Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

by G J Lee

  Chapter 39

  Something Beneath

  Another day of scraping passed.

  Then both nails became blunt and one snapped.

  What we had done though was to pick away an area of old grey plaster big enough to squeeze through. We had also managed to scrape away some of the old cement between the bricks. A lot of the cement was just so hard that it couldn’t be moved but I decided that the small area might now be weak enough to bash through. So I laid on my back as flat as I could in the small space and kicked out with my legs.

  The wall vibrated with a thud but the bricks didn’t budge.

  I tried again.

  And again.

  Nothing.

  “That’s enough,” whispered Lizzie urgently. “They’ll hear us.”

  She was right. If I carried on kicking I might bring the whole household down on us. What we needed was something hard that I could swing. Something like a hammer.

  And that was pretty unlikely.

  But I know now that chances appear in different forms and one came not long afterwards.

  We heard the feet of several people moving towards the cupboard door. The key turning in its lock. The door creaking open. Then we were bathed in the soft yellow glow from the hallway light.

  The Face, Hanz, and behind them Dr Meen.

  “Ous!” shouted Hanz.

  The three of us blinked back at him, confused and afraid.

  “Ous!” he shouted again.

  Still we didn’t move.

  Then Dr Meen stepped forward. “I believe he means you’re all to get out.”

  Although apprehensive we started to clamber up through stiff legs and sore bums to our feet. But Hanz stepped forward and reached into the cupboard. He placed a heavy hand on Rosie’s scalp before she could get up.

  “No!” he told her. “Noch nicht!”

  Again Dr Meen translated.

  “He means ‘not yet’. You’re to stay,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Me and Lizzie glanced back at poor Rosie as the door was closed on her again. Despite our differences I felt a huge surge of pity for her and anger towards the men who kept her locked up. Before we could say anything that might give her a few moments of freedom The Face had pushed me forward and Hanz had grabbed Lizzie by one of her thin arms.

  I felt the door was closing on an old friend.

  We both felt like we’d abandoned Rosie. As we were led away from the cupboard with our hearts stretching out to the little girl left alone her terrible prison, we were shown through a door in one of the old corridors and down wooden steps that opened out into a cold, dimly lit cellar. The walls and concrete floor was damp and there were a few boxes scattered about. But there wasn’t much else. We followed the tall and surprisingly nimble Dr Meen and every time I slowed The Face pushed me roughly in the small of my back. Hanz held Lizzie tightly and dragged her along.

  We marched through the cellar and into a passageway. This passageway had been cut from the earth as the walls and ceiling were being held up by timbers. Between these timbers large squares of wood had been used to stop the soil from crumbling in. The passageway was short and had an earthy smell to it that reminded me of our back garden in the 21st century.

  Soon we stopped before a heavy steel door with large rivets around its edge and across its middle. There was no getting through that in a hurry. The people behind it were either keeping something in or keeping something out.

  Or both!

  With one of his long fingers Dr Meen pressed a button set on a metal plate beside the door and waited. There must have been some sort of viewing hole through which Dr Meen was identified as pretty quickly the door unlocked with a clunk and was swung open by another man dressed in an old-fashioned tweed suit. I was prodded in through the opening.

  Before we had stepped through the iron door I had noticed that the electric hum was getting louder. It seemed to pulse in and out, in and out. As soon as we had got inside the next bit of the tunnel it became much clearer. I also recognised a crackle every so often. Like sparklers. Now we were walking on grey concrete lit by a series of light bulbs joined by a heavy electric cable.

  I could sense a wide space ahead.

  “Where are you taking us?” I called ahead to Dr Meen who was a few paces in front.

  “Not now dear boy,” he answered, dismissing my question with a flourish of fingers. At the same time I felt another finger poke me forward.

  Suddenly we descended a short flight of concrete steps, ducked through a small doorway and found ourselves in a large open area about the size of a football pitch. Dr Meen stopped to look and lit a cigarette. The rest of us fetched up slightly behind him. The Face gripped my arm still tighter as me and Lizzie exchanged surprised glances at what we saw before us.

