She's getting you lost, came an unwelcome thought.
Why would she do that? he asked himself silently.
Maybe she is tired of your weakness. Maybe you betrayed her by wanting to leave. But if you die here, you can never leave. Wolfgang felt the blood drain from his face. Was that true? Would his soul become trapped here, unable to be free? He watched Marie's back as if hoping it would provide a sign of her intentions.
Wait a minute, he thought. She didn't even want to come here in the first place. She didn't want me to go, either.
Right. She didn't want you to go. Leaving her, betraying her. But now you have. You're going. But not any farther.
Marie spun around and clamped her hands upon his throat, stifling his breath. How very dreamlike for her to attack him on cue. He struggled helplessly against her grip, dropping Vogelfang and struggling to break her grip. It was no use. She would not let go, and only held him tighter, so tight that he felt the flow of blood build up in his neck and almost stop, his consciousness fleeting. In desperation, he grasped awkwardly for the knife his father had given him but could not find it. What are you doing? he asked himself. Could you really do it? Stab Marie? Then he decided no, if Marie wanted to kill him, he would let her. It would be better than living his life in Doors, or endlessly searching for a door home that he would never find. Then blackness.
He awoke to the horrible forest whispering ringing in his ears. Standing up was almost as difficult as fighting Marie. Bent over, almost collapsing again, he felt bile rising in his throat. He retched horribly, deep and long, and felt certain that everything inside of his body would come up if he didn't try to hold it back. A long, snake-like black something wriggled from his mouth into the agitated mist. The black thing took shape to become the little hunched man once more. "You!" the man screamed, pointing a bent and knobby tree branch of a finger at Marie.
"I'm sorry, Wolfgang," Marie told him, "but I had to do it. And I had to do it when you weren't expecting it. To get rid of him."
"I got this, Chief," Pilgrim nickered from behind the little man. Great hooves pummeled into the hunched figure until it tumbled, shrieking and wailing, never to rise from the spot where it fell.
Wolfgang didn't care, he was just glad it was out of him. He didn’t even believe it was real, just a figment of his imagination that this place had magically brought to life, an illusion. He needed a moment to rest so he knelt down in the deep mist even though he had no idea what it hid. Marie knelt beside him. "How did you know that would work?" he asked.
She looked him right in the eye. "Rats always leave a sinking ship."
He was sorry he'd asked.
Wincing, she shook her head in anger. "GAH. I wish they would shut up."
Wolfgang leaned forward. "What are they saying, Marie?"
"They're talking to each other. About us."
"But I thought they were us?"
"They are. Our voices. But they're arguing about which of us will die first. And how. They were disappointed that I didn't do it already. They're asking me what I'm waiting for."
"I can barely hear them. Can you block them out? Maybe if you put something in your ears..."
She shrugged. "I don't have anything."
After checking his pockets, he found a pair of earbuds. "Try these," he offered. She took them and slid them easily into each ear, her hands as fluid as water. The slight rolling of her eyes made him think that she was searching for the sound. "Better?"
She smiled. "Yeah," she said. "I think so. Thanks." Marie looked a little happier, at least to him, and he again regretted bringing her into this. If anything happened to her because of him, he would never forgive himself. Even as exhausted as she was, she was still beautiful, her glamour strong and thriving in spite of her psychological state. It blossomed around her, drawing deep from the magic of this place if not from the horror, making her angelic. If he ever got out of this alive, he vowed, he would come back for her. Just to see her again, to be near her, to talk to her. Out of everyone he knew, except perhaps for Pilgrim, she had been his most loyal friend. He liked to think that, no matter what happened in this No Man's Land, that she would never forget him, too.
Chapter 6
AS THEY MOVED FORWARD, SOMETHING up ahead shimmered in the last light of the sun as it slipped below the tree line in the distance. "Did you see that?" he whispered, and waited for Marie to catch up to him and Pilgrim, which she did.
"See what?" she asked. She was beginning to look tired, and Wolfgang thought that the place was finally taking its toll.
"A light over there." He pointed and began to walk toward the flash he had seen.
