09. CRACKING SKULLS IN PORTISHEAD
Pt Two.
By Tony M Richards
Portishead: Saturday November 20th 1982.
Antonio opened his eyes, awaking in a strange and very unfamiliar place. A sharp pain shot through his head, continuing downward through his entire body like a bolt of lightening. He could feel carpet beneath his face; damp carpet, accompanied by the dank, musk odour that arises from such slow decaying matter.
It took Antonio a full five minutes to be able to wake up and roll over onto his back.....
....... A lightbulb hanging from a low ceiling.... Peeling paint; he was alone; he knew that much. Antonio sat up, taking a good look around. It was some sort of small cellar; the low ceiling and narrow walls told him so.
The place looked like any other celler; a mere storage space for unwanted junk. A place for useful objects that had long since served their purpose; relegated to the status of junk; not quite rubbish... Not yet....
Antonio inspected his hands.... Swollen and covered in deep cuts...
How the hell did I get here? He pondered. It was hard to think as he could not ignore the savage pain pulsing through wounded body. He could stand, but only just. His legs and spine had been damaged, although he couldn't quite tell how. He couldn't quite remember. What had happened?
Antonio's mind was snapping in and out of focus, brief flashes of what happened appeared for a second, only to disappear in the blink of an eye.
To gain some sort of understanding; to join the dots; he stumbled around the cellar, looking for clues....
Something.... Anything.... Anything at all...
There was a sea of rusted paint tins and some empty, stained glass jars. Jars that had been used and since discarded. There was what seemed to be surgical instruments; although not modern ones that Antonio had seen at the hospital. These crude instruments looked strange; quite terrifying in fact. Large, rusty with long jagged edges....
Next to the surgical instruments lay a stack of newspapers; old and yellowed by time. Antonio fingered through them, inspecting them for clues. There was nothing even remotely current, some of the newspapers were dated as far back as 1949. Some of the newspapers were heavily soiled.
Other screwed u2p newspaper pages littered the cellar floor. Bloodstained....
Antonio looked around for a doorway. No such luck. Nothing.
For a moment he panicked and screamed out for help. Nothing.....
.... Only his voice bouncing off the walls as he yelled out. He looked up and there it was: An escape hatch.
Grabbing an old paint tin, he smashed the two doors on the escape hatch violently. To no avail. These doors would not yeild. Not in a million years.
There were no handles, just smooth surfaces covered in peeling, pale blue paint. After three minutes, Antonio conceded defeat as he wiped the sweat from his brow. He was in too much pain and the hatch was secured tightly. Nothing could penetrate that exit route. Antonio needed to find another option...... Another option seemed highly unlikely.....
Standing under the light bulb hurt Antonios eyes, making him squint. This intensified the dull pain inside his skull.
He stumbled to the light switch, killing all of the light..... Except it didn't.
Antonio saw something at the back of the narrow room..... ...... A ray of light poking upwards.
Was it an optical illusion? A trick of the mind perhaps? Maybe some sort of mirage?
The orange glow raised from the darkness. Antonio stared at it, trying to piece everything together in his head. His bruised and battered skull.
He woke up here in a terrible state.... He was in a lot of pain....
How did he get here? Don't know.......
Where was he before?
With Jeff and Tobey, driving back from the party? Did it happen? Unsure.....
Don't know....
Antonios mind was running a million miles a minute. So much going on and yet nothing at all. The orange light had an eerie glow in the darkness.
Where is it coming from?
"Where am I?" Antonio mumbled out loud. How did I get here? He pondered.
"HELLO?!" Antonio shouted at the top of his lungs.... All in vein....
He hit the light switch. Adrenaline began to pulse through him, his brain was suddenly able to function through fear of death.
Antonio pulled a heavy table away from the wall and saw the direct light raising up underneath it.
The damp carpet had decayed enough to expose the decaying trapdoors beneath it. Beneath the trap doors shone the orange light.
Another escape hatch! Antonio had found a way out!
There was life beneath the dead wood.
Antonio grabbed the heaviest object he could find- A marble bust of Zeus, and smashed at the rotten wood. The will to survive engulfed him, he smashed chunks of dead wood with the bust, breaking open the hatch; creating a hole. His own escape hatch.
Antonio dropped the bust through the hole and realised what he now had to do to survive: Jump down the hole.
