Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  ‘It’s true.’ There was little point in denying it. The archivist clenched his fists and his teeth at Steve’s confession.

  ‘You are dismissed from your position as my apprentice archivist,’ he said. ‘You are banned from this building for life, and after the election when we have a new Councillor, I will make it my goal to gain access to the secret archive and burn every document inside it.’

  Steve listened to this speech with good-tempered patience. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry I was late this morning.’

  ‘I don’t care about that.’ The archivist’s yellow eyes flashed. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re fired.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know why I took so long to get here?’

  ‘I don’t give a damn.’ The eyes narrowed. ‘All right, why?’

  ‘I was talking to the council secretary. Going through the paperwork.’

  ‘What paperwork?’

  Steve took a photocopied document from his jacket pocket. The archivist snatched it from his hand and scanned it, his eyes flicking back to Steve, until he reached the midpoint of the letter. His pale pink ears flattened against his skull and his nostrils flared. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Steve said. ‘I’m standing for council. And I’m running unopposed. I’m going to be the new Councillor of Te Aro.’

  26

  The campaign

  But Steve did not run unopposed. Two more candidates announced their campaigns later that day and that year’s battle for Te Aro Council was the fiercest in living memory.

  The first of Steve’s opponents to declare was Kim, an eminent imaginary languages poet. Kim was a jolly spherical man with shoulder-length grey hair combed very straight and a long, neatly kept moustache and beard worn in the manner of Confucius. Kim was an eloquent speaker in many languages, but none of them were English or, indeed, any other language or dialect known to anyone else on Earth. His campaign posters consisted of Kim’s beaming face with the slogan ‘Procks! Terples Mas exterples!’ below it in Gothic red lettering.

  Steve was confident he could beat Kim. He spent a whole day touring the local businesses, promising them lighter regulations and tax relief, promises he intended to keep if the council ever gained the power to tax or regulate local business. That evening, he gave a speech in Aro Park. It was well attended by many pigeons and several people.

  ‘People of Te Aro,’ he called across the park. A pigeon cooed and a couple having sex under a nearby tree halted their coitus to listen to him. ‘I promise you something wonderful, the one thing that no one else can possibly offer.’ He hesitated; a gaggle of curious passersby who had stopped to watch waited as he held up his hand and drew out the silence. ‘I give you …’ He touched his fingertips to his chest. ‘Myself. Steve.’ Successful political campaigns had catchy slogans, and now Steve’s voice rose to a roar as he ended his speech with his carefully crafted phrase. ‘I promise you a sensible, friendly Steve for a sensible, friendly future.’

  Scattered applause. Steve bowed and stepped down.

  After the speech he talked to a group of young men who were members of a libertarian commune. They were worried about religious persecution. Steve pledged that under him the council would protect them, but if they voted for someone else he could not guarantee their lives. They shook his hand and pledged their votes and moved on.

  A good day. Steve felt confident. He would defeat Kim and become Te Aro Councillor. He would see inside the secret archive.

  There were four more days until the election.

  He had the rest of his campaign mapped out in his head. Tomorrow he would meet the editor of the Te Aro Community Volunteer Newsletter for coffee and tell them—off the record—that Kim was involved in the Holloway Road scandal that inflicted so much damage on the valley. This wasn’t true—in fact, Steve was heavily involved in the scandal himself—but Kim’s inability to speak English left him defenceless against a smear campaign. Steve rubbed his hands together with glee.

  On his way to the Community Hall to see if the secretary had set a time for the election debate, he stopped outside the council offices. Mounted above the doorway was a board listing the date of the election and the names of the candidates. That morning only Steve’s name was there. Kim’s name had been added at lunchtime. And now there was a third name on the board. A third contender for council. A new opponent.

  They called themself Gorgon.

  ‘It’s an outrage!’

  Steve leaned over the secretary’s desk. The secretary sat in his swivel chair, his face a few centimetres from Steve’s. He was unruffled. ‘I don’t understand your concern, Steve. Gorgon is a legitimate candidate.’

  ‘She’s not real,’ Steve argued. ‘She’s a myth. A monster from the valley’s collective unconscious. The parents of Te Aro use it to frighten their children. “Do your pranayama breathing meditations or Gorgon will get you.” The candidates for Councillor have to be actual living people. It says so right there in the Charter.’ He pointed to the document hanging on the wall behind the secretary’s desk. The seventh clause clearly prohibited fictional or imaginary beings from standing for office.

  ‘But Gorgon is real.’

  ‘Did Gorgon come to this office? Produce a birth certificate? What did they look like?’

  ‘I didn’t handle that registration,’ the secretary replied. ‘The archivist did.’ He pointed to the goat-faced man, who sat at his desk watching the exchange, his hands behind his head, his long thin tongue poking out between his teeth. ‘And he verified Gorgon’s existence, didn’t you, archivist?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Secretary.’ The archivist turned to Steve. ‘Gorgon is real. Verrrry real. You have roused it to anger. Prepare yourselves,’ the archivist warned them both, ‘for fates you cannot imagine and suffering beyond comprehension.’

