She wanted to escape into apartment #303.
Jarrod
navigated the stairwell back to the third floor. Something child-sized dashed across the hall. Towards #303.
“Fuck’s that?”
He suddenly remembered gleaming porcelain, dresses billowing like submerged jellyfish bulbs, the clatter of tiny glass feet. Button eyes peering out of shadow.
Jarrod is certain he hears something moving around in his grandmother’s doll room. His eyes adjust to the dark, a shadow quivers against the wall. A figure on the lower shelf totters, sways forward, inexplicably falls upwards onto the top shelf. This ascension fills him with horror— not the fear that the dolls will harm him but the frisson of witnessing something that should never have occurred.
He wished he wasn’t standing in the hallway of a filthy apartment building, soiled carpet under his naked foot, dingy yellow walls peeling. He wanted to be that child dreaming about dolls in his grandmother’s home. He wanted everything to go away and return to that time when he was tired from swimming all day and the cancer hadn’t stolen his leg and he was still so deep in love anything seemed possible.
And maybe, just maybe, his sister Sarah wasn’t 30-years dead.
Apartment #303 had a light on. He turned the doorknob. It was unlocked.
He’d always assumed the interior was the same for every rental in the complex, but #303’s hallway seemed to extend beyond what the building’s actual dimensions could allow.
He realized too late that he’d shut the door behind him. This side had no knob, no handles, no means to open it. Fear ameliorated his anger, but frustration still ached in his jaw. The only exit was a pet door built into the wall at the end. There was nowhere else to go so he crawled through.
He came out into an impossibly large room, far more expansive than the entirety of the complex’s third floor. The space was illuminated by a sodium vapor lamp that cast a dull luminescence.
The floor was so heavily layered with thick rugs every footstep was muffled. Aqua-blue shag carpet lining the walls absorbed the sound of his breathing. He felt a pressure in his head, as if he’d been submerged in a diving bell. Confusion made him stumble.
Stacks of body parts were strewn about.
It took a moment for Jarrod to realize they were prosthetics: wooden legs, glass arms, porcelain torsos. Plastic heads dangling from cords like a nightmarish department store display. Synthetic limbs so tall they touched the floor and ceiling. Others as small as a toy’s parts.
A table towered over him, yet paradoxically the chairs could be held in the palm of his hand. This failure to accurately interpret the proportions of the room and his own body dissolved and he felt his normal size again.
He gathered his equilibrium, walked further into the room to find the apartment building’s residents supine on rusted metal tables. Strapped down by weathered leather straps, button-eyed and motionless, skin reflecting light like delicate glass figurines. They were surrounded by extraordinary machines.
More a sculptor’s bizarre reconstruction of medical equipment than functional devices. Jutting pieces of metal flowered with brass panels, arms ending in mirrors like reflective fruit. A series of protrusions attached to mirrors angled just so to reflect other mirrors until ultimately reflecting a prosthetic limb, a torso, or head on display. Dozens of reflective surfaces positioned on stands, or bolted to frames that allowed the mirrors to swivel into different positions.
Lucinde was on a gurney, staring into a large mirror positioned inches from her face, angled to reflect a monstrous pair of legs propped up against a wall.
Mirrors circled Sophie. Staring at her own arm and face reflected from another mirror that received the incident ray of a small doll’s arm and head. An infinite array of manipulated self assessments. A gathering of xenomiliacs seeking asylum from their misery.
The gurneys quivered, thunder rolled through the building. Powdered rust drifted to the floor, but the residents remained motionless and continued to gaze into mirrors displaying phantom childhood reflections. Something moved on the other side of the room.
The Doll
walked with a peculiar gait. Its absurdly diminutive body shrank until it was so tiny it could curl up comfortably in Jarrod’s arms. The Doll’s skin was pink as if freshly scrubbed.
