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Back The Escapement Save as PDF
Chapters (15)
  1. Map
  2. The Red Flower
  3. Tinkerers
  4. The Long Drop
  5. The Great Train Robbery
  6. The Waiting Place
  7. Big Top
  8. Clochards
  9. The Fall of Jericho
  10. The Preacher
  11. Hole
  12. The Hermit
  13. The Plant of Heartbeat
  14. Afterword
  15. About the Author

Low-lying hills, far in the distance. The shrubbery was sparse. The more they rode the stronger did the smell of substance linger. Ghostly cars swept past the lonely prairies, ghost men walked past ghostly shops, ghost traffic lights, ghost city streets. Far, far in the distance, the Stranger imagined he could smell salt. Imagined he could see dark rising mountains.

Onwards they rode, until they came to Hole.

Hole

header flower

TEN:

HOLE

They heard and they saw it for miles before they reached the place. The fires burned endlessly, bright white flames hungrily devouring the horizon. They looked like albino lizards crawling on a vast black screen. There were no stars above Hole. The sky was written and erased endlessly. Only occasionally they would see a ghost plane from that other place fly through and disappear. The Stranger wondered if the passengers inside could see the Escapement. Perhaps, cruising at high altitude, someone would look out of their window, expecting clouds and stars, only to be granted a glimpse of this other place, an image to carry with them through all the years ahead, a moment of wonder at something inexplicable.

The burning fires were fuelled by substance. More substance than the Stranger had ever imagined could be found in one place. The fires were like the thieves’ lights one found in prospector towns, but on an unprecedented, industrial scale. It made the Stranger uneasy. There were many blights and snares and traps on the Escapement, buried debris from bygone ages, and the unfathomable machinations of pupae and Colossi in their endless war. Yet they were all of the Escapement, and woven into its fabric. This was something else, a hole in the matter of the world. He had never before seen a region where the walls between this and that other place were so thin. Even in prospector towns where they mined the seams of substance, such as could be found, the concentration was only relatively small. Mining towns were like half-open windows . . . but this place, the Stranger thought, was more like a door.

Then there was the noise. The thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . like the beating of a giant, living heart buried underground. It sent tremors through the earth. It vibrated in the Stranger’s bones. After a time, he almost began to think it was his own heart that was beating, out of body.