Cotman and Gandy

Cotman craned his neck to take in the marquee above the gatehouse. "Welcome to Albert Speer World!", it proclaimed. Or "Welc me to Albe t Speer Wo ld!", actually, since several of the letters had been removed. Or had never actually been present at all, in fact. Typoglycemia, the branding agency had said: it's still legible so long as the first and last letters are in the right place, and it’ll really get the message across. Gandy looked over and nodded, and Cotman nodded back at him.

They joined the queue of bearded patrons clutching DSLR cameras, paid their entrance fees and shuffled through onto the wide boulevard beyond. It was scored by cracks and peppered by small piles of debris here and there, as if a seismic event had pulled the tarmac apart to exhume what lay beneath, pushing detritus through and up onto the surface. Immediately the hoards began taking pictures. Some fell to a knee to frame weeds from low angles. Others loomed to capture the chaotic geometries of shattered paving from directly above. Cotman and Gandy stood back and surveyed the scene.

A small congregation was gathered around a shallow niche in the wall adjacent to the gatehouse, whispering in reverential tones. Cotman and Gandy walked over to join them. The cavity was rough hewn and nearly 3 metres across, with chisel marks still visible in the stone. "There was a Banksy here," said Cotman, "---but the investment group that owned the park had it removed and auctioned off," interjected Gandy, completing his friend's thought. They pondered the negative space, ruminating on the spectral presence of what had once been.

The pilgrim's hushed exultations were carried on the air as Cotman and Gandy headed deeper into the park, their quiet cooings mixing with the odours of fat and flesh drifting over from the refreshment concessions that flanked the avenue - Byron Burger and BREWDOG to their right, Shakeshack and Patty & Bun to their left; a valley of exposed brick, worn wooden floorboards and bare light bulbs. The prospect concluded with a vintage American ambulance advertising Guerilla Dining, their menu consisting entirely of fried chicken dishes named after forgotten b-movie stars. Opposite stood a rusted shipping container, housing a pop-up gallery selling framed prints of tattered antique chairs standing alone in the middle of large, dimly lit rooms.

Cotman and Gandy walked past the emporia, striding on to the end of the main artery, where it furcated into 4 smaller channels. At the origin of the circle stood a wrought iron sign advertising the Zones beyond, and Cotman lifted his head again to savour their names: Motor City and Victoriana on one side, Pripyat and Huaxia on the other. The stubs of pollarded limbs hinted at further sectors, proposed but unbuilt, the focus groups having offered a lukewarm response to the concept boards created for Foro Romano, Hellenica and Ziggurat.

Cotman stepped forwards, but Gandy reached out and held his friend's arm. "No," he said, shaking his head, "not yet." Instead he pointed to the left, and they fell into a crowd heading into Huaxia Zone. A lithesome young woman stood by the ingress, wearing pigtails, Vans and a dark blue t-shirt bearing the legend "Generation UrbeX" in white block print. She pressed a pamphlet into their hands as they padded past.

Huaxia was comprised of a series of spaces of varying shape and size, each composed in a state of exquisite dereliction. Most of the material had been shipped over brick by brick from the slums of Shanxi province, but the first exhibit was an exception. It was an original installation created by the park's artist in residence, the leaflet explained. It was intended as an amuse bouche for the eyes, a sight-bite and a scene setter, the text clarified. It consisted of a moraine of fragmented brickwork and torn roofing felt, stacked to create a small, rugged incline. In the midst of the grey debris stood a partially deflated basketball, its orange dermis livid in the dying embers of a simulated sun. The tableau was titled The Allegorical Hairline Fractures in Yao Ming's Economic Miracle, and a short statement from the creator detailed the ways in which it shed a jaundiced light on the diastolic murmurs that lay at the heart of late capitalism. Cotman and Gandy stood with the other seekers, contemplating it for a respectful period before moving on.

The subsequent spaces were more conventional, and representative of the meticulous facsimiles with which the park had built its reputation. A decaying ballroom contained collapsed chandeliers, peeling stucco and fractalline patterns of creeping ceiling mould. A class room from a provincial high school was garlanded with scraps of exercise books; the browned, curling paper scattered about upturned desks to increase the sense of authenticity. A decrepit wooden staircase spiralled down to a dead end, but prompted rapturous activity from the explorers nonetheless. They leaned over rotting balustrades to snap shots of its plummet into darkness, then scampered to the bottom to snatch the reverse. Cotman and Gandy stood impassively in the shadowy margins, looking, and looking at the others looking. "It's time," said Cotman.

