by Brad Ashlock
“Well, it was sure loud enough,” Cal said.
Naumkin looked to Cal as if the boy had just fallen into a two-move checkmate. He raised his hand to point at Cal and gave him a lecture on his recent impetuousness, but he couldn’t close his fingers. A jolt of pain shot up his arm.
“What is it?” Cal asked.
“Ah,” he noised, “I think I broke my hand. Maybe only a sprain.” He laid the wounded appendage in his other hand and massaged between the knuckles. “It’s feeling better,” he said, spreading the fingers before balling his hand into a loose fist.
They decided to walk around to the back of the building. Against the back wall were more crates, a bundle of fencing, and some king of 19th Century piece of industrial equipment: a big, rust-fused column of gears and pistons. Parallel to the back of the building yawned a wide gulch that a century ago must have been a river. This was it: in the pines where the river dies.
Where a door had been in the back of the factory was nailed a thick plywood plank. It was warped from top to bottom and weathered to a dark gray. Naumkin and Cal approached the doorway. It was too dark to see anything through the sliver of space between the board and the wall. The plank had been nailed into the wooden frame of the entryway. Naumkin had Cal yank on the plank as hard as he could and then jammed the butt of his rifle into the crack. He then pried until the plank snapped in half; Naumkin lost his balance in the break and fell against the wall.
Behind the jagged piece of board awaited impenetrable darkness, the kind of cold soot black of childhood fears and endless night. There were old shadows in the abandoned chocolate factory, shadows that had not been driven away by daylight in almost a century. Why had Nathan Dudley abandoned the factory after getting rid of Lusker? Probably to keep the magic door secret. Naumkin imagined Nathan Dudley returning here to his master, huddling around the Everywhere Door, listening in the dark. Naumkin shuddered.
“We’re really going in there,” Cal said matter-of-factly.
“You can turn back, Cal. Maybe you should. Something’s in there waiting for us. I can feel it.”
“I know. Like all that blackness is just one big pupil. Watching…”
“We forgot to bring a flashlight.”
“Oh shit, Cal said. “What are we going to do?”
From beneath the half-broken wooden plank in the doorway, a shadow seemed to suddenly escape the rest of the darkness. It was snarling, its fur standing on end, eyes flashing crimson. The only way to discern that the broken off piece of attacking gloom had a head was to notice the flash of white fangs in the snapping maw.
Cal was dumbstruck as the dog bounded out from under the door, twisted in midair, and swung its paw like a bobcat. It walloped Naumkin across the face and sent him down into the snow. Instantly it was on the old man. Naumkin protected his face by wedging the barrel of the shotgun sideways into the animal’s mouth.
Cal took aim at the beast, but just before he could pull the trigger, he sensed something behind him and spun around. From across the snowy yard, past the piece of rusty industrial equipment, another dog was charging forward; it would be on Cal in less than five seconds. Without aiming, Cal raised the gun and pulled the rigger. The trigger was stiff. He had it on safety. The dog was one second away, in the air now, mouth a blur of teeth and tongue. In one smooth motion, Cal flicked the safety off, took half a breath, and squeezed. The dog was so close and had so much momentum that it bowled Cal over even as the buckshot turned its face into hamburger. The headless body fell onto Cal and pressed the boy into the snow.
Naumkin screamed in agony as the dog bit into his left forearm and shook its head, trying to grip the appendage right out of Naumkin’s socket. Naumkin had sacrificed the arm for a chance to slip the shotgun beneath the beast. He fired. The shot hit the dog between the legs. The creature released Naumkin’s arm and howled. Naumkin swung the butt of the rifle around and clubbed the dog across the muzzle. The dog rolled into the snow. “It’s not fair,” it said and died.
Naumkin sat against the wall and looked at his arm. His thick coat sleeve was rags and streams of down. Between the coat and the layers of clothing he had on, the damage had been minimized, but four gaping puncture wounds in his flesh bled profusely. Cal got to his feet and went to Naumkin.
“How bad is it?”
“I think it just got into muscle. No major veins.”
“Maybe we should go back.”
“There’s only one dog left now,” Naumkin said.
“There’s still Joost Lusker.”
“We have to try.” Naumkin stood and faced the doorway. He raised his shotgun and blasted what remained of the plank away. They entered the dark. The cement floor beneath their boots was rubbly. Naumkin walked with the shotgun cradled against his chest, his right hand dancing blindly ahead like an ant antenna. Judging from the acoustics, they must have been in a small chamber, like a storage area. Naumkin bumped into a corner as Cal said that he thought he found a door. Naumkin followed Cal’s voice until Cal found the handle. The dim light behind it seemed almost blinding until their eyes adjusted; it quickly cooled to a dim cellar gloom.
The room they currently occupied might have been a storage room a hundred years ago; now it was a gutted hole of rotten wall studs, rusty ceiling pipes, and a floor of broken cement and sand. The door Cal had discovered was nothing but another sheet of plywood hinged in the middle of a two-by-four with a cupboard handle. The two trespassers glanced at one another like thieves, a look that said all at once: be careful, be ready, be there for me.
