The Door to Lost Pages

by Claude Lalumiere

  “What is this?” Kurt shouted to the bookseller, waving the book in his face.

  The bookseller stayed calm. He asked Kurt, “You know that man on the cover?”

  Kurt glared at him, unable to speak, not knowing what to say. One of the dogs sniffed him; Kurt glared at it, too, and it left him alone.

  “You’re in serious danger,” the bearish man warned Kurt. “He worships Yamesh-Lot, the lord of nightmares. He collects sacrifices for his god.”

  “Nightmares? Sacrifices?”

  The man looked into Kurt’s eyes, considered what he saw. “Aqtuqsi,” he said.

  “What?” Kurt couldn’t wrap his tongue around the unfamiliar syllables.

  The man called out, “Aydee,” and a teenage girl with creamy brown skin and long, multicoloured braids emerged from the back of the store. “Can you get me that book on aqtuqsi?” She quickly zeroed in on the book in question, as if she knew the location of every speck of dust in that chaotic mess. The bookseller nodded toward Kurt, and she handed him the book.

  The book was a tiny hardback with dark blue cardboard covers. On the front was a brown-coloured relief of a sleeping man enveloped in a radiating glow. In blue, the word “Aqtuqsi” was printed below the illustration.

  The girl said, “About time you came by.”

  For the first time, Kurt remembered her. From the party: touching his wrist; whispering Giovanni’s name into his ear.

  The bookseller said, “We can help you.”

  What the fuck?

  Still holding both books, Kurt ran outside before either of them could say anything else. His heart pounded in his chest. Sweat ran down his face. He thought, Those people. They were screwing with me. How do they know about me? Giovanni. This has to be part of Giovanni’s game, whatever that is. Yamesh-Lot? What nonsense. How gullible do they think I am?

  Kurt stopped running and caught his breath. He oriented himself and headed over to The Small Easy, his favourite 24-hour joint. He downed his first cup of hot coffee like it was water.

  Sipping his refill, he examined the book with Giovanni’s face on the cover; it really was entirely written in some weird, unfamiliar language. Kurt turned to the other book. This was it: the explanation for what had been plaguing him. Aqtuqsi, an Inuktitut word that translated roughly as “my nightmare”: a supernatural attack by a spirit or sorcerer that paralyzed the body by preying on the mind when it was at its weakest. The phenomenon was known in other cultures under various names—the Chinese called it gui ya, ghost oppression; for the Japanese, it was kanashibari; in the West Indies, the term was kokma; people in Newfoundland named it old hag, because the most common variant there involved hallucinating that an old witch was sitting on your chest; even science had a name for it: sleep paralysis—but, this book said, only Inuit shamans had developed defenses against it.

  Kurt read that sorcerers, if they held an object that once belonged to you (the stronger the emotional bond to the object, the better), could weave a spell that would constantly gnaw on your mind, thus making you more vulnerable to aqtuqsi. The different chapters included testimonies; a history; a taxonomy of different kinds of aqtuqsi, cataloguing their level of threat or danger; ways to protect yourself; and explanations about the power beyond the threshold. It was all in the book. Everything that had been happening to him, explained. Except why—if only he could decipher the other book, the one about Giovanni. That was the real key.

  Drinking his third cup of coffee, Kurt caught himself almost drowsing, but he shook his head, willing himself to stay awake. When he looked up, Giovanni was sitting at his table, across from him, snickering. Without thinking, Kurt threw a punch at him. As soon as his fist reached Giovanni’s face, his image vanished, and there was nothing left behind. Hitting emptiness upset Kurt’s balance. He fell from the chair, his chest hitting the edge of the table. The table rocked, and the mug crashed to the floor, scattering shards of china all over the floor and splattering coffee everywhere.

  Sprawled on his back, Kurt shut his eyes for only a second. And opened them to a nightmare.

  Everyone in the café had been transformed into demonic creatures so dark that they seemed to consume the light around them. They converged on Kurt, but, as in his nightmares, he was paralyzed, unable even to scream.

