The lad awoke bright and refreshed, and only by this could he guess it might be morning. The mushroom glow was the same as when he went to sleep but the air now had a slight musty quality to it, though in fairness this might have been there all along. He looked around to find his way out, but now as he looked around in the dim light he sees there is not just one hole, but several. But from which one has he come and where do they all go? He thinks back to last night and how he went round the stump, it seemed for an eternity, in the end finding just the one entrance. Yet here are, one, two, three maybe even more dark places that seem to lead out of the fungal chamber.

To be sure our lad felt quite alarmed at this, for the holes were tight and retreat would be hard. He had seemingly popped through just a short distance from the outside into here, yet none of them had daylight streaming in from to show which was the right one. The he thought that it must be the dark hedge above that prevented the light from being visible and that the other holes must sure just take him some other close distance to the hedge, either road or field side.

So after a moment’s dithering he picks one of the holes, largely on the basis that it looks maybe larger than the others, and squeezes his way in, pushing his bag before him as he goes. Very soon it’s dark in the tunnel and the lad is sure this is not the one he came in by. He wriggles on, the musty smell clears and the tunnel smells like fresh earth. Still the passage is wide enough and he thinks, if all became too uncomfortable or hopeless feeling, he might after all be able to, albeit slowly, maneuvre himself backwards up the tunnel.

But on it goes, on and on, darkness is all around and heavy press of the earth above sore weighs on his soul in a fear he can scarce keep at bay. The earth gets cooler, but he can hardly interpret this as a good sign as he feels it maybe a further symptom of what he’s been suspecting for some time. That is, that the tunnel is on a downward slope and that he is heading deeper and deeper into the earth. Still there’s something in him that drives him on. It’s strange after all, a clear tunnel like this in the depths of the earth; maybe it’s been used before, maybe it goes somewhere.

Now the incline becomes unmistakeably steeper and the surface made of a smoother sandier earth. It becomes unpleasant to crawl in. He kicks it up with his hands and arms has he moves and it gets in his face, it gets in his boots as he goes. The slope gets steep still, and now our lad feels a real claustrophobic panic. The darkness before him, the slippery sand, the downward tunnel, it’s all too much and for sure, he couldn’t get back up this if he wanted to. It’s now almost as he’s being propelled along, which he is as the slope is now steep, steep, steep, and the floor oh oh so slippery. At length his scrabbling is more a hindrance than an aid to the motion that carries him down down in to the dark.

Well, the scrabbling, plunging terror went on, too long for the lad you may be sure. But was it relief or even greater shock he felt when came to a sudden stop on a sandy smooth cold floor? Dazed and shocked, he felt around and though he hadn’t noticed it, the tunnel had widened some time ago and now he wasn’t sure exactly what he had emerged out of. He could only tell that in front of him were not tight walls of earth, but empty black cool air and a sandy floor beneath him.

The lad tried to stand and found there was space above him that he could. He took a step forwards and that worked too. So, seeming as he had not choice, he carefully walked himself through the dark. Well he hasn’t walked far when his boot struck something hard. ‘Oh ho’ thinks the lad, ‘what now?’ He crouched down and felt what he’d bumped into, and it seemed to him it was a very low stone wall. A flat vertical surface that, as he felt it, only went up half a foot or so. What’s on the other side of the wall? Our lad wants to know. So he feels the flat top surface of the ‘wall’ waiting to find the other side. Well he never found the other side, but what does he find? Only another vertical piece of stone, and this one too, just about half a foot in height by its feel. Now our lad has an inkling. He checks this second wall; yes this one has a top surface that goes on before the stone rises sheer again. The penny drops completely. They aren’t walls, they are steps! But steps to where?

‘Stone steps in the dark could be perilous.’ thinks the lad, so it’s with caution he ascends. Climbs might be best word insofar as he definitely doesn’t simply walk up. He leans forward to feel with his hands that the steps continue and thus can be sure it’s safe to proceed. The stairs go on on on, the lad climbs and climbs. Oh it’s weary work. How much longer to climb? Only one answer to this. As long as it takes for the stairs to take him out of the interminable darkness. So it’s on on on up the stairs, hands forward, back aching, knees battered from occasionally catching the bite of the stone and still no sign of an end to them. But who knows what else might have been out there in the dark. Maybe he has missed side doors, other staircases, passages or who knows what exits.

At length it’s all to much for the lad. The anxiety, the pain, the exhaustion. He stops and seats himself as best he can on the steps and rummages in his bag for food and water. He reflects on what a strange place this is and that whilst only a day or so can have passed it now seems a lifetime away that he was in his house with his old mum and dad, looking across to the abandoned garage, watching the litter blow down the street. At this memory he wonders if he has made the right choice.

But this is no time for regret, so he ate and he drank and he stared into the black, and as he did so he thought he saw a strange glow. He shook his head to clear it for he was sure there could be nothing there. But again as he stared into the black, purple spots began to appear before him. Tired as he was, he gave himself over to looking at them as they had a soothing appealing quality. Now at first it seemed that as he moved his eyes so the purple blobs followed this movement, but then the situation became more odd. For now it seemed the glowing purple spots became stable independent of his eyes. ‘Well here’s another funny thing!’ the lad said to himself as he stared incredulous at the moving colours.

Almost in a trance he watched the purple patches floating in the dark. Then slowly but surely round the edge of of the patches formed a soft green glow. The patches bobbed, and joined in with one another, they separated out, and in this weaving movement of strange light occasionally the lad thought he could make a out a scene that flickeringly appeared between the patches, filling in the rest of the dark. Once there was a blue sky with clouds that floated through, then there was a woodland glade where a blackbird fluttered through, sunlight striking branches in the clearing, now there was a stream bright and clear, unduluating sparkling on its every moving surface, now a bridge under over the stream and a railing on the bridge. The railing was of smooth metal piping which became, as he fell harder into the image, longer and no longer the rail, but pipes that went a long a beige plastered wall.

The lad took a half a stock of what was happening. Around him, to the left and right and behind, the same blackness and maybe, maybe he could still feel the stone step he sat on, but in front, in most of his vision a strange smooth floor of hard grey , a beige wall with a pipe running along it, a diagonal structure of some size he couldn’t make out, underneath which were many many off white trolleys on wheels with shelves on them and beyond the diagonal structure shone light as if a window were behind it.

The floor lapped at his feet and he found he was no longer seated but stood, with the vision of trolleys before him and the darkness receding behind. ‘If I step into this’ thought the lad ‘surely I shall tumble down the stairs to my doom, yet it may be I am not really standing but still sitting on the stair, in which case…’

The lad took a ginger step onto the grey floor, probing its solidity whilst holding his balance on the other foot. He pushed the foot down harder and it was met with floorlike resistance. He lifted the other foot and placed it on the grey floor and in that instance, the blackness around him failed and he found himself stood in a stairwell.