"Be careful." Pilgrim warned. "This place is probably full of foxfires and...ghosts." A building loomed ahead of them totally out of place with the surrounding wood. It was a small building that looked like it could have been an apartment building, about three stories tall with a gabled roof and small windows. It gave the impression in the woods of being a tower, a keep, from a long forgotten war and Marie stood, transfixed, in awe at the building. The flash might have come from one of the windows. A light was on inside.
"What's wrong?" Wolfgang asked.
"I know this place," she said in a voice just above a whisper. "My old house. My mother's house." Her voice was lost in wonder at the building that had transcended time and place to be here. The light from the windows cascaded onto the fog at their feet in streaks and shadows, taut ribbons of light and mist as curtains hanging on the outside of the building, tattered from the elements. Her eyes, dark gray on lighter gray with pupils black and wide, caught and held his gaze because he could not look away from the terror haunting them. Wolfgang had never seen this style of house in Doors. It took him a moment before he realized that by "mother" she didn't mean the changeling who gave birth to her.
"Your human mother?" he asked, in the same hushed tone she had used.
"Yes," she whispered. "What is it doing here?" He didn't have an answer for that, so he stayed silent. But he got the feeling that something bad had happened in that house, something she did not want to relive here, in this broken wood, like a play for some perverted watcher. "Let's go inside," she said finally.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I have to know..."
Pilgrim waited outside.
A weak light shone in the foyer, attractive with the promise of human contact, drawing her to something familiar much like a horse going back to a burning barn. They entered cautiously, the front door creaking a question, surprised to be bothered after all this time. The room had been shut up indefinitely, and the smells had countless opportunities to mix and become even more stale and revolting with each passing moment. Subdued only slightly by the cold and damp, the stench of this hand-fashioned cave told them everything here had been forgotten even before they got a good look around. Finding the doors to each room shut, Marie and Wolfgang took a moment to glance at the old photographs and picture frames grown over with a crust of mold, keeping the secret of the faces within. The wallpaper peeled and sagged petal-like from the walls, its original color and pattern indiscernible beneath the rust and water stains. It was a sadness Wolfgang could smell, see, and feel. After reaching for a door, Marie opened it and disappeared into the soft darkness which sunk like velvet into the room away from the light. Wolfgang paused before following.
That was his mistake.
Marie was gone, the darkness swallowing her up as if that were its sole purpose and, even though Wolfgang followed after where he'd thought she had gone, she was not there. His calls to her went unanswered. He reached the end of the room by walking face-first into the door which stood there, stalwart and duty-bound. Turning the doorknob led him outside once again. He returned through the door and this time felt around for a light switch on the wall. He found one, pressed it until it gave way, and a light as anemic as its sibling in the foyer indifferently showed him the kitchen. Nothing showed any sign that the house was being used. The kitchen, while in the same
moldered state as the foyer, was in order, utensils hung and furniture neatly placed where it belonged, chairs against table, table against wall. There was another door which Wolfgang assumed led to the basement. If Marie had entered this room, and she wasn't here, and she hadn't gone outside as Wolfgang had, then that was where she had to be. He got a terrible sense of foreboding as he approached the door while, at the same time, he felt as if he had to hurry, as if something horrible was happening or about to happen and he had to stop it. He tore open the door and raced down the steps, the smell of stale air, wet and musty and sour, made him clamp his mouth shut and breathe weakly through his nose.
He could hear the footsteps of someone below him in the darkness, in front of the stairs.
"Marie?" More footsteps. "Marie, I'm coming." He felt along the wall for the light switch and pressed it as soon as he found it. It clicked and a tired light bulb suspended on a cord like the freakish child of a firefly-spider coupling glowed and flickered in the room below. Marie was not there, and the footsteps continued in the corners of the basement where the impotent light, a tattered banner cut too short, failed to reach. Leaping down the rest of the steps, Wolfgang watched the dust on the cracked concrete floor rush away from him as he landed, dust long settled and undisturbed for what could have been ages. There was no evidence that anyone had been here in a long time, if ever. Maybe the footsteps he'd heard were just echoes of his own? If that was true, then where was Marie? If she didn't go into the basement, where did she go?
