by L J McIntyre
I sat forward, started tapping my foot. “Where’s this going?”
He crossed his legs. “It means that we don’t have a gene that recognises universities and magazines, and then tells us how to behave accordingly. There were none of those modern institutions back when humans first walked the Earth. You reacted to each rejection differently because of how you perceived each situation. ”
“So what?”
He clasped his hands together, almost as if he were praying. “Perceptions are fluid, changeable. This is the evidence that you are not necessarily hardwired to be who you think you are. You can change. You can see the world differently and behave differently. You are not just your genes.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried to change?” I stood up and walked to a window.
“Please look at me, Jack.”
I turned around.
“Can you give me one example of when you’ve been confrontational in the last…I don’t know…five years.”
“I haven’t.”
“Not once?”
“No.”
“How about two weeks ago when you shouted at me. Was that not confrontational?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“It just fucking was, okay. And I don’t want to be a confrontational arsehole like my dad.”
He put his hands up, palms out. “Sorry if this sounds like I’m pushing you, but what I see in you is someone who’s on the verge of running away from everything, everyone. Okay, aggressively confronting people is not a good strategy for anyone, but neither is running away. Sometimes we need to stand our ground, especially if that means confronting our own demons.”
I cupped my face in my hands.
“What are you running away from, Jack?”
I dropped my hands to my sides. “I told you.” I sat down on the sofa. My knee tapped a thousand miles an hour.
“Right. You’re running from relationships so you don’t hurt anyone. You’re running from confrontation so you don’t lose your temper.” He looked at my tapping knee. “But what else are you running from?”
I eyed him.
He seemed to see right through me.
I looked at the beige carpet.
“Jack?”
“Guilt,” I say quietly.
“For hurting the van driver.”
I shook my head. “For not protecting my mum from my dad.”
“You were just a boy.”
I started crying, sobbing. I put my head back in my hands. Paul sat silently, let the tears flow. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.
“Jack, you couldn’t have done anything.”
“I should have stood up to him.” I managed through the tears. “Before he died,” I started. “I was probably twenty two at the time, I went to his flat, stood outside his window. I watched him sit in front of his T.V. with a microwave meal on a tray and laugh at some show. I wanted to knock on his door, let him know how disgusting he was, how much he’d ruined my life. More than anything I wanted to tell him that my mother was happy. But when I went to his front door, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I did what I always do. I left.”
“What happens when you stand your ground?”
“I don’t.”
“Okay, what happens when you imagine standing your ground?”
“I start sweating. My heart pounds.”
“You get anxious?”
I nodded.
“Does anything else happen in your mind. Do you see anything else?”
“My mother in the hospital.”
“After she slapped your dad for tearing up your book?”
“Yeah.”
“Could that be another reason why you don’t like confrontation, because the only time your mum stood up to your dad, she ended up in hospital?”
I nodded. “God, I wish he was alive.”
“What would you do if you saw him?”
“I’d tell him I graduated with honours in English literature and that my mum smiled throughout the entire graduation, and she’d continued smiling until the day she passed away.”
“You wouldn’t hurt him? Get vengeance for what he did to you?”
I shake my head. “What would be the point?”
“So you see?” Paul smiled. “You’re not your father after all.”
Chapter Thirty Two
“Confront the what? What the hell are you talking about? I’m not going back there,” I say.
We’re still striding in the direction chosen by the hooded man.
“Well, then, you’ll need your car,” he responds.
“But wait, why do I need to go into the cabin? I have to understand all this.”
“Nesgrove is cursed. Has been for a long time.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
He looks at his watch. “You’ve got something we need to lift this curse.”
“What is it?”
“We don’t have enough time.” He points ahead. “On the ground up ahead you’ll find tram tracks. Follow them into the mine. Stick to the left-hand passage when the mine forks. Keep walking until you get to some ladders with a white ribbon tied around them. Someone will be waiting for you at the top of those ladders.”
He looks sideways at me. “We’ll help you get your car at exactly 6:30 pm tonight. That’s when you leave the motel and head to the factory. No later. We’ll distract the others, give you a short window to retrieve the wheels and leave town. How you handle the police after that is down to you, but you need to get out of town long before the Rebirthing at midnight.”
“What’s the Rebirthing?”
“We had visitors some time ago. They changed everything. With the Rebirthing they gave us hope. But a lot of people in town; they’re not themselves anymore. They’ve gone too far.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Why are you helping us?” I ask.
“Because we shouldn’t get to pick and choose whose life is destroyed for the good of the town. Listen, there’s a few more things you should know. Look under your phone cover,” he says to me. “They stuck a GPS tag on the back of your phone when you left it in your room that first night. That’s how they’re tracking you.
“And search your backpack back in your room. You’ll find something of Sally’s in there. Another plant by the police. And take this.” He pulls a tiny plastic walkie talkie from his pocket and hands it to me. “Use it only if you absolutely need to, and we’ll come to your aid if we can.”
