‘Every city has one obvious path to the underground, be it an open drain or a manhole-cover askew. Every entry bears signs of trespass- enough to goad the onlooker. The allure of these places only just outpaces their foreboding, so that a rain storm or a particularly dark night or the smell of something decomposing nearby is enough to turn the curious away. Entry requires determination or desperation or an unlikely alignment of circumstances: the perfect day and the perfect fool, willing to risk themselves in the realization of a journey with no apparent destination.
The unapparent destination is ‘The Drain Place’ and no city’s ‘Drain Place’ is like another. It is as likely to be a black market as it is to be the residence of a single, otherwise uninteresting denizen. It is often the studio for eccentric artists, sometimes a museum for dangerous collections, and rarely the dumping grounds for top secret government material. It is sometimes a zoo- a safari more often than that. ‘The Drain Place’ is never a maze, though a maze commonly precedes it. ‘The Drain Place’ is dangerous, nine times out of ten, but the danger is more likely a result of the environment or the allure than the place itself. The environment, because ‘The Drain Place’ can be dark and prone to flooding. The allure because ‘The Drain Place’ is commonly guarded by those who have nothing in the world but for their knowledge of ‘The Place’ itself.
A comprehensive guide to the nation’s ‘Drain Places’ would represent obsession in several volumes. The loss of money and life and time: it is not in the purview of this undertaking.’
-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside
