I walk.
How can it have changed so fast? How can this be happening? I think back to every Japanese horror film I have ever seen. Am I dreaming? And I remember that particularly weird South Korean film, Hansel and Gretel, the way this mysterious door leads them into another place entirely. Is that what’s happened here? [LSD? WHAT IS REALITY?]
I walk.
I feel as if the real world, the world where I lived, was normal 3-D and I was blissfully unaware of the dangers of reality. But now I’m somehow in a 63-D world and it’s full of all these terrible things I can’t understand. This is the ground-floor corridor of La Baume, but it is also Python Wood. But a really weird Python Wood because there is no noise. It is silent. And, also, none of the leaves are moving because there is no wind because we are INSIDE.
I walk.
“This is mad. Utterly mad. I am crazy. I have to be.”
I walk.
“What if he’s taken her to eat her or—” I shake my head. “Blah, blah, blah.”
I walk.
I’m aware of everything. Each sound is an attack. A possible enemy. I flinch often, but don’t laugh a breathless chuckle when I know no danger is present. Why, I wonder, have I become this bird, this mouse, this flea? When did that happen?
I hate myself.
The word slaps me, hard, out of nowhere.
hate
And I know, in the moment I think it, that it’s true.
I hate myself.
Why?
24
obscurantism
Follow me here, follow me there,
Creeper Man comes to give you a scare
send him away, think you can?
foolish children call on Creeper Man.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
This one time, Dad gave us permission to make Halloween costumes. It was a total surprise because it was the first Halloween he’d ever allowed us to have. We had no means of buying costumes, of course, so we enlisted the help of Mam. She had amazing sewing skills. I was a Jedi warrior, and Nori was Yoda. It was the best night of our lives, and nothing could top that. Nothing.
My feet no longer obey me. They drag and flop with every floundering step. Am I walking up the hill to La Baume in a storm, dragging Nori through the mud? Is it three years ago? Even my arms hang loose and numb, fingertips tingling with fading sensation. [AM I DRAGGING NORI?]
For the first time in a long time, I could cry. But my body has no water to spare, and the ache inside me explodes into a dry sob.
“Nori, I’m sorry.”
All the times I wished she would stop with her ever-talking hands. I imagined tying them up behind her back… [CUTTING THEM OFF.] I was horrible. I would give anything to see them flopping about in excited animation. I would give anything to have her in my arms.
My fault. Myfaultmyfaultmyfault.
The thoughts break through again. Images mostly, in flashes. Painful.
I see the woods… the manor in front of me. Trees with moss hanging from branches. But then in a flash and a rumble of my stomach, they are full of maggots. I shake my head, even as I’m bending over to quell the horrible bone-deep pain in my gut, and the wood comes back into focus.
I stumble on.
Another flash, and the floor is rotten, organic mulch, moving and squelching beneath my feet. I gasp and cough as another bite of nausea and pain comes. When I fall to my knees, I land on the floorboards. Solid, hard.
“Stop it,” I whisper.
But it comes again.
Maggots.
Worms.
Mulch.
Rot.
Slime. Mold. Decay. Bugs. Food. Stink. On and on.
“STOP!”
I spit out another tooth. Feel more of my hair dropping away.
Voices ring in my head—dozens of them, laughing, cackling, hysterical.
Stopstopstopstop oh stop please stop poor me boohoo hahahahahahaha!!!!!
I retch into the floorboards, the pain in my gut like a gaping hole filling up with bile and nothingness.
Notttthingnessssssss, cajole the voices. Obscurantism…
“You’re not real,” I mutter, covering my ears and squeezing shut my eyes. “You’re nothing.”
And they blink off, like someone turning down the volume on my mind’s self-derision. I gasp, looking up tentatively, and there is a horrible empty
silent
still
ness…
all around me.
La Baume has started crying. I find the first bit of water coming from a hole in the wall—the first wall I have seen in… how long? The wall is collapsing, soft around the hole, like cottage cheese, and it is spilling slimy maggots onto the floor in a puddle of putrescent-looking water.
I fall to my knees and I drink, my lips pursed and willing. The maggots wriggle and contort near my eyes but I shut them and keep drinking, swallowing whatever comes into my mouth.
I am going to die if I don’t keep this down.
When my body begins to protest, my stomach to contract, I lean back and clench my jaw.
Keep it down. Keep it down.
I feel the maggots moving inside me.