The Abyss Beyond the Reflection

by Micah Castle

  I heard my wife scream. I heard her high-pitched voice from somewhere in the womb. I closed my eyes at some point and when I opened them, I was on the floor upstairs, I must’ve ran back to where I found The Doorway. A puddle of urine underneath my groin, a pool of drool and blood underneath my head.

  That was the second time I saw The Doorway.

  The doctor said it was absolutely the drugs causing the visions, but I knew he was wrong, deep down in my consciousness, I knew it. Despite the rationale, despite the reasoning and logic, I knew he was wrong. Once you see, you cannot unsee. But I didn’t argue. I nodded my head then I went home, back into my office like nothing happened.

  Weeks, months, years passed. The visions wouldn’t leave, The Doorway wouldn’t leave, burnt into my retinas and my mind. I couldn’t sleep without picturing the world beyond, I couldn’t daydream without seeing the sinewy giants drifting across the gray sea, I couldn’t have sex without picturing the seabed womb engulfing me in warmth and colors. I withdrew into myself mentally and physically.

  My wife forced me to see even more doctors and more doctors and more. Not medical ones, no — psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, the list goes on and on. Countless interviews and appointments and drugs, oh the drugs, so many that some of them must be able to cure whatever ailed me, right? But my mind wasn’t sick, I wasn’t ill, maybe before seeing The Doorway but now I wasn’t. I was seeing what was truly there — how can they say that’s ill? How can they say that’s wrong? They’re the ill ones, they need the drugs and appointments and the nods from the judgmental doctors as they scribble endless notes onto their pads, in the rooms that smelt of air freshener and stale coffee.

  More time passed, more years, more blurs of weeks and days in a never-ending cycle. Something did change, eventually. My wife. Her mind changed. She was no longer able to deal with me, deal with the reality in which we lived. I was too much; what I said, what I thought, my beliefs, the insomnia, the crazed writing, my disheveled, ghastly appearance. She screamed. I screamed. We both screamed until we were blue in the face and our throats were numb. The front door was slammed shut and I was left alone in the house that echoed with her exit, left in the house that is no longer a house but a doorway, the Doorway.

  I entered my office, her screams still ringing in my ears. That was the third time The Doorway revealed itself. Large, peaked, papyrus and golden brown, standing nearly ten feet tall and eight feet wide, taking up the entire wall and then some; but it seemed the room adjusted to its size.

  Like a paper cover caught in a gale, the bottom right corner ripped, whipped against the wind, then the entire cover was torn off. It flapped in the breeze and disappeared into the ether. The sea stood before me, lapping against the floorboards of my office. Foreboding, looming, levitated the ivory vortex outlined in black.

  The giants appeared. They drifted forward, up an invisible set of stairs, and walked through the vortex. Their arms swung like pendulums with their small strides. They did not notice each other, they did not notice me standing idly behind, they just moved on into the opening.

  I heard a voice. Rich, full, enchanting, but only a whisper. It called behind the portal. It called for everyone and everything. Though I couldn’t make out what it said, I still felt intoxicated by its strange words. Drunkenly I strode across my office, past the Doorway, past the clouded sea, past the gaunt giants surrounding me and made my way up the invisible stairs.

  As I stood they moved into the void. My thoughts raged, and my body tingled. I looked down at my hands and saw long, dull colored, sinewy things; my arms were thin, decrepit; the ground seemed much further away than it did before I left my office, then I realized my legs were needle thin and oddly shaped. I touched my face, felt no eyes, only deep-seated holes where they should’ve been.

  I tried to scream but I had no vocal cords, I had no throat, and I didn’t believe I had a mouth.

  The lovely words continued; they still called for me, they called for everyone. Everything seemed to mean nothing. My transformation meant nothing compared to the lovely feminine voice. I lowered my hands and drifted into the opening, the translucent layer like a thin veil hanging above. It flowed over my body and settled.

