Jacob moved slowly over the tussocks of grass, making sure to f keep his footing, worried about going over on his ankle. The last thing he needed was a twisted ankle on top of the knee and the burned foot.. The consolation here was that it was soft and cool underfoot, meaning he wasn’t finding it too difficult to traverse on account of his missing shoe. It was almost soothing on the burning foot, and he was thankful of it.
He was still perturbed by how silent everything was, but he tried not to pay too much attention to it as he walked. If he wasn’t careful, it would push through what defences he had left and he would find it too difficult to keep going. He wasn’t sure just how long he had been in this limbo (for want of a better word), but he knew that unless he left moving, he would find it difficult to find his way back out of it. If there was a way back out.
“Of course there bloody is,” he said aloud, regretting it again as his voice came out flat before it was swallowed whole by the stifling whiteness around him. Was he even going tin. The right direction now? He wasn’t sure. He tried to make sure that he didn’t deviate, figuring it was best to make sure he had a straight trajectory, keeping the threshold to his rear as he walked. What else could he do? Just keep walking and think on Chloe, think of his wife. Think of his life. There was nothing else to do but continue forward.
As he walked, his mind began to drift, his senses having nothing to stimulate themselves with, his brain regressing back into his memories. There was something about this very act, this place, that seemed to bring back some memories that he had completely forgotten about. Something of his childhood, long ago. It was the feeling of the wet grass under his bare foot. The fog.
A shadow crossed far ahead, deep in the mist. He paused. Unsure if he had just seen what he thought he had just seen.
There, again, going in the other direction.
A sound. So very faint. Similar to the sound he was making. Light footsteps on soft grass. Gentle steps. Coming up there’s rom where the thing had crossed the threshold.
He stood motionless. And watched.
Should I shout? Say something?
No.
What if it’s just someone else out walking, lost in the fog perhaps?
No.
I should shout. I need help.
You’ll die.
There voice that was answering his thoughts was completely alien to him. It wasn’t a voice that he would recognise. It was barely articulate, and he had to delve deep to hear the final two words.
You’ll die.
There, louder.
“Sod it,” he breathed. “Hello?”
“Hello?” The voice that came back was disturbingly close. Just up ahead to his right. Where the shadow was.
“Hello?” He shouted again, picking up his pace after resuming his stride. He turned slightly and tried to go in the direction of the sound. It was oddly familiar, yet muffled. “Are you lost too?”
“Are you lost too?”
A coincidence, nothing more. The words typical of two strangers who find themselves in a strange place. It wasn’t too far away, and he saw the shadow move through the mist again. A lone figure. It seems to be moving across from right to left and then away, disappearing into the mist.
“I’m nearly at you I think, please stay still.” He tried to keep the panic out his voice, and tried to project it as calmly as possible.
“Stay still,” the voice said. Yet it was further away. He really recognised it.
He broke into a light jog, the grass thinning out underfoot. There were less tussocks and clumps that he could go over on, and so was able to move at a good pace. He must catch up with the owner of that shadow. If he was with someone else, then surely they could find a way out together. He wasn’t sure if it was juts his imagination or not, but the mist seemed to be thinning a little, and he could see further ahead. The figure was still on the cusp of being able to be seen and not seen, and seemed to never be in the same place twice. He thought that the person could be panicking, and tried to make himself sound even calmer still.
“Please, stop moving, I’m nearly at you.”
“I’m nearly at you.”
“Yes, I know, I can almost see you.” The grass was thinning underfoot, some other soft cool substance was mixed in now, something darker, yet he couldn’t quite figure out if it was just soil or not.
“I can almost see you.”
It was almost a perfect mimicry. Each time. He began to think that whoever it was, was staying ahead of him just out of sight deliberately. He began to feel less sure about if he should be catching up with him - for the voice was most assuredly male.
Something else up ahead loomed out of the mist before him, large, reaching overhead. A mesh cutting through the fog. The dark shape danced beyond it. He continued his pace until he reached
A fence?
