The Girl in the Blue Shoes

by Shaun Hume

  I crept further towards the eerie hue, the milky light not pouring but dripping out of the room behind the closed door. If there were any more slight noises at a distance I am not at all sure if I would have heard them, even a battalion of steady troops thundering towards my position would have done naught to sway my look.

  I held my hypnotized gaze and crept right up to the thing. Nothing appeared to be locked, no keypads, no cameras, no visible signs of any alarm. The door itself had no form of modernity attached to it, the broad oak specimen a fine carved example of the college’s ancient history. I stood for a moment and admired the work put into its ornate finish. A curled archway had been set over the bulk of the door face, smaller symbols that looked like stars and then suns all at once. I chuckled fairly to realise they were one in the same at any rate before looking over the centrepiece of the door. It was a most strange symbol, and one that I had not seen in any other door at Christ Church, or for that matter any other college I had been to. It put me in the mind of a thousand serpents wreathing in fire. This strange image appeared in my head not because it was what the carving was actually depicting, that I nor anyone I do not think could clearly tell. Instead it was the feeling it gave of danger and of pain, a surge of something both powerful and unpredictable.

  I lent my hand on the door, its surface oddly warm. There was a sudden sensation and the heat in the door was accelerated through my skin like an electric shock. I recoiled, drawing my hand back as if burnt, and cradled the fingers of my right hand in the palm of my left. There was nothing wrong with it, and indeed nothing wrong with the door. Nothing physically at any rate.

  Away from the warm door the air around it was crackling with a cold electricity, the ripple in the hallway emanating from under and around and from behind the oaken curtain excruciating.

  Suddenly it was a meeting with the great and mighty “Oz”. The determined importance of what I was doing hit home hard, the power from within a massive burst on the edge of being released. Although I didn’t rationally believe that the door was superheated, I elected to attempt actually opening it by nudging the thick specimen with my shoe. To my repeating surprise, none of the weight that there should be contained in such a large timber door was levelled back against me, and it was almost as if it were actually being pulled inwards for me, a gentle device assisting my entry.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ That self same shoe then took my weight and span me around, my eyes now on The Girl in the Blue Shoes. ‘I said, what are you doing here?’ The Girl in the Blue Shoes demanded of me, much of the concentrated fire in her being as there was on display when we had first met now searing off that evenly tanned skin.

  ‘I told you,’ said I, ‘what you’re doing isn’t right. The repercussions far outweigh any possible gains in the other direction. It shouldn’t be meddled with.’

  She looked at me, and for the first time I thought it; she could probably take me out. If she had been hired by powers unknown, selected by hand to travel to some kind of dangerous other alien world, then she would not only be smart, but exceedingly able to handle herself as well.

  ‘What do you expect you’re going to be able to do?’ said she with even eyes, ‘the wheels have already long been in motion, there is nothing that can stop it now. The door has been opened. We’re lucky it has been kept a secret for this long. When the serious people, the people with the real influence in this world, find out what we’re doing here, what door has been opened, do you really think they are going to want it closed?’

  The premise was no doubt an astounding one, and if such a thing was possible, to prove the existence of such a doorway to such a world, to be marked as the one who discovered it would be the crown jewel on an already most likely decadent crown. Any professor knows that part of making any advancement of any sort is to bring it to the wider public’s attention. And something as significant as this, however volatile and potentially damningly controversial the finding, has to be set out into the open. It is the obligation of any researcher worth his or her salt to voice such a discovery as this aloud, allowing no further subterfuge to be entered into.

  Despite all this, the force inside me still driving things forward was controlling the rest of me that wanted to know what was going on, how it was being done, and who was behind it. My gut told me it shouldn’t have been done, but my solar plexus was a less timid creature. My mind fell into all kinds of holes, each as hard to effect a climb out of as the next. They were all held down by excitement raging and licking up at every edge like spiky flames, daring the rest to deny its heat.

  If the method for completing these “crossings” was sound, what else could the very same technique be applied to? How was this doorway even discovered in the first place? These questions and yet again more than just a handful of others built a wall simply too tall and too thick to be ignored by any small hammer of rational thought. It made the task to knock the whole thing down more and more piteous, a possibility of certainty, but a task of significant magnitude.

  ‘It matters not,’ I said finally, ‘I still hold some weight in this college, and while that rings true, I will see fit to find what I came to seek.’

  I then made another move towards the door, but The Girl in the Blue Shoes shuffled in front of me, her arms crossed and her hair bristling. I knew there was no way I would be passing right now. It left me somewhat in the lows of male self esteem to admit to myself, but it was clearly fact: if I made to get past her and through that door, she would snap me in two like I was no more than an old quill. And any case, that was not how I wanted to play this tirade, I was to think them down, not knock them.

  I gave her blazing eyes one last tinted glare and then turned back the way I had come. To my surprise, The Girl in the Blue Shoes did not call after me or follow. Surely this action meant it wasn’t necessary. No doubt she would call the alarm in no time flat, now my cards were firmly on the table, and it was clear I would be sticking around. That I would not be running away this time.

