In the light of the flashlight I looked at my watch, and then looked again.
One o'clock! I'd been “considering” it for two hours. There was no question of waiting till she was asleep now. She couldn't sleep for hours the night my father left. It would have to be now. It would have to be by the window.
I had another look out of the window.
The attic faced back. The storm porch was just below, with the coal pile under it. There was a sloping slate roof, held up by a wooden post.
I went backwards out the window and hung on till I felt the roof below, and went down the slates. There was a rainwater gutter at the end. I clutched on to it till my feet wrapped round the wooden post, and shinned down it to the coal pile, and turned.
The night was like day
It was weirder than day.
All the plants in the garden were looking at me.
I went across the grass and over the chain link fence. I went up the slope to the cliff, and heard the sea. It took me five minutes, going fast, to reach it, and I stopped and gaped.
Below, everything was a lake of silver.
I could see one arm of the bay, a cold moon colour, and apart from that nothing but silver. The sea was breathing slightly, a soft shushing sound.
I went as close to the edge as I could, and looked over, and saw only the bulge of the cliff, and got on my stomach and leaned farther, and still saw it. The cliff bulged out so far, the sea at the base wasn't visible.
I remembered looking up the cliff and seeing the bulge on top. It was the right bit of cliff, anyway.
I looked round in the moonlight and wondered where to start. I thought I'd start on a few big outcrops of rock that stuck out of the tough straggly grass. If the entrance to the path was so well concealed that no one had ever found it, it had to be an expert job.
I prowled round the shadowy parts with the flashlight.
I did it till the third heap of rock, when I ricked my ankle in a rabbit hole and came down hard. I rubbed the ankle and saw, in the flashlight, that it was twenty minutes to two. I thought that was enough. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and night was no time to do it. I'd do it by day, and it didn't matter if Annie was there or not. She didn't have to know what I was looking for.
I decided that and started getting up and saw it was a funny rabbit hole. It was a piece of slate. It had broken under my weight. I put the flashlight closer and saw the slate was the colour of the rock. It had been put there to look like rock. It would take a smart rabbit to do that.
I got on my knees and pulled the piece of slate out. It was a corner of a bigger piece and I tried to pull that out, too. It was embedded in the tough grass roots and wouldn't come. But I broke some more and uncovered a black hole underneath. It didn't smell earthy or stale, the hole. A fine fresh breeze blew up it.
I sat back on my heels and blinked at it. But it still took a minute to realize I'd found the entrance.
5. Through the Face
There were five steps, very steep, in something like a manhole. I went slowly down, shining the flashlight. The opening was narrow and irregular, but as I went lower it widened. At the bottom it was very wide. It was a room. It was square. It was cut in the rock. I shone the flashlight round. The walls were regular, the roof and floor regular; all regular, and very neat, as if it had just been swept. There was a hole in one wall, like a doorway. The breeze was coming through it. It was coming from a tunnel that I could see sloping sharply away.
I bent and went in the tunnel and started shuffling cautiously down it. The breeze was stronger in the tunnel, and I could hear it. It had a husky sound like someone blowing a bottle. I could feel it plucking at my clothes.
I'd gone about twenty feet when I saw the gun. It was lying by a wall. I knew right away it was old. But when I bent and picked it up, I saw from the bugle-shaped end that it was hundreds of years old. It had lain here for centuries.
It gave me a strange feeling suddenly. It gave me a feeling I was in a tomb. I wondered if it was true ghosts came up and haunted places and put lights out. I thought I'd go now.
I was thinking that when the light went out.
I nearly fell down with fright.
I knew it couldn't be ghosts. There couldn't be any ghosts. It was just that the bulb had gone. It had to be.
In the pitch blackness I could hear my teeth rattling. I was in such a panic I couldn't tell if it was the breeze plucking at my clothes, or something else. I'd dropped the gun. I just hung on to the flashlight. I bent in a sort of crouch and gave it a threatening shake, and the batteries moved inside, and it came on again. The end had come loose.
I tightened the end and thought I'd definitely go now. I'd done enough for one night. It was two o'clock, an hour since I'd left home. I could get back here any time. I didn't have to do it all at once.
While I was thinking this, I was shuffling on. I thought I'd go a few paces more. Then a few more after that. I'd got over my panic. I thought while I was here I'd see what was at the end of the tunnel.
I got to a blank wall, and poked the flashlight round, and found the tunnel went in a sharp bend, and started round with it.
I went round, then round again, descending all the time, and was suddenly dazzled by a blinding mass of silver.
I'd come out to the cliff I was below the bulge. The tunnel had cut right through it. I was perched on the west face with the wrinkled sea miles below.
There was a kind of zig-zag outside the tunnel, a slit in the rock. It zig-zagged down the cliff as far as I could see. It was the path.
Well, I'd found it. I could go now.
But I didn't go.
I had a crazy idea. I thought I'd see where the path went. I couldn't explain it. I just had to do it.
