Soho in the Dark (eBook)

3rd Edition

Dassos Petrou (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
304 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-107647-1 (ISBN)

Infos

They went out of the square towards Dean Street, passing through the throng outside the Guinness bar, and every step they took Alan could see that Jason was becoming visibly more and more lethargic. They carried on, along the narrow alleyway where Private Eye magazine was based, which was just around the corner from one of their favourite lunchtime venues, the faithful old Star Café. But this was no time to think of food. Turning into the road with the Old Hat Factory they headed towards Wardour Street. It was getting dark now, even though it wasn't that late. Confused, Alan looked up to see a massive cloud spreading itself across the sky, a black duvet moving in slow motion.

Textauszug

THE FORGETTING

 

There are sacraments of evil as well as good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight.

Arthur Machen, The Red Hand.

 

 

There was this definite thought that there should really be nothing at all ever. That was obvious, straightforward and clear-cut. Nothing is all there is – and always will be.

 

Well, not anymore. Now there was something. It started with the blackness that shouldn’t have been there. It was too much. Now it was everywhere in every direction. How did that happen? If that wasn’t bad enough now there was now an awareness of the blackness too. It was so aberrant, it was perverse. There was fear happening somewhere. All of that requires thought. How was that possible? Where was it coming from? Suddenly it became undeniable.

"I'm doing it. It's coming from me.”

And the change didn’t stop there. The blackness was strobing, rippling – becoming unstable, tearing itself into strands, becoming brittle and then crumbling… leaving gaps. He was afraid of the spaces in between at first. They were bright. Then he became seduced by them. Now there were fascinating spaces through which the world of things started to be revealed. He embraced the change. These were staggeringly beautiful things, overwhelmingly rich with colour and shape, all of this emerging from nothingness.

Soon the blackness vanished, revealing the world of things. At first this was overwhelming, but then more and more ‘things’ became manifest. There was the wallpaper above the fireplace, which was thickly painted in a rich, matt, purple/grey. Landscape paintings were hung on the walls. Portrait photographs were propped up on the mantelpiece and to one side there were glass cabinets crammed with knick-knacks and old, hardbound books. Looking back at the shelf, there was a leaf green Art Nouveau vase filled with blood red tulips, and to the side of it a bust of a Roman Emperor. Diffused light came from a small, white polished glass sphere held up by the statue of a female nude. Above that hung a gilded, tarnished, Rococo mirror. The nearly burnt-out ashy pile of coals in the grating were covered with wriggly worm-like flecks of glowing red. In front of the fireplace a Persian rug was spread onto the polished wooden floorboards. Lying flat on that two were short metal crutches, the sort you have to put your wrists through when walking with a damaged leg or foot.

That manifestation made him worry again. Whoever those crutches belonged too must still be in the house somewhere. At the far end of the room, to his left, was a large bay window with rich velvet curtains which were not quite closed together. Through the gap, on the other side of the glass, were bare branches clawing at the moon.

Was this Crouch End?

“Where did that idea come from? I am thinking too fast. Slow down,” he concluded. He breathed in. Paused. There was a definite but faint smell of stale incense. He lifted his head and discovered he was lying on a battered old, leather sofa that looked as if it had an exotic skin disease. A bristly blanket was itching his chin. He had no idea who he was, and he didn’t have any inclination to worry about it. The fact was, he didn’t want to be here any longer than he had to. Sitting up, he scooped the covering away from himself to find that he had been sleeping in his jeans and was wearing a sweater. This sudden desire to act was inexplicable. There were not even any flashes of visual memory. What happened last night? Was he at a party? Yes! That was it. But whose party? Why did he stay over? Did he come alone? He held onto that thought as he looked around. Were there people asleep in the shadows – behind the piano, or even under the table maybe? He thought not, though he had no clear reason to be so sure.

Upstairs maybe? Yes. He couldn’t find justification for his conclusions, but that didn’t stop him accepting them fully. Another thing he was sure of (without knowing why) was that he had to get out of that house immediately. In a panic, he heaved himself up and swung his feet onto the floorboards when everything in the room went out of phase. The ceiling appeared to become unstable, wobbling before spinning and then shuddering to a stop after several liquid pulses. But that wasn't all. Something was clawing away at him, scraping his insides. He arched his back and struggled to suppress a groan. A horrible burning sensation coursed through him in a wave, but the pain quickly subsided, and with its departure came fragments of memory. He recalled a girl, with short blond hair standing next to a guy in a cream-coloured Harrington jacket and blue jeans. They were both looking down at him – probably in this very room only a few hours ago. Who were they? What did it mean? Did it really matter?