Naumkin poked his head through the doorway first. He looked out to what must have been the manufacturing floor of the old chocolate factory. The light, dim as it was, cascaded down in gothic beams from the honeycomb of quatrefoiled windows at the half-oval end of the long wide hall. The far wall was lined with huge iron vats and spidery catwalks stalactic with icicles. Some kind of hybrid conveyer-pulley system hung from the high ceilings like a tattered jungle canopy. Down the center of the floor stretched a massive column of rusty gears and alchemical clockwork, Nazi experimental machinery that looked like it was designed to obliterate the earth instead of churn chocolate.
Nathan Dudley and Joost Lusker must have had strange dreams indeed if the design of their sanctum was any indication. What perverse geometries and baroque engineering could have produced such a terrible contraption? It looked like it belonged in a mechanized slaughterhouse, not a maker of Uniquely Flavorsome sweets. Naumkin looked left along the fused pistons and van de Graaff accelerators to the back of the manufacturing floor. Light, as if shining up through shallow water, flickered from the corner through the broken tile floor.
“I don’t see anything. No dogs. No Lusker. There’s a strange light at the far end of the room.”
Cal peered around the door, gave the chamber a once over, and said, “Maybe it’s a trap.”
“Stay here. I’ll see.”
“No, Mr. Naumkin. We’ve come this far together and we’re still alive. I’ll come with you.”
Naumkin sighed and nodded. They ventured out into the heart of the chocolate factory. A sickeningly sweet scent greeted them; the odor of old chocolate still clung to the machinery, the walls, and the vats. Those giant iron pots could hold ten men, even coated in a century’s worth of dirt and rust. The floor tiles cracked beneath Naumkin and Cal’s feet. The sound echoed throughout the hall. Naumkin and his apprentice crunched the floor toward the flickering light, their shotguns raised, caution in each footfall.
“If something goes wrong, Cal, do what you must to get away. Don’t worry about me. You’re young, I’m old.”
The boy nodded but hadn’t really heard what Naumkin had said.
They reached the end of the Nazi chocolate engine and approached the light. The tiles in the corner had crumbled away exposing a narrow staircase that wound down into the aurora borealis.
“It must be down there,” Cal said.
“I think you’re right. Can you feel it?’<
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“Yeah. Like there’s about to be a thunderstorm.”
Naumkin went first, followed on his heels by Cal. The staircase was composed of the same thick piping as the catwalks above. The whole thing wobbled, as if the base had come free of the ground, somewhere deep down where it ended, probably in Stalin’s chomping hellmouth. The light, blinding at first, welcomed them now like a warm bath. They could see through it, like looking through a gauze bandage toward a dying lantern. As they descended, the light dimmed; the time between flashes lengthened until there was nothing illuminating the way except for an eerie phosphorescence that seemed to haunt more than glow. The staircase terminated about ten feet above the floor; it looked like something big had bitten the end off. The staircase bounced violently. Naumkin hung his feet off the jagged metal edge, held for dear life, and let his body drop; he dangled for a moment, then fell to the dirt floor. He stood and helped Cal on his way down. After bushing the dirt off their knees, the trespassers turned and faced the door.
The room they were in was small and had been carved out by hand. The door was set in part of the foundation of the factory, a long rectangle of cast bronze, its crisp edges outlined with Mercury vapor light. There were fifty vignettes in bas-relief upon the door: strangely familiar depictions of fairytales or religions, of fiction or history. Was this the story of a messiah or a fool? Fantastic animals got drunk around a long-bearded figure, and in the next panel had passed out or had been slaughtered. Naumkin tapped the door with the barrel of his rifle.
“It looks like it swings toward us,” Cal said. “You have to turn the handle.”
“There’s a keyhole.”
Naumkin reached forward toward the smooth brass knob, blackened with wear, and turned it. Something distant clanked like a sword hitting granite, followed by a hiss from an opened valve. Naumkin slowly pulled the door open, then covered his eyes with his injured arm from the steady flash of lightning and stars that waited ahead. The light was followed by the drone of what sounded like a billion insects buzzing in a high G#. Naumkin’s mind reeled. He wanted to run away and never leave forever. He snapped back to the present when Cal put his hand on his shoulder.
“Go inside. Maybe it will stop!” Cal shouted.
Naumkin couldn’t hear him, but stepped forward into the din. The instant he crossed the threshold, the light and the drone ceased. The sudden quiet was as painful as the cacophony had been. Cal walked into him. The door shut. On this side, it looked like an old wooden farmhouse door. They looked around. They were in a musty bedroom with an out of shape featherbed. The blankets on the bed were old and knitted, like a Victorian curtain that had fallen from the wall to drape perfectly over the mattress. Across from the bed was a large oval vanity mirror. The light in the room was golden. It was hot and stuffy here. Cal walked across the creaking wooden floor to the window and parted the heavy curtain.
“It looks like a farm,” Cal said.
