I had almost forgotten the recent past and seeing the young woman brought it all back; the puzzling meeting at the roadhouse and the incoherent escape from the encroaching headlights. Her intentions had been oblique and shrouded, no more so than at the town of mad animals where she had cocooned herself in her own nature.

And now she sat in this gloomy hall, ignoring both the meandering recital and the younger man who sat nearby, coveting her. I felt insubstantial, like a tourist watching a re-enactment of past glories, merely a spectator to the game of life. The man approached her and asked her name, a simple thing but one that had not occurred to me in all our time together. I almost heard her reply.

Soon they were dancing in the afternoon light, as dust motes circled them like the fluttering notes of the organ. I was unsure of my own emotions, being unwilling to plumb them to their full depth. It was as though my youth had supplanted me and I was unable to appreciate the beauty of the moment.

An ancient couple shuffled slowly around the dance floor in a counterpoint to the young couple. As I left the Tea Dance I realized that I didn’t belong there or indeed anywhere at that moment. Just existing wasn’t enough but it would have to do. What choice did I have?

It was probably morning when I emerged from my room after a fitful night. The hotel seemed to be built at odd angles with unpredictable alcoves and corridors at every turn. I finally found my way downstairs, following a smell of cooking and rancid flowers that led me to the dining room.

Several people were seated in front of large windows that allowed an untrammeled view of the ocean. Rather than being picturesque, the vision was turbulent and somehow menacing. A middle aged balding man sat looking inwards, dejected by what he saw. He was a dead ringer for my feeble companion, but his resemblance to me was merely coincidental.

An elderly couple sat at another table, engrossed in themselves. I had no desire for food so I continued to explore the old inn. I could hear a strange music wafting along the corridors. A few twists and turns later I came upon a hall with a stage at one end.

The out of date notice gave an indication that his was a Tea Dance, an anachronism well suited to this place from the past. The somber lady who dealt with me at reception was playing an organ on the stage, filling the air with musical yet disconnected fragments that tugged at my memory. A depressed man sat hunched on a chair near the last person that I expected to see.

I was tired beyond words. The events of the last days or years had caught up with me and exhaustion filled me to the brink. The old hotel was hardly peaceful, filled with the sound of creaking timbers and the moan of the ever present wind that somehow penetrated the walls and corridors.

I had helped the old man to his room, relieved that I didn’t have to be reminded of my careworn face any more. It was like turning a mirror to the wall. I found my own room and was on the point of entering when I glanced down the corridor. As though staring into a row of reflected images I saw a multitude of stooped, aging men entering their rooms. It was a momentary aberration and foolishly, I chose to dismiss it.

The room was a cold cube of unconcern, with a window that glared sullenly across the slavering ocean. Rain tapped against the glass, distorting the bleak view. I climbed into bed and stared listlessly at the ceiling, reviewing my life. Things hadn’t gone to plan but then again, there had never been a plan. I could detect the faint odour of pipe tobacco and camphor wood. In the moments before sleep I remembered my childhood and the old carved chest in my father’s room.

I awoke with a jolt and lay under the covers. Nothing had changed in my tiny universe. Gulls keened and the wind sobbed. I rolled over, reached out a hand in the dark and switched on the ornate lamp. When my eyes adjusted to the light I noticed the date on the calendar.

My eyes adjusted to the half light in the lobby. I somehow knew that this was a hotel, albeit a remote and outwardly inhospitable one, but just how I knew was the puzzle. Near a staircase was an ornate counter in front of a curtained alcove, no doubt the inn’s reception. As if on cue the curtains shifted and a woman moved behind the desk.

All this had happened as though preordained and I felt powerless to avoid the crushing certainty that I was caught in a torrent of time, hurtling into an abyss. She may have spoken but I could only hear the rush of blood in my ears. I put the old man down and he leant against me.

She was ancient yet not old and her beauty was timeless. She watched me carefully, her arched features set in stone. I heard myself mumble something about a room and then I remembered my companion and said something about him. She seemed indifferent to everything I said but indicated that I should proceed upstairs.

It still felt like I was reading from a script, perhaps some kind of Victorian thriller and I wondered whether I was the hero or the victim. Then I noticed a tremor in the curtains and I glimpsed a face in the gap. There was a flash of recognition but the moment passed quickly when the woman stepped backwards, blocking my view.

I struggled upstairs, urging the old man upwards. The stairs led to a landing and several corridors leading into darkness and beyond. Paintings festooned the walls. An inexplicable feeling clutched my heart like a claw and squeezed.

The decaying portico loomed over me, somehow unwelcoming yet designed to admit or perhaps entrap. I had previously abandoned all hope so that proviso was left unsaid. Pushing open the doors, I ventured into the unknown.

Daylight seemed to shrivel away as I walked into the entrance hall, giving way to a gloom that was disquieting. Carved figures populated the balustrades, glaring balefully down upon the hesitant visitor. I was still holding the old man in a painful embrace and I was determined to dispose of him somewhere soon.

It felt like I had come home but I was unsure of where home was. Surely this ramshackle mansion was not the ultimate destination of my existential meandering? A chill draught from the inner reaches of the grand hall rippled across my skin and elevated the hairs on my neck. It was like a breath from the past.

I imagined that I stood at the edge of time, hunted to extinction in the earth’s nascent light. All around me on the walls of the cave the shadows of my ancestors danced, silhouetted by fire. Outside in the awful night winged horrors flapped and shrieked, forever free in time but bound by flesh.

I picked up the old man and carried him towards higher ground. He was light in my arms, as though his corporeal state was dissolving with the wind blown sand. The shoreline stretched to infinity, punctuated by headstones of rock that gazed out to sea. Above all, the turgid sky swirled and heaved like the ocean below.

The beach was the nexus between the sky, ocean and earth, a ribbon of sand with a skirt of waves. Two people walked along it, one supporting the other like a father and child, or perhaps a son with his aged father. The wind scratched their skin and the sea murmured ceaselessly.

Instinct drew us towards our destination as the incipient winter blew on our necks. Except there was no us to speak of, as she flew high above the muck of earth and even the old man had sloughed off his skin, becoming at one with nothing. I rejoiced in nothing too, feeble in the face of daily adversity, a rabbit in time’s headlights.

The transformation began sooner than I expected in the snarling city of chaos. The anthropomorphically altered residents filled the streets seeking to drink the milk of human kindness and grow strong from it. We laid low in darkened rooms yet the very air infected us and gave us cause to change.

My dream was coming to an end. I’d been wrestling with my desperate self all night, wrapped in my sheet like a winding cloth. I no longer cared about anything but I did of course, worried about the family that I never had. Logic never entered into the equation-no wonder nothing ever added up.