The Second Coming
“How do you fancy a few nights away?” the boss asked Adrian as he sat in the office of the warehouse where he worked in the small town of Faversham. Couriers would visit from all over the country and Adrian always took delight in informing them that the pleasant little town was the home of England's oldest brewery. Sometimes this unsolicited information would barely raise an eyebrow, whilst other delivery guys (they were usually guys) would begin to chat about their favourite ales, keen to have found a kindred spirit along the sterile miles of open road.
Being careful not to commit an answer until he knew precisely what this involved, the 30-year-old truck driver responded to his boss with a non-committal, “Do you have any details of the job?”
The older man shuffled in his chair and said, “We need you to take a lorry-load of furniture to Herefordshire for a performance by one of those mind illusionist guys you like.”
Adrian had grown up a fan of TV magicians like Paul Daniels and was now an avid fan of Derren Brown. Although it was a less well known purveyor of psychological illusion that he would be seeing, his interest picked up at once.
“Basically, we are sponsoring this show down near Hereford. You get a free ticket and we will put you up for the night in the stately home where it is taking place. Then you reload the lorry and return the next day.”
“Sounds cool!” Adrian enthused, “When is it?”
“May the 20th.”
Adrian jotted a note in his diary.
It didn’t take long for May to come around, and soon Adrian found himself cruising along the M2 with a seven and a half tonne lorry full of company-emblazoned chairs and tables, admiring the long descent to the bridge over the River Medway, with the Channel Tunnel Rail Link parallel to the right and the long climb beyond. The Who song 'I can see for miles,' flashed into his mind.
In spite of being a lover of such classic rock, he always liked to have Radio Four on when driving on motorways. They were usually such boring roads that just seemed to flatten out any landscape into a uniform blandness of cuttings and embankments. Music often lured Adrian into nodding off at the wheel, but the afternoon play or a good debate tended to keep his mind active as the miles whipped past.
Right now, he was stuck in the queue on the London Orbital Motorway heading for the Dartford Tunnel beneath the River Thames. This area always seemed to have a stuffy feel about it, and the fact that Mick Jagger had grown up in the town didn't really take the edge off of the feeling that he could almost taste the traffic fumes. Adrian wound up the window and reached across for the radio dial to turn up the volume.
Today there was a discussion on the afterlife, and people who claimed to have had ‘life after death’ experiences were being interviewed. The general consensus was that, after seeing themselves lying, dying on a hospital bed from above, they would find themselves gliding down a tunnel of light and finally would experience visions of heaven or hell.
Adrian always had his own theory on this. He believed that when the mind is slipping away, its perception of time slows down, until eventually, if the person actually dies, there is an eternity of time in that very moment. He believed that each person would then experience whatever they believed would happen, be it a red man with a tail torturing them with tridents and fire, angels wearing white robes in a sunny paradise or, if they thought they would come back as a rabbit or something, the interior of a burrow for example.
Adrian liked his theory, because it meant that all religions were ultimately right, as the experience of an afterlife was purely down to the individual. However, there was one question – if an atheist didn’t believe in anything at all, would he simply not experience anything at the point of death?
The debate rumbled on for some time and the doubters in the studio were being as messianic about their atheistic views as those with strong religious beliefs. Adrian found this vaguely amusing, and apart from one minor incident with a needlessly aggressive driver and a surprise expletive secreted within the afternoon play, the rest of the journey passed without event.
Before long he was on an A-road coming into the outskirts of a small provincial town. The road was wide and straight, and all the houses were hidden from view by tall hedges. Just after passing a church, the entrance to the manor house appeared on the left. Adrian swung the lorry into the gravel parking area at the front of the stately three-storey house. There was a temporary sign anchored into the flower bed beneath one of the windows stating dramatically, ‘The Second Coming – Bear witness to the mind magic of William Mancini.’ He had come to the right place.
Walking up the steps to the front door, he pulled a chord which operated an old-fashioned bell inside. The door opened, and an elderly gent with grey hair and a walking stick answered. “Good afternoon. Charles Fotheringay. Pleased to meet you. You must be Adrian,” he spluttered.
“Yes, pleased to meet you Mr Fotheringay.”
