Castle Road

Gradually you notice that your senses are functioning. They are picking up so little information, it takes a while to register they are there at all. It is pitch dark, and quiet. There is a roughness against your cheek, and a crick in your neck, and -- now that you think about it -- the ground is cold and hard -- and gritty -- at your side. Your head aches, and your joints ache, and the sting of pins and needles blazes in your right hand. Everything is cramped and sore. Everything is bewilderment.

You crane your head around in search of a clue to your location, but there is no glimmer of light anywhere; all you discover is that looking up and to the left sends arrows of pain through your neck. There is a tightness in your chest when you breathe deeply, a creakiness between the ribs, but it feels good to be breathing. The air smells sooty and decrepit, familiar somehow. There is a dank, electric undercurrent that you half recognize.

Fingers flex at your command -- toes -- everything still seems to be connected. You open your mouth to shout for help, but quickly close it again, not knowing why. Just where are you, anyway?

Think back.

Fragments of your life flicker into focus, detailed but fragmented, with no clear sense of who you are. Your name is Alex. You have a job to do, something important. You have -- no, wait -- had a lover, but -- never mind, don't think about that. Don't think about him. Don't. Something terrible happened there, but it's done now, doesn't matter. Right now there are grains of sand biting into the skin of your face, and a suffocating darkness, and some kind of noise, unidentifiable. A murmur.

Where are you?

Some things are clear enough: you see yourself walking the streets, sitting behind a desk, typing documents. You see a kitchen -- indeed, it snaps into terrifying focus, placing you there, disorientingly: opening a fitted cupboard, reaching for crockery, what the fuck is going on? Whirling points of light cloud your vision, but the fear is real and immediate and for a few moments you can't breathe, caught by the terrible notion that everything that has happened since that moment was just a fever dream, years of your life deleted at a stroke, and there you are again, thrust into your own past. It is summer there, and the kettle has just boiled, and you are taking a cup in which to make tea, and a neighbour's music throbs through the open window.

No, that's not it.

Your heart is beating hard, and for a moment you think you might be sick, but you are here now, and it is dark and cold, and there is a movement of air across your face, and that noise is getting louder. Your limbs are cramped, but you can move, and you push yourself, awkwardly, into a sitting position, trying to make sense of your surroundings.

Where were you, before this?

You remember sitting in your living room, which is small but comfortable. You have made tea for your guests, who are police officers. They are asking you questions, and you don't know how to answer, but you know the questions make you sad, the kind of sad that consumes the whole world with a dreadful, all-encompassing despair. Something terrible has happened.

You remember lying in a bathtub, sweating from the heat, hiding behind clouds of steam. There is nothing inside you but sorrow, a great yawning emptiness, and you would be sobbing if you still had the energy, but you aren't because there is nothing left. Hours pass, and when you finally rouse yourself you are chilled to the bone, and everything is damp and cold, and the realization that you are still alive stings like a hard slap across your face. By all rights your life should be at an end, but it isn't. A great black void has taken the place of your future and you have no choice but to fall into it.

That's not it either.

The last thing you remember is being at work. You are a flunky, an anonymous unit in the most menial rank of the Accounts Dept. A data processor, entering figures into databases all day. You wear a shirt and tie, but no-one cares what you look like, and if they have reason to notice what you do it means you've done it wrong. You don't remember how long you've been there, but you know you've never been noticed -- which could be cause for some thin kind of pride, but isn't. None of that matters, because when you get home you will be in the arms of -- no, don't think about that.

The noise is getting louder, a kind of distant roaring, and it is coming from one direction, but however much you try to concentrate on that direction it doesn't come any clearer. Still, you are quite conscious now, quite aware. You are on your feet and, dark as it is, trying to feel your way through the space. The ground seems level, without obstacles, until you trip over the rail.

You were summoned. Noticed. You've never been noticed, but this time, somehow, you were. Brought to the attention of your boss, and his boss, and his. You feel a thrill of fear remembering it, a vacant, impersonal kind of fear. To be noticed means you have done something wrong, but you are only a flunky, you don't care about that. Perhaps they will fire you, but you don't care about that either. You think about it, but have no idea what you did wrong, what you could possibly have done wrong. There are gaps here, but you're certain they are about you and -- don't think about him -- about you, not about work, not about being noticed. What could you possibly have done wrong?

It takes a few moments to decide that it's a rail. At first, it seems just an obstacle, but it is smooth and linear and metallic and vibrating slightly. It extends away in both directions, and from one of those directions emanates that gradually increasing roar that, once the thought occurs to you, sounds like nothing so much as an approaching train. A rail in the close dark. Under the ground.

You were summoned, and so you went. Granted an audience far beyond your station, brought into the presence of some high-up. A board member? Something like that. She smiled like a Cheshire cat and offered you a drink. You were vaguely surprised by the blandness of her office, its thin grey carpet the same as yours, its desk only slightly more imposing. The plate glass windows gave onto a spectacular panoramic view; there was plenty of space, and the chairs were upholstered in rich leather, and there was a drinks cabinet, but still: you were disappointed. Was this it?

Like the kitchen, everything snaps into focus. Rails, underground, the noise of an approaching train. A glimmer of light from that direction? You aren't sure, but if it isn't now it will be soon, and when it is you don't want to be in its path. All that matters is to be out of the way.

You stumble back, away from the rail, and find yourself in more space than you expected. If this is a tunnel, it's a wide one. Still, in a couple of paces you run up hard against the wall, a wall that curves up and over you. The first part of your body to make contact is your forehead, and for a few moments you are seeing stars. The wall stretches away in both directions, but the roar of the approaching train is suddenly much louder and you have nowhere to run. As light sweeps in, blindingly, around you, you press yourself against the wall, and -- despite everything -- see his face. For an instant, your heart breaks, just as it did the first moment you knew he was gone, dumbly clutching your tea cup, answering questions you could barely hear through the pounding blood in your ears.

Then the train is upon you, and for a few seconds your world is lit up by the light from its windows as they strobe past. A painted vamp looms above you, lounging on a sofa: "Keep mum, she's not so dumb!" The train is feet away, no threat at all; within, commuters with newspapers, listening to walkmans, flash by, oblivious. You are in some kind of station, but incomplete. There is no platform. Beside you are piles of flagstones and bolts and porcelain insulators. The tunnel narrows only a short distance away, and there is some kind of exit there, open, unused.

In moments, the train is gone again, rumbling off into the distance. Darkness enfolds you, but you know your way now and turn in the direction of that briefly-glimpsed opening. As you stumble towards it, the sound of the train recedes to a barely audible vibration.

That's when you hear the chanting.
Posted by matt at April 4, 2004 02:32 AM