***
A chessboard floats into my mind and lands by my feet.
It swells and expands until it’s about half the size of a netball court. The surrounding wooden frame begins to rise off the floor, until it stands nearly two feet in height. The white squares slide underneath the black and the white Staunton chess pieces slowly ascend onto the giant platform.
They stand over seven feet tall.
The black spaces then move underneath the white, and the whole process is repeated with the opposing pieces.
Everything is still. There isn’t a single sound.
I climb onto the board, placing my left palm on the rim in order to hoist myself up. My mind is not dreamy and blurred, like in most dreams, as if one unrelated event will blend into another seamlessly.
I stand upright, and as I do so, out of the corner of my eye, notice an inscription running around the edge of the board. I can nearly read all of it between the tall, ebony and ivory sentinels, but a few words are obscured. I slowly begin to walk around the board, one eye on the back of the white detachment in front of me that appears to be made from the most intricately carved mahogany.
‘Life isn’t the black and white game that you thought.’
As I read the prose, my left hand brushes against a piece. It swivels round, towering over me, with a twisted expression on its face; an expression of the moment of death captured in an instant; shrieking in agony.... I cower and nearly pitch backwards off the rim, fear and horror sucking all curiosity out of my lungs.
I hear a silent scream. I don’t know how. Maybe I feel it more than I hear it.
I hastily grab my bearings on the board. My time at chess club pays dividends and I know from my position at the corner, I should be facing a white Rook; In front of me however, I face a morbid caricature of Mark, my mother’s partner. The gnarled finger nails on his wooden hands are tearing into his cheeks. There is no blood, just deep grooves gauged into his face.
I shake my head from side to side in denial.
Suddenly, a different white piece slides silently forward two spaces – the opening move.
I stand bolt still.
A black piece counters, moving one space forward. I recognise the basic opening tenets of the game. I look down again, adjusting my balance, and watching the game that’s unfolding while attempting to decipher the rest of the words at my feet. I slowly trace my route up the side of the board, with the other eye on the rest of the inscription. White makes a move I don’t recognise. I look down and take in the next part of the phrase.
‘Sometimes, we profess to be the players.’
I move onto the third side of the board. I’m now behind the black pieces. The wood beneath my feet feels solid. I stop and watch the pieces gliding to and thro; black has a strong, secure stockade akin to the King’s Indian Defence and white has made some unusual choices in its opening remit – What is that: A Ruy Lopez move?
The piece that looks like Mark begins to bother me a whole lot more. White brings a Knight forward in an attempt to control the centre of the board, but I can already see that Black can counter this easily. I walk on. This dream seems so real. Within a few seconds, I’m at the third corner in my attempt to circumnavigate. I look down.
‘When we are actually the ones being played.’
Black is close to controlling the centre of the board and white is moving aimlessly.
Black takes full advantage of this by crucifying a defenceless Pawn. The piece shatters into thousands of wooden fragments, fragments that remain in a plume of wood and dust before the remnant combusts into red flames, burning into nothingness. The heads of the white pieces bend forward in grief at the loss of one of their own. As they do, they begin to shimmer and brighten from light of unknown origin. They all begin to shrivel, some swivelling back and forth, darting anguished, silent glances at one another; lost and confused.
One of the pieces catches my attention. From where I stand, and from what I can now observe - the full gravity of the inscription around the board sinks in like somebody bungee-jumping my soul.
I charge onto the board darting through the black pieces, the last line of the inscription simply doesn’t matter right now. I feel like I’m dodging bumper cars at the fairground. Electricity sparks over my head. To my horror, I now recognise several pieces - we are the ones being played.
The remorseful pieces all raise their wooden faces and stare at me pleadingly.
Mark, My mother, Mr Washwater – many people whom I know.
What is happening? Am I still asleep?
My legs give way in front of me and I fall at the feet of a stranded pawn. The engraved, chubby features, the distressed fearful eyes of my younger brother, Buddy.
I swivel to stare at the spaces where the Queen and King should be. Why isn’t the Queen – the most powerful piece - lending support?
…And, I see my very self, standing there carved from wood, a look of denial on my face.
I am the White Queen.
I now look at the King: It’s Camille. Oh my goodness, it’s Camille. It’s the Queen’s role to defend the King.
That’s weird.
A Bishop for white moves diagonally to a place near me. Nobody is defending my brother. The Bishop is Mr Washwater. He looks studious, but oblivious to what’s going on. I trace his line of attack and realise he’s made a bold but naive move to attack the opposing Queen, but he’s left himself exposed with no back up; a novice’s move.
And then it hits me.
I spiral round on my heels to look at the black chess pieces, half expecting them to have crow-like features etched into their faces, but to my horror, I see the very same faces. Buddy, Camille, Ol’ Washo, Mum, Mark; other people I know. The black Queen is Camille. The black King is me. The roles are reversed.
The black Knight closest to me is Dezza. He looks poised and composed, unlike his white counterpart.
I walk to the other side of the board as the black Queen slides towards a white Rook. I see Mark squeal in desperation, his mouth contorting in muted anguish, before the Queen slides on to his square. His Castle is instantly decimated into thousands of wooden shards that self-combust. Camille, the black Queen, gloats wordlessly, as she moves completely into the space he has left behind. I look at the diagonal trajectory now open to her for the next move and I can see that she has put me in Check.
‘They’re playing against each other; they’re destroying each other.’
I hear a voice; my own voice.
It sounds detached, frightened.
It is only now I notice that the black pieces have a strange green glow above them every time they move.
Buddy’s Pawn moves one space forward, out of the line of the opposing Knight but, straight into Camille’s path, blocking her Checking manoeuvre.
‘No,No,No...!’
