The Door to Lost Pages

by Claude Lalumiere

  ChiZine Publications

  FIRST EDITION

  Introduction © 2011 by Paul Di Filippo

  The Door to Lost Pages © 2011 by Claude Lalumière

  Cover artwork © 2010 by Erik Mohr

  Cover illustrations © 2011 by Astrid Mohr and Estelle Mohr

  Cover design © 2011 by Corey Beep

  All Rights Reserved.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Lalumière, Claude

  The Door to Lost Page / Claude Lalumière.

  eISBN 978-1-926851-39-6

  I. Title.

  PS8626.U7515N36 2011 C813'.6 C2010-907280-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Toronto, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  info@chizinepub.com

  Edited and copyedited by Helen Marshall

  Proofread by Samantha Beiko

  Converted to mobipocket and epub by Ryan McFadden http://ryanmcfadden.com

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  dedication

  For Paul Di Filippo, friend and fellow dreamer, who let me steal the title of his collection Lost Pages.

  For Elise Moser, who was there at the birth of the Lost Pages series, offering invaluable support and criticism, and stuck it out through many incarnations and revisions.

  For David Pringle, publisher and editor extraordinaire of Interzone from 1982 to 2004. The fiction and authors published during David Pringle’s groundbreaking tenure on Interzone had a profound impact on my imagination. That body of literature was an essential landmark in my journey as a writer. In addition, David was the first editor to publish my fiction (“Bestial Acts,” in 2002, which would eventually become chapter 1 of The Door to Lost Pages); he also published “Dregs” (chapter 3 of this book) and “A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens” (which appears in my collection Objects of Worship). Appearing three times in my favourite run of any fiction magazine ever was a dream come true.

  For Miss, Yoda, Golem, Goblin, Kirby, and Konrad; their bestial acts taught me to be a better animal.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction: His Back Pages, by Paul Di Filippo

  Prologue: Fuel for the Dark Dreams of Yamesh-Lot

  1. Bestial Acts

  2. Let Evil Beware!

  3. Dregs

  4. Dark Tendrils

  5. Lost Girls

  Coda: The Lost and Found of Years

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  His Back Pages

  by Paul Di Filippo

  When I read and reread the erotic, wise, comic, tragic, passionate, surprising fabulations contained—barely contained!—between the covers of this book, I invariably hear a ghostly accompaniment, that lyrical, endearing croak-warble-whine famous throughout our postmodern world: Bob Dylan, a young Bob Dylan, only twenty-three years old at the time in 1964, singing “My Back Pages,” with its famous refrain: “Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now.”

  The stories that comprise this novella—all con-nected, distally or centrally, to a mystical, mythical (mythical?) used-book store called Lost Pages—embody that oxymoronic, Zen nugget of self-observation by Dylan.

  Pretence and pretentiousness, self-consciousness and self-importance, “seriousness,” and “maturity,” judgmentalism and dogmatism—these so-called “adult” qualities are not the true mark of wisdom or experience in the deep ways of the world. They are instead too often the overreaching, desperately grasping strategies of adolescents and young adults who have forgotten the clear knowledge of pure childhood, but also have not yet attained the hard-won, never-guaranteed insights of older years, which in many ways resemble that selfsame childlike cosmic certitude.

  In The Door to Lost Pages, Claude Lalumière is intent on showing us that access to one’s own heart and soul—and to the coterminous joys of the universe—involves putting down preconceptions and prejudices inherited and inculcated as we age, and returning to the primal source of all wisdom.

  The primal source of all wisdom. Symbolized by a shabby, tatty, musty retail establishment named Lost Pages? The omphalos of the multiverse hiding behind the flaking paint of an innocuous storefront? Secrets of true happiness contained in yellowing pages of pulpy or hermetical texts?

  Why not? You see, that’s the kind of hidebound thinking you have to discard, if you ever want admission to the elect fraternity of homo ludens.

  In “Bestial Acts,” our introduction to this milieu, we witness a kind of lineage transmission, as the current elderly owner of Lost Pages passes on his mantle to Lucas, who has in his own autodidactic way outfitted himself for his new role. Lucas in turn takes the orphaned-by-choice girl Aydee under his wing. Together, they will serve the community of their like-minded peers, of whatever age and race and condition.

  We see one of these fellow travelers next in “Let Evil Beware!” Only a child to the world’s eyes, Billy is in reality one of the props on which the safety of our world depends.

  In “Dregs,” our protagonist stubbornly and fearfully resists for a long time the offered transfor-mations that will enhance his native qualities of open-mindedness and curiosity, until a purchase from Lost Pages sets him straight. Or does it? Lalumière never fails to acknowledge that resistance to enlightenment and the potential for backsliding are always possible in the less-than-perfect human realm.

  “Dark Tendrils” is one of the few instances where such a failure happens, as missteps are taken and warnings unheeded. It’s the necessary black obverse to the ultimately triumphant sense of redemption.

  In “Lost Girls,” even the wise ones—Aydee in particular—are shown to be utilizing less than their full potential, needing a kickstart to the next plateau in the ceaseless quest for nirvana on Earth.

