Swirling colours—light and sound as a single sensation. Floating, falling, with tiny fibrils of awareness beginning to coalesce. Then, something solid emerging from the confusion: a woman, a boy, and a yellow-haired girl. They are watching him. A tendril of anxiety grows, undulating at the base of his consciousness.
The tendril is a plant, a sea plant, swaying gently in the deep blue water. Then the plant grows a bud which bursts into an orange flower—a bright orange flower that gets bigger and bigger, filling the sea.
Orange-red brightness, completely amorphous. He can't see anything else—why can't he see anything else? Suddenly, the orangeness condenses, becoming a reticular pattern of black against dazzling brilliance. His eyes are open.
He gazes up at the branches and the leaves swaying above him, scattering the brightness of the sun. Slowly, the gentle rocking lulls him and the flickering brightness seeps into him, filling the cavities of his mind with rolling light and warmth. The tendril dissolves into nothingness, and his breath flows quietly like the evening tide. Then, though at first imperceptibly, it changes. The swaying becomes slow and deliberate, and the dazzling pattern of silhouettes presses down on him, threatening to suffocate, to crush. He sits up quickly, blinking.
He is surrounded by trees, their huge trunks crowding in on him like menacing strangers. He shrinks back, cowering and afraid. Something is missing. The woman and the two children: where are they? He looks around quickly, but cannot see them. Panic flares, though it is fast dulled by confusion. Were they ever really here, or was they just part of a dream? He tries to picture them in his mind, to bring them back — but sees only shadows. And now the memory of the dream is fading and he can feel them slipping away, sliding out of his mind like sand through a sieve. He sinks back into himself; he is aware that he has lost something, but he doesn't know what.
He hears a voice, a laugh, light and happy like music, spilling through the viscous air. Sitting up again, he looks around. He is on a patch of grass, brilliant green, each blade blazing with luminosity. Directly ahead of him, on a road leading out of the trees, there is a girl, small and pretty, barefoot, and dressed in white. She turns to him, waves farewell, and then is away into the brilliant sunlight.
Her smile fills him with a sudden warmth, melting his fear. The trees are friendly now and pull back, giving him space. He feels the spongy grass under his body and the cool dampness on his hands. The green light shines up through him as if he were transparent, made of soft glass. The girl is his friend, and he knows she likes him. But who is she? The question plops into his mind, hovers expectantly for a few moments in the translucent jelly of his awareness, then fades to nothing, leaving no trace of an answer.
When he closes his eyes, an image of the girl is all around him, bathing him in golden light. A delightful memory, fuzzy and warm, though also insubstantial, shimmering in his mind like a mirage. He tries to focus, but everything is fluid and slippery — each thought sliding away as he reaches for it, like fish in a turbid pool. The girl is there, blurred and confused, and also what could be a woman and a child, or possibly two children. But he can't see them at all now — they are too indistinct. Perhaps they were nothing after all, merely phantasms. There are other images, but so far away, out of reach, and already sliding into the blur: a neat red house and something else, something dying, something he knows is his.
He is aware of a sensation, a cold wetness on his skin, and he opens his eyes. A slug — a black slug as big as a man's foot — is crawling over the back of his hand. He can feel the muscular waves rippling along its belly as it propels itself over his skin on a bed of slime. He watches, fascinated, as the sunlight glistens on its body, adorning it with rainbow-coloured jewels. Its eyestalks move slowly to and fro, and its breathing hole is a vast dark cavern in the side of its shining carapace. Eventually, it slides onto the grass, leaving a sheet of sparkling wet diamond across his skin. The spell breaks, and he sees that there are more of the giant molluscs, scattered around him on the grass. Indeed, he is surrounded by them: a broken circle, all moving slowly back into the woods, their shining trails radiating away from him, the shimmering silver spokes of a rimless wheel.
Standing, he teeters slightly, unsure of his feet. He looks around at the swaying trees, their grey trunks flowing and swirling like molten plastic; at the dark green undergrowth with its tendrils of briar twisting and coiling into a filigree of gothic intricacy; and at the grass at his feet, the blades curling and flowing in waves like the cilia on a protozoan membrane. All is moving, and at the same time perfectly still, as if embedded in clear resin.
