by Tom Harper
‘Stop,’ he said. Before Adam could argue, Jonah pushed past him. ‘I’ll lead.’
Now there were only Lily’s footsteps in front of him. He tried to imagine how she must have felt wandering down here alone. Was she lonely? Terrified? Hurt?
He paused and listened. The soft crunch of Adam’s boots in the rock dust stopped behind him. Water dripped, and the mountain sighed as if it was breathing. Nothing else.
‘What is it?’ said Adam.
‘I thought I heard footsteps. I thought it might be Lily.’
But that wasn’t true. The footprints told him Lily was ahead. Whatever he’d heard, it hadn’t come from up there: it had sounded almost beside him. Had it even been a sound? More like a feeling, a shadow flickering at the edge of his conscious. A ghost.
‘It’s a cave of illusions,’ Adam warned. ‘You have to keep a grip or you’ll lose yourself.’
Twenty metres later, the path split. A three-bodied woman, chiselled from the stone, stared out and bared her breasts at them. Stone eyes riddled them like a sphinx.
‘Hecate,’ said Adam. ‘The witch who guards crossroads.’
Jonah barely looked at her. He was halfway towards the left-hand path, following the footprints, when Adam grabbed his arm.
‘That’s the wrong way.’
Jonah pointed to the footprints. ‘That’s where Lily went.’
Adam’s scalp glistened with sweat. Dust smeared his face. The confidence he wore so naturally in Athens had melted away. For the first time, Jonah could see the child he must once have been, wide-eyed, frightened of a world he understood so much better than everyone else, and yet not at all.
‘She was supposed to go right.’ His dry voice was almost a whisper. ‘That’s what I told her. That’s the way the tablets say.’
‘So why didn’t she?’
‘Maybe she lost her bearings.’
‘Or she didn’t trust you. Or maybe it was just a fuck you.’
They stared at each other, and the goddess stared at them and between them, utterly indifferent to the choices they made. In the silence that separated them, Jonah heard heavy footsteps echoing down the tunnel, a blind beast battering its way through.
‘Ari’s coming,’ said Adam. Jonah ignored him.
‘What’s down the left-hand path?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ve got a guess.’
‘Plato describes the path to the underworld in The Republic. The righteous take the path to the right, the condemned go left down to hell.’
‘What does that mean?’
Adam shook his head. ‘Bad, I suppose.’
‘Then let’s find out.’ Jonah grabbed the arm that was holding him, locking it in place, and started dragging Adam towards the left-hand path. Adam struggled and jerked; he kicked and flailed; he tried to get the arm to his mouth to bite it. The goddess looked on, neither approving nor disapproving.
The footsteps came closer.
‘Ari will kill you,’ Adam warned. ‘He’d have done it already if I hadn’t persuaded him not to.’
‘Like you saved Lily?’
‘I did what I could. It’s not my fault she went the wrong way.’
Jonah let go. Adam stumbled back and banged into the goddess. Down the tunnel, light approached from Ari’s torch.
‘Come with us,’ Adam said. ‘You can’t save Lily, but you might save yourself.’
Jonah looked left, then right, and made his choice. Though, really, it was no choice at all.
Plato
In the dark, the stench was like a physical presence, dense and heavy – almost as real as the footsteps echoing behind me. I stumbled forward as fast as I could, never fast enough to outrun the footsteps. I flailed my arms against the emptiness. I waited to feel a hand around my neck – or a rock wall cracking open my skull. My heart beat so hard I thought it would burst out of me.
And suddenly there was nothing. Nothing in front of me, nothing around me and – crucially – nothing under me. I was falling.
I seemed to hang there for a long, long time. Out of context, out of time, out of every direction except down.
Was this how Agathon felt in the last seconds as he tumbled down the well?
No. Dion said he was dead before he—
I hit the water feet first and plunged in over my head. Water went up my nose and into my mouth and eyes. I gagged.
I left one nightmare and entered another.
Jonah
The path led down. The air got hotter still. When he put out a hand to steady himself on the wall, it came away caked with a strange, spongy residue. He shone the torch on it. An orange fungus covered the walls, almost to the roof, ballooning out in strange knotted shapes. Some of them looked like twisted faces, or eyes, or hands reaching out to pull him into the rock.
The condemned go left down to hell. Had it started already?
He kept his head down, torch on Lily’s footprints, one arm up to protect his face. Hot air blew against him, and he wondered what moved it in the still caverns. Could it be the volcano? He remembered a film he’d seen, late at night in some hotel. Cardboard actors running through cardboard caves, computer-generated lava like melted cheese chasing them. He didn’t think it happened that way in reality.
If he hadn’t been looking down he’d have walked straight into the hole. As it was, he nearly missed it. A dark threshold in the floor of the passage: he had one foot over it before he realised it wasn’t solid. It wasn’t anything – just a yawning nothing. He jerked away from it, tripped and fell backwards. He hit the floor hard and the torch went out.
He lay still. When he could hear his breaths again, he counted off ten. Then ten more, half as fast as before. That brought the terror down to a workable level.
Think of Lily.
He patted around his head until he found the head-torch. Working by touch, he opened the battery compartment and pressed the batteries back into place. He tried the switch again.
