Road to Hell

Condensation dripped down the window of the bus. Andi watched its slow trail. There was nothing to see outside, the fog only allowed a few feet of visibility.

‘All change,’ said the driver, bringing the vehicle to a halt.

‘This is as far as we go,’ he added, looking at Andi, the only remaining passenger, in the mirror.

Hours of travel had made Andi stiff, but he obediently rose and heaved his pack onto his back. It weighed on his shoulders, but the other weight was heavier, the one he hoped to walk off, even if it meant days of dragging his feet through the wilderness.

After the bus left, Andi stood alone at the edge of the road. It continued beyond the bus stop, but he couldn't see how far, in the fog. When he looked up, he saw steep slopes forming a valley that he guessed the road ran through, but ahead of him and behind him he could only make out a small stretch of battered tarmac. He sighed and began to walk, treading on from the point where the damp old bus had left him. His journey had only just begun, but the spring was already gone from his step, or perhaps had never been there.

For several hours he trudged, and the fog did not lift. In the fourth hour he felt a gnawing in his stomach, and thought of the rations he carried with him. But a small building revealed itself then, the fog peeling itself slowly off it as he drew closer. A metal sign hung from a rod over the door, it read ‘BAR’ in rusty letters.

No noise came from the building, so he half expected it to be abandoned, but the door yielded. Inside, three customers sat scattered and expressionless at separate tables, sipping cups of tea or pints of beer. A barmaid had her back turned to the entrance. She turned when she heard the door.

The place was grim. It seemed to Andi that everything was grey, and the air was only slightly warmer than outside. But the barmaid wore a white dress with a delicate red floral print, and a pristine frilly pinafore tied tightly around her waist. Her chestnut hair was piled on top of her head, and she smiled warmly at Andi. He stopped in front of the bar, forgetting to remove his pack as he stared at her. It seemed to him that there was something angelic about her, yet also something very wholesome. This wonderful combination of the celestial and the earthly muted him.

‘Hello stranger,’ she said, in what he heard as musical tones. ‘Why don't you put that bag down?’

This practical suggestion interrupted his reverie.

‘What can I get you?’ she asked, as he took up a bar stool.

‘Tea please,’ was all he could answer.

She nodded, and went away through the swinging doors to the kitchen, where the bop from the wireless lifted the mood. He fancied he could hear her feet dance on the tiles. In the bar though, nobody moved, except to sip on drinks which never seemed to get any smaller. Full cups were lifted, and full cups were set down again.

‘Would you like a pastry with your tea?’ she called, above the music.

‘Yes please,’ he shouted back, conscious of his own raised voice in the hushed room.

A few moments later she was back, happily bearing the comforting victuals.

‘What are you doing in these parts?’ she asked him as she set them down.

‘Oh, you know, walking.’

She looked puzzled but didn't say why.

‘What's your name?’ she asked.

‘Andi, with an i. My mother had a notion... nevermind. What's yours?’

‘Miranda.’

He liked this name very much, and thought it suited her perfectly.

‘Our names share so many letters,’ he said. ‘In fact, all my letters are in your name.’

‘So they are!’ she replied, and went back to drying cups.

Andi finished his tea and bid her a good afternoon. He winced as his pack settled back on his shoulders. Nevertheless, he walked until dusk, and set up camp for the night. As he sat by the fire and looked at the stars, he thought of Miranda, and wondered whether she belonged in Heaven or on Earth.

*

The next morning, he rolled up his bedding hoping that the fog had cleared but was disappointed when he crawled out of his tent and could not see past three pine trees. As he plodded further along the road that day he thought again of Miranda and tried to remember the details of the print on her dress, and the way some curls had escaped their pins and fell around her cheeks. Again, in the fourth hour of walking a building pierced the fog, and he entered in search of sustenance.

More expressionless patrons sat sipping, and as he neared the counter the kitchen doors opened. He stopped in his tracks when Miranda came through, in the same print dress as the day before, her pinafore still as immaculate.

‘Hello stranger,’ she said with her angel's smile.

‘I'm Andi, we met yesterday, remember?’ he replied. ‘In that other place down the road?’

She looked blankly back at him.

‘I'm Miranda. What can I get you?’

‘Tea, please,’ he answered, slowly.

He caught himself wondering then if he were stuck in a time loop, and had already stolen a glance at an old man's newspaper before he could remind himself that he didn't believe in whacky things like that. 4th October 1954, read the date. That was definitely one day later than the day before. He had left on the 3rd, he knew that.

He sipped his tea, and ventured a question to Miranda as she wiped the cups.

‘So where does this road go anyway?’

She half smiled, and was about to reply when the old man behind him spoke up:

‘Walking the road to Hell and he wants to know where it goes.’

The speaker smiled a cynical smile then, mirrored by the two other men drinking whiskey in overalls that matched the grey walls.

Miranda pushed the kitchen doors, and a saxophone's plaintive tune rang through the stillness.

