The voice in the dark

A solicitor's clerk stumbles into a dark room - and gets a surprise 

The solicitor’s clerk often took a short walk in his lunchbreak. It helped to clear his head. There was no park or open space nearby so usually he ambled around the blocks of streets near his office. He peered into shops and marvelled at the once-proud Victorian architecture above them, with its sculpted brickwork, ornate window openings and seemingly useless turrets. He idly wondered what went on in the higher floors.

Occasionally he would explore a short way down one of the myriad small lanes that led off the busy roads. Today, to flush from his mind the numbing boredom of routine property searches, he needed a sharper focus than normally would be obtained from his regular strolls. He needed an exploratory diversion.

             He spotted a narrow passageway between a barber’s shop and a sandwich bar, tunnelling through a four-storey red brick building. He had never noticed it before. He guessed it led only to rear entrances, maybe for the flats or offices above, but went down it none the less. It was dark, and roughly paved, the brick walls either side grimed with two centuries’ worth of soot and grease. An acrid smell suggested it was used as a toilet by late-night revellers or rough sleepers.

            At the far end was a small yard enclosed by buildings on all sides. The bricks here were of the cheaper yellow going on grey variety, suggesting a rear elevation that was not intended to attract admiration. It reminded him of one of those occasional surface gaps between high walls that the Circle Line ran through. In days gone by, he mused, perhaps there would have been lines of washing stretched across the yard from tenement to tenement. He could imagine chattering women scrubbing clothes in cast iron tubs there, and roughly-dressed men trooping across it on their way to find work in the now silent docks.

There was only one door opening onto the yard. It was directly opposite the alley. Its dark green paint was flaking to reveal patches of bare wood beneath. The door was ajar. It swung and creaked slightly on its hinges as a breeze eddied around the tiny yard and swept litter into a neat pile in one corner.

            The clerk looked around. All the windows at ground floor level were dark and dirty. Higher up, he could see fluorescent lights burning in some windows, suggesting the offices of small businesses like his own. He edged towards the door. He mounted the single step, pushed the door further open, and peered across the threshold.

            The door opened onto a dark corridor. It was quiet. No voices, no machinery made their presence known in the dim interior. He was not usually given to trespassing; he knew the law. He was also security-conscious; an open door was an invitation to thieves and squatters.

            “Hallo?” The sound of his own voice bounced along the corridor and returned to him unanswered. “Hallo?”

            The clerk stood in the opening, took stock of his surroundings, and considered the alternatives. It could be a rear fire exit (but it had only a rusty mortise lock, minus its key, and lacked a regulation fire door bar that could be opened only from the inside). It could be a communal entrance used by residents or office workers whose properties inside would have additional secure doors (but there was no entry phone or keypad lock usually required for insurance purposes). Or, it could just be an abandoned, derelict floor blocked off from the offices or apartments above (without the statutory health and safety notices prominently displayed to deter trespassers).

            He called out again. “Hallo!” Again there was no response. He stepped forward. The shadowy daylight from the yard revealed that the corridor had a dead end, with three doors down its sides. The floor was uncarpeted, the bare boards dusty and uneven. The walls were painted in what was once known as battleship grey and did nothing to improve the luminosity. Was this an abandoned institution, perhaps? An orphanage? Workhouse? Now used as a squat? A drug den? A Fagin’s hideaway for petty thieves? There was a faint unpleasant smell, reminiscent of stale cabbage.

A single unshaded light bulb hung from the stained yellow ceiling. He saw a light switch on the wall and flicked it. Nothing happened. Surprised by his own bravado, he knocked on the first door to the left. There was no response. He tried the handle. The door was locked. That was something, anyway. He did the same with the door on the right, with the same result.

            There was one more door, to the left, towards the end, where the daylight barely penetrated. The clerk trod carefully towards it, conscious of the dull thuds made by his rubber-soled shoes. He knocked at the door. As he expected, there was no answering call. But when he tried the handle, the door opened.

