This is where the coincidence comes in. It’s a biggy, but you’re just going to have to accept it, because this is what happened.
At the moment Krats’ friend was looking out of the window, Krats himself was in a store on the seafront. Suddenly he felt a strange sensation at the back of his mind, a kind of tickling. Thinking some acquaintance had snuck up behind him, he turned round, and he saw what Alkland was seeing now. The sea had disappeared.
He wandered out of the shop, mouth hanging open, and walked across the road to the beach. The ocean really had gone, and what was left was what he’d seen from the plane, a measureless expanse of…something, beneath a low, storm-like sky. Not even noticing that the beach and promenade were deserted, that all the summer tourists who’d been milling about when he’d walked to the store had vanished, he vaulted over the wall and went down to the beach. He walked out onto the plain, and he walked: and he found what he found.
Accounts differ as to what actually happened, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing was that the way was opened, a gate nobody even knew existed had suddenly swung wide.
Six hours later Krats woke up to find himself in his living room on the sofa. He felt exhausted and thirsty and staggered into the kitchen to get some milk. On the way he remembered his dream, suddenly, and with shocking clarity. What a shame it wasn’t true, he thought as he drank his milk, that the ocean hadn’t disappeared, that he’d just fallen asleep on the sofa. What a shame: that would have been interesting.
Then he noticed that his shoes were covered in dark grey mud, and that he’d left tracks into the kitchen from the living room. He followed them back in there, and found something very strange. The prints started at the sofa.
That’s how it started. I explained this to Alkland as we stood looking out onto the plain, our coats whirled round us by the strange occasional crashes of wind that seem to be part of the whole thing. I explained that Villig was up there now, high above the Earth in his plane, looking down at the ocean and seeing it the way we were, that I’d needed him up there to be able to take Alkland in. I explained once more that sometimes things are the way they appear, and that if you know that, the world becomes a different place. The Actioneer just stood there, mouth open, shaking his head in mild rejection of everything he could see.
But he didn’t reject it, not really. If he had he wouldn’t have been seeing what he was seeing. He couldn’t reject it, not with me standing there. I’m a very strong dreamer, you see.
‘What happens now?’ he asked eventually, looking up at me earnestly like an elderly child.
‘We walk.’
We took the steps down to the beach. Alkland hesitated for quite a while before actually setting foot on it, as if frightened that the plain might just be an illusion, that his foot would slip right through and he’d fall into God knows where. I didn’t hurry him. I knew that he was having to take quite a lot on board at the moment, and that his current state of acquiescence was fragile. Steps you take by yourself are much stronger: if you push someone they’ll fall, but if you can get them to jump by themselves they may land safely.
In end he took the step, and I followed him onto the plain.
‘How far do we have to go?’
‘It varies. Probably a mile or two.’
‘The going’s a bit, er, soft, isn’t it?’ he muttered, peering down at the mud. ‘Is it going to rain?’
‘No. The clouds always look like that here.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. That’s just the way it is,’
He nodded.
‘Right-o,’ he said, and we walked.
It was absolutely silent out there on the plain, the only sound the faint squelching of our feet in the mud. The surface wasn’t too bad, actually: I’ve seen times when the mud is ankle-deep and vile, but this was relatively solid.
Within ten minutes we’d left the flat area behind, and were weaving our way amidst the low ridges and occasional small dips that ruffled the surface. For a long time we walked without speaking, Alkland trudging by my side, sometimes glancing back the way we’d come, sometimes looking over the terrain with an air of slightly grumpy puzzlement. I’m accepting this for now, his demeanour said, but I don’t like it. If you want to be mud rather than sea, fine. Just don’t you dare do anything else, like change colour or anything. I’m watching you.
After about an hour the ridges started to get a little higher, some as much as four or five feet, and the dips deeper. I led us through them, following the middle ground, our course shaped and altered by the random undulations.
‘Is this a path?’
‘Yes and no. No, because it’s different every time, and so there can’t really be a path. Yes, because it’s leading us where we’re going.’
‘I see.’ Alkland glared at the ridge we were passing, as if feeling that this qualified as the additional strange thing he had warned it about. ‘If I asked you where we’re going, would I regret it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Probably not.’
‘Would I understand it?’
‘Not at first. You’ll see when we get there. You’ve been there before.’
‘I have?’
‘Yes.’
‘My life,’ the Actioneer said wistfully, ‘has become very strange recently.’ In the pale light his face looked tired and drawn, with unhealthy-looking patches of colour.
‘You should try mine,’ I smiled at him.
‘No, thank you,’ he said, with some force. ‘No, thank you.’
Half an hour later I saw that we were getting close. The ridges were bending in a certain way, a way I’ve learned to recognise. Then a turn took us into a sort of tiny valley, wide enough for four people to walk abreast, with the sides just over our heads. It was a dead end, and I knew we were there.
‘Er, what now?’
‘Have you ever had a general anaesthetic?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I had four wisdom teeth out. Why?’
‘Because that’s what this is going to be like. You know when they put the butterfly into your hand, and injected the drug? The way it felt very cold for a moment, cold and heavy and clear? That’s what this feels like.’
