A - Scavenging for Souls

I had always noticed the old swimming baths. I had cycled past them
daily for two years. I found their ruinous state somehow touching, as
if they marked the grave of an old and dear friend. I don't really know
why; perhaps I imagined them when they were heaving with people, their
skin glistening under a sun twenty years younger, their costumes
covering far more of their bodies than is necessary nowadays.

I imagined happiness behind those faded brown tiles and clumps of
writhing, soot-blackened buddleia. I imagined lovers meeting on endless
warm 1920s afternoons, perhaps away from the disapproving eyes of their
families; I imagined lonelier people sitting with their thoughts as
company, and wondering where it all went wrong. I imagined fat,
successful businessmen packing their ever-expanding paunches into the
tight fabric of their swimming costumes, discussing important issues
with their colleagues well away from the boardroom.

Now the place seemed forgotten. The last time it was open, the suburb
in which it is situated was probably still a village, and fields
probably still separated it from the city. Perhaps families would have
strolled through the countryside to reach it, leaving the traffic noise
and belching fumes behind them. It would probably only have been an
hour's walk away, yet it must have seemed to them as if they were
thousands of miles from home, and as they splashed happily through the
water and baked in the sun, their mundane lives would have faded
temporarily from their consciousness.

I was desperate, yet also strangely terrified, to somehow break into
the old baths, and find out what they looked like now, some fifty years
after they were last used. Would I hear echoes of their former
existence in my mind? Would I still hear bare feet pattering on the
tiles, and water splashing in a long-dry pool? I doubted it. I really
didn't know what to expect, but closed-down places held a strange
fascination for me, especially if they had remained relatively
untouched. They represented for me a pocket of an earlier time, still
holding out against the relentless passage of life and technology
around it. I could feel their atmosphere. I could almost breathe the
air that filled them when they had been alive. I almost could feel the
emotions and think the thoughts of the countless people who had spent a
small part of their lives in them, yet still leaving some indefinable
trace of themselves behind, burned into the brickwork and still
floating in the same air.

Abandoned railway stations were a particularly favourite of mine.
There weren't many left unfortunately; most of them had been
demolished. Some were nearly unrecognizable, especially if the railway
line that had passed through them had been dismantled as well. You had
to follow the track where the rails and sleepers had once laid.
Cuttings were best, because you could lose yourself in a different era;
the steep, heavily overgrown banks could shield you from the real world
above, and you could wander through this man-made valley and lose
yourself in your imagination. There would be no noise other than
occasional birdsong or the rustle of some small creature in the
undergrowth. Then I used to close my eyes while my legs stumbled
through the long grass and try to hear the rumble of an approaching
train, its panicked whistle, see the pillar of seemingly solid steam
that burst out and then trailed behind it.

Then I would find an old station. I could normally make out where the
platforms used to be - I could vaguely make out that the ground either
side of the track no longer sloped up sharply, but seemed strangely
flat at first, before rising up to the nettle-strewn banks. Delighted,
I would step onto the flatness, and feel the concrete beneath the
layers of moss and grass that had covered it over the years. Sometimes
there would even be the remains of buildings - waiting rooms I presumed
- often just two brick walls at right angles to each other. Some of the
walls and the roofs had normally given way, I would discover. Heaps of
bricks and old rotten bit of timber would lie scattered on what used to
be the waiting room floor. I would sink to the ground and rest my back
against one of the walls with my legs stretched out in front of me and
try to imagine how the people who once sat there had felt. Perhaps the
train had been late and they were desperately trying to reach a sick
relative. Perhaps while they were waiting for the train to arrive, the
relative had died. A little bit of them would have died as well, in
that station. They would have left a little fragment of their soul
behind. Perhaps it was still there, lurking amongst the nettles, buried
beneath the pile of crumbling bricks on the corner. Sometimes I tried
to find it. I would get down on my hands and knees and crawl in the
debris, heedless of the nettle stings and the wood splinters that dug
into my palms. I would lift up bricks and rusted sheets of corrugated
metal and I would tear out by the roots the clumps of grass and thistle
that had somehow managed to grow on the concrete floor.