A large wire mesh fence. Easily eight or nine feet high. Much taller than him. It brought him to a complete standstill, and he thought of nothing to do but gaze through and beyond as he hooked his fingers through the gaps. Confusion reigned. He was obviously somewhere, but he could be damned if he knew where. Underfoot the grass was all but gone, and he knelt down, picking up some of the “dirt” between his fingers. He had seen this before. Rubber. Chopped rubber that they use to put down in play parks and some non-grass football pitches and basketball courts.
“Hello?” The voice was still ahead, beyond the fence.
Something made Jacob continue to crouch there, and not answer. He decided instead to wait. There was no surprise what came next, and even though he half expected it, it still put a chill up his spine.
“Are you lost too?” Further away.
He remained where he was. He did not dare himself to answer. He finally recognised the voice. He had heard it before. On videos that Chloe had had shot of their wedding. If the speech.
Of him giving the speech.
Jacob.
It was his voice.
He was sure of it. As sure as he could be.
Considering you don’t normally hear yourself externally.
Yet he had, recently. Chloe had had him watch the video of the wedding with her the night after she announced she was pregnant. She had asked him to go around the corner to the small shop there and pick up a tab of ice cream. By the time he was home she had lit all the candles and queued up their wedding video. She had looked so, well, cute, sitting there on the couch, covered in blankets, her legs up beside her, knees towards her chest. Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight, that smile on her perfect lips.
He had watched the whole thing with her and after it and the ice cream had finished, they had made love right there on the couch, by candlelight.
Something muffled, even further ahead. He just caught the end of it.
“…stay still.”
He did as he was told. He was happy now to let the thing move ahead of him. Move ahead through the mist. So long as it was moving in the other direction, he was fine. He suddenly realised that he didn’t wish to meet the owner of the voice.
Not one bit.
As he stayed where he was, he began to recall what the experience of walking semi-barefoot over the grass had reminded him of. A camping trip when he was young. His parents had hired a caravan and driven to the east coast, one of those campsites that had a few modern families but not too much. Not too big either, so it didn’t feel as though you had swapped city living for slightly more basic city living. He could never understand why people camped purely to book in to one of those really big campsites that had a huge entertainment block with gym and spa facilities, a bar, restaurant, swimming pool, full laundry facilities, and the rest. Yet they called it camping. The amount of high earth cruiser type motor homes that even clogged up the roads now was testament to how many people enjoyed that type of experience. Not them. He recalled his mother saying on the telephone that they would be going - that was how Jacob found out - and how she was excited at he prospect of escaping from the hassles of modern living for a while. That said, they had hired a camper van, when they could have quite easily just bought a tent and all gone off into eh wilderness. That was proper camping. Not whatever they were doing. Although, he supposed, they had chosen a site with nothing more than a washing line and a toilet Blok with outside sink, so he probably good class it as proper camping in comparison.
He had risen on the first night, bursting for the toilet. He recalled it vividly, as he had had a dream, a most vivid and nightmarish dream. So long ago, just a mere seven year old and yet all these years later he could still recall snatches of it. Bad snatches of it. Something to do with a play park. The much he could remember. He had been sitting on a swing alone in the middle of one of the those afternoons in the middle of summer, where the sky is an endless ocean of blue, the sun beating down impassively on his face. He couldn’t really recall the bulk of the dream but he remembered how it ended. He had been on that swing, absently watching a larger group of children play on the climbing frame and mini-roundabout. He had been wishing he could join them when a sudden gust of warm air blew across him, carrying with it an aroma unlike anything he had ever smelled before. It was both sweet and foul and it had filled his nostrils, causing him to gag. It was then that a hand had clamped itself down on his shoulder and a voice washed over him carried on thet same dark breeze.
“Don’t you want to join them?” It had asked, the words bubbling behind his ear, as though the speaker with a throat full of liquid.
He had turned around and that was when his memory failed again. The seven year old him had awoken screaming, drenched in sweat inside his sleeping bag on a cheap hard caravan bed and bursting for the toilet.
Not wanting to wake his parents, he had got up as stealthy as he could and taken hold of the small flashlight beside the caravan door, opening it quietly and slipping out.