Panic gripped his chest tight and would not let him breathe. Before him was a wall, ragged blocks stacked with mortar filling the cracks between, and he slid his fingers against the grooves, hoping to find an opening or another way out where Marie might have gone or been taken. The blocks here were darker as if stained or charred, and the mortar had turned brown. Finding nothing, he turned around and studied the opposite wall where the light only just grazed it and thought that he saw something glimmer there, teased out by the simple light. More dust fled before him in his haste, and he ran his fingers along the grooves of the wall where he saw the spark. He felt a prick and drew his hand away from the pain. Sure now that something was there, he pulled out his father's knife and began to dig at the mortar, scratching it away to expose whatever had glinted in the light. He hoped it was a switch to a secret door that would lead him to Marie, but anything that would help him at this point was welcome. The scratching exposed more of the metal so that he could see what it was. It was a pen, the kind that his father told him people give as gifts in the human world. After a little more work, it was free. Though marred, it still held its ballpoint tip and was preserved well enough that he could read the inscription on the side: Rübezahl Chemie. Shocked enough that he forgot to be scared, Wolfgang knew what that was: The company his father had worked for in the human world. This was his father's pen. He had been here, had come this way. Did this mean that the Hindernis was near?
But Marie had said this was her mother's house. Wolfgang had never seen it before, so he had no reason to doubt her. Why would her mother's house be sitting here in the No Man's Land? Was the house always here? Did it change appearance for everyone? The pen was shifting in his grip; he noticed a crack winding up the side. He fumbled with the top and bottom, twisting them against each other in an effort to tighten the pen but loosened it instead. As they fell apart and away from his hands, something fluttered down slower than the casing, a white moth, a dove, a scrap of paper rolled and folded and well preserved in its shell but yellowed slightly none-the-less. Wolfgang carefully unfolded it so as not to tear it too much. It did anyway, along the lines of strain where the paper had been bent, but he held it firmly in place and read it to himself. His heart beat excitedly as he wondered what wisdom his father would impart to him from the past.
"Don't run," it said.
That was all it said. He flipped it over to make sure. Hastily scrawled, Wolfgang wondered if that was a warning for whoever should remove the pen, or if it was something his father had meant to remind himself, should he return this way again. It was a piece to a puzzle Wolfgang wasn't sure he wanted to solve but might not get the chance to even if he wanted it--the basement began to shake. He could hear the old windows rattle in their frames in the rooms above him as if the house was a volcano about to erupt. Faces began to push their way toward him from the stone like worms burrowing through the sides of the basement floor. Skeletal and gaunt, they howled inhuman wails, though the suffering felt human and real to Wolfgang. "You are not welcome here," a face nearest him wheezed. He couldn't help but search for eyes within the soulless black eye sockets, holes so dark they revealed nothing more than a bleakness devoid of hope. He didn't know if he should talk to it, but his father's message "Don't run," came back to him in his mind, the paper actually hovering once again in his mind's eye like a beacon against the darkness, and he couldn't imagine his father ever doing something that would intentionally hurt himself. It hadn't said "Don't talk," so he reasoned that, by omission, it was an option.
"Why not?" he asked softly.
"This is not your house," a face the size of a child's piteously replied.
"But I want to help you," he said. "I want to find my friend."
"We cannot escape," the first face said. "To struggle brings only more pain."
"That's horrible," Wolfgang said.
"Be grateful it is not your house," one face said to him. "It could be. It could be anyone's. We made this house what it is."
He felt sorry for them and a little less terrified because he trusted in his father's advice not to run. "My friend is missing. Marie. Once I find her, I'll leave you." He was going to add "in peace" but he understood there was no peace to be found here.
"Oh, no," replied a face rimmed with flickering light as if struggling between light and darkness. "This is her home, too. She belongs here."
"What?" Wolfgang got a cold and angry feeling deep in his heart, like a lance of ice. It was a feeling usually reserved for MOON, since no others usually made him feel so enraged. If he were a dog, he would have started growling. His hair already stood on end.
"She left us. But she has returned."
"You cannot take her with you. She belongs with us."
