He found it quickly enough, but was dismayed to note that his bedroom had also succumbed to the dampness and the humidity. His bedsheets were sodden, and there was some kind of growth on the ceiling. He glanced around for the ancient phone as well but it was too dark to see properly. The Ivy had covered the window through here but due to the room not facing the sun, and the window being so small in comparison, there was relatively little light. He didn’t fancy trying to hit the light switch due to what seemed to be mould that seemed to cover it. His prosthetics were on the floor through here, and he realised he must have dragged them through at some point before discarding them. Small beads of moisture covered the surface, and despite his first reaction being to pick them up and clean them, he decided that the whisky was more important, so took himself back through to the living room, once more seating himself at his makeshift workstation. He couldn’t lie to himself. It felt good to be back. Properly back.
WHUMP
“For fuck’s sake,” he sighed. He really had put up with this more than he thought he should, but he tried to ignore it. He had work to do. And a throat to lubricate.
He opened the bottle, holding the neck to his nose, inhaling deeply.
“Hello darkness, my old friend,” he found himself singing softly, holding the bottle away from him and reading the label. Eighteen year old. It could be eighteen minutes old for all he cared, so long as it did the job.
“I’ve come to talk with you again.”
He took a swig, enjoying the fire that poured down his throat like magma. It hit his starved guts and churned. The alcohol went straight to his head, causing him to gasp.
He let it settle, his vision returning from where it had fractured.
Placing the bottle down on his desk, taking a pencil in his hand. Preparatory sketched began, as he continued to sing softly to himself, altering the words as he saw fit.
Because the ivy softly creeping
Left it’s seeds as I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
still remains
Within the sound of -
Almost on cue.
WHUMP
He took another swig, blotting it out. He was moving into what Amber used to call his tunnel. She said that when he entered it, the only way out was through. The light was his finished piece, and he couldn’t leave this tunnel without attaining it. He left with the light or not at all.
What was now was as it once was.
He grinned to himself, the lyrics from the song segueing into the story once more. He repeated it inside his head with every pencil mark. Pencil gave way to pen, pen gave way to watercolour.
And the story unravelled in his mind.
Ivy placed one hand on the railing, one foot upon the first riser, and began to ascend. She had been lost for so long, but now she had found the tower here, in the midst of the ruins of what remained of civilisation. She had heard tales of what had been before. Her mother had spoken of their past to hear. Whispered fables by candlelight when Ivy had been nothing but a child. Stories that remained with her still, even as she was on the threshold of womanhood. Now she was here, amongst the iron and the vines that twisted through the balustrades and across the wrought stairs. It was soft underfoot yet unyielding, and she thought she heard a small soft sound with every foot step she took as she ascended.
For she did ascend. It was her purpose.
Her mother, still back when Ivy had been young, younger than she was, had once failed to return to her. She had journeyed far without reason, one day leaving Ivy with a promise that went unfulfilled. When the township fell to plague and famine brought about by an endless war, Ivy packed what meagre things she could, and went in search of her mother.
Her quest brought her to the remains of a once great city. A sneering visage on a broken statue lay over the entrance of a man whose name slipped below the sands of time. The city was once his, she thought, and all his hubris and pride had not been able to save it against the ravages of time.
In the heart of the city, within a tangled forest, there rose a great edifice she could only liken to the bleached teeth of a long dead giant, passed even before the city rose, long before it’s zenith and further before it’s fall. Within that forest she had relied on her small stature and her cunning to evade the denizens of the green. For those shadows in the dark her mother had once told her of, and they would come for her if they saw her. She hid behind large plaques that held long forgotten letters, or crawled through undergrowth that had never been foreseen to forcefully push it’s way through layers of artificial earth.
She had prevailed. She had been quick and she had been clever. She had been quiet. Even when she reached the great pale structure. In front of a large and imposing set of doors, something slept. A beast the likes she had never seen before, beyond her mother’s tales. It’s fur was pale and crossed with dark scars. Every breath it took was filled with six of her own, and it’s fangs were bared even in slumber.