  Inside, God… how wonderful. How could I ever explain the beauty past the vortex and the gray sea? How could my meager, trembling hands write words to describe what those creatures traveled to? I don’t believe there are words in the dictionary to describe it, even if I tried. The warmth. The enveloping lull of comfortability. It felt like I was floating in an ether of lukewarm water and cushions that automatically formed to my shape. Endlessly the whiteness stretched around me. I, not of my accord, drifted listlessly across the pearly void. My fears, my emotions, everything that was pent up inside washed away as if it were the dirt on my body.

  Another opening revealed itself after a while. A black vortex, outlined in gray. If I weren’t in the place that I was, I might’ve been afraid, terrified of what was to come and what could happen to my feeling of bliss, but I idly drifted without a care in the world and allowed myself to be passed through the opening.

  A void in a void. Utter nothingness. A darkness that seemed to be blacker than black. The darkness dwelled there in this space. It lived and breathed and moved as if it were sentient. Though I couldn’t see it, I felt the walls miles and miles away move, felt the floor tremble, felt the quivering of the far-off opening that didn’t reveal itself until much later. Fear enveloped me, terror filled my mind like water in a pot, nihilistic self-awareness settled in my head and spread across my body. Wave after wave after wave of despair, of my current and future shortcomings and negativities bombarded me for what felt like forever. The loss of my wife, the loss of my sanity, the inevitable loss of my house, the inevitable loss of my work. Nothing was what I was, what I am, and what I would always be.

  The unrelenting pain of depression and despair brought me to convulsions, enough so that I squeezed my eyes shut in the hopes that I could force it away by sheer will. They soon disappeared, but I kept my eyes sealed. At some point later, I looked to see a silvery vortex, felt myself pass through, then consciousness ebbed and vanished.

  When I awoke I was in my house but not my house, the house that is no longer a home but the Doorway. My office was in disarray; gaping holes in the ceiling, jagged openings in the warped floorboards, wallpaper peeling, debris littering everything, and a pile of ash in the center of the room. I rested on a piss-stained mattress, the size of which looked like the one my wife and I shared. When I realized it was that same mattress, but now ruined, I reeled.

  “What happened?” I asked the cold room. “How long has it been?”

  I peeked out the nearly opaque window and saw the overgrown yard, a tall, leafless, gnarled oak tree, the houses across the street in disarray and dilapidated. In the distance stood a silhouette of a city, skyscrapers with their jagged tops nearly touching the heavens above.

  I turned back to the room, seeing the Doorway; many renditions of the Doorway. The floor, the walls, the ceiling — the Doorway.

  I found a few scraps of paper underneath the mattress, and a broken pencil and began this entry; my last entry to the world.

  Although the Doorway has taken me in, re-birthed me into this world that is no longer my own, gave me the ability to travel through time, let me see what is beyond our reality, let me truly see what we, humans, are — soulless, giant, drifting monsters — I do not want to return just yet. I want to breathe the Earth’s air, feel the cool breeze on my skin, perhaps bathe in a warm pool of water. I want to live in this world, despite what it is, what we are.

  They open. The papyrus layer of the Doorway encompassing the floor pulls open as if tugged from the inside. The layer of the Doorway in the ceiling swirls, rips, tears into nothing. The layers of each Doorway on each wall turn into shreds, turn to flecks of paper that are thrown into the wind.

  I can see the pulsating gum womb below, the white vor
tex outlined in black above, the bleak sea everywhere else. I can hear the enchanting words. I can feel the warmth and comfort of the womb. I can see the drifting humans stride across the water.

  What lies behind the Doorway is its own being. And I’m a part of it — we all are, whether we know it or not.

  Nowhere Better Than Here

  The sudden flash of the exploding gunpowder illuminated the auditorium. The audience simultaneously awed, “Ooooooh!” The purple velvet curtains were pulled back and a circle of light beamed down onto the short man, standing on the rickety wooden stage, with a curling mustache, a top hat atop his head, and wearing a black suit.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced. “I would like to welcome you to the Eldritch Theater!”

  Clapping ensued like the waves of the ocean, deafening all other noises in the room.