  Their hands penetrated Kurt’s flesh, and he felt his innards and his veins being sucked dry. The more he was drained, the lighter he felt. Suddenly, his immaterial self shot up toward the ceiling while the dark monsters continued to feed on his body. As he was about to collide with the ceiling, or perhaps pass through it, Kurt emerged screaming from the aqtuqsi to find himself lying on the floor of The Small Easy.

  The waitress stood over him, asking him questions, but he couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying. Patrons were staring at him, their arms sternly crossed across their chests.

  Kurt shouted, “Where are my books? The two books I came in with?” He shot to his feet, knocked people aside, searching frantically through the café.

  He couldn’t find the books.

  Hands clutched at him, trying to restrain him. He shouted, “I have to find those books.” Tears of rage and desperation ran down his face. The books were nowhere. He struggled free and ran outside.

  He ran all the way back to Lost Pages. To confront those people? To ask for help? He didn’t know; he couldn’t think.

  But the store wasn’t there anymore. In its place was a laundromat. Kurt was sure that he was on the right street, at the right address. He was certain. He dug through his pockets, but he couldn’t find the bookmark anymore.

  Tired and confused, Kurt walked back home. Holly had already left for work. Kurt was too weirded out, too terrified, to go to work or to call Holly or to do anything besides drink coffee. And more coffee. Anything to stay awake. Going to sleep would make him too vulnerable.

  It was late when Holly finally came home. She took one look at Kurt and immediately acted concerned. Kurt felt too addled to continue facing this on his own. He told her about the recent rash of nightmares, Lost Pages, aqtuqsi, Yamesh-Lot, the books, finding the girl from the party, Giovanni’s attack, the bookshop’s disappearance—everything.

  She listened, but she grew distracted, almost as if Kurt were relaying information she already knew. As he related his story, Kurt’s paranoia kept increasing, especially in regards to Holly. When Kurt finished his story, he couldn’t even look at Holly anymore. They sat awkwardly, in silence, like strangers.

  She broke the silence. “I’ve been plagued by a recurring nightmare, too. It’s not exactly like yours, though.”

  Kurt didn’t look at her while she spoke. He knew he would only sneer. He didn’t believe her. He realized he hadn’t believed her for a long time. Since Giovanni had come between them.

  She continued, “I didn’t want to tell you. You seemed to be having such a hard time. I didn’t want to make things worse between us by saying anything that might evoke Giovanni or what he’d done to us.”

  As if Giovanni’s shadow weren’t always there, a dark impenetrable barrier that forever kept them apart. As if her mere presence weren’t reminder enough.

  Holly recited her dream: “My dreams are haunted by a god of pure darkness. It doesn’t matter what I dream about—childhood, sex, weird adventures, eating—at some point, the god manifests itself. The god is infinitely huge and yet standing right next to me. Dark tendrils shoot out of it and penetrate my body. The god feeds on me, drains me, while I go about my dream. I thought it was just a bad nightmare, some leftover from my guilt about Giovanni, my fear of him.” At first, Holly’s tone was blank, as if she were remembering lines rather than something she had experienced, but gradually a note of dread crept into her voice. “But now I realize it’s something more. Something more ominous. What that bookstore guy said about sacrifices . . . that’s what my nightmares feel like. Like I’m being offered to that thing, that god.”

  Kurt didn’t know how to react. He wanted to protect Holly. For a
moment, he loved her again, as deeply as he used to. He wanted to, needed to trust Holly, to feel closer to her for having opened up to him. But then the suspicion that it was all a lie, that she was still Giovanni’s pawn, resurfaced.

  She said, “Let’s get this over with. I know where Giovanni lives. Let’s confront him and tell him we’re not afraid of his tricks anymore.”

  With that call to action, all of a sudden, Kurt’s doubts vanished. He admired Holly, her courage to face up to Giovanni, when he’d only ever been a passive coward. Kurt didn’t feel as brave as she did, but he yearned to be swept up in the wake of her courage. “You’re right,” he said. “We should have done that in the first place. He’s just a little creep. A coward who hides behind all this magic mumbo-jumbo.”

  Giovanni was at the heart of too much darkness in Kurt’s past. The idea of confronting him made Kurt queasy, but passively letting Giovanni terrorize him was worse. Both Kurt and Holly had succumbed to him before. But now they were forewarned. And they were together, and stronger for it.