  ‘You see?’ The secretary clapped his palms on his desk. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s a choice of visions. A contest of ideas. Democracy!’

  Steve needed backers. Powerful allies. He went to the Earthenware Café and entreated with the owner, a powerful member of the valley’s gay and lesbian community, to seek her support.

  ‘I’m sorry, Steve.’ She set an espresso down in front of him and shook her head. ‘I don’t know anything about Gorgon except their name. But in Greek mythology, Gorgon symbolises primal darkness. Mystery. Devouring sexuality. These values speak to my community’s everyday values.’

  ‘I stand for all of those things too,’ Steve pleaded. ‘And I also stand for balanced budgets and sensible solutions.’ But the café owner did not reply. She was pro-Gorgon.

  Three days until the election. Steve got up early. He reminded himself that in politics image was everything, so he brushed his teeth, shaved and dressed. His plan was to go around the local businesses again. Warn them that Gorgon was a radical who would cripple them with regulation, bureaucracy and red tape. There weren’t many business owners in Te Aro, but they were pretty much the only people who actually voted in the elections. So long as Steve had them on his side he’d be fine.

  But when he turned onto Aro Street the first thing he saw was a small crowd gathered around the video store admiring a black spiral spray-painted on the side of the building. Beneath the spiral, dripping black letters spelled: GORGON.

  Steve saw the owner of the video store on the edge of the crowd. He hurried over to him.

  ‘It happened last night,’ the owner explained, pointing at the graffiti. He was a thin man with a bowl of light brown hair hanging down over his face.

  ‘It’s illegal advertising,’ Steve said. ‘Why don’t you clean it off?’

  ‘People seem to like it.’ The owner gestured at the crowd. ‘Maybe it’ll be good for business. Maybe this Gorgon knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘Nobody even knows who Gorgon is,’ Steve protested. ‘Does Gorgon even exist?’

  ‘I grew up here in the valley,’ said an older woman standing beside them. She had g
rey hair and wore a fake fur coat over a sundress. ‘When we were kids, we sang a rhyme about Gorgon. Hide me. Blind me. Or Gorgon will find me.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Steve asked.

  The woman creased her brow. ‘It was something to do with someone who disappeared a long time ago, down in the catacombs.’

  ‘Who disappeared? When?’

  ‘A girl, I think. I don’t remember when. I’m pretty drunk.’

  ‘So what is Gorgon?’

  The video store owner said, ‘When I was a kid, we thought Gorgon was a terrible monster that destroyed everything it encountered. Now, I don’t know much about politics,’ he admitted, ‘but maybe that’s the kind of leader Te Aro needs right now.’

  Steve went home and spent the rest of the morning designing leaflets on his laptop. Decency. Family. Values. These were things that mattered to voters, even in Te Aro. So he Photoshopped a smiling image of himself onto a picture of laughing children and typed beneath it in a large, friendly light-blue font: Safer Sensible Friendly Communities. He had forty pieces of paper left in his printer and no money to buy more, so he printed out forty copies of his image and spent the afternoon wandering the valley looking for houses where families probably lived and slipping his pamphlet into their letterboxes.

  The next morning there were leaflets in every mailbox in Te Aro. Nobody had seen who’d delivered them. They were totally black on both sides. The paper itself felt oddly heavy and cold, and all who touched them experienced headaches and dizziness. Everyone knew they’d come from Gorgon.

  Steve spent most of the day at home. The Te Aro Community Volunteer Newsletter had run a vicious smear story against him alleging his involvement in the controversial Holloway Road scandal. The allegations were sourced to ‘senior staffers’ in the Gorgon campaign.

  ~

  Election day.

  It was the autumnal equinox. There was early-morning frost; ice in the puddles. A chill mist hung about the valley. People saw malign, ominous shapes in the fog, and everyone agreed that this was a good omen for Gorgon.

  Steve spent the day getting the vote. He toured all of the cults that were friendly to him and reminded their leaders to command their disciples to vote Steve, and to do so multiple times. ‘Make them stagger their votes throughout the day so the scrutineers don’t get suspicious.’

  Then the sun set behind the western hills and the polls closed. Steve watched as the council secretary ordered the ballot box to be sealed and led the Grand Druid and the Chief Executive of the Te Aro Anarchist Organisation into his offices to count the votes. Anxiety ate at him. He’d done everything he could to win and committed voter fraud on a massive scale—but would it be enough to defeat Gorgon? He just didn’t know.

  By midnight the Community Hall was filled. A sea of people stretched from wall to wall. Steve and Kim sat on the stage waiting for the result. Gorgon’s chair remained empty.

  Then the council secretary forced his way through the crowd, which hushed when he stood on a chair and waved his arms for silence. He flourished a piece of paper in his hand. ‘The votes have been counted and checked,’ he shouted. ‘And the results are decisive. This was not a narrow win. This was not a comfortable victory. This was a landslide. The new Councillor of Te Aro Community Council is’—he glanced at his piece of paper to double-check—‘Gorgon!’

  Before the crowd could react, a sudden, savage gust of wind shook the building. The double doors at the back of the hall boomed open. The lights flickered and died, plunging the crowd into darkness.

