finished I had what looked like an uneven pencilled spiderweb connecting the maps. In the centre of the web where the spider would sit were the lane and the church. Around them I had marked a grid comprised of eight mile-square sections. Within each of these squares I had drawn a series of lines which divided them further into smaller areas. Around these eight squares I had marked a further sixteen which I had also crosshatched internally with the same regular lines.
It was a simple geometrical system and the plan that went alongside it was simple as well. The square in the centre of the map covered the place I had been for the last three days. I had already walked most of this area in going to the lane and coming back again and exploring the fields around. I had satisfied myself that there was nothing there. I didn’t know if the thing I had seen would ever come back there but it was the only place I’d seen it. So I would treat it as the centre of the area to be explored and I would systematically explore the land around it. Each day I would select one of my marked squares and I would walk along the crosshatched lines within it until I had systematically walked the entire area of the square. I would walk slowly and quietly and I would look for any signs of the creature. The next day I would do the next square in the same way.
In eight days I would have covered an area of nine square miles centred upon the lane. If I had still not seen it again or come across any sign of it by this point I would proceed to the outer circle and explore the next sixteen squares. That would take me just over two weeks. If I’d still not turned up anything I would start again in the centre of the grid where the lane was. This way I would cover an area of twenty-five square milesin slightly less than a month. I would repeat this cycle until I found it.
This was a good system. This would work. I stood up stumbling slightly and steadied myself on the edge of the table. My left leg was numb again as it so often was when I sat still for too long. My lower back ached. I took another sip of water and looked down at my map. I had no desire for alcohol anymore. The despair had gone. It seemed like a strange mirage now and I couldn’t imagine where it had come from. This would work. I was pleased with this. It was a net that would close around whatever I had seen. It would bring it to the surface so that I could examine it. I would see it again and then I would know. I would start tomorrow.
The next morning I was in a city. It was boundless it seemed to stretch to all parts of the horizon. It looked like a Third World city it was full of slums all of the buildings were strung together with corrugated iron and plywood and bits of old crate and cardboard and barefoot little black children ran around in the streets laughing and kicking deflated footballs and open sewers ran down the edges of the roads and none of the roads were paved. There were women washing clothes in the river talking together as they worked there were men trudging home over the hill in flip-flops and shortswalking back from some pain they had been paid for. There were skinny dogs with their ribs showing lurking in doorways. The sunlight was blazing down. There was hunger and there was poverty but the place was full of life people knew what they were hemmed in by and nobody was lying to themselves about what they could be and nobody had come to tell them what they weren’t and so they just lived.
I was walking through this but nobody saw me. I was an alien here. I came down to a lake and the lake was clear and some boys were jumping naked from a rickety pier into the water screaming with laughter and pulling themselves up again onto the wooden struts their naked black bodies shining in the sun. One of them saw me and pointed and laughed and another one of them hid behind his bigger friends and I walked down to them on the pier and I saw that I was tall and white and angular and
It was a simple geometrical system and the plan that went alongside it was simple as well. The square in the centre of the map covered the place I had been for the last three days. I had already walked most of this area in going to the lane and coming back again and exploring the fields around. I had satisfied myself that there was nothing there. I didn’t know if the thing I had seen would ever come back there but it was the only place I’d seen it. So I would treat it as the centre of the area to be explored and I would systematically explore the land around it. Each day I would select one of my marked squares and I would walk along the crosshatched lines within it until I had systematically walked the entire area of the square. I would walk slowly and quietly and I would look for any signs of the creature. The next day I would do the next square in the same way.
In eight days I would have covered an area of nine square miles centred upon the lane. If I had still not seen it again or come across any sign of it by this point I would proceed to the outer circle and explore the next sixteen squares. That would take me just over two weeks. If I’d still not turned up anything I would start again in the centre of the grid where the lane was. This way I would cover an area of twenty-five square milesin slightly less than a month. I would repeat this cycle until I found it.
This was a good system. This would work. I stood up stumbling slightly and steadied myself on the edge of the table. My left leg was numb again as it so often was when I sat still for too long. My lower back ached. I took another sip of water and looked down at my map. I had no desire for alcohol anymore. The despair had gone. It seemed like a strange mirage now and I couldn’t imagine where it had come from. This would work. I was pleased with this. It was a net that would close around whatever I had seen. It would bring it to the surface so that I could examine it. I would see it again and then I would know. I would start tomorrow.
The next morning I was in a city. It was boundless it seemed to stretch to all parts of the horizon. It looked like a Third World city it was full of slums all of the buildings were strung together with corrugated iron and plywood and bits of old crate and cardboard and barefoot little black children ran around in the streets laughing and kicking deflated footballs and open sewers ran down the edges of the roads and none of the roads were paved. There were women washing clothes in the river talking together as they worked there were men trudging home over the hill in flip-flops and shortswalking back from some pain they had been paid for. There were skinny dogs with their ribs showing lurking in doorways. The sunlight was blazing down. There was hunger and there was poverty but the place was full of life people knew what they were hemmed in by and nobody was lying to themselves about what they could be and nobody had come to tell them what they weren’t and so they just lived.
I was walking through this but nobody saw me. I was an alien here. I came down to a lake and the lake was clear and some boys were jumping naked from a rickety pier into the water screaming with laughter and pulling themselves up again onto the wooden struts their naked black bodies shining in the sun. One of them saw me and pointed and laughed and another one of them hid behind his bigger friends and I walked down to them on the pier and I saw that I was tall and white and angular and
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