“Of course we do,” said Siegfried. “This way is forward, and we always have to go forward.”
An eyeless clown sat at a cheap folding card table, atop of which sat a jar of eyeballs and a card that read admission—2 eyes. Blood trickled from his empty sockets and he scowled as he heard them approach the bramble maze.
“Admission: two eyes!” he demanded.
“Do I have to give you my eyes?” asked the little girl.
“Of course you do! It’s the price of admission! If you want to go into the maze, you have to give me your eyes!”
The little girl took Siegfried by the hand and pulled him out of earshot of the eyeless clown. “I can’t give him my eyes,” she said. “I won’t be able to find my way through the maze.”
“Well, you can’t get into the maze without giving him your eyes.”
She thought for a second. “I can give him yours.”
“No,” said Siegfried. “I need my eyes.”
“I need your eyes. Do you want to see the end or not?”
“I won’t be able to see it without my eyes.”
“Give me your eyes,” she said. “We’ll dream them back for you later.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then I’ll have to leave you here.”
Siegfried looked sadly down at the little girl. He sighed, nodding. “All right.” He dug his fingers into his sockets, so far back his fingernails almost scraped against brain, and then he plucked his eyes out in a single painful tug. Blood poured down his cheeks in scarlet rivulets. Blind, he clumsily handed her both his eyes. Then she took him by the hand and they returned to the clown at the card table.
“Here are my eyes,” she said.
“Give ’em here,” said the eyeless clown, holding out a greedy hand.
The little girl pretended to fumble about, placing both eyes in his palm. He examined them closely with his fingers, then stuck each of them, one by one, into his mouth to make sure they were real. Then he spit them each into the jar and waved the little girl into the maze.
“You may enter,” he said.
“How do you get through the maze?” the little girl asked.
“You walk!”
“Yeah, but how do you find your way out?”
“You walk!” he said again.
She thought for a second. “Are there any rules?”
The eyeless clown leaned back in his chair. “No one’s thought to ask that before.”
“Are there?”
“Yes!”
“What are they?”
“Only you can find your way out. No one can help you. And you’re not allowed to break any other rules.”
“That’s it?” asked the little girl.
“Is that it?” mocked the clown. “That’s everything.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Then he laughed. “Good luck!”
The little girl took hold of Siegfried’s sleeve and led him into the bramble maze. Inside, the walls seemed higher, the bushes thicker, the thorns sharper than they appeared from without. The two hadn’t walked but a few minutes before seeing a young boy, no older than seven, sitting on the ground, crying, eye sockets empty, hands stained with blood.
“I can’t find my way out,” he cried. “I can’t find my way out!”
The boy’s clown sat beside him, as lost and confused as he was.
“Can’t your clown show you the way out?” she asked the boy.
“We don’t know the way out,” said Siegfried.
The boy wailed, but the little girl remembered the rules. No one can help you. She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Just keep going forward. I’m sure you’ll find your way out.”
“No! Please don’t leave me here!” begged the child.
“I have to,” said the little girl. “Or else I can’t get out of here either.”
The little girl pulled Siegfried by his sleeve and they hurried down the corridor of the maze as quickly as they could. It wasn’t long before they ran across another eyeless child, sitting in the mud, also crying and lost. This one looked up, hearing them coming. “Is somebody there?” the child asked.
The little girl put a single finger over Siegfried’s lips, signaling to him to keep very, very quiet. He smiled, nodding, and together they snuck past the child, the child’s clown looking up sadly at them as they passed, but not saying a word.
By the time the little girl and Siegfried ran across and slipped past a third eyeless child, it was clear they were hopelessly lost. They had walked for what felt like hours and the gargantuan brambles seemed to go on forever in every direction.
“How are we supposed to get out of here?” she asked, stamping her foot in the dirt.
“I told you, we don’t know,” said Siegfried.
The little girl thought for a moment, then pointed a finger at her clown. “Wait a minute,” she said. “He said I couldn’t break any of the rules.”
“That’s right,” said Siegfried. “You can’t.”
“But the rules aren’t for me.”
“Yes they are. They’re for everyone.”
“No. The rules are that no one can change the light, nothing can hurt me if I don’t let it, and I don’t have to do the boring parts.”
“Right.”
“This maze is boring. I want to skip to the end.”
Siegfried smiled. “Turn around,” he said.
She turned and saw the exit to the maze, quickly making her way out of it, dragging Siegfried along by the hand.
“You got through the maze,” said the frightfully familiar voice from out of the shadows.
The little girl turned to face The Thing on the Other Side of the Door. “I’m not afraid of you!” she said.
“Who said you should be afraid of me?”
She turned and pointed to the clown cowering behind her.
The Thing on the Other Side of the Door shook its head. “He’s nothing but a nightmare. He has everything to fear because he is made of nothing but. But not you. You still have your eyes.”
She smiled wickedly with her hands on her hips. “Yes I do. And I’m going to find the door out.”
“We’ll see,” The Thing said, slowly fading away. “Your clown may not be able to, but you and I shall see.”