“How was your journey from Canterbury?” asked the elderly gent.
“It's Faversham really, home of England's oldest brewery...” (Mr Fotheringay was clearly not a real ale enthusiast) “...It was fine really; not too much traffic about. Anyway, I am here with the furniture for the performance.”
“Ah yes,” said the old man, pretending to be surprised at this information which he already knew, “I’ll show you through to the main hall.”
Adrian followed the well-to-do septuagenarian through the large, black front door and down a corridor into a large, wooden floored room which had huge conservatory style windows along the entire back wall. These provided views out onto a huge lawn, which led away towards the hills in the distance. There were two huge, white doors in the middle and a patio area outside. ‘This guy must be loaded,’ thought Adrian to himself.
“Now, before you start, can I offer you a cup of tea?”
“That would be great,” responded the truck driver enthusiastically.
The unloading was all dealt with relatively quickly, as the gardeners at the house helped to carry the gear inside. After this, Adrian was shown to his room for the night, which was reached via a wooden spiral staircase. Relishing the luxury of a four-poster bed to himself, he leapt upon the plump bedclothes and relaxed, with the cool, afternoon sunshine streaming in through the net curtains. Before long he was asleep.
As time went by, the peace was shattered by people shuffling up and down the wooden stairs outside his room. First it was just a series of hollow thuds as one or two people’s boots pounded the steps; then a seemingly endless stream of clatter, accompanied by the hubbub of indistinguishable voices. Adrian was aware of this in his half-asleep half-awake state, but it didn’t really register enough to awaken him. He had completely forgotten the old man’s words instructing him to be sure to attend the briefing in one of the upper rooms before the show. This was to take place at 6pm. For some reason, the driver didn’t connect the sound of myriad feet pounding the stairs with the fact that the audience were arriving and heading into the briefing.
It was 6.15 when Adrian finally awoke with a start. Glancing at his wristwatch, it was with a sense of panic that he leapt off the bed, as though the extra few seconds gained by this sudden action would make a difference to things.
His plan to rest for half an hour and then grab something to eat before the show had gone completely out of the window. People were now emerging from the room just along the corridor. As the sound of voices grew louder again, he straightened his hair, opened the door, sneaked out allowing it to close and lock behind him, and then allowed himself to be swept along by the tide of people; along the narrow landing, down the spiral staircase and into the large room he had filled with furniture earlier.
The audience took their seats in no particular order, and Adrian ended up on the window side of the room, around two thirds of the way back from the makeshift stage.
When everybody had settled, old Mr Fotheringay came out and a hush fell upon the crowd.
Trying to muster a
s much pomposity as his slightly withered voice would allow, he proudly announced, “Ladies and gentlemen. I thank you for coming to my home today to witness the mind bending talents of William Mancini. You may be thinking that this setting is slightly unusual for a performance of this kind, but in time you will realise that you are about to witness something truly unique. So without further ado, put your hands together for William Mancini.”
The audience began to applaud and the performer wandered in purposefully through the patio doors, and along the gangway into the middle of the room. Then turning right, he followed the perpendicular gangway up to the stage.
“Thank you for such a warm welcome,” he began, “From your briefing you should all now be aware that you are going to experience an extraordinary event. Some of you will have religious beliefs; some of you won’t. It matters not. I want to begin with a quick poll. Please raise your arm if you believe the following statement. Today you are here to witness nothing less than the Second Coming.”
Around half the hands in the room went up.
“This is ridiculous,” thought Adrian, “Whatever was said in that briefing must have brainwashed them.”
The performer began to ramble on about statistical probabilities at such a speed that nobody in the audience could have truly understood what he was saying, or indeed have any time to question the validity of it. While this was going on, he was scrawling figures onto a white-board with a marker pen. All that Adrian had grasped was that he had started off by stating the scientific odds of a parallel universe existing somewhere in space, and after much arcane rambling and many scribbled equations, he had come to the conclusion that the odds of the Second Coming happening at this place, at this moment in time, were actually just fifty to one.
Adrian imagined that most of the audience who had received the brief would be convinced by this, but being far more sceptical, the truck driver was looking at the pattern of numbers on the board for clues. Perhaps there was some subliminal suggestion in the arrangement of algebraic Xs and Ys, who knows? The performer had also drawn curving lines linking different sets of figures which he had ringed, but still there was nothing distinguishable to Adrian, at least not consciously.
