He built the ship
in the garden shed. Twelve years old. Ruined industrial town.
Dark factories empty now. Only a few still in operation. Great
brick chimneys on every street. Stone walls fallen in, showing
traces of rooms and colourwash sections.
Fires at night. Dark canals. A long way to go. Weeds in the cobbled
streets. Torn colour comics on a wet pavement behind the cotton
mill on Corporation Street. Pools from old processes seen from
the train line, chemical lodges and toxic waste pits.
Clean waterways among trees in some valleys. Damselflies, water
beetle, great crested newts. Smell of wet stone, green leaves
and deep pools. Water rills and stone channels under streets
and alleys, emerging between houses.
Nearby, stagnant rivers full of black mud, red worms and other
mutated things. Pale insects coming from the walls of those derelict
houses near the old gas works, looking like dusty pineapples
with lobster legs but grey and beige. The colours of generation
in forgotten, polluted walls.
Dreamed they were there, then found a few days later. Magical
effect of that calm certainty remained with him for life. Connection
to other systems. Stillness and wonder.
Other things generating in the weeds and chemical fallout of
a hundred years. Radioactive bluebottles with tiny vestigial
wings. Biting houseflies. Long grey worms still squirming in
dogshit.
Railway crossing. Lost path to a lonely fountain, a holy place
by two birch and hawthorn trees between railway lines and bridges.
Quite forgotten. Wooden signal boxes with rows of metal levers
illuminated by yellow light at night. Coming back from shift
work in dusty blue overalls. Budgerigar in a tarnished cage against
the window. Smell of coal gas and oily cotton.
Collected things for years, arranging them in the dark wooden
shed. Tar paper roof covered in rampant pink roses.
Gathering the forces together. Process of Instinctive Recognition.
Brass pipes and spigots from the munition works, glass tubes
and electrical devices wrapped in greased brown paper. Nameless
circuitry and voltaic remedies. Diagrams of anatomy and magneto
stimulation points. Connecting maps and musical scores and anatomical
diagrams. Gradually linking everything useful he came across
in the ruined factories and workshops of this industrial town.
Inevitability of escape and a deep instinct to use everything
available.
The first dismay in these bleak industrial ruins replaced by
calm certainty, then a dawning realisation of all the unique
power sources available here. He would sense something was needed,
then a couple of nights later he would dream of it and where
it could be found or he would get a clear picture of it in his
mind. Uncles contributed to the collection. Bringing glass tubes
and fused X-ray filaments, ultraviolet lamps and stoppered glass
bottles of permanganates and glycerine.
Books on a makeshift shelf. Green, navy blue and maroon cloth
covers, gold lettering - The Young Chemist, Principles of Magnetism
and Electricity. Weather Patterns. Locating Your Psychic Energies.
Wired the fragments together, carefully uniting batteries and
metals and alloys and biological wastes and components from the
mills. Unnameable industrial by-products resembling amphibians
and soft boiled eggs and formless spawn, some of them still alive.
Arranged in linked Kilner jars of dense liquids and connected
to batteries made from interacting fats, acids and metals via
video recorders and carbide lamps.
Fragmented clues to another existence discerned from tiny phrases
and sentences discovered in books and coloured comics and magazines.
Glimpses of possibilities assembled and acted upon. He placed
sheets of lead, copper, zinc, leather and fat between selected
pages of Weekend magazine, Tit-Bits, Knowledge, reproductions
of Turner paintings and etchings of anatomica.
Pornographic magazines discovered on the moors were layered with
maps, musical scores, artificial food colouring, preservatives
and acids suspended in setting lotion in a series of lead and
felt lined biscuit boxes. Ghost of a lost boy among bottles and
worn workbenches. Did you see someone transparent like an old
photograph? Only there for a moment, just passing through.
Any defunct technology was appropriated and co-opted into the
system. Fragmented bird and animal skeletons from an abandoned
slaughterhouse on Blackburn Road, wired together in ingenious
combinations with television aerials and things living in formaldehyde.
Adapted to ferocious chemical environments.
