text: Winter, black as obsidian, crawled over the rooftops of Manchester like the shadows of a dying day. The skyline was littered with cranes from half-finished building projects, crooked steel fingers thrust out from the belly of the earth. The streets from Atlas Fitzgerald’s apartment were slick with ice, waiting to collect crumpled cars and broken bones. Broken bones. The memory scratched the inside of his skull. One year ago today he woke in his hospital bed, his pelvis bruised black, and set up this account to tell his tale. To tell of the voices he heard. But then friends came with cards and flowers, doctors and physiotherapists imparting wisdom and caution of a long road ahead. So he travelled the road and forgot all about the voices, until winter came, when he was out of hospital and his friends and family no longer visited as they once did. Back home, mobile with the aid of crutches, they had Christmas to prepare for and you’d be ok now, right Atlas? Do call though, honestly it’s no trouble. Left alone in the city, away from the hills and trees and starry skies, suffocated by short days and long nights, he heard them again. *Atlas*. Just his name, reverberating around the corners of his room, crawling up the walls. *Atlas*. He had to go back. He had to. Atlas stopped eating then, or rather he ate just enough. Each morning he stood naked in front of his mirror and was horrified by the sight of what he was becoming. His eyes began to retreat into dark sockets, his arms and legs thin and sinewy, his ribs a staircase of bone. *Atlas*. He had to go back. His friend Laurie had told him he looked awful the last time he saw her. She had tried to call but he did not answer, did not respond to text messages. At last, as spring threatened to kiss life into the world, she stopped by. He held the door open, only slightly, dressing gown draped over skeletal frame. Through the front door she could see into the living room, see the coffin he had built. She tried to push her way in but he held her back, which gave him some comfort that he still had some strength left in him. His friends kept trying to reach him after that, thank you Laurie. But he did not relent. He did not respond. And soon enough they left him. They gave up trying. The coffin was a rudimentary plywood box, narrow and tight. Every Sunday throughout spring and summer he tried to squeeze himself in and close the lid and each time it would not go. He could not fit. And so smaller he became, thinner and thinner and *Atlas* still echoed in his mind. He became dizzy, and started to use his crutches again. Until at last, this Friday just gone, he fit. It was time. Atlas packed his bags in the morning and, uneasy on his feet, made his way out of his apartment and took a taxi to the train station. The taxi driver looked anxiously back in his rear view mirror, as did the throngs of commuters and passengers at Manchester Piccadilly who watched him hobble, pirate-legged, toward the train to Clitheroe. He was relieved to be aboard, sat down again, and allowed the hulking vessel to carry him on his way as the world swam around him. A little girl boarded with her mother at Blackburn, and both sat and watched him warily the rest of the journey. At Clitheroe station, Atlas caught another taxi, giving the driver vague directions to take him into the heart of the Forest of Bowland. Turn left here, turn right here. Eventually he told the driver that this was the place, thank you very much. So uneasy was the driver that he did not argue about leaving this skin-and-bones man on a layby in the woods. Atlas cared not, for the voices grew louder now. He clambered over a nearby wall and disappeared into the thicket of trees. At last he found the stream that he remembered following just over a year ago, which lead him to a rushing waterfall and the opening to the cave system. He pitched his tent and tried to sleep through the night although little sleep came his way. The voices, the *voices* all through the night whispering his name. Dawn broke and Atlas changed into his caving gear. A thick red boiler suit, black harness that seemed now heavier and more cumbersome. Flashlight. Sky blue hard hat. He made way for the opening, a yawning mouth that called him to his prize. The cave system was familiar, yet more difficult to traverse than it once had been. Piecing together memories of his last journey here, he made his way, noting the usual formations and turnings. The Main Chamber, Drinkwater Cavern, The Hangman’s Passage, The Big Squeeze. And there it was. That small unchartered hole, newly opened and as yet unexplored. He removed the hard hat, the harness, the boiler suit, until he was dressed only in his tight under layers. He wielded a flashlight that he pressed into his mouth and a single claw hammer and, arms outstretched, he slid into the tunnel. *Atlas*. He was surprised by how easy it was this time around, by how much more room he had. He felt the thin material of his undershirt begin to tear against the salty rock but the voice was louder now, and no longer rattling through his mind but echoing from deeper within the tunnel. *Atlas*. Some thirty metres in he halted. There, just below him, scratch marks lined with blue. His hard hat. One year ago, this is where he became stuck, where he lay as the rescue crew tied his ankles and pulled him, pulled him, pulled him out. His hard hat scraping against the roof and floor of the tunnel, his legs popping from their sockets as he screamed in pain while they pulled him still. But now, now there was an inch or more room all about his head. He pressed on, dragging his lithe frame deeper into the earth. *Atlas*, *Atlas, Atlas*. The tunnel closed quickly around him, hard earth pressing against him on all sides. The flashlight served him no purpose and he spat it out, clearing his airways as the air became thicker and harder to swallow. He clawed his body through the tunnel. The roof and floor scraped him, shredding the clothes from his frame, the skin from his bones. He could not turn his head, so tight was the gap, but still he pulled himself into the darkness, tasting the sweat from his outstretched arms that squashed against his face. And then he could not move. *Atlas.* His pelvis was stuck. He tried to drag his body through but the pain was unbearable and he had no strength left in his arms. *Atlas*. There was no light, no air, no room to move, one hundred feet or more down a passageway that would not fit even the slightest of children. *Atlas, Atlas, Atlas*. “Atlas.” The voice, the thing that called him, breathed deeply on his prone, outstretched arms. The breath was hot and sticky. He felt a light tickling move across his hands, his arms. He realised at once that what he felt was the creeping fingers of another, the one who had whispered his name. The fingers inched down, cold and wet, and touched the crown of his head where they lingered for a moment. And then they pulled away, and he felt the figure shift and scuttle further down the tunnel. He tried to speak but his mouth and jaw were jammed shut by his shoulder. His listened for the voice and found that he was alone. No voices, no one calling his name. Nothing but his slow and laboured breathing and a heart beating so fast and so desperately that he felt his bones pulsating. He felt his face heating up and he gasped for air, trying to push his lungs out yet his ribs and his back were pinched against the rock. He tried to breathe. He tried. To breathe. He could not. Breathe. One year ago this day Atlas Fitzgerald created this account to tell you his story, of the tunnel that called his name. But he could not let it go. He had to find the devil in the dark. No one will find the man Fitzgerald. His tent will not be there when friends come, their last hope that this would be where he went. At the opening to the tunnel, where they had pulled him screaming and crying for his mother a year ago, they will not find his boiler suit or his harness or his sky blue hard hat. A camera inserted through the tunnel will not find his body jammed between the rock. All trace of Atlas Fitzgerald will be dissolved into the earth. I know this to be true because I am the voice that lingers in the corner of the room. I am the fingers that crawl within the gloom. I am the one who plants the seed from which roots break free and creep into the earth, and from which long stemmed flowers reach out and dance towards the sun. Whisper your name. Tell me the thoughts you cannot shake. Tell me your desires, your wants, your needs, that you bury like a body in a shallow grave. Whisper your name, and I shall make them so.