Читать книгу Between The Doors - Wes Peters - Страница 10

chapter two

through the bowels

I

Andrew lurched forward and landed on his knees, reaching out his right hand to brace his fall. The world spun.

Nick landed beside him, and had less luck with his entrance, tumbling forward into darkness. Andrew had to cover his laugh with his hand, which he found still held the gun. That was good.

The smell hit him next. Andrew reeled in dizziness. From the darkness, Andrew heard Nick:

“Of all the places to end up, this shithole…”

They were in a sewer. Long stone corridors led in either direction, shrouded in darkness except where light streamed in through overhead grates. Andrew gazed at the grate above him, blinded by the golden sunlight. It’s sundown, he thought. Sundown in Sunsetville.

“Hope you’ll pardon my language sir—it’s just that—”

“Don’t call me that!” Andrew exclaimed and hurried over to help his friend. Fortunately Nick hadn’t gotten any of the excrement on him.

“Well no sir, I wasn’t callin’ you a shithole, you see—we’re in the sewer.”

Andrew laughed. “No, not that. Quit calling me sir.” He laid his hand on Nick’s shoulder, as Nick’s eyes widened to the size of dinner-plates. “I’m not a day older than you, Nick.”

Nick looked away. “But, sir, it’s just common respect. Beggin’ your pardon of course… if you want though, I can stop. Sir.”

Andrew lost interest in the boy’s dawdling. He walked forward and wrinkled his nose. “So this is Sunsetville, huh?”

Nick hurried over to him. “Yessir, I’d recognize that golden light anywhere. Even the smell of shit can’t ruin that crisp, golden, springtime air. Sorry about the language, of course.” He continued. “I know this sewer pretty well, yep. I work down ‘ere.”

“Do you?” Andrew asked. “But you’re just a kid!”

“Yes well, I’ve got to do somethin’ during the day. My aunt and uncle are usually workin’. They want me to keep out of trouble and all,” Nick looked around. “I knew this sewer pretty well, workin’ with the maintenance men. Too often I’m knee-deep in…” he looked at the puddles of waste and murky water around him. He couldn’t find a polite word for it. He continued.

“Of course, it’s been knee deep since I’ve got here, three moons ago. Especially since it hasn’t rained in over a year, that is.”

Andrew turned sharply. “There’s a drought in Sunsetville?”

Nick considered it for a moment. “If that’s what you call it, then yes. The whole world’s got a bad case of it.” His cautious answer brought a grin to Andrew’s face. “I never heard that word, though, but if druh-out” he sounded it in two syllables, “yeah, if this dry-out means the weather’s hot and sticky all the time without rain, then that’s what it is. Sir.”

Andrew didn’t say anything, thinking of his home. He’d thought he could escape the drought through a door to another world, but apparently that wasn’t the case.

“And truth be told, the rain’s stopped ever since he came,” said Nick, talking more to himself than Andrew, who explored ahead. Andrew asked who he was, and received a few seconds of silence from Nick. When Nick spoke, it wasn’t an answer to Andrew’s questions.

“Look here, sir—it’s a manhole. That’s what we use to get in and out of the sewer, you know.”

Andrew turned around, spotting the manhole on the ceiling. He flashed his friend a smile.

“Let’s get out of this shithole, bud,” he said, tucking the gun into the waistband of his shorts.

II

Andrew followed Nick, who leaped and grabbed the iron rungs of a ladder that dropped from the manhole. Before he had jumped Nick commented:

“I may not have a load of ‘smarts’ as my dad says, but I’ve got a compass in my head.” He tapped his finger on his temple. “Fills up the room where my brain is s’posed to be, my dad also says. I know my way around, and if I’m right we’re below the center of town. Well,” he paused, thinking. “we’re under it. Yeah, that’s better. Once we climb up, then we’ll be in the center of town.”

Now Nick popped off the manhole, and pulled himself into the street. He turned to help Andrew up after. Andrew climbed up with the help of his new friend, and saw Sunsetville for the first time.

Before his eyes could adjust to the light, he took in a gulp of fresh, crisp air that Nick had described earlier. It was a relief compared to the sewer. It was also a relief compared to the air in New Jersey. There the air was filled with ‘global warming’, something his mother talked about despairingly at the dinner table. Here, the boy figured, there could be no cars in this world. If it had no guns, how could there be cars?

The center of Sunsetville took Andrew’ breath away. Behind him he heard Nick say:

“Right? Makes my jaw drop everytime.”

The buildings were one or two stories high, built of wood that shimmered homely in the twilight. Amidst the markets that congregated around the cobblestone town square towered an incredible structure: a clock tower, built of stone. Instantly, Andrew thought of Big Ben, the clock tower he’d seen in the picture books his mother had once read him. At last, a pang of homesickness rattled his bones. He managed to dismiss it in wonder, however, as only as a child can do, gazing in awe at the city around him. And the city had begun to light up.

