The Door to Lost Pages

by Claude Lalumiere

  One morning, shortly after the break of dawn, while the rest of the family was still asleep, he had walked toward that vast expanse of water, eyes closed, letting the smell transport him beyond anything he’d ever imagined. Then he stepped on something that scraped his foot.

  Startled, he opened his eyes and bent down to investigate. Half-buried in the sand was a lopsided, five-pointed star—a speckled rock, just a bit bigger than his four-year-old hand, sculpted into that shape by time and water.

  He saw in that rock a mysterious, seductive beauty. He was convinced that his discovery heralded the promise of a wondrous future.

  He kept it. He kept it for years.

  Why had Kurt insisted that he and Holly go to that party at Carol’s? He’d forgotten why, but he wished they had stayed in—had sex, watched TV, played cards, whatever.

  Carol’s spacious apartment overflowed with guests. The effect, oddly, was to make it seem even bigger, like endless catacombs invaded and overrun by a throng of decadent bacchants. Kurt knew about half the people there: a good mix of familiar faces and new people, exactly how he liked parties. Beer flowed. Joints passed from hand to hand. Smoke was blown from mouth to mouth. Flirtation was mandatory. At first, he’d been having a great time.

  Then he noticed Holly chatting with Giovanni. At the sight of him he’d felt something slither down his back.

  He didn’t think that Holly knew him. Certainly, he’d never mentioned him to her. He realized then that he should have—a long time ago, to warn her. But shame had proved stronger than caution. Kurt had met Giovanni about five years previously but it had been four years since they’d last seen each other.

  Even from across the room, Kurt could spot the cruelty in his dark eyes. Giovanni had the blackest eyes, like gateways into something best left undiscovered. His face always seemed to be on the verge of a sneer. Once, Kurt had been attracted to that darkness, that condescending arrogance.

  Kurt knew from friends that Giovanni still occasionally stepped inside the periphery of his social circle. It was inevitable that they would eventually cross paths again. Mark, Tony, and Jessica occasionally gushed over him, saying how charming he was. But they hadn’t known him back then; they weren’t from that old crowd—and those people Kurt had lost touch with. Whenever anyone brought Giovanni up in conversation, Kurt found a way to change the subject.

  Giovanni had been older than any of Kurt’s friends back then and was older than anyone at the party that night. Late thirties at least, though it was hard to tell how old exactly; sometimes he seemed much older. Kurt used to ask him about his age, but Giovanni had never given him a straight answer.

  Kurt saw Giovanni place his fingers on Holly’s bare shoulder. Kurt grew hot with rage. He wanted to grab Holly and leave the party. Get her as far from Giovanni as possible. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get near them, as if the crowd were conspiring to keep them apart. He tried to shout at Holly, but his voice was thin, raspy, muffled. The whole party became hazy, dreamlike, nightmarish.

  Kurt had a high tolerance for alcohol—usually. He didn’t tend to get drunk, just jolly. That night, though, his joviality turned into mean drunkenness. He argued with everyone around him. Not making any sense. Being a jerk. The party had completely lost its glitter, becoming a blur of oozing anger.

  The next thing Kurt knew, it was dawn, and he and Holly were walking home, shouting, fighting.

  In their two years together, they had never quarrelled. Ever. On the rare occasions when a potential conflict presented itself, they’d always known how to talk things through calmly. He loved that about them, their relationship.

  Kurt didn’t even really know what they were fighting about. Holly was questioning him about some teenager—a dark-skinned girl with long, multicoloured braids—he’d apparently been chatting up.

  “She kept pointing at me. Whispering in your ear.”

  “I can’t remember. I was drunk.”

  “I saw her slip you a piece of paper. Her phone number?”

  “I said, I was drunk—I don’t remember her. I don’t remember anything.” But Kurt fumbled through his pockets anyway. He found something: a bookmark. Holly leaned in to see, but Kurt pushed her away.

  Lost Pages it read, in bold blue letters on a brown background, with the address in small green type. Whatever, he thought, shoving it back into his pocket.

