by David Wood
The Tin Man cut the shirt from my back, peeled away the material as if it were just another layer of skin to glide beneath his razors and cut the leather necklace Matthew had offered. Within an hour I had lost what I had promised to treasure. There was nothing I could do about it though. Gone was gone, and both of us were gone in our own very individual ways. I gave my life away. They stole Matthew's trust.
The Tin Man didn't take it though. He dropped it beside my face. I super-imposed the inscription I already knew by heart onto the peculiar metal: Even The Laughing Boys Cry When The City Dies.
What did that enigmatic inscription mean, really? And what did I care?
They left me face down in the litter, both Tweedles whistling the same heavily corrupted versions of 'Yesterday' as they went.
I resented the way I had been bundled into the tightest possible corner like crumpled up newspaper. Forced face down into the gap between the wall and the skip so the cavities where my eyes ought to have been couldn't catch in the headlights of passing cars. Above me, beyond the arch of the railway bridge I had the vast canopy of black to explore, dimensions of hypnotic perfection to conjure with where I was a star. I was one of those pin-pricks of silver that glittered, blazing never to fade away. Here I was, facing the earth. I could only imagine the stars. Eternity imagining what I knew was there, what I remembered, while I tasted the soiled remnants of my city. I wasn't laughing.
If this was death, I didn't like it. I hungered for the storybook oblivion where my body was worm food and my mind chased through the heavens with the angels.
It didn't occur to me that under this bridge I might as well have been in Hell.
I couldn't think that far.
Going Underground
One
For a tantalising moment I thought I could see heaven. It wasn't close, it was an outline of white light away through the tunnel of the bridge's footpath. Heaven was in Gateshead. After my earlier thoughts on the place even I wasn't spared the irony of that one.
I imagined me a dead man clawing my way along the footpath, hauling myself inch by precious inch and wrecking my hands as I did so, only to reach closed gates. Locked gates.
I heard laughter.
It wasn't real.
So much of what was going on inside my head couldn't have been real. Clinically, I knew that my dead brain was probably tripping out on the merest fragment of the endorphin rush coming its way. The whole thing had to be one massive hallucination. I didn't have eyes, so how could I see?
It had to be an hallucination.
Endorphin. I used the word as a buoy to keep my mind afloat. I didn't know whether I was still at the entrance to Lovers’ Lane or if I were indeed behind the skip, under the bridge. Maybe I had blacked out after the second blow from the Scarecrow's bicycle chain and everything thereafter was down to my imagination and endorphin?
I started laughing. There was no noise anywhere outside of my head.
The world was opening up; folding me into its rawness; its essence seeping into my very being; my life.
Endorphin.
A drug and a last gift. If there is a God, it's not unreasonable to believe he knew very well what he was doing when he mixed the cocktail of chemicals inside the human body.
I felt hands on me. 'Not again, please no. . .' I tried to say but my throat was full of blood. Nothing. No sound.
'Hush.'
The voice was newly familiar but I couldn't place it. Dead men know nothing. Their minds corrode quicker still than their bodies. I knew nothing.
The newcomer gathered me into his arms. Cupped me close to his chest. I don't know how I knew he was a he, but I knew. It felt good; comforting. I drew comfort out of his nearness, glad I wasn't alone.
I didn't want to be dead and alone.
I felt his hands on my chest. Felt his deft fingers probe the doors made by the Tin Man.
And I felt the pain that had been missing for so long.
Two
And it hurt! My God, did it hurt.
The newcomer pulled my body out from behind the skip, whispering softly to reassure me that everything was okay.
I tried to tell him I was dead, and that he was wasting his time with a dead man when there were others out there who needed a good Samaritan more than I did. Empty words. Dead throats can't talk any more than dead fingers can breathe harmony and melody into the ivories of an old piano. Dead less than five minutes and I was missing my music. I felt his palm soothe my brow before he turned me. Felt his gentle caress falter as it reached the gash made by the butcher's hook.
I didn't want this Samaritan to see the ruination carved into me by the Tin Man and the other parasites from Oz. I tried to command my body one last time to shy away, but I had no more ownership or command of my muscles now than I had before, when I couldn't close my eyes.
My eyes!
He turned me gently, cradling me still. His fingers probing at the wound that had been my undoing. I felt I actually felt his finger dip into the opening to touch the inside of my head. I think I screamed. No, I screamed as well as any dead man can. I screamed.
It was Matthew holding me, making good his promise already. There was blood in his hair. It seemed to be stemming from a wound similar to mine, though I could not see its root. The blood trickled down his forehead, onto the bridge of his nose and down again, over his lip. His expression was so placid, the sadness in his eyes infinite.
Matthew touched his fingertips to my eye sockets. Even his gentle touch felt as if he had rammed screwdrivers into the backs of both. I knew pain intimately. I screamed and I heard myself screaming this time. Where he had touched me, blood had begun to ooze from his own eyes. Minute droplets welling out of the glassy orbs, and with this hideous transferral of hurts my inexplicable second sight began to dim.
Before I was truly blind though, I saw more than any one man should ever have to endure.
