Plato's Cave

by Russell Proctor

  So I looked.

  My right foot was held by...well, by a Thing. Only that's the wrong word. I wasn't sure what it was, but Thing does not describe it. For a second my mind saw a toad: a big, suction-padded foot that gripped mine, but it wasn't anything like that in reality. It was something else, something altogether indescribable. Not any sort of appendage at all. All I knew was my foot could not move and I was being pulled towards It. Only It was inside the circle, not outside. Despite being almost horizontal as I floated there, and my feet consequently being quite close to the circle's perimeter, whatever was pulling at me was not trying to pull me out, but deeper in. It was as if It existed within an invisible place inside the circle and was trying to drag me there. If It succeeded, I would be in and would probably vanish from wherever I had been, which was out.

  Clear about that, are you?

  My right foot began to disappear. The toe of my shoe vanished and a cold sensation started up my leg. Slowly my foot followed, dragged by It into wherever It was. My hands clawed at the air, vainly trying to grab something.

  Instead, something grabbed them. I looked and found both arms in Mr Sabatini's grip. He tried to pull but he was too near the circle and was being dragged inwards not only by the circle's pull, but also by the Thing that had me.

  Events got confused after that. I had the vague realisation that someone had grabbed Mr Sabatini, and maybe someone grabbed that person as well. Their combined efforts were slowing the rate at which my foot was disappearing (up to the ankle by now) but I was slowly being pulled apart, which was less than enormously enjoyable. I liked my height the way it was.

  The tug of war, with me as the rope, went on. I kicked my foot but it was held too tightly. The – whatever it was – that gripped it tightened and the lower half of my leg disappeared. The sense of cold crept into the rest of my body now, a numbing, Antarctic bitterness. I had the distinct but ghastly sensation that my blood was freezing.

  Pain. Pain from being pulled in two directions. More pressure on my arms now, as other people joined the chain. I could dimly see a line of bodies tugging behind Mr Sabatini. His grip was unyielding. Pain in my arms, in my leg. Pain in the middle, where the jagged edges would be when I tore in half.

  Slowly, the good guys were winning. A fraction of leg came back into view. That was helpful. It had served me well in the past and I was sure I could find further uses for it. The pain, however, continued.

  More leg. More pain. A good thing, though, was that the constriction on my foot was decreasing. More leg. The top of the ankle. Progress was definitely being made in the right direction.

  Suddenly, I was free. I became a champagne cork and fell out of the circle on top of Mr Sabatini. He fell on top of someone else, Max I think it was. Someone let out a loud Oof! There was a tumble of bodies.

  I looked at the circle. We all did. Something had appeared in it.

  Afterwards, we tried to describe what we saw. We failed. Various words were put forward, but none completely worked. Top favourites were:

  tendril

  tentacle

  feeler

  manipulative appendage (that one from Max)

  growth

  extensor

  line

  stem

  and nasty, squiggly, curly thing (Heather).

  But none of these were right. A new language, a language with no connections to any that yet existed, would be needed to describe what we saw. Any words we currently knew completely failed to do the job.

  It was not like a tendril, because it was too thick. But it was not like a tentacle, because – well, because it wasn't. Just as it was/wasn't a stem. It was a line because it seemed occasionally to be one dimensional; but it was not a line because (as David pointed out) a line is a mathematical abstraction and did not exist in the real world, and anyway such a thing is one-dimensional all the time. Manipulative appendage, maybe, but it wasn't attached to anything. It most certainly was not a toad.

  It moved around a bit in the circle, sort of like the way the sausages squirmed shortly after they appeared. It seemed reluctant to cross the chalk lines, however, which was a relief to all, especially me who was lying the closest to it, my backside on Mr Sabatini's head.

  We watched it for a while. Max had the presence of mind to try using the camera – although I was about ready to shove the thing down his throat by now – despite its inability to photograph anything to do with the circle.

  Then It...well, It didn't withdraw, because there was nowhere to withdraw to. It just ceased being in the circle. No one saw It go, even though we were all looking straight at It. It didn't just vanish. One moment It was there, the next It wasn't, as if It had never been. That's all I can tell you. I'm sorry.

  As we sat there watching It not-vanish, my senses went wild.

  Colours and images...

  Intermittent, fleeting patches of light...

  Noises: a slow double-thud of heartbeat, the roar of blood through veins...

  Something howled in my head...

  Flashes of texture: soft, rough, pain, coolness, heat on my skin...

  And a pleasant slipping into oblivion, almost as good as a bath...

  ***

  I regained consciousness for the third time that day, including the time I actually woke from legitimate sleep. Once again I was back from the dark place, that shadowy region just a little way removed from the undiscovered country. And it still wasn't lunchtime.

  I felt a dull ache in my arms, and another in my foot. My eyes hurt in the light – there was too much of it, too much white, and it was very bright. Scrubbed walls, their blandness broken only by a still life in pastels directly opposite me. Above my head I saw a contraption of metal that looked either painful or kinky, depending on your point of view. Someone next to me was lying in a bed. So was I.

  I was in hospital. This did not auger well: hospitals are places you go when something is wrong. Using the words wrong and Emily in the same sentence was never a welcome idea. I experimented using my arms, found them functional, and used the metal contraption, which was, on more rational inspection, no more than a metal triangle designed for the purpose, to haul myself into a sitting position. I looked at the person in the next bed: female, elderly, no teeth, reading a magazine.

  "Hello," I said.

  She turned and looked at me.

  "Hello, dear," she said. "Have a good sleep?"

  "Yes, thanks. What hospital am I in?"

  She told me and turned back to the magazine. The cover announced that some movie star was having marital problems. I guessed the old woman needed to find out all about it urgently – you know, in case she could help or anything.

  "How long have I been here?" I asked.

  "Well, let me see," she said, without stopping her reading. "It's eleven-thirty now, and they brought you in at about nine-thirty, so that's - what? Two hours?"

  I found the little buzzer thing that summoned the nurse.

  She arrived a few minutes later in the form of a girl younger than me, with lots of white teeth revealed by a smile that was a little too enthusiastic for comfort. Her name tag announced her name was Sarah Hoskins and she was a nursing student. Joy.

  "You're awake?" she said, as if uncertain of the fact. Maybe she hadn't reached that chapter in her textbook.

  "Who brought me here?" I asked, getting right to it in my own anti-social style.

  "Oh, your friends were here until a few minutes ago. They left you a note."

  She fished in the pockets of her uniform and produced a piece of paper. I held it at arm's length, once again cursing the fact that my reading glasses had vanished with the rest of the house, and managed to decipher the following blur:

  Dear Emily,

  (It was Heather's handwriting, sort of like a drunken spider trying to find somewhere to vomit.)

  Sorry, we waited for a long while but I have to go and deal with Mr Sabatini and try to explain what happened. David 's gone to the lab to fetch a th
ing called a gravimeter and some other stuff I can't spell. And he's going to get someone to do a chemical analysis of the sausages. Joanna has gone to see the Maestro. Max has had to go back to work at the Planetarium, but assures us he will "stay on the case." I'll be back as soon as I can, so stay there and don't worry. Everything is ok.

  Heather.

  "They only left a few minutes ago?" I asked the nurse.

  "Yes. Excuse me, I'll fetch the doctor now you're awake and he can have a look at you."

  She left the room, taking her many teeth and starched uniform with her. The room seemed darker without her smile.

  I lay back down and listened to the old woman reading. She muttered to herself, going "Tisk, tisk" occasionally and flapping the pages over. Apparently the movie star's behaviour did not meet with her approval.

  The doctor came in about twenty minutes later. While I hate hospitals, I like doctors. There's something attractive about a man who knows how you function, and can fix you up when you go wrong. Mechanics are the same, only not so personal, and they get too dirty for my liking. This one was also young like the nurse, fresh out of medical school probably, doing his residency and anxious to please. But he had that tired look about him that new doctors doing time in emergency wards tend to get: too many long hours and too much human drama at short notice.

  Perhaps he would like to swap lives with me.

  "You were brought here by some friends a couple of hours ago," he said, after having a good look at me and touching various parts of my anatomy. "They said you collapsed after a physical assault."

  "Something like that."

  "Have you told the police?"

  "We might get around to it, but I don't think so."

  He pouted his lips, as if wondering what to do next. "Well, you've suffered no major physical trauma," he said eventually. "Only your foot."

  "What about my foot?"

  "There are lesions. Nothing to worry about. They look worse than they are."

  "What are lesions?"

  He rattled off the definition like he would in an exam: "Areas of tissue with impaired function as a result of damage. Nothing to worry about in your case."

  I had been going to make a joke about the French Foreign Lesion, but I decided against it. I was learning some harsh facts about my humour.

  "Are you in any pain?" he asked.

  "A little. In my foot."

  "There's a bit of bruising, too, in your arms. Looks like someone tried to pull you in two different directions." He snorted (presumably that was his laugh). I failed to see anything funny.

  "So there's no reason for me to stay here?" I said.

  "Well, no obvious physical reason. Certainly the lesions and the bruising should clear up in a few days. But we'd like to make sure there's no concussion. You hit your head earlier today too, I understand."

  "I fell off a chair."

  "You've had quite a morning. Two periods of unconsciousness a few hours apart isn't good. You may have hurt your head more than you thought. We'd like you to stay overnight so we can see if you have any more episodes of syncope – fainting, that is. Do you have any light-headedness, headache, blurred vision?"

  "No. I feel fine."

  He snorted again. It was a vaguely disgusting sound, as if he was trying to blow something out of his nose. "That's what they all say. Please, bear with us. We wouldn't want you to keep fainting like that."

  After he had gone, I looked at my foot. I had been wearing shoes when whatever It was had done whatever It had to my foot and tried to pull me into the circle when I was already in there, if you know what I mean. I had felt no pressure on my foot itself. It had somehow taken hold of my foot and the lower part of my leg, but there had been no sense of touch, merely a resistance. But now there were two dark bruises – almost black – on the skin of both instep and ankle. I tried to picture something like a hand or fingers grasping me there, but that did not quite fit. The Thing had had no hand, no claw, nothing but an ending to whatever It was, and that ending had not looked like it could hold onto anything, much less inflict bruising. I prodded the dark patches carefully. They were slightly painful, and the impression of my finger was left in them for a moment afterwards, then slowly flattened out.

  The bruising on my arms was more painful, but also more like bruising. This was where Mr Sabatini's powerful fingers had taken their limpet-like hold. His use of force was excusable: I owed him a lot, probably my life, and I felt bad about his house.

  But I had to leave the hospital. I was not about to lie there doing nothing. Heather's note had promised she would be back soon, but I wanted things to happen before then. I could try Mr Sabatini's phone number, and it would be good of me to say thank you, but that would also involve me in discussing the house. Heather could do that sort of thing much better than me.

  All right, I know, I'm a coward.

  I had Joanna's number in my head. I could try her. I stood up and found I could walk. The old lady glanced at me but said nothing. I pretended I was going to the toilet (actually not a bad idea) and left the room, looking for a phone. I had left my mobile back at Joanna’s place, and anyway it still wasn’t working since the Great Removal. There were a few coins in my clothes that had been carefully folded and put away in a closet so I went looking for a pay phone.

  There was one at the end of the hall. I had to walk past the nurse's station to reach it, but she just nodded and smiled with those teeth again. I inserted the coins and dialled Joanna's number.

  The buzz-buzz went on until it rang out. I hung up and fished my coins from the return chute. I had no idea of David or Max’s numbers. I could try the university. Then another idea hit me. I opened the phone book and looked for the Planetarium.

