Alan Moore - Jerusalem

These premises are presently engaged in the construction of a Porthimoth, or “Worthy point or portal, properly proportioning the hem or trim of the immortal psyche, with this Art our theme, our path, our permit”, commonly described as a four-folded capstone to be set upon the summit of a greater chronologic structure, thus to tie together all the moral lines and rafters of event comprising that immense Time-architecture. While this work is underway, the Management regrets that builders will not be available to escort visitors on tours of the establishment, respectfully suggesting that this guide be kept about the person at all times as a convenient source of reference.

On the ground floor is the main entrance, opening onto the Attics of the Breath above the present Mayorhold. Two quadrivial-hinged ingress-points or ‘crook-doors’ placed at either end of the 5 thcentury well-path also offer access to this lowest storey, where specific parts of the endeavour are assembled and where labours are allotted and coordinated. Visitors may notice that the floor is made from two-and-seventy great slabs, each one a hundred paces long or wide and set into a nine-by-eight arrangement. These large tiles, upon inspection, have a tessellate design to their adornments, this peculiarity occasioned by the …

Michael looked up in surprise from the engrossing booklet to discover that his five ghost-comrades were starting to wander off en masse in the direction of the nearest wall, which was perhaps a quarter of a mile away towards the east. Rolling the helpful leaflet up into a tube and thrusting it into one tartan pocket of his dressing gown he hurried after them as quickly as his flapping slippers would permit. He’d scared himself when he’d run off and left them at the foot of Scarletwell Street, and he didn’t want to become separated from them anymore.

That, Michael thought, had been a stupid thing to do. It had just been the shock of suddenly seeing St. Andrew’s Road like that: an unused grass verge where his terrace used to be. It looked so wrong. Worse, it had seemed to say that nothing would turn out the way that anybody hoped it would; that all his mum’s and dad’s dreams ended up in trees and turf and wire carts on wheels. He hadn’t wanted to accept that, and still didn’t. He’d not wanted to be looking at that flat ground, with its flat proof, so he’d run away into a midnight neighbourhood that he no longer recognised.

While all the other children had been looking at the weeping ghost in the check suit as he’d wandered towards that awful, solitary house that stood upon the corner, Michael had been overwhelmed by all the strangeness and the desolation of his circumstances, unable to cope a moment longer with this eerie and upsetting afterlife, this dreadful and demolished future. He’d slipped silently away and ducked into the reassuringly familiar folds of Greyfriars flats, and though the black iron gate across the narrow entrance gave him pause for thought — why had the former unofficial children’s playground that was Greyfriars courtyard been barred off like this? It hadn’t stopped him sliding through the bars like kettle-steam, into the hushed and shadowy enclosure.

Greyfriars’ inner yard had been almost the same as he’d remembered it from pram-bound shortcuts in the 1950s, although obviously he’d never seen how it looked in the middle of the night before. The only noticeable difference, other than the gates, had been a sort of tiredness and untidiness, as if the place had given up. He’d passed along the pathway at the bottom of the courtyard’s lower level, drifting through another locked gate at the far end and out into Bath Street. Only then had it occurred to him that he’d got no idea where he was.

The somehow sheltering incline of red brick houses on the street’s far side, including Mrs. Coleman’s sweetshop and its sugar-dusty jars, had been taken away. Replacing this accustomed view were ugly flats with rust-railed concrete steps, rectangular black windows staring coldly from prefabricated walls that had at some time in the past been painted white, to best show off the Boroughs grime.

Michael had crept disconsolately up the hill with his equally-stealthy duplicates in Indian file behind him. Only when he’d got as far as Little Cross Street, where the row of homes that used to prop each other up like punch-drunk fighters had also been done away with by the white-walled modern buildings, had he happened on a place he knew in the surprisingly consoling bulk of Bath Street flats

Upon closer inspection, even these had turned out to be not all that they’d once been. Rough and mottled lengths of cheap board had been used to patch the double doors beneath their cinema-like portico where someone had kicked in the glass. He’d crouched beside one of the low brick walls edging the path that ran from the dilapidated doorway, had a little weep and tried to think what he should do. That had been when he’d spotted Bill and Reggie Bowler, ambling up the tarmac slope where Fitzroy Street once was, and shortly after that, they’d spotted him.

If they’d not shouted and come scuttling across the road at him like that, with all their extra eyes and arms and legs, he might have just stayed where he sat and let them catch him. As it was though, he had taken flight and run off through the partly-boarded door into the flats themselves. That had been frightening, all of those funny-looking rooms with horrid people doing things he didn’t understand. When he’d burst out onto the open central walkway with the steps it had been an immense relief, despite the strange lights floating everywhere.

This time, when Bill and Reggie seeped out through the drab red brickwork and approached him he had more than had enough, was even pleased to see them. Chastened by his unsuccessful stab at ghostly independence, he’d allowed the older boys to take his hands and lead him past the terrifying spectral hole in upper Bath Street, over to the grounds of those two stupefying towers, where they’d been reunited with John, Marjorie and Phyllis. Even though the Dead Dead Gang’s girl boss had told him off for his desertion, Michael was beginning to know Phyllis well enough to understand just how relieved she’d been to find him and to see he was all right. He wondered if she was perhaps developing a secret crush on him, the way that he suspected he was starting to develop one on her. Whether or not this was the case, he didn’t want to let her or the gang out of his sight again, and scampered hurriedly behind them now across the busy work-space, trying to catch up.

As he drew level with the knot of urchins, big and friendly John looked round and grinned at him.

“Are you still with us, titch? We thought we’d lost you for a minute there. Here, what about all this, eh? It’s a picture, wizn’t it?”

The tall lad gestured to the bustle and commotion going on around them, the incessant to and fro of the grave builders in their shimmering grey robes, waving just one slim arm where Michael was still half-expecting there to be a dozen. The interior of the Works was, to be sure, a picture. Over giant flagstones, with complex and colourful designs that seemed to crawl and flicker in the corners of the vision, moved the solemn builders at their diverse tasks, while high above the multitude, on a huge boss raised from the wall that they were nearing, was the queer design that Michael had seen in the pamphlet: a flat scroll or ribbon that seemed to unroll away towards the right, and over that two triangles joined by a double line. Rough and unpractised, it looked more like something that a three-year-old like him might scribble rather than the work of the mysterious ‘Master Angles’. Trotting there alongside John, Michael blinked up at him.