The Black Corridor Read online

  Suddenly it stopped.

  There was the sound of running and sharp cries. Then a pitiful high screaming like the sound of an animal being killed.

  Uncle Sidney stirred in his chair by the window and stood up.

  'Let's have a look out, then,' he said calmly. His finger went to the button on the window sill.

  As James Henry shouted 'No!' Ryan was halfway across the room, arms stretched toward his uncle.

  It was too late.

  The blind shot up.

  The window covering the whole of one wall was open to the night.

  Ryan stood petrified in the middle of the floor as the flickering light cast by a thousand torches in the street played over him. Henry half out of his seat, stood up and was completely still.

  Josephine Ryan stood in the middle of the floor with the bottle of pills in her hand.

  The dark-clad women sat in their seats without moving.

  The cries and the terrible high scream went on.

  Uncle Sidney looked down into the street. On the other side, in the high block opposite, all the windows were blinded.

  "Oh, my God,' said Uncle Sidney. 'Oh, my God.'

  There was silence until Josephine Ryan said: 'What is it?'

  Uncle Sidney said nothing. He looked downwards.

  Mrs Ryan took a deep breath. She walked firmly over to the window. Ryan watched her.

  She steeled herself, looked swiftly down into the street, stepped back. 'It's too horrible. That really is too horrible.'

  Uncle Sidney's face was hard. He continued to watch.

  The crowd had caught a young man of twenty, one of the people who lived in the block opposite. They had tied him to an old wooden door, propped the door against a steel power supply post, drenched the door and the young man with petrol and set light to him.

  The young man lay at an angle on the blazing door. He writhed and he screamed as the flames consumed him. The crowd pressed closely round, those in front being perpetually pushed too close to the flames by the people at the back who wanted to see. Their torches and the light cast over them by their human bonfire revealed chiefly men, most of them in their thirties and forties. The women among them were younger. All were dressed in dark, long clothing.

  In the front the people were crouched, tensely watching the young man burn.

  A young woman with cropped blonde hair yelled: 'Burn, stranger, burn.' The men about her took up the cry. 'Burn, burn, burn, burn!'

  The young man writhed in the flames, gave a final, frantic twist of his body and was still.

  When he had stopped screaming, the crowd became quiet.

  Apparently they were exhausted. They sat or stood about breathing heavily, wiping their faces and hands and mouths.

  Uncle Sidney pressed the blind button in silence. The blind slid down, blotting out the torches, the fire, the silent crowd below. He sat heavily in his chair.

  The crackling of the fire could be heard in the Ryan's livingroom.

  Mrs Ryan took her hand from her eyes, walked out to the kitchen and went to the sink. The men and women in the room heard her running water into a tumbler, heard her drink and put the tumbler into the dishwasher, heard the door of the washer close.

  Uncle Sidney sat in his chair, looking at the floor.

  'What did you want the blind open for?' James Henry demanded.

  'Eh?'

  Uncle Sidney shrugged and continued to stare at the floor.

  'Eh?'

  'What difference does it make?' said Uncle Sidney. 'What bloody difference...?"

  'You had no right to expose us to that—particularly the women,' said James Henry.

  Uncle Sidney looked up and there were a few tears in his eyes.

  His voice was strained. 'It happened, didn't it?'

  'What's that got to do with it? We don't want to get involved.

  It's not even your home. It was Josephine's window which was uncovered when—this thing—took place. She'll be the one accused!'

  Uncle Sidney didn't reply. 'It happened, that's all I know. It happened—and it happened here.'

  'Very horrifying to see, no doubt,' said Henry. 'But that doesn't make any difference to the fact that the Patriots have got some of the right ideas, even if they do put them into practice in a very distasteful way.' He sniffed. 'Besides—some people enjoy watching that sort of thing. Revel in it. As bad as them.'

  Uncle Sidney's eyes expressed vague astonishment. 'Do what?'

  'What did you want to watch it for then?'

  'I didn't want to watch it...'

  'So you say...'

  Masterson appeared in the doorway and said: 'Tracy's gone to sleep at last. What's been happening? Patriots, was it?'

  Ryan nodded. 'They just burnt a man. Outside. In the street.'

  Masterson wrinkled his nose. 'Bloody lunatics. If they really want to get rid of them there's plenty of legal machinery to help them.'

  'Quite,' said Henry. 'No need to take the law into their own hands. What bothers me is this odd anti-space notion of theirs.'

  'Quite,' said Masterson. 'They've been reassured time and time again that there are no alien bodies in the skies. They've been given a dozen different kinds of proof and yet they continue to believe in an alien attack.'

  There could be some truth in it, couldn't there?' Janet said timidly. 'No smoke without fire, eh?'

  The three men looked at her.

  'I suppose so,' Masterson agreed. He made a dismissive gesture.

  'But it's extremely unlikely.'

  Mrs Ryan directed the trolley through the door. The group sat drinking coffee and eating cake.

  'Drink up while it's hot.' Mrs Ryan's voice had an edge to it.

