All I wanted to do was lose some weight.
Instead I some how ended up joining ‘The Sauna Club’.
Stealing a dead mans bag and plotting to break into a gym that a few weeks ago you couldn’t BEG me to go to.
Now here I am…another friend down, covered in blood and wondering when it all went so wrong. I’ll warn you in advance…last night was one of the most graphic nights of my life.
Just a few short hours ago I was sat in my kitchen counting down the hours until midnight when myself, Jen and Lydia would use Sak’s PT card to sneak in and use a sauna that the police had shut down as a crime scene.
I decided that if I was going back I should be better prepared this time. First of all I rinsed out Sak’s water bottle and refilled it to the litre line. Last time in that strange world of swirling mists was way too hot and if I was going to climb that pyramid of wooden steps in search of Andy then it would get even hotter.
“Up…Andy always goes up”, that’s what Lydia had said. If Andy was still in there then that was where he would be.
Next I decided to search through Sak’s notebook. I would have liked to have kept his phone as well. I thought that might have something important on it that we could learn from, but Lydia insisted that she kept it.
Saks diary yielded nothing except the ramblings of a gym nut. Diet plans, training regimes, gains gains gains - but as I worked my way through to the latest entries the details grew more sparse. The numbers that tracked his BMI went through the roof, the weights he was lifting increased at a frightening rate. All of a sudden it seemed as if Sak had found something better than any steroid…
As 11pm rolled around I thought about leaving a message for my wife.
I was thinking something along the lines of “Good luck with the kid.”
I decided against it…
As the minutes crept closer I reminded myself what all this was for.
I was going for Andy, to bring him back…I was going for Jen, to help her live…I was going for Lydia, because for some reason I couldn’t understand she seemed to like me and there was something in that frightening place that she needed…enough to break all kinds of laws for.
After all that…if there was still any sand left in the timer…then I was going for myself.
It’s time to lose more weight…start shedding the things in my life that are weighing me down. Andy said that you could find answers in the steam, like the Vikings used to…And I’m in need of some damned answers.
At quarter-to I rolled out. The roads were empty. I parked up in a quiet layby and walked the last five minutes to the gym.
The others were already there waiting for me. Jen was wearing a fluffy woollen jumper and Lydia was in bright pink active wear - ridiculous criminals.
We silently nodded at each other. Lydia flashed Sak’s card and with a quick swipe we were in.
For a moment we paused, waiting for the alarm that would give us away…but it never came.
“That’s step one” grinned Jen. I got the impression this was the first naughty thing she’d ever done in her long life.
We made our way through the dark reception area and the café, not daring to turn on any lights in case it drew any unwanted attention. Through habit more than anything we parted ways at the changing rooms. Jen and Lydia through the ladies, me alone through the gents.
Andy’s locker was still closed. The changing room still. I didn’t want to hang around…the memory of those shadows in the showers was still etched in my mind.
Converging again poolside we froze.
The sauna was on.
A strange rectangle of orange light spilled through the glass door and out across the plastic cover on the pool like a burial plot.
The heat was dialled way up and the coals were stoked.
There was no earthly explanation for the sight. No reason the police or any one would have left the scene like this. The gym had said that the sauna would be closed for weeks at least while an enquiry took place. Yet here it was. Heat spilling out, already half filled with steam…waiting for us.
I should have known then that this was wrong.
That it wasn’t us who would take from the Sauna but the other way around.
“Clothes off then.” Lydia whispered, and silently the three of us began to remove our clothes, gathering them in neat bundles by the poolside.
I couldn’t help myself but watch as Lydia removed her skin-tight gym-wear, her bra, her pants…she was like a naked goddess in the moonlight.
There were more scars than I remembered. They travelled up her legs and crisscrossed her stomach, before climbing up between her breasts towards her neck. She caught me looking and smiled and…I didn’t look away. I began to remove my own clothes and Lydia watched me right back. Every single last item, she took in all of me.
