Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

  “What is it called?”

  “It is called Malkuth.”

  “Where is it?”

  The white of teeth showed again, just for a moment. “All around you.”

  “But...” He took a deep breath. “Damn it all, you know what I mean.”

  “Do I? Are you so sure of that?”

  “Fine. The Sphinx talks in riddles. I get that. I remember that from my college English class. I guess I have to be specific. Where is this place, relative to my apartment?”

  “Did you not say that you fell through your apartment floor, and that is how you came to be here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know the answer, do you not? It would appear that this place is beneath your apartment.”

  “But I know that’s not true!” he shouted. “There’s no place like this underneath my apartment.”

  “Suit yourself,” the Sphinx said.

  “Look, all I want to do is get back home. Or wake up, or whatever. How do I do that?”

  “I think that you humans have a saying, do you not, that the only way out is through? I believe you will find that to be the case here.”

  He regarded the Sphinx’s face. No wonder it looks like Maria. Maria would have liked this. She always loved riddles. “You said that everything here was a lie. Are you lying now?”

  “Oh, of course not,” the Sphinx said. “I wouldn’t lie about something that important.”

  “So how do I get through, then?”

  The Sphinx looked down at him, its face in a sardonic twist. “Do you want some advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “The best way to get the information you need is to ask the right questions.”

  “How do I know what the right questions are?”

  The Sphinx’s stone mouth opened slightly, and it gave a basso profundo laugh that vibrated the floor beneath his bare feet. “Well, that certainly wasn’t one.”

  “You are a pain in the ass,” he said, scowling. Then he looked down, and said to himself, “This is fucked up. I’m talking to a statue.”

  The Sphinx inclined its huge head. “At your service.”

  He took a deep breath, and looked back into the Sphinx’s face. “Okay, look. Let me start with some simple questions, before we move on to the big stuff. I haven’t seen a single trace of anyone else since I arrived. But there’s a fire burning here. Who keeps the fire going?”

  “My attendants.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “How should I know? It’s not like I get out much.”

  “But who are they?”

  The Sphinx smiled. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Duncan Kyle!” he yelled. “And why can’t you give a straight question a straight answer?”

  “Because I really don’t think you know what you’re asking, most of the time. You humans are like that, you know. You think things are their names, and if you know the name, you know the thing itself. You throw words around as if they were meaningless, or as if they mean whatever you want them to, and could mean something completely different tomorrow. Then you blame each other when there is confusion.” It paused, and blinked its enormous, glistening eyes. “If you were asking for my attendants’ names, I can’t tell you that, because I don’t know the answer. As for who they are? They are silent. They come to feed the fire and replenish the water in the pool. They don’t talk to each other, nor to me. How can I know who they are, who they would be if they were like you, alone and naked in the dark? How would I know what they love, what they hate, what angers them, what fills them with grief, what fills them with lust? They never tell me such things. And even if they did, I do not doubt that much of it would be a lie. Humans, I think, are as good at lying to themselves as they are at lying to each other.”

  “Playing with words, and shifting meanings, isn’t the same as lying.”

  “It might as well be. It has the same effect. Deceiving yourselves and everyone around you.”

  “But you said you lie, too.”

  With a creak, the Sphinx shrugged its mighty shoulders, sending a thin cascade of sand pouring down from its sides. “Oh, touché,” it said, its deep voice dripping sarcasm.

  Weariness rose in him. Maria loved intellectual sparring. I don’t. “Look, just tell me how to get out of here, and I’ll leave.”

  “That is simple enough. There are two ways out. The way you came in, and the other exit, that is on the opposite wall. If all you want is to leave, those are your options.”

  “Good. Because this whole conversation is pissing me off. Thanks for the water, and all.” He turned and peered around the right side of the Sphinx, and in the middle of the wall was a dark stone archway that was the twin of the one he’d entered through.

  “May I offer you one other piece of advice?” the Sphinx asked. Duncan turned as its head swiveled ponderously toward him, its jewel-like eyes full and alert and not necessarily friendly.

  “Certainly.”

  “If you find your way out of these walls, it would be wise not to be caught outside at night.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not safe, of course,” the Sphinx said, its voice full of high good humor. “You always want to be safe, don’t you?”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Danger.”

  He smacked the heel of one hand against his forehead. “Are you absolutely forbidden from giving me any actual information? Because if all you’re going to do is give me vague hints, you might as well shut up.”

  The Sphinx flashed a smile at him. “As you wish.” It turned its head slowly until it was facing forward, and there was a little shudder and a soft creak as its body stiffened, its face resumed its still impassivity, and the stone lids shut over its eyes.

  Silence fell.

  He looked up toward the Sphinx, which once again simply looked like a huge statue, and waited for its eyes to open again.

  Nothing happened.

  “No, but seriously, what danger?” he said, to no effect.

  After waiting nearly a minute, he scowled, and said, “Well, shit.”

  I’m done with this dream, if it’s a dream. Time to get out of Dodge. Maybe by this time, Libby has woken up, or the rescue crew has arrived, or whatever. In any case, I’m done with all this.

