The Monsters We Deserve

by Marcus Sedgwick

  That’s not all.

  I head for my desk, where I left the torch.

  My notebook is open. It’s turned to a fresh double page, upon which a line of writing sits.

  It’s not my writing.

  It’s ornate, beautiful, old, old, old.

  It says;

  I know your secret.

  I stood looking—

  No, I stand looking at—

  No.

  *

  I stood. I stand.

  I stood, I stand.

  (Why can’t I decide which? Why am I having trouble knowing when I am?)

  *

  I stand. That’s it.

  I stand staring at the notebook, my skin scrawls. I mean, my skin crawls again.

  There are two possibilities.

  Someone came into the house, and wrote this. It’s possible; I don’t lock the door when I go out; Étienne said there was no need. So someone may have come in while I was in town and written in my notebook.

  I stand, staring. I realise that whoever did it has written in English. Not many of the locals speak much English. But some do, and it’s not that complicated. As sentences go, I mean. I could manage the same in French: Je connais ton secret. My notebook is written in English, of course, so anyone could have seen that and delivered me this message. And then I think, it must be Étienne, but the second I think that, and the second that starts to unnerve me slightly, I know it wasn’t him. I saw him in town, not long before I left. I came straight back here – I would have met him somewhere on the road, or on the track, coming back down.

  No. It wasn’t him. So, there is the door, the door that has always been impassable yet now stands open.

  But still I wonder, maybe Étienne is here somewhere; I missed his van somehow and he’s here, fetching something from a floor of the house, the hidden floor. He probably just uses it to store stuff.

  I take the torch from the desk, and thumb the switch as I step to the top of the stairs. They take three steps down the side of the wall before turning to cling to the returning wall, into the blackness. If he’s down there, he’s being very quiet.

  Maybe he’s had an accident!

  That thought gets me hurrying.

  ‘Étienne?’ I call. ‘Étienne! T’es là?’

  Are you there, Étienne, are you there? I’m repeating in my head, over and over. Are you there, Étienne, are you there? Please be there.

  I take each step carefully, slowly. This house is ancient and the torch beam weak, the steps could be rotten and I don’t want to break an ankle, all alone in a forgotten house on the mountainside.

  ‘Étienne?’

  Nothing.

  I reach the bottom of the stairs, and unlike the floor where I have been living; I see I am in a narrow corridor, with doors leading off. The corridor turns a few steps ahead of me, I glimpse another door. The torchlight plays across the floor, across the walls: the wood is old and greyed from its age; a deep brown thick with greying dust, I think, but I wipe my finger across the wall and find no trace of dust on my fingertip.

  ‘Étienne? Es-tu là? C’est moi!’

  Nothing.

  I take a step. I put my hand on a door handle, pressing down on the latch; I hear the lever on the other side flick up. And another noise, from inside?

  Did I hear something else from inside?

  No. No, you didn’t, I tell myself. You didn’t. You are to go inside and see that Étienne is not in there.

  I push the door open; it’s stiff, the hinges creak and the door is so flimsy I feel it might break under my shoulder, but it holds. This must be one of the rooms with the shuttered windows; there is a faint light from outside creeping through cracks. I sweep the torch around me, but the room is empty. Empty, and with a sense of the infinite bridging of time without people in it that really unbalances me, so I withdraw and make my way along the corridor to the next door, on my right this time, the side that tucks into the hill. I push my way in, and the result is as before; the room is empty.

  I swing my torch around to be sure and then I see there is something here, after all: an insignificant-looking table; round, its top resting on a central pedestal. It’s old. Antique.

  I leave the room, and move on: another door on my right, the side against the mountain: I open it too, waving the torch beam. Nothing again.

  The corridor turns to the left and I see one more door on each side. I try them both, one after the other. Both doors are harder to open, both rooms are empty.