He stops, looks down at his watch, then back at me. “We’re not bad people, Jack, but bad things keep happening to us. If you were in our position, you’d sell your soul to the devil, too.” He checks his watch again. “I’ve got to get back now. They’ll be waking soon.”
As he sprints away I’m spinning with dozens of unanswered questions.
“I found them,” Annie says. She’s brushed a few leaves away from the ground. Underneath are the tram tracks. We’re in a long and thin clearing, the trees wider apart here.
“Did you notice, Annie? He didn’t look at you or address you once,” I say as we walk along the tracks.
“I noticed. Very strange.”
“I wonder if you could just walk out of the town without me. Clearly it’s me they want, not you.”
“There’s no way we’re splitting up.”
“But if you don’t have to be in this mess, then you should go.”
“No fucking chance. Plus, you’ll need me if we manage to get out of all this.”
“Need you?”
“Yeah, if you get arrested by the cops, I can confirm your story.”
“But you weren’t with me the morning I saw the body.”
“No, but I’ve been with you ever since. I can tell them exactly what’s been going on here.”
“What’s going on is, I’m screwed.”
We follow along the tracks, both of us quiet, both of us trying to piece
together this psychotic puzzle.
I turn to Annie, “So, I suppose we’re just going to do as we’re told, then?”
“That guy really seemed to want to help us. He probably put the note and food in the room.”
“Okay, but what the hell just happened back there with the hooded weirdos?”
Annie shakes her head.
“I refuse to accept that anything supernatural is going on here,” I start again. “I mean, selling your soul to the devil? What a load of bullshit. And a curse? Come on.”
“Normally I’d be with you, Jack, but how else can you explain what we saw?”
“Honestly, I think I’m starting to understand what’s going on here.” I pull off my phone cover. Just as the hooded man said, on the back of my phone is some sort of cheap plastic tracker they must have stuck on this morning when I was in the lake. My phone was in my bag on the rocks.
Annie looks at me. “What’s your theory?”
“It’s all fake. All of it. Nothing but a bit of sport to entertain a screwed up town. They’re toying with us before the kill, a typical cat and mouse story.” I show Annie the tracker. “What do we do with this?”
“Throw it somewhere. No, why don’t we attach it to a moving object, confuse them a bit.”
“Not too many moving objects here. Maybe we should keep a hold of it for a while. If we really are going into a mine, there’ll be no GPS signal there. It might come in useful later.”
“When he said you have something they want. What do you think he meant by that?” Annie asks.
“Like I said, I think this is all a big game. I don’t have anything.”
“But do you really think the whole town can be in on this?”
As we’re talking, I notice the space we’re walking in is forming a kind of gully, gently sloping downwards, while on either side of us the ground remains the same height.
“It’s a small town. Everyone knows everyone. Christ, they’re probably all related. Doesn’t seem impossible to me that they could have concocted some bizarre plan.”
“But why? Just for pleasure? I’m not buying it.” Annie shakes her head.
“Who knows why. They’re in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the rest of the world. God knows what strange things happen in places like this. You don’t seriously believe it’s something supernatural, do you?”
“I’m not a superstitious idiot, Jack.”
“Sorry, that’s not—”
“Listen, I get what you’re saying. But right now we should be keeping an open mind. So far, they’re always one step ahead. If we make assumptions based on shitty narrowmindedness, we might start seeing only what we expect to see and miss important details.”
She has a point. I do have a limited view of the world. I usually see ogres everywhere I go. Not real ogres, obviously, but the worst sides of people. I look for them to justify whatever anxieties I have about that person.
“You’re right,” I say.
The gulley we’re in is getting wider and deeper. The mist has since dissipated and golden sunlight is kissing the tops of trees. And there, only a short walk ahead, an open mouth of black is waiting for us.
Chapter Thirty Three
Litter is scattered outside the opening of the mine along with old furniture; a peeling leather chair, a blue sofa with springs visible through the seat. Around the furniture are beer and vodka bottles. Shards of glass pepper the ground, with some along the tracks. A small pile of syringes sits left of the mine.
The entrance is surrounded by snapped and tangled yellow and red plastic tape which was once used to cordon off the opening. “Danger! Do Not Enter,” the text on the plastic reads.
“Nice place for a party,” Annie says.
I point to the mine. “Doesn’t look very inviting, does it?”
“Does anything in Nesgrove?”
I shake my head and pull the torch from my pocket. Annie pulls hers out too.
As we enter the mine, I’m surprised to find that the curved walls are mainly smooth concrete. I expected them to be bare rock. Exposed steel beams stand upright against the ceiling. We’re only a few metres in and already the darkness feels suffocating. Or maybe it’s the reek of old and new piss.
The further we tread the more the light leaking in from the entrance is eaten up, and the more we’re compelled to rely on our torches to guide us. Apart from our footsteps, the only other sound is dripping water that neither gets louder nor quieter the deeper into the tunnel we go.
