point. The centre of the universe for each and every one of us, that glorious convergence from which everything, everywhere, is ‘up’. To reach it, to approach that source, that rolling, molten centre of it all, the only thing you have to do is dig.
I’ve dreamed of it, of course. Safe and happy below, wrapped on all sides by uncounted miles of crushing, loving, earth and stone. I see it, and watch the passing of history build upon it, layer after layer. To travel down into the ground is to travel through time, that’s what I always used to say, before I found my book. And I still believe it, but time is the least of the things that waits for us down there, things I can barely think of without collapsing in fear. A thousand terrible things, trapped and alone, out of air and out of light, all contained within those three hideous letters: DIG.
In those dreams I hold a spade. It screams when I plunge it into the weeping soil, and the voice it cries out with is my own. The soft mud begs me to stop, trying in vain to save me. But I do not listen, and the pitted ruin of my shovel moves lump after lump of it, tearing it free of itself, and piling it around me, sculpting my own grave. Bringing the ground up to meet me where I must be buried. It fills my lungs, and I am free. I am awake. The shovel is in my hand, and the book is open to its chapter and verse: DIG.
In the moments without the shovel, without the torn ground, I have tried to find out more about the book, maybe even get rid of it. A bookseller I asked about it pointed me towards you and yours, before I dug into him, and so here I came. To tell my story, of course, but another thing as well; cold, empty and calling. There’s something here, you see. Something to be dug up, rooted out, buried within. A hollow space that all eyes point towards. And I intend to reach it, if my fingers don’t give out first. I know where to dig.
