When he walked through the streets of Spitalfields on the following morning, the people whom he passed seemed to glance at him in curiosity or amazement, and he was sure that what he had done, or felt, had left some mark upon him. It would have been natural for him now to visit the church and sit beneath its walls, but he could not go back to the spot where he had seen the authors of his woes. He passed its entry two or three times, but then hurried back to Eagle Street with gathering excitement: and his mouth became dry when he entered his own room in order to fling himself down upon the bed. He lay quietly for a moment, listening to his heart beating, and then started tossing up and down with a fierce rhythm.
And then later he went downstairs to stoke up the fire, as his mother had asked him. He turned it around with his poker so that the new coals tumbled into the centre and, as they stirred and shifted in the heat, Thomas peered at them and imagined there the passages and caverns of hell where those who burn are the same colour as the flame.
Here was the church of Spitalfields glowing, red hot, and then in his exhaustion he fell asleep. It was his mother's voice which roused him, and in the first few seconds after waking he felt lost.
A succession of bright days did not lift Thomas's spirits; the bright ness disturbed him, and instinctively he sought the shadows which the winter sunlight casts. He felt at peace only in the hour before dawn, when the darkness seemed to give way slowly to a mist, and it was at this hour that he would wake and sit by his window. He had also taken to wandering: sometimes he walked through the streets of London, repeating words or phrases under his breath, and he had found an old square by the Thames in which a sun-dial had been erected. At weekends or in the early evenings he would sit here, contemplating the change which had come over his life and, in his extremity, thinking of the past and of the future.
Then one cold morning he woke and heard the screeching of a cat, although it might have been a human cry; he rose from his bed slowly and went to the window, but he could see nothing. He dressed quickly, combed his hair, and then walked quietly past his mother's bedroom: it was Saturday and she had what she called a 'lie in'. There was a time when he would have crawled into her bed and, as she slept, watched the dust stirring in the shafts of sunlight which entered her room, but now he crept down the stairs. He opened the door and crossed the threshold; as he went out into Eagle Street, the sound of his shoes on the frosted pavement echoed against the houses. Then he passed Monmouth Street and walked beside the church. He could see someone walking in front of him and, although it was not unusual in an area such as this for people to rise and go to their work early, Thomas slowed his pace so that he would not come too close. But as they both turned into Commercial Road the figure ahead, who was wearing some kind of dark top-coat or overcoat, seemed to slow down also -although he gave no sign that he was aware of the ten-year-old boy behind him.
Thomas stopped suddenly and pretended to look into the window of a record shop, although the bright posters and the glossy photographs shining in the neon light now seemed to him as strange as any objects brought up by a diver from the floor of the ocean. He kept himself unnaturally still as he stared at this display, but when after a minute he turned and walked on the other seemed as close as before.
Thomas went forward slowly, measuring pace by pace; he might have been engaged in that game where the feet must not touch the cracks in the pavement (or else, children say, you will break your mother's back), except that he never moved his eyes from the black coat of the figure in front of him.
The sun was rising above the houses of Spitalfields, a dull red circle like a reptile's eye, and although the man seemed still to be walking forward he was at the same time coming nearer: Thomas could see quite clearly his white hair, which curled over the collar of his black coat. And then the head turned slowly, and now the face smiles.
Thomas cried aloud, and ran diagonally across the street away from what he had just seen; he was running-back in the direction from which he had come, towards the church again, and as he ran he could hear the sound of footsteps chasing him (although, in truth, it might have been the echo of his own running steps). He turned the corner of Commercial Road and then, not looking back, he ran down Tabernacle Close at the end of which were the gates of the churchyard.
He knew that he would be able to squeeze his body through the railings in a way that no adult could: as yet the figure in Commercial Road might not have turned the corner, and he might get into the church itself unobserved. As he pushed his way through the gates, he saw the entrance to the tunnel and saw, also, that the planks which had been removed from its front had not yet been replaced. It was to this he ran, as to a place of refuge. He bent down, awkward and breathless, and scrambled through the damp entry: once more he thought he heard movement behind him, and in his panic he sprang forward before his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. He did not know that there were stairs in front of him and he fell, twisting his leg beneath him as he tumbled down; the light from the opening of the tunnel, which he half-glimpsed as he lay sprawled at the bottom of the steps, then disappeared.
It was the odour of the passage which woke him, since it had crept into his mouth and formed a pool there. He was still lying where he had fallen, one leg tucked beneath his body; the floor of the passage was cold, and he could feel that coldness ascending into him. He seemed to have entered a world of profound silence but, as he raised his head to listen more acutely, straining every sense so that he might better understand his position, he could hear faint murmurs of wind or low voices which might have come from the streets outside or even from the tunnel itself. He tried to rise but fell back upon the ground when the pain returned to his leg: he dared not touch it but stared at it helplessly before leaning back against the damp wall and closing his eyes. Without thought he repeated some words which a boy had once chalked on the blackboard between lessons: 'A lump of coal is better than nothing. Nothing is better than God. Therefore a lump of coal is better than God'. And then he traced his own name with his finger on the cracked and broken floor. He had heard the children's stories about 'the house under ground' but at this moment he felt no particular fear -he had been living in the dark world of his own anxieties, and no infliction of reality could seem more terrible than that.
Now in the dim attenuated light he saw the outlines of the passage ahead of him, and some letters inscribed on the curved roof above him. He turned his head, although it hurt him to do so, but the entrance through which he had come seemed to have disappeared and he was no longer sure exactly where he was. He tried to move forward: he had heard many times, from the adults as well as the children of the neighbourhood, that there was one tunnel in this labyrinth which led straight into the church, and it was in this direction that he must surely try to go. He crawled back into the centre of the passage, and raised himself on his arms: using his elbows for grip, he pulled his body after them while all the time he kept his head up so that he might see what was in front of him. He was moving forward slowly when he thought he heard a sound, a scraping sound, at the end of the passage from which he had just come: he turned his head in terror, but there seemed to be nothing there. Thomas now felt hot despite the coldness of the air; he could sense the sweat running down his forehead and along the side of his nose, and he licked it off with his tongue as it swelled in drops upon his upper lip. The pain in his leg seemed to fluctuate with the beating of his heart so he counted the sequence out loud and then, at the sound of his own voice, he began to cry. He was crawling past small rooms or chambers just outside the range of his ordinary vision and yet he tried to move softly, so as not to disturb those who might dwell in this place. In his agony he forgot that he was still going forward, although his mouth was open and he was gulping for air.