  I didn’t know what an air-raid shelter looked like but I’m guessing that what we were seeing was once the shelter that Lizzie’s Dad had told us about. I’m guessing that it was once a shelter because part of the floors and walls had been bricked up. There were posters up here and there telling us that ‘careless talk costs lives’ and the ‘walls have ears’. There were signs of building and digging. We could see mounds of earth piled up in places with spades, picks and other tools leaning against objects like workers on a break. The concrete roof directly above us was low but it had been heightened further away from us and powerful electric lights hung on long cables like strands of liquorice. These lights illuminated a lower area that had bunks along the far wall and a number of tables at which people sat, smoked and talked. In fact there was a bubble of conversation that must have come from at least twenty mouths, men and women, many of them dressed smartly in suits or dresses and here and there the sparkle of jewellery. As we listened we heard a mixture of languages, English, German and others that I wasn’t so sure about. But they all chatted happily together and every now and then a burst of laughter. Hanging over everything there was a smell of damp underground, cigarette smoke, all mixed in with a sudden smell of burning. The burning smell was familiar. It was the same whiff of something smouldering I had when travelling through time. It reminded me of when Mum did the ironing.

  It suddenly became clear where the burning smell came from for, dominating the whole scene in front of us, at the far end of the football pitch, was the focus of every ones attention.

  A huge round ball sat against the far wall, its top disappearing into the damp roof, its bottom joining up at some point below the concrete floor. It was taller than the shelter itself. If I described it as a large marble I would be pretty accurate as the smooth surface of this ball was alive with all the colours that you could think of. Reds. Ambers. Yellows. Blues. And these colours weren’t just still or static. They constantly shifted and moved creating patterns of colour that became so hypnotic that you couldn’t take your eyes off of them. At one point the marble’s whole surface became one of ocean blue that reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of planet earth taken from space and the continents became a twisting kaleidoscope of golds, ruby reds and deep purples. Then just as quickly the object changed colour again and what we were looking at was something completely different.

  It almost seemed alive.

  I looked at Dr Meen, casually smoking a cigarette. He was smiling, mesmerised by the colours swirling and mixing together. Hanz still held onto Lizzie’s arm but both were staring wide eyed as if at some giant snakes’ eye enchanting you before it struck.

  Then suddenly a slash and crash of treacle coloured sparks reaching out like fingers of lightening from several places along its surface. Some people sat at the tables nearby clapped and whooped but then fell quiet again. Then that familiar singeing, burning, electrical smell wafted towards us on drifting slithers of smoke. Eventually the smoke rose to lie along the concrete roof like thin whispers.

  And all the while that pulsing, powerful hum of energy.

  Dr Meen, who was stood slightly in front of us, now turned and talked.

  “I suppose you’re wonderi
ng what this beautiful object is,” he asked us, still holding the cigarette, “and why you’re here.”

  We heard the doctor but we were still fascinated by the movement of colour on the surface of the ball. There a turquoise continent. Here something that resembled a face. Always changing. Moving on.

  “This, ladies and gentlemen,” continued Dr Meen despite not having our full attention, “is the Junction Sphere,” and he swept his arm towards it. “Or the J-Sphere for short.” He smiled and nodded, pleased with his own introduction but then quickly grew serious again when nobody said anything. “Any…questions…at all?” he asked us.

  Silence.

  “Anything...no?”

  Lizzie was the first to speak. “Yes. What does it do?”

  “Ah yes,” said Dr Meen, suddenly animated again, “what does it do? Good question. Good question.” Then the doctor crouched and looked at Lizzie, extending a bony finger up towards the furthest point of the J-Sphere, where it disappeared into patchy concrete. “See the top of the sphere? Lizzie, where do you think it goes?”

  Dr Meen’s wrinkles moved around his brown face in a mischievous smile.

  Lizzie shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Dr Meen straightened. “That, my dear, is directly under your house and it reaches its furthest point at the top of your stairs.” He turned to look directly at me, waiting for the penny-to-drop. “In fact, to be more precise, that is where 1946 ends and the 21st century begins.”