 

He put on his boots, stood up, yawned, stretched out his arms and walked over to the slightly open door, pulling it slowly towards him. He stepped out into the hallway awkwardly, like a bad swimmer daring himself to step off the top diving board. To the far left a light was still on partially illuminating the terracotta-tiles. It was coming from a room that was probably a kitchen. He needed to have a piss, but he didn’t know which of the closed doors would be the toilet. It was too risky. From somewhere up the stairs came the sound of snoring, which for some reason chilled him with worry. Turning around he crept slowly towards the oak front door, grabbing hold of the heavy chain, taking care that it didn’t fall away with a clunk against the woodwork. He was lucky. No one had bothered to lock the Chubb, so he was able to click the latch down on the Yale, open the front door, and close it – all as if he were replacing the cover of an unexploded landmine before stepping out into the night.

Passing through the front gate he stopped to look at the night sky, and the cool air sharpened his thoughts. As he continued, he looked all around, studying the narrow side street, and he was struck by a moment of enlightenment: that was probably Ferme Park Road just ahead. A wave of pins and needles rushed through him, and he walked briskly towards it. He didn’t know whether it was a sense of relief or elation. Turning right on what may have been Ferme Park Road he walked through a brick railway arch and arrived at a familiar parade of local shops. They must have been the ground floor of a row of dignified red-brick, three-story Victorian homes in the distant past. Now there was an off license, a newsagent, a butcher, an antique store, a launderette, and a greengrocer among them, but this street and all the other streets were empty of people.

 

Ahead of him the sloping roofs of tall Victorian houses concertinaed away towards the line of trees, high up on the hill around Alexandra Palace in the distance. He thought he should head in that direction, but with every step, he found it more difficult to connect his thoughts. He still couldn’t recall his name, yet his deep sense of rootedness to north London more than made up for that, in that it helped to settle his rather erratic state of mind. The important thing was to head towards Wood Green. No reason really. He simply felt he should. Once he got there, he would know what to do. But unless he could remember where he lived, he could find himself walking around aimlessly the whole night long.

The thing was to try to focus. He was originally intending to walk the full length of Ferme Park Road, which ran like a spine through his life. Disconnected scenes played out: firework explosions in slow motion. Playing electric guitar as a teenager while his friend’s mother brings in a tray of tea and biscuits; him again as a teenager in bed with an older woman while her husband is away: sitting upstairs on a bus with schoolmates on the way to the skating rink.

At the end of the parade, he stopped. The scene ahead had a hypnotic effect on him. Was the silence soothing or terrifying? He struggled to snap out of it. A road sign by a side street indicated a dead end. But when he looked hard it looked like there was a narrow alleyway at the side of a run down, red brick house in the corner.

 

He was tempted to take a closer look, but he didn’t want to be diverted from his original plan, so he turned away to carry on walking up Ferme Park Road, and as he looked back in that direction, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. The road had shrunk slightly in length, and the line of trees at the top of the hill was nowhere to be seen. He looked behind in utter disbelief and things had changed there too. The road was now closed off by a row of houses that faced him, forming a cul-de-sac. Where was the railway arch, he passed through only a minute ago? How was this possible? It was as if the road was healing itself from a fresh wound. Feeling totally disorientated he turned ahead once more expecting to see the concertina of redbrick pointed roofs heading off into the distance again, only to discover that that wasn’t there either. Instead of being straight the road now snaked a little and was blocked by a low flint wall just a few yards from where he stood. A thick, unkempt hedge rose from the back of it, and there was now a Romanesque church behind that. He was feeling even more entrapped than he had been in the house he’d just left.

What kind of civic planning allowed for this kind of street layout? It was madness. These changes were insidious. They had crept up on him. Ferme Park Road was never like this before.

It was becoming a strain to think clear thoughts, and there was so much strangeness going that he didn’t know where to start....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 0-00-107647-7 / 0001076477
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-107647-1 / 9780001076471