Sample Sunday: The Tell-Tale Eye

It was late at night and I was crossing over the roads and byways of town to the hostel where I had taken to whiling away the days, weeks and months of my life. Actually, can it have been years now? Possibly. When you fall by Life’s wayside and become a derelict thing that few to none care for, an understanding of time and space and how they interrelate can be one of the first things to go. When there is nothing to look forward to, there is nothing to then be much concerned about and this extends to the passage of days and nights and however many there are remaining in one’s life.

I had made it to the flyover, a grey and gloomy barrier between myself and the empty industrial estate upon the other side of which my hostel resided for god-alone-knows what reason. It was there and then that I experienced a peculiar sensation. I felt as if I were being watched and shivered despite the warmth of the night. The feeling of being tacitly observed scraped and scratched its way across the nape of my neck like unwashed, untrimmed fingernails. I felt my chest tightening and my lungs struggling to catch a breath. Across the road from me was a building. One of many that inhabit the landscape of concrete, tarmac, sodium amber light and darkness that had come to be my home ever since I took up residence within the hostel.

There was a plate of damaged glass hanging askew in one of the building’s long-rusted window frames. And it looked at me, like a black and staring eye, the hum, hiss and rush of the traffic on the nearby flyover dissolving away into silence as it did. Though I could feel my nerves drawing tight as strings under my skin and my throat tensing to let loose a scream, I instead stared back defiantly at that rectangle of colourless and dismal space. As I did, I caught a sense of shadow there, a notion of movement, in much the same way one might perceive the momentary twitching of an eye in its damp socket. Reason told me there was nothing there, that it was merely a ghost of moonlight disturbing the glass, but even as I turned to make my way to the hostel that was not my home, I remained unsatisfied.

 

I am sure I was fine to look upon not so long ago in my life, and so was my hair. But now, these days, I look into the mirror and I see eyes that are withdrawn and red looking out through a scraggy shambles of ragged lengths and dishwater grey whiskers. Insomnia has become a way of life and my medication works less well than it once did though I do not tell them so at the hostel. So, perhaps, I am mad and that dark space of glass did not at look out at me as I thought it did.

My days seem to be spent in waiting. Waiting for the tones of evening to show themselves, to stretch, lengthen and unfold from the cracks and crevices that join together this grey and broken world of ours.Could it be my own mind that so disordered these shades and shadows, giving them some strange semblance of life?

Rebecca was my nurse at the hostel and, on occasion, she joined me when I walked and wandered abroad. They said it’s good for me, to get out in the fresh air though the air of this city could hardly be called ‘fresh’. The taste of carbon monoxide taints every breath. And so it was Rebecca who listened to me, observed how unsettled I was and then joined me on the following day, late afternoon, when I went back across the empty industrial estate, passing under the rumbling flyover and came back to that building with its window that I thought to be like a black and staring eye.

She protested when I broke the ancient chain fastening shut its weathered doors. She coughed and moaned bitterly at the rich foetor that escaped from the interior when I drew those doors wide open and went inside. Despite her protests, coughs and moans, she followed me within and even took my hand in hers as we ascended stairs reeking of urine and stale faeces.

The walls, ceiling and doors of the first floor corridor we came to were peeling and pale, revealing mortuary colours and desolate hues beneath their flaking paintwork. In my head, I counted as best I could from one door to the next, taking us towards the one I sought, pausing to try the loose black bulbs of the handles. All they did was rattle uselessly in my hands. I could feel each one grinding whilst not giving and Rebecca’s voice was becoming more strident as I persisted in my ridiculous quest to find something that could not be there. I heard her footfalls coming close to me and felt her small, soft fingers tightly entwining with mine as I tried the next door’s handle. And it was then that there was an opening click and a crusted lock gave.

I cried out as one as it swung inwards. Because I knew, without setting foot in there, without crossing that threshold thick with mildew and mould, that this was the abandoned space patiently waiting behind that glaring glass eye. Though there was nothing in there to see, it was then that my nerves failed. I could feel it as one feels warmth or cold or the absence of either. It was in there, in that black space, a part of it. My body became a numb thing, unmoving and unspeaking. And it was because I was so paralysed that I was unable to do a thing to stop Rebecca from crossing the threshold.

I remember it so clearly now, watching her walk into that interior, seeing her soften, growing wan, waxing and then waning until she became nothing more than a ghost of moonlight slowly fading away into a verminous dark. She turned around to face me, her fair mouth open to scream though all it could let out was a rich and familiar foetor. Her fingers became weathered, unwashed and untrimmed. They were reaching out to me, grasping as her withdrawing eyes pleaded. And still I withdrew, still I retreated from her because I could see what was in her eyes, shining there, old and black like damaged glass. And how the tears that then fell left behind something bitter – traces of a rust from long ago.

END

Copyright © G.R. Yeates 2012

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