Jarrod couldn’t accept that he was standing in a strange apartment with dozens of neighbors being experimented on. Surrounded by reflections. Watching this thing fashioned from porcelain step out of his nightmares. Thunder convulsed the building. The vibrating continued even after the sound passed.
The ceiling felt too high, the floor too close. Jarrod was submerged in deep waters looking up at a sky distorted by a rippling surface. Sarah’s face occluded the sun. He reached for his long dead sister. His hand brushed against her flesh, ice cold and smooth in death.
I’m done. I give up.
All he had to do was open his mouth and breathe in the past. Give up. But this meant he’d never see Mark ever again. A tranquil sorrow, dull and deep, numbed his anger until all that remained was longing.
The Doll’s fingers gripped his wrist. It spoke in a voice that coated the inside of Jarrod’s skull.
All of the children have mirrors.
Jarrod
woke up in bed. The phantom memory of straps tightening across his wrists and torso gradually faded. A vague image of the Doll’s head moving erratically in the gloom as it positioned a mirror before his face was all that remained of the nightmare.
The night was still ink black.
Mark was asleep. Jarrod didn’t know where he’d placed his phone or flashlight. He tossed and turned trying to fall asleep again, to put the weird nightmare behind him.
The persistent tink tink tink of little ceramic hands tapping against the sliding glass door lulled him into a cognitive limbo.
He turned over onto his stomach, desperately clinging to the idea that if he fell asleep the power would come back on and the world would be back to normal when he woke up. His anger was distant, foreign and aloof as sorrow took its place. Mark, I love you. I’m ok now. You mean more to me than I mean to you. It’s ok now.
The tapping grew more agitated.
This time it was Mark who began screaming in his sleep.
Jarrod reached out to comfort him. When he touched what was far too cold and porcelain-smooth to be a shoulder he realized he was having difficulty determining just where Mark was located on the bed.
The body was much too small.
The Doll
places the porcelain residents back on the shelf in Jarrod’s grandmother’s room. The Doll brushes their hair, straightens the silk blouses, shuts the glass door. It steps back to watch the young boy Jarrod sleeping peacefully.
TELLURIAN FAÇADE
Ian remembered the mossy cow skulls floating outside his window. The thought came to him like a vague dream, so distant yet intrusive he felt like a ghost invading the privacy of his own childhood.
But that was a lifetime ago. These days the only phantoms puttering around on the ranch took the shape of his father attired in the bones of a ruined past.
Josh and Lindsay’s bedrooms remained just as he remembered. As each of them flew the coop their parents simply shut the doors and ignored the empty rooms–out of sight out of mind time capsules. He touched Josh’s door, suppressed the memories that ran through his fingertips like a current. He wasn’t looking forward to his siblings flying out, but their father’s funeral meant a reunion could no longer be avoided. Even inside the house he smelled the sweet smoke of someone burning leaves on the other side of the mountain.
He still had dreams about swinging that hay hook into his dad’s neck. All these years later he regretted that he never had the balls to wake up, sneak into his parent’s bedroom, and sink that steel point into the fucker’s throat. But no matter how many times he’d pulled the hook slit open, or how much blood he spilled onto the barn floor, he’d always wake up just as empty as
he’d been before.
He wandered down the old familiar hall with its scratched wood paneling pocked by holes where 4-H ribbon awards had once been prominently displayed. An aggressive wind forced drizzle against the windows with a clatter. It sounded like an animal trying to get inside. Ian walked into the dining room.
The landline had been cut shortly after his father’s illness. Ian didn’t remember if he’d ever even seen him make a phone call. He was uncomfortable exploring his old home, anxious at the realization he was as isolated as anyone could be in this day and age.
He pressed a thumb against the tabletop, print perfectly captured in the dust as if he’d been booked.
It was early morning but the birch trees had grown so close to the house the only light came from the unobstructed window. A flipped switch gave no response.
Ian was grateful he’d held onto his dad’s Vietnam Zippo. He wrangled up some candles. Their dim incandescence allowed him to read something engraved on the lighter.