Matthew ministered my wounds, applying his touch like a poultice. His hands were cool against my burning skin. The sensations were returning too quickly; like an overload. I felt all of the pain that had unmade me. It started around my stomach and spread like sunburst. A gash opened into Matthew's stomach as he eased the metre-long metal stave out of mine. His intestinal tract unravelled even as he began feed mine back into my still-rent stomach.
It was a sickly compelling operation.
His touch was no less than salvation, but it cost him dearly. In helping me, Matthew sacrificed himself. Where he touched me, he bled. Every pore opened, his body shedding red tears for its own damnation. I would have wept for him if I had been able. Throughout the healing, that placid resignation his face wore so comfortably remained steadfast despite the hurts he had to be suffering. It was frightening and strange, where he touched me, the pain fled and other sensations poured in, back-filling the vacuum it left behind. I could feel my fingers touching the air. I could actually feel the air.
'You have got a lot of living to do, Declan.' Matthew said softly. 'I won't let you die. Not like this. Not for as long as we need you.'
I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. I was far from certain that he was even talking. The semantics of the sounds could have been one huge, nasty trick.
The air felt strangely malleable, but not quite substantial enough to be a hand reaching down my throat, choking.
'I'm going to take away your eyes.'
I must have panicked because Matthew laid very calm, very reassuring hands on my shoulders.
'I have to.'
I noticed how noisy my breathing had become; how much it disturbed the unnatural stillness. My breathing sounded doubly oppressive when my perception of the world turned to black. I didn't know how to feel, stepping into this real darkness which in the twist of one night had become my permanent home.
Even with Matthew's unnaturally calming touch I was scared. Scared doesn't do the feeling justice, I was beyond scared, I was terrified. The claustrophobic assault of my new dark 'home' was utterl
y terrifying. All I could think was: It's going to be like this forever. . . I tried to summon Aimee's face from memory but couldn't. I couldn't remember what she looked like. Oh, sweet Jesus, I couldn't remember what she looked like! I hadn't had a warning. No one had come up to me and said: 'See that face? Remember it because you're never going to see it again.'
Would I have believed them if they had?
I doubt it. I seriously doubt it.
Until then I hadn't so much as spared a second thought for Aimee. Had she gotten away? Used the dubious cover of one of the parked cars outside the photocopy shop to watch my murder? What must she be feeling right now? God, did she even get away or was she lying in another gutter but without Matthew to play healer?
Matthew helped me to stand. Blind darkness is dizzying. I had no point of reference to tell me if I was standing straight or if I was about to plunge face first into the pavement. I felt sick.
'I can't see. . .' It was a pitiful objection. The tears that I couldn't cry were there.
Until then I had no understanding of just how important visuals were to my life, nor just how much I took them for granted. Where was the bridge? Left or right? Which way was the town? In the darkness it didn't feel like direction had a place. I tried to calm myself enough to listen for the sounds I knew I needed to orientate myself. The water of the Tyne. The music from the pub. The cars from the duel carriageway. A train pulling into the Central Station. Louder noises that might carry in the night.
A foghorn brayed forlornly, behind me and way off to the right. That way for the estuary then, I reasoned and tried to use that reasoning to build a reconstruction of the familiar geography around me on the black canvas in front of my brain. Even though the street corner was as familiar as any I had ever trodden, I was at a loss to supply enough of the small details I would have needed to walk it alone; kerb distances, litter that shouldn't have been there, slight curves, cracked paving stones. So many little things, but I had Matthew for eyes. I had to trust him. It's a rather black irony, but right at that moment I had nothing but blind faith to carry me home. I could only hope that blind faith in Matthew was as good as any seeing faith I might have placed elsewhere.
We walked painfully slowly. My reconstruction of the world according to Newcastle had us heading in the direction of Amen Corner. The entire process of placing one foot in front of the other suddenly complicated my system of guesswork. Matthew called out a quiet warning whenever the terrain altered subtly enough for me not to notice before it was too late to do anything about it. Still, I misjudged more steps than I judged. To anyone who saw me, I probably looked like a Gerry Anderson puppet, all elbows and knees and exaggerated angles. Personally, I think I coped. I didn't cope well, but I coped.
My perception of time changed as well, as distances become an intangible variable. Suddenly one hundred feet had to be translated into a precise number stumbling Thunderbird-style footsteps. How long did a series of these take? I had no idea. I walked and when Matthew said turn, I turned. Blind faith.
I could tell that we were moving down a gradual incline that steadily became not so gradual, which probably meant I was right and we were working our way towards some point on the Quayside.
The first thing I noticed though the first anomaly was the change in the quality of the air. It felt somehow different. Stagnant. Almost as soon as this understanding came to me I was struck by the changing sounds our footsteps made. They grew louder and paradoxically less solid. Pretty soon they had a sonar-type echo to them. Matthew had led me into a tunnel of some kind.
I tried to get a fix on where we might be. The only tunnels I'd ever heard of running beneath Newcastle were utilised by the Metro system, and none of them ran as far down as the Quayside, nor as deep. It was more than likely I had managed to turn myself around and I convinced myself that what I thought were Dog's Leap Stairs were somewhere to the north of the city and not Dog's Leap Stairs at all.
