The rope was long and old, frayed here and there where it had been tied an unknown number of times, worn by constant striving for aerial freedom. It was stained too, darkened by the sweat of a thousand people who had tried to hold the balloon down. But old and frayed, rough and dark though it was, still the rope sat snugly and comfortably beneath Holly’s armpits, encircling her twice around the chest and shoulder blades, tied in some random fashion that seemed to mimic the very best knot she had ever been taught in Brownies. Those knots had been designed to restrain and hold back; ironic that now, here, they gave her such freedom.
Holly twisted and looked back over her shoulder. She could just make out the field in the distance, a splash of deep green in a patchwork of otherwise pale, wan fields and meadows. A firework rose above the field and splashed a red smear across the sky, much lower than she but obviously so high up for those observing from the ground. Another followed it up, and then another, silent explosions flowering in the air like reflections from oily water.
The rope tugged at her once, hard, and she turned her attention forward again.
The show was going on without her, it seemed. She could hardly blame them. It was not as if they had meant this to happen, and guilt, as her mother often muttered between remorseful silences, was such a waste of time.
Holly was growing cold. She had come to the show dressed in summer finery; a flowery dress, sandals, a sun hat that had been flipped from her head the second the balloon had broken from its mooring, wrapped itself around her chest and tugged her hard at the sky, even though there was no discernible breeze that day. No wind, no gale, no breath in the air, except when the balloon needed it. She looked up, but the pink balloon did not stare back down. She shivered, then smiled as they entered a stream of warmer air. It rushed by her face faster than before, lifting her hair from her forehead, and it was warm and comforting. She even began to feel tired.
Holly looked down, and between her dangling feet she saw a splash of water. It could have been a paddling pool in someone’s back garden, filled to the brim at the break of day and slowly draining as the sun made its traverse of the sky, the black flecks drowned insects, the pool ignored already for some more urgent plaything. Or perhaps it was a lake, a mile across at its widest, speckled with insect-like boats tearing at its surface tension in their eagerness to sport or fish. She kicked off one of her sandals to see how long it took to fall, but the balloon moved her faster across the sky and she lost sight of it before the splash came.
She imagined some lonely fisherman mourning a dearth of catches that day, amazed at the footwear in his net. She giggled. Then she wondered what the little boy in his pond would think at the floating footwear, and she laughed so hard she wanted to pee.
She could, she supposed. There was no one here to see. But she held back, because modesty was really all about herself.
Holly’s arms were aching slightly, and the rope had begun to chafe her armpits through the thin summer dress. But the sensations were not unpleasant. Sometimes after a day riding her bike or running through the woods with her friends she would ache, muscles burning, face scorched by the sun, but it was always a good feeling. It was the evidence of a day well spent. Here and now, that feeling was more profound than ever.
The ground grew dark before the sky. The fields and roads faded into uniformity, and here and there the speckled lights of civilization marked unconscious territory against the wild, the dark, the unknown that lived everywhere. It was as though the ground were fading away into nothing, and only these isolated pockets of humanity held out for a few hours more, their artificial light cementing them to reality.
Holly had always been aware of the unknown, so near that it touched her every day, so familiar and so much a part of life that it was almost impossible to make out from everything else. She talked about it to her mother, but her mother sighed and shook her head and lit another cigarette, not knowing that the smoke made languages in the air. Holly would run through the garden, brushing by plants and flowers and letting them coat her in pollen. Her mother’s shout from the kitchen doorway would dislodge the pollen from the fine hairs on Holly’s arms, perhaps drifting to find other plants, aiding the spread of flowers. The land had language, and Holly was keen to translate.
As the sun dipped down into the west, winning the race, she looked up and saw several bright specks hanging in the air around her. They could have been stars but they seemed much closer, close enough to reach out and touch. She started to stretch her hand but the rope bit in. By the time the pain faded away the sky had grown dark, and whatever the setting sun had been hitting high up in the atmosphere had cloaked itself in night.
For Holly, night was a time of revelation. Lying in bed at home, clouds covering the sky, streetlights turning off at midnight, she had always imagined darkness to be a blanked canvas of history upon which the new day could be drawn. There were always noises linking the day passed by to the new one to come, but whatever made them were more secretive and self-conscious, more aware than when the life-giving light illuminated them. The sun had shunned them after all, spinning its way beyond their land to bless faraway places. They should be shamed at its leaving them. They should be humbled at its return.
And then the new day would dawn, and all night fears would burn away in the sun.
Here, now, above the clouds, Holly knew that true darkness must exist only in death. Because above the sleeping land, starlight made her shine. The light of the sun was minutes old, her mother had once told her, reading in stilted sentences from a book. That had made Holly feel grimy and grubby with age, but then her mother read that the light from stars was years old, centuries, millennia, five billion years, and that most of what you saw in the night sky was no longer there. The feeling of grime had been swept away by time, turning Holly into little more than a fossil. She was an artefact waiting to be found, a blip in time, and that idea of immateriality pleased her immensely. As her mother closed the book and left the room, Holly had stared from her window, straight out and up at one particular star. She wondered whether she could be staring directly into the eyes of a little alien girl a trillion miles away . . . and she knew that if that were the case, that alien girl was a long time dead and gone. All Holly could see of the universe were echoes. Nothing was quite as it seemed.