            The room was in total darkness. He took a deep breath of stale, musty air. “Hallo?” he called. “Anyone there?” He groped with his right hand for where there might be a light switch. All he could find was books, and shelves. A library? He felt vulnerable, yet strangely curious. It was not good to walk into a dark building uninvited. No-one would rescue him if he was confronted by hostile occupants. No-one would find him if he came to serious harm. He delved into his pocket for his phone. His hand was trembling. He checked the phone. There was no signal. The closely-packed buildings would be shielding it. But the phone had a torch app.

He backed out into the corridor so that he could see better to turn it on. The thought that he ought to back out all the way and leave the building crossed his mind fleetingly. But his curiosity was aroused. He could see no harm in taking a quick look at a private library. It might be interesting. If he was questioned, he could plead innocence, claim he was lost. He shone the small beam onto the shelved wall. The books extended from floor to ceiling. He turned the light further into the room.

            “Switch that off!” A rasping, throaty voice cut through the silence. “Switch that thing off!”

            The clerk jumped violently. His heart suddenly pounded and his legs went weak. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”. He fumbled with the phone and extinguished the light.

            “Better,” said the voice. “I prefer the dark. Light makes the head spin, don’t you think? So many things to view that one sees none of them as they really are.”

            The clerk hesitated. He was ready to retreat. He expected to be ordered out, or asked who he was and what he was doing there. But the voice had gone silent. He could hear no soft sound of breathing or movement that might indicate where in the darkness the owner of the voice might be. He peered into the gloom as his eyes tried to adjust to the blackness. Ahead he could see tiny chinks of light, too small to illuminate anything in the room. e expected to be ordered out,

He squinted at them. They were probably in shutters drawn across a window, he decided; folding wooden shutters with knot holes and slight gaps down the edges where they met. In the quietness he could hear the muffled sound of a car engine beyond them. The room must look onto a road or lane. He tried to work out which one by mentally retracing his steps and recalling the turns he had made to get to the room.

            “Are you going to stand there all day?” asked the voice. “You’re letting a draught in.”

            The clerk knew he should graciously exit the room. Instead, he pushed the door to behind him, but did not latch it. He glanced round so that he could see a thin grey line of vestigial daylight from the corridor outside. Something to aim for when he needed to exit. But now not even a glimmer penetrated into the room. He was in pitch darkness. Reason once again whispered leave. Curiosity shouted stay. He broke the silence. “I’m sorry to intrude. What is this place?”

            “What does it look like?” answered the hoarse voice. It was like that of a tired teacher irritated by a dull student asking a dumb question. It came from somewhere to his left, on what he assumed was the far side of the room.

It was tempting to answer, “I don’t know, because it’s dark,” but the clerk’s habit of diplomatically questioning clients whom he suspected of being economical with the truth had purged from him any spontaneous skills of sarcasm or humour. So he tried another tack, realising as he said it how utterly stupid the cliché was: “Do you come here often?”

“I am always here,” replied the voice. “I live here.”

The clerk was bemused. Questions – and possible answers – crowded into his head. Where do you sleep? Maybe there’s a bed here. What do you do all day? Sit here, stupid. What about food? Maybe someone brings it – hence the open door. Bathroom? Could be one attached to the room. Don’t you get lonely or bored? Do I sound it? I have neither welcomed you as a distraction nor chastised you for entering; I am indifferent. The desire to uncover the truth grew stronger. Believing that he was not in immediate danger, he became bolder.

 “What do you do, then? All day, I mean, if it’s dark.” The owner of the voice could be blind, of course, or be one of those rare people for whom hyper-sensitivity to light blistered their skin or damaged their health in some way. He wished he’d thought of that before he had spoken. It was too late now.

“I think.”

“What about?”

“Everything. The mysteries of existence. The follies of humankind. All the things that most people never consider because they are too busy with trivial things. ‘Getting and spending they lay waste their powers,’ as the poet put it.”

The clerk had read English literature at university before he changed to law. He recognised the line from Wordsworth. The one who had wandered lonely as a cloud and contemplated a host of golden daffodils. Dizzy in the disorienting blackness, he wobbled forward and hit his shin against something hard. He cried out in pain. He stretched out both hands, gripping a shelf on the right, and then also found a flat surface to lay his hand on at hip height to the left.

“Mind the desks,” said the voice. “Their legs protrude slightly beyond their tops.”

