I move forward.
Suddenly, my senses tell me that something has changed. Ahead of me the tunnel is different. I can’t tell how yet, so, more cautiously than before, I edge forward…
The sound I emit during my by now regular ‘Humms’ seems to be swallowed up by the direction in front of me, even more than before.
Then abruptly the wall I am dragging my fingers along on my right disappears. In a microsecond, I come to a dead stop. Without turning my body, my fingers find the edge of the wall on my right, and scan beyond it… where has the wall gone?
The answer is immediately apparent… it has turned to the right. I let out several “humms” and feel my face screwing up with the intense effort of trying to interpret the lack of sound I get back.
Maintaining contact with the wall on my right, I turn my head around several times in different directions, emitting a “Hummm” here, and a “Hommmm” there.
On my left and in front of me, there is nothing there. The walls have disappeared.
On my right, there are faint echoes.
I hold my breath. Waiting. Hoping. Praying.
Then it happens.
A fresh draught of air caresses my face from my right. Then once again, a few moments later.
Scared to lose the wall on my right, I take several deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart and bring my mind back under control.
With a mixture of fear and hope, I pull together all the information supplied by my senses.
Although I can’t see, although I am ‘blind’, my mind has built a picture of where I am. Not a very detailed picture… it’s very abstract. But it’s all I’ve got.
If I am correct, I have entered a large chamber. To my left, the chamber disappears further into the darkness. To my right – where the air is coming from – and where the wall on my right turns away from me, I sense echoes. But strange echoes. Partial echoes. I sense a roof above my head, but not a complete one. There is something there, ahead of me on my right, something… but also nothing…
I am shaking now. It’s time to make another decision. To change direction. To make another choice.
“Help!” I scream aloud. “HELPPPPP!”
Shit… I feel so alone. Terrified.
Another draught of air.
I make a decision, turn to my right and feel my way along the wall which angles away from me.
I move forward again.
“Hummmmmmmmmm!”.
Half a scream. Half a plea for help. Half a sonar blip.
I was never very good at maths.
“One. Two… Three…” I start counting aloud, trying to estimate the number of metres I have moved since the junction of the tunnel, my face angling towards any movement of air I occasionally sense on my skin.
“Six… seven… ARGGGHHHH!”
Something solid bangs into my legs. Something immoveable, and I stumble forward.
Losing contact with the wall, my body pivots around the object in front of me, and I fall hard, onto my left side.
I feel my skin scratch on the left side of my forehead, my skull banging into something cold and metallic. My hands flail wildly in the dark.
My left knee bangs heavily against more metal, and my body comes to rest. Not flat, but quite oddly, partially vertical.
“ARRRGGGHHH!” I scream again, and this time the echoes surround me, coming at me from below, and both sides. As if I have fallen into a hole, and I am now entombed.
“Help!” I scream. “HEEEEEEEELP!”
Chapter Five
Hope, at last.
.
The echoes of my scream press back down upon me, and I know immediately that I’m in a confined space. I find myself lying twisted, at rather an odd angle, on my side. I am sloping upwards, the left side of my face lying against cold metal.
I angle myself better, then search for support on the sloping ground with my hands. One hand finds a level lower than the other… strange… but after testing my weight on my wrists, I manage to push myself up into a sitting position, my feet beneath me, my back against the incline. My feet seem to be on some sort of step below me.
“Uhmmm!” I blip several times, turning my head as I search for aural feedback.
A waft of cold air on my face comes downward from the direction of the incline.
I reach for my forehead with my left hand and immediately feel blood on my skin. Warm. Sticky. I smell my finger, then put it to my mouth and taste it. Salty.
I examine the cut with my fingers, fearing the worst, but quickly realise it isn’t actually too bad. It won’t be the thing that kills me.
For a moment I sit there in the dark, piecing together the fragments of fresh information that I’ve been given about my surroundings. It only takes a second or two before I understand just exactly where I am.
A feeling of excitement literally explodes within me. My heart goes into overdrive, and the fatigue and fear I have felt simply vanish.
If I am right, if my idea of where I am is correct, I should be able to confirm it simply by reaching out on both sides of me and finding handrails at about my current head height…
Slowly I extend my hands outwards on both sides, and they quickly each meet a cold metal barrier. I then run the fingers of both hands upwards until they come to a rubber lip that runs across the top of the little walls.
I laugh out loud! I scream for joy, the sound disappearing into the darkness away from me and up the tunnel where I am. Heading UP to the surface. To the EXIT!
I laugh, because I am happy, and because I now know where I am: I’m sitting at the bottom of a stationary, metal escalator!
