Box Set - Chapter Thirty-One

I claw at the slope with flailing arms. It’s so cold to touch it feels like it’s already gone over the edge, like there’s no hope of my saving myself and I’m gone too. Snuffed out like a candle in a darkened room.

I can’t help but whip my head around and watch the too-fast approaching chasm. It’s like I’m sliding towards the jaws of some leviathan monster. It will swallow me whole and I’ll be resigned to sliding down it’s slimy throat to arrive in whatever fresh hell awaits me in the pit of its stomach.

I dig deep in the gravel around me and feel myself slow a little. I turn away from the edge and try to ignore it. I don’t know where Upson’s gone, clearly during the fall we’ve let go of each other. I can’t concentrate on him, I have to save myself and hope that the big man can look after himself.

I dig still deeper. I feel a soft wind on my back, almost enticing me closer. The Abyss is alive, it is temptation, the easy path. Because we’re all sliding towards Abysses at points in our lives. Taking that leap is just so easy but the strongest among us keep away from the edge. At the very least we stay close to in. And the very best among us stand with our toes on the edge and spit into the cold oblivion that lies beyond.

I cry out and groan with the effort of digging my way back up the slope. I push my feet in too and find the hard packed weight of earth beneath the surface. I slow even more and, slowly, painfully slowly, I work my way back upwards, moving one arm and then the next, followed by my still sliding feet. It’s like working against the movement of an escalator or a ladder bending slowly backwards.

I feel tears in my eyes and grit my teeth which are already coated in a fine film of dust from the ground around me.

It feels like an age before I realise I’ve stopped. I pant, my chest heaving in a very uncomfortable fashion like I’ve just run up the stairs of a train station and dived between the doors.

Using all the bravery I can muster, I lock my fingers into the earth and chance a look over my bobbing shoulder.

I don’t know where the light comes from, as the air above me is the darkest black of the darkest night, but with the exception of the stars of the moon. It’s the lack of this which unsettles me. I’d seen it in the night over the desert too. And maybe that was it, a reminder that however peaceful it might be, this is not my world. The stars are a constant reminder that we’re all connected on earth. If I ever felt lonely, I remembered something someone told me once, one of the many quotes, ideas and idle pieces of chatter that passes us by every day. If you’re ever alone look up at the stars, focus on the moon in the sky, just know that someone, somewhere is looking at the light just the same as you.

And now that’s gone. There’s just blackness. And a blackness so dark I can’t quite say where the light is coming from. I can see the gravel between my hands. Feel the roughness and the dust. A waterfall of it dislodges over on my left and threatens to take me downwards again.

I look further over my shoulder, very carefully setting myself down on the unstable slope. I can see the chasm, just a hundred metres in front of me, and it’s dark, so dark, with nothing on the other side. But yet the light seems to come from there too. Tempting light and the cold terror of dark all in one place. I know, very quickly that I have to escape from this place, and soon.

‘Hello!’ I call. ‘Yates! Upson? Are you there?’

There’s no reply. It’s the silence that gets to me. Infinite crushing silence, punctuated by occasional, deafening cascades of falling gravel that sound like machine gun fire. The place makes me want to cry, just the endless oppression of it, the fear of not being able to move without being dragged towards that gaping hole in the nothingness.

‘Easton!’comes a reply, obviously far away but so loud it sounds like he’s next to me.

‘Upson! Where are you?’

 

‘On your left, you have to let your eyes adjust.’

 

I try to focus on his voice and after a few seconds I make out a thick outline. He’s mostly buried in the ground, obviously trying to hold himself there.

 

‘This is what they’re scared of,’he calls. ‘I’ve heard stories, but…’

 

I see him looking towards the edge. I start to move. The less time we spend here the better.

 

‘Can you see Yates?’ I ask. I move carefully but as quickly as I dare. Each step includes me driving my foot deep into the forgiving ground that yields to the force I apply to it.

 

With passing terror, I see that despite my best efforts, each footstep brings me close to the edge. It must be about eighty metres now and lessening all the time.

 

Soon enough, I reach Upson’s side.

