In Search of Narnia

For this tale, I stole from my own story, Looking for Narnia.

The original story sits very much in the realist genre, but for In Search of Narnia, I took the main character and his basic situation and placed him in the middle of a horror story. I hope you enjoy them both.

In Search of Narnia

At the age of seven, George Wade had read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and for the remainder of his childhood he had searched for the crisp white snow and forests of Narnia, rummaging in wardrobes for an escape.

Now, aged 40, he still welcomed the idea of discovering Narnia. His was a nine-to-five world of tube travel and office work—cold calling people and trying to sell them products and services they didn’t want—and then home to his one-bedroom flat in dismal Holloway.

Weekends were often worse. The routine of work might be tedious, but at least it gave him a reason to get up. On Saturday mornings he would wake with depression sitting on his chest like a fat, miserable cat.

He’d lie listening to the family downstairs going about their morning — chatting, arguing; the clatter of cutlery and bowls being washed, the slam of the front door and the sound of excitable feet running along the path. Sounds carried in old houses—they had not been built to be separate apartments. Sometimes he would pretend to be part of their unit or imagine he was tucked in his childhood bed listening to his own parents and siblings. 

Details of the family’s life would float up to him like tempting aromas. He knew what time the father normally arrived home from work and the times each of the two young children went to bed; he sometimes heard messages left on their answering machine and the minor squabbles that broke out between them. Saturdays they seemed to be at their loudest. 

Today was a Saturday. He’d opened his eyes at the usual time, fat cat squarely in place, and considered staying in bed all day — just let the dregs of sleep pull him back into doze after doze until the day had drifted by.

From somewhere he found the resolve to sit up, stretch and, finally, swing his legs over the side of the bed and rest his feet on the cold tiled bedroom floor. George had never heard of anyone tiling a bedroom floor, but his landlord had obviously been offered a great deal on terracotta tiles, because they covered every inch of floor space in the flat. 

George shuffled across the hallway to the bathroom, which smelt of musty, damp towels. It stung, as always, as he urinated. He’d been to the doctor about the pain a month ago, but the doctor had annoyed him, telling him all his ailments—including depression—were down to excessive drinking. On average George downed two bottles of wine a night. 

As he shook himself dry, he heard water pouring into the bath downstairs and the mother calling to the son, Freddie, to come and let the water at least touch him before they left. They would be going to see the father’s parents in about an hour. They always went on the third Saturday in the month, and that was today.

George scrutinised his face in the bathroom cabinet mirror. ‘I look like Shelley,’ he thought. Shelley was a character from a sit-com his mother and he had watched when he was a child. He’d never liked it. Shelley had been an unemployed intellectual, but basically a loser—a loser with saggy, dark bags under his eyes and no jawline.

Beyond his reflection he saw the panelled door set in the bathroom wall next to the toilet. It was an old door — maybe as old as the Victorian house. The cupboard was now used to store the hot water tank. Sometimes when he was really drunk he would imagine it was the door to Narnia and that he would open it and feel crisp snow under his feet and smell pine trees. 

The morning after these evenings, he’d wake feeling pathetic. The cringe feeling once elicited by the memory of a drunken kiss, or singing too loudly on the way home from the pub with friends was now borne from painful embarrassment at his own lonely existence and desperation for escape.

The woman downstairs was screaming.

George stared at the bathroom floor, as if he could see through the hated terracotta to the flat below. 

‘Just piss off!’ the women screamed. There was an unhinged quality to it. He remembered screaming like this once, as Emma was leaving him. He’d stood in the doorway of their bedroom watching her pack and had fallen apart. He’d felt the disassembly of his mind and the screaming had risen from him like a siren. Emma had turned rigid, frightened eyes focussed on him as he sank to the floor like some soap opera queen, rage and fear distorting his face and body. He’d huddled in the doorway like a human draft excluder.

‘I’ll be back in a week,’ Emma had said. ‘I’d like it if you were gone by then. This is my flat, remember.’

That evening, climbing the stairs on his way back from the corner shop, wine bottles clanking conspicuously in the carrier bag, George met the screaming woman from downstairs on the landing. She was struggling with two shopping bags of her own, as she fitted her front door key into the lock.

She glanced at him and said ‘Hi’ in a soulless voice.

He nodded and hurried to open the door to his own flat before it became awkward.

His flat smelt stale as usual — stale smoke, stale food and stale him. It always hit him whenever her returned to it after work, or just a quick trip to the shop.

He dropped the carrier bag onto the kitchen counter, thought about pouring his first glass of red wine, but then decided to watch some TV for a bit instead. It was only 4.30pm. If he started drinking now, he’d need another bottle by nine, and he didn’t fancy the drunken stagger to the shop. It was already dark, which made the depression keener and his desire for alcohol stronger, but he forced himself to sit on the sofa and switch on the TV.

He flicked between channels for ten minutes, then threw the remote onto the coffee table and got up to pour himself a glass of red. He’d drink slowly, making the two bottles last until he went to bed.

By eight o’clock, he’d drunk a bottle and a half of Merlot, and was about to pour another large glass. The speed of drinking had made him agitated rather than relaxed. He staggered to the bathroom for his third piss of the evening, and found himself staring at the cupboard door again. If only. Imagine opening it and seeing the trees and the lantern…

For fuck’s sake, George.

He pulled the door open, ready to laugh miserably at the sight of the hot water tank, coated in condensation. Instead he stumbled backwards, gawping at the impossible sight of a corridor, or tunnel. Yes, it was more a tunnel, carved into rock. The walls ran with moisture, which, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom beyond the cupboard door, he saw was collecting on the ground, creating numerous murky pools. He felt his body and mind reeling with the shock of the discovery. He’d actually found it, a world inside a wardrobe—well, bathroom cupboard.

He took a deep breath, hoping for the aroma of fresh snow and pine, but instead he was hit with the same stale smell he’d noticed earlier when he entered the flat, only so much stronger—so strong he gagged.

 He opened the bathroom window, taking several gulps of fresh air, before returning to the cupboard and squinting down the tunnel. Was there light at the end? He pictured a lantern in a forest. He took a tentative step forwards, gasping as his foot, clad only in a well-worn sock, touched the damp, surface. It was real. He felt the water seep through to his skin and the hard, jagged rock dig into his sole. He felt dizzy. This was too much. This couldn’t be.

And then the moaning started. A dismal, desperate sound, the carried towards him down the tunnel, growing louder and louder until he had to cover his ears with his hands.

There were two figures walking towards him now. Just silhouettes at first, hand-in-hand, but soon he could distinguish them. One was Emma and she was smiling, the other was Sam Carpenter, the man she now lived with, and he was smiling too—the smug bastard. They were both staring straight at him, although they didn’t seem to see him. Their grins remained fixed, as their feet slapped against the stone floor, water spraying around them. They kept coming, like walking corpses, until they stood just a few feet away, still grinning, faces like wax masks.

George wanted to step back out of the cupboard and slam the door closed on this hideous scene. But suddenly Emma, or whatever this thing was, leapt forward, hands gripping his neck, fingers crushing his throat, as she continued to smile. Behind her, Sam began to laugh.

George screamed, thrashing wildly with his arms, somehow dislodging Emma’s grip, and falling backwards into the bathroom. He kicked out at the door, eventually pushing it closed, shutting out the hateful sight of the grinning Emma, and the sound of Sam’s inane cackling. His body began to tremble uncontrollably and his breathing was coming to fast and shallow. He began to count familiar objects around him—the bath, the mirror, the soap dish, the crumpled towel on the floor. His breathing began to regulate and the trembling gradually calmed.

What just happened?

He used the edge of the sink to haul himself upright and touched the cupboard door with the tips of his fingers. He expected to feel it hum with an alien energy, but it just felt like a normal door. He rested his hand on the lever handle, counted to three, and then pushed down, pulling the door open, ready to slam it closed again. There was the hot water tank, and a musty-smelling T-shirt he’d left on top of it to dry about a week ago. He took in this now comforting sight, then gently pushed the door closed and shuffled through the living room to the kitchen, reaching for the bottle of wine.

 *

‘Mate,’ said Dan, and even over the phone, George could see the look of despair on his friend’s face. ‘You know this didn’t actually happen, right? How many bottles of wine had you downed at this point?’

‘I just needed to talk to someone about it,’ said George, now wishing he hadn’t.

‘You can always talk to me, Mate, but I can’t help you while you’re shutting yourself off like this. When did you last call and ask if I wanted to go for a drink, or to see a match? It’s been months, and that’s because I badgered you until you said yes. I can’t force you to keep up the friendship, George. But you must know that sitting in that flat, trying to drown yourself in red wine every night isn’t going to make things better. And as for all this Narnia shit…’

George now regretted confessing to Dan about his Narnia obsession during a drunken chat about favourite books.  Dan’s had been something intellectual and adult. Dan often surprised people with his intellect. He could play the role of a beer-swilling lad when he wanted, but he could also talk for hours about pretty much anything cultural. He was still talking now.

‘You know Narnia, the snowy version you love so much, was meant to represent Hell on Earth, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ said George, who had managed to avoid discovering the religious symbolism of the Narnia books until he was in his late teens. He still tried to block it out. He just wanted Narnia to be a magical world with frolicking fawns and talking beavers.

‘Well Mate, you don’t need to look for that, you’ve done a bloody good job of creating it for yourself.’

‘What?’ George felt suddenly offended, and confused.

‘The drinking, George, and the almost total lack of human interaction. When did you last actually chat to someone like this?’

George wanted to say that this was hardly a two-way conversation, but he’d obviously opened a floodgate and Dan went on.