The sharp pain shocked him into realising the incongruous reality of his position. Fear suddenly gripped him. Panic seized him. It was a physical sensation, as powerful as if the unseen figure had pinned him down. His throat tightened. His shoulders went rigid, but his arms and legs trembled. His breathing quickened to panting, his heartbeat raced. He was blind, helpless, vulnerable. And he couldn’t move.

Since human life had begun, people had shunned darkness. They had chased it away like an enemy, extending the friendly, reassuring reign of the sun with fire, candles, and then electricity. They had welcomed the moon as a slender saviour from the nocturnal gloom. Now he knew why. In darkness lurked unseen danger, despair and death. With light came safety, hope and life. Darkness imprisoned; light liberated.

He turned his head and became further disoriented. Left, right, forwards, backwards, up, down – all became confused. He had lost the sense of belonging, of being, anywhere. He was lost. Was he dead? Was he dreaming, still in his bed at home or even slumped over the sleep-inducing files on his desk? With a supreme effort, he forced his gaze onto the chinks of light from the shutters and he gripped tight the shelf to his right and the table to his left.

“It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? Like anything new and unexpected.”

The sound of the voice was, in his desperation, mildly reassuring, yet also disconcerting: it seemed to read his mind. Without really thinking, the clerk felt his way a pace or two further into the room, towards the obscured window where help might lie. It seemed there was a narrow gangway between the bookshelves and a row of desks. This, he thought, is how unsighted people discover the world, and how they negotiate their way around their homes and along streets.

So maybe the owner of the voice was sightless and therefore not a threat. Although didn’t people who lost one faculty develop greater sensitivity in others? The other occupant of the room could be moving silently, skilfully, around or even over the desks, sensing the clerk’s presence by smell, heat, and the sound of his breathing. Even using some uncanny sixth sense not only to locate him, but also to probe into his head. So dense was the absence of light that the occupant could be right beside him. The clerk shuddered violently, and waved his left arm around in the air. It connected with nothing.

He became conscious of his still-stinging shin, and his panic subsided slightly. He needed to remain calm. To outwit the unseen figure, if he had to. He decided to play for time. “Do you ever go out?”

“I have no need to.”

“Don’t you ever want to see,” he ventured hesitantly, “the flowers? The daffodils are coming out now. If you’re able to, of course. I realise some people can’t …”. He tailed off. 

After a short silence, the voice spoke again. “I see all I need to see. I saw you come in. I saw you bang your left shin on the leg of the desk. And I know what daffodils look like. They never change. Only ephemeral things change. Important things never change.”

A brief feeling of triumph energised the clerk. He had an answer to that. “But daffodils are ephemeral. They flower and then die.”

The response was immediate, and conveyed in lilting tones.

“‘They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise

From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,

And magical scents to a wondering memory bring.’”

The voice resumed its normal monotone. “They are all part of the circadian rhythms which humans ignore at their peril. That was Laurence Binyon, by the way, one of the war poets. But of course you knew that. Do you remember how it ends?”

He did. “Nothing is certain, only the certain spring,” the clerk recited, then wondered how the voice knew he knew the author.

“Very good. But of course,” and here the voice seemed to take on a more sinister note, which made him shiver again, “you are not really a flower lover. You barely notice the gardens you pass on your way to the city. You only thought of daffodils because I quoted Wordsworth. It was an association of ideas.” The voice almost seemed to sigh. “But there is a chair beside you, to your left, if you wish to sit down and talk about the mysteries of existence, and the follies of humankind.”

The clerk stretched out his left hand, and could feel the back of the chair. The discovery unnerved him. He was being observed by someone, something, that he could not see himself. He gripped the chair for security. It was firmer than the flat top of the table. Sitting on it would make him more vulnerable, unable to move quickly. He remained standing, running his other hand along a shelf. “You have many books,” he mused. “Do you read them?”

“I know what they contain.”

To his exploring fingers, they felt old. Most were cloth-bound hardbacks. One or two were softer: leather-bound, perhaps? Like some of the tomes back in his office. Ancient books of law were invaluable sources of information, especially when one was searching for some obscure precedent that would be to the advantage of a client in a sticky situation. But ancient books of law needed to be compared with more recent legislation, which over the past half-century had been cascading from successive governments like mountain waterfalls after torrential downpours. “They feel old,” he said aloud. “They could be out of date.”