He notices some discarded clothing scattered about his feet: a ludicrous blue hat with a little red man embroidered onto it, a purple scarf, and a dark blue jersey with patches of smooth cloth on the shoulders and elbows. There is also a black leather coat with a dark red lining. The back and sleeves are shiny, like the slugs, though the front is smooth suede; he can feel the texture of this in his mind — like a girl's skin, soft and subtle. Smiling at the thought, he looks up the road. His own girl is now far away, a shimmering patch of white in the bright daylight. He feels suddenly alone; the trees close in menacingly.
The clothes might be his, they might not. But either way, he doesn't want them, clinging and stifling on this bright, warm day. Except for the coat, that is: for he likes the coat, with its slug-shiny sleeves and its girl-skin front. It’s remarkably heavy and clings desperately to the ground as he picks it up. When he puts it on, the lining grips the bare skin of his arms, squeezing him affectionately. Then, with uncertainty, he steps out of the widening circle of molluscs and follows the girl up the road.
The smooth plastic blackness of the road arched in front of him like the back of a whale breaking through the waves. The girl was ahead of him: his white-clad target, his goal. He knew he could reach her — just a few yards of tarmac separated them — but as he hurried towards her, he felt something begin to change. It was imperceptible at first, just a strange sense of threatened instability as of an ornament teetering on the edge of a mantelpiece. Then he noticed the colours that swirled around him becoming brighter still, absurdly bright, before gradually melting away from the objects that gave them existence. Once liberated from the bonds of form, they flowed freely: first blending into one another then separating in a mad whirling dance, like the pigments on a deranged artist's palette. Again, he was alone — this time in a realm beyond existence, a realm of formless, flowing colour. He shivered, giddy with panic. But then, in the midst of the swirling mess, there appeared something solid: a firm blob of white that refused to blend. A whiteness that belonged to something: the whiteness of an object. He focused on the girl's gown, anchoring his mind in the swirling maelstrom, and then, slowly coalescing around the rock of whiteness, the rest unmixed itself and swam back into place. The green returned to the grass, the black to the tarmac, and the blue to the brilliant sky that gave it birth. The road was back where he had left it, and the girl was still there, far ahead of him, walking away.
Now, he was between two fences which appeared to converge ahead of him, funnelling him towards the girl, the focussed angularity hard grey metal tearing into his fragile vision. A vague shadow scudded across his mind, possibly a memory. Of a bridge? No, he was on a bridge now; this wasn't a memory at all. He peered gingerly over one of the parapets. A river shimmered twenty miles below; a river of colours and shapes which flowed both ways at once; a river of sound that echoed through him in falling crescendos of noise.
He might have been lost forever in the endless flow of colour and sound, but again the girl pulled him back, an image of her coalescing in his mind to call him away. Starting forward again, he quickened his pace. Even as he walked, he could feel the river as it coursed by far beneath him. It wouldn't let him go. It was tugging at him, pulling him towards itself with a strange force. And there was nothing between him and it except for a flimsy little bridge and several miles of empty, free-fall space. Suddenly he saw falling, a horrible plunge into the gaping chasm. The tarmac veered away from him; he stood on a knife-edge with sheer drops on either side. For a moment, he teetered, swaying wildly and fighting for balance with windmilling arms.
But he did not fall. Forcing his eyes straight ahead, he nailed his vision to the whiteness of the girl's clothes, resisting the magnetic force of the abyss that pulled him to gaze into its vertiginous eyes. His heart hammered in his throat and he ceased breathing, but gradually, he regained his balance. Then, putting each foot in front of the other with a tightrope walker's care, he edged slowly forward, staying directly between the parapets.
At last he reached firm ground. The solidity of the earth under his feet caressed him, enclosing him in a warm blanket of gravity. Relief washed through him, and he breathed deeply, feeling suddenly light, like gossamer in the breeze. He laughed out loud.
At the gate, the road turned sharply to the right. When he reached it, the girl had moved on; she was not more than thirty yards away from him, moving at a molluscan pace and gazing around at the trees and the sky. He made to follow her but stopped dead. On the other side of the gate were two people — a woman and a man — slowly sinking behind the crest of a low grassy hill.