Ivy held her breath, and stepped towards the terrible creature.
He painted the tangled web of green. He painted that bleached bone. He painted the dark earth and the forgotten remnants of a lost civilisation. As he painted it he drank his whisky, until the bottle was half way empty. Yet the sun still burned out there, beyond the ivy. He saw nothing of his apartment.
WHUMP
He shook his head, focusing on his work, his face inches from the drawing board.
WHUMP
More plaster dust fell, he heard it between the walls. Adam put it from his mind. This would not wait. Not now.
It continued to sleep, even as she crept closer still, hardly daring to breathe. Her heartbeat was a melody of life, amidst the stench of death that came in waves, hot from the creatures terrible maw. Yet this is not the story, which has not even begun. So I can say with nothing more than simple truth that the girl did not wake the sleeping fiend, and instead opened gently and silently one of those great large doors.
Sunlight from behind was a shard in the darkness beyond and she stepped lightly in, still too afraid to take more than the lightest of breaths, yet she knew the danger had passed, and it could not get her inside. Even with the door slightly ajar. As great and as huge as the entrance to the tower was, the sleeping creature would be too big to even bring it’s awful fanged maw through the doors, such was it’s size.
Little did Ivy know what awaited her inside was something greater to be feared. Yet she believed this was where her mother awaited her. All she had been left was a folded card with two words inside. Is had been waiting for her on the small wooden table in the kitchen when she had awoken, so long ago now, on the morning of the solstice.
THE TOWER
Her mother had sought it, and she didn’t know why, but now she, Ivy, sought it.
And she was here.
WHUMP
Adam’s concentration was broken as more dust fell, this time around him. He glanced up at the ceiling and saw the crack from the wall had worked it’s way across the room, almost to the window and above him. It had forked, like the memory of black lightning.
It was time he found out the cause. There was work to be done, and he could not do that work with whatever the hell this is. He pushed himself back away from the desk and the whole room swam. Nausea boiled within him and a great spout of acid disgorged upon his throat. It was out his mouth before he could do anything about it, the regurgitated whisky sprayed across the table. Across the painting.
Adam belched loudly as more rushed up from his bowels. This time he was able to stop it, clamping his mouth closed and forcibly swallowing. It tasted just as bad on the way back down.
This was her fault.
Yana.
Whatever the hell she was doing, he had enough. He resolved to clean the mess up when he returned. In the meantime, he made his way to the front door and pushed it open, despite the fact that he felt as though he was going to pass out. Half of the bottle had perhaps been too far, particularly considering his last meal was
fuck knows
quite some time ago.
The door caught on something as he pushed it, something that seemed to have some weight in it. Something that slid stubbornly across the floor of the hall. Halfway open, and pushing harder until he could manoeuvre himself through. Panting and sick in the hallway now, his chair still half over the doorway.
Shopping bags. Three of them. The branding was familiar.
A delivery? Even though…
There must be mistake. They probably had an automated system now. Someone hadn’t keyed in the results of his card being declined and the subsequent phonemail. The order had been processed and the food delivered regardless. It sounded plausible even though he didn’t believe it. There was no way, but even so, there was no denying what he was looking at.
He rummaged in the bags.
Beer. Two six packs in the first bag.
The second bag contained two bottles of vodka. He didn’t even drink vodka. It was obviously an error. Had the doorbell even rung? The outside door buzzer of the building? It was possible. He had been concentrating so how could he have heard it?
Not just vodka. More whisky.
The third bag contained food. Not much, but enough to give him a meal at least. Some dried pasta, chicken, some vegetables. He could make something with that if he had the volition to. His stomach heaved and bile rose in his throat. He swelled again. Grimaced. He thought about going back into the bathroom fore some of his pills, thinking that chewing one may help, but he didn’t want to manoeuvre in past the shopping yet. He had to see what the hell was going on next door. Finally.
Enough was enough.
He went over to the door and started thumping on it with the ball of his fist.
It was unlocked and unlatched, swinging open. Nothing but darkness inside.
“I’ve been here before,” he whispered.
And went inside.
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