by Zack Parsons
The house was in a strange state of disrepair. The browned wallpaper was peeling in loops that reached to the floor, the ceilings sagged, fixtures were covered in cobwebs, and floorboards moved beneath my feet. Furniture and objects were placed haphazardly and with no regard to decoration or even function. Flat bicycle tires and broken umbrellas filled a narrow hallway. A motorcycle engine sat in what might have once been a dining room. It seemed that someone was slowly disassembling it and dropping its pieces into oily canisters laid out on the floor.
We followed Ian into a kitchen full of aquariums. These were filthy and the source of the earthen stink. They were the home to box turtles and lizards and snakes. The way the aquariums were arranged reminded me of jars and cages I’d seen long ago. Cats came rushing in and began begging Ian for food. He shushed them as he puttered around the kitchen, rattling a kettle and running the tap.
“Are you related to him?” whispered Veronica.
“Distantly,” I whispered back. “Never met him before.”
“How did you find her?” asked Ian Bendwool. “Is she ... does she ...”
“No,” I said. “This isn’t Annie. Her name is Veronica. She is a good friend of mine.”
“Wrong,” said Ian. “You’re wrong.”
Veronica gasped as Ian suddenly pinched her wrist.
“Watch it!” I pushed him away from her.
“Veronica.” Ian resumed making the tea. “That’s right. The girl. Like before. That’s what they said.”
“Someone told you about her? Who?”
“The voices,” said Ian. I must have betrayed my incredulousness. He scowled and quickly added, “I’m not crazy, you know. Nothing wrong with my brain. Now you answer me, who sent you here?”
“Max Holden,” I said. “He told me you could give me some answers.”
“About what?”
I wasn’t really eager to spill my guts on the subject of hallucinations in front of Veronica, but there she was, and here we were, and there was no point being bashful after coming all this way.
“I’ve been seeing some strange things,” I said. I confessed the visions of the grasshopper and the pale man-thing that had attacked me in the Paramount vault. I even told him about how I might have imagined Max Holden and yet he’d given me valuable information. “It was all real enough to touch, real as Veronica there, but I don’t think it happened.”
“I don’t know about all that,” said Ian Bendwool, setting out jelly jars and filling them with scoops of black leaves. “Maybe I can help. Maybe. But why would I want to?”
I took a chance on something that had been percolating in my brain for what felt like months. Beau Reynolds and his frantic, late-night telephone call about going through to the other side.
“What do you know about the other side?” I asked.
Ian stopped fussing with the tea leaves. He stood with his old shoulders slumped and his back to us. When he finally answered, he did not turn to face me, and his voice was very quiet.
“Did you go there?” he asked.
“No, someone else did, but I need to know what it is. Where it is. Have you been through to the other side?”
“Yes.” Ian Bendwool turned and tilted up his chin. He ran his bony fingers over his throat, and I could see by the light of the swaying bulb above us the ragged brown scar encircling his neck. It was definitely the mark of a man who had survived the noose. “I saw it once. I did. But I managed to forget it.
“Whatever was there made me put a rope around my neck. I was too heavy for the beam or would have died, but I at least wrung it out of my head. I don’t remember the other side.”
“Hell?” wondered Veronica aloud. “He saw hell?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Yes.” Ian Bendwool’s voice was a growl. “Sometimes I help others see it. Remember it. We’ve all been there, Warren Groves. You of all people should feel it in your bones. Long, long ago we passed into death and emerged, not here but there. Through the waters. On the other side.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“No hell of Abraham.” Spittle formed at the corners of Bendwool’s lips. “Not by the tales I’ve heard from the men I’ve helped. It’s not as written by Blake or Milton. Those who have seen it have told me of monuments of cold black stone and things that devour men like you or me. Air that stings the lungs and water that burns the flesh.”
Bendwool loomed over Veronica, only restrained by my hand on his withered chest.
“No Christian hell of brimstone. That promise is too good. The lake of fire too sweet. In this place the sea churns with the life of unspeakable things that drink the blood and eat the flesh of men.”
“That’s enough,” I said, giving him a shove.
“Is it?” His eyes were wild. “Don’t you want to see it for yourself, Warren Groves?”
“I do.... I think I should... .”
The kettle began to whistle and steam. The sharp sound jarred him from his mania, and he returned to preparing the tea.
“Max Holden remembered it,” said Bendwool as he poured from the kettle. “He came to me and asked, so I helped him remember it. The poor fellow took it worse than most. Most can last a few hours. Maybe a few days. Maybe forever. I don’t know after they leave here.”
“Where is Max Holden now?”
Bendwool handed me a steaming jar of tea. It was almost too hot to hold. He passed another to Veronica full of the same muddled twigs and old leaves, and she hissed and put it on a nearby counter.
“Dead. Or back. It doesn’t matter,” said Bendwool. “He won’t be the same. He saw the nightmare and couldn’t bear it—threw himself off the cliff out there straightaway. Died on the rocks below. I don’t know if it let him come back or if he’s a ghost, haunting your beaches. I don’t have answers to those sorts of questions.”
Ian Bendwool grinned and displayed his browned teeth and rot-taken gums.
