Night had fallen hours ago and the darkness of a moonless night was well established as Sacha climbed the narrow spiral stairs. The walls on either side were thick and made up of a combination of stone and brick, as were the stairs, and all of it was centuries old. He kept his right hand held out to his side, running along the wall, so he could better gauge the curvature of the spiral staircase. He didn’t want to trip and risk falling down the stairs. He’d seen first hand how that usually ended up.

It was even darker here than it was outside but he didn’t dare bring any light with him. Sure, Sacha was the night watchman for the ancient building, but he wasn’t sure that his superiors would appreciate it if they began to get reports of mysterious lights appearing in the tower windows or along the rooftops.

The only way he could tell where he was in the tower, and therefore know how much further he had still to climb, was the air. As he climbed it went through a series of notable changes. At first, the air started out as just slightly musty. As he went higher the air would grow heavy and warmer until it was almost unbearable. Right near the top, however, the air would freshen and cool. It was a pattern that Sacha had learned and grown familiar with over the past few years working there.

Sweat began to collect on his forehead as he pressed on through the middle layer of hot and humid air. Some nights even the walls seemed to sweat but thankfully it was not so this night. He wiped his brow with a small handkerchief and pressed onward.

Buzzzz…Buzzzz…Buzzzz

Sacha pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the screen: his dad was calling. Sacha furrowed his brow. Why would his dad be calling him this late at night? Maybe something had happened. He hoped everything was all right. He normally wasn’t allowed to take personal calls while at work but his concern that something might be wrong he answered the phone any way.

“Hello, dad?” Sacha said. “Is anything wrong?”

There was a moment of hesitation on the other side of the call and Sacha braced himself.

“No,” came his dad’s eventual response, though it was laden with uncertainty. “Why should there be anything wrong?”

Sacha checked his watch.

“It’s two thirty in the morning,” he stated. “Most people don’t just call each other this late unless somethings wrong.”

“I just thought you’d be awake,” his dad told him. “I know you work late and thought now would be a good time to talk.”

Sacha wiped his forehead with his handkerchief again, followed by his neck. He’d stopped climbing the stairs to answer the phone but he’d stopped right in the middle of the hottest part of the climb.

“I’m not really suppose to take personal calls at work, dad,” Sacha said as he resumed moving up the stairs. “We can talk later today after I get off work.”

“Are you actually likely to get in trouble?” was his dad’s reply.

Sacha rolled his eyes. His dad had always had a rather loose relationship with rules. While growing up, Sacha could remember several times when his dad had told him that it was only a rule if you were likely to get caught. That wasn’t to say his dad was some sort of criminal. He wasn’t. But there were several occasions when Sacha had witnessed his dad getting in trouble for ignoring rules he really shouldn’t have ignored.

“I’d rather not risk it,” Sacha admitted. “I really like this job.”

He heard his dad snort on the other end of the line. “What sort of job is that, eh? They lock you in some empty building for eight hours and expect you to just stare at the walls!”

Sacha was shocked by his dad’s sudden outburst. It might not be a glamorous job but it paid his bills. That, and he really did enjoy it.

“You are wasting your life in that building!” Sacha’s dad went on. “What kind of a life can you expect to have, huh? How can you have any friends? Any relationships? How can you ever expect to find a wife?”

Sacha halted again on the stairs. He was slightly out of breath and wanted to be able to speak more easily, even as he began to feel his heart race in his chest from more than just the stairs.

“Is that why you’re calling me?” Sacha demanded. “You think my job’s that bad?”

“Yes,” was his dad’s immediate response. “I was happy for you when you first got it, but that was years ago and you’re just wasting your life away. You need to move on and find something better. You’ll never attract a woman living your sort of lifestyle.”

“First of all,” Sacha began, struggling to keep his voice level, “I do, in fact, have friends. We go out, we have fun, and sometimes I even go on dates.”

“Pshh,” came the response and Sacha could just imagine the look of disbelief on his dad’s face. “When do you have time? You’re awake when everyone else is asleep and you’re asleep when everyone else is awake! And what about these women you’re supposedly dating? You’ve never mentioned any of them to your mother or me.”

“Well, that’s because I didn’t think you’d be all that interested,” Sacha said. “We usually just sit around and talk. Should I begin reporting to you every time I do that from now on?”

“You just sit around and talk on your dates?” was his dad’s incredulous reply. “No wonder you’re still single. You need to woo them, Sacha.”

The conversation was going nowhere and every minute spent on the phone was another victory for his dad. Sacha did love his dad, and they usually got along rather well, but there were a few things they could never quite see eye to eye on.

“Look, dad,” Sacha said and it bothered him how tired his voice sounded even to him. “I’ve got to go. We can talk about this later after my shift.”

“No, Sacha,” his dad stated. “We are—

“Bye, dad.”

