know. She didn’t see me. It was someone else. She cannot have seen me.
I thought I was on top of things. I thought I had everything worked out now. I have done
everything they said. My procedure has been faultless. I can’t understand - explain the
phenomena you are reporting, any more than I could explain if the water was still rippling
back and forth days after you had thrown the stone. I have closed the way. I didn’t even make
that much of an impact. There should be no further bleeding between Above and Below.
“Physical, literal or purely mental” is it? Well I thank you for your confidence in my sanity,
Oliver. I had hoped that you would be open-minded enough - my sanity at the time of
departure was not in question. Now? As times goes on? I cannot vouch for it. But I was right.
To hell with the others. I was right. I’m here. It’s more wonderful and terrible than anybody
ever guessed. I’m in the town’s mind, in its subconscious. I don’t need anybody else’s belief.
I just read your list of incidents. “A bit feeble”? Don’t you see what you’ve reported?
University, Cemetery Junction, Blake’s Lock- it’s my route. My exact route. Either I’ve got
my calculations wrong and somehow I’m causing a disruption – like a shark’s fin breaking
the surface – or -
Or something else is following me. Something that doesn’t care what wake it raises.
It could be nothing. Cats disappearing at Cemetery Junction? Well look at the number of
kebab houses there. It can’t be unusual. And the houses down by the canal are rough. The
dead man at the Lock was probably a drug dealer or something. No, I think you’re attaching
unreasonable significance to chance or unrelated incidents. Which I suppose is because I told
you to. But now I see it, I’d rather think it was pure chance than-
---
Oliver – I’ve found another real person.
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Adrian Tchaikovsky
I’m near Mandela Court, by the canal. I’m writing this in the place he’s done up as his home.
You remember Mandela Court? When we were students it was drug-dealer country – where
everyone went to get their hash – and every so often someone got stabbed or shot or
something, drug-money turf wars. Well I’m shacking up with a genuine junkie. How he got
in here I don’t know. Possibly his dealer slipped him something rather out of the ordinary.
Mind-expanding isn’t the word for it. He’s been here for some years, although time is
exceptionally difficult to keep track of. He’s real. He’s no imago, no shadow. The last thing
he remembers in the real world is Mrs Thatcher being elected. I suppose it was as good a time
as any to make your exit.
I’ve had a day to get my bearings and my strength back. My host is an uncertain character.
He calls himself Witchetty John. He didn’t believe a word of what I said had happened since
his day. His memory is particularly bad. I’ve had to introduce myself to him three times. I
don’t know if it’s drugs or long-term exposure to this place, but his mind is definitely loose in a number of places. I don’t care. He’s given me a chance to regroup, and to read the rest of
your letter.
Oliver – your television – I swear I closed the way. I have not left you with a gateway on
your front lawn. I have been as careful as I knew how to be. If there’s leakage either way then
it must be natural - or someone else. If someone else was following me then they would enter
at the same point- and they might not have been so careful. But what you describe, it must be
the Beneath. Your “row of terraced houses” is probably your own street’s underside. Your
“kinetic sculpture” is surely my entry-point. Or someone’s entry-point.
I will not give in to paranoia. It would be all too easy, knowing what I do. Turn the television off, Oliver. It’s bad for your eyes.
My host is becoming more agitated as I write. I may have to-
--
There has been a difficult series of events. Forgive the handwriting. I am still shaking. I was
accosted by Witchetty John. He’d been getting more and more twitchy as I wrote. I thought it
was that he wanted to see what I was writing, which I wouldn’t have minded, but he began
accusing me. He began saying that something was coming, and that I had brought it.
know how it is. He was working himself up into a kind of paranoid frenzy – and only a
moment before I was talking about me being suspicious.
He attacked me. He had a knife. He got me, too – I’ve bound up my arm as best I can – my
left, so I can still write, just. Oliver, I was only defending myself. I tried to get the knife off him. We were grappling. I knew he was going to kill me if he could. I threw him into the
canal.
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Adrian Tchaikovsky
God, Oliver, it was horrible. He was thrashing and screaming, and I thought it was because he
couldn’t swim. I was shouting to him that I’d throw him something, as if he hadn’t been
trying to knife me a moment before. Then it came and got him. It rose out of the water from
beneath him. I saw its jaws either side of him – huge, a metal lattice – they just closed over
him, but they were completely open-work, just a wire frame. It looked as though he was
floating in the water in a cage – and then it dragged him down. The water is opaque. He was
gone in an instant. Only now, thinking back, do I realise that the jaws of the canal-beast were
shopping-trolleys. People have thrown a lot of junk into these waters over the years. The
canal must be seething with the creatures.
