by S. T. Joshi
There were no doors or stairs or ladders though.
“Up through there,” the estate agent said, pointing upwards to a trapdoor in the ceiling. He set off climbing up the accumulated junk, the clipboard in his mouth, his arms and legs moving slowly but surely. He moved like a four-legged spider. Soon enough he had opened the trapdoor and his sweaty head had disappeared through it, followed by the rest of his body. Neil went up after him, and I followed.
The replacement attic really was like an attic, complete with skylights. Not that the skylights let much light in—the mist out there looked thick.
The attic was one long room—really long, actually—carpeted with offcuts. It looked as if it were split-level, in a sense, with the roof being significantly lower in one half of the room. In that suspended wall, there was a door.
“What you see is what you get, with this room,” the estate agent said. “Let’s carry on up.” He moved a set of stepladders into the middle of the room and made his way, somewhat wobblily, up to the suspended door. This whole structure—the room that seemed to hang from the roof—appeared to be made entirely of wood. I couldn’t see how it was supported, unless it was built into the walls of this replacement attic, but given that even that was an appendage, I couldn’t imagine that any of this was very secure. I lightly tapped the floor—the roof, originally—with my right foot.
“Are all of these extensions legal?” I asked.
“Of course!” the estate agent said. But he didn’t elaborate. I resolved to investigate that more fully, after the viewing.
We followed him up the stepladders.
What I had taken to be a kind of subsidiary loft turned out to be something much more alarming. Once the estate agent had got through the door and we’d all stepped through, we could see that the room was actually much taller than it should have been. The ceiling was far higher than the ceiling of the replacement attic had been. There was a window high up there in a side wall, with a ladder reaching up to it.
“This way,” the estate agent said.
“I feel like we’re not really looking at the house any more,” I said. “We just keep on going upwards.”
“Well,” Neil said, “all rooms are pretty much the same with no furniture in, aren’t they? A room is a room is a room!”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” I said.
“Besides,” the estate agent said, “the view is one of the major attractions of this property.”
“You know,” I say, “I’d quite forgotten about the view.”
“Well!” the estate agent said, “we’ll be seeing it soon enough!” He grinned down from the ladder, his mouth looking very wide, his teeth larger and more yellow than I’d realised. He seemed to be sweating profusely. Even his suit jacket was showing sweat patches. I realised that his shirt was probably white, originally, and just discoloured through excessive perspiration.
Neil started clambering up the ladder, and I followed.
The window opened out onto a wooden platform that nestled into the side of the wall through which we’d just climbed, and was connected to the roof below—the top of the replacement attic—by a complicated network of metal struts and poles. We couldn’t see very far because of the mist, but we could see that this was just one of a series of platforms that stretched off upwards and to the side, some of which looked even more precarious than this one.
“Oh,” Neil said, plaintively, “trust it to be misty on the day we come for the viewing.”
“Don’t worry,” the estate agent said. “We just need to keep on going up.”
“We can do that?” Neil asked.
“Of course we can,” the estate agent said. I don’t know if we were just in closer proximity to him than we had been up until this point, but his breath really stank.
“Is it OK if Neil and I just have a word in private?” I asked the estate agent.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll just go up to the next floor and wait for you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I waited until the estate agent had made his way up some wonky, makeshift stairs, and then turned to Neil.
“Look,” I said, “I know this house is great, but I just don’t want you to get too excited. We need to have a good think about it afterwards, maybe see a few other places, make our minds up after considering all the options.”
“It is really great, though,” Neil said, “and we haven’t even seen the view yet.”
“I know,” I said. “We’re both excited. But let’s not get carried away.”
Neil nodded, eyes wide. “I know, I know,” he said. “I get it.”
All around us the mist was curling, rolling, shifting. There wasn’t any wind to speak of, but it still moved, slowly. I couldn’t hear much apart from the creaking of distant crows, and a sound like that of dry leaves in the wind. Which was strange because, as I say, there was no wind to speak of. Unless the wind was beneath us. Beneath the platforms, beneath the mist.
On the next platform, the estate agent had poured three cups of tea from a flask and put them on a small table. The china cups, the flask, and the table must all have been there already. “Most potential buyers like a rest at this point,” he said, passing me one of the cups. The cup looked as if it had been broken and then glued back together. None of the cups matched.
“There’s been a lot of interest, then?” Neil asked, before blowing onto the surface of his tea in order to cool it down.
“Well, naturally,” the estate agent said. He was scratching at his neck and at the top of his head.
Neil seemed to realise—as I already had—that the tea was long cold. He peered at it down his nose. I took a sip out of politeness and felt my oesophagus contract almost immediately, in response to the terrible taste; not only was it cold, but there was something rotten in it.
The estate agent was drinking his quite happily.
“Yes,” the estate agent said, “this property has certainly attracted a lot of viewings. It’s very desirable.”
“It is very desirable,” Neil said, looking around at the mist and the damp wood. “Especially with the view as well.”