It had been raining and the ground was wet. He realised too late that he hadn’t put anything on his feet and was only wearing his sweat drenched pyjamas, with the cool night air causing the damp material to cling to his skin he was shivering uncontrollably as he walked, attempting o find his way to the toilet block. All around him were the guy ropes of tents, like a low-fi security system. Or barbed wire littering the trenches of no man’s land. He briefly tried to cheer himself up as he walked in the direction he presumed the toilet block lay (the night air was thick with drizzle and for the life of him he couldn’t see it’s welcoming lights from were his tent was) and imagined that he was a soldier in World War I, sent out on as secret reconnaissance mission to locate the German command trench, infiltrate it and confirm the presence of their high ranking officers to begin to turn the tide of the battle. That didn’t last long sadly, and the cold, dark and silence began to eat away at him after only a few moments.
He had somehow managed to get himself turned around and arrived at the edge of the campsite, his feet meeting the rough gravel of the road that ran parallel to the main park. He knew the toilet block was near the road but he must have walked either too far down or too far up. He turned, presuming it was back the other way, and walked hurriedly, nowhere wet than ever before with the cold night smirk merging with the perspiration of his night clothes. Soon he began to near the block, seeing the welcoming lights that had been kept on inside for any camper that wished to use the facilities after dark, despite the fact that the rain had begun to get heavier.
As he neared the block, he tried his best to shine his flash light towards the door, casting large shadows either side of the entrance. He was only a few feet away when one of those large shadows stood up and began to lurch towards him. He had screamed, unable to help himself, falling bak on to the wet grass and soaking himself through even more. His flashlight had frenziedly thrown it’s thin beam in every direction before he could settle it on the creature that was lurking towards him. It threw it’s hands up over its face and staggered back itself, strange noises sitting from it and increasing in volume.
It had taken Jacob a few moments to realise just what the cacophony of strange colours and features were that he was looking at, and the strange sounds that he was hearing. Until he Bega to make out more.
“For chrissake what are ye doin wit the light ya fukkin…”
That was all he needed to hear. There had been a party when his family had arrived at the sight, a group of teenagers in the tent area with a load of cheap single man tenets and enough alcohol to run a bar on the camp site. The shape lurching to and from before him, it’s arms up over it’s face, was one of the aforementioned teenager who, Harry presumed, had imbibed a little too much and had fallen asleep agains the wall of the toilet block.
Jacob had got up and made his way back to his tent, all feelings of needing the toilet dissipated and now more wet and colder than before. A few torch lights had gone on in various tents and an angry male voice and shouted at him to SHUT UP just after he had screamed. They must had thought that he was perhaps one of the teens mucking around, or perhaps didn’t care for the welfare of children to the extent that you would gladly shout at one of them to upset if you heard a terrified scream. Jacob recalled that most of all, being one of the things that had always affected hun the most out of the incident. Now, as an adult and recalling that experience, he had been disgusted at the lack of concern. His cream, he had thought shortly after, had been from the mouth of a child, yes, yet it had also contained real terror. At that point in time, anything could have been shambling towards him, particularly something with malicious intent. He had been briefly scared for his life.
He hoped he would show more compassion than that, particularly towards his own child.
That put him on the track to think about his wife once more, about Chloe, specifically Chloe curled up on the couch, waiting for him so they could watch something together. He wanted that now. He wanted that more than ever. Her smile cast towards him as he entered the room, making room for him beside her on the couch. Why couldn’t he have that?
How long have I been waiting here?
He tried to stretch, his legs having gone to sleep; .He cocked his ear and dropped his breath so that it was as shallow and as quiet as possible. He was listening for the figure in the mist, the one that he hoped had moved far away from him by now, since he was once more lost in reverie.
Time passed and Jacob waited, then waited a little more, just to be safe.
Silence. That same suffocating silicon. Nothing more. He began to move, still running his hands along the fence but now trying to find a way through. Whoever that was mimicking his voice had gone through, and must have done so without too much deviation as it’s silhouette wasn’t gone from via for long enough to convince Jacob that the figure had taken any time at all to circumnavigate it’s way around the fence.
Then again, but could have just passed through t.