I couldn’t remember the last time my wife had looked at me like this.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so…wanted.
Jen opened the door to the sauna. “Are we ready?” She said, locking eyes with both of us as the white tendrils snaked towards her legs. With a nod we entered.
The mood was more subdued than my last visit. As you might expect. One member dead, one missing and a late night break in. Before, Andy had kept the mood buoyant with friendly chatter all the way up to the moment I’d found myself in that strange ‘other’ place. This time we were near silent. The only thing for it was the ceremony.
We took a moment to acclimatise to the heat and then it was time to begin.
Jen flipped the timer.
One scoop for each of us.
Someone had already filled the bucket to the brim. Lydia went first, not messing around with how large a ladle she added to the coals.
I followed, quick to rip off the band-aid this time.
An explosion of white cloud billowed up and into our faces, burning our eyes and obscuring our vision and I couldn’t help but cough in the stifling heat.
Jen came last and with a final sizzle I lost sight of both of them.
I felt that same momentary sense that I was all alone. Somehow passing through a point in the world that was both ‘Thin’ as Andy had called it…but thick enough to find yourself all alone in a white nothingness.
The steams began to clear and we were back. Stood on the obsidian stone floor, surrounded by ancient wooden slats that formed a staircase leading up and away into the unknown.
I felt a lump rise in my throat and my stomach twist in the knowledge that there was something so fundamentally wrong about the existence of this place. Something rotten.
I turned around to look out on the poolside. Our little bundles of clothes were still sat beside the covered waters. But the tarpaulin sheet was…squirming. It was hiding something…somethings…in the water that were trying to push their way out.
And the 9 watchers that surrounded the pool in their high chairs and their waders were no longer sitting. They were stood around the waters edge with long hook like contraptions in their hands.
I watched a hand shoot out from beneath the plastic sheet, followed by a body…a burnt body, with peeling skin. It was trying to escape from the pool. A watcher approached and slid their long hooked pole into one of the cavities that had once been Sak’s eye and drove him back down, through the plastic and back into those dark waters and held him there until the struggling stopped.
I felt a hand on my back and turned to find myself face to face with Lydia, bodies touching, both of us slick with sweat.
“Remember Mike…that’s not our world.”
Looking past her I saw that Jen was three levels up the wooden steps and about to leave us through a passageway leading right and away.
“Jen…” I shouted, louder than necessary but confused “Aren’t we going up? To find Andy”
For a moment Jen looked genuinely torn, and then she sighed “Andy was a good friend to me…but…he’d agree. This is a personal place Mike. Wherever he’s gone now, I don’t know if we could help him. Even if we wanted to. The timers ticking…and I plan to live.” and then she was gone, pushing off down that dark offshoot.
I looked at Lydia and knew that she would do the same. They had tricked me. Neither of them cared about finding Andy, they were both here to help themselves.
Lydia put her hands either side of my face, kissed me deeply and then with a short sharp shove, pushed me away and disappeared down another dark tunnel.
I was alone again, but this time I’d made myself a promise. I wouldn’t leave without exploring.
But which way?
Up into the darkness in search of Andy? No. Starring up into the black abyss filled my heart with terror. Each step seemed to grow steeper and steeper as they climbed ever higher. Whatever was up there, whatever Andy had found…I wasn’t ready to see it.
After Lydia? No. I could see from the look on her face that whatever she was here for was deeply personal.
Away by myself on one of the many other offshoots? Again…I felt a pang of terror at what I might encounter here…especially if I was alone. What was it that Lydia had said? “Every maze has its minotaur’s”
There was only one choice. I’d follow Jen. She needed the help after all. Even in the darkened gym you could see how frail she had become…even in the mists you could see the desperation writ across her face. Jen needed this. If this evening failed her then Jen didn’t have long left.
And maybe by watching Jen I could learn more about what this place could do.