“If you’re a fool and set on your way, I can help you with your questions. I can take you there. It’s waiting for all of us.”
The room was behind a door with two dead bolts that locked from the outside. It was clean in comparison to the rest of the cluttered house but, if anything, more discomforting than the squalor.
The walls were lumped with plaster that muddied the corners and bulged from the walls to conceal the house’s right-angles. Every surface in the room was coated in thick layers of white paint. It was glossy and tacky to the touch. Bendwool made us take off our shoes before entering, and the soles of my feet plucked at the painted floors. The ceiling was covered with the cruciform black shapes I recalled from the cave above the pool. The cave with that goddamn grasshopper idol.
A wooden shelf reproduced the artifacts of the cave: a crude grasshopper-man statue made from clay, pieces scattered on the shelf as they’d lain broken in that cave so long ago. It was laughably crafted, but Bendwool barked with anger when I reached out to it.
“Touch nothing but what I tell you!”
Veronica lingered outside the doorway. Her frown, as her laugh, was different than Annie’s, informed by generations of a changing world and the cynicism of modern youth. She was repelled and a little frightened by Bendwool’s idiosyncrasies but concealed it behind a mocking raise of her eyebrows and a shake of her head when the old man wasn’t looking. She leaned her upper body into the room and inspected the crosses on the ceiling.
“Are you very religious?” she asked. Her sarcasm was lost on Bendwool.
“No. I don’t know what those symbols are. I just put them how I remembered them.”
“Huh,” she said, and she finally walked into the room. She wrinkled her nose and looked down when her feet made contact with the painted floor. She cast a pleading look in my direction.
The one window was covered with a blackout curtain, painted the same ugly white as the rest of the room, but black fibers showed through. There was an old-fashioned phonograph with its horn and furniture painted white
. Beneath the shelf was one chair, white, of course, and nailed to the floor. Rope cuffs were knotted to the chair’s arms and front legs.
“Sit down in the chair,” he said. “I’ll need to tie you up before we begin.”
“You can’t let him tie you up,” said Veronica. “He might be a maniac.”
“Shh,” said Bendwool. “Quiet, sweetie. If I don’t tie him down, he’s liable to hurt himself thrashing around. He has to be restrained for his safety and ours. Then I’ll give him the medicine.”
Indian medicine, Bendwool explained. He mentioned jimson weed and something else. A “surprise” he promised, that would start me on my journey into the past. I didn’t like the sound of any of it. Didn’t sound like my scene, man. Then again, I didn’t come all this way not to let some lunatic old man tie me to a chair and feed me mind-melting poisons.
“I need to have a word with Veronica before we do anything,” I said.
“Sure, sure,” said Bendwool. “Just holler, and we can get going.”
He shuffled out of the room, trailing his stink behind him. As soon as he was gone, Veronica grabbed my upper arms with both hands.
“Do not do this,” she said. “You can’t drag me out here and leave me with this twisted up old man. I barely know you, let alone him.”
“You came looking for me,” I reminded her.
“I came looking for help and found you. I don’t want to be left alone with this guy while you ... do dope in here. Is that what it’s about? Getting a fix? I know plenty of dope-pushers down on the boardwalk. Just drive me back to Sugarside, and I’ll get you sorted out.”
“It’s not about that. I’m out of my depth—you get me? I’m a nickel detective in a hundred-dollar mystery. I don’t have what I need for what we’re into up to our necks.”
“That crazy old man does?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I have to find out if he does.”
I reached into my coat pocket and brought out Ishii’s pistol. She took it from me but looked at the hunk of metal in her hand like a dead bird dropped off by a cat.
“Take it,” I said. “Safety is right there on the side. Point it where you want a bullet to go, look down that V there, and pull the trigger.”
“I know how a gun works,” she said.
“Good. We’re all sorted. You should wait outside the house, on the porch. Maybe back at the car.”
“Leave you behind?”
I gave her the car keys too. What can I say? I’m a trusting sort of guy.
“Get a fried perch,” I suggested. “There was that restaurant we passed a couple miles back. The one with the boat sticking out of the building. I’m sure you’d light the place up.”
“I don’t like this,” she said, but she was already going.
I waited for her footsteps to recede across the jumbled house. I listened for the opening and closing of the door and imagined her slender legs climbing those treacherous stairs back up to the wharf.
“All right,” I hollered to Ian Bendwool. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The surprise was the box itself. Ian Bendwool tied me to the chair and brought it into the room ceremoniously, concealed beneath a yellowed cloth. It was flat and wide like a cigar box. When he pulled the cloth aside, I saw that it was made from green-painted tin, and the lid depicted a pretty girl surrounded by a wreath of purple and white flowers. In a Gothic-style script was written the word Vervains.
My heart skipped in my chest. This was the same box but not the same. The box full of letters Annie kept hidden beneath the bed. It was as if someone had fabricated and painted the box completely from memory. Ian opened the lid, and I could see that it was filled with cubes of compressed plants. He plucked out a cube and held it up to my face.
“Open your mouth,” said Bendwool. “Let it break apart on your tongue and swallow it.”
“What is it?”