“Well, of course,” the estate agent said. “We’ll see it soon. Well. Five or six more floors.”
“Is all this really stable?” I asked.
“It’s about as stable as you’d expect,” the estate agent said. “It is just what it looks like.”
The next few floors were increasingly unsteady. The platforms were not straight, but angled; the struts, pipes, and planks were all different lengths; the screws and bolts that held everything together looked loose.
I started to feel what might have been wind in my hair.
The estate agent couldn’t leave his neck or head alone. He was scratching and scratching. I thought I could see a thick rash of big, sore-looking spots appearing behind his ears and on the skin around his collar, but the mist was so thick that I couldn’t be sure.
“It would be good to sit up here with a nice drink come summer,” Neil said. But I did not respond. I was too intent on maintaining my grip and my balance.
Each platform now was quite small, connected only to the previous one by four wooden struts. Each one had a hole in it to allow access by ladder, and a ladder that led up to the hole in the next one. Every now and again I would wonder if I could feel the structure moving in the wind, but the sensation may have been caused just by the movement of the mist.
I don’t know how many “floors” we had ascended, but it must have been more than five or six, so I stopped the estate agent before he carried on up to the next one.
“How much further?” I asked.
“Not much further at all,” he said. “I assure you, you’d regret not making the most of the viewing after coming all of this way.”
“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry! I’m not about to leave or anything. I just thought I’d ask.”
We climbed the remaining ladders in silence. Well—we climbed them without speaking. The es
tate agent, who was up in front, was whispering to himself and still scratching. The sound of him scratching had become a constant.
Then we were above the mist. We could see. All we could see, if we looked down, was the top of the mist, but even so. The sky above was a cold, pale blue. The structure we were climbing—well, we couldn’t see how far up it went, because we could only see the underside of the platform above.
“Oh my God, Cheri,” Neil said, “this house is amazing. So much space!”
“There is a lot of space,” I agreed, looking around. The mist below was yellow and grey, not white. The upper reaches of the house were definitely swaying gently in the wind. Or not even in the wind—just swaying, gently. Maybe our very presence there was unbalancing the thing. “Well,” I said, “Come on then. Let’s see this view!”
The view became apparent over the next couple of floors.
When we got high enough to see further than the extent of the mist, we lay down on our stomachs and looked out over the edge.
“We’ll wait,” the estate agent said, clawing at his underarms, “until the mist has cleared.”
Beyond the reach of the mist, not much was visible apart from a hazy, grey-brown landscape. I couldn’t think where that was, though—I knew the area from years ago, and I thought it was all residential round there.
As the mist cleared, more became visible, and I started to feel distinctly uneasy. There were rows of houses, sure, but they did not look quite as they did from the ground. I was not even certain that they were the houses that I was expecting to see. The thin gauze of mist that remained did not account for the differences. They were all tall Victorian terraces, which in itself would have been fine, correct, but they were all slightly taller, slightly thinner, than the houses in the streets that I thought I knew. They were all slightly darker and grimmer. There were more boarded-up windows, more soggy, rotting curtains, more abandoned gardens. The empty landscape that was visible further away was just that; a kind of wasteland. I thought that there had been some kind of public building there, though; a library or museum or town hall or something.
“This isn’t quite how I remember this place,” I said.
“Oh well,” Neil said, “your memory has always been unreliable.”
“What?” I said. “No it hasn’t!”
But Neil was distracted. “Look at that!” he exclaimed, pointing. “What’s that?”
“What do you mean, about my memory?”
But he wasn’t listening. He was instead staring, gaping, gawping.
Something was moving down one of the streets below us. A big something. I thought at first that it was a dustcart, but it wasn’t a dustcart. It was too big, for a start; nearly as tall as the houses on either side. And it took up the whole width of the street as well. It had a smooth, humped back that swung from side to side as it shuffled along. It walked on all fours, but its front legs were not really legs. They were arms. Its skin was mottled pink and white, and covered in soft-looking growths. Its head was not visible; it was obscured by the wobbly, bulbous bulk of its body.
“A view quite unique,” the estate agent said.
The beast progressed until it reached that empty space that had once been something else—a town hall, a museum, a library—and then squatted, started rooting around, and eventually seemed to disappear down into the ground.
“I’ve got to be honest,” I said. “This is disappointing.”
The estate agent spluttered and spat, drool running from his big wet lips and awkwardly sharp teeth. “Well,” he said, “well, well, well. I suppose there is no accounting for taste.”
“I really like it,” Neil said.
“Can we talk about it downstairs?” I asked. “Back in the hallway, or the living room maybe? Somewhere it’s a bit warmer?”
“OK,” Neil said. “But hey, look at that!” he pointed again.
I glanced briefly and saw much movement over in a cul-de-sac—lots of people, I think, but I did not look long enough to see what they were doing or what they really were. I pressed my face into the wood on which we lay. “I want to go downstairs,” I said. “Now.”
