Turquoise Traveller Read online

  TURQUOISE TRAVELLER

  Also by David John Griffin

  The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb (2015)

  Infinite Rooms (2016)

  Two Dogs At The One Dog Inn And Other Stories (2017)

  Abbie and the Portal (2018)

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by David John Griffin

  Copyright © David John Griffin, 2019

  The moral right of David John Griffin to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of both the copyright owner and the

  above publisher of this book.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

  to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by David John Griffin

  Text design & typeset by David John Griffin

  Printed and Published via kdp

  Dedicated to my loyal readers

  “The imagination is a palette of bright colors. You can use it to touch up memories — or you can use it to paint dreams.”

  Robert Brault

  “Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”

  Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  “But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe…”

  Knut Hamsun, Mysteries

  “Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.”

  Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

  “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

  Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

  1 : REVOLVING THE DARK

  Stave Swirler sat on a double-decker bus that travelled in the blackest night. He held up cough mixture to inspect it, unaware of why he did so. Prismatic shapes swam within the bottle. Chimes subtly emanated from its dark brown glass, along with the smell of menthol.

  Peculiar.

  That was a benign signal for him to replace the cough mixture into a pocket of his turquoise jacket.

  He shuffled a hand in a plastic bag he saw beside him to find an apple.

  I’m guessing this must be mine.

  An odd saying flashed through his muffled mind.

  An apple a day keeps the monsters away.

  The precise moment his teeth entered the flesh of the crisp fruit, a quiet voice from behind said, ‘I adore oranges.’ And with a roar of the engine, the double-decker bus left the outside world and entered a tunnel.

  Leaving night-time, the known darkness. Swallowed.

  Sodium-vapour lamps were instantly replaced with similar within that tunnel that had been burrowed by vast multi-toothed machines under the slow river.

  Drafts of foul-smelling air rushed through the bus.

  What a stench. Like rotting food.

  The smell clung in his throat and nose, his eyes watering. Stave considered drinking some of his cough mixture when the thought occurred to him that he was not aware of having a cough. But then the air cleared and he decided there was no need for cough mixture either way.

  No past thoughts. My mind feeling strange with memories erased. Or blocked. Washed with black ink. That’s the only way to describe it. What am I doing on this bus? Can’t remember where I’m going or where I’ve been. A nagging sense that reality has altered in a significant way.

  Now a quiet bus engine – more of a modulated hum – as it passed ribs of concrete within the long tunnel. A cluster of lamps, a forty miles per hour sign, a telephone stuck to the wall like a large wart, an air-conditioning fan, then another concrete rib. Almost hypnotic in its repetition. Pulsing light with a pulsing sound of thick air, throbbing as the bus engine pulsed as well, in hummed rhythm.

  Then the hum resonating like a hive of wasps in an echo chamber, making wax pop in Stave Swirler’s ears.

  Something’s not right. I have a strong feeling of an unusual occurrence, a premonition that badness is going to happen. Maybe the engine is going to stall in this tunnel. And such a long tunnel, almost as if it’s never-ending. Deeply worrying.

  The absence of natural light, absence of understanding, absence of memory.

  Panic rose in his throat, making him quake. He wondered if he was coming down with a fever. He held a palm to his forehead but didn’t feel overly hot. He thought to undo his turquoise tie from about his neck or loosen the collar of his white shirt but changed his mind.

  Nagging feelings of worry were still with him. Another bite to the apple calmed him – he no longer shivered.

  He saw a neat hole inside the apple, the size of a nail head, though there wasn’t a hole outside on the red-to-green skin. Perhaps he had eaten the entry point of the grub, beetle or wasp; or whatever other tiny, burrowing organism it had been. At the bottom of the hole, near the core and the pips, was a small object catching the bus’s fluorescent light. Stave dug a finger into the fruit and clawed at the apple flesh with a fingernail, then extracted the item with a finger and thumb. It was a tiny feather, made of ochre-coloured metal. It had fine details on its quill and vanes, yet was no more than four centimetres in length.

  Interesting, I’ll keep that. Amazing what can be found inside apples.

  He carefully placed the find in the right-hand pocket of his turquoise trousers.

  A flash within his thoughts – the word “adventure” jolting into his mind, then it was gone.

  His attention was caught by the advertisements along the top of the bus windows. They showed flashing smiles from vacant models, and images of products held up, with slogans such as, “Buy two, get the third twice the price!” and “Go here instead of there – you know it makes sense”.

  Stave creased his brow at the preposterous statements.

  Loud expressions of someone else’s absurd mind.

  He ate more of the apple, but the skin and flesh of it had become bitter. He carefully wrapped the half-eaten fruit in a striped handkerchief taken from a waistcoat pocket and placed it back into the plastic bag. He brushed his suit trousers with the edge of a palm before adjusting his tie.