  Isabel Ryan flinched and said: 'No thank you, Josephine. It doesn't agree with me.'

  Josephine's mouth turned down.

  'Isabel hasn't been very well,' her husband John said defensively.

  Ryan tried to smooth things over. He smiled at Isabel.

  'You're quite right to be careful,' he said.

  The whole group knew, from Isabel's demeanour, although no one would have stated it, that Isabel was experiencing a phase where she supposed people were trying to poison her. She would eat and drink nothing she had not prepared herself.

  Most of them knew what it was like. They had gone through the same thing at one time or another. It was best to ignore it.

  Anyway, it wasn't unheard of for people who believed that sort of thing to be perfectly right. They all knew men and women who had imagined that they were being poisoned who later had died inexplicably.

  'One of us ought to attend the next big meeting of the Patriots,' said Ryan. 'It would be interesting to know what they're up to.'

  'It's dangerous.' John Ryan's face was stern.

  'I'd like to know though.' Ryan shrugged. 'It's best to investigate a thing, isn't it? We ought to find out what they're really saying.'

  'We'll go in a band, then,' said James Henry. 'Safety in numbers, eh?'

  His wives looked at him fearfully.

  'Right,' said Masterson. 'Time to tune into the report of the Nimmoite Rally at Parliament. The Government will fall tonight.'

  They watched the Nimmoite Rally on the television. They watched it while more cries and shouts sounded from the street below. They watched as a group passed playing drums and pipes.

  They did not look round. They watched the Nimmoite Rally until the President appeared in the House of Commons and offered his resignation.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  That night there were riots and fires all over the city.

  The Ryans and their friends watched the riots and fires, sitting behind their closed blinds, staring at the large, bright wall which was their television.

  The city was being ripped and battered and bloodied.

  They drank their coffee and they ate their cake and they watched the men fall under the police clubs, watched the girls and boys savaged by police dogs, heard the hooting and yelling of the
looters, saw the fire service battling to control the fifes.

  The Ryans and their friends had seen a great many riots and foes in their lives, but never so many at a single time. They watched almost critically for a while.

  But as the programmes wore on, Mrs Ryan became quieter and quieter, more mechanical in her presentation of coffee, of sugar, of things to eat.

  It was when she saw her favourite department store go up in flames that she finally put her head in her arms and sobbed...

  Mrs Ryan had been married for fourteen years.

  For fourteen years she had carried the weight of her vigorous husband's moods and ambitions. She had reared children, battled with her fear of other people, of the outside, had made almost all family decisions.

  She had done her best.

  Now she wept.

  Ryan was startled.

  He went over and patted her, tried to comfort her, but she could not be stopped. She went on crying.

  Ryan looked up from his wife and stared at Uncle Sidney. In front of them, unheeded, glass was smashing into the streets, crowds were running and shouting, the top of the Monument, built to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666, was crowned with flames.

  'Put her to bed,' said Uncle Sidney. 'You can't do or say anything effective. It's the situation that's getting her down. Put her to bed.'

  The group watched as sensible Josephine Ryan was supported out of the room by her husband. Josephine Ryan was about to be sedated and put to bed next to the unconscious Tracy Masters.

  Ida and Felicity Henry, seeing their senior woman carried off, became alarmed. Ida shuddered and Felicity said: 'Where will it end?'

  'You're becoming inhuman,' said Uncle Sidney. 'Switched off.'

  'In the grave unless we do something fast,' James Henry said brutally. Apparently he hadn't heard Uncle Sidney.

  'In the grave,' he said again. 'What are you two going to do, eh?'

  And he laughed nastily into the pale, identical faces of his two sapless wives.

  Fred Masterson looked at Uncle Sidney and Uncle Sidney looked at Fred Masterson. They shrugged almost at the same time.

  And there was Henry laughing as usual. As usual, leaning forward in his chair. As usual, springy, full of ideas, head crowned by that energetic mass of red hair which gave the impression of a man getting extra fuel from somewhere.

  As James Henry pushed his features aggressively towards the faces of his tired twin girl-brides it seemed impossible not to think that he was somehow plugged into their vital forces, in some manner draining off energy before it could reach the women to power their thin, narrow feet, their stopped backs, their limp hair, their lacklustre eyes.

  Uncle Sidney, possessed by this thought, laughed heartily into the room.

  'What the hell are you laughing at, Sidney?' demanded James Henry.

  Uncle Sidney shook his head and stopped.

  James Henry glared at him. 'What was so funny, then?'

  'Never mind,' said Uncle Sidney. 'It's enough to be able to laugh at all, the way things are.'

  Then keep laughing, Sidney,' said James Henry. 'Keep at it, chum. You'll be fucking crying soon enough.'

  Sidney grinned. 'So much for the good old values. Didn't you know there were ladies present?'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'Well, when I was a young man, we didn't use that sort of language in front of ladies.'

  'What sort of language, you old fool?'

  'You said "fucking", James,' said Uncle Sidney, straight-faced.

