Bunker

‘While much is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.’

 Thomas Hardy

  ‘..... the profound influence of science’s materialist ‘values’ on Western thought over the past 150 years is grounded in the dismissal (or failure to recognise) all those ‘facts’ that might point to the reality of a non-material realm.’

 p234, Why Us, James Le Fanu, Harper Press 2009, London

                                                                     Chapter 1

 Mark had been sitting on the top deck of a number ‘49’ bus when he looked down and saw the top of his own head. It had been raining that evening and Mark watched himself as he traced random patterns in the condensation on the window of the bus. He stared, uncomprehending, sure that he was imagining this, that he would blink or something and be back in his body, the body he was floating above. He felt he was watching a film, except this was real, as real as anything he had ever experienced.

 ‘.............Billy.....’

 …all around were these voices, whispering, murmuring. Yet the words that appeared in his mind were not heard, but felt, chalked up on the blackboard of his consciousness.

 ‘………..Your mother never loved you, Billy….’

 Mark could see that there was a woman sat behind him, so large she took up an entire seat. To his left sat an old man with a red border terrier lying on his feet. The voices grew stronger. Static popped and crackled in his ears, but Mark could make out the words if he concentrated hard enough. It was like listening to a radio that was not quite tuned in.

 ‘….You belong to me, now…’

 He was lightheaded, he was floating, slipping, falling into blackness. All he could hear was his own hoarse, ragged breathing and the blood thumping in his temple. The blackness became stable, his feet were on solid ground. He stood, momentarily disorientated and then, with one deep breath, he stepped forward, his hands held out in front of him.

 The air was cool around him. Refreshing even. His shoulders brushed against rough concrete walls. Each foot step made a slight echo that reverberated along what seemd like a long, narrow passageway. From somewhere far away bird song followed him faintly into the blackness, the sound muffled and distorted as if he were underwater, yet before him was nothing but cold, black air. Mark took a step forward. And another, and another. And then his hands had come up hard against concrete and he expelled all his breath in a gasp of relief. There was nothing here; it was a dead end. Wherever he  was, there was no-one and nothing here.

 But as he stood there in the darkness, a thin sheen of perspiration on his face despite the cold air, he thought he could hear a whimper, a faint gurgling on the edge of his hearing. His left hand moved from the pitted surface of the concrete in front of him, to his side and found smooth, brushed steel. A door.

 And then, on the other side of the door, there was another whimper. A murmur that grew into the sound of crying, a baby crying, and then countering it, a woman’s voice, soft and comforting. ‘Hush, Billy, hush.’

 Further down was a handle and then tis knuckles barked against something hard and heavy that nonetheless moved. His fingers discovered a large padlock that hung open from its hasp. He fingered curiously, and then jumped as it slipped from his grasp to clang against the steel door.

 The whimpers stopped immediately. Mark stood still, crazy shapes and colours dancing on the margins of his sight as he stared into nothing. He felt the blackness sucking him in and then there came a faint slap from beyond the door. Then came another, and into Mark’s head came the image of his grandmother, her slippers slip slapping against her kitchen lino. Again it came, and then there was a metallic grinding at the door.