He lowered his feet to the floor. The door opened.
Danyl smiled at Stasia, trying to keep an expression of startled guilt from his face. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said.
Stasia stood in the doorway. ‘Hello,’ she said. Danyl heard the sound of footsteps receding in the hallway, then a door slammed in the distance.
He said, ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Everything very good.’
‘So you’ll heal me now?’
‘No. EZ Wellness Centre is close now. No heal for you today.’
‘Oh, well. Wait—what?’
‘You go now.’
‘Go?’
‘Yes. Go. This place not for you.’
Danyl’s desire to leave vanished. ‘Not for me? Why the hell not? And where go? I can’t even walk.’ He waved at the wheelchair. ‘Do you expect me to wheel myself home on that thing?’
Stasia did not reply. She was awfully calm and her eyes glittered in the candlelight.
‘What’s going on here?’ Danyl glared at her. ‘I want answers. Who was that in the hall?’
She replied. ‘Wait here. I will explain.’
And she was gone again, leaving the door ajar.
Danyl was confused, angry. But he seized his chance. He stood down from the elevated bed and gasped in pain as his foot touched the ground. He staggered over to the shelf and, using it to support his weight, groped his way to the desk, leaned down and tugged on the bottom of the hidden drug drawer.
It slid open but his elation was short-lived. Instead of the pharmaceutical haul of his dreams it merely contained a large glass bottle labelled ‘Danger! Homeopathic water!’, and behind the bottle a small silver jewellery box. He opened it, making a small prayer to a God he did not believe in for even a small vial of morphine, but it was empty except for a black-and-white photograph.
Footsteps in the hall. Danyl kicked the drawer shut, tossed the jewellery box onto the desk and stumbled back to the bed. Stasia entered the room carrying a pair of decrepit wooden underarm crutches.
‘Answer for you,’ she said. ‘Crutch. Yes. Now you walk home no problem. Goodbye.’
He accepted the crutches dumbly, positioned them and then waved his hands in protest. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not leaving. I demand to be told what’s going on.’
‘Going on?’
‘Who are you? Why did you tell me that story? Who was that in the hall? Why are you throwing me out?’
Stasia looked behind her out into the hall, then crossed the room and leaned close to Danyl and spoke softly. ‘There are many things you do not understand, crippled Mr Danyl. Some secrets are safer not to know.’ Her eyes motioned towards the corner of the room. He followed her gaze: a tiny black video camera watched them from the shadowy recesses of the ceiling.
What was she saying? That she saw him raid the drugs safe? That someone else was watching them? He felt lost. Should he throw a temper tantrum? Ask her out on a date?
He said nothing. She helped him onto the crutches and he followed her down the hall and through the reception area to the front door, where she gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Thank you for choose EZ Wellness,’ she said. ‘Have well day.’
The sign said ‘Keep out! No Trespassing!’ Danyl ignored it. He opened the gate and entered the garden behind the Centre. It was shady and private with one side flanked by the blacked-out windows of the Wellness Chamber. The other three sides were protected by high brick walls covered with ivy. An espaliered pear tree grew along the south wall, facing the sun which rose now above the eastern hills, filling the clouds with light.
Danyl needed privacy. The crutches were hard to use and he wanted to practise with them before appearing in public. And he had sentimental attachments to this garden: it was where he first kissed Verity, at Doctor K’s going-away party.
It had deteriorated since that fateful day. Danyl did a turn around the lawn. The grass was long and diverse with weeds; the outdoor furniture looked rotten and close to collapse. All the roses were dying, choked by the ivy. He practised marching back and forth with his crutches, and to take his mind off the pain he remembered . . .
It was a strange party, and a strange time in his life. He had just met Verity and she invited him along, although they barely knew one other. They didn’t drink, or mingle. She asked him about his writing, and, after a few drinks, she kissed him. Afterwards they walked along Aro Street, talking, holding hands, his heart racing, and she stopped and turned to him and said, ‘I have a terrible secret.’
