Chapter 4: The Forever Tower – Part 4

Two walls stood on either side of me. I looked back out through the dark rectangle of a tunnel’s end, into the line. It was a window back to the world I knew. A world in which, just as soon as it had flared, the flame of violence sizzled out and the sombre silence of my world fell back over the walkers and the frozen. Peering out from the corridor, I couldn’t see what might have stopped it, but no one nearby looked at all fazed. They shuffled forwards as they always did, as if nothing had happened.

In my mind I told myself to take a step forwards and rejoin them. I wasn’t going any farther up if I just stood here in this dim corridor and watched the world pass me by. There was nothing to be had in the corridors, else everyone would have entered them. They were nothing but a false promise or the world’s alternative to the concept we called dreams, something to tug us away from the real and into fantasy, something that if we listened too closely to, gave even the slightest inroad on our minds, would snatch them away and pull us into darkness. At least, that was I’d always thought. Why else would not a single person in all the world have ever mentioned them?

If I stayed here too long, I’d be frozen. Around the centre or in the corridors, walls were walls, and walls sang. Why wasn’t I going back to all that was normal? I turned around and peered into the shadows, remembering the figure I’d seen flit across. Had they been like me? Had they stepped in from the stairs? Had they become lost?

Or was there more to the world than what I knew?

Against all wisdom and good judgement, contrary to my very thoughts as they railed against my actions, I began to walk down the corridor. Although it was only a few metres to the first door, I witnessed those steps over the course of what seemed to me a thousand years. It was as if some vast and terrible weight, a burden I never even knew I had carried, was being lifted from me, and with that relief I grew light as a feather and thought I might float to the ceiling. Instead, I realised I was falling and quickly put out a hand to catch myself. As soon as it touched the smooth, cold surface of the wall, time snapped back to full speed.

I took a deep breath and steadied myself against the wall. The relief that had swamped me only moments ago was already turning sour in my mouth as fear bubbled up amongst it. My hand curled around a doorknob ― not a thing I’d ever touched before; the rooms we used for sleep had only empty doorways. I stood ready to open this real, solid door, this barrier between me and the knowledge of whatever lay in the room beyond. How long could I keep going before all chance of return was lost?

A voice came to me, frail as a whisper and faint as an echo; an echo of a memory from long ago. An old, rasping voice, that told me: ‘Keep going up.’

I wasn’t going up. Where was I going? If I was lost to this temptation, this yawning beckoning maw that sought to swallow me, that had lived insidious life for so long in my periphery, who would carry that memory any longer? Who would carry forwards the last words of a failing old man? And what did it mean if no one could? Memories came and went faster than the beat of a heart. Every moment I lived a million ancient and treasured things were forgotten forever, and a million new and exciting were witnessed and remembered. In the face of all that, what was it really worth to try so hard, to dedicate my life and my own memories to one man I’d known so briefly?

Before I even had a chance to make the decision myself, my hand seemed to turn of its own accord, twisting the doorknob around and pushing inwards. Inside was dimly-lit. It was spacious. Rectangular, carpeted, with a flickering low yellow light in the ceiling. Empty. There was no furniture, no windows, no other doors, and no people. Suddenly doubting myself, I backed out of it and crossed the corridor to the room opposite, but that one was the same, the exact twin ― no ― the exact mirror of the first.

Was that all the corridors had to offer? The same room over and over again stretching out for eternity… nothing but the Tower on another axis. With that thought a sudden desperation grasped me ― this couldn’t be all there was, there had to be something beyond the Tower and the endless progressionless movement, something beyond a vague and empty finish line I would never reach. Dreams, I reminded myself. I know what dreams are.

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I pressed on. Further down the corridor. Behind me, the light from the stairway dwindled and died away until I was fully enveloped in the shadows of the world beyond mine. There were other doors. I tried each one I came across; a miniscule few were locked, and all those I could step through led to either empty rooms or more corridors, with more doors. I had moved from an unending yet comfortingly predictable staircase to a labyrinth of chaos and uncertainty. By the time it occurred to me again that perhaps I should turn back, I had forgotten the way.

I slumped down against one of the walls and let my head fall into my hands. What sort of madness had made me throw away my world for this darkness and solitude? How stupid did I have to be to listen to the temptations of the corridors, a song so much more subtle yet infinitely more sinister than even that of the walls? I wasn’t frozen, but what was I? Nothing? No one? Here, where no one else ever set foot, where there was no food or fountains to replenish my supplies; where I would die, and the words of an old man would die with me.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve given up already.’

My head snapped up so fast it felt a little light for a moment. As my focus returned, I found myself face to face with a young woman with a curious look in her dark eyes, her head tilted as she sat across the corridor from me, knees drawn up to her chest, watching. It was only as I opened my mouth to reply that I realised I could, in some wavering, non-comittal sense, see through her and to the wall she sat with her back to.

‘You’ve barely been here a few hours,’ she continued. ‘You have to keep going. I sat down like you, and look how I turned out. If you stay here you’ll be found.’

Had it been hours already? I shook my head, still trying to work out whether she was actually there or if I was hallucinating. ‘Are you… dead?’

She frowned. ‘Well, not exactly. But I can tell you I don’t remember things well. I just wander, mostly. That’s not a good life. You need to find one of the locked doors. Kick it in if you have to, and go through. It’ll be dark, but you have to do it or you’ll end up the same as me.’

Slowly, I clambered to my feet. In response, the woman rose with grace, almost inhumanly, as though her body simply floated into a standing position. ‘I don’t―’ I began, but she held up a finger.

‘You need to go.’ She cocked her head and a shadow seemed to come over her face. ‘They’re on their way. No one’s supposed to end up here, or even know here exists, but sometimes we do, so they clean us up. You don’t want that. Go now. Find a locked door, get it open, go through. And if you hear them coming, run. Go now!’

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