Grotesquerie

by Richard Gavin

  “I’m going to try on my dress,” she says, as if daring me to object.

  She is on her way to change in one of the old miners’ shower stalls—there is no running water here, but the mouldy plastic curtains that partition the stalls at least offer privacy—when the ground begins to quake.

  This tremor is longer than all previous ones, more forceful. Immediately people begin to murmur, in prayer or in vexation or simply in fear. The rocking ultimately subsides. A wave of relief passes over the people of the tract.

  A moment later, there is another tremor.

  *

  Few become true pit-canaries. While the townsfolk dwell Below, there is another level, another extreme that only the most devout have courage or madness enough to explore.

  Beyond the tract, where the mattresses and bags are strewn, stretches another tunnel. It is stiflingly tight and perilously ragged. It must have been bored by something cruder than even the crudest manmade tool. Only those who have dared to squeeze through that aperture earn the stigma of pit-canary because, like their namesake, those birds go beyond, into certain peril, into a kind of underground Event Horizon.

  As to what forged that tunnel, I could add my theory to the dozens that have been posited, but what would such a thing prove? The tunnel is somehow connected to the emerald light. This I believe. I also believe that both this cryptic tunnel and the emerald light are the products of something even greater and stranger than both those two things combined.

  Somehow, we, the people of Evendale, awoke something down there. Now that something is in turn beginning to awaken all of us.

  The change is undeniable. Everyone Below feels it, but because it is so indefinable, we do not speak of it. We simply accept its presence within us, like a growing contagion, an elusive virus.

  This is a cold, unwanted revelation, like happening upon a lump in one’s breast or testicle; the kind of discovery that makes one yearn for normalcy, tedium, for all those ditchwater-dull afternoons and daily routines that we so foolishly felt needed to be stripped away by novelty and change. Yes, it is that kind of wordless knowledge that there is no going back. Even racing up to the sunlit yards of Evendale would be a small and flimsy defense. And so, we wait for what I hope will be, if not an answer, then, at the very least, an ending.

  I’m told that early on some of the men wanted to place bright orange sawhorses before the mouth of that unmapped tunnel as a warning to keep away, but before they could return with their barricade, the mine had produced its own.

  The vine sprouted from one carbon wall, drooped across the down-sloping chute and then poked through the black rock of the opposite wall. Blooming out of this twisting verdant cable were five bellflowers, vibrantly red, as though coloured by arterial blood that raced through transparent petals. Deeply fragrant; even the methane fumes were made sweet, so strong was their perfume. The flowers hung inversely. Set against that gaping hole in the mine wall they were positively incandescent, the beginnings of some fresh new garden of paradise. I studied those flowers often, perched upon my plastic lawn chair, coughing into my sooty hands.

  I still watch the flowers and I wait. Wait for my father.

  Two weeks ago, much to my shrieking protests, he left the camp here on the tract and he became a pit-canary. He said he’d dreamed my mother had come to him through the emerald light and that she’d encouraged him to experience what dwelt on the outer rim of that light. Dad once said he believed the light was actually the breath of some living thing, large and ancient and wise. An entity that had been here long before we crawled out of the swamp, something nested, something waiting…

  He’d also said he thinks this creature, whatever it is, is calling us to descend farther and farther down so it can give us some new kind of fire, the kind that lights up the depths of space.

  I’d asked him how he came to know this, but he said nothing.

  Only two pit-canaries have come back to the tract in the whole time I’ve been here, but it seems to be enough to keep people believing, waiting, wondering. The first was an elderly woman who’d owned a cake shop on Main Street. She said she’d heard trumpets and bells in that tunnel, and that the green light had welled up to touch her and for one brief but glorious moment she was able to hold her own heart in her hands. She’d said she’d weighed her heart for hefty sins. She had determined that it wasn’t yet light enough, so she’d come back up to fast and pray. She stayed above. I never found out what happened to her.