Naumkin went to the window and looked over Cal’s head. Out the window stretched a dry brown pasture dotted with underfed cows. The sun was low in the sky. The cows swatted at flies with their tails as the sun set over them orange and yellow, the distant trees becoming silhouettes, the golden room heading toward pink before an inevitable plunge into gloom.
Cal looked up to his chess teacher and his eyes widened.
“What’s wrong?” Naumkin asked.
“Look in the mirror.”
Naumkin turned from the window and found the vanity mirror. From his position, he couldn’t see his reflection, only that of the red-orange setting sun and Cal’s surprised face. He approached it and then bent over to look into it. He jumped back and put his hands to his face. Without taking a breath, he looked again into the glass.
He appeared forty years younger. He felt his chin. It was rough with five o’clock shadow. He was wearing a cowboy hat and instead of a shotgun, two holstered six-shooters were at his hips. He looked down at his cowboy boots then again to the mirror. In shedding thirty odd years, he had gained about fifteen pounds of sinewy muscle. He looked like the cowboys he had imagined in the westerns he so loved. He examined his forearm where the dog had bitten him; all that was there were little star-shaped scars.
“You said the medicine man hinted we’d be different down here,” Cal said before looking down at himself.
“Maybe here you just become what you want to be.”
“Or more of what you already are.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why haven’t I changed?” Cal asked.
“Maybe you have. Just in a different way.”
“I don’t feel any different.”
Naumkin removed his hat. He ran his callused fingers through his jet-black hair and then tugged at his leather vest as if testing its actuality. He looked back up to Cal, and gave his best Clint Eastwood squint.
“What are you looking at?” Cal asked, his voice strong and low.
Naumkin whirled the mirror around to face Cal.
“Holy shit…” Cal Burgess said. He was a full-grown man now in a skintight black suit, kung fu shoes, and nunchaku sticks around his neck. “Bitched out!”
“What are you, some kind of ballet dancer?”
“Enter the Dragon!”
“What?”
Cal swung the nunchaku, his arms a blur, his catlike muscles tensing beneath his garb, all the while howling like a crazy person. “Bruce Lee,” Cal said, his eyes sparkly.
“Oh, the karate man.”
“Jeet Kune Do, not karate. Bruce Lee was the greatest martial artist ever,” he said and jumped into the air, kicked, and landed on one foot while his arms struck at imaginary opponents.
“I didn’t know you wanted to be a Judo man.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to be Roy Rogers.”
“We need to stop admiring ourselves and figure out where in the hell we are. What’s so funny?”
“Sorry. It’s just your accent…with the cowboy thing. Sorry.”
Naumkin looked back to the door they had come to.
“Something’s not right.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no light shining from under the door.”
“Maybe it only does the lightshow going in,” Cal suggested.
Naumkin walked to the door they had come through and swung it wide. Behind it hung a couple moth-ridden dresses above several pairs of worn high heels. Naumkin slammed the door shut.
“Where’d it go?” Cal said. “Where’s the chocolate factory basement?”
Naumkin shook his head and muttered, almost inaudible, that he didn’t know.
“Are we trapped?”
“Why do you think I have all the answers?” Naumkin barked.
“Well,” Cal said, looking down at his kung fu shoes, “we better find out where we are.”
They went to the door at the far end of the room. It led to a cramped hallway. Dust motes spun through the air like miniature galaxies and reeled off course in Naumkin and Cal’s wake as they ventured to the top of a rickety wooden staircase.
“We’re in somebody’s house. Like a ranch or something,” Cal said.
“Let’s go down.”
Each step had its own idiosyncratic groan or creak. They reached the bottom of the stairs. Ahead of the staircase was a door that looked like it would lead outside of the house. To the left in an antique cluttered living room sat an old man in overalls. His head was tilted back over the headrest of his chair and he snored lightly while a cat on his lap stared at them. The cat hissed. The man jerked forward and the tabby leapt from his lap and hid beneath a couch in the corner. The old man looked around the room, then settled his gaze upon Naumkin and Cal. He leaned back in his char, his fingers digging into the upholstery. “Who the hell are your?” he cried.
“Sorry, sir. Don’t be afraid. We’re lost.”
The man looked at them, especially at Cal in his black Jeet Kune Do uniform, and shook his head. “You aim to rob me?”
“No. We just need a little help. Please,” Naumkin said.
“Help with what?”
“We’re not exactly sure where we are,” Naumkin said.
The old man stood. “What are you two?”
Cal said, “Chess players.”
“You trying to get to Little Rock?”
“Are we in Arkansas?” Cal asked.
“You two really are lost. Yeah, you’re in Arkansas. About fifty miles south of Little Rock. Where are you from?”
“Never mind that,” Naumkin said. “We’re looking for a girl. She’s been kidnapped.”
“A girl.”
“That’s right,” Naumkin continued. “We’re looking for a maze, a building of some kind with a lot of doors.”
“I don’t know what in Sam Hill you’re talking about.”
“Do you have a car, sir?” Cal asked.
The old man’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Do I have a what?”
“A car,” Cal said. “Transportation. An automobile?”