The duo emerged back onto the central boulevard, and disengaged from the flow of bodies moving on to the next sector. In the months after the park's initial opening Motor City had been by far the most popular Zone. Prose poets and photo journalists had flocked from around the globe to compose hymns to its evocation of the nightmare that had usurped the American Dream. It had been rumoured that an Iranian film director was scouting the cavernous hulks of its abandoned factories as a location for a science fiction movie. But over time the clamour had faded, and Motor City had ceded the mantle to Pripyat.

The Pripyat Zone had closed for refurbishment the previous year, and a huge new exhibit had been installed. It was the park's biggest yet, more vast even than the full scale replica of a brick built power station that formed the centre piece of Victoriana. A sign at the entrance boasted of its unveiling: "MOCKINGBIRD. All New for Summer 2014. Advanced bookings required". A line of text at the bottom of the notice advised that the park's complimentary wi-fi service did not function in the vicinity. Cotman and Gandy handed over their tickets and entered the sector.

Pripyat was different in character and aesthetic to the other Zones. Motor City, Victoriana and Huaxia were closed, circumscribed places, in thrall to the urban landscape. They were testaments to man's capacity to create and conquer, even in their dissolution and decay. Pripyat announced no such thing. In Pripyat man was losing. Had lost, even. Pripyat was open to the elements, and contained a world falling into entropy, reclaimed inch by inch by nature’s persistent grasp. Grasses sprouted through fissures in the blacktop. Creepers shrouded abandoned shacks. Arable land had turned to wildflower meadow. Animal life ran wild, with songbirds nesting atop telegraph poles and deer flitting through the brush. It was the new-old paradigm that the park required to ensure its continued relevance, the board had argued.

Cotman and Gandy walked side by side down the winding woodland path. They slowed their pace and detached from the back of the group with whom they had entered the Zone. As the throng disappeared around the next meander on the trail their voices faded from hearing, swallowed by the rustle of leaves and the piped in burble of a phantom watercourse. Cotman halted, placed his rucksack on the ground, unzipped it and removed two items. He handed one to Gandy, and together they donned the rubber masks, each a caricatured likeness of the heedless features of Prince Charles. "All this ancient dust," said Cotman. "I am a ruin myself," replied Gandy.

MOCKINGBIRD loomed above the tree-tops, half a mile away, a vast oblong of metal scaffold, a climbing frame for the offspring an infernal machine-god. Cotman and Gandy walked on into the fading light. The air was heavy with the sharp smell of ozone, and the hairs on their arms bristled with the charge in the atmosphere. As they drew closer they sensed a faint humming, detected by the diaphragm as much as the ear. They heard the voices of the crowd again too, and the clicking of their camera shutters. Cotman's mobile phone chirped in protest as its signal failed, and Gandy smiled grimly beneath his mask.

The winding path ended, and they stood at the edge of a clearing. The long grass was trampled flat by the party ahead of them, and the parties before them. "STOP," shouted Cotman. The crowd ignored his instruction, and continued to mill around in front of the towering metal structure. "STOP," he repeated, to no avail again. Gandy withdrew the pistol from his belt and fired a single round into the crepuscular sky. The crowd stopped.

They turned to face the two interlopers and a hush fell over them, first of puzzlement, then of fear and alarm. Cotman reached into his bag once more, this time removing a small metal box with a dimmer switch mounted on the top. Gandy proffered his gun towards the group, herding them closer to the base of the rusting pylons. He ignored their mewling pleas for clemency, and retreated to join Cotman at the fringe of the glade.

Cotman held the box in front of him and turned the dial exactly one quarter clockwise. The humming emanating from MOCKINGBIRD became more intense, and birds took flight from the trees around the clearing. One of the crowd made to run away, but Gandy fired another shot into the air, and he fell to the ground, cowering, screaming and clutching his beanie-hatted head.

Cotman turned the switch another 90 degrees, and the hum turned to a buzz, filling the air with a violent vibration. Small objects were agitated by the reverberations. A layer of dust was lifted from the ground and swept towards the huge array, and tiny pebbles began to hop and skip in that direction. The group looked around in alarm as their clothing was pulled taut against their bodies, and their piercings began to twitch. "Ruin upon ruin," said Cotman. "Rout upon rout," said Gandy.

Cotman twisted the switch again. The buzz became a cacophony, and tremors shook the earth. A howling wind thundered around the clearing, the vortex centred on MOCKINGBIRD. Members of the group fell to their knees, holding their heads in agony. One looked on in wide-eyed horror as his camera levitated from his body and towards the colossal construction, the strap pulling at his neck like a noose. His mouth formed the rictus of a silent scream, his cry lost to the tumult.

