maps of the lost

Spirals within spirals

Even if you spend a lot of time on Google Maps or an old school print A-Z of London, it’s hard to find it. Hard to disentangle it from all the other twists and turns of streets and alleys, back lanes and passages in that part of the city. It’s a complicated place as it is, with new built on old built on old built on old, a city which can feel like a forest that has grown rather than been planned. Like a forest, you only see the understory at street level, and the overstory that towers above. You don’t see the mycorrhizal networks, the wood-wide web where under the ground everywhere is connected, one way or another.

But that’s for another time. What concerns us now is at street level, and what is at street level is a labyrinth. Technically a maze, but it started as a labyrinth before most of the city was even a city, and that’s what it is called by those who know of it.

You need to find the right starting point, but there’s talk by those who know of it that if you find a carving of Gog and Magog on the parapet above a shop and then form an isosceles triangle between it, what is now a Nando’s, and the spire of a Hawksmoor church just visible above the roof tops then the arrowhead shape points you the right way.

The labyrinth can be completed within half a square mile of the city, but there are many different choices that can be made along the way. Unless you take exactly the right routes through the streets and alleys, the passages and the courtyards, the magic of the labyrinth falls away and you’re just walking the streets, round and round like a mad person or an earnest psychogeographer.

If you walk the labyrinth just right though, every turning correct, you will find yourself in a small and scruffy pocket park, fenced round with rusting railings. A small Hellenic-style statue stands on a plinth, stained by bird-shit and the air of the city.

Sit on the bench near it. If you have walked the labyrinth the right way, the statue will get down from its plinth and sit next to you on the bench and tell you many things.

The Nothing

There’s nothing different about this morning, it’s your same weekday routine. Alarm at half-five, swimsuit on, clothes on, moka on, coffee drunk, pick up your bag from where you left it beside the front door last night. Short drive to the pool, into one of the cubicles to take off what you’re wearing over your suit, and then locker, water, breathe.

Strokes, breathe. Strokes, breathe. You feel the water and the physical motion wash away thought, and you reach that point where you stop being the swimmer, just become the swim.

The big clock moves round and you get out, your legs a little jelly, but that’s good. You feel good. Shower, and you lift your face to it, enjoying the moment. Then you go back to a cubicle to get changed, so you have time for another coffee and a croissant before you get to work. The pool’s getting busy now, lots of chatter and voices, the early morning but not as early as you regular crowd.

Then, when you’re just about finished getting ready, you realise you can’t hear anyone any more. You can’t hear the splash of the water or the rumble of the aircon or the smack of flip-flops on tile. You shake your head, to dislodge water from your ears, remember you’d worn your plugs, lift a hand but they were out, you’d taken them out and put them back in their case.

You start to worry that you’ve missed something, an evacuation of some kind and so you hurriedly push your towel into your bag, and open the door to look out.

There’s nothing to see. You blink once, blink twice, feel a little sick. There is nothing to see. No off-white floor tiles, no row of cubicles with orange doors, no metal pipes running up the wall, no wall, no nothing. Although you don’t know how you can tell, you know that you are not even looking at a space where the pool used to be. There is nothing there, not even a space. Just nothing, in all directions.

You feel dizzy, and terrified about what might happen if you fell forward into the nothing, so you step back, shut your cubicle door.

A moment later there are voices, calls of greeting echoing off the walls, an announcement that two of the lanes are about to be closed off for non-club members, the hiss of a shower. You open the cubicle door, and see everything is there again, just as it was.

Now, in the mornings, you get up early, moka on, dress, coffee, trainers on, and out in the open to run and run until you can’t think.

Window Shopping

In a town or city near you, there’s a shopping centre which has seen better days. A handful of well-known names just about anchor it still, but other shops you’ve never heard of come and go with depressing regularity. You’ve never seen so many un-let units, or those vinyls with illustrations of happy, laughing shoppers that are put over windows to hide the fact that there is nothing behind them, a false tooth in place of an empty socket.