  I walk to the window of the last room; it’s the other one with shutters shut tight: I fiddle with some catches – the old glass is thin and cloudy and I’m scared I’ll break it, but I manage to open the window, and then cast the shutters open too, without damaging anything, or myself, though my hand is throbbing to remind me of hurting myself, and then I’m looking down over the valley; the same view, more or less, as from the kitchen; just a little lower and closer to the trees.

  It’s not late, but the sun is already dropping behind the mountain, behind the house; the trees turn from green to grey almost in front of my eyes, and where is Étienne?

  I realise that Étienne is not here; that Étienne has not been here, and that there is nothing down here. Not a thing. Except for that table and now in my mind’s eye I recall something from looking at it: it’s one of those round tables with a flat drum for a top, the sort that has a drawer or two, a narrow drawer, concealed in the drum.

  I make my way back to that room, the second I looked into, and there is the table. Yes, it has a drawer. Since it is the only thing here I suppose it is here for a reason, that it has been left for me, and though that makes no sense, I tug the drawer open. Inside, is a key, an iron key, as thick as my forefinger. It has a label tied to it, with a short length of thin grimy string. I pick it up, revolving it between my fingers, and put the torch beam right on it. The label is made from thin white card, aging with spots of foxing, and a reinforced hole. One side is blank, remarkable only for a pattern of the spots forming a perfect triangle. But there is something written on the other side, in old, old handwriting:

  Cave.

  I stare for a moment or two, trying to work out how you can have a key to a cave, when the thing that is really bothering me surfaces and screams for my attention.

  The handwriting on this label, on this old, obviously old, old label, I swear it’s the same handwriting that has just appeared in my notebook.

  I shoved the key back into the drawer, slid it shut, hard. And as I made my way back up the narrow staircase I had the sense, I had the … I could feel things clawing at the back of my legs, feel it as if it was actually happening, but I forced myself not to rush, not to panic, and emerged into the light of the house, and my world.

  I closed the door, and leaned against it, making sure it was secure. A chill breeze seemed to have entered the house, so I went over to the door outside, and saw I still hadn’t collected the shopping. It was heavy and normal and I put things away in cupboards, normal cupboards that did not lead to staircases to forbidden places, forbidden parts of the …

  I tried to think about tins and packets and I focused on each of them … but forbidden is a great word, one with power, I mean, exactly the kind of word I like to use, a word with history, history and power. Everyone knows what bidden means; you are encouraged, you are invited to do something. Or to go somewhere. And that ‘for-’ part at the start is a prefix from the old languages of the North, meaning against; it denotes an opposite; just the same as ‘un-’. We are not invited. We are not allowed. We are for-bidden to enter the dark rooms of the mind where—

  What? Who said anything about minds?

  Put the shopping away, I put the shopping away and the room was getting dark, so I tried the light switch that turns on the little light by the armchair and I cannot say how happy I was when it came on, the generator was running and I sank into the chair to think what to do.

  *

  I’m still thinking what to do. But w
hat do I mean? There isn’t anything to do. I came home, I put the shopping away, I found the house has an unknown area. No, that’s not right. It didn’t happen in that order. And I left out a couple of things, but maybe I’m just tired, the air is so mean, I mean thin, up here and I thought I had got used to it but maybe I haven’t quite yet.

  Do I smell gas? No. Then, I go to my desk, because maybe I imagined the whole thing, then, no, I nodded off in the armchair and now it seems real but it isn’t but when I get to the desk there is my notebook still.

  I know your secret.

  I stare at it. Well, then, someone came in and is trying to play games with me. Maybe someone who knows the house. Not a burglar, because there is my laptop on the floor beside the desk, where I left it.

  I shame my hands. I mean, I shove my shameful hands into the pockets of my fleece. There’s something solid in the right-hand pocket and before I take it out I know what it is. The key from the drawer of the old round table downstairs in the darkened rooms sits in the palm of my hand, and—

  *

  I stare at it – I stared at it, I mean.

  (When am i? I mean, when am I? I.)

  Staring at the key, staring, and I recalled then that I’d slipped it into my pocket, downstairs. That’s right.