He supposed anything was possible
He continued searching for a little more until he found it not far to the left from where he had been waiting. At first he couldn’t even make it out. Then he saw it. A gap in the fence.
It was a blink. Nothing more.
No wait, he sneezed. Closed his eyes but for a moment.
The fence wasn’t behind him. It was as though he had taken a hundred steps forward, not one. There was no grass underfoot. There was no rubber underfoot.
Perhaps, he thought, but it’s under all this snow.
Full dark, the whiteness of the ground illuminated by large lights somewhere above, the glow diffused by freezing mist. His breath condensed before him and he shivered. Still clad in nothing but his running clothes, he was now woefully, completely and utterly underdressed for where he was.
When I am.
If I am.
Chloe.
HELP ME.
He jumped on the spot, flapping his arms around. The fog had closed right in along with the drop in temperature. All the distinct moments up until that one, he could understand. It wasn’t right, but he could make sort of sense out of it. There was a timeline. There was a narrative to it all. There was nothing of the sort here. This was wrong. Plain and simple. Wrong.
He had stepped through a gap in the fence and emerged here. Not only that but the light had gone. The very sun, had gone.
It’s not gone, it’s just dark.
He shooed that thought away, that patient and logical voice that served to try and placate him all this time. He didn’t need it just now. He knew that this didn’t make sense.
Well then, it said, changing it’s tone, go on then.
He had no choice. It was either walk on or freeze to death.
He made his way through the snow, deep enough to come up to his ankles. As perverse as it was to almost enjoy the coldness on his feet, it served to numb over the pain that had begun to resume in his buried foot, and he was grateful for that at least. If nothing else.
Something loomed out of the mist before him. His body jerked slightly, bracing himself, ready to run at the almost alien shape. About waist high, yet recognisable now he drew nearer. It was one of those children’s things (for want of a better word) that you would find in a play park. Normally shaped like a small horse or motorcycle, and affixed to the ground with a large tightly coiled spring. They were a little bit past his time, but he had seen them in pub play gardens and the like, aimed at smaller children. He approached it, gingerly brushing the snow away, revealing bright red plastic underneath. A little more, despite his fingers going bright red and numb. He stepped back. Yes, as he thought. It was clear even though he had moved between the lights and his own shadow overlay the diminutive ride. A motorbike. Along the side running atop a yellow lightning bolt was the word EZRider rendered in white with a thick black outline, in a font normally associated with racing bikes and formula one cars. He wondered briefly if older children didn’t perhaps have a field day at that.
Next to the EZRider was another shape that he absently wandered over and brushed the snow from, his fingers resuming their numb state despite the feeling just coming back to them. This one was a blue horse, a large rainbow running up from the top of it’s hind legs along it’s side and arcing up towards a pink saddle festooned with stars. In thick multicoloured bubble lettering, this one said Sparklehorse.
EZRider and Sparklehorse, well then, he thought, just a shame neither of you are a little bigger and I could ride you the hell out of here. Ride the EZRider. I’ll make myself an EZRider. He coughed up laughter at that, despite the fact it was less funny than the average christmas cracker joke. Oh boy, this is how it starts. This is how I start to lose my mind.
He left both the horse and the motorbike behind and continued onward, keeping himself moving to stay warm. Numerous other shapes loomed out the dark and sodium tinged mist towards him as he did so, a see-saw, a roundabout, a series of irregular lumps he took to be tyres or something similar. Something to jump from one to the other.
Then ahead. He saw them. Swings.
Don’t you want to join them?
Something grabbed his lower spine with icy fingers before caressing it lightly. How odd that he should recall that nightmare, and that time in the campground, and now come across a set of swings.
He found himself walking towards them despite a feeling that he shouldn’t. Then again, to what end? To go where? He was fast convincing himself that something had occurred on the canal path and he was simply in a coma. If this was his mind and body’s way of dealing with it, then so be it. He had read an article a few years ago about a young woman who had contracted Legionnaires Disease and been in a coma for six weeks. She described in great detail a long and protracted series of dream sea nightmares, some of them lucid, that she had endured within that time. What was to say that that wasn’t what this was?
