maps of the lost

There's a road in the Suffolk countryside which winds through fields and trees. You might find yourself driving it late in the afternoon one day, not seeing another car for some time. As you come around a corner you'll see a rough wooden sign, hanging from a stake driven into the verge, and handpainted with the words, "KEEP STRAIT ON”.

As you'll drive a little further, you'll see what it refers to, as there's a turning off to the left, not signed, with a single-lane road winding down between steep banks.

There are quite a lot of painters who live in Brighton, and Mr Hobbs is not one of the successful ones. He's been skirting the edges of the art world for decades, turning up at openings, especially if there's wine, having the odd painting in a corner of an unprestigious local exhibition, disappearing for a year or two then popping up again, at a gallery event or at a party where everyone assumes someone else invited him.

No one knows him as anything other than Mr Hobbs, and people in the art world don't know if he's shy and very formal, or whether it's an affectation. The default assumption is of course the latter.

He is obsessive about subject, which is not that remarkable but does mean that he gets called 'the doorman' as a nickname when people are gossiping and being cruel, so quite often, and sometimes in his hearing because he's not important enough not to offend. Every painting includes a door, internal, external, large, small, but always a door.

In the last few years all his paintings have been of a landscape within which a door stands, jarring and surreal. An English meadow, the arctic tundra, a mountainside, all competently but unexcitingly rendered. And somewhere, standing without anything to hold it up, a door.

Mr Hobbs has stopped going to openings, even with good wine, and it's a long time since he's been seen standing against a wall at a party, holding a glass, not talking to anyone.

There's an old abandoned house in a village near where you live. It's not in bad shape, but no one who lives nearby can remember there ever being an occupant.

On this day, 9th March, every year, a stranger walks into the village and up the overgrown path to the old house. He knocks three times, speaks briefly, and then stands at the door for a minute or two, head to one side, as if he is listening. Then he leaves.

Every so often, someone in the village says, "we should ask him what he is doing," and everybody else says yes, but no one ever does.

When does a pond stop being a pond and become a lake? Most people, if asked, would probably say it is about the size. But there's another way of defining it: a lake is deep enough that the light of the sun does not reach the bottom. Tovey's Pond in the woods of the Elham Valley in Kent is small and unprepossessing, it's not pretty and it's hidden away behind brambles, and most people who live nearby don't even know it's there.

But it is a lake, because the light of the sun does not reach the bottom, can not reach the bottom, will never reach the bottom, because there isn't one. Tovey's Pond goes all the way down, and it never stops.

No matter how strong the wind, its surface is a smooth black mirror. Drop a stick into it, there will be no ripples. Shout out into the air, and the sound itself will be swallowed down into the water.

In Margate, or maybe in Hastings or maybe Blackpool, or maybe anywhere by the sea that you go, there is a small, run-down amusement arcade.

It's not a glitzy palace of high-tech games, a little in-arcade café that sells panini and cappucinos, and rows of golden flashing slot machines. This arcade is small and cramped, and from the outside looking in has a dim green quality to the light that makes it look like if you walk in you will be going under water.

Old slot machines with pull arms slump together in a row. Aging games you've never heard of which still only cost ten pence a go flicker and chime fitfully. When you stop and peer through the layer of rain-streaks and grime on the window, it looks as if you'd be the only one in there.

When you step back from the window though, the door to the arcade is open, and that startles you a little, because you are sure that before you stooped to look through the window, it was shut. The wind, of course, you think, even though it isn't windy.

If you look through the door, down the central aisle, you'll see a dusty change booth. A thin man in late middle-age sits behind the glass, the light in there even greener than the rest of the place. He's wearing a worn grey shirt under a knitted tank-top in shades of drab brown. What's left of his black hair is slicked back, and he wears equally black thick-rimmed glasses. And he stares at you. And stares. And stares. Then after a moment, he opens his mouth and you think he's going to say something, but he opens it further, as if in a silent scream, and he opens it further, much further, and the time for you to run from that doorway would, alas, have been before he opened his mouth at all.

While out walking on a sunny autumn morning, you might notice a woman acting a little strangely. She is walking slowly with her hands outstretched and cupped together, as if she is carrying something very fragile, and very precious.

Keep a careful eye on her. If she stumbles on a loose paving stone or slips on wet autumn leaves, she will reflexively put out her hands to break the fall, and she will drop what she holds.

You will see a droplet of what looks like water, sparkling in the sunlight, fall from the gap between her hands like a solitary drop of rain.

It will take longer to fall than you would expect, as if time itself has slowed. This is a good thing as it gives you time to run away as fast as you can.