The path was in shadow, and I pointed the flashlight down and birds flew out. They flapped up one at a time like dusters. They did it slowly, as if they didn't want to do it at all. But they all did it, and in half a minute the zig-zag, right down to water level, was alive with gulls. The big silver birds wheeled in the night, not crying out, just flapping their wings. Right above the sea, I could see the step in the cliff sticking out.
It was so weird, it was like a dream.
The trench was cut deep in the cliff, about four feet. It was a long jagged tear, either a natural fault or deliberately cut.
Whether it was natural or not, someone had made steps in it. The first couple I could see quite clearly, although they were covered with crumbled rock from the cliff. The rest were so badly deteriorated there was just a bumpy downhill path. Storms, or birds, or the constant shower of debris from above had almost levelled out the steps.
I started slowly down them.
The surface was so crumbly, I couldn't step at all. I crammed the flashlight in my jeans, and went on my behind.
It took me half an hour, with rests in between.
On the last leg of the zig-zag the steps appeared again as if the sea sometimes washed up. I got on my feet and walked to the bottom and hung on to the cliff there.
The sea was winking and slapping just below.
I can't explain now what I did.
I knew it would be a hard job scrambling back up the cliff. I knew it would take time.
I can't explain it. But in dreams you do things without explanation. And it's like a dream to me.
Even now, after everything — a fantastic dream.
I jumped, anyway.
6. Who's There?
I landed on the platform and flashed the light in the cave and saw it was deep (it is twenty-four feet). I examined it a long time before moving. I saw the floor was safe and inspected the roof and walls. I saw the iron bolts in the wall, and the barrel of hard tar secured there. The floor was scattered with stones and rubbish flung in by the sea.
It sloped down backwards, and there were two steps down to it from the platform.
I went carefully down them and saw, in the floor of the cave, a hole. I shone the flashlight
in it and saw water at the bottom and knew immediately it was the sea because it was moving. I also saw the rungs set in the side of the hole, and the chain secured to the third one.
I didn't look further round the cave.
I checked the chain.
I stood on the first rung and put weight on it, and it held so I did the second and the third and grasped the chain and pulled. Something shifted at the other end, but it wouldn't come, and I put out my foot to go lower but found the next rung was in the water, so I went up and took my sneakers and socks off.
While I was at it, I took everything off. I took my windcheater and pullover off, and my watch, then the rest, and wedged the flashlight near the hole, and just then the light shone back at me.
It wasn't my light. It came floating up out of the hole. It floated two or three feet and stopped, and my heart jumped in my throat.
I said, “Who's there?”
He said, “Who's there?”
A kid came out of the hole. He had nothing on.
I said, “How did you get there?”
He said, “How did you get there?”
He put out a hand and touched my forehead, so that a kind of headache came and went, very fast. He'd just been repeating what I said, but he said something else then. He said, “I came in my boat. It's here. You can see it.”
He walked up the two steps to the platform and pointed, and I followed him and saw it. It was a canoe, bobbing in the moonlight a few yards away. I hadn't seen a canoe as I came down the cliff. It was a funny time to be canoeing.
He said, “You're Barry, aren't you?”
I said, “Who are you?”
He said, “I'm Dido.” (Deedo, he said it.)
I said, “How do you know my name?”
He said, “I've heard it.”
“Are you on holiday here?” (He was fairer than the Seele kids. His hair was white.)
“Yes,” he said. “Come down the hole. There's a tunnel. I came through it. I've got a waterproof light. There's a barrel and a box there, both very old.”
“Is it safe?” I said.
I said it for something to say. I had no idea of going down the hole with him.
“Sure. You push yourself under and walk. You just walk in the tunnel. When you need a breather, you come up this side. Or you go out in the sea. It's safe,” he said.
He stepped down off the platform and walked to the hole. “I'll go first,” he said.
He went down the rungs and pushed himself under and the water turned bright green. After a while it faded, and the chain moved. It clanked up and down a few times as if he was tugging it. I didn't know if he was signalling me to follow. I didn't do anything. I just watched the hole and in a few seconds it flashed green again, and he surfaced.
“You didn't come,” he said.
I didn't know what to do. He'd seen I'd taken my clothes off as if I'd meant to try.
“Come,” he said.
He backed away from the rungs, and I went down.
“Duck,” he said.
I hung on a rung and ducked, and came up panting. It was cold as ice.
“I'll go first,” he said again. “Give me a tug when you want a breather.”
He didn't look at me. He just ducked, and I took a breath and ducked, too.
It was emerald green in the tunnel.
His light was brighter in the water, and everything was magnified. I saw individual grains of sand floating. I saw my hands big and pink in front of me. I saw him big and pink. He was holding the light low and pointing it so that it lit up the place. We were walking in slow motion down a green crystal passage with an arched roof. He turned and saw my head slightly graze the roof, and he tapped his own and bent to show what I should do.
I nodded and he pointed to the chain. It was sagging along the slaty wall of the tunnel, rusted and flaking, and a few yards away two big objects, attached to it, moved gently up and down, partially blocking the tunnel.
I pulled myself along the walls, and got to the barrel and the box. They were painted with tar. He watched me feeling them, and motioned farther along. Then he looked at me and pointed upwards, to see if I needed a breather yet.
