Spawn of Man by Terry Farricker

gargantuan, ancient machine that had lain dormant, but now stirred into life, a reverberating throb echoed in Robert’s ears. The noise registered as far away, reaching him from miles below ground, buried for an age. Robert covered his ears, not sure if he could block out the noise, or if the pounding was only the echo of the blunt pain building in his head.
    When he had lain in Alex’s arms she had always told him he was special. Robert and Alex had been intensely close. She was strong, resolute and fiercely loyal and he had loved her and Jake beyond all else. But when Alex and Jake were together they entered a world too insubstantial to exist in reality. A delicate and intangible fairytale realm, that some mothers can transport their young to, through stories and plays. Alex seemed to exist in both the real and the unreal world concurrently. Being Robert’s wife, and being his partner in everything, anchored her in the practical world, but her relationship with Jake was of that other land, where landscapes were fantastic and improbable, alien and real and painted as if from memory. And she was so very beautiful.
    The noise was growing and it had direction now. It was thudding both inside and outside his head. Robert walked to the end of the corridor. For a moment he was confused; there were two routes to take now, left or right, which direction had he come from? There were no signs, no indication of an exit, in fact no information at all. He was sure he had come from the right-hand corridor but now everything looked white, featureless and identical. He decided to turn into the right-hand corridor.
    He needed to get out of the hospital now, right now. He was acutely aware that his wife and child were here somewhere and he felt like he was abandoning them, leaving them neatly arranged in a cold room somewhere in the labyrinth of corridors. Leaving them alone with people who did not know them or care about them, save for categorizing them and storing them away.
    But he had to get out. He was suddenly seized by the notion that if he did not, he might spend the rest of his life penned in this endless maze of corridors like an experimental rat. The hammer falls of pain in his skull were now compounded by the accelerated beat of his heart. Then, he became aware that although he had walked in excess of maybe one hundred and fifty feet, the corridor still stretched out remorselessly ahead of him. He could not discern any break in the walls, as they yawned out before him, to a vanishing point lost somewhere in a milky-white, tiled and plastered distance.
    The lights blinked out and Robert froze. He extended his arms into the thick darkness, his fingers unraveling as if to feel the blackness, and then retracting in case there were things hiding in the gloom. The silence accompanying the darkness was wrong and even the incessant banging deep in his brain had ceased. The Stygian cloak that had enveloped everything felt close, smothering and impenetrable. There was no hint of illumination, either in the corridor or the world outside the windows, and Robert held his breath, eyes closed tight, even though it made no difference. Then a faint glow appeared in the distant reaches of the corridor, slight and flickering but growing. And getting closer. Then came a sound, soft and with a slight slap like the sound of flesh on wet tiles.
    Robert took one step backwards, torn between facing what may still be in front of him, or running headlong into the blackness behind, into that pulsating, shifting corridor. Slowly the brightness emitting from the far reaches of the corridor ahead of Robert began to eat up the distance between it and himself, until he realized it was only the overhead lighting concealed in suspended ceiling panels. But the soft padding noise was getting closer. There was a bend in the corridor ten feet in front of Robert, veering to the right, and the sound seemed to be originating from that direction.
    Robert moved to the