One night, in a dream, you walk through an old city. No one appears to be on its narrow streets that wind between old stone buildings other than you. As an indigo twilight sky begins to fall into darkness, you find yourself walking beside city walls that tower above you. There's a set of steps which leads up and through the walls, lit by a single soft yellow lamp, and at the bottom is a hawk-headed man.

He stands very still, watching you, and although you have never seen the like of such a thing you know not to be afraid. He is waiting for you.

When you wake in the morning, the dream stays with you all day, and the world feels a little strange, as if your waking life is less real than the one you dreamed. Even years on, you'll remember the dream every now and then, and the way the soft yellow lamp lit the stairs, and how the hawk-headed man just stood at the bottom of them, waiting.

Sometimes you just need to get away from it all, the work and the emails and the concrete and the cars and the feeling that the world is going too fast for you not to fall off the edge.

Your escape is a simple one: a night away, sleeping under the stars or in the woods. You take no tent, just a bivvy bag, and you feel the cold and you listen to the owls and for those few hours, you feel like you can stop thinking, and just be.

There's a routine you have, before darkness falls. You take a bin liner with you, and spend time picking up litter wherever you are - and wherever you are, there is always litter. Plastic gloves and bottles and cups, lids and cigarette ends and shredded balloons that people launched to commemorate or celebrate but now just litter and choke.

That night, you find more than just litter. As you pick crisp packets out of brambles in a wood, you hear a low whimper, and see a young fox caught in a snare, its leg bloody. You're not sure what to do but you're not going to do nothing so you make soothing noises, telling it that it's ok, that you're not there to hurt it, stay calm little one, please don't bite, I am here to help, this may hurt as I pull it away but there there, shush shush.

The fox doesn't bite, and you find your way to unloosen the snare, and then gently, oh so gently, free it from where it has bitten into the fox's leg. As soon as it's free it trots a few yards from you, pauses, looks back. You look at the fox, the fox looks at you, and that night you sleep really well.

Another night, months on, in those same woods, you will find yourself in great danger from a man who sees you as nothing but prey. He has been walking the woods full of hate and crimson violence and spite for the world, and when he sees you, alone, in this lonely place, he laughs because he knows he can do terrible things and will do terrible things and you will not be able to stop him.

But the foxes can, and just before he reaches you they are on him like a swarm, biting his tendons and clawing up his clothes to bite at his face, his neck, everywhere. When he is not moving any more, they trot off, but one pauses, looks back. 

There’s a mirror which sits in a charity shop right now. It’s not unattractive, but it’s not particularly attractive either. It’s about three foot across, in a slightly ornate wooden frame which looks quite old-fashioned which may put off many buyers.

Maybe it’s to your taste though and it’s priced quite low because it hasn’t sold for some time, so you might buy it, take it home and hang it on your wall. 
Beware.

To you it’s a mirror. To those in another world that you can’t see, it’s a window. And you really don’t want anyone from that world to walk past and see you, because then they might start thinking about how they can come through. And you really, really, don’t want that, I promise you.

Sometimes the official version of events and the truth are very far from being the same thing. That can be because someone is lying for gain, it can be because someone is lying to hide an embarrassment, or it could be because the truth can’t be told for fear of the teller being thought mad.

Kilnsey Crag lours over the landscape of Upper Wharfedale, its huge cliff shaped by glaciers  the largest overhang in the UK, and a challenge for the climbers who inch their way up one of the routes on its limestone face.

Behind it though, not visited by climbers or the tourists who visit the village’s tea-shops, is an old quarry, out of sight for most and forgotten by many. It’s been closed down since early this century, and the official version was that the excavations had reached the watertable, and so had to stop.

That may well be the case. But if you’re in the right pub at the right time and you’re talking to the right person after he’s more than the right amount to drink, he might tell you about the time that he worked in the quarry, and how as it got lower they started to see the lights.

Nothing spectacular, just a flicker here or there, white or green, now you see it now you don’t. It was put down to friction between rocks, static, bioluminescence, tired eyes. 

As the quarry got deeper though, the stories started to change. What had been lights now seemed to be misty shapes lit from within, and then as it got deeper the misty shapes became shadows and then one night the shadows walked. No one believed the night watchman, not then, but they did once the shadows started to appear in the daytime, and when they walked across the stone and grew from the ground and that was that.

Even if you spend a lot of time on Google Maps or an old school print A-Z of London, it’s hard to find it. Hard to disentangle it from all the other twists and turns of streets and alleys, back lanes and passages in that part of the city. It’s a complicated place as it is, with new built on old built on old built on old, a city which can feel like a forest that has grown rather than been planned. Like a forest, you only see the understory at street level, and the overstory that towers above. You don’t see the mycorrhizal networks, the wood-wide web where under the ground everywhere is connected, one way or another.