  'Of course I didn't. I don't believe in... A man has to have a very limited vocabulary if he needs to resort to swearing like that.

  What are you trying to prove, Sidney?'

  Again the look of vague astonishment crept into Uncle Sidney's eyes. 'Forget it,' he said at length.

  'Are you trying to start something?'

  'I don't want to start anything more, no,' said Uncle Sidney.

  The television screen jumped from one scene to another. Fires and riots. Riots and fires.

  James Henry turned to his wives. 'Did I say anything objectionable?'

  In unison they shook their heads.

  He glared again at Uncle Sidney. 'There you are!'

  'Okay. All right.' Uncle Sidney looked away.

  'I proved I didn't say anything,' said James Henry insistently.

  'Fair enough.'

  They're my witnesses!' He pointed back at his wives. They told you.'

  'Sure.'

  'What do you mean—"sure"?'

  'I meant I believe you. I'm sorry. I must have misheard you.'

  James Henry relaxed and smiled. 'You might apologise, then.

  To all of us, I should have thought.'

  'I apologise to all of you,' Uncle Sidney said. 'All of you.'

  Ryan watched from the doorway and he was frowning. He looked at Uncle Sidney. He looked at James Henry. He looked at Ida and Felicity. He looked at Fred Masterson. Then he looked at the television screen.

  It was not so different. It was frightening. Nothing seemed real.

  Or perhaps it was that nothing seemed any more real than anything else.

  He went towards the television with the intention of switching it off. Then he paused. He was overwhelmed with the feeling that if he turned the switch not just the television picture would fade, but also the scene in the room. He shuddered.

  Mr Ryan shuddered, full of fear and hopelessness. Full of depression. Full of doubt.

  It had been a bad day.

  The day was really something of an historic day, he thought.

  Today marked the turning point in his country's history—perhaps the world's history.

  Perhaps it was the beginning of a new Dark Age.

  He came to a decision and reached forward to switch off...

  CHAPTER SIX

  Seated in his little cabin, the television flickering gently in front of him, the foreign voices speaking their lines, Ryan falls, against his will, into a doze.

  Surely he knew, when he sat down, when he selected a film in an alien language, that this would be the result. Perhaps he did but would not acknowledge the thought.

  Ryan, a man tormented by nightmares during his official hours of sleep, who rises every morning with the indefinable despair of a man who has dreamed of horrors he cannot even remember— Ryan is desperate for rest.

  Through the caverns of his brain pound the sounds of heart and blood, the drums of life. He hears them dimly at first.

  *

  Ryan is standing in the ballroom.

  The dance floor has a dull shine.

  The lights in the candelabra are low.

  They give off a bluish light.

  Black streamers decorate the walls.

  There are masks suspended at eye level on them.

  The masks show human faces.

  K

  E

  E

  P

  GOING

  P

  E

  E

  K

  The spaceship is on course for Munich. Travelling at just below the speed of light.

  The spaceship is on course for Munich.

  I KNOW THAT I DES...

  ... DES SCIENCES—HISTOIRE DES SCIENCES—HISTOIRE DES SCIENCES...

  IT IS TRUE, HOWEVER

  I AM WILLING TO TELL

  WHOEVER WISHES TO KNOW

  (there is no need to tell—there is no one to tell—it does not matter...)

  K

  E

  E

  P

  GOING

  P

  E

  E

  K

  WHICH WAY?

  *

  In the ballroom the masks show human faces. Faces distorted by anger, lust and greed.

  Suddenly one of the masks shows his wife Josephine, her face ferociously distorted. There is his youngest child, Alexander. His mouth is open, his eyes are blank. Alexander—a drooling idiot.

  The couples are circling to the
chanting music. It grows slower and slower and they revolve slower and slower. They are dressed in dark clothes. They have the firm and well-defined faces of the practical, self-interested, well-fed middle classes. They are people of substance.

  Their eyes are masked by the round sun-glasses. The long closed windows at the end of the room look out into blackness. The music gets slower, the men and women revolve more slowly, so slowly they barely move at all.

  The music almost stops.

  There is a slow beating of a drum.

  The music is heard more loudly. It is like a psalm sung by a chorus of monks. It is a funeral dirge, the song sung when a man is about to be buried.

  The drums beat louder, the music quickens.

  A high screaming note comes in and holds steady through the dirge.

  The drum beats faster, the music quickens.

  The high screams grow louder.

  The dancers bunch in the middle of the room, staring towards the window through their round, black, covered eyes. They begin to talk quietly among themselves. They are discussing something and looking at the window.

  *

  ON THE NIGHT OF THE FAIR THERE WAS AN ACCIDENT.

  Q: WHAT WAS THE EXACT NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE?

  ON THE NIGHT OF THE MARINOS AN ACCIDENT

  Q: WHAT WAS THE EXACT NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE?

  ON A NIGHT IN MAY AN ACCIDENT

  Q: WHAT WAS THE EXACT NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE?

  ON AND ON MAY ACCIDENT