I swigged deeply from Sak’s bottle to the line that said “Keep going” and then I set off after Jen. I clambered up three tiers of the wooden steps, feeling the world grow incrementally hotter each time. The slatted wood burning at the soles of my feet.
I reached the tunnel and found myself starring down a narrow passageway like the gully of a ship.
I slowly made my way forwards. Behind the slats there was definitely…something, but it was hard to make out. Heat and darkness that I didn’t want to get any closer to than necessary.
After several meters the corridor made a hard turn to the right and I kept going. Then a twist to the left. Then another right.
“Whatever you do…wherever you go…remember your way back” had been Andy’s advice. The passages went on and on and it was a while before I noticed that the corridor was shrinking. The hot, damp wood getting closer to my skin on all sides. Steam seemed to creep in through the gaps between the slats and the path was growing hazy.
Another turn and then I realised I was at a cross roads.
“Jen?” I called in vain, knowing that even in her condition she’d had a decent head start on me.
To my left I spotted a strand of grey hair on the floor and hoped that was a sign I could trust. I pushed on, faster now, hoping to catch up with Jen before there were any more forks in the road that could trip me up. I couldn’t see any more of Jen’s fallen ringlets but the whole passage was beginning to smell like burnt hair and I hoped that I could reach her in time.
One more turn and then the passageway finally open out into a room.
The room was about the size of a classroom…maybe longer, all still wooden but no longer the same boat like slats. Now the walls and the floors were split into 1m x 1m wooden squares and each square bore an intricately carved design. Faces, flowers, animals, patterns, each engraving burnt directly into the wood.
In the middle of the floor, maybe 6 squares in, was Jen – collapsed in a heap. Her skin was pink and mottled and she was panting heavily.
“Jen!” I gasped and took a step towards her
“No!” I heard her small voice come back but it was too late to warn me. I’d already stepped down hard on the first panel and as I did a cascade of scalding water poured down from holes in the ceiling above.
I shrieked as my skin boiled and blistered and I fell backwards into my passageway for shelter.
“Go away Mike…please.”
“Jen come back…what are you doing?”
“I’m light enough…I’m nearly light enough…look at me…I’m all bones…I can get across…I just need a breather.”
My eyes boggled at what she was attempting to do. She had at least 4 more squares to cross before she would reach the safety of another passageway. It seemed as long as she remained perfectly still on the floor then she wasn’t putting enough weight on the wooden panel below her to trigger the boiling waters above.
“Let me help you!” I cried desperately
“No dear…you’re…you’re too heavy” she said with a weak smile. She was right of course, but at that moment in time, those were the last words I’d wanted to hear. I’d come here tonight to prove myself…so I wouldn’t have to be a flabby coward all my life…This was the place in which I would finally change…I decided I’d help Jen even if it killed me.
I stepped out onto the first panel again. Slower this time, easing myself onto it. I breathed…no water, no burning. Gently was the way to go.
Another panel…I moved as slowly as I could. I thought I’d just about got away with it when a small dribble of water hit my scalp. It couldn’t have been more than a table spoon but it felt as if it had been poured straight out of a kettle.
It seemed that each panel was more sensitive than the last.
How many weeks had Jen been withering away in the hopes of finally being gaunt enough to cross this room?
I realised that Sak’s litre bottle of wasn’t doing me any favours. Five more panels to reach Jen…4 more panels to escape the room. I could do the whole lot in maybe 20 steps, but my weight was already tipping the balance.
I tried one more panel and knew I was pushing my luck. A small shower of water this time that felt like a blade down my back. I could feel it burning deep in my body and knew that it would scar.
I was as close to Jen as I could safely get. The only option now was a mad dash. To grab Jen on my way and get to the passage on the other side of the room as quickly as possible.
“Mike…please don’t…I’ll be okay…please?” I ignored her, no longer sure of who’s life I was really trying to save.
I didn’t know how much help it would offer but I needed all the help I could get, so I poured all of Sak’s bottle over my head, in the hope of some thin amount of resistance to the agonising waters above.
