Apocalypso Read Online Free PDF

elaborate hoax? Some almighty wind-up? The old man’s
foolish talk and then this incredible tale that he told with such conviction.
Could such a tale be really true? And if it was, what would it mean? A feather
from an angel’s wing?
    The
sunlight flickered through the window and the carriage wheels click-clacked on
the track beneath. But somehow here, here in this compartment, there was
silence. And stillness.
    And
sanctity.
    ‘You
may see it,’ said the old man. ‘Although you may not touch it, you may see it.’
He held the box forward and his ancient fingers lightly brushed the polished
lid. And Porrig saw that on that lid there was a date engraved in silver.
Engraved when the box was new, in the year that the old man had bought it.
    And the
year engraved upon that lid was 1837.
    ‘That
is my fate,’ said the old man. ‘I will not die. I cannot die, until I have
returned what I have stolen, do you understand?’
    And
gently, gently, he unscrewed the lid.
     
    ‘You gotta get out now,
love. The train don’t go no further.’
    Porrig
jerked up on his seat, eyes blinking.
    A large
Jamaican lady in the costume of a cleaner smiled down upon him. ‘Sorry to have
to wake you up, love. But it’s the end of the line, Victoria, and I gotta clean
the compartment.’
    Porrig
gaped all about. But for the smiling cleaner he was all alone.
    ‘Did
you see an old man?’ Porrig asked. ‘Getting off the train? He was sitting just
there and—’
    ‘I see
lots of people. Thousands of people. One old man’s much the same as another.’
    ‘Not
this one.’ Porrig shook his head and clicked at his jaw. ‘Never mind,’ he said,
as he dragged himself to his feet. ‘It was just a mad dream or something.’ And
he pulled down his suitcase from the rack and turned to take his leave.
    ‘You
look after yourself,’ said the cleaner. ‘You mind how you go.’
    ‘I
will,’ said Porrig, climbing down from the tram.
    ‘And,
love,’ called the cleaner.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘That’s
a real pretty aftershave you’re wearing. It fills up all the compartment. It
smells just like lilacs, it does.’

 
     
     
    4
     
    It was a somewhat ashen
Porrig who boarded the Brighton-bound train. A chastened Porrig. A quiet one.
He took himself off to the buffet car and ordered a cup of coffee.
    ‘Not
till the train leaves the station,’ the attendant told him. ‘And that goes for
the bog too.’
    Porrig
sat down in the nearest compartment and waited for the train to leave. He was
confused, Porrig was. Confused and upset. He didn’t know what to believe. He
knew he had met the old man. The old man had held the door open for him: he’d
have missed the train otherwise. But how much of the rest had been real?
    Probably
only the first part. The stupid story about hollowed-out rats and maggot races.
He must have dreamed the rest. Fallen asleep and dreamed it. And the smell of
lilacs? Well, he hadn’t actually smelled that himself. But perhaps it
had wafted into the carriage from the outside and he’d smelled it in his sleep
and sort of incorporated it into the dream.
    That
all made sense. After a fashion.
    That’s
how Scully would have figured it out. Though possibly not Mulder.
    Satisfied
that it did all make sense, after a fashion, Porrig returned to the buffet car,
for the train was now leaving the station. Here he was met by an unruly scrum
fighting for attention at the counter. Porrig went back to his seat.
    The
train rushed forward, passing by houses and streets, houses and streets,
further houses and further streets. Porrig looked out at them and wondered, as
many have before him, just who were all these people who lived in these houses
and drove along these streets. There were so many of them, all going about
their daily lives, their ordinary lives. These people didn’t meet angels, they
just went to the shops and watched television and brought up children who did
just the same. That was the real way of it; that was how it really