If you’re there at the right time, on the right day, and you are the right kind of person at exactly the right moment, you might notice a shop selling a clutter glass ornaments and mirrors. You might decide to wander in, if you have time. Perhaps there’s a present to be had for an elderly relative who likes ornaments and nick-nacks, albeit not for that one aunt who would sigh and say, ‘oh thank you, another thing to dust’.

After a few minutes browsing, you feel you have something of a headache from all the reflections, you reflected in glass reflected in other glass, reflected in mirrors, reflected in other glass. You realise that you are the only customer, and have been the only customer since you walked in, and you haven’t even noticed any staff. When you look at your watch you see that it’s three hours since you came in. That feels strange and you feel strange and you think about leaving but don’t, just look into the reflections and feel as if you’re falling down into them. One of the yous that you can see waves its arms as if drowning, mouth moving as if trying to tell you something very important.

Your body jerks suddenly, the way it does sometimes when you’re in that twilight just before falling asleep, and you are in motion again, and you walk past all the glass and out of the door, and you don’t stop until you are out of the centre and into the fresh air, and you gulp down breaths as if you’ve never breathed in such a long time.

If you go back into the shopping centre you won’t see the shop. If you stop any of the other shoppers and ask them if they saw it, before the centre security come and politely move you on, they will all tell you no, they did not.

There was one person who did, and who like you went in, but you won’t find them to ask, not anymore, and nor will those who knew them.

Reunion

It’s a while since you’ve been back to Manchester, and ten years to the day since you had been in this bar. You remember the date because it was the last day before you and your university friends scattered to the four winds after graduation. The bar had changed name but the decoration and the vibe felt the same. Nine of the eleven who met a decade before had managed to make the trip to reunite. One was in Australia, and the other had taken a bend too fast on a holiday in Greece six months after graduation and the group had shrunk by more than geography.

You all raise a glass to her, and you all catch up on each other’s lives. It’s easy, and it’s fun. No one is there to show off, no one is bragging about their career or their house. For the most part everyone was more interested in recounting the various terrible mistakes we had made and ridiculous disasters that had befallen us all.

As the two friends you were talking to move from in front of you to go for more drinks, you look around the bar. It’s still early evening, so it’s a mix of the post-office crowd have one last one and the early-start evening people warming up.

Then you see him, across the other side of the bar. You pass him over for a second, then look back. He’s not that remarkable to look at, just a young man with curly black hair sat on his own at a small table in the corner. What is so striking about him though, is the look of sadness on his face, and the fact that when you look at him an almost overwhelming feeling of despair rushes out at you like a physical wave. And what is even more striking than that is that you remember so well how you saw this man on that last night after graduation, and that terrible, terrible feeling of despair. He doesn’t look a day older.

When your friends come back, they ask you what’s wrong, because it’s visible on your face. You say oh nothing really, but can you see that man over there? They look round, look back at you. They can. Has he been hassling you? Is he staring at you? Do you want us to have a word? You make your face make a smile and say no no, he just reminded me of someone. Do you remember him at all from - you don’t say the last time we were here - when we were at uni. There’s shrugs and shakes of the head, and they don’t seem to have felt anything odd about him, so you let the conversation run on. After a few minutes, he gets up, and makes his way through the crowd to the door and leaves.

You put him out of your mind as best you can, and enjoy your night. The next morning, as you all meet for breakfast in the hotel before leaving, someone says, “we should do this once every so often,” and you say without thinking, “we must, we must in ten more years.” Then you think, just to yourself, I wonder if he will look the same, and what will happen if I go and speak to him.

Night Watch

There’s an old office building in South London, where every business is out of the building by seven, and until six the next morning there’s no one there except one security guard, who spends much of his time drinking tea, and watching old episodes of Only Fools and Horses, Formula 1, and porn on his phone. Every so often, he has to go round and shine his torch along corridors and try doors and generally earn his living for a while.

One December night quite soon though will be his last night at work, and he’ll quit the next morning and take a job in a garden centre, which apart from the early morning and late afternoon is a daytime daylight day job.

That’s because on that night, he’ll be doing his 2am rounds in the dark and when he reaches the third floor he’ll notice light shining under one of the office doors. For just a moment’s break from the boredom rather than caring about the bills, he will find his master key and unlock the office door to turn the light off.