But of course I would find nothing and I would clamber rather
sheepishly to my feet, brush the dirt from my clothes and hope that no
one had been watching me. I was normally safe; the green and shady
tunnels where dismantled railways had once cut their way didn't seem at
all popular with the general populace. I could understand why. There
were far too many shadows, far too many trees and bushes to hide
behind. I could certainly sympathize with parents who wouldn't let
their children play in such places.
There had been only one occasion when I had been caught out. I don't
really know why I use the expression caught out. After all, I wasn't
doing anything wrong in the first place, was I? But it must have looked
rather strange, to see a grown man crawling on his hands and knees in
the remains of a station waiting room, peering in every nook and cranny
in search of souls. But I felt desperately guilty and embarrassed
nevertheless.

It had been a woman walking her dog. The dog was a very old Black
Labrador. It was so old its belly had sagged and appeared to be
dragging along the ground whenever it tried to walk. Its muzzle looked
grey and wizened and occasionally it seemed to lose control of its back
legs, would stumble slightly and then somehow right itself without
falling over. It saw me before the woman, just as it was in
mid-stumble. Its brown eyes widened, and a muffled 'rrrfff' came from
its mouth before it turned towards its owner for guidance.
It was an abandoned station I had visited before, but I had always
found it a fruitful scavenging site and I had returned several times.
Although it was almost completely obscured by brambles and nettles,
amazingly one of its signs still remained, nailed to the only wall of
the waiting room that had survived. Hambden it was called. I had walked
nearly twenty miles to reach it, but always found the rather strenuous
journey worthwhile.

The woman looked in my direction and nearly jumped out of her skin.
She was quite good-looking, perhaps mid to late 40s, with dyed blonde
hair and wearing a green blouse and a tweed skirt. What an odd
combination for a walk in the countryside, I said to myself, before
apologizing for giving her such a shock.

"I am sorry," I said. "You must think it a little strange, me being
here like this on my own. I'm on the lookout for rare insects. These
sort of places are wonderful for that sort of thing, all the holes and
nooks in the old brickwork, you see."

I had been so tempted to say 'rare souls' instead, but presumed the
effect of that would have been her running screaming back to her car or
wherever she'd come from, phoning the police, and telling them that a
madman had taken up residence in the old abandoned train station.

The woman attempted a smile, but succeeded merely in looking slightly
alarmed, before muttering to herself and quickening her pace as she
continued along the track. The dog, which was off its lead, did not
follow her but instead looked back at me, lifting one of its front paws
off the ground as it sniffed the air. I smiled at it; the creature was
old and its muzzle was flecked with white. Specks of foam dotted its
mouth and as I watched, a strand of drool began to ooze from its chops,
hanging there and swaying slightly in time with the dog's ragged
breathing. "This creature is not long for this world," I said to
myself, and closed my eyes. The shady track and the scattered wreckage
that had once been a train station faded from my mind. I cleared my
head of all thoughts, and found myself in an empty blackness, utterly
comforting and devoid of worry. I felt emotions and memories struggling
to break through at the edges, to invade my serene world and disturb my
peace, but I refused to let them. To do what I now wanted to do
required complete concentration, and I could allow nothing to distract
me.

The dog emitted a muffled growl, as though its head was wrapped in
cotton wool, or it was floating just below the surface of an immense
lake and was trying to cry out to the rapidly fading sunlight above it.
My smile broadened, but still I tried not to hear the final sounds that
the dog would ever utter. I still needed to be completely detached from
the physical world. Finally, I saw a tiny pinpoint of light at the
center of my personalized dark universe; it was like the way you still
see the glare of a light bulb imprinted on your retina even after
you've closed your eyes. Yet this image, rather than receding, grew
from an initial speck until it swamped the whole universe in blazing,
blinding light.

This was good. Sometimes I could only make the speck grow a little,
before it faded again and disappeared into nothingness. That normally
only happened with people; I had never yet managed to expand that speck
until it entirely encompassed my mind when there had been a human being
standing before me. With an animal...well, that was different, and a
lot easier to accomplish.

