Will Elliott: The Pilgrims

He reached out and flicked the wood with his fingernail, just to make sure his eyes had got it right. They had. It was … well, it was a door. It had a keyhole, and a small handle — more a copper groove for the fingers to fit under, to pull. An odd decoration for the wall, but surely nothing more; nothing on the other side but the old bricks of the train bridge, cool to the touch.

Surely nothing more …

So he kept walking, and could not later have said just what made him pause, turn and look back. But when he did, he sucked in a sharp breath and dropped his briefcase. It opened as it fell, spreading papers over his feet. His lunch orange rolled sideways along the ground into a puddle of filth. Just for a moment there’d been a glimpse of movement, a glimmer of light at the keyhole.

He crouched before the door, then shrieked and fell back. Looking back through the keyhole for just a second was an eye . That glimmer of light? It had been like daylight, when the owner of the eye shifted away.

Now the keyhole was as it had been before: dark, nothing but brick behind it. He scrambled back to his briefcase, hands shaking a little as he put it back together. The orange he left in the gutter. And, though shaken, he kept walking, and the day panned out just as he’d dreaded it would, till it was time to go home, and things — for good or ill — began to change.

‘Here’s young Eric Albright, late home from work.’ Whoever spoke was lost in the shadows under the train bridge. The cleaners’ vacuums had woken Eric at his desk around nine. The voice was of course familiar.

‘Well, if it isn’t Stuart Casey,’ said Eric.

Casey, or Case, moved into that wedge of the path revealed by the street light. He might as well have stepped out of a costume shop having just dressed in its most convincingly generic-old-drunken-man garb: battered hat, fingerless gloves, ragged shirt and mismatched jacket and trousers sitting loosely. Case’s unsteady footsteps sprayed little stones across the concrete path, indicating he’d put away at least one bottle since noon.

‘You’re looking well,’ said Eric. Case laughed uproariously, and Eric joined in. They both knew he looked like shit.

‘How’re you looking, then?’ said Case. ‘Eh? Saw you this morning, checking out my wall. You dropped your briefcase all over the place. Something scared you pretty good, eh? What was it, a ghost? Maybe a naked woman with wings?’

‘Naked woman with wings!’ said Eric, pretending not to be unnerved by the mention of ghosts. ‘Where’d you get that?’

‘I seen one myself. No lie. She flew right through from under here, night before last. Pretty as a diamond, she was. Glittered like one too. I’d put a few away, but I saw her all right.’ Eric was surprised by how straight-faced and earnest Case sounded. The old man sighed a long breath reeking of cask wine. ‘How bout a game?’ he said.

The cheap plastic chess board was already set up not far from the door. Eric had played him on maybe a dozen occasions, often when Case was too drunk to stand up, and had never once beaten the old guy. He had twice forced a draw, but that was all. ‘Nah, not tonight.’

‘Why not? Still scared of the wall? The door?’

Eric didn’t like the glint in Case’s eye. ‘What about the door?’ he said.

‘You tell me,’ said Case. ‘What about it? What’d you see?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Why don’t you want to tell?’

This would go on for some time, Eric realised. He shrugged and kept on along the path.

‘You think I’m joking about that woman, don’t you?’ Case called after him. ‘Does this look like I’m joking?’ He dug around in his pants and held up a black pistol.

‘What the hell are you doing with that?’ said Eric. ‘Where’d you get it?’

‘Never you mind where I got it. I’m here keeping watch. That door — something’s going on, and you know it. You saw something. Well, so did I. I heard something too. It’s making noises down here at night. Has done for a week or two.’

‘Noises? Like what?’

‘You tell me, I’ll tell you.’

‘Fine,’ said Eric. ‘An eye. OK? I thought I saw an eye at the keyhole.’

Case made a strangled noise. He staggered forwards and grabbed Eric’s sleeve. ‘You wait here with me tonight. OK? We’ll stand guard, you and me. Something’s gonna happen, I can feel it. It’s your chance to see something no one else ever has, you bet. We’ll keep watch. OK?’

This was possibly a very elaborate scheme via which a lonely old man hoped to garner a little companionship. It was so ambitious Eric almost felt duty-bound to oblige him, at least for half an hour or so. He sighed and crouched with his back to the graffiti-clad wall. ‘Fine, let’s play.’

And just as they finished their third game, and Eric began to say his goodbyes, white light bloomed into the tunnel of the train bridge, beaming through the keyhole of the door.

They ran, abandoning game and briefcase, out of the tunnel towards the park and dropped onto the footpath’s smooth concrete. It was cold on their legs and arms. ‘What’s the plan?’ Eric said.

‘Just listen,’ Case whispered. A sound came from the tunnel: rick rick rick , like long fingernails being drawn across old wood. It abruptly stopped, and the light dimmed to nothing. A cold breeze swept over them from the park, stirring up some litter on the nearby road. Case quietly laughed. ‘Lots of secrets in the world, eh? Just when you thought you had the place figured out. Damn, but it’s quiet around here too, isn’t it? This little spot manages to shoo people away when it wants to act up. But you and me are here, aren’t we? Why us, eh? What do we matter?’

‘Um; you know, to me, it’s kind of still just a train bridge. And that light — there has to be an explanation.’

Case laughed again. ‘Bet there is. And you think there’s an explanation for that woman too?’

‘With the wings, Case?’

‘You think I’m joking about her.’ Case sounded affronted.

‘No, man. I think you were whacked out of your head on some pretty good stuff.’

‘Pfft. Wait and see. You might just — wait. Look, it’s starting up again!’

A line of light threaded along the door’s bottom edge, moving slowly up the left side first, then the right. Another point began to glow from the keyhole, beaming out like a searchlight. ‘Quick, you get up the other end of the tunnel. And take this.’ Case handed him the gun.

‘Why am I taking this?’ Eric said.

‘Cos I’m too drunk to shoot straight.’

Shoot at what? Eric thought. Martians? But he took the gun and sprinted through the tunnel past the glowing door. Then he tripped over the chess board and briefcase and went down, pieces scattering across the path. His mobile phone and gun both clattered to the ground. He scrambled to get them, but then a human voice called out from behind the door. Empty-handed, he charged through to the far end of the tunnel and crouched there, panting. Smooth moves, man, he thought. Cool under pressure. Resourceful too. Batman you ain’t.

For a time the tunnel’s light dimmed till it had almost faded completely, when there was a loud bang. With a jolt and rattle of wooden boards, the door slammed open. Light flooded the tunnel like day pouring in. A gusty wind sprayed dust and pebbles across the ground, knocking chess pieces from the path and rolling them on the dirt.

He felt strangely, eerily calm as a shape appeared in the doorway. A face, a human face, he thought. It was a man of middle age, ugly and scarred, with coarse curly hair. Behind him there was a sky, dim, white instead of blue, with thin grey cloud crawling across it. The invader seemed to be climbing up as though from a stepladder below the door’s other side. With a grunt, he was through, standing a little bow-legged, looking left and right up the tunnel, hands at his sides as though to draw a weapon, and indeed long knives were in sheaths on his belt. In the distance was a huge shape, sparkling bright as a gem. A tower? Some kind of building …