The Toynbee Convector

Now...

Very quietly, he lifted his head. To stare at the dark light bulb sunk in its dead white socket, six feet above his head.

It was as far off as the moon.

His fingers twitched.

Somewhere in the walls of the house, his mother turned in her sleep, his brother lay strewn in pale winding sheets, his father stopped up his snores to—listen.

Quick! Before he wakes. Jump!

With a terrible grunt he flung himself up. His foot struck the third step. His hand seized out to yank the light-chain there. Yank! And there again.

Dead! Oh, Christ. No light. Dead! Like all the lost years.

The chain snaked from his fingers. His hand fell.

Night. Dark.

Outside, cold rain fell behind a shut mine-door.

He blinked his eyes open, shut, open, shut, as if the blink might yank the chain, pull the light on! His heart banged not only in his chest, but hammered under his arms and in his aching groin.

He swayed. He toppled.

No, he cried silently. Free yourself. Look! See!

And at last he turned his head to look up and up at darkness shelved on darkness.

“Thing...?” he whispered. “Are you there?”

The house shifted like an immense scale, under his weight

High in the midnight air a black flag, a dark banner furled, unfurled its funeral skirts, its whispering crepe. Outside, he thought, remember! it is a spring day. Rain tapped the door behind him, quietly.

“Now,” he whispered.

And balanced between the cold, sweating stairwell walls, he began to climb.

“I’m at the fourth step,” he whispered.

“Now I’m at the fifth…”

“Sixth! You hear, up there?”

Silence. Darkness.

Christ! he thought, run, jump, fell out in the rain, the light—!

No!

“Seventh! Eighth.”

The hearts throbbed under his arms, between his legs.

“Tenth—”

His voice trembled. He took a deep breath and—