*

Each day, Andi crawled out of his tent to trees shrouded in fog, and each day he dragged his heavy feet along the never-changing route, longing to see beyond the white wall, longing for a turn in the road, a ray of sunshine. And each day, his pack weighed on his thinning frame, and his heart did not get lighter. Thinking of Miranda gave him some respite, some escape from the feelings of shame he nurtured in the recesses of his soul, and each day he loved her a little more. Their shared letters gave him hope, although he didn't like to admit such a notion. And each day, he saw her. He grew accustomed to her blank expression at first, and the necessary repetition of introductions. The happiness she brought him, though brief, distracted him from the strangeness of discovering the same building and the same person at the same hour each day, even though he was moving forward in space, and the dates on the newspapers changed.

He was more preoccupied with getting to know Miranda than understanding the mechanisms of the world the bus had left him in. Miranda was here, so it was on all accounts better than the world he had left behind. He considered sometimes walking back, waiting for the bus to come and take him home, out of the fog, where he could put his bag down forever. But there was the other weight, and that he could never put down there. He suspected also, that moving forward was one of the keys to the daily meetings with Miranda. Who was to know what would happen if he moved in the other direction?

He used each of these meetings to find out a little more about her, and how she ended up a solitary barmaid on the road to nowhere. He didn't like to dwell on the old man's comment, and preferred to think of going nowhere than to Hell.

She had done well in school she said, and could have moved to the city. But her father was ailing, and couldn't keep the bar anymore, so she stayed to run things, for now.

He never saw her father, he only heard him call her from the depths of the house sometimes.

He wanted to spend more time with Miranda, and was thinking, absurd though it may sound in this setting, of asking her to dinner. She would know, he thought, where they could go, for there must be something here, other than trees and road and bar, otherwise why would those men be wearing overalls? And where did they come from, to sip their perpetual drinks?

He made up his mind one day, he would ask her there and then. After the ritual introductions and small talk, he would invite her to dinner.

And so, in the fourth hour, as he pushed the door, he tried to leave his shame outside, and hold his shoulders higher.

‘She will be my fresh start,’ he thought. ‘She doesn't have to know.’

As he sipped the tea she prepared and the conversation slowed down, he cleared his throat.

‘What would you say to...’

But an old man looked up from his newspaper then, over steel-rimmed glasses, no muscle in his face had moved yet he mocked Andi, challenged him, and won.

‘Yes?’ asked Miranda.

‘Nevermind,’ replied Andi, and took up his pack.

He smarted as he walked, feeling the old man's gaze still upon him, expressionlessly crushing his resolve.

‘I must find myself in private with her,’ he thought. ‘Tomorrow, I shall follow her into the kitchen, and the music will cover our conversation.’

*

The next morning, as he crawled from his tent, he hardly spared a glance for the trees, the fog seemed a permanent fixture in this strange land. He thought only of Miranda, and practised his invitation over and over in his mind. He knew the print of her perpetually clean dress by heart now, and curiously, pictured the shapes of the petals rather than her face as he repeated his lines, warming his hands on his tin mug by the fire.

‘I just have to believe that I am worthy,’ he thought to himself as he walked into the fog.

‘And besides,’ he insisted as he trudged, ‘she doesn't have to know. We can stay here once we are married. It must be quite beautiful when the fog lifts, and I can start over. Yes, I am worthy.’

Later that day he pushed the door of the bar, and ignoring the silent drinkers, installed himself on a high stool. After the usual introductions and having placed his order, he watched her move lightly through the swinging doors, her hips swaying just the right amount. He took a deep breath, and followed her, muttering ‘I am worthy, I am worthy...’ over and over to himself as he went.

The light from the kitchen glowed through the windows in the doors, and as he pushed them open, the music rang louder. But as they closed behind him, the sound faded, and the light turned almost to darkness. Instead of the homely kitchen he was expecting, he found himself in a dark stone corridor. He shivered as he saw the damp walls glisten in the faint light which came through the doors he had pushed. Looking over his shoulder, the bar now seemed inviting in contrast. But he pushed forward, down the long corridor, looking for Miranda, following a dim light which seemed quite far away. His reason told him to turn back, but he knew what was behind him: the road to Hell, the silent drinkers, and before that, the place he had fled. And so, he moved between the damp stone walls, and the light got brighter.

As he walked an outline began to form in his view: a figure, sitting against a wall on what seemed like a throne, and another, kneeling by its feet. Torches burned on the wall each side of the seated bodies. This seemed to be the end of the corridor.

‘Andi,’ said a deep rasping voice as he neared, ‘we have been waiting for you.’

He fell to his knees as he saw the creature, averting his eyes, letting his gaze fall on the scaled hands that rested on intricately carved ebony.

‘Miranda?’ whispered Andi, to the woman who knelt at the creature's feet, the pretty print dress he knew so well hanging off her thin wrinkled form. The woman threw back her balding head and laughed.

‘You didn't really believe you were worthy of “Miranda”, did you, Andi?’ came the bellowing voice.

‘No, I guess I never really did,’ whispered Andi, his shoulders drooping and his eyes fixing the scaly feet.

He drew his chest up then and looked straight into the glowing yellow slits that glared at him.

‘What do you want this time, my Lord?’