Gemma Files
“Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore. This tendency, too, is naturally enhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities. When to this sense of fear and evil the inevitable fascination of wonder and curiosity is superadded, there is born a composite body of keen emotion and imaginative provocation whose vitality must of necessity endure as long as the human race itself. Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.”
Like any kid who grew up on C. S. Lewis (my favourite was The Magician’s Nephew), I’ve always wanted to write something involving a portal universe, one of those stories where people stumble sidelong and end up somewhere completely different, awful in the oldest sense of the word. For me, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “Onion” sets the standard, though I also mention Elidor, by Alan Garner, in the text, because its mixture of numinous terror and gritty realism has stayed with me since only slightly after my initial tour through Narnia, leaving me with a lingering fear of looking through front door mail slots. As for how the Lovecraft quote ties in, meanwhile — why it suggested to me that this might well be the time to act on these impulses — I think it’d have to be the line in which Lovecraft says, “[I]t has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore. This tendency, too, is naturally enhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.” Stay out of that wardrobe, kids.
♦
So say two sisters finally come back home, after their parents die — twins. Their names are Holly and Heather. They have a younger brother, Edwin, whom they haven’t seen for some time. Estrangement’s grown up between them all, for no apparently good reason. It’s sad, but these things happen.
Holly and Heather attend university in Toronto. They also room together, because why not? They’ve always been like that. They can’t ever remember being apart.
Edwin never went to university. He finished high school, then trained as an auto mechanic, so he works all year round. He does most of his calls along the rural routes of northern Ontario, circling the area where they used to live, in Lake of the North District; his specialty is extending the life of trucks and four-wheelers, fighting planned obsolescence on behalf of people who can’t afford to trade up. Distance is an issue, up there. If you can’t drive, you can’t do much of anything.
One night Holly gets a call — it’s Edwin. Mom and Dad are gone, he says. Accident, out near Overdeere. Black ice pile-up. You need to come into town to hear the will read, then muck out the house with me.
The girls know this isn’t going to be easy, either way; it’s not like their parents were hoarders, as such, but they did tend not to ever get rid of anything. There’s a lot of stuff to appraise, most of it probably worthless, except on an emotional level. But it’s got to be done.
We’ll live there while we do it, Heather decides. Go up just after midterms, spend a few weeks. It won’t take longer than that. Not if we don’t let it.
“Town” is Chaste, up past Your Lips, almost to God’s Ear. Five traffic lights, a church, a school, a gas station strip mall, and a clinic that does double duty for Quarry Argent. Around it, there’s a network of small farms, plus acres of uncut woodlots. Cabin-style houses here and there, like the one they grew up in. It took thirty minutes to drive to the town limits, then twenty more to walk in, so days started early, up before dawn. Insects singing in summer, dark and cold and silent all winter.
Hope the fireplace still works, Heather says.
Funeral’s already happened: cremation. The lawyer’s office is in the strip mall, right next to a hardware store. Edwin’s waiting outside, their parents’ shared urn under one arm. The reading’s brief — three-way split. The lawyer suggests they sell the house as soon as possible, and they agree, once it’s cleared out. They sign, initial, and drive up, Edwin leading the way.
The house looks the same
The house smells the same.
The air is full of dust, already. It hasn’t been that long. Does this happen, when people die? Does dust just fill the air, like you’re breathing in their ashes?
Edwin puts the urn on the mantel above the dusty fireplace. I was thinking we could scatter them in the garden, he says, but we’ll have to wait for spring. Too cold, right now. Earth’s frozen.
Yes, Holly agrees, while Heather says nothing.
She’s looking at the urn, its dull silver curve. Thinking she can almost see something reflected there, besides them, but unsure of what.
♦
So say they work all the rest of that day, as the light slowly dims. Outside, overhead, grey clouds scud a mackerel sky. Inside, Edwin, Heather, and Holly are going through closets, pulling out drawers, looking under sinks and poking around cabinets, finding spaces they barely remember existing. Every inch of secret room packed tight with boxes, bags, piles of paper. It’s amazing what stacks up.
Why would they keep all this? Heather asks, amazed.
Edwin shrugs. Why wouldn’t they?