Danyl blinked back tears. Was she really gone? He leaned on his crutches, staring down at the grass, and composed himself, fighting back the sadness. He turned, ready to leave the doctor’s garden forever. But—that was strange. There was a small blue gate in the corner of the north wall. It looked new and out of place. It wasn’t there eighteen months ago. He was sure of it, because that was the shadowy corner where he kissed Verity. Did Stasia build it? Where did it lead? Beyond the wall lay only the unclimbable, rocky scarp of the south hill.
He hobbled over to investigate. It was definitely a recent addition. He could see where the brick wall and steel trellis had been cut away, the flowerbed beneath it dug up, gravel laid down. The gate itself was made of blue corrugated steel: there wasn’t a speck of rust on it. It was bolted shut with a large steel deadbolt.
Danyl glanced about. He was quite alone. The high walls and blacked-out windows afforded him total privacy. He unbolted the gate and pulled it open.
It led to a narrow unsealed path running between the cliff face to the south and a high wire fence to the north. The fence was covered in ivy. Peering through it he could see the rear of one of the apartment buildings on Aro Street. The path curved away out of sight around the hillside. He remembered Steve’s words: ‘The valley is filled with hidden pathways. Only the wise know them all.’
He considered his options. The worst-case scenario was that the path led to a dead end or someone’s backyard. The best was that it led through to the bottom of Epuni Street, somehow, and would be an excellent shortcut back home where he could phone an ambulance and wait for it in comfort.
He stepped through the gate and closed it behind him.
The path was too narrow for his crutches, so after some experimentation he navigated it sideways. Looking back at his progress he admired the tracks he made in the soft earth: a round indentation from his crutch, a footprint, then another indentation followed by the same pattern repeated. Classy.
But slow and tedious. The sides of the path were thick with wild blackberry bushes. Someone had poisoned them so the fruit and leaves were dead, but the brambles were covered with thorns and they scratched at his legs. His foot ached. His arms grew tired. His bladder was full. He had drunk too much celestial water back at the Wellness Centre. Should he relieve himself on the path? No. Too risky: if he needed to backtrack he’d be walking through his own urine. He had made that mistake too many times in the past to repeat it here.
Then he reached the bend in the hill; the gate behind him disappeared and the end of the path came into view and he stopped, struggling to comprehend the impossibility of what he saw. His destination was not Epuni Street, or some random backyard. The path led to a steel door in a high brick wall topped with barbed wire. Looming above it were the sheer black heights of the tenement tower.
5
The thing beneath the tower
Danyl had never set foot in the Aro Valley until a cool, overcast day in early winter, eighteen months earlier. Back then he worked as a sales clerk in a second-hand bookshop on the other side of the city. His life to that point had taken some dark and disappointing turns, but things were finally looking up: he had his job in the bookshop, and a nice place to live—also in the bookshop, where he slept on an inflatable mattress in the non-fiction section on the second floor.
Life was good. He went running eve
ry morning and showered for free at a nearby aged-care hospice. But best of all he was writing. Mostly fantasy and horror short stories, which were published in a local alternative fiction magazine called Oeuvre Outré, in return for which he allowed the editor of the magazine to advertise in the shop window. He was on his way.
And then one day the Campbell Walker walked into his store and changed everything.
He materialised early one morning, while Danyl knelt beside a box of new stock, stacking the books on the lower shelves. Danyl’s gaze took in the gleaming black leather boots then travelled up the three-quarter length black canvas shorts, puffy white silk pirate shirt and black leather trenchcoat to the skeletal, dimpled face framed by mirrored sunglasses and tangled wet-black hair poking out from a baseball cap, which bore a logo of a human stick figure followed by two plus signs. This odd, unknown figure held out its hand and said in a strong, nasal voice, ‘Hail, traveller. I am the Campbell Walker.’