  And I wondered what it was the key to, so I tried a few doors. Not many options. Not the key to the cupboard door, the cupboard that isn’t a cupboard, I mean, and then I tried it in the main door to the house, but I already have a copy of that key and it’s much larger than this one. Then I remembered what cave means in French. Not ‘cave’ at all; it’s a false friend, isn’t it? A false friend, it’s pronounced ‘carve’ and it means cellar.

  Outside, shivering now that the sun had gone, round to the cellar, remembering that Étienne had never given me a key to the cellar door. It’s just stiff and heavy and there’s nothing inside to steal but the generator, and good luck with that; the beast weighs a ton, obviously.

  But it wasn’t the key to the cellar either; I could see before I even tried it that the keyholes were different sizes and shapes. Inside the cave, the generator was humming away to itself, and I smiled, but then, as I turned to leave, it stopped. So I had to curse it, and shove the door open and go inside to fix it again. I hadn’t brought the torch but it was light enough outside to half-see what I was doing and I swear I could do it blindfold now, I’ve done it so many times: re-prime the pump, pull the handle hard, hope. That’s all there is to it. My hand throbbed, my cut right hand, but throbbing means healing, doesn’t it?

  *

  I had no idea about the key. I held it in my fingertips as I came back round and up the slope to the door. The label blank on one side, the writing – cave – on the other.

  Inside, I collected the torch, marched straight downstairs again and this time I really did shove the key back into the drawer.

  *

  Upstairs, I closed the door behind me, checked it was shut, and went to start thinking about making something to eat. I don’t know how long I was doing that, fussing about, taking things out and putting them away again and I fixed on something, putting water on the gas ring to boil and no, the house didn’t blow up, but then I thought it was getting really cold, so I went to light a fire. At the armchair …

  At the armchair, by the fireside, I stopped.

  Sitting on the seat was my copy of the book.

  And sitting neatly on top of that was the key.

  I stared at it, something nagging about it, and as I forced myself to start thinning, I mean thinking, again, I saw what it was. The writing on the label. It had been blank on one side; cave written on the other. Now I saw a new word on the label: piège.

  I stared at it for the longest time, the longest time, glaring at it, willing it not to be here, wishing this were not happening, but it was, and finally I had no choice. I had to see. I flicked it over, expecting to see the word ‘cave’ on the other side, but it was blank. And yet, it was clearly the same key, the same label; I even recognised the little pattern of foxing spots from before.

  Piège. Not cave. I think that I must have read it wrong before. But how could I have? Cave is nothing like piège.

  *

  I backed away, keeping my eyes on it, and turned to the cupboard where I’ve been keeping a bottle of whisky for just such occasions as this, for just such, such just such occasions as this when I think I might be losing my …

  … for just such occasions when I need to get extremely drunk.

  *

  So I did.

  Shoved. Then. Thoughts. Desk. Map. Silk dress. Ink. Forced. Grey. Time. Down. Forest. Creature. Sun. Wrenched. Hum. Door. Snow. Steps. Glacier. Gas. Hysteria. Burned books. Savage. Love. Birth. Empty. Repetition. Easy. Neglected. Table. Cut. Key. Key. Pioneer. Electricity. Charnel-house, bone-yard. Still-born. Colour. Lake. Hut. Door. Door. After. Elicit. Open. Hand. Neurotoxin. Healing. Breathing. Breathing, hear breathing. Here. Breathing. Close. Forest door. Key writing. Prowling. Home sorrowful and away. Fortune, fate, frightful. Pronouncement. Dress. Grey dress, dark grey dress. Ink on crinoline, band of hair, brush of fabric on boards. Cold, cold. Stab. Lungs pointing. Air, rent of floor forest door. Grimly. Quietly. Hidden.

  And this by daylight.

