COPYRIGHT MARK A WILLIAMS
The Cascade
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
Chapter 1 – Setting Sun.
The mist slowly began to condense over the murky waters of the river in the early evening. The sky over the city is a murky grey, the odd dirty seagull wheels and whirls overhead looking for its next meal among the rubbish and litter. The mist slowly rolls off the river and across the docks, gently licking and touching each object it comes into contact with. It thickens and dirties in colour as the first touch of the nights cold squeezes it into a newborn fog. The dock is decrepit and disused. Junk and detritus from its former life as a busy industrial quay and the years of neglect and dumping by locals have left it looking like the scene of some weird accident. Tufts of grass have taken hold in patches, between crates and prams and shopping trolleys, bursting up through the rotten mildewed concrete. Overhead there are ancient rusting cranes that once hauled cargo from boats, ships and barges onto the docks. They now hang lifeless and limp, vaguely silhouetted through the growing fog bank by the setting sun in a grey sky. The cranes presence scars the landscape and the view of the horizon like petrified giraffes, framing the sky and giving depth perception to the scene. The fog rolls on, expanding and thickening, sliding its icy tendrils up the cranes, greedily swallowing the lower objects in its path, smothering them, denying the night its shadows.
Further along the dock there are some disused Victorian warehouses still visible as the fog encroaches upon their territory and heads towards them. The plaster covering the outside walls has decayed and fallen off in so many places, exposing the red brick beneath. It is impossible to tell where the plaster ends and the liberal splashing of toxic seagull shit begins. But the seagulls are strangely silent tonight, the fog is dampening all sound and there are now no gulls to be seen or heard. The nearest warehouse is a good fifty metres from the cranes and is set apart from the other warehouses by being much further up the docks. The rest form a dark avenue, each cast a shadow across the other, in the half-light of dusk and are soon to be swallowed by the encroaching fog. This warehouse once had great inspiring church like arched windows round all sides. The panes in each section of each window are now either broken or missing. Odd pieces of rag are caught on some remnants of broken glass still held to the frame and they gently move with the night breeze. There is a faint light emanating from within this warehouse, as though some rogue and lonely light bulb still endures within. From the corner, looking at two sides of the warehouse it looks like a giant cage, to house some indefinable great beast. Through the now empty windows the fog begins to crawl its way inside the warehouse, to explore the inside of the massive seemingly empty building. There is a wooden stage or loading area raised at one side that is probably a rotten and lethal trap after these years of neglect.
As the fog wends it way in and across the great expanse of floor in the warehouse there is a slight flickering of the light emanating from the far end of the warehouse hinting that it is either moving or being moved. A muffled hint of hushed voices from the far end can just be heard growing nearer and clearer, the light source barely any brighter in the dark of the warehouse with the night’s fog trailing around the floor in wispy curls.