I have found some supplies that John laid in. I have his knife too. I may rest up here a bit. It will be interesting to see how and if my wound heals.
A thought has struck me, that has made me feel very ill inside. Witchetty John was a man of
about five foot nine, thin, with sandy hair and a receding hairline, and a kind of scraggly
beard. He was wearing jeans and a very grimy beige T-shirt. Oliver – does this match the
man found at Blake’s Lock? Oliver, I read about that in your message before my fight with
John. I don’t understand it
Something is coming. Forgive writing. Not much time. Something coming down line of canal
– on my trail. Slow-moving. Cannot see what it is yet. Mere sight fills me with dread.
Will have to dispatch this very soon. Don’t know how long I have.
I fear. Beyond any reason to, am gripped with fear. Will try for a better look at it. I knew
something was following me.
Oliver, you told her, didn’t you. She got it out of you, what I was doing, where I was going.
Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut? She’s coming over the waters like a shadow
Don’t know if I can get this out – didn’t want to tell you – you had to spill it to her – trusting, always trusting –
IS NOT CAROL
CAROL IS GONE
47
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
6.
Jed – what’s happening? Are you alright?
I got your letter and it was all wet and the smell off it was disgusting – like the mud at the
bottom of a ditch. Your handwriting was almost indecipherable, particularly toward the end
where it turn
ed to scrawl.
Are you okay???
Jed, I promise you I didn’t tell Carol what you were doing. It’s just she came downstairs
quietly in the middle of the night and walked in on me watching that TV channel. You know,
the weird one. She asked me what it was and I said I didn’t know and she just looked at me
with such a cold expression and then she went upstairs again.
Jed, she’s gone. I got back from work today and she wasn’t home, though your letter was
sitting there. It’s four in the morning now. I haven’t seen her in nearly 20 hours. I have no
idea what’s happened; we hadn’t rowed or anything. None of her stuff is missing. This I can’t
explain – all the plastic utensils and cups, even the ones stored in the cupboards, had melted.
There wasn’t any sign of a fire, no smoke damage or anything, just the rack of slotted spoons
and ladles and things had all dripped and reset like a Salvador Dali painting. And the
diamond patterns on the kitchen lino had all run together into a big swirling blot.
You’ve got to tell me what is going on between you and Carol. This is my wife we’re talking
about!
God, Jed: what’s going on? Talk to me!
Are you okay?
What should I do?!
Oliver
48
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Adrian Tchaikovsky
7.
I’ve taken up religion.
Or at least, it’s taken up me.
Sorry about the delay. Been indisposed. I went into the canal. Couldn’t be helped
don’tcherknow. Bit of a scuffle. I thought for a moment that body you found would turn out
to be/have been mine.
I’m feeling better now. I’m staying with the monks.
I might have mentioned I’ve seen the odd monk about the place. Can’t really remember
whether I did or not. What’s a hallucinatory urban nightmare without a few monks? But
they’re nice monks, not Victorian gothic Castle of Udolfo monks.
I’m not making much sense. Mind you, very little is. Let me begin with what I can be clear
on. Let me tell you about the monks.
Well it’s the abbey, of course. That little ruin shunted away between the criminal courts and
the Kings Road offices. Not a ruin here, though. It’s quite hale and hearty, thank you, from
the observances at nones to the vegetable garden.
Oliver – they’re real monks. They’re not imagos. They are not only real monks, they are the
monks from the Abbey, the very last batch. These are Blessed Hugh Farringdon’s men, and
while he was getting his neck stretched by Henry the Eighth, they made their escape. They
came here. I told them it’s been five hundred years and they were very polite in their
disbelief. They are the same men, Oliver – not descendants or shadows of them. They’ve
been living the monastic dream, lodged in the Underside like a pearl in an oyster.
They took me from the canal and they took care of me, set my leg where one of the wire-
jawed things had smashed it up. Attended to certain other injuries I had sustained. It’s been a
while. Of course I have no idea how much time has passed and so “a while” will have to
cover it.
