by Carl Derham
*
Oli’s fall had only lasted about ten seconds, although the extreme level of weirdness had made it seem considerably longer. At the end of the fall he felt the same sensation as approaching your selected floor in an elevator. His feet gently touched down on solid ground. Or was metal? His legs gave way and with a bit of a thud he landed on his backside. Wherever he was, it was the darkest place he had ever not seen; and silent too. Everywhere has some kind of background noise, whether it’s the wind, birds, or traffic, but there was nothing. The only sound was his obviously accelerated breathing. He was also certain that he could hear his heart attempting to force its way out of his chest. He couldn’t make out any shapes or shades of grey. The faint movement of air that he had experienced in the passageway was also missing. He started looking round in all directions hoping for some clue to his whereabouts, but there was nothing. Placing his hands on the floor he felt cool metal, very smooth, like the door of a fridge. Oh bum he thought, I’ve left a pint of milk in the fridge. It’s gonna be walking and talking by the time I get home. The idea of Ed going anywhere near the fridge during his absence, was inconceivable.
He held the palm of his hand out flat as he thought he could feel rain. No he thought, not rain, it’s not wet, and besides, I’m in the desert under a pyramid. Was it the dust that had fallen into the hole with him, and was now settling? He decided to crawl a couple of metres to his left to avoid getting too much of the dust over him. He raised himself onto his hands and knees and started to crawl. There was a metallic thud as his head contacted a hollow metal case, and he decided to sit back and let the dust do its thing.
As he sat back, he caught sight of a faint red light in the corner of his eye. He turned his head so quickly that he jarred the muscles in his neck and had to bend his head down to rub the back of his neck with his hand. He slowly raised his eyes, still rubbing his neck and tried to focus in the direction from which the light had appeared. Two more lights had joined it, a yellow one and a green one. Traffic lights? He thought. He had no perspective of distance, or size for that matter. Then, next to the red light a row of smaller red lights appeared one after the other. He could now make out a faint hum interspersed with a random, almost imperceptible clicking noise. It immediately reminded him of the sound that his clunky old computer made when he turned it on. All his friends had the very latest in computer hardware but Oli had retained the same beaten up old Dell that he’d purchased from a friend, eight years before. It was probably up for an award by now for the most abused and antiquated PC in the whole of London, but it served Oli just fine.
More lights appeared next to the yellow and green ones and there was now enough of an ambient glow to enable him to make out that the lights were situated about five metres away from him and that they were raised about one metre from the floor.
He placed his hands on the floor and lifted himself onto his knees. Whether this was in readiness to run or to approach and examine the lights more closely, he wasn’t yet sure.
Run? He thought.
“Where to?” he replied to his thought. Darkness surrounded him and he certainly wasn’t ready for another clunk to his bonce. So inquisitiveness became the overriding drive and he tentatively approached the lights.