 

‘I can’t see anyone,’ he says. His voice cracks with fear, not an emotion I expect from the large man who volunteered so fearlessly. I wonder does my voice sound the same? Does this place reduce all of us to our deepest primal instincts, fear being the most predominant and overpowering of them all. We are all children to something so big and dark and scary.

 

‘But we heard him, we heard the echo of him,’ I say, logic defying him. ‘We just have to look for that.’

 

I cast around. It’s so hard to concentrate, completely different to the hot quiet of the desert dunes.

 

‘I-I think I see something,’Upson says. He clears his throat and gains some composure. I can tell he’s not a man to be beaten so easily. ‘Over there, the ripples. ‘

I think I see it too, a break in the air, like a plume of steam or a heatwave. Yates was there, or at least he once was.

‘Let’s get over there before it’s too late,’ I say.

I begin to move, trying to direct my way up the slope all the while knowing that the instability of the land will take me downwards. I hear Upson make a hesitant move to follow. I don’t know how long we’ve been in this place. Teague said that time worked in a different way between these worlds. If a week had passed in a couple of hours between earth and the Edge, who knew what the displacement was like here. Our half hour might have passed already. I knew one thing, I wasn’t going to leave this place without Yates beside me. I don’t care what Upson decides to do.

Secretly, I pray that the other man doesn’t leave me. I don’t think I could stand this place alone for too long.

We grow closer and closer to the echo. I hope it’s Yates. There might be thousands of people down here. People left the town all the time in search of something better? How many fall and just keep falling? What if this place is infinite, going on and on into nothing, engorged by the fear of the hesitant and they all lie in echoes, just out of the reach of our sight?

I shake the thought from my head and trudge onwards. The pool of fear remains in the pit of my stomach and I try my hardest to focus on the job at hand.

If a place like this exists, then I can’t help but feel terribly alone in the universe. A place so large and so empty, watched over by no one and nothing. It is then that I realise how much I don’t want Upson to leave. There might be no one watching over us in this waste land from on high, but while I have him here, we can look out for each other.

‘How long were you in the town for?’ I ask.

‘Oh years now.’ Upson seems glad I’ve broken the silence. I turn and see him confidently wading forward, but a set of teeth grasp his lower lip, a sure sign of anxiety. ‘I love the peace, but I get this feeling sometimes, you know? That there might be more than a village in the middle of the desert. Makes me think of home.’

‘I suppose once you start thinking like that then it’s hard to stay,’ I observe. ‘I’d be the same.’

‘You’re right there,’ Upson says. ‘Sometimes I love it. The togetherness…’ he takes a breath like the oppression of the Abyss has left him just from this simple act.‘There’s nothing like it, but then you wonder? The thing we always wonder. Why are we here? Aren’t we just scared of what’s next? Scared to take that leap and find something better? Even if that thing was what we left behind.’ He takes a pause. ‘I don’t know, it’s just a thought.’

He folds into himself suddenly. I wonder how long he’s been aching to get that thought off his chest. He looks almost guilty to have thought it at all.

‘That’s what led me to science,’I say. ‘Back home, back when I was alive, I loved it. It wasn’t to disprove anyone, or to hurt or offend anyone, but I guess I’ve always had that feeling. That there was more to the world than we could see. I guess some people turn to faith. I wish I could have more faith. But I turned to science, to fact and exploring the world around me. I miss that. The desert cuts me off and I’m constantly feeling like I might sink in the sand…’

I stop. I’m not accustomed to being so open with someone I’ve just met. Maybe it’s the Abyss. The fear makes us search for companionship, so we spill our secrets and our deepest thoughts so we might know our fellows better.

‘Aside from the terrifying hole in creation and the constant impending sense of doom, I’m glad I came down here,’ I say.

‘I think when you truly have nothing like this, not even a sense that there might be an escape, you take a new perspective,’ Upson says. He gestures ahead of him. ‘Look, Easton, is that him.’

I follow his finger and concentrate on what appears to be a mass on the edge of the world. A man shaped mass surrounded by heat and cold and loneliness. I can hear him.

Easton, Elle. Just our names repeated over and over.

I’m here, Yates. I think, desperate for him to get away from that blackness.