  I soon hit a crossroads of corridors. To the left of me lay the trail towards all things science. And to the right was the winding path that led into the realm of my past, and the English and theology department. Now here again there was a familiar struggle. Was what I was dealing with more attune to the sciences, or the world of imagination and expression? To the naked eye all would seem clear, but to me the answer was not so clean cut. I felt as if two magnets, both of different chemical makeup and construction but with near identical strength, were pulling at a half of my body each, a see-saw of rationalisations and speculations fighting out a battle in my brain. But as I let the majority of my mind be washed over by the concept, one arm began to ache more than the other, and perhaps more strangely, my internal compass was leaning away from the world of science and towards the less rational but ultimately more truthful English department.

  16.

  Whether it was because it was the more familiar road out of the two that shoved me along the deepening corridor and into my old realm I didn’t know, but it was indeed towards here that I was headed. Like a blood hound to its quarry I had an overwhelming sensation that my nose was aimed in the right direction, sure it was this line I was meant to follow.

  It was only as I then drifted further on my way that I first began to think about how exactly the people involved were effecting these “crossings” The Girl in the Blue Shoes had first spoken of. I couldn’t believe how I had not pondered the revelation sooner, and to turn it over right now it seemed absurd. A physical device of some kind would be the most likely candidate, but I quickly concluded that anything which required a great amount of energy and external power would be too easily detected. The drain on any main system would be noticeable, and the area required to store such an internal system just wasn’t available in such a space as Christ Church.

  But what else could it be?

  Although I had veered away from the path of science, I was unsure if I had really taken onto the idea of the process
being a completely non-scientific one. Even though the discovery may have had its grounds in theology and the creative sciences, that did not stop it needing a more logical and technical footing in order to be fully realised. I muddled these thoughts and mixed them up like a fruit filled porridge, moving large chunks off to the side of the bowl to dredge back up later.

  In truth, the why and how had nothing tangible to do with what I was doing at the present; I was trying to find out the where. After I had discovered the shadowed hiding place for all this speculation, then would the other answers to other questions be placed again on the table, all out for me to match together, like Jacks and Jokers in some unreal card game.

  It was unusually cold within the college walls, maybe more so than it would already be, my memory of the place not matching to such a chill as this. So old and filled to the near brim with years and years and years of accumulated breezes from shoulders walking by, hands swishing through the air with expression and excitement, the drill of steady thought circulating around the place like a slow moving storm. This temperature though steadied me some, and helped to tune my mind more onto what I was doing, the warming spring eve’s air outside already trying its best to lull my senses and thicken the swill of actions in my brain. Even with the steady rain, the warm drops only added elixir to the wind’s magic words.

  Something on impulse suddenly moved me, again a natural movement that I could not decipher meant this action was familiar, or just felt right, and I ducked into an office. Upon entry it was clear it was a space of some professor, and I took a look at the wares on show.

  There were three desks placed next to each other like an island in the middle of the room. Tall bookcases stood up against the three walls that had no door in them, serving as company to all else. A drizzling ambient light spilled dimly through the office’s singular window, despite the night-time hour casting dusty and unnatural shadows about the place. The bookcases were filled rough and ready, much like those in my own flat, tomes taken down and placed back up in haste. I turned my attention more fully towards the desks, and it was here where my neck hairs began to tingle. Two of the desks were obviously in quite regular use, one even holding upon it a lukewarm cup of tea, suggesting its maker had been called away not too long ago, their caffeinated beverage left forgotten at the hands of some much more pressing matter.

  But one desk portrayed a twisted tale.

  I moved around the room until I was face to face with the suspicious desk, my eyes looking down on the view the seated owner would normally observe. Not a word, not a spec of dust, not a daub of ink. The desk was clean and tidy, hardly the nominal condition for the workstation of a college professor, even if he had been absent for a pair of months or more. I studied it without touching anything for what seemed like a long time. The sounds around me were cleaved in two and brushed away to the sides as I focused in and squeezed my eyes, now desperate for a further clue, a clearer explanation as to who was turning the cogs, whom was responsible for the ticking of the clock.

  To the schooled eye, abnormal would be the more fitting of a description for the state of the environment around me. A tidied mess that to any regular citizen would be an unordered heap, but to the fettered thinkers among us, a carefully laid ruse. No one was using this office desk … but for some reason, someone wanted everyone else think that it was being used.

  Just as I inclined my head closer, and near the ends to identify the architect, or indeed victims of this subterfuge, voices reached my ears. Trying to keep quiet, but failing miserably, were two others in hushed but urgent conversation. They were still of such distance from me that I could not make out the exact words of their talk, but the gist was evident. I made for the door and edged my way out, but not at all matching the skills of dear Mr Bond, my childhood favourite idol; he surely would have slipped away unseen. Instead of a careful extraction I heard the tell tale ‘that’s him!’ from behind my back, and even before I had whipped my head to check who it was I knew was looking for me, my legs stole right back into the room with the desks.

  I looked around franticly for what could aid me in my defence, or more probably, my escape. I looked up to the windows. They were all the same, peeling paint and bruised wooden frames with single panes. I dived for the nearest rubbed brass latch and threw the window open. Thick and unencumbered sheets that were more like walls of rain splattered into my body even before my first foot had reached out onto the ledge. It was deep and dark and oddly cold, the time of year failing to help the warmth to bloom.