Cast iron frame and steel strings of a grand piano wired up to
aquariums via the wings of roadside bird and animal remains,
linked to galvanised tanks of canal water and iron filings on
the tar paper roof.
Electric shock generators amplified through rows of tiny bottles
of Woolworth California Poppy. Wired into miniature Japanese
tape recorders and regulated by components from Timex Dan Dare
watches. Connected through alloy strips and gold leaf and bottles
of sulphate crystals from the abandoned chemistry labs of Heapey
Bleach Works. Accumulated and stored in cans of film from behind
the Plaza, Pavilion and Empire cinemas in town. Suspended in
brilliantine and opiate cough mixtures. Carbon arc lamp inserted
as a catalyst.
Rescued mechanical and household items - old sewing machines
and gas masks and shop tills strung on weaving machines and psychic
detection kits with litmus papers, holy water and tungsten and
steel filaments and gas mantles.
Later he discovered how to co-opt entire districts. Wired up
slag heaps and electrical pylons and even the slow micro-energies
released by decaying mill buildings. Systems of silver paper,
Gloy and malt vinegar inserted between the damp stones. Thin
copper wire and brass stair rods discharging into canals, then
distributed back along polluted waterways via gas and water pipes
and sewer lines.
In this way he hooked up factories and filter beds and various
churches of Psychic Healing. Collecting funds of luminous psychic
energies into makeshift battery systems from front room seances,
itinerate faith healers and a lucky Catholic exorcism. Silver
foil wrapped wedges of gum tied with copper wire around iron
bars carefully wound with ammonia soaked string. Rubber tubes
condensing through Kilner jars full of blowfly chrysalises layered
in mercury from smashed barometers. Smell of sour milk and candle
wax.
Leaching atmospheric energies from telephone systems, weather
and radar fields via adapted transistor aerials.
Then he found he could access radiated sexual desire, guilt and
deviancy tensions of all varieties, along with drug and alcohol
addiction patterning, via silver paper surreptitiously stuck
onto exterior windows with animal glue. Transformed and filtered
via old Dansettes and valved radios attached to a cream leatherette-covered
Elizabethan tape recorder. Fixed by advertisements for dynamic
tension, soldering wire reels, a pound note machine and woollen
clothing soaked in mild acids and caustic soda in water from
the canal circuits. Maintained by links from clandestinely wired
iron beds in Chorley Hospital. Voltage finally boosted by cluster
burst discharges of cruelty, fear, greed, envy, frustration,
conflict, despair, inspiration, joy, insight, grief, ecstasy
and anger from all over Greater Manchester.
The final improvement was when he discovered a steady state access
to all these emissions, carried on the electromagnetic cages
of domestic electrical wiring from all the rooms in every city
and town of the locality. Made it quite easy to gain lift off,
maintain escape velocity and provide inter-dimensional transport
for decades.
Around thirteen years old by now. Left with a glad heart into
a marvellous adventure, though slightly afraid when finally looking
down on rapidly retreating streets and cities, then the blue
and distant Earth.
Seemed also to be penetrating time and place as well as distance...
Travelling without moving. Not sure where to. Some odd effects
of memory as though superimposed over another film of himself.
Dark versions of New York, Paris, Rome and London through some
other lives led in those rooms. Apartment with passing lights
from cars and a woman there. Somehow he knew her well. Smell
of powder and lipstick. Adult concerns he could only guess at.
He knew that other people couldn't see him properly. Always once
removed, like a projected film on smoke and water. They tended
to be restless in his company, looking away into the middle distance
during conversation. So he didn't mind leaving. Froze the scene
into a still, then abstracted himself like a cut-out photo. Glad
to see it all go, in a way.
Those places - moving through them all now. Bleak rooms and yards,
sometimes sunlit. Knew he was from somewhere else and there was
something to do. All instructions came in dreams or calm detached
insight, always clear and correct. Wiring paths solved, grey
mists of confusion cleared and the way forward appeared.