The only way he could describe it was how Disneyworld looked at night, with the illuminated towers and magic that hung in the air. There were no electric lights to illuminate the buildings here, but the sunset (which was not halfway finished) cast a beautiful radiance on the tower and the buildings below. Torches lit some of the houses and streets. Staring at the gigantic face of the clock Andrew saw strange markings that looked like graffiti radiating. They were symbols and designs and obscure markings of purple and pink and magnificent fuchsia that illuminated the clock face. Andrew had only been to Disney when he was four, and though he loved the atmosphere, he resented the crying children, many of whom were older than he. Also, he resented that he couldn’t ride the rides because of his height.

Here, though, was a new world, a world without crying children and height restrictions. The boy gazed at Sunsetville, his face illuminated by the falling sun. Here he didn’t have to be Andrew Tollson; here he didn’t have to be small. Here he was a man of the gun; he could be big as he wanted to be.

III

One watched the two climb into the dusty street. Tom Treeson sat astride a young horse, caramel in color with a rich mane. He recognized Nick, but not the other. The other wore strange clothing, shorts and a t-shirt with a collar, and a mess of dirty blonde hair on his head. In the light of the sunset the boy’s eyes burned. He had an unsightly bulge beneath his shirt at the belt, and had Tom known what lay under the boy’s shirt his jaw would have dropped to the dusty street.

Tom Treeson rode up to the two slowly. He was an older boy, dressed similarly to Nick, except for the brown top hat he wore. Nick heard him coming and turned to meet him.

“Hey Nick,” Tom said, tipping his hat.

“Hullo Tom,” Nick said.

“You missed work today, my friend.”

After a moment’s pause, Nick said “Yeah,” and said no more.

Tom Treeson looked up at the clock tower and was silent for a moment. “You missed one hell of a day, Nick. John’s laid up in the infirmary.”

Nick started. “Johnny? What’s happened? Is he all right?”

Tom shook his head. “Crawlies got him. Down below. He was fixing a leak, broke off from the group, and got lost a bit. The next thing we heard was his screams.”

Tom shuddered visibly, remembering that morning. The men had followed John’s screams through the sewers, heading northeast through the stone tunnels. You always had to remember which direction you were headed down there or you could end up in a lot of shit.

They had John face down in the muck, spiders crawling over his limp body. Fortunately some of the workers had matches, and they struck a light to scare the beasts away. Tom had never seen spiders like this in his life. They had been bigger than his fist, and fast too. When they saw the light of the match they quit crawling on Johnny and turned to face the intruders. Tom had seen their red eyes, and that’s when he’d lost it. He screamed and sprinted at them, waving his match and swinging the wrench he’d brought with him. The other boys tried to stop him, but he was too far gone. He hit one crawlie with his wrench. It flew and splattered against the wall. Splattered wasn’t the right word; exploded was better, Tom decided.

He had continued his rage until a spider began to climb his pants leg. He let out a yelp and swung his body, trying to throw it off. As he turned, he saw the black mass behind John’s body; hundreds of crawlies recoiling at the light, fleeing toward the sewer wall. Tom Treeson watched the crawlies in wonder as the mass retreated, and then finally remembered the spider climbing up his leg. He looked down and gasped as he saw the beast climbing his thigh in a direct line for his crotch. He swatted at his thigh with the wrench, oblivious to the damage he was doing to his muscle. The wrench tore apart the spider, which finally fell from his pants into the dark water below.

They carried John’s body into the streets above, and Tom had to wipe the shit off of John’s face to see if his eyes were open.

There was shit in his eyes, thought Tom as he told the two boys his story. Things could’ve been worse, though. John was alive, just ‘not responsive,’ as the nurses had said. As for Tom Treeson, he was just glad he’d worn pants that day. Otherwise, the spider would’ve bitten a chunk out of his calf or worse, slipped into his shorts. Either way, Tom Treeson would’ve ended up in the infirmary besides John if not for his jeans.

IV

Andrew saw the shadow pass over Nick’s face as he heard the story. The part about the crawlies especially terrified Andrew (he assumed the ‘crawlies’ were spiders, but didn’t ask.)

When Tom finished speaking, Nick was silent. No one made a sound, and the bustle of the markets closing for the day seemed far away. Nick finally said:

“Will he be all right then?”

Tom looked at Andrew for a moment. Then he looked down. “There’s no telling. The nurses say he’s breathin’ and such, but that he’s gone ‘comatoes’ and ‘non-responsive’. Sounded like a bunch of squabble to me, but I don’t know much about doctoring,” said Tom, with mystery in his eyes. “But as far as I’m concerned, they’ve no cure for the bites. The nurses said that the poison is long-lasting, and that not all patients wake up from their sleep. Sometimes they just don’t snap out of it, you know it?” Tom shook his head. “And ye know whose fault this all is, dont ya?”