“The world is older still. The mysteries of existence are undying, and the follies of humankind unchanging. If getting and spending was laying waste to people’s lives in Wordsworth’s pre-industrial rural England, it has most certainly not ceased to do so in a faster-paced society. ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ as the Book of Ecclesiastes puts it.”

The clerk took a couple of steps further towards the window. “You keep up to date, then?” he asked casually.

It did not elicit the answer he had hoped for, but the kind of answer he feared. “When you think about the mysteries of existence and the follies of humankind, the past, the present and the future are all one. Only the flimsy packaging within which they are contained may change. They are themselves for ever old, and always new.”

The discussion was becoming too heavy for the clerk. He dealt with facts, not philosophies. Both intrigued and appalled he sighed audibly. His fear had subsided a little. He wondered how someone could live like this. But what should he do now? Having discovered this recluse, did he, a humble clerk with little influence and no authority, have a responsibility somehow to liberate him, to help him literally to see the light, to open his eyes to the alleged wonders of the world of which the clerk himself was largely ignorant? Or to leave him alone to think his thoughts, harming no-one in his book-lined cell?

After all, the owner of the voice seemed to have chosen his seclusion. He appeared content with it. Besides, there was always the risk that somehow, in ways the clerk couldn’t begin to understand, exposure to the light might unhinge the figure, destroy him mentally or even physically. He’d heard of people from isolated forest tribes, and former members of secretive cults, who had been driven mad when exposed to mechanised modernity with its complex technology and frantic speeds, its bewildering array of goods and its confusing rules and regulations, with the need for money, and by its teeming, noisy, argumentative throng.

He was confused. In the course of his work he had met many kinds of people including a number who could only be described as “odd”, “weird” or, if he was feeling charitable, “different”. But never anything – anyone – like this. He faced two choices. The simplest, and the most sensible, was to bid the voice farewell, turn around and grope his way out of the room, go back into the street, buy himself a strong coffee and a sandwich, and return to work. The memory of the strange encounter would fade like a bad dream as he focused once again on the conveyancing papers he had left on his desk and later joined the crowds in the tube to return to his anonymous suburban home.

Or he could gamble, take a risk, move forward and open the shutters, to see the probably emaciated creature for himself. Then like a parent dragging a reluctant child to school, force the pathetic, negative individual to confront the real world beyond the room. Had he indeed been propelled here by some Providence to become a kind of loco parentis? A liberator of the wretched being? What if the stranger was a prisoner, held against his will for so long that he couldn’t conceive of freedom despite the door being open?

But with rescue would come responsibility. The voice’s owner would need help to adjust. The clerk would have a duty of care, not because of his legal training but by virtue of being just another human being in the right place at the right time. Didn’t common decency require him to help a person out of a pit into which they had fallen for whatever reason, or to be a Good Samaritan when others – perhaps better qualified than he – passed by not wishing to get involved in something that complicated their lives? It was complicated. He wouldn’t be able to walk away and leave the poor creature to fend for itself. Itself? Or himself?

Itself. “It” was preferable. An object, a creature, not a person. Some thing he could battle, if necessary destroy, without breaching any law. But what would confront him if light shone in? What would it be? The total darkness sent his memory and imagination into overdrive. Deprived of visual signals, the brain invents its own often vivid and startling images. Visions from stories, films and childhood picture books projected themselves into the air. They seemed to dance before him. They looked real. A grotesque Phantom of the Opera. A horribly malformed Beast pining for his Beauty. A hunchback with theatrical features straight out of Notre Dame. A Victorian freak-show exhibit with two heads or three arms.  

Following them in a bizarre procession came images of strange hybrids from classical mythology. A multi-headed slithering Hydra, an aggressive half man, half horse Minotaur, and a fire-breathing Chimera. A snarling Cerebus guarding the entrance to the underworld. Had he indeed stumbled onto the verge of hell? Was he already in outer darkness? Had the clerk, as Keats once complained, already died and was now living a posthumous existence?