  "Max Fisher, please," I said to the girl who answered. There was interference on the line, background howls that rose and fell in pitch and volume.

  "One moment, please."

  "Dr Fisher here."

  "Max, it's me. Emily."

  "Oh! How are you?" He sounded tired, and maybe less than enthusiastic to hear me. I know I would be.

  "Fine. But everyone's gone. I need a lift home."

  I could hear him breathing, but he paused so long I thought he might have gone away. When he spoke again it was in one of those tight voices that indicate anything: maybe doubt, lying or being slowly strangled.

  "The doctor said he thought you should stay in overnight. Isn't Heather there?"

  "No. Look, I'm fine. No problems. I just need to get out of here."

  "Well..."

  "Oh come on, Max. You know what's been happening."

  "Yes, but...Perhaps you should stay there where it's safe and let us work on things. David's going back to the house with a lot more equipment. And I'm trying to pin down anything in the vicinity of Microscopium that might give us a clue."

  I sighed. "Look, Max, you won't find anything. You know you won't. Whatever it was that took hold of me this morning is not from Microscopium. You know that. It's from - I don't know, somewhere else. Somewhere inside the circle."

  Silence for a few seconds. Well, almost silence. There was a long exhale of breath from the other end of the line. He tried not to make it obvious, but it was there. Finally, he said, "We need to do further investigations."

  These scientists could play with their toys for ages and never find out anything. Maybe Joanna and the Maestro were on a more productive, if more obscure, track.

  "Are you coming to pick me up or what?" I asked, rather rudely. I was having that sort of day, and Max wasn't helping.

  "Heather said she would get back there as soon as possible. I suggest you wait."

  In other words, he was shifting responsibility.

  "I can't wait. What time is the sky due to split this afternoon?"

  Things were so weird by now I could ask that peculiar question in a totally casual manner, as if enquiring about the time of the next train into town.

  "Three-fifteen."

  "Well I don'
t want to be here when it does. Not in hospital."

  "But that might be the safest place, in case you have any – well, any adverse reactions."

  "What, in case I turn into stars or something?"

  An orderly walked past just as I said this and looked at me a little strangely. But then he was carrying a bedpan full of piss, so what was his problem?

  "What are the doctors here going to think if I do that?" I continued. I had a vision of them trying to plunge a drip into an ethereal arm. "Besides, I haven't had that problem at all today. Becoming sub-atomic and being kidnapped by an invisible Thing, yes. But no stars."

  There was another pause on the other end, then: "Look, I think it's best you stay there for the time being. At least wait for Heather."

  I hung up after saying, "Thanks for nothing."

  Back in my room, I found the old lady puzzling at the half a dozen sausages that had been in my bed when I left. She had picked one up and was sniffing at it. "Sorry," I said. "They're mine."

  "I thought you'd left your guts behind," she said. "But then they moved. I saw them."

  I grabbed my clothes and left again. Time to take matters into my own hands. I found the Ladies toilet and changed from the hospital-issue gown into my own clothes. That felt better.

  Being abandoned by the others irked me a little. Of course, they had not really done that. David was still hard at work on my problems and Heather was being the rock of my foundations and looking after the minor but essential details as always. I found myself reluctant to chastise Joanna for ignoring me, as she had been so helpful up until now. But what was it the Maestro was doing, that she had gone to check on him? Max was out of the picture, for the time being at least. But I didn't mind that so much. He had put me in a bad mood.

  When (if) the sky spilt this afternoon, I wanted to be somewhere I could react to circumstances, not lying helpless in bed. I had this feeling that something big was going to happen. Of course, hospital might be the best place for me, if something weird or painful occurred, but I needed people I knew around me, not a group of strange, inexperienced doctors and nurses. I needed Joanna and David's calm assurance if anything was going to grab me and try once more to drag me off into the void.