The light came on – woozy yellow, no match for the profound darkness in the cave, but enough to see something. He wiped his arm on his T-shirt to get off the slime.
Lily’s footsteps went straight to the edge of the hole and vanished. Dizzy from the fall, he crawled to the edge on his hands and knees and shone the torch down.
The hole was a shaft ten feet across and about thirty feet deep – hard to tell exactly, because of the steam boiling out. Through the clouds, Jonah could just make out something wet and glossy, bubbling and heaving at the bottom. Mud, oozing and simmering, releasing steam as its bubbles popped.
Didn’t she have a torch? Her tracks had been straight and clear, not the erratic path of someone blundering in the dark. Did she see it in time?
He shone his light up to the top of the shaft. Among the shadows, he could see a dark hollow opening in the rock face opposite. A continuation of the tunnel.
But how do you get there?
He should have thought to take a rope. He examined the shaft more carefully. The rock was uneven, full of crevices and ledges. With a bit of skill, you might be able to climb around to the other side.
Jonah didn’t have any skill. Shadow had taken him climbing a couple of times in the Peak District, but his wrists had been so sore afterwards he could hardly pick up a guitar. All he remembered were the basics: hold on, don’t fall off. So much easier when you had a harness to catch you.
He looked back. He looked forward, at the footsteps going over the cliff. He tried to imagine any scenario where Lily had somehow turned around. There were no footprints going back.
You can’t save Lily, but you might save yourself.
He got down on his stomach and dangled over the drop, stretching his leg out into the shaft until he felt a foothold. He moved his right arm over. Now he was splayed across the rock face like a spider.
Think of Lily.
He shifted his weight and pushed his toe out until he found another foothold. Then another handhold. Inch by inch, he
worked his way around the shaft. It was wider than it looked. Steam made the rock slippery. Every time he thought he had a grip, his hand started sliding away. And always there was the mud, spitting and groaning below.
He risked a look ahead. He’d come more than halfway. But this was the hardest bit – a wide, shallow curve where the rock was almost perfectly smooth. He reached for a small bulge, almost as far as he could stretch. His fingers scrabbled, slipped, tried again and just got a purchase. Not even a grip, just pressure holding him in place.
He moved his leg towards the next foothold. Further, further – but he came up inches short. He brought the leg back. His fingers had locked up; the tendons in his wrist felt as if someone had them in a vice. He tried again, swinging his leg to make the extra inches.
His toe touched the rock – but slipped off. He tried to swing back again, but he’d gone too far. Unbalanced already, he couldn’t support his weight. His left foot lost its purchase.
He hung by his fingertips, just long enough to feel despair obliterate his soul.
Then he slid off and fell, screaming, into the mud.
Plato
I’ve drowned so often in my dreams you’d think I’d be used to it. But nothing prepared me for the shock of falling into water from darkness. I went under and water rushed into me. I kicked out of instinct, but I didn’t know up from down. At least in my dream I could see the sun.
My head broke the surface. I gasped, sank back, and kicked so hard I almost flew out of the water like a dolphin. I gulped air into my lungs and choked again.
Breathe, I told myself. I forced myself to slow down my movements. Small circles with my arms, gentle motions of the legs. Like treading grapes.
When my breathing had calmed, I let myself sink experimentally with my arm extended straight up, until only my hand poked out of the water. Still no bottom. I swam back up.
This time I went sideways, trying to keep a straight line. A corner of my mind imagined swimming in circles, never knowing, until my strength gave out and I slipped under. I swam harder.
My hand brushed a wall: now my world had three dimensions I kicked my way along it, feeling for any gaps. The water was warm and stank of sulphur, leaving a powdery fur on my tongue.
I felt space and groped around. In front of me, there seemed to be some kind of lip or ledge, just above the water’s surface. I hauled myself out. All I wanted was to lie down, but the ledge wasn’t wide enough. I patted around and felt another ledge, higher and further back. Beyond that, another one.
Steps. Climbing out of darkness, into darkness.
I crawled up the stairs on my hands and knees. I counted ten steps. Where the eleventh should have been, my hand touched a flat rock floor. I stood up, wobbly as a child learning to walk, and explored the room with my hands. It was a big space: I felt column after smooth column, stretching away in every direction. Like being lost in a forest.
At least I didn’t feel cold. The air in the cave was as warm as my skin, the dripping water as regular as my heartbeat. My body dissolved into it. All that remained was me, the person who exists when everything else is gone.
There are walls around us that box us in to our world. The body is one of those barriers, a wall around our soul. Hard to see past.
But not any more.
Jonah
He was still screaming when he hit the bottom. Hot mud filled his mouth as he went under. The pain was like nothing he’d felt before: choking, burning, suffocating him. His body shrivelled up like plastic tossed in a fire.
He’d stopped sinking, but he hadn’t started to rise. In mud, he had no buoyancy – or perhaps there was no air left in him. He kicked frantically, though he no longer knew up from down. He lashed his arms and flailed his legs, but the mud wrapped him like a wet blanket. He still couldn’t breathe.
I’m sorry, he said to Lily.