  And finally, “The Lost and Found of Years” puts a classy metatextual spin on the whole package, as author meets creation.

  But to say that all these stories embody a similar worldview or set of lessons is not to proclaim them programmatic or tendentious or preachy. Far from it! This fine little book is not some New Age self-help manual: it’s involving fiction of the most intimate and passionate stripe!

  Claude Lalumière is an adept of prose. His sentences are sprightly and always surprising. His sense of structure is admirable. He plays deftly with horror tropes, fantasy tropes, SF tropes. One minute he’s channelling Lord Dunsany, the next Charles de Lint, John Crowley, or Jeff VanderMeer—peers, but possessed of different voices from Lalumière’s own unique tones. He braids clues and motifs into a shimmering tapestry. (Just count the sly occurrences of “green, blue, and brown,” the colours of a mythical deity.) His characters stalk or dance across the pages, fully alive and palpable.

  Additionally, in a smallish but important way, Claude Lalumière is not only a universal author but a regional writer. His native Canada, specifically the city of Montreal, is as much a player in these stories as the people, even when not specifically named. There’s some numinous element of these tales that acts as a counterbalance to the hegemony of US fantasy trilogies. We are hearing a voice literally from beyond the lands we (we American readers) know.

  I have the honour of being one of the dedicatees of this volume (and even of being namechecked in a story!). It’
s an honour that causes me to smile with great happiness, to resolve to be worthy of such a dedication, to live up to the ideals on exhibit herein.

  I’m still searching for ways to be younger, for the door to Lost Pages myself!

  Prologue

  Fuel for the Dark Dreams of Yamesh-Lot

  It is said, in one version of the tale, that in those days humanity had taken to burying its dead in the ground. No longer did the people surrender the corpses of their loved ones to the Green Blue and Brown God’s acolytes, who would then offer the bodies to their God.

  And so did Yamesh-Lot begin harvesting the dead.

  From deep in the pit at the heart of the world, Yamesh-Lot’s tendrils burrowed into the earth—far beneath the Godmoat that shielded the world from his darkness—and then back up again, near the surface, careful to avoid the Godpools and the network of underground rivers that connected them. He sought out corpses, found them, wrapped his tendrils around them, and pulled them to him.

  Yamesh-Lot poured a portion of his dark essence into each. The corpses grew new eyes: ebony orbs that marked the lifeless, reanimated husks as his.

  The enslaved corpses marched toward the subterranean Moon, which rested on its earthen cupule, shielded in the depths of the dark abyss from the ravages of sunlight. They climbed onto the Moon, and there they laboured for their master. Their fragile bodies could not withstand for very long the grind inflicted upon them. Fresh workers were constantly needed.

  The workers extracted from the Moon’s bowels an ore that Yamesh-Lot forged into weapons: ebony swords that cut through any light and withstood contact with the Green Blue and Brown God’s holy waters. He had long envied the swords with which the Shifpan-Shap—those warriors of the Green Blue and Brown God—attacked his nightmare hordes; the dark god’s soldiers were too insubstantial to carry such heavy instruments and were thus unable to fight back effectively.

  Once the Moon had been stripped bare, Yamesh-Lot raised an undead army that, moonswords in hand, rampaged through the mortal lands of the Green Blue and Brown God while, in the sky, the Shifpan-Shap were occupied by their nightly struggle against the dark god’s legions of nightmares. There was a scourge upon the lands as people were set upon by the corpses of their former neighbours, families, and lovers. The world was blanketed by human screams; but even that could not stir the Green Blue and Brown God to intervene directly.

  When the moonswords pierced skin and touched human blood, Yamesh-Lot’s nightmares finally found a path to the world of dreams. Thus did Yamesh-Lot’s tendrils of fear and dread slither into the minds of humanity; finally, the dark god fed on the sweet essence of living mortals; it was a delicacy whose smell had long teased him with its succulent aroma.

  But there are other versions, other stories, other outcomes, other delusions, other myths. . . .

  Chapter 1 - Bestial Acts

  Now, most of the time, Aydee has no reason to think of the man and the woman. Occasionally, she spots someone walking down the street who for some reason or other—a piece of clothing, a hairstyle, a frown—sparks an unpleasant memory. These are not unwelcome incidents. They remind her that the man and the woman are nothing but a memory to her, that she has succeeded in stepping into another life.

  Aydee: that was her secret name, the one she’d given herself. No-one knew of it, especially not the man and the woman who’d given her that other name when she was born.

  For the first ten years of her life, Aydee lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with that man and that woman. The man made good money. He had a job that required him to wear a suit and tie—he sold something or other, stocks, buildings, insurance, whatever. He shaved every morning, except for the moustache that was much too big for his small face.

  Most of the money from the man’s job went into business suits and cocaine. The man and the woman rarely slept, rarely ate, and rarely thought of food at all. Occasionally, the man or the woman would order pizza or bring home TV dinners. Even then, she wouldn’t get enough to satisfy her appetite.