The little girl looked around and saw nothing but darkness. “Where are we?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Siegfried. “You took my eyes.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“Neither can I!”
No, I mean—” She stopped and listened close. She could hear sloshing water and the rhythmic breaking of waves. “Water!” As she focused, she could delineate between the inky black waves and a velvety starless sky. Then she saw it, a few hundred yards out in the water, a square concrete building rising out of the surf. “Can you swim?” she asked Siegfried.
“Yes, I think so,” he said nervously.
“I’ll be your eyes,” she said. “There’s a building out there. We have to get to it.”
Siegfried swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said. “Anything to get to the end.” He knelt down and the little girl climbed onto his back. Then he waded out into the tide and began to swim.
His clothing grew heavy, weighing him down, but he swam hard, struggling to keep his head above water with the extra weight of the little girl on his back. “How much farther?” he asked.
“Not much,” she said. “Just keep swimming.”
His legs pumped, his arms splashed, and his clothing grew even heavier. “How much farther?” he asked again, choking on salty seawater.
“Not much,” she said again, seeing the lights of the concrete box growing closer by the second.
So he swam harder, giving it everything he had, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of seawater, taking care to keep the little girl above water. “How much farther?” he asked one last time.
“We’re almost there. Swim. Swim!”
And Siegfried slipped below th
e waves.
The little girl let go, pumping her own legs, dogpaddling the last few feet. She reached out, grabbing a ladder at the base of the building, and held on for dear life. She looked out into the water, but saw nothing but black. “Siegfried!” she shouted. “Siegfried?”
There was no answer but the sound of waves slapping against the building.
“Goodbye, Siegfried,” she said. “I’d have liked you to see what the end looked like.” Then she slowly climbed the ladder, the weight of the water in her clothes like a sack of rocks strapped to her back. She climbed and she climbed and she climbed some more for what seemed like days, until she reached the top of the ladder and found there a metal door, covered in rust.
The little girl turned the handle, pushed open the door, and fell inside.
The Thing on the Other Side of the Door stood in the center of a windowless room, arms behind his back, head cocked, eyes trained on the little girl. “You’re here,” he said.
“Yes,” said the little girl, terrified.
“Where’s your clown?”
She looked down at the ground, scuffing her feet. “He didn’t . . . he didn’t make it.”
“You used him to get all the way through, didn’t you?”
She nodded, ashamed.
“Good. Good!” He smiled. “Loathsome creatures. He would have eaten you, given the chance.” He began to pace around, excited. “I had hopes for you. I really did. I could see it in your eyes. You weren’t going to let this place beat you. Some children you can tell right away won’t make it. Others I’m not so sure. But you figured it out, didn’t you?”
“Why did you bring me here?” she demanded.
“I didn’t bring you here,” he said. “No one brought you here. You came here.”
“You tricked me.”
“Into what?”
“Into going through the door beneath my bed!”
He shook his head. “On nights when there is no moon and the stars are the only light to see by, a door appears beneath the bed of a child—always a child, one just old enough to still believe in such things, and never beneath the same child twice. That child is roused by a clatter that makes no sound at all and tempted by a light that streams from a crack beneath the door. Only the bravest and most adventurous open the door and crawl through. The rest go back to sleep, think it nothing but a dream, and spend the rest of their lives fearing what might lurk under their bed. You chose to go through the door. Just as I did.”
“You came through the door?”
“A long time ago, when I was your age.”
“But you’re old!”
“Very,” he said. “It took a long time for another child to make it through. Like I said, I’ve never seen a child get here. Now I have.” He smiled big and broad. “Finally I get to go home.”
“We’re going home together?”
He laughed. “No. There always has to be someone here to care for the nightmares. They have nowhere else to go. And it has to be someone who understands what they are. They are things to overcome, to be destroyed, to be sacrificed. They’re what make us brave; they’re what help us face the world. We trap them here so they can’t infect the rest of the world. The rest of who we are. That clown wasn’t your friend. He didn’t want to help you. He used you to try and find his way out, to try and become a dream again. But he would only have gotten worse, would only have terrified other children. He was a nightmare that needed to be relegated to the dustbin of the universe.
“We are where the nightmares go. And where they were meant to stay. Not just anyone can look after them; it has to be someone capable of being as awful as a nightmare, someone unafraid to do terrible things, someone who can dream up such awful challenges to keep those damned clowns stuck in here forever.”
“This is about the clowns?” asked the little girl.
“And all the other awfulness you saw. And all the awfulness you haven’t yet seen. But you’ll have time. There are so many nightmares and only one child a month to pin your hopes on. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe one of the first ones will find their way through; maybe they’ll figure out what the clowns are for. But look at me. Look at how long it took this time.”
“But you said you’d show me the way out!”
“Yes!” he said, shaking his head. “And I did! I told you how to find the door. You were my door. I get to go home now. Through you. And if you want to leave, then you have to find your door.”
“But this is the end! You said the door was at the end!”