  “Thank you, thank you! I am your host Jepado! But you are not here tonight to hear me ramble on and on about myself, no! You are here to see the Great, the Wonderful, the Astounding, the Fantastique Frederick!” A roaring applause filled the smoke-filled auditorium, with drunken men pinching their fingers and putting them on their lips, whistling; while others pounded on their tables, their drinks sloshing and spilling onto the ale-stained wood.

  “With his assistant, Marvelous Marco!” The announcer shoehorned in before he strode off the stage. All that was left was the sound of the audience dragging on their cigarettes and cigars, exhaling thick smoke up into the air.

  Fantastique Frederick came out with a leap, his kaleidoscopic sequin suit shimmered and changed hues as the light focused on him, and his bright purple bowtie whirred like a wheel, the speed of which revealed an image of a bluebird against a violet sky. A big smile stretched across Frederick’s face and his mustache nearly touched the brim of his hat. His eyes glowed, his teeth sparkled, and the makeup he wore hid the sweat that ran down his forehead.

  As the audience came to life once more, shaking the floorboards of the entire theater, Marvelous Marco jumped out onto the adjacent side of the stage. His ruby colored vest shined like a red-light bulb underneath the light, his amethyst pants sparkled like stars, and his polished shoes glistened. Marco tried to match the smile and joy Frederick radiated, but his young, clean shaven face, and his makeup did not seem to compare. He was dwarfed by the energy Frederick brought to the stage, but Marco never allowed it to bother him.

  “Thank you Jepado and welcome to the Eldritch Theater!” Frederick spoke loudly into the auditorium. “I am your entertainment for the night, your distraction from the doldrums of your everyday lives, your deepest darkest secret, your razzle, your dazzle, your everything that you wish you could have or be, but you simply cannot. I am the Fantastique Frederick!”

  Another roar of the audience.

  “And this is my wonderful assistant, the pen to my paper, the dreams to my sleep, the beautiful sky on my summer’s day, the one, the only, the Marvelous Marco!”

  There was clapping but the energy that erupted for Frederick had diminished.

  “So!” Frederick said, as he strode to the back of the stage and pulled a table out from behind the curtain. “Let’s begin!”

  As they left the stage, taking the small set of stairs that lead into the dressing room underneath, the audience’s hollering and clapping faded into the distance.

  Frederick tossed his hat onto the small loveseat against the wall, which was plastered with posters of recent performers like Harry Houdini, William Robinson, and Harry Kellar, then undid his bowtie as he entered the room, while Marco unbuttoned his vest and kicked off his shoes. Frederick sat onto the stool in front of the large mirror across the makeup table, leaned over and undid his shoes then took off his jacket, revealing a plain dress shirt. Marco slid Frederick’s hat onto the other cushion of the loveseat and plopped down, throwing his vest over the back of it.

  They sighed at the same time and leaned back. Another successful show.

  “We still got three hours until the cab is here to take us to the hotel, what do you want to do ‘till then? Get something to eat? I hear there’s a nice Italian place a few blocks away. Or we can find a bar someplace?” Marco asked as he stared up at the floorboard ceiling.

  Frederick turned to the mirror, took a moist towel that hung from a hook on the side of the table, and began removing his makeup. “We can grab something to eat, but later, maybe in an hour or two. I have more work to do.”

  “By work you mean reading those books?”

  Frederick looked at Marco through the mirror and nodded.

  “When are you ever going to be done with those damn things? We’ve been working together for five years, since the beginning, but you’re still working your way through ‘em. I don’t even know how you can even read them, let alone consider them ‘work.’ It’s all gibberish written by a couple of hundred-year-old loonies.”

  Frederick wiped away the white paint from his forehead and the blackened ash from his eyes. “Because I want something more than this life. Those books, those things you consider ‘written by loonies’ possess knowledge that not a soul can begin to understand today. It is work because it truly is work. Grueling hours of deciphering a dead language, understanding the ink drawn illustrations of things and places, the queer mathematical equations and scientific formulas, that the sane mind is not supposed to comprehend, and I am coming to a point where I can use what I’ve learned.”

