Dead but Dreaming - part 1
Circa 1988 — 12 years old
Growing up in a seaside suburb in the 1980s was ideal. But the backdrop to this was Apartheid South Africa — a horror I was mostly unaware of, and sheltered from. Yes, a very privileged position, though I didn’t recognize it at the time./ (More on this in a future post.)
The Goonies, The Lost Boys, surfing, skateboarding, snorkeling for crayfish, spearfishing, fishing, swimming… Pristine beaches, a dramatic coastline. Cold, clean waters just a hundred meters down my road to the west, and behind me, a mountain range looming over the coast like some ancient Titan. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect location. I sucked the marrow out of life as any kid in that time and place would have: smashing my teeth on my BMX, breaking bones on my skateboard, and nearly drowning in surf just beyond what I could almost handle.
I had many friends, yet I always felt like an outsider. Often I’d vanish into books and comics for weeks on end — Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth were stalwart companions, gifted to me by my father and great-uncle.
Uncle Mike also gave me a toy Nautilus submarine — battery-powered, made of metal, sea green. I’d take it to the beach and swim with it in the shallows, imagining it in the deeps. That cinematic POV children have — the one most adults lose — was in full effect.
Uncle Mike was full of sea stories. He’d been a rescue swimmer in the Suez Canal during WWII — a legitimate hero, though like most real ones, he never talked about it until near the end of his life. The sea was his element. He encouraged me in ways that would later become defining. He used to regale me with tales of The Submarine…
A legendary great white shark said to have patrolled False Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1980s. While some claim it was a real, massive shark — estimated at 7 meters (23 feet) — others consider it an urban legend, possibly started by journalists. Eyewitness accounts, including those of shark expert Craig Ferreira, support the existence of a large and powerful great white, though its exact size remains unconfirmed.
And then there were stories of Atlantis, aliens, and monsters from the abyssal ocean. He set my imagination on fire.
One foggy afternoon, I walked out to the giant granite boulders along the shoulder of the bay. A thick mist was rolling in fast over the sea. As I stood on the rocks, I was overcome by a very strange sensation — the sense of something huge rising from the ocean. Some vast, strange combination of octopus and shark and humanoid, with wings. I held out my arms, and in my mind I called to it — feeling it rise through me.
Rapture.
Of course, you’ll say: Cthulhu.
But I had never heard of Cthulhu.
Not until a week later, when I was in the library. I was pulling another book from a shelf when Disciples of Cthulhu almost literally fell out — or found me. The shock that ran through me when I saw the cover, then read the description, was electric.
To be continued in part 2...