‘Make the effort, Mate, not just with me, but with all your old mates, and maybe try and make some new ones—even some female ones. It’s been a year…’

‘Thanks, Dan. I’ll take all that on board,’ said George.

‘Listen, George, I don’t mean to be hard, but…’

‘I’m sorry, I have to go,’ said George, and he put the phone down before Dan could make him feel any worse.

* 

On his way back from the shop that evening, George saw the woman from downstairs walking ahead of him. She looked forlorn, head bowed, shoulders slumped. He wondered if she also had two bottles of wine in her carrier bag. He hadn’t heard any of her family return, so he guessed her husband had taken her at her word and pissed off, and taken the kids with him. She’d always struck him as a positive, upbeat person, from what he had gleaned through the floor of his flat. It was sad to see her like this. George slowed his pace so that they wouldn’t end up meeting at the front door.

Home again, immersed in the stale bubble, he didn’t even bother to pretend that he would wait until later to pour his first glass. He felt the surge of relief as the red liquid glugged from the bottle. He was also thinking about the cupboard in the bathroom, and whether he would look inside it tonight, once the alcohol had numbed the fear of what he might find. Maybe tonight would be different. Perhaps if he thought hard enough about a beautiful, magical place before he opened the door, that’s what he would discover. And then he could just close the cupboard door behind him as he stepped into the forest.

 He drained the first bottle in less than an hour and staggered to the bathroom. Everything was a little out of focus, but he managed to grasp the handle to the cupboard door and pull it open. Cold air hit him, and when he breathed in, he smelt pine. He wanted to cry. He pushed through the fur coats that filled the space beyond the door and stepped out onto crisp snow. There, just a little way ahead, was a lantern, casting yellow light on the surrounding trees.

He stood swaying on the edge of the pool of light, waiting for something. The arrival of a friendly fawn, perhaps. Or would it be a witch in a sleigh drawn by wolves? If it was her, should he hide? Or just embrace the adventure?

Someone stepped from the shadows. A creature with legs covered in fur. George gasped and almost called the name of his beloved character. But when the alcoholic haze cleared, he saw the creature’s face.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said his father. ‘Look at the state of you.’

George moaned and shook his head. This wasn’t right.

His father tottered forwards on his bowed, hairy legs, which looked inadequate to the task of supporting the man’s bloated torso. The face was just as George remembered it, the last time he had seen his father, a few days before his death—jaundiced and sagging, as if it had been filleted.

‘Wipe your mouth, for God’s sake, your lips are black from all the red wine, you sad sack of…’

‘Please…’ whimpered George.

His father looked him up and down, scornful eyes digesting every detail.

‘Well, I’d say I was disappointed,’ he said, ‘But you’ve turned out pretty much as I expected. A pathetic drunk still walking into wardrobes hoping to find something better.’

George tried to remember a kinder side to his father, but this was an accurate representation of the real man. Disdainful, judgemental and cruel.

George began to edge backwards towards the rear of the cupboard. His father, or the hooved creature that resembled him, trotted after him, ranting: ‘Selling shit no-one wants, living on your own because you weren’t man enough to make a woman happy, drinking yourself to sleep every night!’

‘Shut up!’ screamed George, and he turned and ran back through the coats, stumbling out, not into the bathroom, but into the tunnel. He saw the bathroom light dimly shining up ahead and charged towards it. Behind him he heard hooves clicking on the rock floor; the sound grew more rapid, and he could hear his father’s ragged breaths.

He flung himself through the cupboard door, glancing back just briefly to see the father/fawn atrocity cantering down the tunnel, face inflamed with rage, slack mouth smeared with phlegm, sagging neck flapping like a ball sack.

He slammed the door closed.

 And waited.

 No-one pounded on the other side. No-one called through the varnished wood about how pathetic he was.

This time George didn’t open the door to check everything was back to normal. Tomorrow he would buy some locks to make sure it stayed closed. For tonight he wedged a stool from the kitchen under the handle, and went to bed.

*

He hadn’t expected to sleep, but when he opened his eyes, it was daylight, and he could hear the woman downstairs crying.

 He woke himself up fully with strong coffee before checking inside the cupboard. Sweating hot water tank and the same t-shirt. He was still going to buy locks. He didn’t want any of those monstrosities getting out.

As he reached for the latch of his front door, he heard the door to the downstairs flat open and hesitated. He remembered the mournful sound of her crying earlier, and decided to bite the bullet.

She was standing in the communal hall, struggling to pull the front door open. George knew from last winter that the lock sometimes stuck in the cold weather.

‘Can I help? He asked, and she jumped slightly before turning and nodding.

  ‘Please.’

After some jiggling, aided by muscle memory, George pulled the door open. He hadn’t even noticed that it had snowed overnight. But a thin layer of it coated the front path and the pavement. Flakes were still falling like TV static.

 ‘Thanks,’ said the woman.

 ‘My pleasure,’ said George, ushering her through the door ahead of him, and closing it behind them.