  He strode back into the archway by which he’d entered the room, once again letting his fingertips trail along the stone wall. The light diminished and finally vanished altogether, but his footfalls were confident and regular on the smooth floor. Uphill and into the huge room with the window. The light was brighter now, enough to see and avoid the rubble in the middle of the room. Evidently outside, whatever passed for day was happening, although the view through the window still showed nothing but the same featureless rusty gray light as before.

  Across the room, back into another arched doorway, and back into the dark. His heart pounded. The sudden longing for being home, in his own apartment, in his girlfriend’s arms, washed over him. He broke into a run, barely realizing he had done so, and burst into the room with the boxes, books, and angel statue with his chest heaving in what were nearly sobs.

  He looked up toward the ceiling, and had a rush of sheer terror.

  The hole was gone. Where before there had been a view into his apartment, the corner of his sofa and coffee table visible, there now was only the rough facing of cut stone, intact and solid.

  He gave an inarticulate cry, and retreated until his bare back pressed against the chill surface of the wall. His frantic glance darted around the room, and his mind reached desperately for an explanation. Had he taken the wrong path? No, there had been no other turnings, no way to get lost. And it was definitely the same place into which he had fallen. The boxes, the statue, the shelf with the books, even the piles of broken ceramic were still exactly as he remembered them.

  Only the debris that had fallen from his apartment floor, and the hole in the ceiling that was his portal back home, were missing.

&nb
sp; And now he did cry. Helpless weeping seized him, shaking him like a wolf shakes a rabbit. His knees buckled, and he slid to the ground, the stones tearing a long scrape down his backbone, and he sat on the earthen floor, one hand over his face.

  After a time he looked up, his eyes bleared with tears, and drew one arm across his face, looking upward again with a desperate hope.

  The ceiling was still intact. The words trapped and no way home rang inside his skull, and then his mind went blank.

  • • •

  Hours later, after pointless wandering that took him through a maze of rooms, each filled with ruined statuary, broken stone and pottery, and stacks of moldering books, Duncan found himself once again standing before the Sphinx. He knelt, shaking, and drank from the pool. His hunger was now extreme. He hadn’t eaten in... how long was it? He couldn’t even begin to figure it out.

  “Tell me how to get home,” he said, his voice ragged.

  The Sphinx spoke, without opening its eyes. “I told you. The only way out is through. You found that going back was impossible, yes?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I cannot answer that, for the very good reason that I do not know.”

  “Why am I here? What happened that brought me here?”

  “I think that if you do not know the answer to that already, then anything I could tell you would be meaningless.”

  “Try me.”

  The Sphinx opened its eyes a little. A crescent of shining white, green, gold, and black shone beneath its half-closed lids. “You have been condemned to wander through the ten worlds,” it said, its resonant voice taking on an oratorical tone, “making your way through them one by one, learning the lessons that they can teach, and only after you have met the challenge that each one represents will you be able to return back home victorious.”

  He stared at the Sphinx, his mouth hanging open a little. Finally, he said,”That’s bullshit.”

  “I know,” the Sphinx replied. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”

  “So you don’t know.”

  “No, sorry.”

  “You’re a lot of fucking help.”

  “Hey,” said the Sphinx, sounding a little aggrieved. “We all do what we can.”

  “I’ll be leaving, then.”

  “Good luck,” the Sphinx said, its voice gaining a sarcastic edge.

  “Please don’t add, ‘you’ll need it.’”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  The Sphinx’s eyes closed.

  He muttered, “Poser,” under his breath, and walked toward the other exit from the room, the arch on the right side of the Sphinx’s front paws. This opening led into another tunnel, once again smooth underfoot and with no low hanging obstacles. It sloped upward, gradually at first but then more steeply, and once again he found himself moving into vague light that colored the walls, floor, and his own body a dusty gray brown. After perhaps a hundred yards, he stepped through another arch into a narrow room that was clearly some kind of atrium. Along the wall to his right, a row of mullioned windows, their sills just over his head, let in the tired illumination from the still-overcast sky. The light had dimmed now. Noon had passed. It was closer, apparently, to the nightfall that the Sphinx had warned him about.

  Set in the wall with the windows was a huge set of timber-frame doors, cross-banded with iron strips. A pair of enormous rings hung from ornately-carved brackets in the center of each, at slightly above head height. There were more piles of debris scattered about, but the floor was mostly clear and unobstructed. He padded across the room toward the doors.

  He was ten feet away from them when he realized that what looked like vague, amorphous lumps in the shadows were actually something other than fallen rubble and refuse.

  Skeletons.

  There was the jolt of adrenaline, and sweat stood out on his chest and forehead despite the chill air coming in through the windows. He walked forward, more slowly now, toward the nearest one, which was seated against the wall to the right of the nearer door, its head tilted in a way that suggested sleep rather than death.

  The skeleton was dressed in leather and metal armor, and had a heavy cap with a flat nosepiece. He knelt down next to it, and reached out and touched the sleeve. The leather cracked and crumbled into powder under his fingertips, and an iron fastening fell off and landed on the floor with a faint thud that sounded loud in the silence.