3…2…1…I ran.
I hadn’t sprinted since school and was pleased to see that in dire straights my body could still deliver.
For the first panel I was faster than the downpour, but I hadn’t considered how I would quickly pick up Jen. She was small but it still took enough time for the scalding waters to catch up with me. For a moment the cold water offered the protection I’d hoped for and I could see my arms steaming. I hoisted Jen up into a fireman’s lift and ran like I’d never run before. Then the burning began.
Like nothing I’d ever experienced - In rivulets down my scalp and between my eyes, it felt like wax coating my body. I closed my eyes, bowed my head and thought of nothing but how I could protect Jen from this furious shower.
I couldn’t tell you how I managed to reach the other passage way - but I did.
Jen and I collapsed to the floor and for a moment I writhed there, semi mad with the pain, wishing that I could die rather than feel any more heat.
It began to pass and I could feel Jen gently stroking my hair.
“Oh look at you…your poor body…You shouldn’t have done that love…but thank you.” Jen smiled and somehow I felt like it had been worth it…for this strange old lady who I had met twice. It had been worth it.
We staggered on…arm in arm. A haggard old lady and a chubby moron with what felt like a body covered in third degree burns.
I don’t know how many more twists and turns that corridor took before opening out again. It felt like Jen carried me more than I carried her.
When the passageway came to an end I blinked dumbly, not sure of what I was looking at. The tunnel just stopped. A jagged tear in the fabric of everything. All around us was desolate and impenetrable blackness, save for a lone path leading straight forwards towards a towering wall of ice.
I looked down. The path was about a meter wide and maybe 15 meters long and every inch of it was built from iridescent coals. Some glowing orange, some still char black, some burnt all the way through to hot white ash.
“Oh god” I heard Jen mutter beside me. “I can’t…”
I knew what she meant. I didn’t know if I could either. I’d heard before that walking on coals was just mind over matter but from where we were standing, feeling the heat shimmering off them, it felt like it really would be the death of me.
Andy had said to be careful here “Whatever happens here…happens”…every burn and scald was another scar that I would take home with me…if I ever got home.
But he had also said to breath…just breath and everything would be fine. And for some reason I trusted him. A man I had met only once but who was brave enough to climb up and up and up to the top of the tower…
“Are you sure this is the way Jen”
A tear rolled down her cheek and she nodded. “There’s a room dear…somewhere in this maze where the mists show you…different times. Past, present…and futures…so many different futures…and in one of them…I was alive and well. Holding my grand daughter and…and laughing…” I could see that she believed in that future with all her heart. That just that act of believing in it was what had kept her going this long.
“It has to be true.” That was all I needed to hear to at least try. I took one final breath and set off across the coals.
There are no words to tell you how much it hurt, or how much that hurt grew step by step. I waited for a numbness to set in but it never came. I could feel each new burn afresh but also the sharp edges of the coals cutting my feet apart and then burning inside the cuts. The fire finding its way deeper inside me, burning up and up towards my bones.
I tried to switch off my brain and squirrel away deep into the recesses of a memory to distract myself.
Images of my wife kept flashing before my eyes.
The day we’d met.
Our first kiss.
Proposing to her.
Our wedding.
Finding out she was pregnant.
And knowing.
Knowing in my heart of hearts that there was no way it was mine.
Images of her naked body bucking and gyrating but not with me.
Some other man.
Some one else.
I don’t know who…
But maybe this place could show me.
And then…
My hands made contact with the wall of ice. I’d made it. One final step onto a small block in front of me and the relief was immeasurable. I didn’t want to look down…I knew that if I saw the damage to my feet then there was no way I would ever make it back across to Jen.
Before me was a jagged shard of ice as tall as a church.
The perfect whiteness of it shined out in this hellish darkness. Inside it I could see colours dancing, refraction, swirling into…images…people. Not just people but…Jen. I could see the future that she’d been promised. I could see Jen, bright and shining and laughing. By my hands, at the bottom of the ice wall was a small fissure that you could reach right into and inside I saw an old ceramic bowl, just like the one Sak had inhaled from in my dream.