Drip, drip, drip is the soundtrack of this place.
Up ahead on the wall to my left, I make out something written in red. “They came in spring. Their gift was Rebirth in autumn,” it says. I nudge Annie to show her the text.
I feel her nudge me back and I turn around. Sprayed on the opposite wall in runny black paint is the message, “Where are you now?”
We both flash our torches down the tunnel as far as the light reaches. The walls, almost every inch of them, are covered in graffiti. But none of it is like the tags or street art you usually see everywhere. This is something different. These are messages.
A lot of them repeat those same two phrases:
They came in spring. Their gift was Rebirth in autumn.
Where are you now?
But there are others, too. Maybe some of these will give us an idea of what’s happening and how to get out of here. We slow down to read as many as we can:
We are not your territory.
Arthur Dunlovin hanged himself for you. It didn’t work.
All we needed was an idea.
You built us out of existence.
The curse is here for good. For you. For me.
Lived in pain. Died in Peace. Never Rested.
Chained to Nesgrove forever.
Between the writing there are hundreds of scribbles, symbols, markings, faces, crosses. Too many to examine and it’s too dark to take pictures. The tunnel curves around and divides into two smaller shafts that fork left and right.
“I don’t remember which tunnel we have to take, do you?” I ask Annie. I must be in information overload to have forgotten such an important detail.
“He said left.”
“Crap, I was leaning towards right. You sure?”
“Positive.”
We enter into the small tunnel that veers left. This looks a little bit more like I’d imagined a mineshaft. There’s still concrete and steel support around the walls and ceiling, but there’s also damp, bare rock. Other shafts, dark and seemingly infinite when I point my torch down them, splinter off this main one.
“I don’t think he said to leave this tunnel, did he?” I ask Annie.
“No. We stay on this one until the end.”
A sound up ahead, hard to distinguish, silences us. We stop walking.
Drip, drip, drip is all we hear. We wait longer.
Drip, drip, drip.
There it is again. A sort of shuffling sound, a footstep maybe. Impossible to know which direction it’s coming from.
I put my hand over my torch, Annie does the same; just enough light leaks through our fingers and illuminates our way. We both move slowly, careful not to trip on the tracks and careful not to make too much noise.
I can hear Annie breathing. At least, I hope it’s Annie.
Our lights stretch forward a dozen metres and up ahead the floor looks bumpy and jagged like it’s covered in something. Rocks possibly.
We hear the sound again, drag and click, nearer this time.
We advance slowly and get closer to the rocks on the ground, only they’re not rocks. They vary in colour and texture, shiny things and threaded materials.
They’re shoes. Hundreds of shoes spread across the floor and down the shaft.
And there’s that noise again. This time it’s close, too close. We both stop walking.
I notice something strange about the shoes. They’re moving, or at least, some of them are. I take my hand from the front of the torch and shine the full
beam to the ground in front of us. Rats; scores of the filth critters are scurrying around the sea of footwear.
Annie shouts, “Holy fuck.” She grabs onto my arm and pulls me back. “I wasn’t expecting that. I hate rats.”
“How do we get past them?”
“Oh god, I really don’t know. What if we throw something at them, like a shoe?”
“Could work. Or they might come scurrying in our direction.”
“Shit the bed. I couldn’t think of anything worse,” she says.
“Honestly, I think we’re going to have to peg it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sprint through them, over them, whatever we have to do to get past.”
“No.”
“Annie.”
“No.”
“We have no choice.”
There’s a hole in the wall to the right that they are going in and out of. It’s probably a ventilation shaft.
“Listen,” I say to Annie, “I’m going to pick up that big leather boot and throw it in the middle of them. Then I’m going to sprint right through to the other side. Just follow close behind me and the path should be clear, okay.”
“Fine.”
I bend down and reach for the boot. It’s one of those high-top, heavy boots that goths used to wear back when goths were a thing. Just as I grab it and lift it a few centimetres, the mother of all rats comes running out of it and onto my arm, its claws scratching me. I scream like the banshee and hurl the boot, along with the rat, in the air. Both land in the middle of the swarming vermin.
I shout, “Now, Annie.”
I sprint through the tunnel and stare straight ahead. My ankle twists and turns on the uneven surface created by the forgotten footwear. I keep running and hope Annie is behind me. My foot lands on something that wiggles, explodes and crunches under my shoe, and I keep on running.
Annie is screaming. I have no idea if she’s being mauled by rats. Once I clear the shoes, I stop and turn. The light from Annie’s torch is flailing around and she’s shouting, “fuuuuuck”.
She ploughs right into me, almost knocks me off my feet.
“Calm down. It’s me,” I say.
“Okay, sorry. Christ,” she pants. “That was an actual living nightmare for me.” She shakes her body and flicks her arms around as if removing any lingering rat juju. “The things we have to do for this fucking town. Let’s find those ladders and get out of here.”