  From that moment on they fought about everything and nothing. Every day. About the most inane things. Too quickly, arguing became their predominant mode of communication.

  One evening, after five weeks of this torment, Holly stormed out after yet another screaming match. Something about the volume of the TV while they were watching the news. Stupid. Inconsequential.

  Near midnight, she finally came home, with Giovanni in tow.

  Giovanni, again. I should have guessed, Kurt thought.

  Holly didn’t say a word to Kurt. She walked right past him, without acknowledging him in any way. Giovanni greeted Kurt with a “Hello” whose a tone left him feeling exposed and vulnerable.

  Then they started making out right in front of Kurt. On the couch. Taking off each other’s clothes. Fondling each other. As if Kurt weren’t there. Or maybe especially because he was there.

  Kurt didn’t know how to react. He just stood there silently, stunned into numbness.

  Holly continued to ignore him. But Giovanni kept stealing these cold glances at him.

  At this stage, anger was pointless. The sight of them—the girl he loved giving herself to a man he despised and feared, to a man who reminded him of his own weakness, stupidity, and shame—filled him with hatred and self-loathing, but he felt compelled to watch.

  When they positioned themselves in a sixty-nine, Kurt had finally had enough. He shut himself in the bedroom, closing the door quietly. He went to bed without bothering to take his clothes off.

  Kurt thought about leaving the apartment, but, as painful as it was, staying also afforded him a measure of control; it allowed him to focus on the transgressions that were occurring in his presence rather than letting his imagination run wildly paranoid with much worse horrors. Holly and Giovanni went at it for hours, groaning and moaning and screaming.

  Despite that, Kurt eventually settled into an unrestful doze.

  When Kurt saw the first hint of dawn through the window, he decided to get up and go out. Have breakfast at The Small Easy. Try to get his head straight. Figure out what to do.

  But he couldn’t budge.

  Frustrated at being unable to get out of bed, he tried to move specific parts of his body, but he couldn’t even wiggle his fingers. His entire body was cocooned inside some kind of force field. It stung, producing a mild electric current every time he tried to move. The field pulled itself tighter against him, crushing his chest. He panicked, uselessly.

  Kurt felt a presence—not so much with him, but directed at him. He could move his eyes, though not his head. He glanced around, but there was nobody. The bedroom seemed undisturbed. It struck him that he couldn’t hear anything—no noise leaking in from other apartments, no sounds from the city outside. Even this early in the morning there was always some kind of background din. The absolute silence—deafness?—made him feel intensely isolated, more than he would have ever guessed. The helplessness of being trapped in his bed combined with that sense of utter isolation from the world—it terrified him.

  The pressure of the cocoon around him increased. His lungs were being squeezed; he could barely breathe.

  He willed every part of his body to move. His terror gave way to rage, and he finally managed to open his mouth. Kurt focused all his energy on screaming. Although he sensed the beginnings of the scream in his throat and felt it move through his mouth, the scream hit the invisible cocoon and bounced back into his throat, choking him, without making the slightest sound.

  Kurt intensified his efforts to break free, but he only succeeded in slightly budging his head. Some feeling of dread compelled him
to look at the door; as he did, it opened slowly. Holly walked in, leaving the door open. She was naked, her short hair suddenly grown to shoulder length, her normally hazel irises a deep, unnatural black.

  The cocoon crackled all around Kurt, squeezing him ever tighter, so tight that his rib cage contracted under the pressure.

  Holly pulled the covers off him. She was smiling ghoulishly. Without a word, she unzipped him and worked on his cock with her hands. Kurt’s erection was hard enough to hurt him. He tried to shout at her to stop, but the cocoon allowed not even a whimper to escape.

  She sat on top of Kurt and rode his erection, her black eyes laughing at him.

  Helpless, he felt the semen begin to build and rise, but he didn’t want to come. Not like this.

  Then, just as he thought he could no longer hold himself back, his consciousness was ripped out of his body. His incorporeal self rose rapidly toward the ceiling. A malevolent presence radiated from beyond that threshold, pulling him toward it. He resisted with all the strength his terror afforded him. He knew with utter certainty that he would not survive the crossing.