The basin was slowly collecting water as it melted from the gigantic shard of ice.
Was this some kind of cure? It had to be. There was something about the ice that seemed to shimmer. This felt like the prize at the end of that long terrible gauntlet.
I turned around to face Jen. She was sat by the tunnel. From this distance I couldn’t see any signs of movement from her. I had to be quick.
I looked at the coals and took small solace in the fact I had done it once already. Surely I could do it again. I was about to step out when I paused. Amidst the coals I had spotted something. Eyes. Living eyes, blinking in the embers. And occasionally fingers too. Wriggly fingers pushing up towards me.
I blinked.
Had they always been there or was something rising out of the flames? Something that wanted to stop me taking the secrets of this place back home.
I looked around at the world of darkness around me…desperate for another route, and at the edges of my vision I could now see small flecks of light. Small flecks of human shaped light, burning in the darkness.
Like stars dotting the night sky, there seemed to be an army of figures, burning into existence.
We had to leave.
I took another breath and ran, trying to concentrate hard enough on not spilling the bowl of water to take my mind off the excruciating pain. I could feel the coals squirming, beneath my feet, more body parts erupting from the rubble. Appendages reaching for my ankles.
At the last I tripped and collapsed to my knees in the fiery embers, but I’d come too far to stop.
I shuffled the last few steps, feeling the skin coming away from my shins in rags.
I reached Jen and poured the basin straight into her mouth.
She was alive but ashen grey. Ice cold water dribbled down her chin.
“Swallow” I said, more firm than I’d ever been in my life.
Finally I saw her neck muscles twitch. Then her hands raised to meet mine and she continued to drink. Stronger now. Whatever was in the water was helping her.
I looked around and saw whole heads were emerging from the coals, skulls devoid of flesh and missing chunks.
The specks of light in the darkness had grown as well. People made of flames but with unnaturally long limbs.
It was time to go. However much Jen had drunk, that would have to be enough.
I lifted her onto my shoulders and we set off back down the maze of passage ways. Turn after turn I was mulling over how on earth I would face that room of scalding water again.
“Turn right when I say” a voice said beside me. “Don’t stop moving…just turn right when I say” I realised that the voice was coming from the other side of the wooden slats, as if from another passageway that was running parallel ours. And what’s more was that I realised the voice belonged to Andy.
“Turn now.” I was too tired and too hurt to question, and the moment I heard those words I turned sharply and found myself walking out into a solid wall of steam. A passageway that I’m sure hadn’t been there before…So thick with smoke that I was blind but it wasn’t hot. For that alone I was grateful.
I pushed on and on and on, like I was back in the passing place again with no idea where I was heading or what I would find at the end of it. But for some reason I trusted Andy…trusted him enough to walk blindly into this tunnel and hope it was a shortcut. All at once we were out. Back in the chamber where it had all began.
I let Jen slide off my back and we both collapsed on the lowest bench. A frenzy of laughter burst forth from both of us…the mad laughter than only a survivor can ever experience. We’d made it. We’d survived. And what’s more we’d won…We’d found a cure for Jen!
“I can’t thank you enough Mike…you’re my angel…you’re my guardian angel” She was crying and laughing and she looked stronger already.Colour flooding back into her face.
I looked at the sandtimer and saw that precious little remained.
“We better go Jen” I said, a huge smile plastered across my face. I was burnt, battered and beaten and yet I’d never been happier. The sauna takes but it also gives.
“Yes…let’s go…it’s time for me to start living my life again” Jen shot up with a spring in her step. “It’s time to live!” She shouted, and pushed open the glass door to the poolside and went out to collect her pile of clothes.
It took me a moment to realise the mistake she had made. I watched in horror as the glass door to the sauna closed, cutting me off from Jen.