I’m ready to go about my business now. I have made my peace with the monks, commended
them on their Christian charity. I do not know how long I have left. I’ve been safe here, in the cloisters, but when I set off again I will be hunted. I must achieve something.
I will find the Heart. I will look into this town’s soul and send you the image. That is the task I set myself. I will remain free long enough to do that.
Oh I’m dancing now, Oliver. We know what we want to talk about. I just let my pen make its
own way. How cruel do I want to be to you? How ignorant would you prefer to remain?
49
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Adrian Tchaikovsky
--
Out of the Abbey now. I’ll miss the monks, but I was reaching the end of my tolerance.
They’ve been holding back history for so long they make monotony a virtue, every day like
the last. My final haven before the end. The Abbey ruins are encysted not so very far from the
centre. I may find the canal again, but
Not the canal. It will be looking for me there.
Still not going to say, Oliver. Still not going to blab. Haven’t decided whether you deserve it.
What’s that? You’re angry, reading this? I’m toying with your secure little piece of dull
you’ve bought yourself? I’m dead by now, or worse. What are you going to do about it?
Perhaps you’ll say “Oh he was mad”. Easy way out for you. Be my guest. You’ll never make
yourself believe it.
--
Heading on now. A maze of little paths behind the great buildings. I’m reaching the frayed
edges of the commercial district . I ventured onto Kings Road, around what would be the
Jacksons Corner crossroads - you know, where all the shops and pubs and wine bars change
hands over and over. You can’t imagine it, Oliver.
The buildings are at war. Slow, slow war. It’s like some vile nature documentary where a
whelk or limpet or something is eating another whelk. Slow, slow violence, the one half-
formed shelly thing devouring the last, and being devoured in turn. Almost too slow to see
the movement, but it’s there. At the leading edge of the change the constructor crabs throng
like tiny parasites, and the building that is being displaced and dismantled groans and howls,
so low you can feel it through your shoes.
And I wonder: which is the reflection? Do these leviathans devour each other as the
businesses above thrive and fail, or are the flagging currents of the city business driven by
these obscene, grinding battles? It turned my stomach, but I watched for hours.
Further in I should find regions where the business above is better. Perhaps I shall find
something more wholesome at the heart, something that thrives without this cannibalism.
--
I can hear the station and the scuttling and hooting of the trains. Perhaps I can escape that
way – flee to whatever centipede things the locomotives have become, ride one like they did
in that sci-fi thing with the worms, all the way to the collective unconscious of London, or
York. I cannot imagine retracing my steps, and besides. It would be waiting.
50
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
I am close to the heart now. Looking up at dusk I seemed to see great shapes overshadowing
the horizon. I have lost track of precisely where I am but I must be between Friar Street and
Broad Street, or between Friar Street and the station. I shall go away from the hissing and
scrabbling of the trains and find the heart.
Oliver, I have made my decision. I shall be cruel. I shall tell you all. You have brought my
ruin on me. I shall reciprocate. What are old friends for? Oliver, I suspect you of sophistry. I would like to believe in your goodwill. I cannot. I cannot believe that you did not tell her, in the end.
Oliver, Carol was always interested in my studies. Perhaps she didn’t tell you. Probably she
didn’t. It would have raised awkward questions. About what she was doing with her time.
She spent a lot of time with friends from the office. Or working late. No. With me, Oliver.
The researches. She was going to come with me. That was what she wanted. If I say she was
going to leave you it’s too prosaic, O
liver. She wanted out, or in, or whatever makes sense.
She wanted to see what I have seen.
I played the honest man, of course. I wouldn’t have it. I don’t take passengers, I told her. This mission is a solo deal. She was upset at that, angry. Who was she to be angry? This was my
study, always mine. I don’t care how much she thought she knew, she had no right
Here we go. I was almost overwhelmed by sympathy there. My pen was poised to scrub it all
out.
Perhaps I will scrub it all out. I will look at it tomorrow.
--
Going onward. There is a shadow ahead of me. I am trying to get my bearings. I think it is
Station Road I am travelling on, so it must be Friar Street ahead. The landmarks are much
changed from their likenesses above. The orgy of consumption is worse here - perhaps a
recession on your side? At least I can see the truth, without the gaily painted signs. Some of
the building-molluscs are just decaying shells, the inhabitants sucked out and not replaced. I
think of those great starfish the Australians have, that are eating the Barrier Reef piecemeal.
Some predator has been through here like a hand rifling a box of chocolates for its favourites.