The Seeker
A short story submitted to the Welkin Writing Prize 2023, inspired by a picture
Art: Zdzisław Beksiński
The incessant drips slid inside the neck of the threadbare overcoat. It had been brand new when he began the search, back when he started the journey that had led him here. The iron gates groaned, the gnarled, graffitied walls struggling to keep them upright in the gusts of wind funnelling down the dark alley that had brought him to this place. After so many years, he hesitated, his feet rooted to the uneven pavement that led into the neglected park he had been guided to. Perhaps the search had become the thing. His reluctance to draw it to a close held him in the grip of unexpected inertia. The note had turned up unexpectedly, crumpled and worn, not unlike the woman who acted as receptionist, cleaner, and sentinel at his cheap backstreet hotel. The boarding house was more accustomed to the patronage of sailors who prowled the dockside streets around it seeking world-weary women who would make them — if just for an hour — feel wanted. An hour was just enough time not to notice how little the woman at reception cared for the cleaning. Her interest was in observation and the gathering of titbits of gossip; as she pushed the grubby note across the counter he could almost feel her rheumy old eyes prying through the thoughts racing around his head, seeking meaning, grasping at other people’s secrets in a vain bid to make her own life more interesting. The note had brought him here. On a dark evening when all the self-respecting whores and pock-faced sailors were tucked up in rooms in dingy bedrooms down by the port, he found himself in the high part of town in the shadow of the ancient church. The creak of the gate snapped him out of his reverie, reminding him that he was here for a reason. Finally, perhaps, to free himself of the burden of not knowing. He turned up the damp collar of a raincoat that no longer deserved the description. Leaning heavily on the stick that carried the weight of a body lopsided since the accident, he pushed against the wall of terror that held him in the shadows. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, lighting the old clock. Unseen by him, the woman noted the time before turning to walk back to the hotel, back to the reception desk behind which she gathered characters for the stories that wrote themselves on her old typewriter.