I shook my head, and he shone the light at the far end. Then he ducked under the obstruction, and I followed him.
It was only a few yards farther. A pulley was stuck in the wall and the chain ran through it. It was rusted and covered with barnacles. But I'd had enough suddenly. I needed air. I gave him a tug and pointed up, and turned. But he caught my arm and pointed the other way, towards the sea.
He didn't wait for my agreement. He just took off, with the light.
I followed close behind, my lungs bursting.
I saw him go out the end of the tunnel, and the light turned murkier.
He waited for me in the sea, keeping himself under.
He took my hand as I came out. I felt myself choking, and kicked out, and in seconds broke surface.
He backed off in the water as I gasped and coughed.
“We were down too long,” he said. “I'm sorry.”
“It's all right,” I said.
“Come and rest on the boat.”
It was bobbing a few yards away, and he swam to it. I waited a while, coughing, before turning there, and he helped me in and I sat and got my breath. It was a little canoe, six or seven feet. All around the breeze was wrinkling the water.
He saw me rubbing myself in the breeze.
“Come and dry off,” he said. “Over here.”
He went to the end of the boat, and I followed. “There are two steps,” he said, and watched while I went down. “Now in here,” he said, and opened the door.
It was a room about thirty feet long. There was a carpet on the floor and a sofa all along one wall. There were easy chairs and a low table, and music was softly playing.
7. Where Do We Go?
Dreaming. I knew it. It was three o'clock in the morning, and I was dreaming. My mother hadn't wakened me to ask about the flashlight. I hadn't gone backwards out of the window, or down a cliff in the middle of the night. I hadn't swum to a canoe with a couple of steps (in a canoe?) down to a room thirty feet long. I'd dreamed it; was fast asleep now and dreaming on my bed.
“I have to wake up,” I said.
“You're not asleep,” he said.
He was smiling at me. “Come and dry off.”
He took my arm and led me through a doorway into a corridor, very long, with many rooms.
We were in a bathroom. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, were of metal, but not of metal I'd ever seen. It shone softly, a bluish green. So did the sunken bath and the shower. We stood on a grid beside the shower and I felt immediately dry. The air didn't move. It was just dry; and so was I, in a second.
Minutes later we were dressed and I was seeing everything.
I won't put it now. For now I'll say I saw the sleeping quarters, the kitchen, the control room, and that later we drank tigra, and I felt marvellous. I felt wonderful. I knew I could jump any wall, or dive impossible distances. I could fly. (This is the tigra, and I'll tell more later.)
I also knew we'd taken off. There was no sensation of movement. I'd just felt it earlier, that dizzy fractional lurch.
Nothing of what was happening was believable to me. It just kept on happening, very fast. I had no time to believe or disbelieve. Yet I hadn't stopped thinking. I thought: he's from another world; but even as I thought it I knew it was mad. You couldn't come from other worlds. At school we'd heard why. The fastest thing in the universe was light. It was the same speed as radio. To send a signal to the moon took a second and a half. To the sun, it took six minutes. To the next star after the sun, four and a half years. Just to signal a planet where there might be life would take 300 years; so how could there be flights of that distance, of that time?
I knew there couldn't be.
So I sat, not believing, not disbelieving, just nerving myself to ask the question. Finally, I blurted: “Where are you fro
m?”
“From Egon,” he said.
“Is that — another planet?”
“Not another planet.”
“In outer space?”
“Not outer,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Inner.”
He laughed as my mouth dropped open, and leaned over and patted me. He patted me like you pat a dog. “Inner space, Barry,” he said. “There's a world below this world. There is a world under the sea. The real world. Egon. Look,” he said.
We were in the main room, at the low table, and he slid a panel from beneath and studied it. Then he pressed something, and I felt the tremor again, but now like a high-speed lift slowing. He pressed once more and the room darkened and the wall lit up.
It took a moment to see that it wasn't the wall, but what was outside, that had lit up. The wall had become transparent; outside was the sea. It had lit up dimly, a dark soupy colour. I heard him muttering, and he did something else, and with a single giant flicker the whole sea lit up. It lit up for miles. It was the most fantastic thing I'd ever seen. It was not like sea. It wasn't even like water. There was no motion, no waves. It was clear as air, a pale honey colour. And everywhere there were mountains.
Before I could take it in, it all went out.
In the darkness I heard him muttering again. Then with a series of flickers, faster than sheet lightning, the whole world lit up; above, below, on all sides. We were poised in our chairs, and all the furniture poised with us; the entire structure of the boat transparent.
Miles above, through the ceiling, the sky flashed and glittered like a skin of mercury. Far below, there was a vast winding valley. It was mottled like a lizard, and on both sides of it foothills sloped. Immense terraced cliffs rose from the foothills, their castle-like tops facing each other. There were canyons between the cliffs, and swarming in and out of them were millions offish. There was an unbelievable multitude, of every colour. The walls and terraces were of every colour — purple, green, tangerine. Ahead was a mountain range, and the nearest peak was shining turquoise. There was a forest on its crest.
Under Plum Lake Page 2