He knew he had only to place his hand in an enamel basin of clear
water by the side of the armchair - final connective link - and
the whole apparatus flickered forward like a broken film. Simultaneous
forward and reverse live video layers blurring the district for
a few seconds as they synchronised into smooth, effortless dream
velocity. Through dark clouds of coal gas and electricity, towards
all these other cities. Shimmering molecular interplay around
and through them. Time like a slow film. Mirrors growing darker
in the immediate district. Warm starlight and movie colours and
voices. Somewhere else to go...
Drift of cold places beneath motorways and along endless roads.
From labyrinths of New York and Chicago to Club Gibus in Paris.
Old woman proprietor spitting nearby. Hotel on the street. White
static on screen over faces lost and faces found. Don't forget
me. Another life or two lived out in places long ago and far
away. Forgetting down the years. Only a thin thread pulled out
of black dirt between flagstones along an East End street by
warehouses. Cracked tarmac over shiny black cobblestones along
the Seine. The bar overlooking the Vatican. Up cold steps a hundred
years from now... shattered times... the smell of coal gas and
broken hotels in the cruel light of day. Living like a ghost...
always returning, circulating like stars around some magnetic
pole lost among the population. Empty shoes under the table.
Cigarette burns in the Formica surface. Dead friends turning
away. Who is this anyway... then falling, suddenly losing balance.
Most embarrassing.
Where to now? Used to receive instructions. Always imagined they
were internal. Never seriously considered possibility of an external
source. All gone quiet for some considerable time. Perhaps been
abandoned.
Waited for a long time before leaving the room. Must make my
way alone now. All support systems vanished.
Trying to put the pieces together. Along the motorway tunnels
all alone. Somewhere to go to along the canals and railway sidings.
Ghost coming home. No maps at all, no understanding of the slow
violence of time and memory.
Across Europe from Los Angeles. Displaced skin. Uncomfortable
transmission failing. All power sources used up. Bulldozed...
built over streets beneath this very motorway, or one exactly
like this in some other place... towns and cities re-arranged...
He returned years later. Still a young man, or so he assumed.
Though he could not guess what he looked like. Away so long.
Reassembled right on Market Street and no-one noticed. It was
mid-Winter, the streets were cold and he went by the big windows
of the butchers shop in the centre of town. Thornley's written
in gold on the glass. Sawdust spilling out onto the black stone
pavements from the bare boards inside. White marble counters
and sides of pork slung from hooks in the boarded ceiling. Warm
smell of roast meats from basement kitchens below the streets.
He realised that he could no longer eat and turned away. Beer
and tobacco from The Royal Oak Hotel. Never want anything like
that again. Looked into houses at dusk from icy wet streets.
Warm in there. Resigned longing, as if something had broken.
Everything seemed changed. Shops were different. The Arcade.
The Human Bat versus The Robot Gangster still in a window but
strangely transparent now. Shop empty... flakes of limewash on
the bare floor. Mill shop gone. Vague shopkeeper almost there.
Marketplace deserted under sodium lights. Loneliness of empty
cinemas. The Royal. Damp smell of leaky ceiling on gold painted
plaster. Wide road driven through the centre of town. Steely
Lane overgrown by ghost meadows. Duxbury Woods built over. Endless
road links. Supermarkets and petrol stations out there now. Shadows
of stupidity. Smiling councillors superimposed over a lost town
far away. Christmas on the market and farmers bringing fresh
food with the taste of coal smoke. Fading away. Built over. Money
changing hands quietly, then you leave. Smile across the years.
No place here. Chorley Guardian abandoned. Ruins and leaves above
the factory wastes.
Walking at sunset over Rivington. The library closed. Ghost books
in gold lettering with moving illustrations. One falls open.
Naked figure beside an oasis in the desert. Ruined houses and
bus station beyond. He goes away but the book vanishes before
he gets home. Never gets home this time. Never arrived. Lost.
Perhaps they forgot. Where can we go to? Reach my hand across
the years. It is too late, they have gone. Too far. Your hand
appears in books and songs, in dreams.
