O had that dream again last night: the one with the two children...

A black crow on a winter branch secretly folds one broken wing behind. Her beak shines hard, sharp and crooked for the kill. She has one cold, black eye wide-open, alert, unblinking; deep and sure as death.

O had that dream again last night. The one with the two children. And their eyes, their eyes huge and black, black and huge, twisting, turning, weaving their ancient spell, drawing him in, to drop wildly down, down, down, spiraling down. And always the pressure of the drums pounding in his temples, and he didn’t know which way was up. Their eyes, their eyes that mesmerise, that beckon - calling, calling, calling - from the darkness, from the outworld, from the hinterland, far, far away, over the city walls, far, far beyond his neat square room, and this tiny, white screen.

Look. There. They're there now. Two little, stone-age savages with screwed-up dirty faces. A girl and a boy, big sister and her little brother. She holds his hand tightly, and he fidgets, twists and turns to escape her grasp. And their wiry bodies are ever-mobile, as they watch and wait, impatiently shifting from foot to foot. Twigs and branches whip and snap and crackle, under small bare feet.

They’re dressed today in pale grey animal tatters. They never seem to get any older. They're always the same, always watching, waiting, and their eyes always calling, calling, calling: ‘Come hither, come hither, come hither, and join the dance…’

The girl leans in. See the unscrubbed face of a wild woodland creature, screwing up her eyes, furrowing her brow, twitching her stubby button nose, scowling and sniffing; momentarily overcome by curiosity, it seems, momentarily losing her native caution, as if, for a moment, she can see him sitting there and wonders what he is. As if for a moment she could press her soft, warm cheek against his. Her black eyes grow wider and rounder as she leans in. He sees her lower lip is painted black and swells into a petulant pout. The air becomes suddenly chill. He feels a wisp of the wind of their world. The white frame clicks and clears a little, widens, and he glimpses their woodland home.

It must be autumn there now. Leaves lie russet on the ground in long, slender barrows by the brook - winking in the breeze, red, yellow, orange, brown - and here and there the forest floor is flattened cold and grey by the clockwork footfall of the hunting bands that crossed and recrossed in Indian style not half a day ago.

Now the girl is distracted by something in the trees. She turns, and crouching low, she grips her brother’s tiny, grubby hand more tightly, and they slip away in a rustle of leaves.

O was a child of six when he first saw them. It was night time, and they were clanking down a metal fire-escape, then hurtling headlong in a whip and a flap of heels and cloaks down the cobbles of Gasworks Brew. He thought they must be child-workers from the mill, fleeing their filthy metal masters, overseers of the clanging machines. He saw them run in terror from the Time and Motions, from the Clackers. Saw them clunking in clogs, in tattered shawl and poor coat. Little angels with dirty faces. Saw them as they scurried frantically along the canal path, under the bridge, along the lane to the cinder path. Watched them disappear somewhere up ahead.

He can’t see them now. But he knows one is the girl – she’s the taller of the two, and she’s on the left-hand side of the pair – and one is the boy – he’s the smaller one on the right. She's his sister, and she lowers a warm, protective wing across his shoulder, in a motherly gesture. And they are walking away. He hears the boy’s voice sometimes. It’s not a small child’s voice; it’s the voice of an old man, trying to remember.

It’s so very long ago, you see. All I know is: she holds my hand so very, very tight and she never lets me go. And I look up to her. Niamh, my sister, so determined, so very brave. She's much bigger, much stronger than me. And I know she's so much better than me, in so many ways. And we march out into the night, up the cinder path, along the lane, and out into the open fields.

O watches two children walk away: a girl and a boy. Black night holds its breath, and they get further and further off, become indistinct. Like two sooty smudges in the grate, fragile strangers, as – puff – they are caught in the draught. They swirl and turn and – pop - they disappear up the chimney. Gone, the broken, black umbrellas, one large and one small. Gone, in tatters, into the night, and out of sight.

A black crow on a winter branch secretly folds one broken wing behind. Her beak shines hard, sharp and crooked for the kill. She has one cold, black eye wide-open, alert, unblinking; deep and sure as death.

But whatever lies behind the door...

But whatever lies behind the door, there is nothing much to do.

He’s had a long, exhausting day, wading thigh-deep through the hard, yellow grasses of the out-world; beneath a raw, white sun, he's been scavenging with Roy for bits of old machinery among the stony ruins of long-forgotten settlements. He starts to nod, and his chin finally drops onto his chest; and it’s remarked by two wise, old heads, Theodor and Benn, tribal elders gathered beneath the stars, across the sacred circle round the fire: that he has gone.