NON GRATUM ANUS RODENTUM.
The autumn air made him feel like a kid again. The woods out back beckoned. He blew out the candles. Their waxy odor drowned out the scent of the distant blazing leaf pile.
Ian hiked further up the mountain, intoxicated by the scent of Douglas fir trees. Tangerine and scarlet and purple leaves tumbled over each other so he couldn’t tell what was alive or animated by a breeze. Animals screamed, not quite chirps or yips. He wondered what had riled them up. His boots slipped in the mud. Every step forward was an accomplishment.
He hiked until he’d traveled deep enough to find his old underground fort. He’d spent an entire summer digging the pit and the passages branching off. Planned on reinforcing the walls, but couldn’t lug cinder blocks this far. Adolescent dreams of miles of tunnels in his own underground empire, but all he’d managed was a shallow den and a few short crawlspaces. The whole system had caved in after a heavy rain, then brimmed with water that turned larvae infested.
A gnarled blackberry bush grew from the banks of the depression. Ian realized with a touch of sadness that his secret stash of Devil Dinosaur comics and Mack Bolan novels buried down there for over three decades had to be nothing but pulp now.
He gingerly pushed the thorny vines aside and found a stone wall, shin high, running alongside a tunnel split off from the foliage choked hole. It was a dark mossy green, slick from the condensation glittering like jewels on its surface. He was surprised to discover this was the natural color—no lichens grew on the marble smooth stone so tightly stacked he couldn’t tell if there was any mortar. Had no idea how he could’ve missed the wall in all the years he’d roamed these parts.
The unusual mineral color made him think of his projectile point collection. His elementary school library had a guide that helped him become adept at differentiating a dart from an arrow tip–though his father had always insisted the ones he found on the property were thunderstones. Ian laughed at the thought; his father had also believed that animal burrows were entrances to abandoned cities.
But there’d been a knapped arrowhead he’d never managed to locate in any reference book. Made from a deep jade colored stone similar to this wall. The July he’d found it was the summer someone broke through the sliding glass door at the side of the house. Plenty of accessible rifles and trapping gear to steal, but all the bastards had taken was his projectile collection.
He pressed an ear against the wall and heard things below–watery tinkle of small stones rolling down an embankment, maybe an underground stream or lake. There were lots of subterranean reservoirs in these parts. Nez Perce had probably built this. Maybe a scrapped try at a well and geological activity had recently exposed the stones.
So much history in the forest, all kinds of wonders bound to come to the surface eventually. As his dad used to say, Worlds buried beneath worlds.
Terminar antes de la puesta del sol, Ambrose said as if failing to finish his chores quickly would attract the attention of something he wanted to avoid. The ranch hand had shown up later than usual. Ian was glad to see him. He’d forgotten what an integral presence he’d been growing up.
The barn had fallen into disrepair. Walls sagged, marked by cavities where horses had chewed the wood raw like poorly healed wounds. The reek of mildew and manure and a stronger odor emanated from cracks in the cement floor. Ian didn’t understand how sewage had managed to leak uphill from the septic tank into the barn. He said this out loud.
Pasajes secretos. Here long before the Indios, Ambrose explained.
Passages? Ian was slightly embarrassed; his mother had been born and raised in Guanajuato, but he’d only managed to pick up a smattering of Spanish. And most of that was learned from Ambrose himself.
Abandonado burrows, conectados por lo México cuevas. Indios explore, things found down there, no le gustaba.
What’d they find? Encontrar?
Oh, ancient ceremonias. Ambrose frowned.
Cómo?
Practicante de la Vias Verdes, Tlaloc fanáticos.
Ian wasn’t sure what to make of this. He rolled his thumb across his dad’s vintage Zippo lighter’s wheel, held it next to a fracture in the floor. The flame tip wavered towards the opening.