The woman had flowing hair as black as the night itself and wore a tiny dress of the brightest red — a splash of freshly spilled blood against the brilliant blue of the sky. He caught her profile as she turned to speak to her companion: magazine model loveliness, with tanned skin and sculptured features. But for all her allure, it was the man who caught his attention.
For some reason, the second disappearing torso filled his consciousness, hammering its presence into the back of his brain. The man’s short hair was thinning from the forehead. He wore glasses and a lime green tee-shirt with a flash of orange on the front. And slung casually over his left shoulder was a jacket, a black jacket with a red lining.
He felt something he couldn't identify, a tightness inside, cold and dark, which blossomed quickly into an unplumbed, all-encompassing loathing. He stood rock still, turned to stone, unable not to watch, as boiling black blood pumped furiously through his skull. A moment later, the man was gone, vanished behind the hill, and the terrible spell was broken. The empty grass rolled towards him like an ocean swell; he was breathing hard, and he was afraid.
The girl in white! He turned quickly and relaxed; she was still there, standing at the side of the road, pulling a flower from the hedge. She felt so close that he could reach out and touch her. As he watched, the scene coalesced into a moving tableau of unbearable beauty: the girl in her dazzling white gown floating on the plastic river of tarmac as it flowed slowly between the undulating green banks, her dark hair flowing over her face to meet the startling blueness of the flower, a splinter of sky in her hand.
Then another figure appeared behind her, a discordant pulse of ugliness, and the tableau shattered. It was a small, fat man in a dark suit and bowler hat. The man’s chubby face was creased with worry, and his stubby pin-striped legs sliced together like scissors as he walked briskly up the road, carrying a battered leather briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other.
He shook his head and blinked vigorously, trying to get rid of this new, unwelcome blot — trying to restore the harmony. But the fat man caught his eye, raised the umbrella in greeting, then hurried forward to meet him. The ugly stain spread quickly across the loveliness, growing larger, closer, but he couldn't escape. He was trapped like a light-blinded rabbit. Then, when all seemed lost, the girl intervened; as the little man trotted past her, she stepped forward and took his arm, stopping him.
The cool wash of relief quickly ebbed away, however, as the girl leaned up to whisper to her chubby new friend, her body touching his with a revolting familiarity. The fat man tried to pull away, indicating at him with the briefcase. But she held on, talking softly to him and turning him away. The fat man struggled again and this time she kissed him, pressing her lips onto his quivering pink jowls. The little man's struggles now became feeble, and as he collapsed into her control, she took his umbrella and led him away down the road like an obedient puppy.
His short-lived relief was now replaced by a sharp sense of betrayal. How could she desert him like this? It couldn't be true; there must be some mistake. Any minute now she would send the little man on his way and come back to him. He knew she would; she was bound to. But even as these thoughts jabbed through his mind, the girl was already stepping off the road, leading her new friend into the woods. The incongruous pair was now encased in a horrible and exclusive intimacy and, choking on jealousy and betrayal, he watched helplessly as they disappeared into the enveloping greenery.
Now he really was alone, completely and utterly. He stared blankly up the empty road as the hot tarmac arched and rolled towards him. The hedges and trees twisted and swayed with slow deliberation, and a cold snake of fear slithered up his spine. It was all so oppressively close: the trees and the sky crowding against him, the tarmac smothering his awareness with a crawling intimacy. He pushed at the air, fighting for space, but still it pressed in on him — the whole of creation forming an existential rugby scrum with him at its centre. Then suddenly, just as he was about to collapse under the great weight, it lurched back, the trees and the sky hurling themselves away from him, stretching into the dizzy distance, further than he could ever hope to reach. He staggered forward into the gaping void — and then it was all back again, crushing in on him, tight and suffocating. The snake coiled into his skull, and a hurricane of panic whirled through his brain.
He spun round to escape the hideous oscillations, first turning back to the gate then over towards the bridge, but it wouldn't stop. The oppressive closeness and dizzying distance still alternated wildly, and then blended, combining into one hideous blur of suffocation and vertigo. He jammed his eyes closed to shut it out, but they were all still there — the gate, the road, the field — writhing on the undersides of his eyelids. A scream ripped through his skull, but the noise coagulated silently in the plastic air. He ran forward, but his feet refused to obey.
And then gravity was no more. As a panorama of tarmac slid by under him, he could see the tiny stones, each embedded in a coat of black, each so different from — and yet at the same time so alike — those that surrounded it. They moved past in slow motion, coming gently towards him with an unhurried languor, like hundreds of black, luminous friends.
Then, with an explosion of light and colour and jolted twisting limbs, gravity made a come-back.
An ocean of black-coated boulders stretched out into infinity and then came rolling back in slow, gentle waves. Warm hardness caressed his cheek, comforting and calming. He liked it down here, cuddled to the plastic tarmac; down here it was safe, away from the panic and the fear. As he focused on the coagulated boulders in front of his face and stared into the weird twisted gaps between them, he thought of melting into liquid and seeping down into the vast network of caverns beneath the surface of the road, of spending eternity as a thousand subterranean rivulets tricking deeper and deeper into the hard flesh of the earth.
There was a blurred movement at the edge of his vision and he refocused. A creature was approaching, clambering over the sea of boulders. Clearly intent on matters of vital importance it moved quickly, following some invisible path across the featureless if uneven plain of the road. It got closer and closer until—as big as a rhinoceros—it paused under the jutting overhang of his nose, sensing his presence with bobbing antennae. Then, with quiet deliberation, it turned and hurried away, going up past his eyebrows and out of sight beyond the top of his head.
After the ant had gone, he lay watching the waves lumbering towards him across the tarmac. The slow rolling gradually seeped into him and his thoughts rocked gently in time with the waves. The boulders melted into each other and a heavy curtain of darkness began its inexorable descent.
But he didn't want to sleep, he had only just woken up.
Suddenly galvanised, he scrambled to his feet, shaking his head to dissipate the heaviness. But as soon as he was up, it started again; the trees and the sky hurled themselves in at him, before veering away with dizzy insanity. The snake of fear was quickly awake, slithering up his throat. Now, however, he sensed something inside, a tiny pebble of hardness that the fear couldn't touch. And so this time he caught the snake, seizing its scaly neck. It twisted, trying to bite him—a slab of sky crashed down—but he held it. Then, with teeth-gritting effort, he forced it back down into its cave; the oscillations slowed, and stopped.
He relaxed and for a moment all was stable. Then—suddenly—the trees crushed in, swerving giddily up to his face. Again the fear rose, but again—and with less difficulty—he forced it down, restoring equilibrium. A butterfly of lightness fluttered across his chest and he breathed deeply, savouring the viscous air; he had won, and having won once he knew he could win again.
Where to now? Without the girl to guide him, he was at something of a loss. He looked around aimlessly, wondering what to do. The wooden fence next to the gate was breached by a stile, and beside the stile was a tall signpost. Perhaps this might help.
Unfortunately the sign was blank. It was a piece of wood, one end carved into a hand with the forefinger pointing across the field behind the fence, but with no words to give direction. Despite its unhelpfulness, however, he was entranced by the quality of the workmanship; for in addition to the forefinger, the other three fingers had also been carved, curled into the palm and gripped by the thumb, each with its nail and joint creases. Then, as he gazed up admiringly, it moved. The hand twisted upwards and the forefinger wagged, beckoning him forward.
His tiny tremor of surprise faded leaving a residue of confusion. He'd seen good wood carving before, but nothing quite this lifelike. The sign seemed to sense his lapse in attention and beckoned more vigorously, this time with an edge of impatience. His puzzlement gelled quickly around a hard pulse of indignation. Who on earth did it think it was? he thought. Then, as if to add insult to injury, as he went to turn away the wooden fingers snapped imperiously and the whole hand waved him forward and pointed across the stile.
He stormed back towards the bridge, seething. Nicely carved or not, he was damned if he was going to be ordered about by a wooden signpost—he would go this way instead. But as reached the beginning of the metal parapets, his tempest of outrage faltered. He gazed into the dizzying abyss and felt it sucking him forward, spinning him with vertigo. Perhaps not the bridge, after all.
He turned again and headed up the road towards where the girl in white had disappeared, deliberately not looking at the sign as he strode past it. A few yards beyond the stile, however, he lost confidence. The road stretched out into the dark unknown, its trees and hedges pressing in menacingly, assassins awaiting their victim.
There was, of course, the field.
The field, with its open blue skies and its little grassy knoll where the woman in the blood-spill dress had wandered, carefree as a sky lark. Sunlit pastures opened out before him, enticing and safe.
'I'm going this way because that's what I want to do,' he said, trying to sound assured, 'I hope you understand that this is my decision, and my decision alone.'
The sign did not respond, but he sensed an arrogant smugness in the curl of the fingers. He gritted his teeth but refused the challenge; he wasn't going to let himself get rattled by some pompous, puffed up piece of wood. And so, taking an angry grip on the waist-high cross-bar of the stile, he swung himself up onto the first step.
And nearly fell off again—for the wood was like rubber, swaying and buckling under his weight. For a few precarious moments he teetered to and fro, fighting for balance, and then lunged forwards, gripping the cross-bar with both hands. He managed to swing his left leg over onto the swaying foot-piece on the far side and then stood astride the stile as it bucked like a rodeo bronco, trying to throw him off. After a short while it seemed to tire and he saw his chance. But his optimism was misplaced—just as he'd got his right leg over, the foot-piece plunged suddenly and tumbled him onto the grass.
As he picked himself up, he glanced up at the sign; there could have been a slight vibration, a quiver of suppressed mirth. Muttering silent imprecations, he stomped away across the grass, hammering his anger into the innocent turf.
Once in the field, the path was easy to see, running over the crest of the little knoll. He walked quickly, still propelled by the rocket fuel of indignation though glad to be underway, to be finally away from the bloody thing. Then, as he looked towards the slope, he thought saw something, a diaphanous patch of colour vanishing over the horizon as if the woman's dress had left an after-image in the shimmering air. He stopped stone dead—for beside the red ghost was another, in lime green.
As he stared at the now empty sky, a weird coldness trickled inside him and his confidence ebbed like a falling tide. Perhaps the bridge was the best option after all. It wasn't that dangerous—he'd managed it once, he could do so again. Also there was something nice the other side, although he couldn't quite remember what; a mirage teardrop, black and shiny, crawled slowly across his mind and was gone.
Back at the stile, the sign held an imperious palm against him.
'I think I've come the wrong way,' he said, 'It might be better if I just went back over there.'
It pointed over his shoulder, quivering with impatience.
'I'm not sure that I should. I really think—.' His voice tailed feebly away as the sign stabbed the air with its finger. He looked up, pleading, but it remained impervious, pointing implacably across the field.
This time when he set off along the path there were no coloured ghosts, and his apprehension—together with the hazy miasma of the memory—gradually evaporated. He liked walking on the grass; its soft springiness seemed to propel him forward in long, fluid bounces. A gentle breeze cooled his face and the china-blue sky arched over him like a vast upturned cereal bowl. To his left the ground fell away steeply and in the distance he could see the two-way river snaking across the rolling hills. It was all so pretty and bright, like a Toy-Town film set. He could have reached out and cupped one of the far hills under the palm of his hand.
Something caught his eye to the right: a splash of colour. He turned quickly, in time to see two rabbits diving into the hedgerow, alarmed by his approach. They were lovely creatures, one a rich dark blue, the other emerald green—brighter even than the grass—and each showing its bob-tail, a flash of dazzling white against the coloured fur.
He was moving quickly now. Although he could feel the turf under his soles at each step, he seemed to be gliding over the surface of the field. He was a yacht sailing across the open sea; shimmering waves flowed across the grass, sweeping over the crest of the hill, crossing and recrossing each other, forming intricate whorled patterns as they swirled and eddied around his feet. Here and there exotic plants thrust up through the ripples: thistles with leaves like razor-wire and colour-burst flowers of brilliant pink, and yellow ragwort crawling with black and vermilion caterpillars, too poisonous even to look at.
His velocity increased. The waves swept under him at giddying speed and the taller plants streaked by like telegraph poles from a train window. He ought not go so fast, he could easily trip, but he felt sucked forward by his own momentum and he couldn't slow his legs.
Faster and faster and faster. The world blurred into parallel lines of speeding colour, closing around him in a tunnel of slippery speed. Everything became speed—and the speed became fear, a high velocity terror that roared in his ears, his eyes, his brain. And still he got faster, a human rocket hurtling towards the crest of the hill.
Towards the crest of the hill?
He should have half way to Jupiter by now, not still heading up the hill. Steeling himself for a fatal fall, he glanced behind. The stile, with its obnoxious signpost, was right there, no more than fifteen yards away. He turned back to the path. The crest of the small hill lay ahead of him—and he was standing stock still, washed by the gentle ripples of the grass.
He breathed deeply and his panic melted away. When his galloping heartbeat had returned to normal, he tried again. Putting his left foot carefully forward, he made a single step. That felt fine, everything was normal and he had moved about a yard. Another single step: again all OK, another yard forward. Then another, and another. He grinned, and with a surge of confidence, strode out for the top of the hill. But no sooner had he begun to walk normally, than—with a flare of naked panic—he was sucked into the tunnel of uncontrolled velocity.
He caught himself, stopped walking and was instantly still, though again no further forward than when he first started. How on earth was he meant to get anywhere? he wondered, gritting his teeth. Again he started walking—and again he was sucked into the tunnel of speed, and again when he stopped he had made no progress. This time his frustration snapped. As the grass swirled innocently around his feet, he clenched his fists and glared at the hill in front of him.
'This—is—ridiculous!' he shouted, 'Will you please stop this—at once!'
The waves seemed to pause, quivering slightly—with contrition perhaps? He started forward again, stomping crossly on the chastened ripples. And nothing happened. No acceleration, no sliding into the tunnel of speed: he was walking normally, moving like a person not a cyclotroned sub-atomic particle. This time he could feel the drag of his own weight pulling him back at each step, this time he was making effort, climbing the hill rather than sliding up it. At last he seemed to be getting somewhere.
He climbed onwards, pulling himself up the slope. Soon he was panting, heaving himself up with straining muscles, enjoying the exertion of exercise. The slope rose steeply in front of him and the summit beckoned ahead. He couldn't move quickly now, but took each step one at a time, steadily winning altitude with sweat and effort.
He paused for breath, panting hard, looking up the near vertical bank ahead of him. Not far to the top now, surely. He was certainly enjoying the climb, though he didn't remember the mountain being so—.
Mountain? What mountain?
He turned and, instead of a distant view of the road and the bridge far below, there was the stile, exactly where he had left it, fifteen yards behind. He spun round angrily to confront the mountainside and in front of him was a harmless little slope, leading to the crest of a small hill a few paces away.
'That's it,' he hissed, glaring at the grass, 'I've had it up to here with you and your silly games. I'm going back to the bridge, signpost or no signpost.'
But as he turned to march back to the stile, something felt different; the ground was flat, there was no slope. He looked around—and saw he was on top of the hill.
'Thank you so much,' he said to the grass, 'So good of you to oblige.'
On the other side of the knoll, the field banked away to the bottom of wide valley. The opposite slope was coated in thick woodland, a dense emerald green, the foliage plastic and fluid, close and yet so far away. Beyond the wood were more hills, rolling into the distance: some wooded, some a patchwork of fields, some with tiny Trumpton villages clustered on their slopes.
Where to now? he thought. The path swept down into the valley where another stile led into the woods. Of course he didn't have to stick to this particular path, or to any path at all for that matter. It was a big field and he could go anywhere he wanted. But as he looked out over the open grass, across the uncharted expanse of swirling waves and whirlpool eddies, he shuddered. Despite everything, it might be better to stick with the devil he was, by now, getting to know rather well. And so, with one last look around the little hilltop he had won with such difficulty, he started down the path towards the woods.
He hadn't gone more than six paces before he noticed the slope getting steeper, falling away in front of him. After a few more steps he was on a steep bank, gazing down into the valley bottom miles below, giddy with vertigo. His feet began to slip on the near vertical grass, he was about to fall—.
'Just you stop that!' he snapped, 'Right this minute!'