  Holly kissed Kurt. Squeezing his hand, her lips brushing his earlobe, she said, “Let’s go. Now. Let’s make him scared of us for a change.”

  They fuelled up on coffee. They needed the buzz, the extra adrenaline. Neither of them said what was foremost in Kurt’s mind: that they could no longer trust their lives to sleep, that they might never be able to again. And Kurt was utterly exhausted.

  They called a cab. They had no plan, but Kurt was determined to push this as far as they had to, uncertain of what, exactly, that could entail.

  The cab was waiting for them as they stepped outside. They climbed in the back seat, and Holly called out the address to the driver.

  The cab reeked of incense . . . pungent and nauseating. As the car started, Kurt was suddenly overwhelmed with drowsiness. He turned to look at Holly; but it was no longer Holly who sat next to him. His eyes locked with the mocking leer of her demonic doppelganger.

  Kurt yelled at the driver to stop, to open the windows. But the cabby ignored him.

  The demon Holly murmured Kurt’s name in an electrified, distorted voice. Again Kurt screamed at the driver, again with no response. Kurt tried the door, but it was locked and he couldn’t get it open.

  Kurt struggled to stay awake. As his eyes closed, dark serpentine shapes oozed out of Holly’s demonic body and converged on him.

  In Kurt’s aqtuqsi, he was lying at home, in the bed he shared with Holly. Next to him was Holly’s demonic doppelganger. She looked more deformed than in any previous episode, her skin peeling off, her perfectly black eyes glowing menacingly.

  Kurt thought: None of this is real. It can’t be. But it didn’t stop him from being terrified.

  He tried to break free, to shake himself awake. But the invisible cocoon sizzled, burning his skin, keeping him restrained. Crushing him.

  A fiery black tongue slithered out of the demonic Holly’s mouth and licked his cheek, searing off the flesh. The monstrous parody of Holly metamorphosed into Giovanni.

  Kurt opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His own scream filled up his throat, choking him.

  With no further preamble, Kurt was torn from his body. His ascension dragged on for an eternity. The menace seeping from the ceiling filled him with increasing terror. Suddenly, he was only millimetres away from crossing that threshold.

  With all his will, he tried to scream, to shake himself awake, to call out to Holly. The real Holly. He wondered if she was still alive. Or how long ago she might have been sacrificed to Giovanni’s god.

  And the image of that star from his childhood filled his mind—that rock Giovanni stole from him. He mourned the future it had promised him. He held on to that memory, made it glow as brightly as he could, believing it might be the only thing that could save him. But, despite himself, it dimmed until it became so dark he could not even remember what he was trying so hard to hold on to.

  Giovanni laughed at him. Gloating.

  As Kurt passed through the ceiling, dark tendrils wrapped themselves around him.

  Chapter 5 - Lost Girls

  It’s obvious to Sandra that Aydee feels like she doesn’t belong here. Aydee, wrapped in layers of tattered and dirty clothes, wearing a tuque thattries hard to hide her face, fidgets nervously while she recounts the latest adventures of her “other self.” Sandra begins to regret bringing her inside.

  It’s only midmorning; The Small Easy isn’t very busy yet. Sandra—petite, extravagantly tattooed, fashionably underdressed—is sitting with Aydee at a table that looks out onto the street. Their muffins and coffee arrive. Sandra thinks the waitress is kind of cute: plump, friendly, frizzy-haired, sporting a nose ring.

  Sandra expects Aydee to resume her story, but Aydee’s attention has wandered. Russet—a brown mutt nearly as tall as a Great Dane but with the robust musculature of a Rottweiler—stares at her through the glass, one paw held up against the window. Aydee matches the dog’s gesture.

  There’s a slight drizzle today, and the year’s first hint of autumn chills the air. Sandra had insisted that they come inside. Aydee reluctantly agreed after Sandra suggested they could sit by the window to keep an eye on Russet. Aydee dislikes leaving him alone outside; even more so recently. Dogs are being found stabbed, murdered, and the city isn’t doing anything about it.

