I picked up the old man and carried him towards higher ground. He was light in my arms, as though his corporeal state was dissolving with the wind blown sand. The shoreline stretched to infinity, punctuated by headstones of rock that gazed out to sea. Above all, the turgid sky swirled and heaved like the ocean below.

I found some steps that wandered up through the dripping stone. A turreted roof appeared through the fog, hunched over the headland and I supposed that this building was the destination of the steps. A feeling of déjà vu surged through me like a wave of nausea. Fragments of memory crystallized in my mind.

I climber higher up the slippery stairs and the old edifice reared up before me. It seemed to be a kind of gothic palace decaying in the briny mist, bristling with spires and crumbling into the black cliffs that leered over it. Attraction and repulsion held hands in my heart.

Whatever awaited me there was a relic of another time, an anachronism that had snapped its chains and overthrown the past. Each step dragged me closer to the kiss of destiny, a date with dissolution and despair. But where the hell was I?