The white grew more blinding, and as its glare increased I began to
see little writhing, wriggling patterns of colour within it, almost
like the blood cells you can sometimes see rolling down the front of
your eyes. Normally, of course, when light became too intense, too
dazzling, you'd close your eyes to protect yourself from being blinded.
I tended to do the opposite; as soon as I saw those tiny, jittery
shapes dancing back and forth in front of me, I knew I had to open my
eyes otherwise my brain would be fried. Once I had kept them closed for
a little longer than was safe, and had felt a hideous, grasping pain
slice down the left side of my face, as if a scalding hot claw had
reached inside my head and grasped my brain, making it sizzle. Blood
had oozed out of my nose, mouth, ears and eyes, and for months
afterwards I had woken every morning to find my pillow red and
moist.

So I opened them to see that the dog had sunk to the ground, its legs
splayed out awkwardly around it, its long tongue lolling from its mouth
and stretched unmoving on the grass. The woman had continued walking
and failed to notice for nearly two minutes that her dog had failed to
follow her. Or, indeed, that it was dead.

"Tigger!" she shouted. "Tigger! Come on, I want to get home. Tigger? I
thought to myself. What a hideous name for a dog. Still, he wouldn't
have to be called that anymore. He was my pet now, and I could call him
what I wanted.

"Oh for God's sake!" exclaimed the woman, and marched back to the spot
where her beloved Tigger lay. As soon as she saw the way he was laying,
she realized she wouldn't be taking him for any more walks.

"What happened?" she said as she turned to me. I noticed that she
didn't appear particularly upset, and any faint twinges of guilt that I
may have been feeling disappeared completely. The poor old creature had
probably become something of a burden to her, especially when it became
unable to keep up with the vigorous pace she set on walks.

"The poor thing just collapsed," I replied, clambering out of the
ruins and brushing the brick dust from my trousers. "He started
following you, and just collapsed. I think he might be dead."

"Well what am I supposed to do?" said the increasingly unpleasant
woman. "I can't carry him all the way back to my car. And anyway, I
don't really want a dead animal in my car in the first place."

"I'll take him," I said, completely sure that she would accept my
offer. The only problem I could foresee would be if she had any
children, who would obviously be distraught if they were denied the
opportunity to say goodbye to Tigger. "I'll bury him around here. I've
got a spade and stuff in my car," I lied, "I have them so I can dig
under some of these ruins while I'm looking for my insects. I'll make
sure he gets a good send-off."

"Well..." the woman hesitated. Hopefully she wasn't too alarmed by my
appearance - if she was, I was afraid she wouldn't trust me and my
plans would be as ruined as the ex-station I was standing in. I had a
feeling my face was filthy; I had been exerting myself considerably in
my soul-searching that day, and was probably caked in sweat and dirt. I
wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, but was relieved to see
only a few smudges smeared across it.

"Ok," she said finally and rather awkwardly. She was obviously
slightly embarrassed at her lack of emotion, and presumably at the
bizarre situation she found herself in. "Just let me keep his collar.
My husband will want to keep it in...err...memory of Tigger." She
reached down and pulled the collar over Tigger's head. It pushed his
ears forward, and they flapped back lifelessly when it was off.

"Thanks," she said quickly and marched off at an even faster pace than
before. I turned my head to follow her departure and closed my eyes. I
can at least try, I thought. This time, I found it harder to dispel my
worldly thoughts. My lovely, peaceful, dark universe failed to settle
completely, and jagged flashes broke in at its edges, ripping its
fragile fabric apart. I thought for a moment that I could see a single
atom of whiteness where the bridge of my nose would be, but made the
mistake of opening my eyes to see what effect this would have on the
woman, and the atom, along with the universe that revolved around it,
disappeared. I was sure that for a moment she slowed, and swayed
slightly to the right as if drunk. She definitely raised her right hand
to her forehead, and rubbed absentmindedly there before continuing on
her way as if nothing had happened.

Interesting, I thought, and chuckled to myself and turned my attention
to the dog. I crouched over it and gently stroked its head, which was
already quite cold. I lifted the skin over its left eye and peered into
the bloodshot white and the dead brown that looked vacantly past me
towards the station. This was the most difficult part of the entire
process. There had been times when I'd failed completely, and the shift
that I had to achieve in my mind had been unattainable. Saddened, I had
left several dead animals where they had dropped and trudged back to my
bicycle to journey wearily home and pour myself a stiff drink.