His heart wrenched with every beat in a panic. Did that mean she was dead? Had this place killed her? Wolfgang remembered the salt statues in the woods--she, blinded, while he was gutted. What had she seen that she did not want to see? What did she see when she closed her eyes that she had to forget? The faces on the walls, buried in agony in this place, forever bound to it, forever alone. Was Marie also bound to it, this, her mother's house? The faces could not see past their pain, poor creatures, and Wolfgang drew only one conclusion that horrified him more than death masks on a wall ever could. Had she killed herself? "Where is she?"
"With us."
"In this house?" he asked, "or someplace...else?"
"With us."
He had to look for her. He had to find her, no matter what, no matter if she was alive or dead, no matter in what way he might find her. But his father's words, scrawled across that white paper, bone-like, bandage-like, came back to him again. Don't run. If he ran out now, looking for her, would he be putting her in more danger? That's stupid, he thought. You're taking it too far. Your father couldn't have known about Marie. Maybe he wrote that note just for himself, anyway. She needs you, and you're talking to ghosts who don't want to help you.
It was maddening. He wanted to strike out at something, anything, just to bring an end to the nothing happening. No matter how he tried to convince himself that he should flee the basement, his thoughts returned to that pen and that note, purposefully lodged in the wall with the intention that someone find it. Then the ghostly faces, on worm-like necks, became joined with their bodies, skeletons which also slid out of the walls like so many secrets, a small family of mother, father, and child, and these three then surrounded Wolfgang, a fence of regret, a fence of loss. Wolfgang pulled out Vo
gelfang and got ready for a fight.
"Too fragile," the father said, "is flesh."
"Do not forget," said the child.
The mother, the most ghastly shade of all with her torn hair and tortured face, said nothing. It was then that Wolfgang saw the noose around her neck, rotten and black with age, so frayed and worn he had at first thought it a necklace. Before he could react, they turned their backs on him and rushed up the walls on unmoving legs, gliding with a supernatural smoothness of gait.
Everything in his being wanted to follow them, to see if they would lead him to Marie. He burned inside like Orpheus, unsure that Eurydice was behind him, on fire with the need to have just one look to make sure she was there. But he had faith in his father. And his father had written, "Don't run." So he didn't. He took a deep breath and let it out, and waited. He waited so long he felt his body would explode from all the energy building up within it that had to be set free, a matter of moments that felt like hours, when the house, in a way that he could only later describe as shifting around him, changed from the basement of what he presumed was a dilapidated old French country home to another basement just as old, but filled with casks of wine, kegs of beer, and crates containing foodstuffs and delicacies stamped with languages that Wolfgang had never seen before. Acutely reminded of how hungry he was, Wolfgang's stomach growled, but the thought that he had lost Marie turned his stomach back to silence. So the shift was the reason for waiting. Wolfgang took his leave of the basement by charging up the stairs, eager to track down his best friends and continue on his journey.
The stairs led outside. A large and crooked tree grew outside the house, his footsteps through the mulch as he came around to the front punctuated from time to time by the soft thud of something of substance hitting the ground from a height. A woman opened the front door to meet him, the age-spotted skin on her face hanging heavily, a culmination of time and trials, and the long, indigo silk scarf around her head shimmering in the firelight from the roaring hearth within. Whether the scarf was hiding hair or not was anyone's guess, but her eyebrows more than made up for any missing hair by stretching across her face from one side to the other. If she had been a pirate or a fortune teller, Wolfgang would not have been surprised, and he expected her to be carrying a crystal ball instead of a fruit with skin like a honeycomb of green pimples that repulsively matched her own pale skin. The old woman twined the scarf around a finger as if it was a lock of blue hair and gripped the fruit tightly with her other hand. She had a pendant--a large, dark eye, with flecks of deep green and dirty white flickering like stars in the sky behind wind tossed clouds. Caught up against the folds of her wide and shapeless dark dress, the pendant hung off-center, and made her overall lopsided. The gambol with which she walked toward him did nothing to help straighten her out. This place would warp anyone, Wolfgang found himself thinking, while she undulated with each step, bird-like, a living symbol of the waves of the ocean at night and the depths which it concealed. "You've made it!" she cried.
Ghost of Doors (City of Doors) Page 7