Sacha ended the call and then immediately placed his phone into “Do Not Disturb” mode. He wasn’t looking forward to the fallout he’d have to deal with whenever he and his dad did have that conversation, but that was a worry for another time.

Several minutes later, Sacha poked his head out through a small trapdoor in the roof and pulled himself up and out. The cold night air was almost freezing against his skin and his breath rose a few inches in front of him like wispy clouds of fog. Around him stood the many spires and buttresses of the structure and along the edge of the roof were row upon row of carved stone statues. He walked over and sat down beside one of them, letting his feet hang out over the edge. Ever since he was young he’d found it surprising that people were bothered by heights. To him, there was nothing all that dangerous about them as long as you weren’t too clumsy. Besides, the roof here was practically flat. Sitting here was no different than sitting on a bar stool and letting his legs dangle.

“Beautiful view,” Sacha remarked as he looked out over the city. Only the street lights were illuminated and the winding streets with their dots of light reminded him of the way the morning light sparkles through the dew on a spiders web.

“I’ve always preferred the view with moonlight,” the statue beside Sacha said, its voice a strange and melodic mix of grinding stone and pooling water. “But I can see how you would appreciate the view tonight, much in the same manner that I would if it were in fact a full moon. It is a marvelous thing that we each may enjoy such diverse elements within the same world.”

Sacha smiled to himself. He loved the way they spoke to him, the way they chose their words. He rested against the weather worn stone, feeling the cold of it sapping away his heat. He breathed in deeply of the night air and felt himself finally calming down from his dad’s phone call.

“You are full of thoughts tonight,” the statue observed, “but empty of words.”

Sacha nodded.

“You are more like us than like them,” the statue said. “For every word we speak we have a thousand thoughts. But they speak a thousand words of only a single thought.”

This was something that each of the statues, at one point or another, had said to him. It was, in fact, the first thing that he had heard any of them say. He’d been working there for just a few months when he’d found the staircase and, for lack of anything else to do that night, decided to climb up it and see where it went. Upon reaching the roof he looked out and was amazed by the both the view and the collection of statues. As soon as he heard the first one speak he’d thought that this was some sort of prank. The statues quickly dispelled that idea and Sacha found that he was surprisingly not bothered by this discovery. On the contrary, he began taking his breaks up there, sitting beside one statue or another, and looking out over the city and talking.

It was strange to him at first that he could never seem to be able to see that part of the roof from the ground. The statues here were so different from the usual ones that adorned the rest of the building that he thought he should be able to find it quite easily. It wasn’t until almost a month of spending his breaks on the roof that he realized it wasn’t the same city he was looking down on from the roof. The the streets were wrong, and there were never any cars, people, or animals. Whatever this place was, it was not on top of the building he worked in.

“Your thoughts are heavy and they make your silence loud this night. May I share in your troubles?”

Sacha told the statue of his dad and their conversation.

“An inconvenient conversation in an inconvenient place at an inconvenient time,” the statue said once Sacha had finished talking. “And its conclusion will be delayed far beyond the morning.”

“Yeah,” Sacha agreed, “but I don’t think I even want to try to change his mind. I just want him to let me live my own life.”

“He wanted you to value the things he valued,” the statue stated. “Marriage, children, work.”

“I’m happy the way I am,” Sacha said, “I like living alone, I’ve never been all that comfortable with kids, and I don’t think there’s enough time in this life to convince him that what I do for work is a real job and not just some summer internship.”

“If you do not have children,” the statue said, “your father’s lineage will end.”

Sacha knocked his heels against the wall below him. Being the only child in a long line of only children had its benefits but it also had its drawbacks, chief among them was the expectation to keep the family line running. Even as a young child Sacha had felt that pressure. He’d also known then as he did now that he really didn’t want kids. He didn’t want that responsibility. He didn’t want the concerns and worries that he saw other people with kids going through.

It was similar to how he felt about marriage. He had never felt the need for someone else in his life. He’d never felt lonely growing up as an only child and now as an adult he loved that he could come and go as he pleased, do what he wanted when he wanted to, and that when he did want to be with other people he could easily go out and meet up with them. Perhaps as he got older, more into middle age, he’d change his mind, but for now at least he was fine.

“I’m sorry that I cannot ease your burden,” the statue said. “You have shared with me your words but your thoughts are still as heavy and your silence still as loud.”

“You’re fine,” Sacha told it, “I’m glad that I could tell you…glad that you asked. I’ll just talk to him in the morning and see if we can sort it out.”

“I am sorry,” the statue said again, “You will not speak to him in the morning.”

This was not the first time the statues had given him the impression that they were aware of things beyond this rooftop. They sometimes remarked on things done or said while he’d been out with friends. They asked about people he knew who were sick. They consoled him when his grandparents died.