The procedure for killing my animals had to be reversed if I was to
succeed completely in my task. The difficulty always lay in the
inevitable loss of concentration between the moment I opened my eyes,
and the time I closed them again. It was always easier with stray
animals. On those occasions I had no distraught owners to deal with,
pestering me with their tears. Their emotional outbursts could so
easily shatter the fragile peace of my universe, but alone save for the
corpse of some flea-bitten, homeless dog, then I would always fulfill
my desires, and add to my little menagerie.

The unpleasant woman had certainly distracted me, but not to any
terminal extent, and the overgrown valley through which trains had once
belched their way was so peaceful. Even the birds had appeared to stop
singing, as if in awe and expectation at my unusual deeds. Above me the
sky was almost imperceptibly darkening. It was one of those days when
there would be no real sunset; bright blue would simply deepen to dark
blue and finally star-studded black. I loved the night. In the daytime
I always felt so desperately lonely, but as soon as the sun rose, I
would have as much company as I wanted, indeed more than I'd ever
dreamed of. Not human company quite yet, you understand, but that was
only a matter of time and practice. After all, the woman had definitely
staggered; she had definitely felt something go slightly wrong in her
head. Perhaps she would go to sleep that night and never wake up;
perhaps the effects had only been delayed. I would never know, and I
would never know where to find her if she did die. A great shame,
because she would never become my first real, human friend.

I closed my eyes again, making a conscious effort to end my train of
thought, to send it down some overgrown siding and into a decayed
station locked deep within my subconscious. I was lucky - the woman had
only distracted me a little, and it took only a few seconds to reach
that wonderful, calm, thought-less plane of existence where I could do
whatever I wanted. This time however, instead of blackness, I saw a
field of white before my eyes, the same field of white that my original
tiny speck had expanded into. It no longer blinded me. If it had, my
brain would again have begun to fry, and smoke would have poured from
my mouth, eyes, ears and nostrils. The dog was dead; its soul was no
longer throbbing with energy so powerful it could have destroyed me.
The multi-coloured, shapes that had swam like amoebas through its
brightness were no longer there. The whiteness was fading visibly
before my closed eyes. I had to act fast before the dog's soul simply
withered away and disappeared into the ether.

I stretched out my right hand and touched the dog's eyeball with my
index finger, recoiling slightly at its cooling, clammy jelly. The
brightness in my mind flared briefly, and then within seconds dark
spaces began to appear at the edges of my vision, framing the light,
hemming it in, and then finally pushing it into a circle that receded
gradually until it returned to the tiny white speck that had first
marked its emergence. That too winked out, leaving only a faint,
greenish impression burned onto my retina. I had often tried to
convince myself this event was accompanied by a sound, a dry, crunching
rustle of the kind you get when you squash fallen leaves to a fine red
dust in the palm of your hand. This was perhaps merely a product of my
overactive imagination. After all, where exactly could the sound come
from? From the dead creature's soul? That really would be stretching
the bounds of possibility.

The deed was done, and I was thoroughly satisfied with myself. I
opened my eyes, blinking them slightly even against the soft green
light of the old station. I pulled my finger away from the dog's
eyeball, grimacing as it stuck slightly before coming away with a faint
ripping sound. I clambered to my foot, my joints protesting against the
sudden movement, and looked around at the half-collapsed walls, the
writhing masses of buddleia and the scattering of bricks and dust in
the undergrowth, before trudging off up the railway track. I didn't
even bother to glance at the dog; it was just so much flesh and bone
now, nothing else. The spark that had set that flesh and blood on fire
and given it life was with me now, tucked away deep in my mind, along
with the others. Along with my friends.

I walked for what seemed like hours. The wooded slopes either side of
me gradually sank until I could peer over their tops and see the fields
beyond. Evening was making way for night, and mist had begun to gather
in hollows. I could smell its earthy, yet at the same time wonderfully
fresh scent. I inhaled deeply, flaring my nostrils and loving the chill
that invaded my body. The onset of darkness was so exciting for me; I
thrilled as I felt its precursors - the quieting of birdsong, the
dampness in the air, the specks of light that began to ignite in the
sky, the increased silence that made my steps sound like thunder as I
padded carefully through short wet grass.