It’s a valid question.
Upstairs, under the bed in their parents’ room, they find the box. It’s plain cardboard, with both their names written on it: Holly & Heather, 1995. When Holly opens it, it makes an odd little sound, like a sigh.
It contains a collection of seemingly random objects, some broken and melted, all discoloured, as though exposed to bright sunlight for long periods of time before being stored. Some sort of tin, slightly flattened; a necklace with two clear, cracked plastic beads; a handful of shells and stones, still crusted with dirt. A doll’s hairbrush. A stiff gilt ribbon. And also two folded sheets of paper, worn along their creases, like they’ve been kept inside a wallet. Opened, these turn out to be covered in rambly, vaguely familiar writing, too large for an adult’s… Holly think it’s hers. Heather thinks so, too.
Go there, the top of the first one says. Throw each piece down, as you do. A trail. Breadcrumbs.
Wind the string (and there is string, Heather sees now. It used to be purple) around three corners. Wait.
Words will come. Say them.
Let it form.
Never knock first. Wait until THEY do.
Wait again. Until THEY go away.
Open.
And on the second page, nothing but this — a warning, one can only assume:
If it’s That Place, then don’t.
The don’t is underlined, three times.
They all three examine the box and its contents for some time, Edwin watching his sisters, as though waiting for them to speak. Eventually, Holly asks: What is this?
I don’t know, Heather replies. Some kind of game?
We made this, though. And I don’t remember…
… ever playing anything like this? Me either.
Those rules are crazy. It’s like we were high when we wrote them.
Heather shakes her head. That’s how you wrote till you were ten. Unless you were doing stuff you never told me about,“high” didn’t come into it.
But you must’ve been there too.
Been where when? When this got made? I don’t —
Holly turns the box lid over again, pointing out: Not the rules, no, but this here — that’s not just labelling. That’s our names, the way we used to sign them. Mine, and yours, too. See?
Yeah, sure. Like you say, though… I don’t remember.
There’s a snort, then; a swallowed laugh, curt and ugly. It comes from Edwin, who they turn to look at, as one. He raises his eyebrows.
Seriously? is all he says.
♦
An hour later, they’re sitting at the kitchen table with a gas lantern turned up high and a whole sheaf of crumbly newsprint spread out in front of them. Edwin took the file from a drawer in their Dad’s desk in the icy little add-on office he built out back when the girls were eleven, looking out onto the not-so-distant fringe of almost all-conifer woods. Now that most of the leaves have fallen except for the evergreens, you can just make out a pale little smudge halfway up the sloping rock face that marks where they once set up a wooden card table and used it for shelter, sitting beside each other under its shade, staring down at the house from up high. It was blue once, but age and weather have chewed its planks almost bare.
You don’t remember any of this, Edwin repeats, finally, after they’ve told him that several times. That seems… no, seriously?
We don’t, Holly says. Heather snorts.
It’s a joke, she tells her sister. He’s making it up. She gestures at the articles Edwin’s been showing them, the documents, the photos. Not the getting lost in the woods part, obviously — we could’ve blocked it out, trauma, all that. Just… everything else.
Why would I lie? Edwin demands.
Another snort. Why wouldn’t you?
What the file says is that when Holly and Heather were nine years old — Edwin was seven then, odd man out since birth — they disappeared for roughly three days, seventy-one-and-a-half hours, after having “gone for a walk” one afternoon. That they were found in a clearing, one the adults searching for them had already covered, marking it off their maps a good thirty-five hours earlier: dirty, unconscious, mildly wounded (scrapes, bruising, a long scratch down Holly’s cheek, which may have created that faint scar she’s never known how she got) and starving. Having lost so much weight, in fact, that it almost seemed they’d been gone for far longer.
What Edwin says, however…
You used to play the game, all the time. You’d never let me play. It was something you made up one day, passing the paper back and forth, like you were writing a story together. Words just appearing in your heads, like you were being told them.
Oh, you are so full of —
You said it opened a door to somewhere, Edwin goes on, undaunted; probably gives him immense pleasure just to say it out loud, after all this time. Someplace that scared you, but you kept on going back again and again, probably because it did scare you. And I wanted to go too, ’cause I wanted to do everything you did, but you told me it wasn’t a good place to go. Said if I did, they’d know I wasn’t supposed to be there, and they’d get me.