The procession had not finished, however. Dante had said there were nine circles of hell and the clerk felt he was plunging further down into them. In a confusion of macabre images and mixed ideas, he saw the softly spoken giant created by Doctor Frankenstein endowed with superhuman strength and who, when his wishes were thwarted, became a ferocious monster who could overcome and kill anyone. There was the gracious aristocrat who would transform into a blood-sucking life-sapping Count Dracula and turn his bitten victims into the Undead. The respectable Dr Jekyll who needed only a dose of something to turn into the unprincipled Mr Hyde ravishing, looting and murdering his way through London. A once-dashing Dorian Grey hiding his true shrivelled, soulless existence from the world. A Legion locked in by conflicting emotional drives that tore him first one way, then another, and estranged him from so-called normal society by overpowering any of its members who dared approach him. There were ghosts and ghouls, lumbering ogres and lascivious goblins, crafty demons and violent devils, an emaciated, obsessive Gollum shrunk to a shadow of his former dignified self, and Dementors and Cyborgs and hideous aliens.

The clerk shrieked aloud in tortured, mental agony. Where did all these creatures come from? Where they really just the inventions of the imagination? Or were they embodiments of deep subconscious, primordial fears passed down the generations via their DNA? Or did they actually exist, visible only to far-sighted individuals? Were they archetypal images held in the collective memory, dating from the days of the dinosaurs? Or were they spirits from another, non-material dimension or parallel universe that occasionally spilled its ghastly contents into the world of time and space? He released his hands from their physical supports and slapped them against his head, and shrieked again. He was afraid. Very afraid. He was going mad.

The voice broke in. “You are confused, are you not?” It almost sounded sympathetic. “Paralysed into temporary inaction. Uncertain as to the true nature of reality. Which, of course, is far greater than anything you can touch, taste, see, hear or smell. And in your disorientation you are considering whether to leave me alone or to risk exposing me to the light and unleashing my anger. Staying merely to discuss the mysteries of existence and the follies of humankind seems not to be much of an option for you. That is disappointing. I thought you might be a kindred spirit. That we might have a profitable conversation about things that really matter. But I see you are like all others. You cannot see beyond your immediate needs.”

“You are very perceptive,” the clerk cried defiantly, his terror forcing his voice up an octave. Then added, “You’re right in one thing, though. I can’t see anything, and I can’t think straight, because it’s too dark. Why do you stay in the dark? Why won’t you let me see you?” On saying that he forced himself forward a couple of steps, groping along the shelves and the tables, pushing his feet ahead gingerly, to detect obstacles. He was barely aware of what he was doing, driven by his survival instincts. He was screaming inside. He needed light. He needed air. He needed escape.

“You would be greatly shocked. You would wish you had never done so. You would regret it for all time.”

“Why? Who – what – are you? Why should I be afraid?”  He shivered again. The chinks of light were close. He reached out but judging distance in the dark was difficult. He still had a short way to go.

“You are afraid, and you will regret it for ever,” repeated the voice. “So don’t even think about it.”

“Maybe you’re more afraid of me than I am of you,” he replied. “Think about what, anyway?”

“Opening the shutters.”

The schoolboy denial shot unbidden from his lips. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“But you already have,” came the reply. “It’s one of the follies of humankind. An unwillingness to face the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Isn’t that your legal mantra? Or does it not apply beyond the courtroom? Does it apply only to the person you consider inferior and not to your allegedly superior self? Remember, you may not be able to see me, but I can see you. Clearly. Inside and out.”

The clerk paused, trembling. He turned sideways, peering into the room, searching for any clue to the whereabouts and identity of the voice. How could it see him? Night vision goggles? Infrared camera? Supernatural perception? He shuddered once more.

