It is late.
I should have done this months ago. I am in a panic that not enough people will realise how important this is. I need to shout it from the highest peaks.
I search for a point to call from. I can see Keith Seatman in the distance. His shadow disappearing across the water. He is elusive, unknown and yet familiar.
I spy a flickering glow up ahead. A soaring echo matches the sweep of the beam as it dances across the waves. I would climb the lighthouse to the top and scream out my news to the world but, although
a lighthouse might look long, it is not tall enough. So I run further inland to the abandoned school on the hill with its tall bell tower.
The school is alive with noise. My old teacher commands me to enter, her round red face shimmering and see-through. The spectres of my memory dance in the tired beige hall, its paint peeling. The tiny chairs are pushed to the side. The music begins, loud insistent, stamping a rhythm together, we
all hold hands and off we go.
I am pushed outside by intangible tiny hands. A
skipping rope flips and spirals in constant loops. A small child plays a tune. The nightmare recorder player is pumping out notes whilst others hit the side of an upturned bin, insisting on a rhythm. I try to keep time, the rope skimming the top of my head. I cannot keep time.
Everything slows to a crawl. Even gravity cannot pull me down as I leap between rope and air and tarmac.
Mr Metronome is beating out a rhythm and we all follow. A sweet melancholy settles over me and the playground fades to white.
The children are running ahead through the white. I call for them. But to them I am
left behind or lost and dropped. I cannot find them. I am one of them and I need to join their dance. I call out for them to come back. The white dissipates to grey, to blue, to grey, to black, to sepia, to the abandoned peeling beige of the old school hall. There is a rising electronic spike and they rise.
They surround me. Beckoning me forward and back. To join the dance. The rhythm is kinder now.
Four steps at a time. Four steps at a time. Do not panic. All is well. Four steps at a time.
The chairs and table are swept into the room. The shutters rise. The see-through dinner-lady with her see-through ladle pours hot cocoa into a cup.
“Take this”, she says. “And get to bed.”
A nightcap is thrust on my head and I am pushed towards an ancient door. I look about. The mood is quieter. Children chatter behind their hands. They shouldn’t be here. They have got older. I have got older. I must look
odd in a nightcap and cup in my hand. An old Hammond organ plays an exit tune.
I’m still here. Chains rattle. There is an incessant
tap tap on the door. The children are silent. Tap tap. I turn. They all point, as one, at the door. Tap tap. This is the stuff of nightmares. The door rattles and creaks. I cannot breathe. It opens. A staircase is revealed. Chains rattle. I step inside.
I walk up the stairs. A sound builds, grinding, rising. What is that noise? A powerful noise. The stairs end and a vast empty room sits before me. Filled with boxes. Each box humming and shaking and dancing.
Boxes with rhythms in.
At the end of the room is another door, a staircase beyond that leads to the bell tower. I sip my cocoa and find my tongue coated
with salt and candy. The stairs reach into darkness. I climb.
The shimmering reflection of the moon hangs over the distant sea. Somewhere a kettle whistles. A boat bobs on the line of the horizon. A black triangle against silver and grey.
Please, is it you? I need them to know. They must know. The ritual has begun again and all must join the half-remembered dance.
When the music plays all hold hands and off we go. We cannot resist. Put the record on again, Miss. I want to dance. I have to.
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