A Temple in the Sky

(Part of: The Comic Misadventures of Spencer Holloway)

 A Temple in the Sky

“Just down and around the U-shape.” 

The U-shape? What U-shape. He paces around, he lived a lifetime of being lost. When he gets back on it, his bike swerves and rattles, being bought from a shitty antique shop. He almost knows the guy that runs it, a nice young guy, big into the Who. But their conversations never seem to go anywhere. 

He often felt stupid as a young artist barrelling around in the country, he was like a disordered pigeon; flying into glass panes, dingy and dirty, bringing rotten diseases in his wake from Glasgow. This was just another landmark, another unknown odd shaped object built out of bricks. If he was able to find it, he wondered if that woman had led him astray, the path was haunted not by will o’ the wisps, but tetchily old ladies wearing floral bonnets. He adjusted the lapel on his suit and peddled furiously in his too-tight trendy slacks. The road ahead was dirt and quickly descending into indiscernible farmland. As he approached the gate he looked forlornly at his bike, before leaving it and hopping over. After a few clumsy steps through knee high yellow grass, he returned and loudly lobbed it over in an action that most resembled some kind of attack which might have been perpetuated by either of them. He settled on the thing and began peddling with increasing distaste. The wheels were winning against the grass, but only in the most pitiful way which would win them nothing but a participation trophy. With what little would consider luck, a farmer now appeared on the horizon. To the tee, he was your typical farmer. Short, stout, old, and with a look on his face that indicated he might reach for his shotgun at the first sight of the mop top on our protagonists’ head. To a genuine luck, no such thing occurred. He simply allowed the pitiful boy to continue on his course until they were within shouting distance. 

“Mowing the grass their lad?” 

Disgruntled peddling continued, 

“No- I mean, sorry, I’m-” he straightened off the bike with the ferocity of a man swiping a particularly irritating bur from his coat and began stomping through the grass towards his farmer.  “Do you have any idea about-” swiping grass from his trousers, 

“a Masonic temple anywhere around here?” 

“The Devil-” 

“Not a functional one, an old one…” there was a sudden cacophony of crumpling as he removed a large black and white picture of the thing from his inside pocket. 

“Oh right… that thing.” The farmer seemed particularly unimpressed, as if he’d rather this stranger shown him to a fully operational underground qabbal. 

“Well, your best bet would be to go back the way you came. Follow the road back along the U-turn, go right and you’ll see it.” 

Spencer squinted. 

“Alright.” before grabbing hold of his handlebars uncertainly and beginning to wheel the bike.  “Thanks… sir.” He waded away with that rickety companion. 

“And try not to go stumbling into many more people’s land, ‘specially not with that thing!” The farmer shouted out. 

“Yeah. Thanks… sorry.” At least he and the farmer could be joined in their shared disdain of the bicycle.  “U-turn… U-turn…” he muttered to himself once he was clear of that awful field. He was stood just before it again, except this time on the opposite side of the thing. From either side you couldn’t see where it was going, since the trough of the “U” was filled up with shrubs and trees; probably with the express purpose of confusing someone like him. He walked along sheepishly, not daring to get back onto his embarrassment of a bike after it had caused him such humiliation. As he’d noticed prior, the road graduated from paving into dirt at this end, and he was now going along that part, hanging around the walled edge lest he be surprised by a sudden car. Instead, he was approached by a trinity of schoolboys riding their own bicycles who gave him looks in the middling stratosphere between disgust, confusion and admiration. Obviously, he soon ended up exactly where he’d started after being tricked by that stupid woman. 

“Go right…” 

He held his fingers up before his face in double L shapes. He was a bit disappointed by the instructions, surely it would be more fitting if to get to the Masonic temple you had to go left. It only made him more suspicious that the whole thing was another farce. He followed the directions anyway which took him down a much similar road, but now with working sidewalk and not “U-shaped”. It was fully enshadowed by a large wall which reached up past all five foot ten of him and was topped with the poking leaves of more indiscriminately planted trees. His knees were beginning to hurt from all this walking and peddling, leading him to hope that he would turn a corner and be inducted into the brotherhood on the spot, shining temple before him. Of course no such thing happened, and he was only coming into more worrying proximity with fields by following this route. He knew full well the way back to civilisation, he was hardly far from the out of-the-way dregs of a town, but he was set on following the farmers’ instruction to the end. At the stopping of

his straight-line path, the street petered off at a corner into forgotten suburbia. As per instruction, Spencer was instead stuck facing a low stone wall, beyond which stretched a million more miles of yellow unwelcoming fields. Awful, awful fields. 

He stared off, with clouds in his eyes and misery in his heart. There, at the top of a hill, was the yellow ghost of his temple. Surrounded by a maze of the like-coloured grass and all the wire fences and low stone walls. 

He set off towards the town creaking and wobbling on his old bike.