Gandy stuffed his gun into his belt, reached across and took the box from Cotman's hands. They stood for a second, studying the Last Judgement in grisaille that lay before them, and then Gandy turned the dial again, completing its circle. A thunderclap blasted above, and the members of the mob were flung violently into the air, as if the force of gravity had abruptly polarised. Bodies twisted and reeled like ragdolls, limbs flailing at terrible angles as the group were drawn up and into the maelstrom, impotent amidst the energy emanating from the enormous iron edifice. Their figures became indistinct as they were swallowed by the swirling spout of dust and debris, and then the din was punctuated by a series of dull bass thumps, the impacts shaking MOCKINGBIRD to its foundations.

Gandy turned the switch back to its starting position, and silence descended. Backpacks and cameras thudded against the ground, and a lonely tweed hat fluttered down limply as the cloud of dirt dispersed. When the sky had cleared Cotman and Gandy removed their masks to appraise the fruits of their labours. The remains of the crowd were spread across the surface of MOCKINGBIRD like butterflies in a display case, a grotesque naturalist exhibit curated by a sadist Shrike bird. Rivulets of a cherry red blood trickled down from pulverised flesh, running into the ferrous scabs that encrusted the structure like pox. Gandy tossed the box aside, stepped forward and lifted his hands wide and to the sky. "Woe, destruction, ruin and decay," he shouted. "The worst is death---" continued Cotman, moving forward to stand beside him, "---and death will have her day," interrupted a voice from behind.

Cotman and Gandy turned to see who had disturbed their moment of exultation. The young woman from the entrance to Huaxia Zone stood at the mouth of her path, her face impassive. The leaflets were gone from her hands, replaced by the box that Gandy had discarded. "Who are you?" asked Cotman. "My name is Petra," she replied. "What do you want?" said Gandy. She didn't answer, but instead walked to Cotman, and placed a beatific kiss upon his forehead. As she stepped towards Gandy he fumbled for his gun, but she placed a soothing hand over his, and pressed her lips to his brow too. Standing between them, she intoned in a low voice. "Should the whole frame of nature round him break; in ruin and confusion hurled; he, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack; and stand secure amidst a falling world". She turned the switch on the box, and Cotman and Gandy let out strangled moans.

* * *

The damp grass slapped against the boy's shins as he careened through the undergrowth, the black shadow of his dog leading him deeper into the forest. "Come back, Sam!" he shouted, ducking to avoid a moss-covered branch. "We're not supposed to be here!" he protested, his forehead slick with sweat in the humid air. Tales of the forest were legion amongst the villagers. They whispered of the relics hidden amongst the thick foliage - the steps to nowhere, the hut with the haunted chair, the brown cathedral with the thousands of bats in its soot-stained apse. For the boys of the village it was a forbidden playground, a place of tall tales, and a stage on which to prove one's mettle. They laughed about it, but they wondered too, and beneath the thin veneer of bravado lay a deep disquiet, unspoken but understood by all. Who had created the buildings? For what purpose? And what of the spirits that had survived the Fall?

The boy burst through the tree line into a shallow depression filled with waist high grass. He heard a scuffling ahead, and saw a ripple in the lake of green. "Sam!" he shouted again, running towards the disturbance. I've got you now, he thought, closing on the spot, but mid-stride his shin hit something hard and he was sent tumbling forward, landing face down in the dust. He spat the dirt from his mouth, cursed and rolled onto his back, laying still for a second to clear his head.

When he sat up to nurse his throbbing foot the boy saw the obstacle that had felled him - a rusting metal stump some ten inches across. The girder it had once supported lay to the left, sheared from its base. Its length disappeared into the grass, but a few feet to the right was another stump with another rusting upright, and further iron stub was visible beyond that.

The boy was frightened, but he was curious too. Sam forgotten, he rose to his feet and began to walk along the line plotted by the strange remnants. He had counted nine when his eye was caught by the glint of a bright white object peeking through the undergrowth. He pushed the tall grasses aside, and what he revealed made him gasp aloud. Before him stood a pair of perfectly preserved, life-size marble figures, the stone polished to a brilliant lustre. Their features were carved with magnificent precision, and the boy ran his eyes over them with wonder. Every fold in the clothing was expressively traced, every pore on the skin delicately marked. They were alien presences, a singular hymn to the pure and pristine in a world of dilapidation and degeneration, but their bearing was anything but reassuring or aspirant. The two bodies were twisted into a tortured contrapposto, their faces locked into awful screams of pain, an evocation of timeless suffering.

The boy stood unmoving, awestruck. He wanted to touch the cold stone, to know that they weren't an apparition, but he didn't dare, lest he rouse them from their dreadful slumber. As he faltered before them there was a rustling in the grass, and Sam came trotting to his side, panting happily. The dog stopped next to the boy, lifted its leg and emitted a stream of hot, golden urine onto the feet of the figures.

"Let's get out of here Sam," said the boy, and together they walked back into the forest.