“See?” said Gary. “I’m not here. All there is, is you, walking up and down the platform, talking to yourself, trying to get up the courage to . . . “
Richard had not meant to say anything; but his mouth moved and he heard his voice saying, “Trying to get up the courage to do what?”
A deep voice came over the loudspeaker, and echoed, distorted, down the platform. “London Transport would like to apologize for the delay. This is due to an incident at Blackfriars Station.” “To do that,” said Gary, inclining his head. “Become an incident at Blackfriars Station. To end it all. Your life’s a joyless, loveless, empty sham. You’ve got no friends—“
“I’ve got you,” whispered Richard. Gary appraised Richard with frank eyes.
“I think you’re an asshole,” he said, honestly. “A complete joke.”
“I’ve got Door, and Hunter, and Anaesthesia.”
Gary smiled. There was real pity in the smile, and it hurt Richard more than hatred or enmity could ever have done. “More imaginary ‘friends? We all used to laugh at you round the office for those trolls. Remember them? On your desk.” He laughed. Richard started to laugh, too. It was all too horrible: there was nothing else to do but laugh. After some time he stopped laughing. Gary put his hand into his pocket and produced a small plastic troll. It had frizzy purple hair, and it had once sat on the top of Richard’s computer screen. “Here,” said Gary. He tossed the troll to Richard. Richard tried to catch it; he reached out his hands, but it fell through them as if they were not there. He went down onto his hands and knees on the empty platform, fumbling for the troll. It seemed to him, then, as if it were the only fragment he had of his real life: that if he could only get the troll back, perhaps he could get everything back . . .
Flash.
It was rush hour again. A train disgorged hundreds of people onto the platform, and hundreds of others tried to get on, and Richard was down on his hands and knees, being kicked and buffeted by the commuters. Somebody stepped on his fingers, hard. He screamed shrilly, and stuck his fingers into his mouth, instinctively, like a burned child; they tasted disgusting. He did not care: he could see the troll at the platform’s edge, now only ten feet away, and he crawled, slowly, on all fours, through the crowd, across the platform. People swore at him; they got in his way; they buffeted him. He had never imagined that ten feet could be such a long distance to travel.
Richard heard a high-pitched voice giggling, as he crawled, and he wondered who it could belong to. It was a disturbing giggle, nasty and strange. He wondered what manner of crazy person could giggle like that. He swallowed, and the giggling stopped, and then he knew.
He was almost at the edge of the platform. An elderly woman stepped onto the train, and as she did so, her foot knocked the purple-haired troll down into the darkness, down into the gap between the train and the platform. “No,” said Richard. He was still laughing, an awkward, wheezing laugh, but tears stung his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He rubbed his eyes with his hands, making them sting even more.
Flash.
The platform was deserted and dark again. He climbed to his feet and walked, unsteadily, the last few feet, to the edge of the platform. He could see it there, down on the tracks, by the third rail: a small splash of purple, his troll. He looked ahead of him: there were enormous posters stuck to the wall on the other side of the tracks. The posters advertised credit cards and sports shoes and holidays in Cyprus. As he looked the words on the posters twisted and mutated.
New messages:
END IT ALL was one of them.
PUT YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR MISERY.
BE A MAN—DO YOURSELF IN.
HAVE A FATAL ACCIDENT TODAY.
He nodded. He was talking to himself. The posters did not really say that. Yes, he was talking to himself; and it was time that he listened. He could hear the rattling of a train, not far away, coming toward the station. Richard clenched his teeth, and swayed back and forth, as if he were still being buffeted by commuters, although he was alone on the platform.
The train was coming toward him; its headlights shining out from the tunnel like the eyes of a monstrous dragon in a childhood nightmare. And he understood then just how little effort it would take to make the pain stop—to take all the pain he ever had had, all the pain he ever would have, and make it all go away for ever and ever. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets, and took a deep breath. It would be so easy. A moment of pain, and then it would all be over and done . . .
There was something in his pocket. He felt it with his fingers: something smooth and hard and roughly spherical. He pulled it out of his pocket, and examined it: a quartz bead. He remembered picking it up, then. He had been on the far side of Night’s Bridge. The bead had been part of Anaesthesia’s necklace.