Stars floated here. They were the specks of light the sun had glanced from as it dipped down to bed, reflective shapes in the sky, and now they caught moon and starlight, shedding the primeval radiance without a care. Holly tried to steer their way. The breeze had her up here, and she was submitted to its will, but she still thought that if she leaned to one side, left, left, she could edge herself that way. She looked up but the balloon was merely a shadow blocking out a circle of the night sky. The shapes came nearer. Holly was cold and hungry and she closed her eyes as her bladder let go. Her pee warmed her legs for a time, but then she thought it had turned to ice.
One of the shapes seemed to manifest from the silvery night, drifting closer to her as if steered by someone else, and it was as dawn exploded leisurely in the east that she saw it was another balloon.
There was a boy hanging beneath this one. He seemed excessively tall, as if stretched by however long he had been hanging up here, and though at first Holly thought he was waving, perhaps it was simply his limp, dead arm swinging in the wind. His balloon was a bright silver, as if it had swallowed and retained the starlight. It veered away, taking the boy so that Holly could not make him out in any great detail, for which she was glad. He had looked very thin.
As the sun rose once again, warming her back, she looked around her at the reflections or dark specks that marked other shapes. She was amazed at how many people seemed to have been taken by balloons and blown up here. Perhaps somewhere, there was someone she knew.
When she was eight one of her school friends, Samuel, had gone missing. His parents had come to the school with red-rimmed eyes and thin, sunken faces, their hands so tightly twisted into eac
h other that they looked like an old knotted tree. They had sat on the stage with the headmaster during morning assembly and then, when called upon, Samuel’s mother had made a tearful plea to the children to tell them where Samuel may be. Holly had been shocked. She had no idea why Samuel’s parents would assume that she knew where their son was. She had looked around at her friends, and they all appeared to be thinking the same.
Samuel had never been found, and Holly had soon cast him from her mind. But now maybe she would see him again. Perhaps he was up here, with all the other people caught beneath balloons, and perhaps even now her own mother was standing red-eyed on a stage, pleading with a hall full of children for Holly’s safe return.
She looked down at the new ground created by this sunrise, and far, far below she could see a road. It had no dimension from this altitude, it was merely a grey line stretching across the land. It twisted here and there, avoiding hills she could not see. Branches sprung from it and snaked away to places where few people went, withering eventually to nothing. Holly thought that was strange. All the roads she remembered went somewhere, not nowhere. Maybe there were so many more roads left untravelled, there simply to exist. There were no signs of cars travelling these routes, but then maybe she was too high up to see. They would certainly not see her, she was sure of that. She kicked off her other sandal, giggled as it span away below her, and she watched until distance had swallowed it up. Its eventual fate would remain a mystery.
She warmed up nicely in the morning sun, though her arms and legs had grown stiff during the night. The rope was still making her armpits sore, but the worst pain now came from her shoulders and chest, stretched and strained as they were by the unaccustomed weight they were supporting. The rope was holding her in position, true, but it was her shoulders taking most of the strain. She tried to shrug herself into a more comfortable position. The rope shifted. She smiled, satisfied, and then screamed out loud when she realized that the rope was still shifting. It was slowly pulling her arms up, as if forcing her to flap the slow wings of a wounded butterfly, and if that happened the loop would slip over her arms and past her head, and the balloon would no longer have her.
Holly forced her arms down, crying, screaming out at the unknown people in the unseen cars far below to help her. The sandal must have landed by now, surely? They couldn’t just ignore it, could they? Swerve around the footwear that had bounced across the concrete road, clip it with their wheels, send it skimming into the ditch to rot there and become home to ants and woodlice and other things?
It took all her strength to stop screaming and squeeze the rope to herself. It tightened. The wind caught the balloon and snapped it this way and that, and the rope tugged, and it tightened some more. Whatever unseen knot held her here must have been twisted and knotted again, because suddenly she felt safe once again.
She looked down at the strange ground far below, glad she had not gone. Things were much nicer up here.
Minutes later, and the brief scare seemed a lifetime ago. The speckled sky of night felt like two lifetimes, and the memory of those people chasing the rope as the balloon whisked her away was someone else’s entirely. She may have been up here forever. She wondered what she ate and drank, but she felt neither thirst nor hunger.
The sun was chasing her. The breeze carried her westward, ever westward, but after yesterday she had serious doubts over whether she could ever beat the sun. It was gaining on her even now, furtively following its path of old and aiming to bypass her to the south, arc over her head and win the race again. She could see it if she glanced over her shoulder, feel its heat on her left cheek, arm, leg. She willed her balloon on, but will was not enough. There was wind, and the balloon’s own improbable desire, and that was the only power her flight was allowed.