She had left the sauna, but not into our world. She had left into that hellish other earth.
She turned to face me…confused as to why I wasn’t following and I watched the realisation dawn on her face.
Jen tried to stop, but couldn’t. The black obsidian tiles had a slight slope to them leading towards the stagnant waters of that other pool. The tarpaulin cover had been removed and I watched as Jen slid right down towards the edge. Then her legs gave out from under her and she slipped.
Her back came down hard on the lip of the pool and I heard a terrible crack. She lay there for a moment, her torso still on the pool side, but her legs in the water. Her body an unnatural right angle.
Her eyes searched for mine and her mouth tried to speak, and for a moment I thought about going to get her. But then the water seemed to suck her down. Jens broken body was dragged towards the centre of the pool by invisible currents. Her broken body caught in a riptide that was pulling her down. From the edges of the room the watchers reappeared, emerging from the gloom and pulling with them the tarpaulin cover back across the pool. And then Jen was gone.
I tried to scream but my mouth was too dry.
I wanted to throw up but there was no moisture left in me
“MIKE THE TIMER” Lydia screamed. I don’t know when she had arrived or how much she had seen but it didn’t matter. She was too late.
“SPIT NOW” I saw on the timer that there were mere seconds for us to still leave, but it was no use. I couldn’t have spit even if I’d wanted to. I was too dry…too shocked and too dry. “YOU HAVE TO FUCKING SPIT” Lydia screamed in my face…a madness in her eyes that I’d never seen before.
Then her hands was inside my mouth, grabbing at whatever moisture was left, and then I watched as she plunged her hands down onto the coals.
We were back.
Back in our the safety of our sauna…our gym…our world.
Lydia had forced me to spit. But it was just the two of us. Jen was gone. We’d come so close…It wasn’t fair…it wasn’t fair at all. The Sauna had cheated us.
“We have to go…now” Lydia said calmly. Impossibly calmly under the circumstances. She lifted me and walked me out of the sauna. She grabbed our clothes and led us to the entrance. Marching me forwards like a puppet.
I let myself be numbly led. The midnight air must have been freezing on my naked body but I didn’t notice.
I didn’t even question how she knew where I’d left my car.
When we got to my car we both started to dress in silence. It was only then that I realised that Lydia was covered in blood. She was bleeding from a myriad of tiny scratches all across her body.
“Lydia” I gasped…blinking back tears. “Are you-” I tried to ask, and she stopped me with a kiss. A kiss that was long and deep and real. Then we were falling bacwards. Fumbled into the backseats of my car and she pulled me inside her.
I didn’t know what to feel.
It was transactional.
It was the rush of still being alive.
It was wrong and I loved it.
Bloodied and burnt, we fucked and didn’t care a damn about the viscera we were leaving all over the back seat of my car.
When it was over she asked to be driven to a bus stop.
“Let me take you home?”
“No…The walk will do me good.”
“Did you…” I didn’t know how to phrase the question “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No” Lydia said despondently. “So that’s that I guess. There’s no way we can go back there…we’ll need to find somewhere else if we’re going back.”
I nodded. At any other time, if some one had suggested that we might ever go back to that terrifying place that had just taken the life of a friend - I’d have bolted.
It was madness but there was no doubt about it. Both of us had unfinished business in that place and there was no question we had to return. I couldn’t help Jen but I can still help Lydia…I won’t make the same mistakes again. The sauna won’t trick me again. And once Lydia had what she needed…then it would be my turn. My turn to see into those mists that show the past. And then see what options await me in the future.
“I’ve got an idea Lydia…give me a week…but I think I know a way that we can go back.” “I trust you” was all she said.
We kissed one last time and parted ways.
And now I’ve got a week. One week to finally finish my home sauna project and then I can go back. Lydia and I can go back whenever we want and take and take and take from that place where all things are possible if you are willing to risk it.
…and I’ll win this time…For Jen…I’ll live for the both of us.