Danyl shook his hand and introduced himself. Campbell tugged him to his feet and produced a rolled-up copy of Oeuvre Outré, which contained a short story by Danyl about a beautiful young prostitute who hunted and murdered serial killers. ‘If you’re the same Danyl who wrote this,’ he said, ‘you should kneel before no man.’
Danyl confirmed that he was the Danyl who wrote ‘Become the Huntress’, and Campbell shook his hand again. ‘Wonderful writing,’ he said. ‘Mostly. But what drew my attention were the subtleties. The hints.’
Danyl blinked. ‘Hints?’
‘The intellectual framework. The ideas hidden just below the surface of your story.’
‘Ideas?’
‘Ideas,’ Campbell said, ‘are the architecture of reality. As you well know.’ He looked around, drew Danyl behind a tall bookshelf and whispered, ‘I suppose you’re wondering what brings someone like me to your little bookstore. As you’re no doubt aware,’ Campbell confided, ‘I, the Campbell Walker, have renounced my former career and devoted my life to a higher calling.’
Danyl was not aware of this. He had no idea who the Campbell Walker was, but he put this down to ignorance on his own part and nodded seriously. He soon learned that Campbell was a wealthy software entrepreneur who assumed that his moderate commercial success merited international, rockstar levels of fame.
‘And you could play a small part in my great work,’ Campbell continued. ‘Come to this address tonight, writer. It will be well worth your while.’ He slipped an envelope into Danyl’s hand. ‘This is just a taste.’
And then he was gone, the door buzzer buzzing his departure. Danyl opened the envelope. It contained an unsigned cheque for ten dollars and a scrap of paper with an address on Aro Street scrawled in red ink.
And so that evening he closed the bookshop early, ate dinner sitting cross-legged on his inflatable mattress, then caught a bus to Te Aro and walked through a light icy rain, searching for Campbell’s address.
He’d heard of the Aro Valley, of course—the area had an unsavoury reputation. But it seemed innocent enough: plenty of old houses, some crumbling, others gentrified and over-restored, cafes humming with custom, and a handsome park, empty but for the dripping trees.
He found the address. It was a driveway leading between two buildings. Danyl followed it and emerged into a large courtyard surrounding the tenement tower, a symphony in unpainted concrete. The sounds of construction—jackhammers, shouts, steel being rent asunder—came from the building, along with billowing clouds of concrete dust which were illuminated by the arc-lights along the driveway.
‘Writer!’
Campbell strode forward out of the chaos. He put his arm around Danyl’s shoulder and led him along the driveway, which continued around the building to a large open space behind it.
‘Poor bewildered writer,’ he chuckled. ‘You must be dying of curiosity. Don’t be overwhelmed with awe—ask me any question you like.’
Danyl looked up at the building. Through the windows he could see a dozen figures in overalls and orange fluoro vests moving about, using tools that cast showers of sparks out into the damp night air, or tossing debris through the windows down to skip bins far below. He said, ‘What are you doing here?
‘Ha! You cut right to the quick of things. But how can I even begin to reply? Let me answer your question with a question. What is your IQ? Have you ever been tested?’
‘I did a test on the internet once. I got, like, 105.’
Campbell burst out laughing. ‘Come now,’ he said patting Danyl’s arm. ‘I’ve only just met you but I assure you, your IQ is not that low—you’re not an imbecile. The test must have been defective. My own IQ is 178 so I speak with some authority. Come. This way.’
They walked around the building to the rear courtyard, which was walled off at the back and filled with rubble. A children’s playground had been torn up and discarded in a far corner of the plaza. In its place was a row of shallow, narrow trenches. These were lined with plaster and surrounded by electrical equipment: filters, pumps, diesel generators. The machinery looked brand-new: boxes and packing styrofoam lay scattered around it. More figures in overalls bustled about these instruments.
‘Magnificent, isn’t it.’ Campbell was still talking. He waved his hand, taking in the building, the distant hills, the low, stone-coloured sky. ‘My parents were just lowly university lecturers,’ he said, a touch of sadness in his voice. ‘But through hard work and application of intellect I’ve transcended my humble origins. Now look at all I’ve accomplished—and this is only the beginning.’