Ambrose’s Mesoamerican fables were familiar, reminiscent of Ian’s father whisking the family away to this ranch 35-plus years ago under the pretense he was saving them from conflicts in the Middle East, gas crises, and nuclear threats. Filled his kid’s heads with tales about tribes that prospered in the Americas long before humans crossed the Bering Strait, of all manner of flesh and blood spirits slipping out of their intangible worlds to haunt this tangible soil.
As he’d told it certain clans used to banish their strongest braves because they were just too damned good at fighting to fit into polite society. That’s how he’d seen himself—didn’t belong with the nine to fives; returned from a war tour then moved his family far away from the entropy of civilization.
A real goddamn warrior.
Fanáticos, Ian agreed.
The rift in the barn floor brought to mind cenotes, sinkholes where ancient Mayans had lowered sacrificial victims into the watery depths. Ian half expected his old man to pop up from behind a rotting hay bale like a mossy jack-in-the-box.
Ambrose didn’t go to the second floor. Ian was grateful for not having to make up an excuse to avoid treading up those ominous stairs where his dad had ruined everything.
Talk of tunnels inspired Ian to hike to his underground fort again. Sunlight shimmered between gaps in the cloudy sky, softly warmed the forest floor a burgundy hue.
The stone wall had ascended in the brief time he was away. He could now see petroglyphs etched into its surface. Ian estimated it was 30 feet lengthwise now. Yellow tamarack needles and alder cones were bunched around the perimeter.
Someone had started to stack stones here long ago and the lakes underfoot had moved the earth, swallowed everything, held it in its gut for ages, and now the waters were forcing the wall through the forest floor.
In a matter of hours.
This was the only scenario that made sense.
Ian placed his hands on the wall and felt something reverberating against it again and again deep below. Frenetic pummeling, rushing waters, roaring streams.
Or drumming.
That made no sense. It was water. That must be it. Subterranean rivers.
He’d come out first thing in the morning. Get some gloves. Do some measuring. Clear away those blackberry vines.
Ian began the hike back to the house. He thought the strange green sky was some weird optical illusion due to the full moon having not yet fully set. He couldn’t come up with any other explanation.
Josh and Lindsay waved to get Ian’s attention as he approached the luggage turnstile. His sister looked great, his brother paunchy–a barrel shaped torso gave him a bovine appearance. He’d once overheard their father say that at 14 Josh was the mental equivalent of an 8-year old. Ian wondered what mental age his 40-some
thing brother had finally achieved.
This had stayed with him all these years, fueled his hatred of Josh as his relatives coddled and made excuses for his big brother’s failures. He’d struggled for what little he had, borne the full brunt of the bankruptcy and subsequent divorce while his parents hadn’t chipped in a dime. But when Josh needed help after one of his many hare-brained schemes, there’d always been a spare room or funds to help him get back on his feet.
Ian helped them gather their luggage. They stopped at the airport restaurant before hitting the road.
His brother and sister ordered food. He sipped his beer at a deliberately slow pace to show how much self-discipline he’d mustered. He was on his fourth by the time the food arrived.
You two ok sleeping in your old rooms? Not much has changed. Ian spun his coaster around in a puddle of beer glass sweat.
Not much? Albino kids still tappin’ at your window? Josh snorted in amusement.
Not even a goddamn Bigfoot, though I’m expectin’ one’ll smell your filthy ass and come a callin’.
Hah hah. Remember when you saw kids runnin’ in the woods one night? Heads all weird?
Sounds like something dad made up.
Dad didn’t make things up. He knew the land.
Only reason we moved to the boonies was it made it easier for him to beat the shit outta his wife and kids without any neighbors complaining.
C’mon. He knew what was what.
Yeah, knew all about cities built before the Pleistocene. He ever tell you about the Chiricahua riding pterodactyls outta tunnels in Arizona? Bullshit. Old fool knew fuck all.
Lindsay interceded, Ian please don’t use big words just so you can make yourself feel smarter than your brother. And keep it down. People are looking.
Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales Page 10