“A bouillon of verbena, jimson weed, and some other things. I cooked it up safe. It will help you ease into understanding.”
I opened my mouth, and he placed the bullion, only slightly larger than a sugar cube, onto my tongue. It felt like straw. The bitter, herbal flavor spread through my mouth. The cube dissolved quickly into small plant fibers. I swallowed. Ian nodded and returned the box to its place on the shelf.
“Now close your eyes,” Bendwool said.
I did as I was told. The room smelled of burning sage, smoking in a pan in the corner. I listened to the muffled pad of Bendwool’s feet on the floor as he crossed the room to the phonograph. I expected music, but when it hummed to life and began to play, there was only the hiss and crackle heard between songs on a record.
Bendwool began to speak, his tone serious and deep, each word enunciated carefully.
“Before you open your eyes, you will listen to the sound of my voice and heed my instructions. You are in the Lost Lodge. The place of the grasshopper idol. The fallen temple of the past. It has been recovered from our collective experience. You are Warren Groves. You remember this place. You are Warren Groves, and you have been here before. You are in a place of great understanding.
“On the count of three you will see the world as it is meant to be. On the count of three you will open your eyes, and you will be Warren Groves. One.
“Two.
“Three.”
I opened my eyes. I was still within the room, though it seemed distorted by a lens. I tried to turn to see Ian, but I could not find him with me. I felt as if I had a fever.
“Your body begins to feel lighter and lighter until you are weightless. You feel completely relaxed and at ease.”
The tension oozed from my limbs. My arms and legs were limp. My shoulders relaxed. I was very aware of my breathing as it slowed.
“You feel weightless, as if you are floating, and you are. You are floating through a soft mist of white light.”
The white dome of the lodge began to recede and become insubstantial and misty. I looked down, and the floor was white smoke, slowly rising and swallowing up my feet. Light glowed all around me. Even the chair faded away, and I was upright, floating as I would stand.
“You are surrounded by warmth and light. You feel safe, but you have not yet reached your destination. Within the light you are standing in a room. Before you is a door. On the other side of this door is the memory you have shut away. The door is locked, but you have the key to unlock this door. You are in control. Nothing behind that door can hurt you ever again. These events have already occurred. You are safe. This is the answer you have sought for so long.”
I walked to the door. There was nothing remarkable about it. Just a plain white door with a brass handle and lock. There was something closed in my hand. I turned my fist and opened my fingers, and there was a small key in the palm of my hand. My actions were very slow and deliberate. I grasped the key with my fingers and inserted it into the lock and turned it. I heard tumblers shifting and clicking into place.
I reached out and grasped the doorknob. The brass was cool against my hand. I turned and pulled, opening the door toward me. There was only darkness on the other side of the doorway. A distant voice urged me to step through. Step through.
I did.
The axis of perception and gravity tumbled upside down, and I was floating quickly upward. I emerged from liquid, pushing and kicking onto rocks and tearing away the familiar cowl of birth. I lay upon octagonal paving stones, reaching up as columns in some places and in others arranged as stairs. The air was thin and burned in my mouth, and the world was awash in the marrow stench of the Pool.
This place was dark, so dark I believed at first I was in a huge cavern with a ceiling too high to be seen. My eyes adjusted to the new light, and I realized that above me was sky, blackened and roiling as if filled with smoke. Distant clouds flickered, purple and bruised, with lightning. A cyclopean shaft of light broke through and cast a bloody ray down into the world. It only remained for a moment before the clouds swallowed it up.
The peril of being smothered by a wave sent me scurrying up the octagonal rocks and away from the coast. I managed to get my feet beneath me and began climbing the stones. As I exerted myself, my breathing grew labored, and my heart pounded heavily against my rib cage. This was not the stones in my lungs, which seemed gone, but the effect of being at a high altitude or some other place where the air was thin.
I climbed higher and higher, up from the coast, until I stood upon a rise overlooking a plain of paved stone. This was not paved with the octagons; it was a wide boulevard made from slabs ten feet to a side.
I sensed the outlines of a perfect street, a grand boulevard now cracked and buckled and tilting into ruin. On either side of this road rough obelisks of black rock reached many feet into the air. A few reached all the way to pyramid caps. Obelisks slumped or shed clattering stones. Some were fallen entirely and lay across the road in sundered pieces or in one crumpled bulk like the fallen trunk of a massive tree. Some few braced against one another and formed precarious arches over the road.
The vast scale of the boulevard and its surrounding structures was difficult to accept. They were immense, to be sure, but there were no trees or other identifiable landmarks.
This place was too dim to see a great distance, but on the horizon there were glowing plumes and incandescent streams suggesting volcanism. The wind was hot and stank of sulfur. The world rumbled and vibrated with these eruptions, the obelisks shedding more stones, but the fires were too distant to be of much immediate concern.
I climbed down from the octagonal stones and onto the ruined boulevard. I leaped the last few feet from the top of a geometric pillar and landed on the pale, fleshy residue of a membrane. I leaned down to examine the leathery material and was surprised to see it covered in a visibly spreading frost. I touched a finger to the frost, and it was warm. Fuzzy white spread to my fingertip, and I felt a pinch to my skin where it had touched me.