  Below, the demonic Holly was still riding his cock, writhing in ecstasy on his inert body.

  Kurt’s sense of time split in two: he experienced himself rushing toward the ceiling at tremendous speed, yet every second felt like hours. His fear increased with every passing moment, the malevolence ever more tangible. Calling to him. Wanting him. And just when he thought he could no longer resist—

  —he landed in his body, screaming.

  Of Holly, there was no sign. Kurt was fully dressed. The sheet still covered him. And the door was closed, as if he’d hallucinated everything. Or dreamt it. But he knew he hadn’t. He still felt the pain on his skin, in his throat, in his lungs.

  Holly—wearing a tattered white T-shirt, her hair restored to its normal length, her eyes their natural hazel—ran into the bedroom, calling Kurt’s name with frightened concern. She’d never heard him scream before. She took his hand, caressed his chest. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry,” she said. “He’s gone now. For good. Please. I went crazy. That wasn’t me. You know it wasn’t.”

  Kurt didn’t want to contemplate life without Holly, even after all this. He knew she wasn’t to blame. He knew what Giovanni was capable of. There was nothing to forgive.

  Kurt told her what had just happened: the strange paralysis, her demonic doppelganger—all of it.

  Holly held him silently for a few minutes, her hands under his shirt, against his bare skin. Her nails dug into the flesh of his back, and he felt closer to her than he had in weeks.

  Then, she said, “I need to tell you something. You’re not going to like this.” Kurt didn’t have the strength to hear this, whatever it was. But Holly barrelled on regardless. “He kept asking about you, but I wouldn’t say anything. He said there was something you always kept hidden from him. Something that you’d invested with a part of yourself. Something that gave you the will to resist. But he never could figure out what. My eyes must have betrayed me—betrayed you—because he saw it. The star. On the mantle in the living room. And then . . . I don’t know why . . . but I told him the story. Your story.”

  “Oh fuck, Holly. . . .”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. He took it. He stole it. He just laughed. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t even yell to warn you. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t. Something about those black eyes. . . .”

  It would have been so easy for Kurt to lash out at Holly, then, to make her pay because he felt betrayed. He was tempted to give in to that, but what was the point? Kurt had let this happen. It was his fault Giovanni was in their lives at all.

  Holly said, “Let’s get it back now. I think I know where he went.” She avoided Kurt’s eyes when she revealed that, and paused awkwardly before continuing. “We can’t let him get away with all this.”

  “Holly, let’s not. Let’s just forget him. Let’s just not ever see him again. Either of us. Promise me you’ll never go anywhere near him again.”

  “I promise, baby.”

  Kurt nodded and clasped her hand. “Besides, the star would only remind me of Giovanni, now. Its magic is ruined. Corrupted.”

  Holly asked, “Okay, but . . . How do you know him? Why does he have it in for you? Why are you so scared?”

  Back then, Kurt had always held back; Giovanni had pestered him about it. As much as the older man had fascinated Kurt for awhile, some instinct toward self-preservation had made him resist the urge to fully open up.

  Since spotting Giovanni at Carol’s party, Kurt had been trying to avoid his memories, even more than he usually did. But now he had an urgent need to trust Holly, to stop hiding from her. So he finally told her about his time with Giovanni.

  “Back in university, a bunch of us got interested in dreams. Every Saturday night we’d fuel up on beer and pot and tell each other our best and weirdest dreams of the week. This girl, Bethany, got really into it, more so than any of us, and one night she brought this creepy old guy with her. Giovanni. At first, a bunch of us snickered at the sight of him. He looked like some kind of perv. But Bethany was clearly impressed with him. He was an expert, she told us. He could tell us what our dreams meant. He charmed us, somehow telling each of us what we most wanted to hear. Were we that transparent?”

  Kurt paused. Holly waited, didn’t rush him. She squeezed his hand tighter.