“They” who?
How’m I supposed to know? He looks down at the table, taps the closest headline: GIRLS RECOVERED UNHARMED. This is where you did it, right here, where they found you. Not at first — used to be you’d go upstairs, into the attic, till you caught me sneaking up after. That was when you took it outside, into the woods, up past the old table. Up over the rock, with that clump of three trees.
Holly shakes her head. Okay, Ed, Christ. That’s more than enough.
I’ll show you. You think I can’t? Take you right fucking there. Been there enough times, since.
Sure you will, Heather mocks. The scary place in the woods! The door! Fucking Narnia.
Holly laughs. Fucking Elidor, sounds like.
They grin at each other. Edwin sit there sullen, arms crossed — twice as big, not that that counts for much. Bent in on himself like he’s already eaten so much of his own rage, over the years, it’s gestating inside him; has to hug himself hard, or it might break free and flop out, spraying everywhere.
You two, he says, to no one in particular.
♦
None of them will be able to remember how they got there, later on. Just that they’re suddenly standing there, bundled to the eyes, breath puffing out like steam, rising ghostly into the black, black sky. The clouds hang heavy except where they gap here and there, wind torn. Through these few rips, patches white with numberless stars can be glimpsed, finally freed to reveal themselves now that the city’s light pollution’s been peeled away by cold and distance — sharp, small, glinting bright. Pins, velvet set. Weasels’ teeth.
Three trees and a dip, a crevice full of dirt and leaves where two rocks meet underground, grinding against each other. Frost on the bark, odd speckles of snow. A ferocious lack of light, so deep it almost becomes a fourth presence, pooling between them in that triangle, that inverted chalice.
Here we are, Edwin tells them, unnecessarily, as Holly feels the hair on her neck — hood hidden though it might be — start to lift.
This is bad, Heather says, equally unnecessarily. This is…
(fucking terrifying)
And they don’t even have to look at each other, don’t have to say it at all: don’t know why, could care less, but they just can’t stay. Wild horses couldn’t keep them here one single moment longer, let alone their stupid-ass “little” brother, whatever goddamn game he’s playing — there’s nothing to be done but turn, grab hands, and run, run and keep on running. Back down the path, ’round the rock, past the table. Back to the house, the warmth, the light.
… the worst place on Earth, Holly thinks, as Edwin falls behind, startled by the sudden swiftness of their mutual retreat; he’s yelling something after them now, but the wind has it, snatches it from his lips like a great, black, invisible hand. And they’re long gone, anyhow.
Back at the house, they fall into bed, clutching each other, hearts hammering. Every breath seems to shake the world, drawn and let go in a shudder. There’s no way they’ll fall asleep, not tonight — maybe not ever again, if they can’t get back to Toronto fast enough, once the sun’s finally up.
That’s what they think, at any rate. Until, inevitably, they do.
♦
And when Holly wakes up, much later, she’s alone.
♦
Four in the morning, probably. The whole house is cold, dry, empty. Dim, but not exactly dark — there’s light coming from somewhere, all right. Awful light.
Holly has trouble making herself get up, let alone open the bedroom door, but she does. She has to. And the first thing she hears, stepping out into the hall, is the sound of something crunching underfoot.
She looks down, squints. Can just make out a trail of objects, leading to the attic stairs.
Throw each piece down, as you [go there], her mind whispers, unprompted. A trail. Breadcrumbs.
It’s the stuff from the box, definitely. She doesn’t have to look closer to know it.
Names in her throat, caught and choking: Heather? … Edwin? But she can’t let them go, physically can’t. Not when who even knows what might be nearby but hidden, all unseen. Might be —
(watching)
(listening)
(waiting)
Holly swallows, so soft she can barely feel it. Directs her feet along the prescribed path, one reluctant step at a time. And as she follows, tracing the route Heather must surely have set out for her, she finds herself wondering, resentful —
How could you start without me?