--------------------
I count each and every step as I ascend the stationary escalator, London’s best invention. I remember my old world where finding broken down escalators on the London underground was an everyday occurrence. In the new world that I have lived in for the past year, they were always working perfectly. Efficient. Superb. The thought that this one is broken gives me hope that I have managed to return to my old world. To Sarah. To Keira. To Nicole. To the good old inefficient London Transport network of 2012! I never before thought that I would think of it so fondly, but now I find myself longing for it. Sadly, reality strikes very quickly, as I remember the name of the station that I saw earlier on the plaque on the wall. A station that only exists in my new world. Which confirms that the ‘jump’ from my new world to my old world never took place. I must still be exactly where I was. Stuck in purgatory.
I climb upward for several minutes. When the ground begins to level off and the handrails on either side of me curve away towards the horizontal ground again, I know that I am at the top. Two hundred and twenty-eight steps.
I’ve never been to this station before. Never explored it. I have no memories of its layout.
If I move away from the top of the escalator, will I lose myself in a cavernous hallway with connections to many other tunnels, or will I be lucky enough to find a quick exit to the streets outside?
The truth is that I will never know unless I keep moving forward.
“HELP!” I shout again at the top of my voice. “H E E E L P!”
--------------------
No one comes.
And even though my eyes eagerly search for any light that could indicate an exit or window, it’s as dark here as it was further below.
BUT, and this is a big but… as I stand at the top of the staircase and once again become attuned to my new surroundings, I notice that the air smells fresher. Not as musky or damp. Cleaner. Sweeter.
And once again I feel the breath of air upon my face, beckoning me forwards, like the music played by the Pied Piper of Hamlin.
So, knowing that it’s the only friend I have down here, and that the strategy of following it has seemed to work so far, I set off bravely – or stupidly – away from the top of the escalators. Following the breeze.
Once more I revert to my dolphin-like sonar, and start up my regular repe
ated “Hummmms”. It’s not long before I detect a wall before me, which, when I reach it and then follow, leads me to the ticket barriers that people have to go through before they head down the escalators.
I feel my way along the barriers. I count five. They are all closed. Dropping my rucksack onto the floor on the other side of the last one I encounter, I carefully hoist myself up and over the barrier.
On the other side, I orient myself with my back to the barrier, wait a moment for the air around me to settle and then wait again for a puff of fresh air on my face.
I feel it. Slightly to my left.
I step forward. Eyes closed. Chin slightly elevated, both hands in front of me.
Taking one cautious step after another, I sense that the walls around me have disappeared.
“Hummmm…” I hum loudly. “ECHO!” I shout loudly.
The sound does come back at me, but the walls have definitely receded away. I must be in the middle of a wide and large concourse.
The question now is, whether there is an entrance from the outside leading into this chamber, or a tunnel coming from another escalator somewhere taking me to a higher level… If so, where is it?
My nerves begin to reappear. Verging on fear.
I stand still. In the middle of wherever I am. Sensing. Another draught of air? Sound? Anything?
This is ridiculous. How on earth did I end up here!?
Then I feel the draught of air on my face again, and realise it’s come to me now slightly from my side. I turn slightly. I wave my hands in the air, flailing wildly at anything that could be in front, and start walking off again.
In an instant, the darkness disappears.
It’s as if God Himself had said, ‘Let there be light!”
A sun detonates and explodes in front me: all around me. A searing bright explosion of pure, brilliant white bursts in my head, and I automatically recoil, turning my head, contorting my body, falling to the ground and burying my head in my knees, my arms striving to cover my head and eyes, desperately trying to defend me from the light.
Before I could see nothing. Only darkness.
Now I can see nothing, again, but instead of darkness, its bright, bright, BRIGHT white light. If I was not blind before, now surely I am.
Chapter Six
Blinded by the Light!
“Aahhh!” I scream, loudly, not understanding what has or is just happening to me. “AAAAHHHHHH!!”
I’m kneeling on the ground now, my hands cupped over my eyes.
Did a bomb just go off? If I wasn’t dead before, am I dead now?
Strangely, there are few other sensations, no physical pain, no sound, no ringing in my ears… I can hear my heart pounding wildly in my chest, but apart from that… I’m guessing I haven’t sustained any physical injury to my body or limbs.
My eyes are screwed tightly shut… TIGHTLY shut… I don’t move… I am physically immobile…
I don’t know if it’s seconds, or minutes, but then, - and THANK GOD! - darkness begins to return to my eyes again. It starts with a black spot in the middle of what would be my field of vision, which then slowly grows and expands, until the light which has invaded my head is fully gone.