  I thought about Bertie and his Grotesques. I still hadn’t conformed with his tight views on the interesting carvings, but my skin voiced its own disputing ripple all the same as I left the building and made for its top hat, not fearing the little creatures coming to life, but a stronger feeling in my midst. I imagined there would be Grotesques of a different kind on my tail as soon as I set my foot on the college’s time worn head.

  And of course I was proved correct in the merest of moments, as lumbering sounds flew out of the window behind me, scrabbling up the slippery edges of the building as was I. Chancing a look behind me I spied two figures of solid black shadow, such was how they appeared to me through the gloom, the thickset rain their smokey shroud, heads of coal peering up at me with what were surely deep red eyes from Hell. My own streaming eyes set back on the road ahead, they met the silhouette of sleeping spires that surrounded me. Just as obscured as my fresh followers, but endlessly more appealing, a flight to one and the other a preferable but not conceivable course of action ahead of me now.

  I scrambled further, now with two feet on firm and flat setting of the college, but swiftly so too were those behind me, making chase and eating up the distance between us like great trolls gobbling up bones. And we were well and truly on the rooftops now, a trio of scuttling rats, leaping across the small gaps and bumps and uneven shoots of lead and stone as they popped out like the heads of startled creatures, jumping up to see who it was causing all the ruckus. I was running, yet I was calm, the reasoning in my actions not enough to slow me down. I jumped and dodged and climbed where I could.

  Frighteningly a hot sound rushed past my right ear, but I barely had the energy to notice it, a bullet surely only inches from embedding itself into my head. Or depending on its calibre, sailing straight through it. I heard a grunt and crash, but hadn’t the pity in me to look back, my pursuer the thicker of us both, and no doubt the less aerodynamic or suited to scaling ancient roofs like a seasoned alley cat. Another hot flash, and this time the sound was lower, but was accompanied with another sensation too.

  I ran on for a further handful of steps before a white heat suddenly began to resonate from one of my legs. At that time I didn’t know which, but it was enough to buckle the rest of my body, a house of cards collapsing into one. It threw me to such a hard stop, and with such an abrupt force, that it was my instant reaction to cast around me with wild eyes, sure I had just been nabbed by a third foe set at me in the opposite direction. I managed to catch as much of myself as was enough to prevent further damage to my body when the sickly crunch and impact took its full hold, the rest of me falling mostly on top of my left shoulder.

  I lay there like the remnants of an imploded smoke stack, and couldn’t help but be intoxicated by the earsplitting silence that crowded its way all around me. A swirling mist that almost comforted me until the realisation of my current predicament and the slicing pain in my leg came tearing back to throw its weight around in my mind. The throb of the bullet wound met with the clattering sound of body parts as my pursuer made haste towards me. Before I saw the face of any human, though, I looked up at the face of the clouds, still swirling and marbled with wisps of black and grey and some gold and amber hues from the reflected lights that were now illuminating the spiderweb of streets that cast out from below me. I lay like the injured fly, my hunter advancing for their prize, a captured and cornered morsel, an easy catch in the slow sticky rain.

  The last thing I reca
lled were the steady drops pooling in my eye sockets and dampening my hair. And then I felt another sharp pain, and nothing.

  17.

  The utter next moment, as it seemed to me, I was sitting in a chair. I was loosely restrained, but adequately enough to know I wasn’t going anywhere of my own volition just now. I was also sure that more than an hour or two had passed since my last wakeful moment. I looked down at my leg and felt the tightness of a bandage, as well as observed its neat application. I was still a tad soggy, but not as I had been before, and nearby there was a steady warming source that was drying my bones to further success.

  I was in a thin room, some kind of spacious basement store cupboard by the look of it, and slowly but surely, like butterflies flapping around my ears, senses were starting to come back to me. The second after my sight was my hearing, a whispering behind me clear and stirring. I couldn’t turn around, but it was a man and a woman who were conversing, that much was evident. What then too became clear was that the pair of voices, even in their fretting hush, were both familiar to me.

  A steaming gale was building outside, coupling with the storm and spurring it along, the faint howls of the tips of its fingers sliding under the closed door to the room. The rain too seemed to have intensified, and even from my current below ground position the incessant tapping, like millions of falling stones clattering off the roof onto a ground made of glass, was a gentle murmur from above. Along with the whispering it gave the feeling of an approaching swarm, a charged plague of something ghastly and unwanted that was about to engulf all.

  Suddenly the whispering stopped and the silence pressed. With a shuffle of shoes I was face to face with … myself!

  For the first time in the whole ordeal I questioned my sanity. A full beard and a face more haggard than was my usual sport loomed before me, but there was no doubt that which loomed was me. Suddenly nothing made sense and everything felt wrong. How was this possible? It was only when myself gave me a wry smile that I calmed a little and knew what was to follow. Although I had never actually seen it, I knew enough about that look to know exactly what it held, and conversely, what was coming next. I was pleased with myself, I had the superiority of the situation. I could see it lathered all over my face.