Words: Lara Fox (She/Her)
Rain pattered against the window. The windscreen wipers ticked back and forth. The red glow of a traffic light illuminated my face. The sky was a dull, dirty grey. An existential dread blanketed London. Or maybe it was only me? The car steadily carried me through the city. A small boat rocking on the murky sea. Hard raindrops hit the pavement, slicking the streets. Everything was as it should be. It was Thursday.
Feeling like I wanted to walk the rest of the way home, I signalled to the cab driver to pull over. Sitting in my prison-like 9-5 cubicle was giving me back pain. Shopkeepers were turning their signs to close, cafes were stacking their chairs on tables, and offices were switching off their lights. A pair of small children, one dressed as a skeleton, the other a witch, flew past me, laughing and shouting at their parents to keep up. Halloween. I had somehow forgotten. That electric sparkle Halloween holds over children, the possibility of being anyone you want to be whilst being able to consume endless chocolate, wears off when you reach adulthood. It had for me, anyway. I kept walking, head down, as the rain fell harder, splashing upwards around my ankles, soaking the bottom of my suit. Groups of 20-somethings started to appear, a glee in their eyes strangely similar to that of the children. What was it that made this night so filled with anticipation? I even felt it myself, although all that I thought awaited me was an oven meal and bed.
At the end of the street, I noticed a red glow escaping from a slightly ajar front door. As I got closer, I could hear classical music playing from the inside, floating up the stairs and wrapping itself around me in a warm embrace. That same red light filled the stairwell, creating a stark boundary between the outside world and whatever was down there. What the stairs led to, I could not see. Assuming it was just a nightclub opening early for Halloween, I went to continue my walk, eager to get home. But before I had the chance to fully turn away, a man emerged from the top of the stairs wearing a bejewelled red mask with a masquerade ball-esque decoration attached to it. He came outside, lit a cigarette, and just stared directly at me. He gestured to the stairwell as if directing me to go inside, but he was not ordering me. There was no threat there. He had an air of nonchalance about him. I am someone who tends to keep to myself and would never have expected to pay attention to the unwarranted gesture of a stranger. However, just as I was about to refuse and walk away, he took off his mask. The man had a remarkably familiar face, but I could not place where I could possibly have met him. Not just vaguely familiar but so overwhelmingly like one I felt I knew, just far, far older. The uncanny familiarity was so powerful that I could not leave.
Without a word, he put out his cigarette under his heel and walked briskly back down the stairs into the red abyss. I stood, fairly shaken, and looked at the stairs down which he had disappeared. The red hue bouncing off of them gave the image of someone descending into the depths of Dante’s inferno. A frightening yet intriguing allure. I walked in and was swallowed immediately by the music. There was a mystical force guiding me. It all felt extremely satirical, like a terrible remake of a classic horror movie. I played into this idea, too much of a realist to believe anything important awaited me at the bottom of these stairs.
The red light was getting stronger, now pulsating off the walls in sharp sudden bursts. The music had sped up as though someone had increased the frequency. It was sharply piercing my eardrums. The combination of the distorted music and oppressive light was all becoming too much, but when I tried to turn back, a wave of nausea overcame me. I buckled to the floor just as I made it to the top of the stairs. The last thing I remembered seeing was the man’s face looking down on me as my vision started to blur. I felt consciousness slipping away. He was saying something I couldn’t quite make out, but I could tell it was not malicious. Perhaps even comforting. Just before the world went dark, I realised who he was. It was me many years later; I was looking down at myself from some unknown future, back to this distorted present. My hazy brain was pushing to stay awake, screaming, ‘wait! Please! Who are you? Where am I?’.
‘Let go,’ he kept repeating. ‘Let go … Hell is what you make it.’
I awoke with a start. Sunlight was streaming through the windows. Birds chirped overhead. Children played happily outside. My bedsheets were wrapped around me, warm and fuzzy, and there was nowhere I’d rather be. The back pain I normally awoke to was gone. I looked at the clock to check the time. It was 10am on Thursday, the 31st of October.
