The Message

When I regained consciousness the room was in darkness and the only noises were the rain hammering on the tin roof of the building and the distant, receeding whoops and cries of wild children. I felt sick and dazed as I pulled myself to my feet. I had dropped my camera on the way down, so I fumbled around on the floor until I found it and stuffed it into my pocket. I groped my way along the corridor to the door - the sodden plank was still there where I had put it, god knows how long ago. Had there ever been a light in this place, or music, or the apparition of my weeping grandmother? It seemed impossible, but the images were burned into my mind - and perhaps into my memory card too. I ripped at my coat to reach my camera but I couldn't get the screen to work even though it switched on. Shit, damaged in the fall, it will have to wait. I staggered out into the rain, angry and confused. It was even colder now and the wind howled round the dark echoing blocks rising into the moonless night. I had to find my safe place, but had no idea which direction to take. Almost bent double against the rain I pressed on through the empty lifeless streets, like streams now with the relentless rain. I soon came out into open land. The earth beneath my feet was saturated and muddy so I slipped and careened around before heading for some trees I could make out on the skyline. My safe place was by some trees, maybe this was the way I should go. I had a mattress there and some food carefully hidden. I crashed through the trees and out into some open ground in front of a large temple-like building. The surface beneath my feet changed abruptly into gravel; crisp, sturdy, reassuring. Over the rain and the crunching of my feet I could hear singing - and fervent, evangelical shouting into the ether, one word over and over again. Lord. I didn't trust myself after the last experience of hearing and seeing things in that broken building that I now doubted ever happened , so I continued forward. Then the large double doors of the temple building burst open and a crowd of singing and chanting people came towards me through the rain. I turned to move back into the trees but slipped on the soaking gravel and went down again, twisting my knee painfully. I felt hands on me, pushing, stroking, holding, lifting. The chanting had become a babble, a kind of ululating gobbledygook, now snatched away and then amplified crazily by the buffeting wind. I felt myself rising, being lifted on a raft of hands into the rain. The last time this happened to me was years ago, before it all ended, crowd surfing in the mosh-pit at a metal gig in Glasgow. This time it felt safer, and I was only wet with rain rather than sweat and beer hurled around by screaming frenzied metal fans. The crowd carried me out into the darkness, away from the building and I looked up at the sky. Suddenly an electric sign buzzed and flashed on and off the front of the building. It went out again quickly but that rasping electric buzzing hung in the air like a charge. Then the sign came on again, the message. I just had time to claw my camera from my pocket for the daily blip photo and snatch it before the message died in the night....




With thanks (and apologies) to Martin Creed.