Easier said then done. Antonio may have been a qualified nurse, but he was in a lot of pain, unable to think straight. He could not cure himself.
The ground looked to be about twenty foot downwards. A long way to go. Bit not that long when considering life or death.
Antonio rolled over and dropped through the hole, as he fell he hit the wall which broke his long fall. He landed on his hips, crying out in pain.
"SHIT! FUCK! AAHH! FUCK!" He cursed, his voice echoeing off the walls.... Into nothingness.
Once he was able to stand, he realised he made it down with a mere few scratches and a sore hip; there seemed to be no permanent damage done.
For now.
Once Antonio has stabilized himself, he picked up the bust and headed downwards, there was nothing in the other direction. Just a dead end.
The gas lanterns on the wall, flickered with orange flame. Victorian? He thought. It didn't matter.
Those gas lamps with orange flames had given him the beam he needed to guide him from the cellar when Antonio was engulfed in darkness.
Antonio was unsure what lay ahead, but the further down he got, the lower the ceiling became.
Antonio stood at 6'5. There is barely an inch between his head and the ceiling. Human beings over time have become taller. Maybe once this was considered an acceptable ceiling height, Antonio considered.
It dawned on Antonio that his escape route had actually pushed him deeper into captivity. The path was leading him downwards, deeper underground....
Antonio was certain of one thing, as his mind began to clear, he knew there was something dark and nasty unfolding; although he was unsure what exactly that could be.
The walls were made from black porous bricks, giving the pace the feel of a medieval dungeon.
There were corridors that lead to corridors that lead to corridors. Antonio twigged that this place is not unlike the insides of the pyramids he has read about at school. He had no idea where he was heading, it then suddenly occurred to him that he could well die down in the maze if he didn't find his way out or get help.
And then he saw it. He saw them. He froze...
He saw the heads....
Shelves had now appeared underneath the gas lamps. The dark oak shelves had jars. Inside the jars?.....
Heads.
Dead people, from god knows when...
Heads.....
HUMAN HEADS
Antonio had frozen in shock when he spotted the first one. The orange light illuminated the poor souls trapped in the jars. Poor souls floating in some sort of embalming fluid. Heads trapped in time, jammed into glass jars, soaked and pickled in vinegar or embalming fluid. God knows what it was.
Antonio felt a strong wave of emotion hit him: Fear.... Sickness...Sorrow...
Who were these people?
People like him?
Was this his fate?
To end up in a jar, trapped in a dungeon?
Antonio walked to the shelves and inspected the jars perched upon them. Each one a soul.
Hundreds and hundred of heads in jars. Each one a person. Each one born into the world, each one once a child; each once a living soul with fears and hopes. Each one.... Destined to end up as a victim. Another head trapped in a jar.
The heads had variations: Boys and girls; old and young; some with the eyes sewn shut; some with lemons or dead rats shoved into their mouths; some with the skin removed, but the eyes and tongue remaining; some white, some black; some with painful expressions still on their faces- their terrifying last moments captured for eternity.
Antonio swung the heavy bust in his hand, his confusion and fear beginning to intensify rapidly and engulf him. His heart was thudding away inside his rib cage.
Fear.
Nothing but fear....
Antonio had spent his life in fear, an outsider in Portishead. Half black, half white; not one or the other. Trapped between two worlds.
Now he was trapped in the maze; one he'd been trapped in all his life. From the beginning. This maze was very real however, not psychological.....
Was it a dream? Had this all been a dream? Antonio's whole life?.... Nothing but a dream?....
Antonio stumbled further down another passageway with low ceilings; past more poor souls trapped in jars; past more dull, orange light; past annonamous, large, wooden statues standing at every corner turn.
Antonio tried not to look at the hundreds of souls trapped in glass jars.
"HHHEEELLLOOO?"
The noise startled Antonio.
"HELLOOO?"
"I'M HERE! I'M HERE! I'M HERE! I'M HERE!" Antonio yelled, in hope, realising help or somebody else trapped in the maze was just a reach away. He wasn't alone.
That person was just a reach away.
Closer than he thought.
From behind, he felt somebody grab him around the chest and arms, pushing a rag over his mouth and nose. For a second he felt sick and then dizzy...... Then he fell back.... Into darkness........