Street upon street of terraced houses are laid out in silent, regimented lines. Rubbish collects in damp corners and under the paint-cracked front doors that open directly onto the drab concrete. Front rooms are permanently barricaded behind cheap curtains. Dead flies lined up before these polyester bulwarks, ranged on the sill like a phalanx of tiny warriors guarding the fortress within.
Anaemic light pulses at the edge of certain windows. The ghostly flickering of late-night electronic distractions numbing the lost, the lonely and the insomniacs with its bilge of entertainment.
Seeming to grow out of the torn rubbish bags and cracked food caddies – old and worn and broken cables crawl up the various ageing facades like undernourished vines dying quietly in the dark. Wires trail lazily from point to point up the tired houses, to the ageing twigs of TV aerials and the decaying leaves of satellite dishes. These dirty vines stretch across the streets from house to house and then to splintery telegraph poles, carrying with them sagging webs of lost communication. Mossy downpipes punctuate the grim facades gurgling and spluttering their biliary discharge onto the rain slicked pavements.
Silence and fine rain fill the air, cold and insistent the mizzle would soak a late-night wanderer to the skin in a few deceptive minutes. Tall street lights are haloed with a sickly chemical glow and they drape their thin light across the streets, reflected in the rain dappled windscreens and dull headlamps of the myriad cars crowding the narrow roads.
At this late hour these streets should be as empty as the eyes of the dead.
Yet, there they are.
Waiting calmly in the middle of each street, countless featureless shadows, each intensity personified, giving off a brooding potential under the nacreous light.
Are they Seekers?
Are they Collectors?
Are they Heralds?
They are patient.
They are unwavering.
They are The Many.
Headlights pierce the Stygian darkness – a taxi whisking a pair of alcohol infused lovers to the climax of their ill-advised liaison – and for a moment The Many are caught in pin sharp relief. As the light recedes, they turn as one, facing their comrade, The One who has found the narthex. In perfect unison The Many slide, like the oil dark water in the gutters, toward The One and merge together till there is only one shadow figure standing in the cold, lustrous drizzle.
The portal is unremarkable to human eyes, it looks like so many others dotted throughout the terraces: dog scratched white UPVC with a small, grimy stained-glass window. Yet, to The Many, this door resonates with exquisite divine possibility. The human hallway that lies beyond is cold and dark and filled with a jumble of discarded coats and shoes and bags. The Many see a sacred pilgrim route, a holy passageway leading to venerated stairs and beyond them, among the human dross asleep on the upper floor, lies The Chosen.
With a singular thought The Many vibrate through the door, atom dancing past atom. The Many slip past the living room, ignoring the snoring human that lies sprawled on the sofa, then, in an instant, they are up the stairs standing in front of the final threshold. A relief of carved wooden balloons is stuck to the cheap veneer, each balloon a different pastel colour, with a letter painted in soft white – M, E, G, A, N.
The child’s human name is of no consequence now, for the prize has been found.
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