  The other pit-canary who returned only lived for a few seconds. He came crawling out of the tunnel screaming in agony. He screamed and he screamed. He even tore out the vine of bellflowers. When two of the men dragged him out, they discovered that he’d been torn open, but the innards that spilled from his jagged and gaping wounds were fossilized; white and smooth and solid, like hand-carved entrails on a marble statue.

  Only after the commotion ended did someone comment about how the red bellflowers had already grown back across the tunnel mouth.

  *

  Another tremor.

  And another.

  It won’t be long now…whatever ‘it’ is.

  The bellflowers begin to ring. Their chiming is open and almost without a source. They swing like their namesakes in a belfry. And like those chapel bells, these glassy-sounding flowers seem to rouse the faithful to service.

  One by one the people begin to crawl through the tunnel. Where they had once given a wide berth to avoid, they now scramble and fight to penetrate. The emerald glimmer is now visible within the tunnel, cresting upward like a tide of foul sewer water. Rita and I watch as the last resident wriggles toward that ill light.

  Rita begs me to let her go, but I hold her back. Impulsively, senselessly, she wrestles that damned dress over her head, tugging it over her filthy T-shirt and jeans.

  I feel the collapse occurring in the tunnel beneath us. It shakes the ground. The chorus of screams from those who’d raced into the forbidden chute are muffled by the falling black rock, but they are no less terrible.

  Is this what you lured all of them down there for? I wonder.

  “Dad!” Rita cries, over and over.

  I shriek for her to follow me into the rescue pod. Eventually she does. I shut the door, praying that the cave-in won’t reach this upper level and that it ends swiftly. There is no oxygen in the tank, but we need shelter from the mushrooms of black smoke that begins to fill the tract. Chunks of coal smack against the pod like the shower of stones in Revelations. The light leaks up through fresh fissures in the ground.

  Eventually the thunder wanes. I look through the pod window, expecting to see only blackness. But there is a distinctive glimmer, greenish and persistent, even against the thick filter of coal dust.

  I close my hand over my mouth.

  She pushes past me.

  I follow her, choking on the fumes and dust.

  The emerald light presses through the collapsed tunnel, shining like a lamp covered with perforated black felt. For a long time, we simply stand. Then something squeezes through the piled rocks. It rolls nearer to us with patient velocity.

  I turn to Rita, who looks bolted in place. Terror blanches her face and makes her jaw hang slack.

  I step forward.

  “No!” I hear my sister scream, seemingly from the far end of the world. “No, goddamn it!”

  I reach down, pick up the luminous object, and turn back to Rita.

  I roll this newfound gift in my palm before halving it with a forceful twist.

  “It’s from our Father,” I inform her with a knowledge that seems to originate outside of myself.

  Rita reaches for her half but quickly drops her hand. She watches in mute but visible agony as I bite into the apple.

  The Patter of Tiny Feet

  Against his better judgment Sam stopped the car and allowed his Smartphone to connect with Andrea’s. The earpiece purled enough times to allow him to envision Andrea sitting with arms crossed, eyeing her vibrating phone, ignor
ing his extension of the olive branch. Choking back the indignation he truly believed was righteous, Sam obeyed the recorded instructions and waited for the tone.

  “Hi, it’s me,” he began, trying not to be distracted by the escarpment’s belittling sprawl of glacial rock and ancient forests. “Look, I’m sorry I stormed out like that. It was childish of me, I admit. I’m happy about your promotion, I truly am, it’s just…well…I suppose I was a little shocked by how much your new position alters our plans.” He was lecturing again. Andrea had accused him of it often enough. Was he also being high-handed, as she liked to claim? “Anyhow, I really do have some scouting to do, that wasn’t a lie. But I wanted to call you before I got too far out and lost the signal. I’ve got my equipment in the car with me. I’m going to snap a few locations just to get Dennis off my back. I should be back in a few hours, so hopefully we can talk more then. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and get you to change your mind about anything. I…I guess I just need to know that a family’s not completely off the table for us. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow, but at some point in the not too distant future I’d…”

  He could feel himself babbling. Already his first few statements had grown hazy; he winced at their possible fawning stupidity.