Because if that’s what was happening, you wouldn’t be standing here freezing to death thinking about this very thing, he thought. He supposed that could be true, but then again as he had never experienced anything in his life even close to this before, who was to say what was true and what wasn’t?
One hand caressed the frozen chain of the swing as the other one swept the snow off it. It landed with a soft whump, a sound he forever associated with being outside in the snow, making snowmen, rolling snowballs and sledging. Their winters in the sheltered part of the central belt where ehe had grown up had been notoriously mild, but there had been a couple. Once, his parents drove him and two of his friends up into the nearby hills, to a car park normally reserved for walkers. By the time they reached it, there were a few other cars there, people with the same idea. The crest of the hill that stretched above was full of crisp deep snow, with a few sledges making fast progress down towards the car park. Jacob and his friends had grabbed their own plastic sledges from the boot of the car and joined them. It was one of the best winter afternoons he had ever had, and even though he had begged to be taken the following year when there was next a white cap of snow in the hills, his father refused. Jacob had never understood why.
Of course you do, it didn’t end well did it?
He frowned as he continued to run his hand up the chain. Was that the case? He tried to recall the session ending. Surely they had gone home when night had begun to fall, his father presumably dropping both his friends off at their respective houses before returning home. Yet for some reason there was the sound of crying mingle with that memory, and he wasn’t sure if he had just fabricated that end to it as he stood there. Was that a woman crying? His mother? His mother was crying on the phone. Not that night, another night, softly after. Jacob had been confined to his room.
He shook his head, no, that wasn’t what had happened. They had been taken home. It had been incredible fun and he could never understand why he had never been taken back.
Still, that crying sound persisted. In the back of his mind. He tried to picture his mother, perhaps seated or standing, shedding those tears. With sudden alarm he found he couldn’t quite picture her face. He tried to grab hold of a firm memory. A morning going to church, him going - as always - reluctantly. A strict Catholic upbringing however meant that church was never out of the question. He would always attend mass, and it wasn’t until he was a teenager and had argued relentlessly for years that he was able to get out of going. But not easily. It was with great reluctance. He could still see the disappointment in his father’s facer. His mother sitting beside him as he told them triumphantly across the dining table that he was old enough now so that he couldn’t go. His father’s face, long and sallow under a thinning pate, frowning, deep lines. His mother in her blue Sunday dress, her hands fidgeting with the napkin, brining it up and dabbing it on her cheeks, long after any possible remnants of dinner had been done away with. She had been nodding along to his father’s diatribe. Yet he just saw Chloe’s face. Chloe’s face. Superimposed on his mother’s. He tried to focus, to really recall it, but all it seemed to do was impose his wife’s deeper into the memory.
He sat on the swing, burying his face in his hands.
Another hand clamped on his shoulder.
Starting and leaping up, he was oblivious to the freezing damp of his posterior, rounding on the swing and seeing nothing but luminous fog behind. If this is a dream, I wish it would end or change into a more pleasant one.
He decided he wished to leave this strange playwark frozen in fog in a deep part of his subconscious, so began to jog lightly through the snow. His feet were soaked as wells freezing and his whole body began to feel heavy and uncomfortable. He didn’t care, he just wanted to move away from these silent moments to childhoods and so continued in the opposite direction from where he had come, making sure to put as much distance between himself and the swing as possible, the sparklehorse and EZRider motionless and innocent beside it. All the just sat there in the stillness, waiting for someone else to come along, another child. Someone who would ride them, filling this strange frozen place with he sound of laughter. It wouldn’t be him.
Soon thy were out of sight and it began to get darker around him as he moved away from the large overhead lights that had illuminated the play area. He soon arrived to another large fence similar to the one that he had squeezed through, but this time there was a door. Not a fenced door as one would expect, but the type of door found in the interior of a house, planed and painted wood, inset into a metal Fram linked with the rest of the fence. Jacob heard something behind him as he stood before the door, something far back towards the swings. A soft whump sound.
Just more snow falling from the swing or one of those stupid little rides, he thought. I’ve passed through there and disturbed something.