Risking further disorientation and dizziness, he swivelled his head so that he could see the sliver of dim daylight at the door through which he had entered the library or schoolroom or whatever it was. It was still ajar. That’s what they told you on survival programmes. Plan your exit route. He felt slightly less panicky. He assessed the width of the gangway to it. He’d shuffled down it in pitch darkness and suffered only one collision with a desk. So if he put one foot carefully in front of the other – keeping his legs straight and not splaying them in haste – he should make it, if he needed to. It would be much easier, of course, if he let the light in. He could then see the way out if he was attacked, and as there was a line of desks between him and where the voice seemed to come from, the other’s progress would be hindered. If he was quick …

He turned back to look at the shuttered window. He stumbled forward, reached out, and touched it. It was the obvious thing to do. He needed the light to see his way out. No matter what other sight befell him. He could shield his eyes from the apparition, look straight ahead, run for the exit. He could still run, a short way. He did it for the train sometimes.

“I warned you. Don’t do it. You will never be the same again. You will regret it. For ever.”

The shutter rattled. His hand resting on it was shaking violently. The clerk was sweating. The best way to pull out a painful splinter or tooth was to do it quickly with a sudden jerk. A slow action prolonged the agony. So on that principle … But why? Was it worth the risk? What risk? A veiled and unspecific threat. Nothing more. Such threats were in reality empty. Just uttered to cause fear but with little likelihood of any sanction to follow. What could he possibly regret? A haunting memory, perhaps, even a lasting one, but the physical danger was surely minimal. Besides, the sight that awaited him, however disagreeable, might further his knowledge. His knowledge of good and evil.

“Remember Adam and Eve.” The voice was reading his thoughts again. “What they thought was good had unexpected and ineradicable consequences for the worst.”

He could hear a car in the lane, and footsteps beyond the shutters. He strained his ears and could hear voices too. If the worst came to the worst, he could attract attention by banging on the window. By breaking, it even, with his elbow. Wasn’t that how you got out of a building in an emergency?

“You will be very foolish if you do.” The voice was more strident, urgent. Did it care what he did? What was he to it? What could it do if he did? He was just a trespasser who had stumbled there by accident. He meant no harm. He was just curious. “You will,” warned the voice again.

“I will!” cried the clerk in a surge of determination. “I will!” Gripping what he took to be the two central shutters, he wrenched them apart, stumbling back slightly as he did so. Light from the lane flooded in, and he stood blinking, looking out for a few moments as his eyes adjusted. The world beyond went about its business, oblivious to him. The room behind him was silent. There was no voice. Nor any sound of movement.

He considered his options. Turn slowly right, so that he faced the shelves and then his escape route, and only glance into the room to see the source of the voice as he neared the door. Just in case it was truly revolting. Or turn slowly to his left to see the source first, and then run. The former was probably the safest. It would shield him from further shock. A heart attack in that dusty, confined space could be fatal. There was no reason to suppose that the owner of the voice, he or it, would offer any assistance. But if he did that, his back would be turned to this other presence. He would be unprepared for any sudden movement towards him. It would render him defenceless. He would be taken by surprise, and immobilised.

He decided to look first. He took a deep breath. He spun round and swept his eyes across the room. He screamed and covered his eyes. “No!” He looked again, and screamed again. “No! Please!” Then without stopping to think further he averted his eyes and bolted for the door, crashing against the desks in his haste. He wrenched open the library door and stumbled towards the exit. He forgot the step below it and fell sprawling into the yard face down.

He lay there panting. Then he raised his head, twisted, and looked back at the door which swung on its hinge and creaked. He tried to get up but was so weak, he could hardly move. With a supreme effort he raised himself on his knees and crawled as quickly as he could across the yard towards the alley. Reaching it he pulled himself up and sat against the wall, facing into the yard, breathing heavily from the exertion.

The fluorescent lights still burned in upper floor offices. No-one looked down into the yard. No-one, no thing, followed him out of the door. His breathing slowly eased. His heart quietened. The voice had been right. He wouldn’t forget the view that had confronted him when the light poured in. It had burned right into his head. It had branded itself on his brain. It was like a transparent overlay through which he now peered into the world, with the voice echoing behind it like a constant soundtrack.

He shivered. Then his eyes became transfixed on the doorway. It seemed to draw him to it. He was both shocked and yet also attracted by the temptation that now gripped him like a vice. It was the strong temptation to go back inside. To confirm what he had seen. To explain what he had experienced. Even to explore the mysteries of existence and the follies of humankind.

And above all to check that there really had been no-one else in the room apart from himself.

 

© Derek Williams March 2017