But that’s for another time. What concerns us now is at street level, and what is at street level is a labyrinth. Technically a maze, but it started as a labyrinth before most of the city was even a city, and that’s what it is called by those who know of it.

You need to find the right starting point, but there’s talk by those who know of it that if you find a carving of Gog and Magog on the parapet above a shop and then form an isosceles triangle between it, what is now a Nando’s, and the spire of a Hawksmoor church just visible above the roof tops then the arrowhead shape points you the right way.

The labyrinth can be completed within half a square mile of the city, but there are many different choices that can be made along the way. Unless you take exactly the right routes through the streets and alleys, the passages and the courtyards, the magic of the labyrinth falls away and you’re just walking the streets, round and round like a mad person or an earnest psychogeographer.

If you walk the labyrinth just right though, every turning correct, you will find yourself in a small and scruffy pocket park, fenced round with rusting railings. A small Hellenic-style statue stands on a plinth, stained by bird-shit and the air of the city.

There’s nothing different about this morning, it’s your same weekday routine. Alarm at half-five, swimsuit on, clothes on, moka on, coffee drunk, pick up your bag from where you left it beside the front door last night. Short drive to the pool, into one of the cubicles to take off what you’re wearing over your suit, and then locker, water, breathe.

Strokes, breathe. Strokes, breathe. You feel the water and the physical motion wash away thought, and you reach that point where you stop being the swimmer, just become the swim.

The big clock moves round and you get out, your legs a little jelly, but that’s good. You feel good. Shower, and you lift your face to it, enjoying the moment. Then you go back to a cubicle to get changed, so you have time for another coffee and a croissant before you get to work. The pool’s getting busy now, lots of chatter and voices, the early morning but not as early as you regular crowd.

Then, when you’re just about finished getting ready, you realise you can’t hear anyone any more. You can’t hear the splash of the water or the rumble of the aircon or the smack of flip-flops on tile. You shake your head, to dislodge water from your ears, remember you’d worn your plugs, lift a hand but they were out, you’d taken them out and put them back in their case.

You start to worry that you’ve missed something, an evacuation of some kind and so you hurriedly push your towel into your bag, and open the door to look out.

There’s nothing to see. You blink once, blink twice, feel a little sick. There is nothing to see. No off-white floor tiles, no row of cubicles with orange doors, no metal pipes running up the wall, no wall, no nothing. Although you don’t know how you can tell, you know that you are not even looking at a space where the pool used to be. There is nothing there, not even a space. Just nothing, in all directions.

You feel dizzy, and terrified about what might happen if you fell forward into the nothing, so you step back, shut your cubicle door.

A moment later there are voices, calls of greeting echoing off the walls, an announcement that two of the lanes are about to be closed off for non-club members, the hiss of a shower. You open the cubicle door, and see everything is there again, just as it was.

In a town or city near you, there’s a shopping centre which has seen better days. A handful of well-known names just about anchor it still, but other shops you’ve never heard of come and go with depressing regularity. You’ve never seen so many un-let units, or those vinyls with illustrations of happy, laughing shoppers that are put over windows to hide the fact that there is nothing behind them, a false tooth in place of an empty socket.

If you’re there at the right time, on the right day, and you are the right kind of person at exactly the right moment, you might notice a shop selling a clutter glass ornaments and mirrors. You might decide to wander in, if you have time. Perhaps there’s a present to be had for an elderly relative who likes ornaments and nick-nacks, albeit not for that one aunt who would sigh and say, ‘oh thank you, another thing to dust’.

After a few minutes browsing, you feel you have something of a headache from all the reflections, you reflected in glass reflected in other glass, reflected in mirrors, reflected in other glass. You realise that you are the only customer, and have been the only customer since you walked in, and you haven’t even noticed any staff. When you look at your watch you see that it’s three hours since you came in. That feels strange and you feel strange and you think about leaving but don’t, just look into the reflections and feel as if you’re falling down into them. One of the yous that you can see waves its arms as if drowning, mouth moving as if trying to tell you something very important.

Your body jerks suddenly, the way it does sometimes when you’re in that twilight just before falling asleep, and you are in motion again, and you walk past all the glass and out of the door, and you don’t stop until you are out of the centre and into the fresh air, and you gulp down breaths as if you’ve never breathed in such a long time.

If you go back into the shopping centre you won’t see the shop. If you stop any of the other shoppers and ask them if they saw it, before the centre security come and politely move you on, they will all tell you no, they did not.

It’s a while since you’ve been back to Manchester, and ten years to the day since you had been in this bar. You remember the date because it was the last day before you and your university friends scattered to the four winds after graduation. The bar had changed name but the decoration and the vibe felt the same. Nine of the eleven who met a decade before had managed to make the trip to reunite. One was in Australia, and the other had taken a bend too fast on a holiday in Greece six months after graduation and the group had shrunk by more than geography.

