Grotesquerie

by Richard Gavin

  In the end, having been saddled with belongings and bird was scarcely a hardship. The true burden came in the form of an inexplicable compulsion, a behavioural tic that began to chew on Kolkamitza’s psyche day and night, abating only if he succumbed to its command. This compulsion was, of all things, a need to knock on strange doors.

  This had originally been her habit, yet he seemed to have inherited it as he had her material goods. Kolkamitza had discovered this quirk about Erin on their first date, when he’d found himself standing awkwardly beside Erin as they’d called on what he’d assumed to have been Erin’s friends or relations, only to discover after they’d responded to her rapping that they were all perfect strangers to one another. The first time this occurred had been mortifying. Kolkamitza had stood on the porch of some random townhouse, his face smoldering with humiliation while his lover rushed through introductions, explanations, questions. Love had allowed him to be fooled into this same scene many times afterwards, to the point where it had become a kind of game for him; waiting to see how long it would take before the resident or residents would shut and bolt their alien door.

  It surprised him how rarely this had occurred. More often the occupants would answer Erin’s genial questions and offer a few of their own. Mutual acquaintances would sometimes be sussed out, or common interests. More than once the pair of them had been invited in for coffee, even asked to stay for dinner. Kolkamitza had found these meetings interminable. He did not possess Erin’s charm, nor her fascination with other people.

  Initially Kolkamitza had assumed that Erin had dragged him along for those encounters to illustrate some point about people being inherently kind, or fundamentally alike, or some such.

  But as time wore on, Erin had begun leading him further and further from the beaten paths of the city, into areas that he found unsettling, even menacing. He’d finally asked Erin how she had ever come to develop such a queer habit and was told, somewhat brusquely, that as a girl she had been obsessed with Drawing the Sortes. “On my seventh birthday, I flipped the Book open to Matthew 7:7. You know, ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ I’m still searching for the proper door.”

  Their last two visits had truly tested Kolkamitza’s mettle. Each adventure had occurred on a Friday evening and ultimately led to a weekend of bewilderment and fear.

  The penultimate visit had been to a plank cabin that sat by the rim of a quarry known colloquially as the Bone Cauldron, where pale stones cupped a pool of noxious water. When Erin had led him onto the cabin’s sagging porch and rapped upon the flimsy excuse for a door, Kolkamitza was convinced that the whole ordeal was some grotesque joke. He’d been loath to experience the punchline.

  The abode had consisted of a lone room. The window was a cut-out square over which plastic sheeting hung by wafer tape. This sheet pulsed noisily, like an infected lung. His surroundings seemed septic. The upper corners of the room were marred by patches of mould.

  Erin either did not notice these details or was unfazed by them. Their visit had been brief, ending once the ugly little man who dwelt in the cabin had begun slipping from pidgin English into some demi-language. It was akin to the glossolalia one hears from the faithful while in fervor, but it had apparently communicated to Erin whatever it was she’d been seeking beyond that door.

  Their final visit had been to a half-built house on a development lot. Erin had wandered around to the rear of the structure, where an ominous iron door had blocked their way. She’d rapped on it three times, which had been enough to push the imposing barrier back from its jamb. Inside the house they’d found, amidst the must and melancholy, an incongruously cozy scene: a parlour table that had been set for two. A tea service of newly polished silver shone defiantly against the gloom. A pair of china cups had been set upon the tabletop, presumably just for them. The oolong they’d held had been fresh, steaming.

  Erin had gone right to one of the waiting chairs and was about to partake of the tea when Kolkamitza smacked the cup from her fingers. It had chinked against the marble floor but did not shatter. Eventually he’d convinced Erin to leave. They’d argued for the rest of the journey home. Kolkamitza had pressed her to confess to setting up the tea party beforehand, but Erin had been vehement that she’d never so much as laid eyes on that house until the two of them had been swept there by fate.

  When Kolkamitza had told her that he refused to ever again knock on unfamiliar doors, she’d scolded him, saying that all things had their protocol, and in matters such as this, those of the liminal, things must always be met out in threes. She’d felt that two had now been completed. The third and most important discovery was yet to come.