  What signals the beginning of a descent into a type of madness? No prescience, a wiping away of any warning…

  With a howling roar like the cry of a massive, prehistoric beast, the whole of the road tunnel, with flat floor and ceiling, and curved sides, began quickly rotating anti-clockwise. It took a while to register in Stave’s brain as to what was happening. Then he realised the impossible was occurring. He fastened his seat belt.

  This is serious, we are going to crash; we’re sure to die.

  The bottom of the bus scraped along the left walkway with screeching and a shower of bright sparks, then was travelling along the left wall that had become the ground. The bus swerved to avoid hitting the obstacles – the grills, telephones and speed signs – bumping over the tunnel’s concrete ribs. Stave gripped the seat rail in front of him, bouncing up and down while the quivering bus was thrown violently about.

  It’s a wonder the side mirror hasn’t been smashed off. A surprise I haven’t been knocked out.

  The bus was steadied, being driven at an angle in the opposite way of the tunnel spinning, to kee
p it upright. The driver was performing an admirable job under the peculiar circumstances.

  ‘It’s OK, nothing to worry about,’ came a sturdy voice from the driver’s compartment of the bus. The vehicle was now being driven along what had been the ceiling of the tunnel, the metal-encased lights clanking against the underside of it. ‘I do believe we’re still the right way around.’

  Whichever that was, or is. This doesn’t normally happen, I’m certain. Feeling giddy and unnatural.

  ‘What is the right way around?’ Stave questioned out loud, more to himself than anyone else. But he felt embarrassed at vocalising such an obvious question.

  The driver in his cabin heard and answered back via the intercom. His voice, crackling with static, came from speakers along the length of the bus.

  ‘Ask someone the opposite side of the world,’ he said and chuckled dryly. ‘What is up, what is down? What’s sideways, for that matter. Bleating haven, bleeding blade – hang on to your hats.’

  Now the whole of the tunnel had revolved even more, so that the right-hand wall had become the ground. And after the bus had flattened the railings there, the tyres finally found the real floor again. With sounds of metal being twisted and shearing, the mighty tunnel stopped rotating.

  The bus continued, uninterrupted.

  ‘Everyone still in one piece?’ the driver continued in a loud voice, this time without the use of the intercom, his words dulled by the driver’s cabin. ‘I often dream this, no apology needed. I’m a good character. I live in the best part of the city near the park, and I’ll be meeting my destiny today. That’s all I can recall at the moment. Enough now, I must concentrate on the driving.’

  Stave had been holding his seat so tightly, his knuckles and fingers had turned white. He relaxed.

  So, I’m in someone else’s dream. Interesting. Totally ludicrous, though. For a dream, it’s very real. But then for reality, it’s most dreamlike.

  Still the pulsing of sound and vision, still the concrete ribs, the lights, telephones and railings, passing time after time.

  If this were my dream, I’d have the tunnel slither away, the river dry, to leave a delightful village setting to explore on the ancient riverbed. Hmm, strange thinking on my part.

  Stave studied the murky glass panes, each one large enough to afford vision of the ghostly reflection of the seats in the bus. The yellow light from the tunnel lamps turned to a dimmed orange.

  With the suddenly reduced lighting of the tunnel and the bright strip lights within, the interior became more prominent in the reflections. Stave couldn’t see the driver in his cabin seat controlling the vehicle but could easily see the other travellers by turning his head to the left to look behind him at their reflections.

  On the opposite side of the bus, further down, there were two other passengers. Four people, including the bus driver, travelling through the tunnel.

  Not a busy bus service.

  On the penultimate seat before the back sat one of those passengers, a young man with shaved sides to his head. Not much younger than himself, Stave considered. A welt of black hair covered his forehead. This was in contrast to Stave’s full head of hair with his receding hairline. The young man wore a red costume eye mask, held over his eyes with an elastic band. And he cradled a bottle of fine champagne in his arms, tapping fingers of one hand onto the glass. He had a studded dog collar around his neck.

  Behind him on the back seat was a young woman with prominent features, deep-set and serious eyes, pale skin, and mahogany hair tied into a pigtail. She was attractive in her own way. She wore a flowing dress, printed with images of marbles. She was unwrapping newspaper parcels taken from a holdall beside her. The parcels contained wooden fish – carp, barbell, and tench amongst others – all of them carefully carved with precision. The scales, fins, and heads were beautifully rendered. She inspected each one carefully before wrapping it again in the newspaper and returning it to the holdall. She hummed a song, a pretty melody, contrasting with the hum of the bus engine. Even from where Stave was sitting he could smell her lavender perfume.

  The same gravelly voice of the bus driver came over the intercom again.