“Who said this was the end? We are where the nightmares go, and where they go, there is no end.”
“So I’m stuck here forever?”
“No. All those children out there are stuck here forever. Their bodies are at home or in institutions, staring into space, no one around them aware of the nightmares they see. You get to leave. Eventually. When the right child shows up.”
“What do I do until then?”
The Thing on the Other Side of the Door smiled. “Skip the boring bits. And don’t let the clowns out.” Then he hugged her, and he began to glow and expand until he popped out of existence. He returned to a body that had lain asleep for longer than he cared to think about.
And the little girl was a little girl no longer.
She had done whatever it took.
She had killed her clown.
She had become a thing worse than a nightmare.
She had become The Thing on the Other Side of the Door.
As They Continue to Fall
Author’s note: The following story was written almost twenty years ago and was only ever published briefly online. Proud as I was of it at the time, it would most likely still be languishing on my hard drive along with dozens of others were it not for a young filmmaker named Nikhil Bhagat. As a college student, Nikhil approached me on the website reddit and asked if I would be willing to write a short thesis film for him to direct. As I always try to help out young artists and students when I can, and I had a spare week on my hands and this old story kicking around I was never going to do anything with, I agreed. The result was a short film turned viral video that earned Nikhil his first couple of professional gigs, and I’ve been asked about it repeatedly ever since.
I’ve included the story in this collection, warts and all, as a curiosity, for those of you interested in the origins of this small corner of my career.
Although the roof provided a spectacular vantage point from which to experience the breadth and scale of the city—what with its twinkling arrays of indoor lighting and aerial beacons showering a Technicolor wonderland through the midnight black—westerly winds carrying the fetid stench of rotting garbage from the dump just two miles away ensured that no one could mistake the city’s beauty as anything but skin deep.
The Walker had, in fact, begun to think of the city quite like a dance-hall lover: alluring, mysterious, and enchanting; that was, until the sun came up and the cruel daylight illuminated every imperfection and dispelled every illusion that the dim lighting and three-martini buzz had ever fostered. It was strange then the night that the Walker found himself in that twenty-four-hour Chapel of Love, a cheap ring on the finger of the city, ready to wed himself to it for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till sobriety did they part. The minister had said all of the words correctly and the Walker had carried through the motions just fine, but somewhere deep in his heart he knew that the city had never really meant it. Not a word of it.
And oddly enough, neither had the Walker.
It just so happened that he never found his way out of the haze, and the two had never been properly annulled. This night, however, his wife was quite the belle; she’d put on her best face and stepped out into the evening ready for romance, and perhaps a little spin beneath the night sky.
He, on the other hand, had a rather different agenda; he had, after all, found himself an angel.
And thus he crouched atop the tallest tower on the Lower
East Side, cradling in his arms a weathered thirty-aught-six and breathing patiently into the crisp night air. The rank smell of refuse burned unpleasantness into his nostrils, barely masking his own unwashed pungency. His thoughts, for the moment, briefly turned to hygiene. It had been, what, seven, maybe eight days since his last shower? After this kill he was surely off to the YMCA for a long session with a hot shower. There was no doubt about that.
He imagined it for a moment, the scalding hot water across his back, the steam kissing his skin. If only he had a pair of clean clothes to toss on afterward, it would be perfect.
There was a flicker, a brief spark of light as his target lit a cigarette from atop its perch. Sharp features and pristine skin flashed against the flare of a wooden match. And in that instant the Walker could almost make out the shadowy form of its wings. But now all he could spy was the distant floating orange dot that hovered two inches from the invisible face.
The cigarette was a blessing; the laser sight always seemed to tip them off.
The Walker rolled over onto his back and drew a deep lungful of the rancid breath of the stale night. There he lay for a moment, a mound of greasy, tattered rags, a battered wife-beater cowering beneath two ragged button-ups, and a patched-up pair of jeans hidden under crusted, worn-out sweat pants. It was summer, of course, so he’d dressed light. Yet nigh unnoticeable was his limber, athletic frame, worked passionately to a taut musculature and fed upon unheated cans of soup and missionary ham on wheat. He gazed out into the starless city night and huffed nervously in anticipation.
From his front breast pocket he withdrew one copper round, intricately etched with various symbols and designs—mostly warnings and runes, a single ankh drawing attention away from the other, more esoteric carvings. He brought it to his lips and kissed it deeply, a look of true reverence pasted upon his face. He didn’t put much faith in the gods, after all, but he knew they would frown upon his actions without the proper ceremonies. Damned if they weren’t as fickle as the angels themselves.
For a moment he thought back and felt the kiss once more.
Schoolyard. Fragmented memories of gravel stretching as far as the eye could see; swing sets, slides, and teeter-totters forming a bastard child’s lonely megalopolis. Angels perched on the jungle gym. Daemons in the rafters of the equipment shed. Strange faeries shadowing the playing children. A granite and iron city beside a tired brick schoolhouse, three stories monolithic to the young.
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories Page 6