'Where are we?'
'Beneath the streets,' Matthew said enigmatically. He chose not to enlighten me further, even when I pushed. All he said was: 'You'll see.' I felt like screaming: How the hell will I see, I'm blind! It took a lot for me not to, but it wasn't Matthew's fault. It was part frustration, part fear. Without Matthew I would have been still lying dead in a gutter back up there somewhere, so I did everything I could not to take out on him all the bitterness I felt broiling up inside me.
I counted my footsteps to occupy my reeling mind. It worked to an extent. Twenty seven paces to the first deviation, a slight turn to the right. As far as I could tell, we were the only living things in these depths; I heard no obvious skitterings of rats and other less savoury underground dwellers. I did hear water, steadily dripping. With Matthew's help, I staggered ahead. Determination hitherto untouched, flared up from within me: I wasn't going to give in. My resolve was grim.
What tenants lived in this darkness, truly?
Behind the water, there were other sounds, not rats and skitterings, but there were sounds. It took me long seconds to discern what they were, and when I did I could not believe that I had them guessed right: whisperings, like ghosts in my personal blackness, come to haunt me into insanity.
I reached out to touch the coldness of the walls, and was surprised to feel more than a trace of warmth in the stone. I could think of nothing even remotely rational to account for the strange tingling sensation it sent coursing through my fingers, so I stopped thinking about it. It surprised me just how easily I banished the puzzling phenomenon from my thoughts, but then I had so many more pressing worries that maybe it wasn't surprising at all.
Even this quickly, without the benefit of eyes I was rapidly becoming alert to other sensory input. I could smell that I was underground. I don't think I could possibly begin to explain how I could distinguish outside air from the air I was breathing down here without having samples of the two for instant and easy comparison, but I could. I could taste the difference as well. It tasted like old air; air that had been caged up, hidden away. How old was it? I leapt on that train of thought, hungry for the labyrinth of distraction it promised. Could it be possible that the air I was breathing was older than I was? But if I thought of air that way, couldn't it equally be posited that the outside air was older than me? Or did photosynthesis and recycling count? Did the fact that the air out there had been through God knows how many sets of lungs and had oxygenated God knows how many blood streams effectively kill it off to make room for new air continuously being birthed by plants?Or was it a case of permanent rejuvenation? With that kind of thinking, was any of the air outside truly old, and even if it were old was it still unpolluted? Was that the reason behind the differing tastes, that the air inside hadn't been tainted by twentieth century chemicals? It made my head spin, but it did the trick. I lost myself for a while.
Three
Until the voices dragged me, kicking and screaming, back.
The speed with which they stopped being those childishly elegiac susurrations picked up and carried by the warm stones and became disembodied voices was frightening.
Indeed, that they became voices at all was truly terrifying.
It felt sudden, but had I been more attuned to my surroundings instead of theorising about thin air I might have picked up on it sooner; noticed the gradual transition that had to have taken place and not felt so disorientated by the sudden bombardment of yammering, ghostly conversations as they swamped me. I couldn't think of them as people, not then. It probably sounds pretty lame, but as long as I couldn't see whatever was behind the voices, I couldn't bring myself to believe there really was anything there, and right then, among them, they were nothing more hostile than figments of my deranged imagination.
Like that, they were easier to believe in. Madness was something I could accept. Something I could welcome even.
I felt hands pawing at me, spinning me around. Almost as soon as I started to turn I lost my balance and started to fall. The hands kept twisting me. I felt myself stag
ger forward, my arms flung out in front of me to protect my face. I lost all sense of place. I was in madness. I was living it. Still they kept sending me around, bouncing me from one anchor to another. Picking me up as I began to fall, sending me on my way like I was some spinning top.
I had no idea what was going on, but I couldn't believe I was in danger, not after everything Matthew had done to bring me this far, and I had died once, so what fear was there left for death to offer? I had no evidence to support my intuition, but I never doubted it. What they were doing went no further than acquainting their own blind bodies with my touch and feel. Getting to know me by drinking my body in by touch and smell, building a picture of me in their own minds. The spinning was no more than an expedient if bizarre greeting.
Despite its bizarre nature, I tried to force my body into relaxing and accept the greeting for what it was, but every tendon was strung so tightly it could have sliced through cheese.
'Matthew?' I called out, groping desperately at the thin air, trying to snag something solid. It was disconcerting, I felt their hands on me all of the time, pushing me on my way, but when panic had me reaching out blindly to stop me from falling I never once collided with one of them. Never so much as touched them. For that reason I couldn't stop thinking of them as ghosts and as long as they were ghosts I couldn't make my body relax. It was a vicious circle.
'I'm here,' Matthew answered without having to raise his voice above the slowly dwindling yammer. I heard him clearly, as though he were no more than a few feet away, which was odd. It felt as if I had span more like twenty or thirty feet, but I could easily have been spun back on myself more times than I realised. Either that or the acoustics of the tunnel could have been performing some pretty unnerving tricks to carry his simple 'I'm here,' above the closer hubbub that surrounded me. I took it as a comfort. Maybe he had followed me through the tide of hands so when my spinning came to an end he would be there to catch my fall.