They walked around the pits. They were empty; they looked like long, thin whitewashed graves. Electrical cables and polythene tubes snaked across the ground between them. Campbell waved to the workers labouring at their incomprehensible tasks.
‘So,’ Danyl tried again. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Campbell replied. He put his hand on Danyl’s arm again. ‘And then you’ll tell the world. That’s why I need you—to write. You’ll document what you see here—use all your skills, all your craft—and then when we’re done there will be a record, a heroic ode to bequeath to mankind. Do you accept? Of course you do. How could any man refuse?’
Danyl said, ‘I still don’t see—’
‘But I warn you now, writer.’ Campbell’s grip tightened on Danyl’s arm and his voice dropped to a low hiss. ‘Everything you see here is secret. You will say nothing of this to anyone until I authorise it, when the time is ripe. I have my unpleasant side, and you would do well to fear it. Do you understand?’
‘Not—’
‘Come then!’ Campbell pulled him forward and they left the trenches behind and headed towards the building, where the driveway curved around and descended into a darkened basement. ‘I’ll show you around your new home. Have you lived in Te Aro before?’
Danyl shook his head.
‘You’re going to like it here. It’s a community but it has a tremendous sense of dynamism, of flux. Everyone passes through the valley sooner or later, and it attracts individuals, artists, not the mindless cattle that comprise the disposable bulk of humanity.’
They reached the top of the ramp: it led down into a vast, impenetrable darkness. Dust and the sounds of construction and/or demolition issued forth from it. Campbell led him down, raising his voice over the din. ‘This building will be the birthplace of something astounding, writer. I’ll show you everything—from this humble basement to my penthouse command centre on the top floor, from whence I survey this valley and plot my stratagems. You’re privileged to witness the beginning of the DoorWay Project.’
He looked at Danyl expectantly, so Danyl tried to inject a trace of awe into his voice. ‘Oh.’
‘Ha! Oh indeed.’ Campbell looked Danyl up and down and chuckled, his eyes twinkling. ‘An IQ of one hundred and five. Imagine!’ His laughter floated up through the dust and the sound of the jackhammers.<
br />
Danyl now stood before the steel door, resting on his crutches. It was sturdy, cast into the wall with reinforced beams. On the other side, he knew, was the courtyard behind Campbell’s tower. He touched the cool stainless steel. His fingers lingered on the handle.
It was too dangerous. Campbell could be watching him from the top of the tower, or even lying in wait on the other side of the gate. But he pressed his ear against it and listened and heard nothing but the chattering of insects, and cars on distant roads.
Why? Why did Campbell build a secret pathway from his tower to the EZ Wellness Centre? Was he in league with Stasia? Bankrolling her? That didn’t make sense. Campbell had his flaws—he was crazy and powerful and evil and cruel—but at least he didn’t believe in alternative medicine.
Danyl decided to try the gate, just to check if it was locked, and then he’d leave. He didn’t need more trouble with the Campbell Walker, especially not now that he was crippled and vulnerable.
Slowly, carefully, Danyl leaned on his crutches and turned the handle. The gate squealed and swung inwards. He peeked through the gap.
Beyond it lay the courtyard. It was littered with dead leaves. The machinery around the trenches was sun-bleached and covered with rust. The driveway leading to the front of the building was now blocked by a massive precast wall topped with wire. Cracks in the concrete base of the courtyard formed an extensive network of weeds, spreading out from the massive building dominating the expanse: a mad king holding court over a dead kingdom.
Danyl’s eyes were drawn to the steep concrete ramp leading beneath it to the basement, a dark void squatting beneath the tower. A great secret lurked within that darkness, Danyl knew, and now, unexpectedly, it was within his grasp. A steel roller-door hung across the top of the entrance at a broken angle. He would have to crouch to pass under it to enter the building, were he brave or foolish enough to do so.
Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley Page 4