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Authors: Tim Lebbon
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began to climb. Up must be good, I reasoned. If we had come
down
here then
up
must be good. Hand over hand, feet seeking purchase, fingers knotting with cramps, muscles twisting and burning as I heaved myself higher, higher. I refused to look back down, because I knew that silent city was below me, watching, and that somewhere Scott still pursued his own wronged ghost. I could not bear to see him.
I had no thoughts of trying to find him in a place so endless.
Time lost its meaning. The blue light of the dead lit my way. I went up and up, and though I once thought of sleep, there was nowhere to rest. I moved on, never pausing for more than a few seconds to locate the next handhold or footrest, weightless. I did not tire. My heavy breathing fled into the massive space behind me, swallowed away without echo. I wondered how far the sound would travel before fading away. Perhaps forever.
I was hardly surprised when I tumbled onto the same ledge Scott and I had fallen from. I had no idea how long had passed since then. I was not hungry or thirsty and did not need to urinate, but I was certain that I had been in the city for days. Its grime seemed to cling to my skin, giving glimpses of the multifarious fates its inhabitants had suffered. And much as I thought of my wife and children right then, they seemed like memories from ages ago, the past lives of someone else entirely. It was the city that had taken the bulk of my life.
I plunged into the tunnel without a backward glance. If I turned I may have seen something impossible to ignore, a sight so mind-befuddling that it would petrify me, leaving me there to turn slowly to stone or a pillar of salt. I simply ducked away from that impossible place and entered the real world of darkness once again.
The blue light abandoned me immediately. I was in pitch blackness. I must have kicked through the shapes at my feet, though I could only visualize them.
I kept one hand held out, fingertips flitting across the stone wall to my right. Perhaps it was because I could imagine nothing worse than that place I was leaving behind—and the fate that must surely await Scott there, given time—but I walked forward without fear, and with a burning eagerness to see the sun once more.
I walked, and walked, and all the time I thought back to Scott running from me, wondering what had made him do so, why he had not turned to say goodbye.
He should never have left me like that. Never. Not on my own down there.
The tunnel seemed far longer than it had on the way down. The slope was steeper, perhaps, or maybe I had taken a branch in the darkness, a route leading somewhere else. I walked on because that was all I could do.
As light began to bleed in, its manifestation was so subtle that it took me a while to notice. I could not see and then I could see, and I did not discern the moment when that changed. My fear was dwindling, fading away with the darkness. We are all energy after all, I thought. There’s nothing to us but space and power. Our thoughts are an illusion, and the world around us even more so.
An illusion…
“Where is
that
coming from?” I whispered, and my voice was curiously light. Those ideas, those images and concepts, all so unlike me. Given time perhaps I could have thought them, but it had only been a while since I had left the city, only a while.
He should have never left me alone…
I heard Scott calling my name. His voice floated to me from afar, nebulous and ambiguous, and it could have been a breeze drifting through the tunnels from above. I made out carved symbols on the walls, recognized them from our journey down here. In the bluish light issuing from my skin, eyes and mouth, the ancient words were beginning to make some kind of sense.
I heard Scott again from up ahead, but his voice was fainter now, fading, retreating somewhere and some place lost to me forever.
Voices rose behind me to call me back, and sounds, and the noises of a city coming to life.
At
down
here then
up
must be good. Hand over hand, feet seeking purchase, fingers knotting with cramps, muscles twisting and burning as I heaved myself higher, higher. I refused to look back down, because I knew that silent city was below me, watching, and that somewhere Scott still pursued his own wronged ghost. I could not bear to see him.
I had no thoughts of trying to find him in a place so endless.
Time lost its meaning. The blue light of the dead lit my way. I went up and up, and though I once thought of sleep, there was nowhere to rest. I moved on, never pausing for more than a few seconds to locate the next handhold or footrest, weightless. I did not tire. My heavy breathing fled into the massive space behind me, swallowed away without echo. I wondered how far the sound would travel before fading away. Perhaps forever.
I was hardly surprised when I tumbled onto the same ledge Scott and I had fallen from. I had no idea how long had passed since then. I was not hungry or thirsty and did not need to urinate, but I was certain that I had been in the city for days. Its grime seemed to cling to my skin, giving glimpses of the multifarious fates its inhabitants had suffered. And much as I thought of my wife and children right then, they seemed like memories from ages ago, the past lives of someone else entirely. It was the city that had taken the bulk of my life.
I plunged into the tunnel without a backward glance. If I turned I may have seen something impossible to ignore, a sight so mind-befuddling that it would petrify me, leaving me there to turn slowly to stone or a pillar of salt. I simply ducked away from that impossible place and entered the real world of darkness once again.
The blue light abandoned me immediately. I was in pitch blackness. I must have kicked through the shapes at my feet, though I could only visualize them.
I kept one hand held out, fingertips flitting across the stone wall to my right. Perhaps it was because I could imagine nothing worse than that place I was leaving behind—and the fate that must surely await Scott there, given time—but I walked forward without fear, and with a burning eagerness to see the sun once more.
I walked, and walked, and all the time I thought back to Scott running from me, wondering what had made him do so, why he had not turned to say goodbye.
He should never have left me like that. Never. Not on my own down there.
The tunnel seemed far longer than it had on the way down. The slope was steeper, perhaps, or maybe I had taken a branch in the darkness, a route leading somewhere else. I walked on because that was all I could do.
As light began to bleed in, its manifestation was so subtle that it took me a while to notice. I could not see and then I could see, and I did not discern the moment when that changed. My fear was dwindling, fading away with the darkness. We are all energy after all, I thought. There’s nothing to us but space and power. Our thoughts are an illusion, and the world around us even more so.
An illusion…
“Where is
that
coming from?” I whispered, and my voice was curiously light. Those ideas, those images and concepts, all so unlike me. Given time perhaps I could have thought them, but it had only been a while since I had left the city, only a while.
He should have never left me alone…
I heard Scott calling my name. His voice floated to me from afar, nebulous and ambiguous, and it could have been a breeze drifting through the tunnels from above. I made out carved symbols on the walls, recognized them from our journey down here. In the bluish light issuing from my skin, eyes and mouth, the ancient words were beginning to make some kind of sense.
I heard Scott again from up ahead, but his voice was fainter now, fading, retreating somewhere and some place lost to me forever.
Voices rose behind me to call me back, and sounds, and the noises of a city coming to life.
At
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