When he opens the door, he will stop one step in, and the four men who are round a table talking will stop for a moment. “Sorry,” one of them will say. “We’re just borrowing the room for a time. We’ll put it back when we’re finished,” and he will give a big reassuring smile.

The security guard will just nod and back out of the door and lock it again. He will go downstairs, post his keys back through the letterbox, and walk away from the building into the night because there had been no light for him to switch off in the upstairs office. It was well enough lit by the daylight streaming in through the windows.

SSSHHH

The first time it happens you think it’s just a dream. You wake in the early hours, and there’s a light in your room. Dazed, you think it’s moonlight shining through the curtain as it has that cold silvery quality, but your curtains are fully drawn. Then you see it, scrawled across the walls of your bedroom, what look like words written in a glowing script you cannot understand, letters curling around in on themselves and twisting around each other. It looks like Arabic, but it’s not. Sleep takes you, and in the morning you laugh at your empty walls and the strange dream and go about your day.

A few days later it happens again, and then not for a month and then again, and again. It puzzles you and you speculate on what might be. A dream, a vision, a weird brain artefact in the hypnopompic state, you don’t know for sure. You wake, see it, close your eyes and open them again and it’s still there, then sleep comes and when you wake it isn’t.

But the one thing that you do start to believe is that each time it happens, you come that little bit closer to being able to read it. It’s almost as if the words are forming in your mind, and all you would have to do is to start to speak and you would read them out, even if you don’t understand what the words mean. You may even start to feel, to know, that in the speaking would come understanding.

Don’t ever give in. Don’t ever voice the words, even if you are sure that you know them, that you could speak them. If you do, the words will be gone from the room forever. And alas, so will you.

LET’S TAKE A RIDE AND SEE WHAT’S MINE

You’re not sure if it’s the second time or the third time. Hell, for all you know it may be the fifteenth and you just didn’t notice. But this time, you do.

The car that overtakes you is an unremarkable red Ford, but you recognise it and the driver, a woman in late-middle age. It passed you a little while back, but you don’t remember over-taking it in turn. A young man is sat in the passenger seat, staring ahead, jaw slack, as if he’s fallen asleep with his eyes open.

Gradually, the car disappears out of sight, you take a turn-off onto another dual carriageway, some more songs play and you still have hours to drive.

Then, miles on, she passes you again. Same car, same woman. Different passenger, an older man, slightly confused as if he’s just forgotten something very important. What are the odds of that you think, and then you laugh. She’s driving about ten miles an hour faster than you, and it’s not long before the car is out of sight.

Half an hour later, every light on your dash comes on. The car splutters and chokes and stalls. You manage to guide it to the verge, too shocked to swear until you stop and then you swear a lot. You’d meant to renew your breakdown cover the other week, but there was always something else to do first.

A red car passed you, and pulls up just in front. The driver’s door opens and the woman walks to your car, looks in, and tap, tap, taps on your window.

Don’t wind down your window. This is what will happen if you do.

“I can give you a lift,” she will say. “Come on.”

You will look ahead at her car. The passenger seat will be empty. There will be a small voice in your head that says you shouldn’t but it is such a small voice and so, so far away. You will get out of your car, walk to hers, and open the passenger door.

Darkness

It’s an ordinary day, in an ordinary place, and you’re walking down an ordinary street on your way to do some ordinary things: buy some teabags, pick up shoes that have been re-heeled, post a letter, maybe stop for some coffee even though you know you might get cake too and shouldn’t have cake but almost certainly will.

The weather is the definition of nondescript: a flat, low grey sky, like a lid over the world. Fitful drizzle. A breeze that promises to turn into something stronger but then can’t be bothered.

All of which is why the last thing you are expecting is for the world to suddenly go dark, but as you pass a vape shop, and step over some dog shit, that’s exactly what it does.