The slopes flattened out completely; tangled hedges lined the track.
Unseen creatures scampered and fluttered within them. I felt the same
old yearning rising within me, and once or twice focused on their
little minds. It was difficult though, when my prey were unseen, and I
was tired after my earlier exertions. I am sure however, that I managed
now and then to make some of the little flutterings cease, and to put a
stop to the beating of perhaps two or three little hearts. Perhaps in
this case it is only my vanity speaking. In any case, I was certainly
not going to bother crawling into the hedges to gather their bodies,
tempting thorns to tear my flesh and twigs to scratch at my eyes. The
reward was too insubstantial to justify such effort.

The land fell away either side of me as the old line ran along an
embankment. It was nearly pitch-black now, and I could see little
around me other than the mist and the occasional dark blurred shapes
that might have been clumps of trees, perhaps even telegraph poles or
pylons. It was easy to forget that the rest of humankind still existed
in this silent, misty and friendly world.

Yes, I said friendly. I had said that it was only at nighttime that I
stopped feeling alone. This is perhaps a little difficult for me to
describe this to you. It would be easier to invent another human being,
person who might be crouched at the foot of the ground sloping up to
the embankment, cowering behind some thorn bush and praying that I
didn't notice him. This figment of my imagination, this descriptive
plot device would undoubtedly be terrified, chilled to his very (and
most probably delicious) soul. At such close quarters he would be able
to see me through the mist. He would not be able to see my gaunt,
unshaven features, my wildly staring eyes or the brick dust still
clinging to me. He would certainly be able to notice how carefully I
walked, what pains I took to preserve the perfect nocturnal stillness.
He would see I was wearing a long dark overcoat and an equally dark,
wide-brimmed hat. He would see I wore rather fashionable Gucci
sunglasses, and would wonder why I needed them on such a dark
night.

Then, after I had walked past and began to fade into the mist, he
would have felt safer and crawled out from behind his thorn bush, the
painful judderings in his chest beginning to ease. He would have begun
to climb up the embankment, falling to his hands and knees as the
grassy bank steepened, and then he would have noticed something else
following me. At first he may have mistaken it for mere swirls in the
mist caused by a light breeze, or cloudy figments of his imagination,
by products of the fright he had received when I strode past. Then he
would have looked closer, as the swirls seemed to solidify and take
definite shape, congealing magically from the air as if the mist was
freezing in the air, yet continuing to float there as carved chunks of
ice. He saw the shape of what could have been a dog gliding past
several inches above the old railway track. Its edges were blurred and
undefined, and sometimes its shape seemed to blink completely out of
existence, to become one with the mist, but within seconds it would
reappear, its legs treading the air as if it was water, trailing
streamers of vapour behind it like streamers. He would look upward and
see that several feet above the dog, a cat was gliding silently through
the night, its head turning from side to side, yet always leaving a
faint after-image of itself behind when it moved so that it seemed to
have two heads. The man would shiver and wish he was safely behind his
thorn bush again. The way the ghostly cat looked around as it moved
terrified him. It seemed to him that the creature was sniffing the air
for something, and he would have been terribly afraid that that
something was himself.

Hundreds of gaseous animals would have floated past him as he stood on
the lip of the embankment. They would have taken nearly half an hour to
pass him. All of them would have winked in and out of nothingness from
time to time, but some would certainly have seemed more clearly defined
than others. The man might even have been able to detect the colours of
some of those at the front of the procession, but most of them were
merely misty-grey. Some, those at the end of the procession, before the
mist stopped writhing and returned to its muffled stillness, were
translucent. The man would have seen tendrils of vapour curling not
only in front of them, but behind them as well. These stragglers may
have been dogs, cats, rabbits, anything. Over the years the shape of
their physical existence had been forgotten, and their souls had lost
the memory of what they once were. Those at the head of the procession
were newly dead. If the man had seen me that night after the demise of
the Black Labrador, he would have noticed that particular beast at the
head of the queue. Its blackness would still be intense, and would have
sharply contrasted with the milky whiteness of the countless shades
milling after it.

There were, of course, no humans following me, and yet I always held
the image of that nasty woman in my mind, of the way she staggered when
I tried to draw her soul from her body. How wonderful it would have
been to have succeeded in killing her. The colours and patterns dancing
in the blazing white of her universe would have been glorious indeed, a
sight to bring tears of wonder to my eyes.