She awakes from sleeping in the armchair, waiting for her son
to arrive. Make-up on the delicate old face. Standing by the
window, gazing out. Bus depot over the road. Lights on all night.
Passing by. Engineer whistling. Walks by. Waiting. Never arrives,
not for years.
Left you there too long. Can't retrieve this damage done. Just
a ghost, still waiting. One day I will arrive, you will see.
Gone away now far too long.
No-one seemed to recognise him, they all seemed uneasy or afraid,
as if it were somehow important not to acknowledge him at all.
Turn away. Deny that presence.
He was faded and transparent, resembling several other people.
And there was something forlorn, fundamentally altered. He could
not realise that he radiated a terrible loneliness of unfathomable
distance and time. Displayed indications of other conditions
not dependent on any premise recognised here. All this glimpsed
unconsciously through proximity and transmitted as a howling
void of terror and distance and disembodiment. Of course everyone
turned away. Down wet stone streets forever.
When he was a child he knew he had dreamed of this. His grandfather
would tell him the story. The Astronauts Return. Unknown and
unrecognised, a long lost play at Santy's Theatre. He was fascinated,
not realising it had already happened, even then. Through the
Odeon foyer, Cinema Manager Mr Green says "Hello" then
looks puzzled. He too is transparent. Fading dinner jacket with
silk lapels by filmstar photos on the deco staircase. Cigarette
smell of the big green moquette and chrome sofa in the foyer.
Through the town, displaced and unacknowledged. It had already
happened. He looked in a shop window. Dark clothes. Can't quite
make out the face somehow. Blue skies then intermittent rain.
The old street empty now. Overgrown in part. Rearranged.
Shadow of the pilot on lupins growing from the sand. Must have
been years. Projected film across his face as he spoke to the
woman from the pet shop. Then the sequence in Woolworth - stole
a toy gun, beaten by his father. Sobbing alone up the stairs.
Other kids playing in the streets all around. Isolating agony.
Dread in the pit of the stomach. Never forgotten.
Glimpses of uncles returned from war lost among market stalls.
New concrete roadway empty and weed grown. Built by mistake through
the fields. Grass covered building from the train. Watched him
as if they knew. Eyes far away and still kind but knowing they
could not speak. Knowing it had already happened. Navy blue gabardine
coat and black beret. Cycle clips. Along the canal.
Father and mother still there. He was now much older than his
parents. They walk by with a shudder. Lifted up to the sky on
his father's shoulders in the park. Summer Sunset. Going home
now. Sees them go by, a series of shadows. Himself there as a
child. Small, unknowing. Years before, from a distance. What
happened, where did he go to? Maps and diaries contained in music
scores and diagrams he can no longer read.
Dark Victorian shop on Steely Lane. Smell of the foundry behind
dim stone walls. Wet streets. Black soot on every surface. Glass
bottles. Slippery Elm Food, Asafoetida, Liquorice Root, Sarsapiralla.
Smooth, dim, deal tables and benches. Dark smell of cordials
and tinctures and woody substances, herbs and remedies. No-one
comes. Mrs Gent - Proprietor. Temperance Bar. Lost lodges and
waterways in the grounds of abandoned factories. Groups of children
playing. Hide out there for years becoming the guardian of this
place. Never seen. Never recover the maps. The engines long since
dismantled, dispersed, taken away by enterprising junk dealers.
Now disguised on the scrapyard near the railway.
Childhood friends injured by wrecked fighter planes and a room
full of fibreglass. Old electrical devices exploded with water
and chains. Just a ghost now, waiting for the ship to arrive.
One night it comes down hovering then goes away swiftly without
landing. Burnt patch in the rhododendrons. One child dreams of
this and visits the site. Dream memory recognised through the
years. 1957. He feels a sudden inconsolable grief and loss. Terrible
dreams of returning. Grief of awakening replayed over and over.
Those days are gone.
The mortal fear and despair of those left behind. Kids avoid
the spot, sensing something dark there, a shadow on the garden.
Sit still and someone will come. Always in hope. Someday, someone
will come. Just wait. |
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