‘Stark,’ he said, turning to look at me, ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t be. It’s okay: it will be all right. There’s no need to be afraid. Not yet, at least.’ He didn’t look very reassured. ‘Don’t worry about what happens next. I’ll find you, okay? I will be there.’
A deep breath shuddered out of him.
‘Okay.’
We carried on walking steadily, straight towards the dead end. About five yards away Alkland timidly took my hand, and I held it. Another few steps and the feeling cut in, cruel sharpness and a heavy chill that seems to soak right through your body. I gripped the Actioneer’s hand tightly and kept going.
‘Stark—’
‘Sweet dreams,’ I said.
12
Utter darkness all around apart from a glow of light like a torch spilling yellow to be swallowed up. A soft thumping sound grows nearer, and then a creature like a kangaroo bounds past, softly lit at the edge of the glow for a moment and then gone, bouncing quietly.
The corner of a school desk, the grain of the wood huge and deep. Someone’s illegible initials, and a patch of floor.
A hand swims past.
Then, deeper.
It was late one Saturday night when we drew up in the town. We’d loaded up Rafe’s pickup with nothing more than a couple of bags and driven out here, leaving our lives behind. Bored, unhappy, two misfits who wanted something more, something different, we looked around us at the ghost town’s deserted square and decided to call it home.
I can still remember it very clearly, that night, that moment, the pickup pulled up against the kerb and us standing one foot on the bumper, looking round and thinking, What the heck, let’s have our own town. It was quiet and dark, just the sound of us dragging on cigarettes and the haze of the p
ickup’s headlights and I can remember realising that this night was special, that you don’t get many like it in your life.
How often do you just get the hell up and do something? How often do you have the courage or the strength to leave everything behind and look for something new, to search for something that you can be happy with? To do that, to have taken that risk, and to have discovered something: that felt very special. Later that night we found an old piano in one of the rooms off the square, and we wrote a melody, a sweet and singing song. We wrote the town.
Ten years later things were a little different. For a while it had been just us, hanging out in the disused buildings, trying to write our songs. We were going to be stars in those days. We were going to write tunes which people would weep to hear, which would turn hearts and heads and live for ever in people’s minds. We weren’t going to stay in the town for ever, no way. It wasn’t important in itself, it was just a symbol of our freedom.
Then slowly, other people began to drift into some of the houses. At first they were a bit like us, loners looking for a place to rest while they recouped to rejoin the struggle which some people’s lives are always going to be. They didn’t join up with us as such—we didn’t become some gang or commune. They just settled, and we’d see them around. And then we’d seen more, and more.
Today there were a few hundred people living there, couples, whole families: the place had become a town again, and Rafe and I were still there. We hadn’t got away, hadn’t found what we were looking for and left. Somehow we’d been sidetracked, and were now the founding fathers of the new town which had risen from the ashes of the dead one we’d discovered.
Things between Rafe and me had gone a little awry in the last couple of years. Somehow something had got in the way of our friendship, and we’d moved a little apart. When we’d arrived on that dark and interesting night, our concerns, our hopes, our selves, had been the same. We were two sides of the same coin, we were each other’s oldest, best and only friend. Somehow things had changed, our interests had diverged, as if the town itself had come between us. I hoped that today I might be able to do something about that. A big meeting was to be held in the square: something was threatening the town, or was thought to be. I felt the issue had been blown out of proportion and couldn’t get that excited about it, but as a founding father I had quite a lot of respect amongst the people, and I knew I ought to be there.
I turned up at the square quite early, and saw that four chairs had been set out at the front. I was aware that one of them was for me, that Rafe and I were to be joined by a couple of others to sit up there and oversee the debate, as if we were the government. I’d never really got my head round our supposed status in the town, and suddenly I knew what I should do.
Instead of going and sitting in my chair, instead of taking my rightful place up there, I walked over to the kerb, to the very spot where we’d stopped the pickup all those years ago, and I bent and sat down on the warm stone.
I knew that people would be wondering what I was up to, why I wasn’t taking my place up there at the front, but it felt like the right thing to do. When Rafe came into the square he’d see me sitting down there, remember that night, remember what we came for and the way we were back then, and he’d come and sit beside me and the years would disappear. We’d be two friends again, hunkered down on the kerb, facing the world together and thinking, What the hell, it’ll work out. Seeing us together like that, seeing the founders side by side once more, would pull the town together and we could beat this issue, face it as one and overcome it.
The square filled up quickly and I looked round the gathering crowd, marvelling at how many people were here now, amazed at how a community had grown up from nothing and taken on a life of its own.
Then I looked back, and saw that Rafe had arrived. He was sitting in one of the chairs.
I stared at him, thinking that maybe he hadn’t seen me when he came in. He was sitting with arms folded, impressive in a suit and tie, listening to the speeches. He looked across at me and frowned, indicating the chair beside him. I shook my head, smiling, thinking he’d know what I meant, and he shrugged and turned back to the debate, watching with judicial weight and authority, like a founding father should do.