In time, perhaps, I would succeed. I had lived this life for as long
as I could remember. In fact, I could remember nothing else than
roaming the ruins and forgotten places of the world, searching for new
friends to keep me company in my unbearable loneliness. It was only in
these places that I seemed to be able to use my powers. In the dreadful
bustle and peace-shattering noise of the town it was impossible to
shift my mind into that dark, empty space where I could gather my
souls. And yet, if I turned into a side street off some turbulent main
road where car horns blared and footsteps echoed like thunder on
pavement, I might chance upon an old bombsite, the blackened skeleton
of a building that had survived the renovation of those around it. I
would ignore the warning sites, and smash past the flimsy chipboard
barricades until nettles and rats and scurrying insects and sweet,
blissful silence surrounded me. These sorts of places contained so many
sad echoes, so many unseen and unheard vestiges of the lives that had
once been lived within them. The stench of memory was ripe and
powerful, and helped me do my work.

And so my cycle came to a rest outside the old swimming baths that I
knew so well, but had never dared to enter. I feared their power. I
sensed on the countless occasions that I had glided past them that
something different emanated from them, something utterly unlike
anything I had encountered before. I wondered whether something
dreadful had happened there once, because even from outside I could
feel the brooding atmosphere within, so heavy that it made my head
throb and quickened my pulse. I had been to places of death before, and
the experience had certainly unnerved me, yet I had managed to achieve
my greatest work, and add many new members to the unseen procession
that even now flocked behind my bicycle, pausing with me to allow its
faint stragglers to drift to the front and join its leaders, becoming,
until I moved again, one cloudy, intangible mass. I had never really
understood why, but it was only at night that they became visible.
Perhaps it was something to do with the moonlight, because when the sky
was clear, my souls literally burned with white fire behind me, and
their glow radiated out through the mist that always surrounded them.
When cloudy, I could barely make them out, and that old, terrible
loneliness gripped my heart in its cold vice and squeezed, bursting
tears from me.

I feared the baths for the same reason that I feared my eyes remaining
closed when a soul's white spark expanded to fill my mind-vision. I
feared the age-old memory of something rotten and dark that had
happened in that place would weigh down on me so heavily that I would
be crushed to the ground, and then perhaps someone else would emerge
from the ruins of a changing room, and they too would be wearing a long
dark overcoat and a black wide-brimmed hat. As I felt the earth rushing
away from me, perhaps they would bend down over my crumpled body,
snatch the sunglasses from my face, and reach out an index finger. I
wondered what it would feel like to have my soul wrenched from my body.
I wondered what it would feel like afterwards, when I had left my
lifeless corpse behind in the ruins, and followed this dark-clothed
stranger who was so much like me. At first I would walk just behind
him, and I would look down at my body and see that I was still whole. I
might even be able to touch myself and still feel solid flesh, I wasn't
sure. But what would happen when my place at the head of the procession
was taken by someone or something else, and then by another and
another, until I drifted further and further backwards to lose my way
completely in the mist? What would it feel like to become slowly
invisible? What would it feel like ultimately to become one with the
vapour, for my soul to lose its individuality to become part of one
glowing, floating mass?

I dreaded to think. And this dread made me pause by the boarded up
entrance of the old swimming baths, and feel the tendrils of power that
snaked out from behind the brown-tiled walls.

Perhaps countless other creatures like me were lured to this place,
trudging thousands of miles from all corners of the earth, to pounce
upon each other as in some psychic gladiatorial contest, until only one
was left standing, and the shades of the vanquished were forced to
follow him across the land forever, his endless friends, the eternal
companions to ease his loneliness.

And yet...

Maybe in this place I could learn my final lesson and achieve what I
had until now failed to do. Perhaps the memories and emotions soaked
into its crumbling walls were so rich and throbbing with power that I
could somehow channel them, to hurl them into the soul of a passing
being, a human being.

In my mind I saw the woman stagger again, and I imagined how it would
feel to have the soul of a fellow human behind me, unseen in the
daylight yet visible, shining and glorious in the dark. Would I be able
to turn to her and take her hand, or would her essence merely melt
through my fingers like mist?

My heart pounding, I climbed off my bicycle and headed for the
entrance. An unseen cloud of souls glided silently after me.

It was time to find out.