He has gone. And he finds himself back in the same old place; and he feels the same, eerie stillness, the same dumb pressure on his temples. He swings his head around, desperately seeking something familiar, something he knows: a rock, a bush, a river, a familiar sky even, a familiar sun. He finds none. There is nothing. He stands alone on alien ground. He’s like one who has fallen from the sky, breathless, abandoned, exposed on a dry, stony hillside; one whose limbs have been brutally broken, one who cries to the distant, foreign moons and stars, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ No answer comes. He hears only the dry wind over desert lands.

There’s nothing to be done, so he sets off walking. Not heaving heavy boots through thick, coarse grasslands with a trusted companion: this time he’s limping alone over hard, endless grey limestone, a screaming, sideways wind beginning to batter the side of his face; across a desolate landscape, emptied of any living things, save for – scattered here and there – the odd crippled tree, sheltering amongst dry, broken stones in a deep, rocky scar.

He halts. Something is suddenly familiar about these particular gnarled and twisted limbs that reach out in desperate need from the gully nearest to hand. He remembers the day they painted trees. Ged’s tree grew strong, straight and tall in a meadow; it was sturdy, full and round, glittering green in a clear blue sky, animated by cheery, fluttering, twittering birds; his stood all alone, tense, breathless, frail and leafless, exposed and close to death on barren, purple steppes. He hadn’t been a happy child.

And as he remembers, he thinks he hears Jacques' chanson - you know the one, David:

But whatever lies behind the door, there is nothing much to do.

He thinks he knows what’s behind the door. He had heard the inhuman shriek behind the door as a child, as he trembled on the bend at the top of the stairs; and one by one his mother and father had gone to answer a knock at the door. 

And what was behind the door was the one thing they couldn’t protect him from.

But at least now, he didn’t care – or, at least, he cared less. For in front of that door, there was Tina.

Yes. At least, there was someone. At least there was something. Even if it was only his humdrum life with Tina, and the mortgage, and the kids (whose names he couldn’t remember) and the drab routines of the education factory, the reliable, reassuring tick-tock of the modern human machinery. The career plan, the property ladder, Christmas and the holidays. The whole package (from cradle to grave). It was the conventional family story, the Wonderful Life they saw from the living room sofa (two more payments and it was theirs) every evening in the building society ads. The ones that made Tina purr so contentedly.

God is dead, said Nietzsche, and the moderns buried him, out there in the desert. Don’t go looking for him, though: he isn’t there. 

Of course, the furniture of Jesus’s world was very plain and rustic: a lake, a few fishing boats pulled onto the sand, some nets and baskets, a dusty town square and a water-hole with a surly lip; a random huddle of square, white-painted, mud houses, a cave or two in the surrounding hills, a bigger hill with some crosses, some noisy, clanking Roman soldiers - all metal with a flash of red - some holy-men in rough, colourless robes, sundry poor villagers; and a temple.

It occurs to O that with a few minor alterations, it was a place where you could arrive with some old gunslinger chums and save a whole village of poor peasants from the tyranny of an evil bandit.

Of course, to operate like Jesus - or Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, for that matter - is not easy in a large Brutalist building of stone, steel and glass, in a room arranged into rows and rows of desks, and children in uniforms, and adults in matching suits and ties, and the endless modern corridors.

There’s the rub, as they say. How do you live a life of love and kindness, of untamed wildness, a life worth living; in a world of corridors and timetables?

There is only art. Only words. There is no escape. Like the Prisoner ('Be seeing you' in neat blazer, slacks and sailing shoes, or 'wait and hope' in billowing, rakish sleeves), the Outlaw needs to go beyond the walls to find out for sure. But he is afraid of what he might find. That there is nothing.

He needs to go out into the desert lands to search for meaning; to search for God. He knew it couldn’t be this! But he feared there was nothing else.

So, does he wait and hope to meet a nice girl, who works in sales in the modern city, who will make him happy?

Or does he walk into the desert to find Tina's rebel twin in a broken Mad Max out-world? The stunningly wild and beautiful, dangerous and damned vampire queen. They call her Tiaa - there is always an alternative.

He remembers from his literary youth the choice offered in The Cocktail Party. Which was it to be: the solitary saint or the routine married couple?

Seems he must go out alone, go into the desert and risk all. Risk his life, risk death to find out.