The darkness gives me bizarre comfort. I’m not dead. I’m now in darkness, as I was before.
Then I try a remarkable experiment. Slowly, with my fingers still covering my eyes, I open my right eye a tiny bit.
Light floods in again. Bright… White… I close my eye quickly. Darkness.
I open my eye again, very slowly, finding that I can control the influx of light, and finding, remarkably, ‘Hallelujah!’ that I can see again!
Opening my other eye just as slowly, I scan my surroundings. Relief floods through me,. the like of which I have never, ever experienced before. Then happiness. Joy. Euphoria!
I can see!!!
And within seconds I can see not only where I am, but where I’ve come from, and where I need to go.
The Exit!
“What the hell are you doing here?” a voice suddenly barks at me from somewhere on my right.
I turn, and slowly stand up. A man in a blue uniform is hurrying towards me, brandishing a broom in both hands.
I contemplate hugging the man, but instead I start to laugh with relief.
As he comes closer to me, the man slows down.
“What are you doing here again? I told you NOT to come back! And why are you laughing? James, this isn’t funny!” he shouts, seemingly exasperated with me.
It’s a moment before it dawns on me that this man, my saviour, knows my name. How?
The man stops several metres away from me and rests against the broom.
“You’re a mess, James. And you stink!” he says, screwing up his face. “Look at you! What on earth have you done to the clothes I gave you before?”
What’s going on? I’ve never seen this man before in my life. What’s he talking about? I look down at myself. At the clothes I’m wearing. Now I can see, I’m shocked to discover I’m wearing rags. At some stage, however, they were probably recognizable as a tweed suit. But now the clothes are filthy. Disgusting. Where on earth did I get them and how come I’m wearing them now? They’re not the clothes I was wearing a few hours ago…when I stepped off the train, trying to get back to Sarah and my old world.
I’m confused.
“Listen…”, the man interrupts my thoughts, “come with me again, but keep your distance. You know the rules! I haven’t got much time left…I’ve got two more stations to do today before my shift finishes.” The man begins to turn, but hesitates when he sees the confused look on my face.
“Have you been drinking again? Are you drunk?”
“No. Stone cold sober.” I reply.
“Good. I should hope so. Come on, then…and please hurry…”
Dumbly, I start to follow him. Whoever he is, he knows the way out. He’s my saviour, and there’s no way I’m going to lose sight of him.
He leads me across to the other side of the area we are now in, then up some stairs.
“The other escalator isn’t working yet,” he shouts over his back. “But it’s not far…”
We soon come to the top, where we walk down a small corridor and stop before a locked door. The man pulls out a key, opens the door, and steps inside. “Wait here,” he instructs, and I obey.
A few moments later, he steps back outside and waves for me to go in. He’s wearing some sort of facemask now, covering his mouth and nose. I must really stink.
“I’ve put a couple of bags of lost property on the bench. Help yourself and take a shower in the cubicle at the back. I haven’t got a towel, so I’ve opened a new bag of paper towels. Sorry, but you’ll have to use a pile of them to dry yourself. Throw them in the bin when you’re done, and make sure you wash your hands as soon as you go in, and don’t touch anything till you’ve done it.”
He looks at me, and for a second I see concern registering in his eyes. His voice is a little muffled by the facemask, but I hear him say, “Bloody hell, James. You’re a mess. Really!” He pauses, then continues. ‘This is the last time, okay? If I see you in here again, I’m calling the police. I’m only helping you because of that old saying, “… but for the grace of God, I could be you… ’ Or something like that. I can’t remember how it goes, but you know what I mean!”
I do. Basically he’s saying that it only takes a little bit of bad luck, and he could end up like me: a tramp.
Me a tramp? What the hell has happened to me?
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes. I’ve got a few things to finish up, then I have to hurry to the next station. I’ll let you out, then you’re on your own.”
A moment later, and he is gone. I step into the little room, and as promised I find a treasure trove of lost clothes. Emptying the bags on the floor, I quickly trawl my way through them, and manage to pick out two new sets of clothes. I contemplate taking both, simply because I don’t know how I got here, what’s going on, and wha
t’s the next big surprise that’s waiting around the corner for me. But then I decide against it. If I’m still in my old world, without any money or clothes, it looks like I will have no choice but to catch the train home to Surbiton tonight and then go home and get a new wardrobe. Hopefully Jane won’t be home yet. And if she is….?
I shake my head and move towards the shower. At this moment, I don’t have the strength to think about Jane. I can only face one problem at a time, and right now, I need to wash.
Am I Dead? Page 3