I hurdle headlong towards him, wrapping my arms completely around his smooth wooden frame. I push with everything I’ve got. It’s like pushing against a lamp post. He won’t budge. I give it everything…
‘It’s the wrong move!’
I spin round and round screaming at the top of my voice.
‘It’s not the right move!’
Each of the black and white squares underneath and around me, flash up the following phrase one word at a time:
‘Shot his own sow right through the heart.’
I grab tightly hold of Buddy around his face and plead with him to move. He looks sad and accepting of his fate; he doesn’t even know I am there.
All around me, phrases fire back and forth across the squares, one word here, one word there.
‘Fol de riddle, lol de riddle, hi ding ho.’
Faster and faster they flash until I feel myself being blinded, by the strange strobe effect. I gasp, disorientated.
Suddenly, everything goes black. I stumble over, feeling temporarily weightless and suspended in nothingness.
I cry out my brother’s name, as a strange
green mist lights the face of the black Queen. Forwards she moves, as one more phrase lights up on the board.
‘Here comes the chopper, to chop off your head.’
I run with all my might straight at Camille, in a last ditch attempt to save Buddy. I brace myself for the impact.
I have the book in my hands.
I am wide awake.
Light peeps in through the gap in the curtains. My lips taste of salt and my pillow is damp.
Not only do I have the book in my hands, but I am holding it directly over my chest. I check my wrist for the time on my new broken watch. It’s seven am. I catch sight of my tattoo....
‘What the hell is happening to me!?’
I roll my head from side to side and hear a soft crumpling. Arthur’s device has brought me out of the most devilish dream. Well, that invention works just fine. I stare at Buddy. He’s fast asleep.
I try to catch my breath for a few moments, clawing reality back in.
Sitting bolt upright, I grab the dream diary from my bedside table that I’ve been completing for English, and sketch rough details.
How did the book get out of my bag and into my sodding hands? Was it flying like Buddy described?
I open the thick tome and turn to one of the blank pages between the chapters. The Stone Angel told me to write here and that’s precisely what I’m going to do.
The pen nib touches the surface of the page. No hesitation this time. I’m vexed, I need answers.
I’m less than a word into writing the line, ‘In the dream...’, when my scrappy handwriting is replaced by smooth, elaborate, old English script. I continue to write, but, the new handwriting disconcerts me to the point that I stop and stare, waiting for it to catch up with my style. I adjust to this, and spend the next ten minutes detailing the events of the night.
No sooner have I finished, when pages closer to the beginning, start to bulge and swell. Under my bed, the bell is ringing in my bag. Something is moving inside the book, near to the front.
I start to push the book away, across the bed.
Several tiny, blue and white – what I can only describe as miniscule spinning tops - spill out from the edges, on to my bed. The scent of freshly cut grass smacks into my nostrils. More spinning tops tumble from the side as I bravely place my fingers under the leaf and turn, quickly snapping my hand away. Dozens fly out, all configuring into a diagonal formation, circling and twisting in a spiralling motion, round and round, hovering just off my bed. They hum and vibrate collectively, and sound like many Tawny owls from a great distance.
I look at the page that’s open before me and immediately feel exceedingly pissed off!
It’s the nursery rhyme section: It’s the one about the Carrion Crow.
Why is this thing insistent on speaking to me in such a childish, infantile, babyish way?
‘I get it, I get it. The Crow is turning people against one another...’ I whisper angrily.
I sit there and think about the very words I uttered…and the dream.
‘Against one another.’
The bell bangs a chime out so loud, Buddy stirs in the bed beside me.
I jump.
Another page begins to contort. I place my fingers into it, ready to turn as the spinning tops fly back into the book just as I close the previous page. Streams of fairy lights coil and weave their way out of the side of this page like a silvery spider’s web. I brush one of them and its light turns from a soft white to a brilliant gold, as do all the others. They hum in unison as if they are pleased to be touched. It sounds faintly choral, like I’m listening to thousands of tiny fairies.
The nursery rhyme underneath the tangled web, reads: Oranges and lemons, sing the bells of St. Clements.
I read it all the way down to the bottom: Here comes the chopper to chop off your head.
‘Look, I don’t really get it.’
I then realise what I should have already realised. The book is giving me the interpretation, but in its own way. I close my eyes and immediately, something the Stone Angel said, seers across my mind:
‘The people of the Printing Press gradually grew to understand some of its power but could not grasp its purpose. This in itself led to great conflict.’
Simplicity.
Understand it like, like…its intended audience would, Shel. The Stone angel said that the book had been possessed by others, but was meant for me.
As I think about the chess pieces moving back and forth, another page starts to bulge. The fairy lights clamber back inside tightly as I turn towards the next mystery: Purple smoke is billowing out of the side, and I waft away plumes of the stuff, breathing some of it in. Suddenly, my heart feels warm, and my finger nails start to glow with a similar purple tint. In the midst, tiny vortexes form instantaneously, channelling the smoke in different directions.
Apart from this, I can barely see a thing. I cough and wave the smoke away.
As it clears, I discern the words below: Goosey, goosey gander, where do I wander...
Ahh, I remember this. This is at least different to the others. I read the last lines: There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers, so I took him by his left leg and flung him down the stairs.
Oh my goodness. I used to sing this in the playground. Essentially, I was singing about attempted murder.
Attempted murder.
And then it dawns on me why the people of the Printing Press could not grasp the purpose of this book. They just saw it as mainly a bunch of Nursery Rhymes...and nothing more.
As the purple smoke vanishes the moment I close the page, I’m already clambering out of bed, and hastily getting ready for school. I have Mr Washwater for History, just after break today. If I could just pick his brains during break time?
What was it AKM told me? Ask him questions about the Island. I go to work rehearsing my intro.
Chapter Seven
When It All Kicks - Off