  The woman had the habit of letting small change accumulate at the bottom of the cutlery drawer. Aydee would pilfer it in order to buy lunch at school. Aydee didn’t know if the woman noticed that Aydee took that money. Aydee was always careful to leave enough change in the drawer so that it would look undisturbed. Still, she sometimes had enough left over to buy a snack on the way back from school.

  Most weekends, the woman would get on the bus to see her mother and bring Aydee along. Aydee and the woman rarely exchanged even a word during these bus rides. Aydee passed the time reading off the street signs, like a countdown to armageddon.

  Fat and mean-mouthed, the woman’s mother chain-smoked so carelessly that she often had at least two cigarettes going. Every time they visited, the old crone would spew hatred from the moment they stepped in the door to when they left. She’d start with that “no good husband” of her daughter’s. Always the same litany: “Did you have to marry one of them? They look at you, and all they see is a slave, you know. That’s all they’ll ever see.” Then she moved on to immigrants, neighbours, family . . . she never ran out of spite. While the old crone ranted at the younger woman about this and that, she would serve Aydee platefuls of food: tomato-lettuce sandwiches, homemade cookies and doughnuts, fried eggs and bacon, chicken noodle soup, fruit salad, chicken with gravy, meat pie, apple crumble . . . There was cigarette ash in every mouthful. Still, Aydee ate. The old woman, chiding her daughter for Aydee’s thinness, would always insist that they take some food back with them—but that invariably angered the younger woman, who screamed back that she knew how to take care of the girl. It was an argument that the old woman always lost. Aydee knew the old woman didn’t really care about her. All she wanted was to dominate her daughter. Aydee was just the most convenient weapon. Every visit resulted in the same fight.

  On weekdays, while the man was away at his job, the woman would spend the whole day cleaning, working herself into white-hot rages at the dust and grime that constantly undermined her efforts at spotless cleanliness. She shouted at the dirt in the corners; she screamed at the smudges on the floors; she hissed at the mildew on the bathroom tiles. She could not abide the slightest smear or dust. The apartment reeked of disinfectant. The woman fuelled her fastidious campaigns with a constant stream of cocaine and jumbo bottles of cola.

  Aydee had taught herself to be meticulously clean and tidy. Thus, for better and for worse, Aydee was ignored, invisible.

  On her tenth birthday, like most nights, the man and the woman were sitting on the living-room couch, watching television with the sound on loud. The one bedroom in that apartment was the bedroom of the man and the woman: a strictly forbidden zone. Aydee was allowed to sleep on the couch, but, often, she was forced to seek refuge in the bathroom. She would take off her shoes and lie down in the tub, inhaling the fumes of the various cleaning products the woman used to keep it sparkling white. That night, though, she just stood in the living room, between the couch and the door, watching the man and the woman. Waiting. Waiting for nothing.

  The man was drinking beer; the woman, cola. It was past midnight; the bowl of cocaine on the coffee table was half full. They would still be up for hours, Aydee knew. They might even stay up all night. She was hungry and tired. In the fridge, scrubbed to an immaculate white inside and out, there were only more big plastic bottles of cola and cans of beer. She had tried to drink these before, but the beer smelled like piss and the soft drink felt like exploding sludge.

  Her heart was a tight mess of knots, a heavy weight in her chest. She didn’t cry. She never cried.

  She was hungry. She was tired. Enough; she’d had enough. There was nothing for her here.

  She was ten years old, now. She didn’t need to sneak out.

  Once, I was a ten-year-old boy. Father. Mother. No siblings. No pets. I begged again and again to get a dog or a cat. But my folks were firm on this one. Mom hated animals. She was scared. People can be so stupid.

&n
bsp; The best thing my folks ever did for me was leave me alone. On days when there was no school—the whole summer in fact—I’d wander around the city, and sometimes even a bit beyond. Walking. Riding my bike. Taking the bus. Getting on the subway. The city itself was my best friend.

  I never made any friends at school. I wasn’t picked on either. I was weird, but invisible. I’d learned early on to keep my weirdness to myself. I still remember the first time my mom pleaded with me to act normal, to stop embarrassing her by saying weird things no-one understood. I was only three years old. She didn’t threaten me, but the more she nagged me the less connected I felt not only to her but to everything around me, the more I retreated into my imagination. What was it about me that caused her so much distress? Was I really that different from the other kids?

  It probably took her and my dad a bit over a year to begin to suspect how far I was roaming. They thought I was just playing outside—in the alley, or in the park down the street.

  They made a big fuss at first. They yelled at me, something they rarely did. They made some sort of half-hearted attempt to restrict my comings and goings. For a few weeks they diligently watched over me. They demanded a strict accounting of my time. I was furious for a couple of days, mainly at the realization that they could exert such authority over me. I figured they couldn’t keep that up for very long. I was right. It was clearly more taxing for them than for me.

  That was around the time I turned ten. Around the same time I discovered books. Looking at me now, you’d think I’d dropped from my mother’s womb right onto a messy pile of old, lurid paperbacks and arcane leatherbound tomes. But there were no books in the house I grew up in. The only books I remember from my early childhood are schoolbooks and dictionaries. Except . . . in fourth grade, there was an incomplete set of an old, battered encyclopaedia on top of an old filing cabinet in the back of the classroom.