You all raise a glass to her, and you all catch up on each other’s lives. It’s easy, and it’s fun. No one is there to show off, no one is bragging about their career or their house. For the most part everyone was more interested in recounting the various terrible mistakes we had made and ridiculous disasters that had befallen us all.

As the two friends you were talking to move from in front of you to go for more drinks, you look around the bar. It’s still early evening, so it’s a mix of the post-office crowd have one last one and the early-start evening people warming up.

Then you see him, across the other side of the bar. You pass him over for a second, then look back. He’s not that remarkable to look at, just a young man with curly black hair sat on his own at a small table in the corner. What is so striking about him though, is the look of sadness on his face, and the fact that when you look at him an almost overwhelming feeling of despair rushes out at you like a physical wave. And what is even more striking than that is that you remember so well how you saw this man on that last night after graduation, and that terrible, terrible feeling of despair. He doesn’t look a day older.

When your friends come back, they ask you what’s wrong, because it’s visible on your face. You say oh nothing really, but can you see that man over there? They look round, look back at you. They can. Has he been hassling you? Is he staring at you? Do you want us to have a word? You make your face make a smile and say no no, he just reminded me of someone. Do you remember him at all from - you don’t say the last time we were here - when we were at uni. There’s shrugs and shakes of the head, and they don’t seem to have felt anything odd about him, so you let the conversation run on. After a few minutes, he gets up, and makes his way through the crowd to the door and leaves.

There’s an old office building in South London, where every business is out of the building by seven, and until six the next morning there’s no one there except one security guard, who spends much of his time drinking tea, and watching old episodes of Only Fools and Horses, Formula 1, and porn on his phone. Every so often, he has to go round and shine his torch along corridors and try doors and generally earn his living for a while.

One December night quite soon though will be his last night at work, and he’ll quit the next morning and take a job in a garden centre, which apart from the early morning and late afternoon is a daytime daylight day job.

That’s because on that night, he’ll be doing his 2am rounds in the dark and when he reaches the third floor he’ll notice light shining under one of the office doors. For just a moment’s break from the boredom rather than caring about the bills, he will find his master key and unlock the office door to turn the light off.

When he opens the door, he will stop one step in, and the four men who are round a table talking will stop for a moment. “Sorry,” one of them will say. “We’re just borrowing the room for a time. We’ll put it back when we’re finished,” and he will give a big reassuring smile.

The first time it happens you think it’s just a dream. You wake in the early hours, and there’s a light in your room. Dazed, you think it’s moonlight shining through the curtain as it has that cold silvery quality, but your curtains are fully drawn. Then you see it, scrawled across the walls of your bedroom, what look like words written in a glowing script you cannot understand, letters curling around in on themselves and twisting around each other. It looks like Arabic, but it’s not. Sleep takes you, and in the morning you laugh at your empty walls and the strange dream and go about your day.

A few days later it happens again, and then not for a month and then again, and again. It puzzles you and you speculate on what might be. A dream, a vision, a weird brain artefact in the hypnopompic state, you don’t know for sure. You wake, see it, close your eyes and open them again and it’s still there, then sleep comes and when you wake it isn’t.

But the one thing that you do start to believe is that each time it happens, you come that little bit closer to being able to read it. It’s almost as if the words are forming in your mind, and all you would have to do is to start to speak and you would read them out, even if you don’t understand what the words mean. You may even start to feel, to know, that in the speaking would come understanding.

You’re not sure if it’s the second time or the third time. Hell, for all you know it may be the fifteenth and you just didn’t notice. But this time, you do.

The car that overtakes you is an unremarkable red Ford, but you recognise it and the driver, a woman in late-middle age. It passed you a little while back, but you don’t remember over-taking it in turn. A young man is sat in the passenger seat, staring ahead, jaw slack, as if he’s fallen asleep with his eyes open.

Gradually, the car disappears out of sight, you take a turn-off onto another dual carriageway, some more songs play and you still have hours to drive.

Then, miles on, she passes you again. Same car, same woman. Different passenger, an older man, slightly confused as if he’s just forgotten something very important. What are the odds of that you think, and then you laugh. She’s driving about ten miles an hour faster than you, and it’s not long before the car is out of sight.

Half an hour later, every light on your dash comes on. The car splutters and chokes and stalls. You manage to guide it to the verge, too shocked to swear until you stop and then you swear a lot. You’d meant to renew your breakdown cover the other week, but there was always something else to do first.

A red car passed you, and pulls up just in front. The driver’s door opens and the woman walks to your car, looks in, and tap, tap, taps on your window.

Don’t wind down your window. This is what will happen if you do.

“I can give you a lift,” she will say. “Come on.”