  “Okay, whatever, fine” Marco said, like he did the dozen or so times before when this conversation came up. “Read your damn loony books.” He got up from the couch and strode over to the makeup desk. There was no point in arguing with him, he knew. It was like this since the beginning. Marco just never saw the appeal of esoteric knowledge. What good would it do in the real world?

  He took a different rag from the hook on the adjacent desk side and quickly wiped the paint off his face. He tossed the rag into the bin underneath the table and went to the door. “I’m going to go see the sights of the town. I’ll be back in an hour, then we’re eating no matter what. I’m starving, and I could really go for some pasta.”

  Frederick continued removing the makeup with one hand, while with the other he waved goodbye to Marco.

  “See you later, Fantastique Frederick,” Marco said as he left.

  A few minutes after Marco had exited the room, Frederick got up from the stool and went over to the massive chest against the wall. Inside lay his work. Stacks of leather bound tomes filled the trunk, dozens upon dozens of yellowed sheets brimming with notes, equations, and formulas, and a bundle of pencils wrapped together in twine. Frederick hefted out the stack he was presently working through, three thick volumes in total, then a few sheets of paper and a pencil.

  He cleared some room on the floor and set each book down, side by side. The golden written Latin titles duly gleamed underneath the electric bulbs of the makeup desk. Breve de Grey, the farthest left read; Prioribus Nobis, the middle read; and the farthest right, Iter in Alium Locum.

  Frederick sat in front of his work and sighed, then flipped open Iter in Alium Locum.

  In the hour Marco provided him, Frederick feverishly scribbled down notes, archaic equations that hardly made sense to him then, and drew curving lines that darted from one part of the page to the other, connecting ideas and thoughts that could potentially work together.

  It was only when the assistant barged into the room that Frederick wrenched his eyes away from the texts on the floor.

  “C’mon,” Marco said, waving his hand towards the door, “let’s go, I’m starving, and that Italian place closes soon.”

  Frederick put his hand onto his knee and pushed himself up onto his feet, his joints cracking. “Fine, fine; I am done for now anyway.” He grabbed his normal jacket, threw it on and walked out of the dressing room.

  As they trudged up the stairwell to the outside, Frederick asked, “When did we decide on Italian anyway?”

  * * *

 
After the next and last show in town finished the following night, Marco and Frederick relaxed before their travels the following day. Marco reclined on the loveseat while Frederick sat on the floor, reading.

  “Where we off to next, Fred?”

  He looked up from his book for a moment, thinking, then returned to it. “We are going back home for a few weeks, we are booked all over in Cherry Brooke.”

  “What kind of places?”

  “Bars, clubs, small theaters; the usual locations.”

  “God, I hate playing bars,” Marco seethed. “They’re all filled with drunks — drunk men no less, hardly ever any women there — that end up getting rowdy near the end. Remember that one time that guy tried to get up on stage while we were doing the saw act?”

  “Mhm…”

  “God what a buffoon! But, I guess it’ll be nice to be back home. Wonder what my mother is up to, after father died and I left, I’ve been worried about her…”

  “Yes,” Frederick murmured, “it will be nice, and we do not even have to pay to stay anywhere.”

  “You still own that rickety place on the outskirts?”

  He nodded, turning a page.

  “Still filled with your ‘work?’”

  He nodded again.

  “God… where am I going to sleep? The last time there wasn’t even a pot to piss in, let alone a place to sleep.”

  “We will find you room, do not worry your little head off Marcus.”

  When the horse-drawn carriage left, the driver leaving their belongings on the slush covered sidewalk, they both stared at the run-down house of Frederick’s. It still stood, surprisingly, and the windows were not all broken, though some were boarded up. Its wooden walls were mostly brown, save for the stained sides which were weathered severely by the harsh summers and brutal winters. The roof slanted downward, giving the impression at any moment it would slide off and crash onto the unkept yard below.