Possibly. Possibly not. He thought to the figure that had been ahead of him in the fog. The one that had flitted about, moving stealthily and mimicking his voice. Where had it gone?
Whump.
Closer.
It was behind him. He tried the door handle, his skin searing itself to the frozen metal. He turned but it would not move.
“Hello?” The voice rang out behind him. Faint. He guessed the other side of the swing, a fair distance.
HE went either side of the door, peering through the fence at the fog, trying to see what was behind the door that could be stopping it from opening. Something odd was happening when he tried to look upon the area directly behind it. That particular spot was bathed in darkness so absolute that he couldn’t see a thing. The light was crying to him from the swings, an beyond the fence. The door was of normal height and the light would be carrying over the top and illuminating behind it, expect it wasn’t, there was just a void there.
Whump.
That one as right behind him. He turned, surprised to see a familiar shape about five feet from him. He recognised it straightaway, with it’s rainbow, stars and fun rounded letters. Sparklehorse.
A bell rang in his head. Something was familiar about his. A playpark in the snow. Isolation. Movement in the snow.
Was it animals? Yes. But not real ones. Moving, but only when not observed.
Had he watched something? A film? This had happened in a film. A little boy. A little boy with special powers.
A book. One he had read as a teenager. Was his brain appropriating, plundering his memories?
Of course it is, because you are in a fucking coma.
As soon as the thought had crossed his mind he closed his eyes and counted to five slowly before opening them. The child’s sit on ride was gone, and he was looking at nothing but his own footprints in the snow.
No, not just that. A shape, just beyond the mist. Moving towards him. It was becoming less ethereal the closer it was, and was becoming more and more tangible as he stood there and looked at it.
“Are you lost too?”
The voice rang out too loud. It came from the figure that was approaching him. His guts felt as though they had turned to ice.
“I’m nearly at you I think, please stay still.”
The figure wasn’t far now. Jacob could almost hear the crunch, crunch, crunch as it strode through the snow towards him. He let out an involuntary mewling sound and turned to the door. He had to get it open. He did not wish to be there when the figure caught up with him. The figure that was using his voice. He had a sudden premonition of another hand on his shoulder and being swung around to gaze into his own face, but nit his own face. Some kind of twisted version, as it brought itself right up to his own and -
The door was still not opening no matter how much he tried. He put his shoulder to it and brought all his weight down upon it. He cursed himself, wishing instead of running he had taken Tom’s first suggestion on board and joined the fucking gym instead. He had refused because he never saw himself as working out in a small sweaty environment in front of other people who were younger, stronger and fitter than he was. Tom had sighed, and explained that it was not like that, that he had been going since they moved up north all those years ago and it was absolutely fine. Jacob had reminded him that Tom was one of the people who were younger, stronger and fitter than him, even if the younger part was only by a few months. Tom had rolled his eyes at that. Jacob cared about Tom dearly, but when he did that he could, quite honestly, go to hell. Nonetheless, he had joined Jacob on his running and that had been that. No comments and no more coaxing to get to the gym. Now here Jacob was trying to barge a damn door out the way and getting nowhere.
Crunch crunch crunch
The footstep were so close now, and it was all Jacob could to to stop himself from turning around. He didn’t want to turn around, even when his own voice could be heard now at a conversational level.
“Please, stop moving, I’m nearly at you.”
Crunch
He shouldered the door again, then again. He felt it give, which gave him all the impetus he needed to keep going, now fuelled by pure adrenaline and nothing else.
Crunch
It gave a little more.
Crunch
More. A crack had appeared in the woodwork and that as just fine. If he couldn’t get it to move he would break the fucking thing down. Again he hit it, again.
Finally it gave. It burst open away from him as it simultaneously split apart. He didn’t know if he had felt or imagined the fingers brushing agains the snare arm when he fell forward, but later would deign to give it now more thought. He didn’t wish to know how close that this had gotten.
He landed on a soft carpet, facedown, the sound of a door slamming shut behind him. When he stood up, he realised he was in the middle of a large brightly lit room, with no door in touching distance.
He could do nothing more than return to the floor, and close his eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment