A Survivor's Guide to Eternity (11 page)

“I don’t know. Anyway, that’s there as a possible choice. I don’t know what you want, but there are alternatives. Everyone needs to know that when they come here.”

“Okay. Thanks, George,” exclaimed Ed, as Thomas returned to the room.

“Ah, t’is but a man hard to locate. I was looking for you,” said Thomas, gazing over at George.

“Good to see you’ve met Ed, anyway. We should get going. The flow is stronger at the moment, so that gives you a better chance of a successful transience.”

“Why’s it stronger now?”

“Not sure really, it just is. Maybe the amount of soul traffic in there. If there are more people in transit then maybe it’s slower. It seems to have a few days every now and then when it’s stronger.”

“One thing puzzles me, Thomas. You mention ‘days’ but there are no clocks or hours of daylight to judge the exact time. How do you do it?” asked Ed inquisitively.

“It’s guess work really. We have a rough idea of what a twenty-four hour period feels like and we all seem to naturally sleep twice in that period, albeit at different times. It’s these sleep patterns that we go on.”

“Oh! Pretty vague then?”

“Tis indeed,” replied Thomas.

With this the three of them left the small room, Thomas followed by George and then Ed. He glanced around and looked back at the room for one final time, before skipping to catch up with the other two heading down the tunnel.

“Well at least I don’t need to take suitcases with me and check them in. No security to go through or passport to forget. Not even any spare underwear. It redefines ‘travelling light’,” Ed mused, as he caught them up.

“We didn’t have suitcases back in the Tudor days. T’is a most excellent notion though,” replied Thomas, as they reached the intersection and turned down towards the opening.

“All these tunnels and intersections and sleeping rooms, they must have been designed and built by someone. It can’t all be by chance, don’t you think, guys?”

“It’s a conversation we’ve had many times, Ed,” replied George before continuing, “The stairwell we’re going to now is rumoured to have been carved out by the Viking but we can’t see how it could have been possible. The rock’s so hard that he’d have needed proper tools. The tunnels and all that’s linked to them does on the surface seem to be of human design, but we really have no way to verify it.”

“Mystery upon mystery eh,” replied Ed, noticing the tunnels were getting a little gusty.

“It sounds a bit more fearsome today,” remarked George as he paused to tie his shoelace.

“T’is indeed,” replied Thomas before adding, “T’is a good day to turn and step into the tunnel.”

Ed also began to notice the strong breeze that weaved through the tunnels, dancing across his face with a very slight chill. The small beams of light seemed slightly more sinister than the day before and Ed started to feel nerves in the depth of his stomach as if there was a very tiny spin-dryer on the go. He marvelled again at the black sand, mesmerised by the disappearance of the footprints behind them. The breeze increased in power as they grew closer to their destination, making the whole scene even more menacing. The fears of jumping began to eat away at Ed but he knew he had no choice if he was to continue his quest and find a possible solution for his predicament.

They walked further through the tunnels and over to the opening where the firm sand gave way to an uneven rocky floor. Their pace slowed and they tiptoed delicately for the last few yards, the wind positively howling through the entrance, giving off a low resonant tone. All three stared in at the all-encompassing flow, mesmerised by its power. Thomas stepped back and pointed Ed towards a smaller opening to his right which led to a claustrophobic hand-cut stairway.

“You need to go up there. George will go with you and give you a helping push if you lose your nerve. I will keep watch from here with the crook just in case it goes wrong and you drift over to this side out of the main flow. T’is unlikely though because the force would take you all the way through the flow to the bottom,” stated Thomas, as George put his arm around Ed’s shoulder and led him over to the opening. Ed was more than concerned that this might go horribly wrong and he might become aimlessly caught in the weaker parts of the current. He had no idea what would happen in such a circumstance but felt obliged to proceed regardless, anxious to become more empowered.

“One more thing, Ed, give ear to me,” added Thomas loudly as the wind howled.

“What’s that then?”

“Can you leave all your raiments for us, what say you?”

“Why? Why would you want my clothes?” barked Ed, slightly put out.

“Forsooth, the timepiece also, that would be of great use. Worry not - if you return and stop off in one of these places, then you will for sure find yourself garbed in the same vestments. You are inseparably bound with them. They are part of you now and if you find yourself here again, you will appear fully clothed. Your old garments from this visit are useful to us though. We can use them to make ropes and suchlike. We do not have sufficient yet, but I pray in time we can help rescue paused Transients in the bottom of the tunnel.”

“Oh bloody hell, alright then!” exclaimed Ed as he slipped off his shoes and stripped down to his underwear, surprised not to feel cold in the gusts that brushed over his goose-bumped skin and on into the tunnels.

“Keep your shoes on though, Ed, you’ll be more comfortable going up the rocky stairs in those,” shouted George, almost drowned out by the noise.

“Okay. Elegance is out of the window here then,” Ed retorted, as he bent down and put his shoes back on.

“I’ll tell you something for nothing though, George, you can forget the arm around my shoulders now I’m half naked.”

“Understood. No problem. Let’s go,” chuckled George before he headed into the stairwell, swiftly followed by Ed.