Air on his face. He’d broken the surface. He spat out a mouthful of mud and gulped down the air. Foul, steaming, sulphurous air – but it brought him to life.
Bicycling his legs to stay afloat, he opened his eyes. He could still see. That meant there must be light. He put his hand to his head and felt the head-torch, still strapped on. He wiped mud off the housing. The light got brighter.
He tipped back his head and looked up the shaft, trying to find the tunnel opening. One look said it would take a miracle to climb out. He tried anyway, stretching as high as he could. His slick hands slid off the stone; the mud sucked him back.
He wasn’t going to get out.
Follow Lily, a small voice said in the back of his mind. She hadn’t gone back, and he didn’t think she’d managed to climb across. He wouldn’t let himself think her body might be somewhere underneath him, buried in the mud.
So where did she go?
He looked at the shaft, through the steam and bubbling mud. He palmed his way around the edge of the pit.
A shallow opening. Not much, just a few inches of clear space above the mud. Probably nothing more than a recess, but he stuck in his hand and felt back as far as he could reach.
Nothing.
He ducked down and tried to shine the light inside. Rock and darkness. He sniffed it, but all he smelled was mud. He listened, but his ears were clogged.
He didn’t want to go in there. He went right round the chamber, squirming through the mud, feeling every crook and hollow for a way out. No luck. Five minutes later, he was back at the same place.
The knot comes apart and you are back where you began.
There wasn’t any other option. And he wasn’t going to last forever. Heat and fumes made him dizzy; his skin was flayed raw. Sooner rather than later, he’d pass out and go under.
He took a deep breath and turned onto his back. He slid under the opening like a patient going into a scanner, his mouth just sticking out of the mud. The air was a supercharged fog of fumes and steam compressed into the narrow gap beneath the rock ceiling.
Light meant nothing in that tunnel. Mud bubbles popped against his back. Mud fingers reached into every fold of his body. Muddy air coated his tongue, his throat, his lungs. He was an earthworm, contracting and expanding, wriggling blind. He ate mud; he excreted mud; he became mud. All that was left of him was a single imperative: Go on. Go on or die.
And then he touched something. Something that didn’t ooze away when he touched it, but resisted him. Something hard and real. Something blocking his way.
A rock wall. Was it a dead end? Panic began to bubble through him but, before it could take hold, his scrabbling arm felt something else. Nothing else: not mud, not rock, just … space. Air, as far as he could reach.
He lurched up from the mud and sprawled, gasping, on a rocky ledge.
Plato
Imagine our situation something like this …
I’m lying in a cave. The hard floor bruises my bones; a knot in the rock digs into the back of my head. But even the pain fades eventually. The stone swallows me, the warmth of my body melting me into it.
Poets rhapsodise about the silence of the grave, but they’re beautifully misinformed. It isn’t silent. Water drips into the chamber. The stone hisses with the melody of the earth turning on its axis.
In the dry air, I catch the impossible smell of ripe figs. The goddess must be near. There’s a sweetness all around me, like honey on my tongue. My nostrils open, my mouth relaxes, every pore in my body seems to dilate.
The darkness gives me strange sight. I can’t see my hand in front of my face, but I can peer over the rim of the world and see all space combined. I can dip in my hand and scoop up bubbles of time, twisting them this way and that to see how they catch the light. In a glistening bowl, I see the gilded city, its temples proud on the high rock of the acropolis. There are ships in the harbour beyond the walls, but I can’t see the flags. Is it Athens?
I think about how I got here.
I can hear the silence and see through darkness. I’m awake and dreaming. I’m dead, and more alive than I’ve ever bee
n.
A door opens and spills light into the room. It’s dim, from down the end of a long deep tunnel. A shadow appears against it. Far away, I see a man coming towards me. He’s short and stooped, moving awkwardly. It takes him a long time to reach me, though the only instrument I have to measure it by is the beat of my heart. The closer he comes, the brighter the light gets, like a star coming down to earth, until by the time he reaches me I can barely stand to look at it.
And as he gets here, I realise he’s been with me all the time.
Jonah
He reached up to turn on the head-torch. All he felt was mud-matted hair. The torch must have slipped off somewhere in the tunnel.
But a worm can still read the dark by the twitching of its hairs. He found steps. He slithered up them. He felt space, sweet air spreading around him like a clearing in a forest. After the tunnel and the mud, it made him feel as if he was floating. He could smell fruit in the air, the first green thing he’d encountered since he left the mainland.
A sudden and irresistible tiredness hit him. He felt himself sinking. The rock had opened below him, soft as a mattress, and he was falling into it. He tried to stay awake, certain there was something he had to remember just out of reach.
Everything we are is memory. Who said that?
A door opened in the ceiling. Dull orange light spilled through, and the sound of rushing water. He was still sinking, but the light was getting brighter. It hardened the mud that caked his skin, baking him into it. Through the holes around his eyes, he saw a figure walking towards him out of the light. Was it Lily? The light behind her was too bright. He tried to reach out to her, but the clay coffin wouldn’t let him move.
She smiled. The coffin cracked open and flew into a thousand pieces of light.
Thirty-eight