As the sun reached its zenith Holly saw another balloon drifting in from the north. Its path seemed to match hers for a while, several miles away but clearly defined by the reflected glare from its filled expanse. Holly crossed her arms and watched its progress. There was a shape hanging below this one too, a long thin shape dangling apparently lifeless, though it was still too far away for Holly to make any rash judgments as to its true status. She would have to wait, see if it came any closer, and make up her mind then.
It did come closer. Slowly, almost indefinably, its approach only apparent in the fresh detail Holly could make out. Like the hour hand of a clock she could not perceive its movement, yet still that movement was obvious. Her own internal clock was not attuned to such subtle changes. She wondered at all the intricacies of the world she missed because of this; the growth of plants, the blossoming of flowers, the lengthening of her own hair, the ageing of her skin, the erosion of a rock, the melting of glass. If she could speed up time she would see all these things, like a time-delayed camera showing her the birth, life and death of a mayfly. But time would not be changed by the likes of her. She would have to change herself.
Holly closed her eyes and tried to blank her mind, think of nothing, focussing on one single point of light in her mind’s eye. When she opened her eyes again the balloon was noticeably closer, and the shape below had resolved into a hanging body. She closed her eyes again, that spot of light, nothing else, the light, the light.
Eyes open, reality crashed back in a welter of sensations, and the balloon was closer. The body had turned its head. It had a skeletal face, skin dried and pressed to the bones by the breeze. Long hair flared around its skull. Some of its clothes had been ripped off, and those that were left were bleached by the sun. Holly could not tell whether it was a boy or girl. Not even when it spoke.
“Hello,” it said.
“Hello,” Holly replied. She had observed this balloon’s journey and perceived its dangling cargo’s progress across the skies. So much else must have changed that she had not noticed, and she looked around to see what. Down below, the road had vanished and the ground was smothered in a silvery sheen of distance. She wondered how high up she was, and how much higher she could go.
“Don’t you think it’s amazing,” the hanging body said, “how many people are taken by balloons and carried up here?”
Holly nodded, went to speak and realized that there was no need. The person looked away, seeming to agree. There was not that much to say.
They drifted together for some time, until the sun had overtaken them once again and was on its homeward descent. Holly used her newfound talent to close off time, concentrate on the light, the light, and when she opened her eyes again she had seen the sun move. She wondered if the Earth was aware of those things on its surface or floating way above, or whether it was so old and slow that these fleeting things were all but invisible to its grand perception. She and the body glanced at each other often, and she even smiled. The other person’s balloon looked larger than Holly’s, but perhaps that was a trick of the light, or distance deceiving her again.
She thought of the many things she could ask: How do we get down? What is down? Has there ever been a down, or did we dream it? But she did not wish to spoil the moment with awkward questions. So she averted her eyes for a time and watched the Earth moving beneath them.
At some point the other balloon must have been tugged away by an errant breeze, because when Holly looked again it was gone.
She thought about falling. It was not the falling that killed, she remembered her mother once telling her, it was the impact. Looking down between her feet now, the ground hidden by a layer of cloud, she thought that maybe she could fall forever.
That did not frighten her. What frightened her was immobility, apathy and an absence of wonder. She knew that she had a choice. The rope slipped again as if to remind her of this; if she raised her elbows and pointed up at the balloon, the loop would slip over her shoulders and head and she would begin her new journey.
She raised one hand, felt the rope slide up her arm and lock at her elbow. It would be as simple as that.
She hung and watched the sunset, specks of light emerging acros
s the heavens as star- and moonlight picked out other balloons. And she closed her eyes and concentrated on the light, to see whether she would feel herself making that choice.
PAUL FINCH
* * *
The Old Traditions Are Best
PAUL FINCH IS A FORMER police officer and journalist, now turned full-time writer. He first cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama The Bill, but has also written extensively in the field of animation, contributing numerous scripts to various children’s television shows.
However, he is probably best known for his work in the horror genre. To date, he has had eight books and nearly 300 short stories and novellas published on both sides of the Atlantic. His first collection, Aftershocks, won the British Fantasy Award in 2002, and he received the award again in 2007 for his novella “Kid”. That same year he won the International Horror Guild Award for his story, “The Old North Road”.
Finch co-scripted the UK horror movie Spirit Trap (2004) starring Billie Piper, while more recently he adapted Leviathan, one of his father’s Doctor Who scripts from the mid-1980s, for a brand-new audio release starring Colin Baker.
He is currently working on three movie adaptations of his own stories, Cape Wrath, Charnel House and Hunting Ground, and on Dark Hollow, a film adaptation of Brian Keene’s horror novel of the same title.
The author lives in Lancashire, northern England, with his wife Cathy and his children, Eleanor and Harry.
“I’ve long been fascinated by the old traditions of Britain,” Finch reveals, “of which there are too many to count – but how many of these are really old or were simply Victorian inventions designed to attract tourists to village festivals?
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