  “I’ll see you when I get home. Love you lots.”

  The jeep that was scaling the road behind him gave Sam an unpleasant start when he spotted its swelling reflection in his rear-view mirror. The deafening beat of its stereo, no doubt worth more than the vehicle itself, caused the poorly folded maps on Sam’s dashboard to hum and vibrate as though they were maimed birds attempting to flap their crumpled wings. The jeep rumbled past and the girl in its passenger seat was whooping and laughing a shrill musical laugh that Sam half-believed was directed at him. He started his engine and cautiously veered back onto Appleby Line to resume his half-hearted search for a paragon of terror.

  He’d been truthful about the mounting pressure from Dennis, a director who possessed the eccentricities and ego of many legendary filmmakers, but completely lacked their genius. After helming two disastrous made-for-television teen comedies Dennis broke off to form his own miniscule film production company, Startling Image. Freak luck had furnished his operation with a grant from the Ontario Film Board, which Dennis said he planned to stretch as far as it could go. His scheme was to produce shoestring-budget horror films that would be released directly to DVD. Dennis believed this plot was not only foolproof but in fact an expressway to wealth and industry prestige.

  Although Sam’s experience in moviemaking allowed him to see the idiocy of Dennis’s delusions, being a freelancer required Sam to accept any jobs that came his way during leaner times. Location Manager was an impressive title on paper, but with anorexic productions such as Gnawers, Startling Image’s inaugural zombie infestation film, Sam found himself working twice as hard for a third of his usual compensation. He was contracted for a major Hollywood studio film that was going into production in Toronto next spring. He had only accepted Dennis’s offer in order to bring in some extra money. The draconian hours, the director’s tantrums, and the risible script for Gnawers would have all been worth it had Andrea kept her word.

  But now it seemed there would be no need to furnish their guest bedroom with a crib and rocking chair and a chiming mobile on the ceiling. Instead there would only be Andrea’s customary seven-day workweeks, her quarterly bonuses spent on ever-sleeker gadgets and more luxurious clothing. Sam’s wants were simple: to know the pleasures of progeny, fatherhood, to watch someone born of love and blessed with love growing up and sequentially awakening to all the wonders of life. His grandfather had advised Sam years ago that there comes a time in every man’s life when all he wants is to hear the patter of tiny feet.

  Now thirty-eight, Sam had come to appreciate the wisdom of the cliché as well as the cold sorrow of realizing that this natural desire might shrivel up unfulfilled. What then? Sunday afternoon cocktails with Andrea’s fellow brokers, with him chasing an endless string of movie gigs until, perhaps, he could found a company of his own?

  Only when the car began to chug and lurch in an attempt to scale the road’s sudden incline did Sam realize he’d allowed his foot to ease off the gas pedal. He stomped down on it, and the asthmatic sounds the engine released made him wince. This far up the escarpment, well past the Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area, the road hosted surprise hairpin turns that required a driver’s full alertness. Sam shook the cobwebs from his head and willed his focus on the narrow road before him.

  Had he not been so determined to exceed Dennis’s expectations, Sam might have let the peripheral image pass by unexplored. But his determination to prove his worth, now not only to Dennis but also to Andrea (maybe even to himself as well), inspired Sam to edge his car onto the nearest thing the narrow lane had to a shoulder. He gathered his hip-bag and exited the vehicle. With eyes fixated on the alluring quirk in the landscape, he began to climb the rocky wall that fed off the laneway.

  The stiff pitch of a shingled roof was what had commanded his attention after a rather long and uneventful drive around the escarpment. It jutted up, all tar shingles and snugly carpentered beams, amidst the leafless, knotty treeline. As he climbed upward and then began to wriggle across the inhospitable terrain, Sam questioned the housetop’s reality. Had his anxious state conspired with his imagination to impress a structure where one could not be?