  And this by my mind’s tugging, forced thought to pull up, pushing against the trap of the drink. Failing, falling, then rousing and I start to surface. But fall again. Time. More time. Rousing. Dying. Drowning. Withdrawn. Published. Created and sold, created and abandoned. Dead after thirty-three years. Dead after seven days. Dead two months early. Horror; hysteria. Gas. A mind with its meaning and the falling of leaves on the forest floor. Hum. The Humming. Gas. Silence. Piège. Door. Key. Footsteps and snow. Footsteps and snow. And I make another …

  I make another effort, before the daylight goes.

  *

  And when am I? I mean where, of course. Where. Where?

  It’s cold. I’m cold, which is more. Which is more.

  I sit up and still my eyes are shut.

  Outside.

  Outside, cold. Hard underneath. I open my eyes, I open my eyes and I mean I really have to make my eyes open. Moon. Clouds. Moon behind clouds, halo of brown-light, silver-faced moon. I retch.

  *

  Doorstep, under porch.

  Late.

  I don’t remem—

  Yes, I do. Some of it.

  With a stab; the key.

  And piège. What does piège mean? What does it mean?

  I cannot remember. Maybe I never knew, French was never my strong—

  Wait.

  The key moved.

  The book moved.

  Or do I mean: the book, moved?

  Small things, small things. You must look out for the small— Did it move itself or did someone move it …? Of course it didn’t move itself. People move things. People move commas. Writers move commas, and commas do not move themselves, because things do not move themselves. People move things.

  *

  I sit up straighter, my head bangs from the drink.

  I shudder, try standing.

  Throbbing.

  I need coffee. Maybe even water. I have some tablets. Somewhere I have some pills.

  I do stand and the world is still spinning. Glance at sky. Trees, trees, trees. But sunlight has gone. It’s late then. I was away for some time, some deal of time.

  I stagger and shoulder the door open, back into the house. Back into the house. Have to make, to boil some water. Coffee, and the house will be cold and I will have to light a fire or I will—

  No. I will not have to light a fire. A fire is already lit. The house is warm. The firelight flickers on the white lace hem of a grey silk dress, a dark grey silk dress. I imagine touching the silk and it would feel like cobwebs, and yes, there is someone in the armchair. The book sits by her hand. There is the smell of gas.

  Hearing me come in, she stands. She stands.

  She does not smile.

  ‘I was
never drunk,’ she says. ‘Not once.’

  She’s in middle-age, and it takes me a moment to decide that she is who I think she is. We are so used to thinking of her … thinking of her as young, as that young girl, running away from home at sixteen, writing her book at eighteen and nineteen … but what of her after that?

  What of her after that is what I see before me.

  She must be around fifty, I judge (and didn’t she die at fifty-three?).

  She fixes me with an unnerving gaze, and I am duly unnerved. I open my mouth. Shut it again. Lift a hand, let it drop. She stands by the armchair, and in her hand is my copy of the book. But the book is hers, not mine.

  When we read a book, though, we call it ours, don’t we, and I have always said that’s because readers make a book their own through reading it. They do half the work, with their own imaginations, fleshing things out, painting each character and place and event in more detail than we have actually set down on paper, and we writers merely set the readers on their way. So it is my book too. Her book. My copy of her book. And that copy is in my mind as much as it is in her hands; it’s in my damn mind forever.

  Her mouth moves, and she speaks. She lives.

  ‘What has brought you here?’

  I stare at the book in her hands. She doesn’t look at it, or make reference to it. Yet we both know it’s there.

  She is standing, I am standing. Nothing passes. Finally I know I have to give some kind of answer.

  ‘Triangulation,’ I say. ‘I suppose.’

  She considers this. I see the word ‘triangulation’ whisper across her lips, thoughtfully; underneath I already see that famously bold spirit.

  ‘That,’ she states, ‘is an answer with no small degree of perfection.’

  She seems satisfied. But her brown eyes stay fixed and do not smile, her mouth is narrowed. From where I stand I feel her grey cobweb silk under my fingertips and there’s that smell of something again: something mineral, something dead.