Fracture

The cold comes early this winter. I keep to my apartment, a few rooms above the street in an old house that has been coming apart for as long as I have lived in it. The brick is cracked and ivy has got into the mortar. The windows have gone cloudy with age, and the curtains are heavy enough to keep out most of the draught. There is a single oil lamp and an armchair worn to the shape of me. I sit in it with my coat still on and watch the flame bend whenever the wind finds a gap.

The wind is loud outside. Inside it is so quiet that it feels wrong, like a graveyard at dusk. At first I tell myself I like it. This is a rest, I say, a season away from other people and their small demands, and I will go back down into the street when I am ready. That was some time ago, and I am still not ready.

I spend hours at the window watching the street. People go past under their umbrellas with their shoulders hunched, all at the same pace, and none of them look up. In this rain I can stand there for an hour without seeing a single face.

I wonder where they are all going, and then I wonder why they bother. Each of them is as alone as I am. They just have not noticed yet.

Meanwhile the room has started to close in on me. Damp comes in around the window frames and gets into the wallpaper, and the whole place smells of wet wood and old paper. The walls used to feel solid. Lately they feel as if they are listening.

Through the wall I can hear a pendulum clock in the next room, and it never stops. I try to listen to the rain instead and I cannot. The ticking gets into the back of my skull and stays there, counting off the days as they go.

So I pace to the window and back, and the floorboards creak the whole way. Time has stopped behaving. An afternoon lasts three days, and then a week goes missing. The corners of the room look sharper than they used to, and the shadows thrown by the furniture are not quite the right shape.

I try to read, but the books on the shelf are old and yellow and falling apart, and the words slide away before I reach the end of a line.

The voices start when the rain eases and the wind drops. They are never loud enough to make out, only a rise and fall like people talking in another room. I catch myself leaning against the wall and holding my breath, sure that the next word will tell me what is happening to me. It never comes. The harder I listen, the further away they go.

I can no longer tell day from night. By now I know every sound the house makes: the floor, the wind whistling through the cracks, and above all that clock, each tick chipping a little more off me. I have stopped looking in the tarnished mirror, because the man in it looks as if he knows something I do not.

It starts at the edge of my sight with a flicker, like a match struck somewhere behind me. Then the walls seem to bend inward, in time with my heartbeat.

A sound follows, like an electric wire humming, low at first and then climbing until it fills my head. The ticking is inside my skull now, and every tick comes with a flash of white. My hands are shaking to a rhythm that is not mine.

The floor tips. I grab for something solid and find nothing. My throat closes, every muscle locks at once, and the room breaks into flashes of light and dark, faster and faster, until I cannot make anything out.

Then I am on the floor with my cheek against the boards and my fists clenched so tight that the nails dig into my palms. I cannot move or speak. My sight narrows to a single point of light, and in the dark around it I see the shadows, close enough to touch, watching me. The whispers have become a roar.

Eventually it lets go of me. I lie there getting my breath back, with the taste of iron in my mouth and the cold of the floor coming up through me. The clock is still ticking. The room has not changed, but I have.

The next day is strangely calm.

Sun comes through the curtains and lies warm across the floor. The noise of the city sounds far away, as if everyone outside has agreed to keep quiet for a while. The shadows look soft for once, and even the clock seems to have slowed down. I sink into the chair and let myself enjoy it, although I know it cannot last.

By evening the unease is back. The gas lamps come on in the street and their light shivers on the cobbles. The air in the room grows heavy, as though something has been pressing against the calm all day and is about to break through. I stay in my chair and tell myself it will pass. Whatever it is, it will pass.

But the world outside is restless.

Someone screams in the street, then someone else, and then I hear a whole crowd panicking. I grip the arms of the chair. Whatever is happening down there has nothing to do with me. If I stay where I am, it will fade like every other disturbance this city sends up to my window.

It does not fade. It gets louder. I shut my eyes, and the screaming comes through the walls anyway, as if it wants to be seen.

In the end I get up. My legs feel heavy. I go to the window and stop with my hand on the curtain, because I know that once I pull it back, there will be no getting the quiet day back.

My hand is shaking as I pull the curtain aside.

Chaos greets me.

A carriage is racing down the street with its wheels sliding on the wet stones, and nobody is holding the reins. The horses are wild with fear, but they cannot get free of it. It swerves off the road, mounts the kerb and ploughs into the people on the pavement, and they go down under it.

I stand frozen at the window. I want to look away and I cannot. The warmth has gone out of the room behind me. The city I have spent all winter shutting out has come right up to the glass and is making me watch.

The screams from the street and the ticking of the clock run together into one noise that keeps getting louder. The walls seem to throb in time with my heart, until I cannot bear it any longer.

I throw the window open. The cold air hits my face, and for a moment my head is clear. The street below looks strange and far away. Without thinking any further I climb onto the sill and jump, and the fall seems to go on far longer than it should.

I land more softly than I expected, on ground made soft by the rain. I lie still for a moment, waiting for the chaos in the street to reach me.

It never does. When I get to my feet the street is empty and completely silent, as if none of it had happened. I seem to be unhurt.

Then a gust of wind hits me, sharp and cold and unlike any wind I have felt before. The air is full of static. It prickles along my arms and neck and makes my hair stand on end, and underneath it I can hear a low hum, faint but impossible to miss.

The wind grows stronger and circles around me, pulling at my coat. The hum rises through the soles of my feet into my chest, and the street no longer feels solid, as though it might break apart under me.

I look around for something to explain it. The street is lit by a strange light I cannot trace, the shadows are too long, and the buildings seem to sway very slightly. The whispers that followed me all winter have gone quiet.

Then I look up.

The clouds have been torn open, and behind them, instead of stars, there is an enormous rock falling towards the earth, glowing red and trailing burning debris across the sky. The hum deepens until I can feel it in my bones. The clock has stopped. Time itself seems to have stopped with it.

Now, at the very end, I understand. The clock, the voices, the jump from the window: none of it could have saved me from this. The end was always coming, and all I have done is go out to meet it a little early. Everything I was afraid of in that room was only a rehearsal for what was waiting outside.

It fills the whole sky now, and the ground is shaking under my feet. There is nowhere left to hide.

As the world holds its breath, so do I.