“OK, OK,” said Neil. “Come on then.”
The estate agent followed us down.
I slipped various times, as did Neil, but neither of us fell.
* * *
BACK IN THE BEAUTIFUL HALLWAY, I WAS SHAKING.
“What’s wrong?” Neil asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s something weird about this house.”
“I really like it,” he said.
“I know you do,” I said, “and I’m not forgetting that. But—weren’t things different when we went upstairs? When we were up on those wooden boards? Didn’t it feel wrong?”
“Did it?” he said. He looked confused.
“I think it did,” I said. “I think I want to leave.”
Behind us, the estate agent cleared his throat. The sound was large and ugly. I turned to see him wiping something green away from his mouth. “Don’t go yet,” he said. “You haven’t seen the cellar.”
“I don’t want to see the cellar,” I said.
“You can’t make your mind up without seeing the whole house,” the estate agent said. “It might change your feelings completely.”
“I don’t want anything to change my feelings completely,” I said.
“Come on, Cheri,” Neil said. “Let’s see the cellar.” He looked to the estate agent. “It won’t take long, will it?”
“No,” the estate agent said, grinning widely and scratching at his Adam’s apple. “It won’t take long at all.”
“Come on,” Neil said, pulling at my hand like a child, guiding me over to a small door to the left of the spiral staircase. “Come on, Cheri.”
The estate agent strode ahead of us, keys jangling in his hand. “We like to keep this door locked,” he said.
“Why’s that?” I asked. But he didn’t appear to hear me.
He opened the door and stooped to pass through it. Neil followed him, also stooping, and yet somehow turning to grin back at me at the same time. “Come on,” he mouthed. Beyond him, the estate agent was making his way down a steep, narrow staircase, squeezed in between walls with all the paint peeling off them.
I hesitated. I looked behind me at the black and white tiles. I felt as if my heart were beating my blood into foam. I could hear rushing in my ears. I was starting to feel ridiculously paranoid, as if everything we’d just seen was wrong, strange, impossible. I doubted everything, momentarily, as I thought about what we’d seen when we’d gone upstairs.
“Cheri,” Neil was saying, his hand reaching out to mine once more. “Come on.”
I smiled at him. I put the panic down to being tired and stressed out. House-hunting is always exhausting.
“Let’s just look round it quickly,” I said.
“We’ll be done before you know it,” he said, nodding.
I nodded back and took his hand and started to follow him down the stairs.
* * *
Houndwife
CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN
Caitlín R. Kiernan is the author of several novels, including Daughter of Hounds (Penguin, 2007) and The Red Tree (Penguin, 2009), which was nominated for both the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. Her next novel, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, will be released by Penguin in 2012. Since 2000, her shorter tales of the weird, fantastic, and macabre have been collected in several volumes, all published by Subterranean Press, including Tales of Pain and Wonder (2000, 2008), From Weird and Distant Shores (2002), To Charles Fort, with Love (2005), A is for Alien (2005), Alabaster (2006), and The Ammonite Violin & Others (2010). In 2012, Subterranean Press released a retrospective of her early writing, Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One). She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her partner Kathryn.
* * *
1.
MEMORY FAILS, MOMENTS BLEEDING ONE AGAINST AND into the next or the on
e before, merging and diverging and commingling again farther along. Rain streaking glass, muddy rivers flowing to the sea, or blood on a slaughterhouse floor, wending its way towards a drain. There was a time, I am still reasonably certain, when all this might have been set forth as a mere tale, starting at some more or less arbitrary, but seemingly consequential, moment: the day I first met Isobel Endecott, the evening I boarded a train from Savannah to Boston, or the turning of frail yellowed pages in a black-magician’s grimoire and coming upon the graven image of a jade idol. But I am passed now so far out beyond the conveniences and conventions of chronology and narrative, and gone down to some place so few (and so very many) women before me have ever gone. It cannot be a tale, anymore than a crystal goblet dropped on a marble floor may ever again hold half an ounce of wine. I have been dropped, like that, from a great height, and I have shattered on a marble floor. I may not have been dropped. I may have only fallen, but that hardly seems to matter now. I may have been pushed, also. And, too, it might well be I was dropped, fell, and was pushed, none of these actions necessarily being mutually exclusive of the others. I am no different from the broken goblet, whose shards do not worry overly about how they came to be divided from some former whole.
Memory fails. I fall. Not one or the other, but both. I tumble through the vulgar, musty shadows of sepulchers. I lie in my own grave, dug by my own hands, and listen to hungry black beetles and maggots busy at my corporeal undoing. I am led to the altar on the dais in the sanctuary of the Church of Starry Wisdom, to be bedded and worshipped and bled dry. I look up from a hole in the earth and see the bloated moon. There is no ordering these events, no matter how I might try, if I even cared to try. They occurred, or I am yet rushing towards them. They are past and present and future, realized and unrealized and imagined and inconceivable; I would be a damned fool to worry over such trivialities. Better I be only damned.