Alan Moore - Jerusalem

He still wasn’t entirely sure what Phyllis and the others wanted him to see up in Mansoul or why they were determined he should see it, but if it was to be his last adventure in the Upstairs world then he was going to make the most of it. He privately suspected that the gang were going to show him something that was even more fantastic than the things he’d seen already, as a sort of special treat or party to commemorate his going away. At three, he’d been through enough Christmases and birthdays to know that when somebody was planning a surprise for you, you had to make out that you didn’t know, or else you’d spoil it. That was why he was just quietly smirking to himself while Phyllis and the others sorted out their entrance to the builders’ meeting-place, the Works, and all pretended to be worried over something. Michael knew what they were doing. They were trying to throw him off the scent of the amazing pageant they were organising to mark his departure, but he didn’t let on that he knew. He didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

Michael played along, then, as the gang assembled on each other’s shoulders, a manoeuvre he’d seen them perform before. John stood at the bottom of the tower, then Reggie Bowler, balanced with his worn-out boots to either side of John’s heroic face. Clambering up the two boys like a mountaineer, Phyllis was perched on top of Reggie, fumbling in the air above her at the summit of the human pile. Since Michael, Bill and Marjorie were littlest and therefore of no great advantage to the height of the arrangement, they just stood and watched from a few paces further up the walkway.

Mildly puzzled, Michael asked Bill what the gang’s three tallest ghosts were up to.

“Well, if you remember, the last time we wiz up ’ere in this new century, we dug back down to 1959 and went from there up to Mansoul. We went in through that boarded-up old building that wiz on one corner of the Mayorhold, where the first town hall had once stood, ages back. The thing wiz, this time we don’t want to show you Mansoul like it wiz in 1959. We want to show you what it looks like now, in 2006, and up ’ere there’s no place left standing we can enter through. But that’s all right. When we ’ad all of our adventures in the future, up in Snow Town and all that, we left a hole up in the air around ’ere, covered over with a bit of carpet like the trapdoor of our den on the rough ground near Lower ’Arding Street. That’s what our Phyll’s looking for now. Oy, Reggie! ’Ere’s your chance! Look up ’er frock!”

Teetering above them, Phyllis called down through the sickly sodium light.

“Just you dare, Reggie Bowler, an’ I’ll piddle on yer ’ead. Now ’ush up an’ behave. I think I’ve found it.”

Making pulling motions in the dark above her as if hauling something to one side, the Dead Dead Gang’s intrepid leader was uncovering a ragged patch of violet-blue which hung there in an overcast sky that was otherwise completely colourless. Having thus located the gang’s route up through the shouts and sirens of the night into Mansoul, Phyllis next went about directing their ascent. She told the crew’s three smallest members to climb up the ladder formed by their companions, with Bill going first, then Michael, and then Marjorie. When this was done they helped her up and through the sky-hole so that she in turn could help up John and Reggie. After they’d replaced the waterlogged and filthy carpet-remnant that had been used to conceal the aperture, the ghost-gang stood beside it for a moment, taking stock of their ominous new surroundings. Michael was a bit put out, as these did not suggest the special treat he’d been expecting. Probably, he thought, the others were just dragging things out so it would be more of a surprise.

The space that the gang stood in, cavernous and indigo, was nonetheless still recognisable as the same ghost-structure they’d climbed through just before the angle-fight, although in a much worse state of repair. At least one of the phantom floors had fallen in completely, due to what seemed to be water-damage from above. Sodden and broken beams stuck out from halfway up one tall and badly distressed wall like snapped ribs and the bluish light was everywhere, scabbing to purple where the shadows pooled.

Michael remembered that in 1959 this building had been all in black and white, with no apparent hue at all until you went up to Mansoul by that short flight of useless, narrow stairs on the top floor. It looked as if the world Upstairs was leaking colour, amongst other things. Michael couldn’t remember all this water being here before, streaming like silver down the derelict and towering walls, or gathering in hollows like carpeted rock pools down amidst the rubble of the floor. It also seemed as if the quality of sound found in Mansoul had percolated down into the usually-muffled phantom realm along with all the wetness and the moody coloured light. Each plip, drip, splash and glassy tinkling reverberated eerily about the echoing, damp-scented ruin, which resembled nothing more than some enormous warehouse after an insurance fire.

Damp-scented? Michael realised that along with sound and colour filtering down from above, his sense of smell had started to improve to something more like the rich, overwhelming faculty that it had been Upstairs, where there were entire stories in the way that something smelled. He was beginning, for example, to detect the stink of Phyllis’s fur wrap, along with the perfumes of mould, decay and — what was it, that other thing? He sniffed the air experimentally, confirming his suspicions. It was smoke, the faintest whiff of it, and Michael couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

He stood with his five phantom friends, who all seemed genuinely hushed by the thick atmosphere of desolation that had fallen on them — along with the cobalt light and the cascades of water — from above. While he suspected they were only putting on an act to conceal the surprise they had in store for him, Michael was feeling a bit put out by his going-away party so far and sincerely hoped that it would pick up later. He gazed up into the dripping blue gloom overhead and listened to the ringing leaky-tap noises, the gush and spatter, burbling liquid trills that almost had the sound of whispered conversation.

“Ooh, Gawd. Ooh, Gawd, Doug, I think ’e’s gone. Whatever shall we do?”

“Just you ’ang on, Doreen. ’Ang on, gel. It’s just up over the Mounts. We’ll be there in another minute …”

Still with no one really saying very much, Michael had joined his ghostly playmates as they’d started their ascent of the partly-collapsed building’s interior. This proved a lot more difficult than when they’d come this way before. For one thing, the dilapidated staircase they’d used then looked to be long since gone, requiring the six children to climb up the crumbling walls like spiders, but with half as many legs. Brave John went first, pointing out foot and handholds, indentations in the sodden plaster, for the benefit of the five spectral youngsters who were following him.

For another thing, besides there being vestiges of Mansoul’s sound and smell and colour down here in the normally sense-stifling ghost-seam, traces of the upper world’s increased feelings of weight and gravity were also evident. If they’d have fallen from the sheer face of the wall, they’d probably still have descended slowly enough not to seriously hurt themselves, but flying through the air or bouncing up like lunar beach balls obviously wasn’t going to work. All of them felt too heavy and too solid, meaning that they had no other choice but to climb slowly and laboriously up the high wall in a cautious human chain. They still had a few after-pictures peeling from them, but as they went higher these grew flimsier and fainter, and then winked out of existence altogether.