“Why won’t I be able to speak to him?” Sacha asked.

“Your father passed you on the stairs,” the statue replied, “Seeing you there surprised him and so he spoke with you, but he was confused and didn’t know fully what was going on.”

“He called me on my phone,” Sacha corrected the statue.

“He passed you on the stairs,” the statue corrected Sacha.

“If he’d passed me on the stairs then I would have seen him.”

“You are blind and cannot see all that passes on those stairs,” the statue said and Sacha had to admit that it was very dark on the stairs. Still, it was a narrow space and he doubted very much that two people could walk passed one another on them.

“How could he have gotten in? The building’s locked and alarmed.”

“The building where you work is not the only place to which this rooftop is connected,” the statue explained. This was the most information Sacha had ever been able to get from any of the statues regarding this place. For whatever reason, they were never comfortable discussing what or where this place was, instead focusing on discussing Sacha and his life, his family, and his friends.

“If my dad had passed me on the stairs then he would be up here,” Sacha said, feeling a sense of triumph thinking that he had won the argument.

“Correct.”

Sacha paused and then looked around. All he could see were the statues. He got up and walked around a bit but still he couldn’t find any sign that there was anyone else up there with him.

“There’s no one else up here,” Sacha finally stated.

“No one?” a statue to his right intoned.

“No one besides me and you statues,” Sacha corrected himself.

“That isn’t right either,” the statue replied. “You just can’t see them because you are blind.”

Sacha waved his hand in front of his face and then in front of the statues face.

“I can see that just as well as you can,” Sacha told the statue.

“A person may be able to see some things, and yet still be blind to other things,” was the statue’s reply.

“Then where is he?” Sacha asked though not really sure he wanted the answer. He’d had his theories about what this place was, and having the statues all suddenly telling him these things about his dad, and insisting that there were things here that Sacha was blind to, he worried what they could be getting at.

“Come and see,” he heard the first statue say.

Sacha returned to where he’d been sitting before and looked out over the city. Just as always it seemed to him to be empty of all life. He tried listening for any hint of a sound but as always he only heard the faintness of a distant breeze.

“I don’t see him,” Sacha told the statue.

“What do you see?” The statue asked.

“I see the city.”

“What is in the city?” the statue pressed him. “Look and describe it to me as though I were the blind one asking for details.”

Sacha sighed but did as he was told.

“There are hills, or perhaps they’re mountains that lay very far away, its hard to tell, that surround the city,” Sacha began and he was surprised that even this element had gone unnoticed by him until now. “The buildings are not very tall, maybe three or four stories at most, but they are densely packed. I don’t see any yards. The streets are narrow too,” Sacha squinted his eyes, trying to see the details he’d never looked for before. “In fact,” he went on, “I’m not even sure that there are streets. I always assumed they were there, but now I’m not sure. They could just be sidewalks or alleys. The streetlights are…

Sacha’s voice faded away as he turned his attention to the streetlights. The pinpricks of light the dotted the winding lanes between buildings were always there, but with the realization that there were no streets, what was the need for streetlights? And as he looked, he realized that he couldn’t see any posts for the streetlights to hang from. It was as if all those points of light were just floating in the air. What was more alarming to Sacha, was that as he watched them closely he realized that they were also moving. They didn’t move quickly, which is why he had never noticed it before, but they were moving. Even as he watched in amazement he saw one point of light vanish behind a building as though turning a corner.

“Is he down there?” Sacha asked in a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Can I go to him?”

“All who walk the winding stair must eventually pass into that place,” the statue replied, “but at this moment it is not your time to join your dad.”

“He’s dead,” Sacha said, “isn’t he?”

“In the truest sense of the word, your dad is not dead,” the statue told him, “but you have not yet learned the truth of life and death. So for now, I will say that his body has ceased to function.”

Sacha slumped against the stone statue once again, the weight of the situation bearing him down. Why had his last conversation with his dad have to be an argument? An argument that he ended by hanging up on his dad!

“He wasn’t even sick!” Sacha protested even though he knew it wouldn’t do anything to change the reality of his dad’s death.

“Many illness’s leave no marks and pass without trace until the very end.”

Sacha checked his watch. His break was almost over and he’d need to begin making his way back down the stairs soon.

“Will I still be able to come up here?” Sacha asked as he rose to his feet.

“There is no reason to disallow you from doing so,” the statue said.

“I just wasn’t sure if, maybe, this had all been to prepare me for this moment.”

“This is to help prepare you for this, and other moments,” the statue told him. “It is to prepare you for every moment.”

Sacha nodded and turned towards the trapdoor that would let him back down to the spiral staircase. It was a long walk, same as always, and he wondered how many more times he would pass this way, up and down, before his turn came to go up and not return.