  There was still some skin clinging to the bones, but it had dried and stretched and split. It looked insubstantial, inorganic, like a film of gray plastic. The skull was heavy and apelike, the leg bones long and massive but straight. Duncan was a little over six feet tall, and regular gym visits kept him well-muscled, but when this individual was alive he would have been able to pick him up one-handed.

  There was something odd about the skeleton, though, besides its size. Leaning in, simultaneously thinking, Why am I doing this? In horror movies, this sort of thing never ends well, he looped his index finger under the broad chin, and lifted the head. It had thick brow ridges, and from underneath the cap a fringe of dark hair still protruded. He turned it a little. The remnants of tendons gave a dry, brittle creak.

  It was the teeth. There was something inhuman about the teeth, especially the molars, which were thick, heavy, and ridged with deep grooves. He reached out with his other hand, and put his fingertips against the face, and pulled downward on the jaw. There was a cracking noise, like breaking ice, and the mouth popped open.

  The jaw had two rows of teeth, both on the top and bottom.

  He recoiled, and stood, his breath whistling in his throat. It’s not human. It’s a troll. Or a giant. And a deeper fear, one from scary stories in childhood, bubbled to the surface. And when I turn, the skeleton will come to life. It will stand up, the bones rattling against each other, and come after me...

  But the skeleton showed no signs of life, even after he turned away and then back. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever seeing anything that looked deader. The jaw gaped forlornly, the head tipped at an awkward angle. He walked past the doors, and up to three other skeletons that lay sprawled on the floor. All were similarly huge, and in fact were even bigger than the first one. If he had come upon these first, he would have known instantly they weren’t human. The cheekbones were thick, and angled up from the side of the skull like arches. One of them had lost its cap, and a heavy ridge ran from front to back along the top of the skull, beneath a tangle of wiry black hair.

  Lying on the floor next to the nearest skeleton was a massive wooden cudgel, the end festooned with metal spikes. A little further away was a short, curved sword with leather wrapping on the handle. A crude skin pouch, tied with a frayed cord, was clutched in the long-nailed fingers of the nearest skeleton. Everything had been preserved, mummified by the dry air. There was no way to tell if the remains were ten, a hundred, or a thousand years old.

  This is a dead world. Everything. The plants outside, the giants in here, all of it. All dead. But then he knew that this couldn’t be true—something kept the Sphinx’s fire burning, kept water in the pool. He shuddered, and walked toward the doors.

  He reached up, and grasped the iron rings. He pushed, leaning all his weight into them. At first, they didn’t move, and he wondered if they were locked, or barred from the outside, or so frozen with age that the hinges wouldn’t move. But there was a deep groan, and the doors swung outward. Light came through the space between them. Finally there was a gap wide enough for him to squeeze his body through.

  Outside the door the ground was bare, covered by fine earth, rusty brown in color. It might not have been watered by rain in a century. Craggy rocks protruded in some places, and there was the same desiccated vegetation that he’d seen earlier from the window, rattling in the cool breeze. The sky was a uniform gray, with only a vaguely brighter spot near the horizon that showed where the unseen sun must be, now near setting.

  Nothing to eat. He put one foot in front of the other, heading downhill and away
from the doors. There’s nothing edible here. I could go back to the Sphinx’s room if I need to drink, but I’ll still die if I don’t find anything to eat. His belly was sunken already, his muscles weak and shuddery, after perhaps twenty-four hours without eating. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to slowly starve.

  Probably peaceful. At some point, you’d get so weak that you’d lose consciousness and never wake up. As long as you had water, though, it wouldn’t be so bad. He resolved, at that moment, never to get too far from the building, where there was the only known source of water he’d seen.

  He turned around and stared at the edifice he’d just left. It looked more like a geological formation than a structure raised by hands and intent, as if the underlying bedrock had simply produced these enormous windowed walls in a volcanic upheaval eons ago. The seams between the huge stones were so narrow that a knife blade would not have fit between them. The building itself sprawled sideways and back like an oddly geometric lava flow, cresting the hill where it sat, a temple as imposing as the Pyramids or Stonehenge or the ziggurats of Ur.

  He walked down the hill, through clumps of dead plants that scratched his bare legs as he went past them. They were the source of the spicy odor—as his passage bruised the dry stems, there was a scent like oregano or thyme, left behind like a ghost of former vitality, years after they last grew and thrived and were green. At the bottom of the hill was an empty river course, its rocky bed barren of life, with only a fringe of dead grass along the edges to show where living things had once grown. The wind was stronger here, and in the distance he heard a low susurration, like the distant noise of ocean waves. He walked up the hill on the other side, a higher vantage point than any in the area other than the temple itself.

  He stood on the crest of the hill, the wind ruffling his hair as he slowly turned a full circle from the temple and back again. There was nothing, as far as he could see, other than the scrub-covered hills rolling off into an uncertain distance. Nearer at hand was an upswept rock formation, ending in a jagged edge. But everywhere devoid of life, desolate, empty.