  A red light flared up in the square outside. A man screamed and the whole hall gasped. The stench of smoke and gasoline filled the room as sheets of flames criss-crossed the square, casting a hellish glare on the crowd. From his vantage point on the stage, Steve could see that the fire on the square had a pattern.

  A spiral.

  There was another long moment of shocked silence, then the archivist appeared beside the doorway. The flames danced in his yellow eyes; he gestured at the doorway and the darkness and fire beyond it. ‘Residents of Te Aro,’ he cried out, ‘I give you—Gorgon!’

  The flames surged. The crowd cheered.

  27

  Clues

  Steve took his crowbar from the pocket of his overcoat. He stood on tiptoes and gently smashed in a window in the back wall of the Councillor’s Chamber.

  Steve did not believe in defeat. Yes, he’d lost the election. Technically, if you wanted to split hairs, Gorgon had ‘defeated’ Steve. But why had Steve fought in the election in the first place? To get access to the secret archive. And he could still do that, just not by democratic means. And what better time to act than now, in Gorgon’s moment of triumph when the rest of the council staff were distracted by the post-election celebration and the bonfire in the quad and the screams of people whose hair had caught on fire? Steve cared about knowledge, not political power. Now he would obtain that knowledge, and once he had it he would use it to bring down Gorgon and seize all that power for himself.

  Steve’s crowbar was his most prized possession. It was made of high-carbon steel. It gleamed with a silver-coloured enamel coating. It was the length of his forearm and able to be slipped into the pocket of his overcoat; it was very light, but strong enough to snap doors from their frames like kindling. No psychologist had a better friend than their crowbar. Steve had, in a moment of extravagance, etched the name of his crowbar into its shaft, in an elegant flowing script. Lightbringer.

  He used the curved hook of Lightbringer to clear the last few shards of glass from the frame, then he threw a scrap of carpet over the rim and hauled himself into the chamber.

  He kept low. Holes in the curtains looked directly out on the quad, where celebrating Te Aro residents danced around the spiral-shaped fire, howling and screaming with abandon.

  He crawled across the dusty carpet to the corner of the room. He wedged Lightbringer between the closet door and its frame and gave an expert twist. The door popped open, revealing the cowboy uniforms. He could just make out the bulge where the filing cabinet was hidden. Lightbringer would make short work of its lock: then the secret archive would be his, and finally, he would have answers. He’d solve the mystery of Ogilvy. Of Threshold. Of the plot against reality. And he’d know what happened in 1974.

  He parted the cowboy outfits. The cabinet was there, but the steel around the combination lock was buckled. It had been forced.

  Steve was too late. The filing drawers were empty. The archive had already been stolen.

  The secretary frowned. ‘Stolen by whom?’

  Steve stood in the door to the Councillor’s Chamber, looking at the broken window and the smashed, empty filing cabinet. Steve stood behind him. ‘Stolen by the archivist,’ he replied.

  ‘The archivist? Impossible. He knows the Charter forbids entry to this room.’

  Steve whispered in the secretary’s ear. ‘I saw him. I happened to be wandering behind the building, and I witnessed the archivist smash the window with a crowbar and climb inside. That’s when I came to get you.’

  The fire in the quad was out and all the revellers were gone. It was just Steve, the secretary, and Kim, the other failed election candidate, who stood beside Steve and said sadly, ‘Bretec quagnet.’

  ‘I don’t understand this.’ The secretary looked tired. Lost. ‘Why would the archivist break in through the window? He has a key.’

  ‘That’s the genius of it,’ Steve countered. ‘If he’d used the key to get in, we’d have known it was him. He didn’t, so we don’t, and that’s how we can be sure it was.’

  ‘Yes, that makes perfect sense. But what did he take?’

  ‘A secret archive,’ Steve explained. ‘Documents removed from the old archive and hidden in the Councillor’s cabinet. I believe these documents are proof of a sinister plot within this valley.’

  ‘But he’s the archivist,’ the secretary replied. ‘Why would he steal the secret archive? And why tonight?’

  ‘Let�
�s find out,’ Steve replied. ‘We’ll hunt him down.’

  ‘I can’t hunt anyone down. I have to stay here and wait for Gorgon. He or she is now the rightfully elected Councillor of Te Aro.’

  ‘There is no Gorgon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vertek?’ Kim looked astonished.

  ‘It’s a conspiracy,’ Steve explained. ‘A plot. The archivist is in on it. So was the old Councillor. Something happened in this valley in 1974. All evidence of it was removed from the archive and hidden in here. The archivist knew I was looking for it, and that if I won the election I’d uncover the plot. So he created a fake candidate to run against me and used Gorgon’s strong brand recognition as an evil mythological creature to trick the people into voting for it. That’s why Gorgon hasn’t appeared to celebrate its victory. Because it doesn’t exist. So let’s search the archivist’s desk.’

  The secretary looked bewildered. ‘For what?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Steve replied. ‘But whatever we find is bound to be incriminating.’

  The drawer sprang open in a shower of wood splinters.

  Steve used the tip of his crowbar to search through the debris inside it. The secretary gave Lightbringer a funny look. ‘Why did you have that in your pocket?’