I looked at him, and realised that I’d blown it. I’d misunderstood everything. I’d thought that by a romantic gesture I could pull everything back to the way I wanted it to be, but all I’d done was pass up what little authority and belonging I had. Rafe was part of the community, a central person in this collection of people. I could have been, but I was losing it—losing it because my heart was in the wrong place, because I was living in my own world on the periphery, in a world that was a film with me as the hero.
The debate continued but I couldn’t hear it. My heart felt empty as if I was falling like a stone, and my ears filled with a rushing sound, a dreadful fear and loneliness. I got up and walked from the kerb, away from the debate. A few heads turned curiously, but not many. Not enough.
I went into the old bar where the wrecked piano still stood. On top of it lay a dusty cigarette packet, yellow with age. It was Rafe’s from the night we arrived. We’d left it there as a monument, back when we both thought the same way and believed in the same gestures, and seeing it made me realise how long it was since I’d been in there. I stood in front of the piano and prepared for one last chance.
Through the dusty, dirty window I could see the crowd out in the sunlight, still listening, still turning over the weight and confusion of the issue, trapped in today with the past forgotten.
I reached out to the keys and did what I could.
I played the melody, the tune Rafe and I had written the night we arrived. When that melody drifted across the square, I hoped desperately, then things would be all right. People would recognise it, Rafe would recognise it, and what I’d failed to do on the kerb would happen. Everything would come together, pulled by a melody from the past, from the beginning of everything.
Only when I started did I realise how long it had been since I’d last played, how I’d lost touch, forgotten. My fingers groped over the dusty keys but didn’t know where to go.
I couldn’t remember the tune. I scrambled, I faked, I tried to find the notes, but they weren’t there any more. The melody had gone. I looked up to see that a couple of people were looking across, including Rafe, but they just turned away, back towards the debate, towards their world. The world that they had and I did not.
The melody was dead. I couldn’t remember the tune.
I realised then what I was; how deeply I had failed. Rafe had changed, the world had changed, and yet I had stayed the same. I was still the same romantic, stupid boy who’d turned up ten years ago, with a head full of dreams and belief in his own special nature. I hadn’t changed: though I had some spurious standing here, I was still the same romantic loser deep inside. Rafe had moved on, had assumed his mantle and gone with it, become serious, an important person. I could see him out there, concentrating hard on the meeting, and I knew I should be doing the same, not trying to solve everything with one melodramatic masterstroke.
All I’d done was to remove myself from a spotlight I hadn’t deserved in the first place, and suddenly I felt old and tired, weighed down with wasted years. Until that moment I hadn’t thought that anything had really changed, but I realised then that time had flowed by, that the town and Rafe had gone upwards and onwards and left me behind, still tied to the past, still full of my feelings and nothing else, still the person I had been ten years ago. All that time, all those years, had been worth nothing. I was still just a preserved boy, looking in at the present from the outside, an empty space obsessed with itself.
I turned away from the piano and left by the other door, the one facing away from the square. I couldn’t go back into the town, because I had no place in it any more, and I had no other home to go back to. The only place that would ever feel like home was myself. However much I hated living there, no ot
her door would open.
Though it was still daylight in the square it was dark the side I left by, dark and evening like the first night we came. I didn’t bother to go back for any of my things. I just left, and knew that I would never return.
I followed a dark path that ran along the side of a mountain until it turned into a deserted supermarket carpark, the pavement wet with recent rain. A faint wind sent newspapers shuffling along the walls and sailed leaves like boats across the black puddles. It was still night and there was nothing in the carpark except a broken guitar and a supermarket trolley. I started to walk on, but suddenly the trolley started to move and I decided to follow it.
The trolley moved slowly because one of the back wheels was broken and whirled round. I walked beside it, smelling rain and fallen leaves, and as I walked I began to feel a little better. The moon was full above us, poking out intermittently between thick and stormy cloud, and the dark land was utterly silent except for the sound of my feet on the path, and the occasional squeak from the trolley’s limping wheel.
Then we were in streets, a residential area from an old-fashioned Neighbourhood. Ancient streetlights towered above us, shedding weak pools of green light on the mangled pavements. It was extravagant and intense like a moodily-lit movie set, but it was real, three-dimensional. We continued forward between banks of houses where the windows were all dark and all the curtains drawn. There was nobody there. I tried the locks on a few of the old-fashioned wheel-cars, but I couldn’t open them, and the handles were cold. I wasn’t surprised: I understood this place. The trolley cruised on in front, and I followed.
We reached a dead end and came to a brick wall, grey and high. I tried to climb it but there was nothing to get a hold on, and I just slithered back to the ground. When I turned I saw that we were by a canal.
The trolley set off down the path by the side of the water and I walked behind, looking up at the old dark warehouses and hearing the soft lapping of the water against the sides. One building was a little frightening, a huge white old hulk that looked as if it had once been a hotel or a strangely ornate factory, squatting massively beside the sluggish water. There was something unpleasant about it, but I couldn’t work out what it was. Nothing happened as we passed it, so maybe it was just paranoia.
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