“Bye, Thomas, thanks for everything. Hope to see you again someday,” Ed shouted back out through the doorway as they turned the corner and started to ascend the black stone stairs. The gusts of wind completely demised in the stairwell, leaving them in a calm and serene atmosphere.

“There won’t be much wind in here, Ed, it’s much calmer. Not sure why.”

“That’s good, it was getting a bit much,” replied Ed, thankful that the stairs were smooth and not slippery.

“There are six hundred and twenty-four stairs altogether. Should take us twenty minutes or so.”

“Now that’s a lot of stairs. Will you be okay in slippers?” enquired Ed, aware that it was going to be a tiring climb.”

“Yes, it’ll be fine.”

The walls of the stairwell were surprisingly smooth and as glisteningly miraculous as those in the main tunnels. Visibility was good and every twenty or so steps there was a tiny recess in the ceiling with a bright piercing light shining down. Each time the pair passed through the beams they cast a ghost-like, eerie shadow, melting back down over the steps with an
amorphous freedom,
getting longer and longer as Ed quickly fell behind George’s pace.

“Hold on, George,” panted Ed, as he pulled them to a halt after a hundred or so steps.

“No probs.”

“Where do these lights get powered from, George? I can’t see any cables or switches.”

“As far as we can tell, it’s all natural light. It is not electric or gas or anything. If you reach into the holes there’s nothing there, they’re just empty. Very strange, but when you land here after hopping from mammal to reptile to sea creature, anything seems possible.”

“Sea creature? Tell me no, not a fish? How would a fish kill itself? What about a prawn?”

“I don’t know. It’s rare anyway, don’t worry.”

“Mmmm! There’s quite a few things I shouldn’t worry about, eh?” replied Ed ironically as they continued on their way, George slowing slightly to Ed’s pace and allowing him to catch up.

Ed began musing on his next transience, wondering where and what he would end up with. He thought about the strange ‘other world’ running alongside the physical one and began to question George.

“Have there been any other ways that people have made contact with these communities down here?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if we know that some other physical world is going along parallel to this, isn’t it possible that somehow we can make a connection from here, some sort of contact or message? Maybe that would save me having to make the jump.”

“What, like a telephone hotline back to the living?”

“I don’t know. What about Ouija boards,
séances
,
mediums and all that stuff? I never believed in it but by the same token I never thought I’d end up here.”

“Well as far as I am aware, there has never been any sort of contact made like that, at least not from this portal. We think it was all human hype, a myth. Pseudo contact with the spirits and all that. We have had a few fortune tellers and mediums in the past but they’ve never been able to do anything. They try for a while, sometimes over a prolonged period of time, but they always give up. One of them had the idea that it was the souls trapped around the outer edges of the flow that communicated with the other side, the physical side. They even held some ‘events’ down near the entrance, but all to no avail.”

“That’s interesting. Maybe getting trapped is like being half in and half out, caught between worlds. A distant and faint voice of misery. Maybe that’s Hell itself. I hope that doesn’t happen to me,” replied Ed as they continued up the stairs.

There was a very faint chemical odour and as they got higher Ed could see a series of small cracks in the rock with minimal amounts of what looked like a black fluid leaking out. He stopped on a stair, spent a while to gather his breath again and poked at the substance with the first finger of his right hand.

“What’s this?” he enquired, realising its spongy foam-like texture.

“I don’t know. We’ve only ever found it here on this stairwell. It looks like it’s leaking out but really, it never changes. In all the years I’ve been coming up here, it just remains exactly like that, no more and no less. Very odd, eh!”

“Yeah, very odd, along with everything else. Do we have much further to go?”

“No. We’re nearly there now but come and look at this,” replied George, pointing to something just ahead of him on the wall. As Ed got closer he could see it was a single vine growing from one of the steps and meandering up the curved wall, disappearing into the ceiling. Above it one of the jets of light bathed its entire length, casting evocative shadows across the wall and onto part of the stairs. Ed drew closer still and caught sight of a series of tiny bright blue flowers like tiny buttercups.

“It’s the only one we’ve ever found anywhere in the tunnels. Amazing isn’t it?” stated George.

“Certainly is. Why hasn’t it spread? How long has it been here?”

“As far back as we know. It appears to be growing at a very slow rate. Touch the flowers in the centre, Ed.”

Ed went even closer and put his little finger out towards the centre of one of the tiny flowers. It immediately and instantaneously curled up into a tight ball, leaving Ed aghast. He removed his hand away and was shocked to see it open up as quickly as it closed.

“We call them Tumpleberries. Odourless, harmless and altogether a mystery. Anyway, let’s crack on,” said George, continuing up the stairs, promptly followed by a bemused Ed. The mysterious flowers had certainly taken his mind off the task at hand and relieved his increasing anxiety of what was to come. The climb became steeper and steeper, causing Ed to become more and more breathless with every step.

“Not far now, come on, keep up.”

“Alright then,” sighed Ed begrudgingly as he followed suit, ascending higher and out of the grasp of the odour.