At first there’s a cold wave of fear washes over you: I’ve lost my sight. Aneurysm, tumour, breakdown, incipient death. But after a moment or two, you realise you can still see, just. There’s enough light to make out the street around you, although you can’t tell where it is coming from. It’s like the last moments of dusk have fallen, just before it turns into night.

Then it’s light again, the street and the drizzle and the sullen traffic, just as it was before. You stand and look around you, confused, scared. The door of the vape shop opens and a short, balding man comes out. He looks intently at you and says, “Did you see that?”

You feel a huge sense of relief. It’s not you. What the hell did just happen? But most importantly, it wasn’t you. Meteorological event, eclipse, sunspots, ozone layer who knows. It wasn’t you. “Yes,” you say, struggling to get anything else out. “Yes.” You wait for him to share his fears, his concerns, to feel that solidarity of human beings both dealing with something.

But instead, he winces. “Most people won’t have. Sorry. Got something a little wrong. Really sorry. Don’t let it bother you.” Then he scuttles back into the shop.

The wind makes an effort, shrugs and gives up. The drizzle starts, and stops, and starts. The cars go by. You walk on, and try and not think about what just happened because it makes you feel like you don’t know the world.

And you don’t.

Seen/Unseen

If you’re keen on new technology, you might have one of those video doorbells that detects movement. If someone comes and tries your front door, or your car door, they’re captured there on video.

If you’re keen on new technology and animals, you might also have a wildlife camera that detects movement and takes photos using an infra-red flash. It was a bit of an indulgence for your small surburban front garden but you’ve seen ghostly images of grumbling hedgehogs and a twitchy mouse, as well as any number of cats slinking around their inscrutable business. And once, to your amazement, a young fox, who wandered in without a care in the world, sniffed at a few things, and then trotted off to his next appointment.

One day though, you might be reviewing the night’s capture on the wildlife camera and see a shape like a person walk slowly into your garden. Unlike the shots of the animals in the night (three cats, one hedgehog, an insomniac blackbird) you can’t make out any detail illuminated by the infrared flash, just a blurry but unmistakeable shape. It stands there, completely still for about three minutes, then moves it head. After a moment more, it turns and slowly walks away, out of your garden and out of sight.

Indignant at this intrusion, you review the footage from your video doorbell, which they passed to get onto your garden, and when they walked out. There’s nothing there. Nothing at the timestamp on the wildlife cam. Nothing around it. No

thing. But when you look really closely, you think you can see two impressions on the grass.

You’re not sure which unsettles you most. The fact that the shape like a person could be seen on one camera but not the other, or the fact that just before it left, despite the lack of detail in the picture, when it moved its head you are sure that it was sniffing the air.

Departing

Darkness comes in fast at this time of year, and you got caught out, further along the beach than you’d planned to walk. The light faded almost with every step, and you had to be careful as you crossed a strand of rocks, not wanting to lose your footing and hurt yourself on a deserted beach. The sea is just a restless grey now, a cat pawing at the beach.

As you walk up through the dunes and onto the road that leads inland, headlights come your way. You step back from the road in case you’re not seen. A small green hatchback passes you, and there’s just enough light left to see the dark figure of a man inside. He doesn’t look at you as he passes, but pulls up soon after, where the road ends and the dunes begin. You expect him to get out, which makes you a little apprehensive, but he doesn’t.

The driver sits there motionless, staring out to sea. Enough, you think, this is creeping me out, or maybe he is troubled and wants solitude, so you are just about to turn away when it happens.

The interior of the car lights up, a brilliant blue-white that hurts your eyes. You squint at the car to see where it’s coming from, but it seems to have no obvious source. It comes from everywhere, and nowhere all at once, as if the air inside the car has been replaced with light, poured in like water.

Then abruptly as it started, it stops. You’re left with nothing but the afterimage, brilliant white windows drifting across your vision until they’re gone, and everything is dark again. Far out at sea there is a distant flash of brightness, like a flicker of lightning right at the horizon, but in a moment it is gone.

When your night vision returns, you peer at the car, and think you know what you have seen, but do not want to have seen it. You nearly walk away, but your curiosity gets the better of you. You have to know.

You were right. When you walk up to the car, there is no one in it.