  ‘As you were. If we all get along, then there’s no fear. That’s one of my mottos I made up. Fear only makes you fear the more. Don’t fear the feared – go with the flow. Next stop is when we get out of this crazy tunnel. At least, you might get off there. Who am I to say? I’m awaiting further instructions.’

  The agitated voice of the young man was heard as he talked with urgency to the lady with the wooden fish.

  ‘Did the tunnel turn or did we? I’ve a good mind to report this to the authorities. Though all has calmed down now so I’ll try to forget it. You alright? You look placid enough.’

  Whatever answer the young man received didn’t reach Stave’s ears and all he heard was the sound of static, as if coming from a badly tuned radio set.

  The engine throbbed again, the pulse almost keeping pace with Stave’s heartbeats. He became restless, bringing to mind that he had forgotten why he was on the bus or even what his destination might be.

  The tunnel was relentless. Already they had been travelling through it for five minutes.

  It must be a wide river we are under or maybe it’s a mountain we’re going through.

  He inspected his ticket taken from his turquoise trousers pocket. Perhaps that would give some indication of his destination. He unfolded it. The back of the ticket bore the bus company's logo consisting of a circle with a spot in the middle, and four green arrows pointing to it. The ink was faint on the front side, the only clear type being a ten-digit number and the words, “Price: you pay” in red lettering.

  More ludicrous nonsense.

  By impulse, Stave looked up and raised an eyebrow. How had he not seen the coffee machine before, the one opposite the luggage area at the front of the bus?

  It must be a progressive bus company. Such refreshment possibilities are usually found only on coaches.

  The bus still travelled the steadied tunnel road, passing rib after rib of concrete. Between them, more advertisements in neon, and enamelled signs, advertised “Coffee in all its Glory”, “Don’t Race Past Pastry” and “Unidentified Tea, No Cups”.

  Stave stood and, holding onto the green rails, swayed while walking up to the black box that was the coffee machine. Between the machine and the driver’s cabin was a staircase leading to the bus upper deck. Beside the machine were a cake dispenser, a cast iron kettle, and a microscope.

  A strange place to have such scientific equipment.

  Steam squealed from the kettle spout, sounding like a piglet trapped in quicksand in the distance. The coffee machine shook now and then as though alive and cold. He watched coffee drip from its spout into a plastic cup. A sign on the machine read, “You should know better”.

  While idly pressing the buttons on the cake dispenser marked “cakes”, “more cakes” and “even more cakes”, he fumbled in a pocket with the other hand for a coin. To his surprise, an item appeared in the plastic tray at the base of the dispenser with a clunking of its mechanism, without the need of payment. It was a grey cake with blue currants.

  He took it, turning it over in his hand, with an irresistible desire to eat it. He bit into it with a fervent passion. The first mouthful was delicious. It had an indefinable flavour, unlike any cake he had ever tasted.

  That's good.

  He took another bite. There was something hard inside. He extracted the object from his mouth. It looked like a lump of rock, possibly a conglomerate of calcium from animal shells, bones, and teeth.

  He placed the find, about the size of a small coin, onto a glass slide of the microscope. It seemed a natural thing to do on finding a piece of rock inside a free cake, to inspect it under a microscope that had been conveniently left there. He adjusted the focus wheel while peering through the top lens.

  Filling his vision was a black prism, refracting white light into various shades of gr
ey and blue. The greys were as disturbing as the sight of infected vegetables or decaying vision in the midst of a migraine. The blues were like toxic fumes. They were difficult to keep his attention upon, a stroboscopic effect making him feel light-headed while examining them. As disturbing and dizzying as they were, there was a fascination that kept him looking through the lens. He tore his sight away only upon hearing the sharp ringing of metal on metal, coming from the upper floor of the bus.

  2 : STRANGERS IN THE DREAM

  Stave climbed the rubber-coated stairs. On his ascent of the spiral staircase were more advertisements in plastic frames on one side, proclaiming, “Beware below as above” and “Beginning of the end”.

  He reached the top deck of the bus and looked to his right. Strangely, the driver was there in his cabin, driving. Upon looking opposite, he saw the luggage rack where the cast iron kettle now stood, along with the coffee machine, cake dispenser, and microscope.

  There were blue shutters over the windows. At the back, where the young woman with her wooden fish sat directly below, was a goldfish out of its water, flopping and twitching on the patterned bus seat.

  And there, in the aisle next to where Stave had been sitting below, stood the dramatic figure of a man dressed in black trousers and a leather apron. He was more than seven feet tall, his head touching the ceiling of the bus. He wielded a heavy mallet, striking a metal object with vigorous force. The object, in the shape of a diamond, was being flattened on a blackened anvil. His left foot pushed down on bellows. The bellows were giving oxygen to hot coals in a brown cardboard box. He looked up to meet Stave’s gaze, then continued his work. His eyes were fiercely determined.