Just then the torrent of data stopped, “I am going to ask my question again. Now that you have seen what I have illustrated to you, I repeat, how many of you believe that you are about to witness the Second Coming?”
This time every hand went up except for Adrian’s. The pressure just to do the same as everybody else was immense, but determined to retain his individual view even though this risked being singled out as some kind of killjoy, he stuck to his guns and kept his hands firmly linked in his lap.
“You sir?” inquired the performer, now addressing Adrian directly, “I am curious as to your lack of belief. You appear to be in dissent with everybody else in this room.”
Things were getting very uncomfortable.
“From this I would deduce that your circumstances have been somewhat different today.”
Adrian began to wish he had just stayed in his room rather than joining the group after committing the dreadful sin of not attending the briefing. However, the performer broke the tension with that stock phase of his, “It matters not!”
After a pause he banged his hand down heavily on the table; “I want you all to turn to face the windows and keep your eyes fixed upon those hills. The time is six minutes past seven. Remember that the number seven always means a special circumstance, like the seventh day in creation stories. If we were to view this differently then, the time would be 66 minutes past 6 – 666, a number you will all associate with apocalyptic thoughts. Those of you who have chosen to disbelieve have no further time.”
‘This is just a load of mumbo jumbo,’ Adrian thought to himself, ‘This supposedly religious pick-and-mix of ideas is more Dan Brown than Derren Brown!’ (The driver had read this acclaimed author’s story about the Holy Grail several years ago).
Just then around six black dots appeared over the top of the hazy line of hills. As they grew nearer, it was clear that they were helicopters. Adrian almost burst out laughing – was this guy really trying to convince him that the Messiah was arriving by helicopter?
The helicopters grew larger, until they were hovering overhead and began to descend onto the huge lawn outside. The noise from the rotors had become deafening. Mr Mancini couldn’t put any more ideas into their heads now, as you couldn’t even hear him speak.
One by one the ‘coptors descended onto the grass. They were completely black and had blacked out windows, making it impossible to see the occupants. As the pilots killed the engines and the rotors began to slow, the noise became more bearable.
The performer walked down the central aisle and over to the windows. He threw open the two patio doors and ushered for the audience to step outside onto the lawn.
One by one they got up from their seats and filed outside. ‘They are all hypnotised,’ thought Adrian. Yet, it seemed that the most comfortable thing he could do would be to inconspicuously join them, so pushing his arms down on the sides of the chair he tried to hoist himself up, but no – he was stuck!
‘I’ve seen this trick before,’ thought Adrian, ‘It’s all in the mind,’ but nothing he did would enable him to move from the chair. As he struggled in vain, this became more and more irritating, for the room soon emptied. Even shifting his whole body weight aggressively to the left and right was impotent at moving the chair from its seemingly fixed position on the floor.
When everybody had left the room, the performer remained inside and closed the doors.
Silence filled the room.
Looking at Adrian he said, “Life is like a series of pictures that passes in a flash. Just suppose for a moment that what you are seeing is for real. The pictures in your mind may give you a clue as to why you are here?”
Adrian blinked, and each time he blinked an image flashed in his mind, each vision a little longer than the last with his eyes becoming a little heavier.
There was the view of the motorway from behind the wheel of the lorry.
The sight of a red sports car cutting in front of him.
The view from the front of his cab as his lorry hit the crash barrier.
A vision of shattered glass.
A view gazing up at the sky from a grassy verge with an ambulance nearby.
And then two paramedics in fluorescent jackets gazing down from above.
Adrian gasped, ‘Oh my gosh, this is for real! I died on the motorway and I’ve missed my chance to meet my maker!’
Just then he opened his eyes with a jolt and looked down at the wooden floor. His chair was in the centre of a separate square panel of wood. Apart from this one square, the floor was smooth all the way across the large room. It seemed like a trapdoor of some kind.
Just then fear gripped him; he knew he was going to go through that trapdoor into the great beyond, and he had always been told that punishment awaits disbelievers. Just what would be down there waiting for him?