We trudge faster, at points sliding down the slope, our hearts leaping from our chests with the panic of it.

‘Yates!’ I call, but not too loudly. I don’t want to startle him and cause him to fall. He must be feet from the brink, simply standing like a diver on a board, ready to take the plunge.

He turns. Tears streak his face. He’s deathly pale like a vampire, and his eyes are circled. How long has he been here?

‘You’re not real,’ he cries. ‘Nothing is. How can it be? Why would it be?’

‘I am real.’ I hold up a hand to stop Upson in his tracks. I want him to be comfortable, I want him to believe me. I want him to come home. ‘Yates, I promise, we heard you. This is Upson, a man from a place we found. We can go back, I promise.’

I smile but my fear is difficult to hide. I imagine what this place must have done to him. Amplified the loneliness, cut him off from everything. I wonder could I dive forward, concentrate and bring us back up, but I don’t even know how to take myself back up to the town.

Yates moves towards the brink. ‘Is this it?’ he says. ‘Is this what you want?’

‘No, Yates, no I don’t, I want you to come back with me.’

‘It’s just one thing after another isn’t it,’ he says. ‘I thought I was better, I thought nothing bad would happen to me, I was – I was over it!’ He shouts the last words.

‘I know,’ I say. But I don’t know what to say. He’s right, life, and death throws obstacles bigger than the last ones. We find an answer and it slips between our fingers. ‘I understand…’

‘How do you understand? Did you do it? Could you ever do what I did? I deserve this, Easton.’

So he does believe it’s me, or see it on some level.

‘Yates, I…of course I couldn’t. Because what I went through in my life was an ounce of what you went through. But we dealt with him, remember? In the flat, you me and Elle. An eye for an eye.’

‘And Graham,’ he spits. ‘I know you don’t want to mention him. Don’t want to tip the loser over the edge do we? Remind him that his stupid boyfriend abandoned him too.’

‘Well I’m not abandoning you!’ I call back. I feel a bubble of anger rise, anger at Graham angry at Yates’s stepfather, at this place, at everyone. It’s not fair and I don’t know how to fix it. And how I want to fix it.

‘Yates,’ Upson steps forward. His voice is firm but kind, confident. Like the weight of this place just bounces off of him. I hear a hum, a thumping like this place has a heart. It threatens to tempt us all down, over the edge and spinning through the black. ‘I don’t know what happened to you, but I’m here. I don’t know you from Adam and I know you don’t deserve any of this.’

I see the tears glisten on the boy’s face and I see the man he once was, cracks and wrinkles shining through, threatening to take over.

‘But you’ve got to rely on people, son. And some of them will hurt you. Some of them will leave you in the dust and forget you. But some of them stick by you. And they’re the ones I want to find again too. So we could go back, away from the edge, and find the people who stand taller. That could be you and me Yates. You me, Easton and everyone else. So come on.’ He holds out his big, dark hand.

‘You feel like this down here because this place sucks the life from you,’ I say. ‘But we can go back, Yates. If you just come with us.’

As if on cue, I make out the music. The lulling, mystical song of the desert. It sounds far away, and I have to really listen for it to make anything out at all.

‘See, you hear that? It’s all the people who want you to come back up with us,’ I say.

‘I don’t hear anything, Easton. It’s not for me.’

‘You have to really listen for it,’ I reply. ‘I couldn’t make it out myself.’

Yates seems to take a step back towards the edge, despite the look of being torn between two worlds.

‘Is Elle there too?’ he asks. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and takes a step towards us. ‘I’m sorry, Easton. I am. I just…’

‘She is, and I know,’ I say. I step over to him and catch him in an embrace. He smells like he’s been outside for an age. If he was alive, I could imagine his fingers being cold and stiff, swelled against the cold as his blood tried to keep him alive.

‘Upson,’ I say. ‘Come on.’

The big man comes over. Determined not to lose him this time, I take his arm and grip tightly. I hold onto Yates with my other. I try not to look over the edge but I can’t help it. The split second my eyes dart towards it makes me feel nauseous, terrified, like a child separated from his parents.

The second feels like an age.

The age ends. I’m Easton with my friends and we follow the music up and away from the Abyss, hoping never to return.