  “Soon, we began meeting every evening. Increasingly everyone’s dreams took on a darkly erotic aspect, and that spilled over into the meetings. It was getting too creepy for me, but all the others seemed so into it. I didn’t want to be, you know, the square. Giovanni would usually spend the night with one or more of us. I don’t know that he even had a place of his own.”

  Holly interrupted, “He does, now.”

  That brought images of the two of them together to Kurt’s mind. Kurt must have let his revulsion show; Holly cringed and looked away.

  Kurt remembered Giovanni in his own bed, fondling him, cajoling him into revealing his most intimate secrets.

  “Then Bethany died in her sleep, and it all changed for me. Giovanni was with her that night. I was convinced that he was responsible. Regardless, there was no evidence of foul play, and her death was attributed to ‘natural causes.’ But the spell was broken, for me at least. Maybe for a few of the others, but I’m not sure. I was the first to leave the group, and I broke off contact with everyone. That’s the last time I’d seen him before that night at Carol’s. I never wanted to think about him again.”

  Kurt wondered if one day he and Holly would ever be ready to discuss what she went through while she was in Giovanni’s thrall. He wasn’t ready to hear it. She said, “Let’s forget about him. Let’s concentrate on the future. Our future.”

  Kurt enfolded Holly in his arms, pressed her against his chest as hard as he could, wanting more than anything to trust Holly again.

  Kurt and Holly resumed their lives as best they could. Things between them never returned to exactly what they’d been before; that had been lost forever. Kurt thought, Something else that creep stole from me. From us.

  They stopped going to parties; it was too vivid a reminder of how Holly had met Giovanni. There was no fun for them there anymore. Their social life suffered for it; some friends dropped out of their lives, but not all of them. They became much more domestic. There was pleasure in that, too.

  Kurt liked to think they were building a new life, that they had faith in each other. It was awkward sometimes, but Kurt was confident that they both wanted to be together. Yet sometimes he caught himself doubting: maybe that was only how he wanted things to be; nevertheless, he let himself believe that. Ignoring the evidence; ignoring his gnawing anxieties.

  Holly never mentioned Giovanni, or her time with him. It was a wound neither of them seemed eager to reopen, though sometimes that silence weighed heavily.

  Sometimes, she would start to say something to Kurt, and then stop herself after a word or two. Eve
ry time that happened he quietly feared that the aborted subject was Giovanni, and he was selfishly grateful for her silence.

  Kurt occasionally suffered through snippets of that strange dream—various permutations of paralysis, demonic visitation, and out-of-body experience. He was always a bit shaken the morning after, but he told himself they were only nightmares; he ignored them as much as possible.

  Then, the nightmare struck every night for an entire week. Each night, the sensation that his life was in danger increased.

  It was still the dead of night when he emerged from the paralysis for the seventh consecutive time. His whole body was drenched in cold sweat. He was too freaked out, too frightened, to go back to sleep. He slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Holly. He needed to move around, to get some air. He dressed and went out for a walk.

  Outside, it was chillier than he’d expected. He dug his hands into his jacket pockets and scraped a finger against something. He pulled it out. It was that bookmark from Carol’s party: Lost Pages. He read the address; it was at least an hour’s walk from where he was. What the hell, he thought. He might as well have a destination, even if the bookstore would be closed at that time of night. He needed to occupy his mind.

  The shop’s sign was as garish as its bookmark, with gaudy mismatched colours and cheesy, ornate font. There was some light inside, so he peeked through the window. There was a guy sitting at the counter. Kurt went in.

  The tiny store was crammed full with books . . . and dogs. At least half a dozen, of all sizes. Kurt couldn’t stand being in there. The smell of dust and dogs. The cramped messiness. Who would ever want to spend any time in this dump? He nodded an apologetic smile at the big, tall guy at the cash and turned to leave. But something on the top shelf of a bookcase next to the door caught his eye before he’d made it outside: a leatherbound tome with a faded painting of Giovanni’s face on the front cover. The book looked very old. Too old.

  Kurt grabbed it; but the words inside were in a language he couldn’t read. He couldn’t even recognize the alphabet. It was like nothing he’d ever seen.