  Aydee sips her coffee silently, while Sandra thinks about today’s story—some intricate yarn about Aydee’s alter ego helping a group of time-lost prehistoric proto-humans find their deity, the Green Blue and Brown God—a primordial “god of life”—one among the several outlandish recurring characters in Aydee’s fabrications. Sandra wants to prompt her to continue, but she hesitates. Poor crazy Aydee and her crazy stories, thinks Sandra, yet she’s nevertheless fascinated by Aydee’s imagination. Those weird stories of ancient tomes, powerful gods, and outrageous monsters excite Sandra—they sometimes seem more real to Sandra than her own dead-end life. She feels guilty about indulging, maybe even encouraging, Aydee in these delusions, but what else is she to do—ignore her?

  As Aydee tells it, on the evening of her tenth birthday, she, hopelessly lonely and with nowhere to go, walked away from her abusive parents. She’s been living on the street ever since. She believes that when she fell asleep in an alley that night, she was split into two people. The other Aydee had awoken to find herself rescued by a giant lioness—“the god of lost children”— only to be flung in the middle of an eternal conflict between the supposedly benevolent Green Blue and Brown God and Yamesh-Lot, a violent, amorphous god of darkness, which led her to discover a strange bookshop called Lost Pages. She ended up being more or less adopted by the shopkeeper, living with him and his many dogs, and apprenticing at the shop. Lost Pages is at the centre of Aydee’s fantasy life, and Sandra’s been seduced by the allure of this surreal bookshop: its inventory of arcane books that can’t be found anywhere else; its knack for attracting—and helping—people (and other creatures) who are desperately lost.

  Aydee breaks her muffin in two, slipping half of it into a coat pocket. “Gotta keep some for Russet,” Aydee says, responding to Sandra’s inquisitive stare, and then falls abruptly silent again.

  Sandra feels selfish—she’s already wolfed down her own muffin in three hurried mouthfuls—and wishes she could afford more food, but she barely has enough money to leave a tip. She should get a better-paying job, but together she and the boys make enough to get by; being a twenty-year-old high-school dropout with no special skills limits her options. Cleaning up the tattoo shop isn’t exactly stimulating, but at least, in addition to the under-the-table slave wage, she gets her tattoos done free.

  Recently she’s been thinking of moving out on her own. For that she’d need more money, though. Tom’s mood swings are getting worse all the time; he’s too focused on scoring drugs every night, and she’s fed up with that scene. And, as sweet as Kevin can be to her, because of his paranoia about “strangers” they don’t make other friends. It’s the thre
e of them against the world—only she doesn’t believe that anymore.

  She’s never told them about Aydee; they would neither understand nor approve.

  Some days, Aydee is cheerful, wrapped up in the magical life of her alter ego or simply enjoying Russet’s company, but today Sandra can see that Aydee is having a rough time. She’s distracted and nervous, and not just about leaving Russet outside.

  Aydee starts crying. At first Sandra is too shocked to react, but then she reaches out and squeezes Aydee’s wrist.

  “Why did I wake up in that filthy alley? There’s no Lost Pages. Not for me. I wish that other Aydee would come and rescue me. She’s a hero, she really is. She helps people who think they have no place in the world find where they belong. I wish she’d be my hero. She runs Lost Pages now. She’s strong and beautiful, with her hair braided and beaded and her skin as smooth as a baby’s. Not like me.” Aydee disentangles her wrist from Sandra’s fingers and wipes her runny nose. “But we’re still connected! I know everything that happens to her! She has to know about me! Why doesn’t she come and find me, so I can be safe, too? Me and Russet. She has to find us some day. She has to!” Aydee glances outside at Russet, who is steadfastly focused on her. “It’s getting cold again.” She pauses. “I don’t know if I can take another winter.”

  Not for the first time, Sandra wonders about Aydee’s age. When she noticed her last February, begging on the street with her dog on the coldest day of the year, Sandra had assumed from her weathered face and scraggly voice that she must be around fifty. She’s so frail and withered, but there’s something about her features—the delicately small ears and nose, for example—that makes Sandra think Aydee might be closer to thirty, maybe even younger. Whenever Sandra asks, Aydee always answers, “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve lost track.”

  The boys are sleeping off whatever shit was in the pills Tom brought home last night. To avoid them both, especially after that hateful quarrel, Sandra bunked on the couch, even though she hates sleeping alone.