— and almost freezes in realization’s wake, shockwave rocking her top to toe. Thinking, helpless: Oh God. So I do remember…
… a bit, something. Not enough.
Up the stairs, one half at a time, braced tight against any creak, each puzzle piece increasingly leaf- or dirt-encrusted, increasingly deformed, as though they’ve been buried and trodden on since she, Heather, and Edwin first pawed through that stupid box. A curl of formerly purple string lies outside the attic door, question mark–curled, frayed at one end; not cut. Sawed, or bitten through.
Wind the string around three corners. Wait.
Her hand is on the door, pushing. It falls open without a sound.
Inside — still cold, still dim. The light increases. This is where it’s coming from.
(Of course.)
The rest of the string, already wound, maps a rough triangle on the floor in front of one wall, the one without a window. Stone piles form corners, three to five stones each, uneven granite eggs, earth-smeared. Somebody (Heather) has obviously already skipped over Words will come. Say them, for which Holly can only be grateful, though she thinks she can almost feel those same words — or similar ones — plucking at the corners of her brain’s folds.
Let it form was the next instruction, as she recalls. And… it has.
There’s a door sketched on the wall, six feet by two, complete with lintel and threshold, even a knob. From a distance it looks spray-painted, scratched, its slightly uneven dimensions filled in with greying black, but, as Holly draws closer, she sees it’s actually more incised or even burnt into the plaster. Worn, like it’s been there for years.
She and Heather were up here yesterday, though, when the wall was clean. Empty.
The rest of the list plays itself out as she stands there, not wanting to come any closer. Four final groups of instructions, paragraphed, like so —
Never knock first. Wait until THEY do.
Wait again. Until THEY go away.
Open.
If it’s That Place, then don’t.
Them, Holly thinks, over and over, frankly unable not to. That Place. And she stands there not knowing what to do — there’s not exactly a smell, maybe the memory of a smell… like the woods. That place in the woods, the hollow, the three trees. Shadow of leafless branches above, ruin of fallen leaves below.
(The worst place in the world)
So she stands, and she doesn’t knock, and she waits. And then, finally — from behind the door, deep under the plaster, or somewhere even further than that — she hears her brother Edwin’s faintly wavering voice reverberate, struggling through, as though the wall’s a skin he’s trapped behind. As though it’s a metaphorical stand-in for the flesh cradle they all once shared, both separately and together; the slightly bulging membrane of their dead mother’s womb, fresh-wrapped in architecture.
Open the door, man. Holly, I know it’s you, gotta be… just let me back in, please. They’re coming.
And: THEY, she thinks. Them. That Place.
(don’t)
She swallows again, throat scratchy. Manages to ask, at last —
Is Heather with you?
A pause. Dunno, Edwin says, finally, before she can convince herself he was never there at all: quieter, faster, growing panic threading through each new word, tightening till they start to ruck. I went in looking for her, found them instead, and now — they’ve seen me, they’re coming. I think they have her… please, Holly, let me the fuck back in! Please!
Barely a whisper now, but if it was written down, it’d be underlined — four times, maybe five. And Holly knows she should do something, anything, though she isn’t sure what. But…
Shouldn’t’ve gone, she finds herself thinking, with a dreadful lack of sympathy. Not when you saw where it was. We told you not to.
And what did we think we were doing, anyway? Playing this game… all of it? Where did we want to go?
Anyplace, perhaps, so long as it was different. Not that we could have known where we might end up, when we began.
(A wardrobe, a door in the wall, a blister; a mirror turned window, different on the other side. Three trees, a wood between the worlds. Narnia. Elidor. Charn.)
We didn’t know, though.
(No. Of course not. But —)
— THEY did, I’ll bet.
And she can’t move, and the light, the smell. So horrible. The very worst. And then —
— her brother starts to scream, high and thin and anguished, more like an animal than a man. And after he stops, stops short, as though the sound itself snaps in half, there simply are no other noises, just nothing. This deafening silence, where surely there should be noise.
So: Holly stands there frozen, hand half reaching. And then there’s a grinding noise, plaster dust sifting, spotting the floor like snow. And then…
… the drawn-on handle begins, very slowly, as if manipulated from the other side…
… to turn.