  “We have one last call to make before the cycle is complete,” she’d told him. In less than a week she was dead. But her habit of knocking on strange doors lived on in Kolkamitza, who now found himself helplessly impelled to rap on closets, refrigerators, gates, crypts, cars, warehouse loading docks, houseboats, cupboards, hutches. He had yet to receive a proper response to his summons.

  *

  Morning was all but over before Kolkamitza took leave of his bed. Though he’d slept long and deeply, he felt unrested. Perhaps the emotional strain of last night’s quests for strange doors had taken a greater toll than he’d realized. Midnight had found him among the tenements. It was a dangerous area to be skulking around in, but his exhilaration outweighed the risk. He’d rapped on dozens of ugly doors, and, upon knocking, would hunch like a garden gnome, hiding, waiting for some indication that his calling had been upon the right house, that he would be given some piece that was missing from inside himself. Much to his dismay, this did not occur.

  Kolkamitza shuffled to the window. His first glimpse of the backyard revealed a very fine-looking Saturday. Summer had come ‘round at last. He opened every window in the house before putting the coffee on.

  Rheims was audibly restless before Kolkamitza had even removed the cage’s night coverlet. Standing before the gibbet-like contraption, watching the bird flutter and flit, he was again arrested by the familiar temptation, the compulsion.

  He reached to unlatch the cage, stopped short, and then, in tribute to Erin, gave the tiny arched gate a trio of slow knocks.

  Rheims instantly went still. His wings taut at his sides, the jackdaw fell forward, landing against the papered base of his cage with a padded thump.

  Kolkamitza gazed emptily at his fallen companion. He exhaled dramatically and fixed himself a mug of coffee, giving the kitchen table a measured tap-tap-tap before allowing himself to sit and drink.

  His thoughts were an incomprehensible slurry. He fretted over whether he’d remembered to feed and water Rheims, concluding that he had. The bird must have perished from a broken heart, a longing for its mistress. Kolkamitza decided that the least he could do was give the creature a proper burial. He gulped down the dregs in his mug and got dressed.

  Outside, the heat was sheer. The simple act of fetching the shovel from the tool shed had Kolkamitza sweating. Rheims was now reposing in a plastic grocery bag, which Kolkamitza rather unceremoniously carried to a random spot in the centre of the yard. He set down the bird in its crinkling shroud and proceeded to dig. The chore was taxing and the pit he wound up forging was slight. Kolkamitza set the jackdaw’s bagged remains inside the hole to better gauge the worth of the grave. He decided to bore out a few more shovelfuls to ensure that Rheims would be safe from scavenging animals.

  The shovel struck something solid. The kickback was severe, driving Kolkamitza’s lower teeth into his tongue.

  Stunned, pained, overcome with directionless fury, Kolkamitza stomped and swore before regaining his composure. Peering into the grave, he immediately spotted the culprit: a band of iron was poking up from the soil. Flipping the shovel, Kolkamitza proceeded to scrape and jab around the band in the hope of jimmying it loose, but the obstruction wouldn’t budge. As he cleared away more of the earth he discovered that the band was of considerable length; some twelve to fourteen inches
of it were now exposed.

  It was Mystery enough to keep him engrossed. After investing far more energy than he should have on this fool’s errand, Kolkamitza had managed to unearth a square frame, roughly two-feet by two-feet. The outline stood out from the base of the pit in bas relief. He sat on the edge of the hole, his chin resting on the end of the shovel handle. He studied it. Was it a lockbox? Thoughts of funds or incriminating evidence excited him momentarily but very quickly made him realize just how empty his life had become of late. To waste an entire day in pursuit of such a childish fantasy?

  Kolkamitza reassured himself by reasoning that no time spent in a state of electric confusion was ever wasted. Just the opposite in fact.

  He began to scour the metal frame in search of a latch or lock. Like some mad resurrection man, he scuttled about the grave, muddy fingers crawling over his nearly-exhumed prize.

  There was nothing to be found. Clay still covered the surface of the square. Kolkamitza tried to clear it away but it clung tenaciously. The face of the square felt markedly less firm than the metal frame itself. In fact, it felt almost hollow. He wanted so very much to see the object in its entirety, wanted so very much to know.

  Something inside of him parted, made him two selves instead of one. This shift occurred with such subtlety that it did not fully register with Kolkamitza. He only came to know that this second, deeper self had been roused when he reached out to grab his shovel. On the conscious level Kolkamitza was going to attempt to jimmy the frame open with the shovel’s edge, but unconsciously his hand was resisting this instruction. It was instead curling into a fist and moving calmly above the muddy square.

  Like an impartial witness to the workings of his own body, Kolkamitza watched as his hand knocked once, and again, and yet again.

  The square gave way like a trapdoor. It fell inwards, further into the earth. Kolkamitza could hear the soft clatter as the bagged corpse of Rheims and several clumps of soil rained down into the passage. There then came the measured creaks as the forsaken door gently swayed back and forth on its long-dormant hinges.

  Time stalled as Kolkamitza stared into the shaft. Knees bent like an anchorite, head as empty as the sky, he gazed wordlessly, unsure of how to feel. In one sense, he found the whole ordeal impossible, absurd; a notion that was compounded by the fact that the world around him was pressing on in blissful ignorance of his discovery. Children hollered and cackled in various yards, squirrels chittered and pounced within the overgrown hedges. But despite being surrounded by mundanity, Kolkamitza nonetheless felt himself at the hem of a deeper world.

  From one of the neighbouring houses a mother squawked for her son to return home. The sound of this made Kolkamitza feel weirdly vulnerable. He was stricken with a fear of discovery. The muscles in his legs were achingly resistant to his attempt at rising, but once he was upright, Kolkamitza frantically peeled the sweaty shirt from his torso and laid it carefully across the pit, weighting it with little mounds of dirt. The fabric scarcely covered the hole, but it was concealment enough to confuse any spying neighbours.

  He went inside the house, which was dim and cool, and thus provided a small measure of comfort. In the kitchen, he drew himself a glass of water and sat down. He badly needed to collect himself.

  Was it truly so grand a thing, unearthing a hatch in the yard? Should such a discovery stir up so much anxiety and confusion?

  He drained the water tumbler and managed to slow his breathing. He concluded that his discovery was not at all worth fretting over, for the simple reason that he had not truly discovered anything. Not yet. He’d unsealed a gate of some kind. But as to its nature and to where it may lead, these were truths yet to be realized.

  And yet there was no denying that he had knocked, and fate had answered. Could this be the crucial third door that Erin had been seeking until the night she died, the one that would complete the cycle?

  From the junk drawer Kolkamitza retrieved his flashlight. He was relieved to find that its batteries still had power. He grabbed and donned a fresh shirt from the hamper and marched back to the yard. After ensuring that the neighbouring windows were free of onlookers, he stripped his makeshift cover from the hatch. Part of him was expecting it to have vanished in his absence, but it not only remained, the pit seemed to have grown blacker and, paradoxically, more alluring.

  He shone the light down and it immediately illuminated something fine, something intricate. At first Kolkamitza thought it might have been some sort of abstract pattern in the earth, but after scanning the beam about he realized that it was a Persian rug, a rich tapestry of scarlets and whites and complex arabesques. Squatting at the edges of the rug were a battered sofa, a rocking chair, and several wooden stools, poorly stacked.

  ‘A bomb shelter? A repository?’

  Kolkamitza couldn’t resist reaching down with his free hand. The air below was cold, like a submerged spring. He rotated his wrist, swirling the chilly air. He wanted more, so much more. Fantasies about what else there may be to discover down there percolated in his mind and were immediately replaced by manic theories as to how he should proceed. Should he dig further? Daylight was depleting. Should he expedite the process by renting a backhoe?

  Ludicrous.

  A thin memory then flashed in Kolkamitza’s mind, an image that could provide the simplest, most direct means of progress. It was stored in a corner of the tool shed. He’d not thought about it since the week he’d moved in. Had he glimpsed it earlier today when he’d fetched the shovel to dig the jackdaw’s grave?

  Racing to the shed, Kolkamitza was overjoyed to confirm that he had.

  The tree swing had been left behind by the family who’d occupied the upper storey prior to Erin. Kolkamitza had pulled the swing down the very day they’d vacated. It had been his vengeance for all the loud, shrill summer afternoons he’d had to endure when the parents had let their son loose in the yard.

  The swing’s rope was comprised of thickly braided polyester. Kolkamitza was confident that it would support his weight. He unknotted the two lengths from the swing’s plank, then tied them to one another to create the longest possible cord. This he bound to the trunk of the apple tree that grew close to the door in the earth. There was not enough rope for him to secure it around his waist, but, provided the drop wasn’t greater than what it appeared to be, he could scale down using the hand-over-hand method.

  Hunched by the rim of the hole, rope-in-fist, Kolkamitza hesitated. His reluctance was almost mystical; an intuition that somehow this descent would forge a rift in his life. This was a waymark. But whether this journey would lead to worse or better things he dared not guess.

  Triple-winding the rope around his wrist, he pulled the makeshift towline taut and began his incremental repel. The neighbourhood’s indigenous noises became muted, while the nerve-wracking creak and groan of the rope grinding into the tree trunk was amplified. Kolkamitza willed himself to stay focused. He was now eye-level with the lawn. He could see swarms of ants frantic in their obscured labours amidst the blades.

  Drawing in a breath like a diver about to plunge into the deeps, he allowed the subterranean cold to swallow him.

  All told the drop was roughly eight feet. The proximity of the ground along with the ribbon of daylight shining through the trapdoor assuaged some of Kolkamitza’s trepidation. He told himself he would simply try to discover what the hatch was, then he would climb back to the surface. He would even phone the landlord and explain the saga to him in full. After all, he’d simply been trying to bury a cherished pet, when suddenly…

  His boot soles hit bottom, creating a cavernous thud, even with the padding of the Persian rug to soften the drop. He pulled the flashlight from the pocket of his cargo pants and swung it about.

  The room was large; roughly fifty feet by his estimation. But how could such a structure be possible? At this size, at least a portion of this wooden longhouse must sit directly under his home. Granted, his house had no basement, so such a thing was fea
sible, if far-fetched.

  Moving the light above about, Kolkamitza took in more of what looked to be some form of storage unit. Furniture and crates lined the wood-slat walls, along with hulking forms made amorphous by fabric coverings. The air was musty and cool. The structure itself was like the hull of a ship, with its trussed roof and network of bulky support beams.

  A light burst into view at the far end of the room. Though he only glimpsed it peripherally, the appearance of the bright orb caused Kolkamitza to gasp. His heart swelled, his testicles climbed upward.

  He could see it plainly now: there was the silhouette of a man standing at the opposite end of the room. The figure’s shape cunningly refused to be caught in Kolkamitza’s flashlight. Kolkamitza stumbled backward, his trembling hand feeling about for the rope’s end. Never had his desire to see the sun been so dire.

  He began to pull himself toward the light. He looked back, certain that the figure was now charging toward him. How long had the apparition been down here, he wondered, just waiting, waiting for someone to open that buried door and set him free?

  When Kolkamitza noticed that the man also looked to be scaling a rope toward the same bright square of daylight, he squinted to better accustom his eyes to the dimness. The ornate frame of a large mirror slowly became apparent. Once Kolkamitza had assured himself that what he had seen was nothing more than his own murky double reflected in that standing glass he laughed weakly. He lowered himself back down.

  Something crinkled under his foot. Kolkamitza respectfully picked up the plastic bag that held Rheims and set it down on the arm of the musty sofa before crossing the room. He gave the cunning mirror an admiring once-over and noted more bric-a-brac, much of which was rather expensive-looking: silver candlesticks, a roll-top desk, a grandfather clock. Perhaps his landlord was an eccentric hoarder who had created this storage unit to conceal his compulsion.