He knew that it wouldn’t be a man in red with a trident; his own ideas of heaven and hell were much more practical. Adrian had an irrational fear of cats; a phobia if you like. His worst nightmare was to go down into that underworld and find it crawling with felines. Surely something so terrible wouldn’t be thrust upon him for simply not believing what this entertainer had told him?
William Mancini could see how much turmoil was going on in his subject’s mind. He wandered over to the far wall, unlocked a small, grey box that was fixed to it, opened the door and pressed the red button inside. The trapdoor opened, and a split second later Adrian was freefalling. At last he was free from the seat of the chair but goodness knows where he was headed. The view was one of grey rocks rushing past faster and faster, and he had that sinking feeling that you get on fairground rides, except that it just went on and on, with the shades of rock getting darker and darker. And then when they were almost black, he noticed a slight reddish glow
to them, which brightened further as he fell. It looked like the reflection of flames from far below.
He knew his brain would have to think fast to save him from a lost eternity.
Then came that eureka moment – his theory was going to save him!
Had he really lost his life in an accident, eternity for him would be whatever he believed it would be. As he had been singled out for believing the mind magician’s performance to be a hoax, then the afterlife for him would surely be that it was a hoax - he was still alive!
Adrian opened his eyes and the falling stopped. He was back on his chair in the big room, with the sun streaming in through the patio doors. The old man who owned the house was standing in front of him. “You’ve been here a long time,” he said, “The show ended an hour ago.”
Adrian looked down around his chair. There was no trapdoor. Then he cast his gaze upwards towards the end of the room. There was no grey box on the wall. What’s more the helicopters had gone and so had the rest of the audience. To say he was confused would be the understatement of the year. “But what about the punishment?” the lorry driver stuttered.
“Punishment?” said the old man, “Well, you’ve got to load all this furniture back onto the lorry I suppose, but that can wait until tomorrow!”
Adrian’s mind was awash with his experiences as he lay in bed later that evening, but one thing was sure, he was alive and that was good.
He awoke early, and the maid brought him up a fine English breakfast, complete with black pudding. The only time he had had a better ‘full English’ was ironically in Scotland, when his fry-up been augmented with a hearty piece of haggis.
The gardeners were on hand to help with the loading again. This was good news. He would be on the road again by 10am.
Bidding farewell, the old man shook his hand and wished him a safe journey. Adrian wandered happily across the gravel turning area to the cab of his truck, opened the door, and just as he was about to hoist himself inside, he noticed a black, leather briefcase upon the driver’s seat.
He climbed in and put the case on his lap. On the steering wheel was a yellow
Post-it note with the number 256 upon it. ‘Sixteen sixteens,’ Adrian thought to himself, being slightly over-qualified in the field of mathematics for his manual position.
Rotating the three dials on the front of the case to 2, 5 and 6, the lock sprung open. Inside was the biggest surprise yet – it was full of five pound notes. There was also a white envelope with the single word ‘ADRIAN’ written on the front. He opened this, and inside was a short letter from William Mancini which read as follows:
Dear Adrian,
Thank you for taking part in my performance. I am hoping that a recording of the show will be broadcast by a satellite TV channel in the autumn. The other audience members have been debriefed following their revelatory experience. Your circumstance is different however. Due to missing the briefing before the act, you were less susceptible to my unconscious suggestions. This made an interesting, albeit unexpected, twist to the show, and I would like to thank you personally for taking part with the £1,000 enclosed.
Knowing about your phobia, your employer had instructed Mr Fotheringay to keep his cats out of sight for the time that you were staying here. However, you will find that as a result of certain suggestions I made after the show, you will no longer possess this irrational fear.
Yours sincerely,
William Mancini
The performer knew nothing of Adrian’s visions of a horrific accident and he knew nothing of Adrian’s idea that apparently saved him.
Just then, a black cat with green eyes wandered across the gravel driveway and purred as it rubbed its head against one of the large tyres.
Completely naturally and without thinking, Adrian climbed out of the cab, picked up the cat and stroked it. Then, glancing back at the open briefcase on the seat in the cab, he broke into a smile.
‘If this is hell, it’s really not that bad!’ he thought.