  A few more cautious footsteps were all that was required to confirm the substance of his glimpse.

  It was a wooden frame-house whose two storeys might have sprouted stiffly from the overgrown rockery that ringed its base. Blatantly abandoned, Sam couldn’t help but note how the house’s battered walls, punctured roof, and boarded windows did not convey the usual faint melancholy or eeriness that most neglected homes do. Instead, there was an air of what might be called power. Sam wondered if the house had drawn strength from its solitude, become self-perpetuating, self-sustaining, like the mythical serpent that nourishes itself by devouring its own tail.

  The site was so tailored to his wishes that for a moment Sam almost believed in providence. Lugging the film crew’s equipment up and along this incline would be arduous, but he was confident that it would be worth the extra effort. Given the minuscule budget for Gnawers, even Dennis could not balk at the richness of this location.

  The place was almost fiendishly apt. They would have to bring generators here to power the equipment, and a survey of the house would be required to gauge its safety hazards, but it could work. More than work; it could shine.

  As he entered the clearing where the farmhouse stood, Sam lifted his hands to frame his view in a crude approximation of a camera lens. This simple gesture was enough to transform his roaming of the derelict grounds into a long and elaborate establishing shot. One by one he took in the set-pieces that may well have been left there just for him: the crumbling stone steps that led up to the empty doorframe, the rust-mangled shell of a tractor that slumped uselessly at the head of the gravel clearing, the wind-plucked barn whose arches resembled the fossilized wings of a prehistoric bird of prey. It was glorious, perfect.

  Sam wished he had someone there to share it with. But surely Andrea would not draw as much pleasure from this as he did. Her interest in movies extended only as far as attending the local premieres of any productions Sam had worked on. Beyond that, Andrea’s world revolved around crunching numbers for her clients.

  For a cold moment Sam imagined one day teaching his daughter or son the thrill of seeking out the special nooks of the world. For Sam, movies were secondary. Their presentation invariably paled against the sparkling wonder of discovering the richly atmospheric settings that often hide out from the rambling parade of progress: art deco bars, grand old theatres, rural churches, and countless other places like this very farm.

  He fought back the wring of depression by freeing the camera from his hip-bag and beginning to snap photos of the potential set. Moving around to the rear of the
house chilled Sam, even though the April sun was still pouring modest warmth on the terrain. Perhaps the sight of the high shuttered room was what had unnerved him. Regardless, it would make an excellent shot in Gnawers. With this many possibilities, Sam’s mind began to thrum with startling revisions that could be made to the script.

  A round wooden well sat at the edge of the property, mere inches from the untamed forest. Sam approached it, struck by just how crude it was. The surface had not even been sanded. It still bore the mossy flaking bark of the tree from which it had been hewn. Sam might have mistaken it for the stump of a great evergreen had the mouth of the stout barrel not been secured with a large granite slab that was held in place by ancient-looking ropes. Or were they vines?

  Regardless, the well or cistern could have been part of the topography, for it did not look fashioned in any way, merely capped. It was as if a massive log had been shoved down into the mud. Its base was overgrown with weeds so sun-bleached they’d come to resemble nerves.

  Sam frowned at the thought of how its water might taste.

  The house had no back door, so Sam hastened his way to the open doorframe that faced the incline, excited by the prospect of the house’s interior.

  The forest had shared its debris with the main hall. The oiled floorboards were warped enough to appear as a heaving sea of wood. The floor was carpeted with broken boughs and leaves and dirt. Sam clicked several shots of the living room with its lone furnishing of a broken armchair; of the pantry that was lined with dusty preserves; of the kitchen with its dented woodstove.

  To his mind he’d already collected more than ample proof that this location would suit the film, but just to cross every T he opted for a few quick shots of the second storey. After that he would go back home. He had a strange and sudden need to snuggle up to Andrea, in a well-lit room, with the world held at bay beyond locked doors.