Nick looked up slowly at the grand clock tower. “The lord of spiders,” he whispered, and now Andrew knew Nick wasn’t telling him something.

Tom Treeson nodded. “Old St. Gerardo. That luney’s sent his crawlies down through the sewers to feed,” he said, spitting while saying feed. He straightened up on his horse, and looked off into the distance.

“I’ll take my leave of ye, and give ye something to chew on: don’t be lurkin’ round here tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Every maintenance man in town has had it with the old ‘saint’, or whatever he calls himself. Joe Freeman from the tavern downtown ain’t so fond of him neither, and we’re all gonna have a word with him.”

Andrew knew what that meant. Whoever ‘Old St. Gerardo’ was, his head was likely to end up on a pole, like in those westerns where the Indians got out of hand.

“But the door to the tower’s sealed! Oh Tom, you’ll never get into the Clock Tower.” Nick cried. All three boys looked over to the door. It was round and wooden, like something out a fairy tale. Nick and Tom continued to squabble, but Andrew kept his eyes on the door.

Am I meant to go through that door? His heart jumped at the thought.

“We know it,” Tom answered. “The wizard’s sealed it shut, sure. Keep us out. But we’ve got a way around his tricks. Stop by the tavern on the way home and maybe you’ll see what we’ve got up our sleeves.”

Tom rode off soon after. Nick, though in shock from this news, jumped when he read the time on the clock. “Oh! Andrew, we’ve got to get home real quick. My aunt and uncle don’ like me out past sunset, you know.” Andrew wanted to comment that he didn’t blame them, considering the spiders and all. He chose to hold his tongue instead. Before they left the town square, however, Andrew shot one last glance at the wooden door at the foot of the tower. He had a feeling he was going to open that door.

God help me when I do, he thought.

V

The sun had set, and the city lit up. As Andrew and Nick walked to Nick’s aunt and uncle’s house, Andrew saw the walls around him come to life. It was the same graffiti which had stained the face of the clock tower. The city walls were covered with these strange drawings and words. The words were indiscernible to Andrew, and Nick had no idea what language it was. Andrew thought it was German or something.

The colors of the graffiti lit up the town in the place of electrical light. Shades of fluorescent green and orange and pink radiated from the walls to light the boys’ way. Andrew had never seen such a colorful place in his whole life. His neighborhood in Nayreton got very dark at night, surrounded by the thick darkness of the forest. Here, however, the night was electric. Nick claimed the graffiti was written by oddly dressed people in the town.

“You don’t see them much ‘cept when they write on the walls,” the boy explained. “It’s a weird thing, but they talk like little kids and wear new clothing that only little kids wear. My aunt calls them ‘kid adults’ cause they never grow up, or at least they don’t want to.” Nick added that all of this was beyond him.

“They sound a bit like hipsters,” Andrew said. Nick didn’t know what those were, and before Andrew could explain he spotted a few hipsters. Except, they weren’t quite hipsters. They were certainly outstanding and strange looking though. They congregated outside of Joe Freedman’s tavern, looking up at a man standing upon wooden scaffolding. The hipster-looking people wore high multicolored socks and tunics that were as fluorescent as the graffiti on the walls. The men wore tight clothing that looked like it belonged to women. The women had their hair short and wore hats to look like men. Either gender wore large glasses without lenses in them. Andrew had seen oddly dressed individuals like these in TV commercials back home, advertising the new iPhone or something along those lines. Here were something like those people, except they looked like they’d come from a different century.

The man on the scaffolding was a tall lanky fellow with a patchy beard and sullen grey complexion. He wore an old patched suit, and Andrew thought the hipsters must have picked it out for him: it was bright yellow. Nick informed him this was Joe Freeman.

“Let’s watch from a distance,” Nick advised. He and Andrew stuck on their side of the street. “I don’t want my friends from work to see me, they’d want me to join up.” Andrew saw Tom Treeson gathered around some men who were not dressed as extravagantly as the hipsters, and knew them to be the maintenance men.

So Nick’s only just met me, and he’d rather stick with me than his friends? Andrew thought. It was a comforting and concerning thought. The two boys listened in to Freeman’s sermon:

“He has terrorized this city. He has made a mess of what Sunsetville truly is,” Freeman proclaimed. His eyes shone eagerly. His voice was high-pitched and nasally, cracking at every other word. “And what is Sunsetville?”

“Our home!” came the response from the crowd. Freeman surveyed them with a stern glance. He looked as though he had neither shaved nor slept in days.

“Let me tell you all a story, friends and neighbors,” Freeman said. He straightened. “My bar always brings in good business. I used to be a little fool, like all of you, thinking things were good here and all. Thinking that I could make it in this city. Well, I was wrong. Dead wrong! We’re all fools, don’t you know it? Well I didn’t, not til that saint came into the bar and played up a scene.

“He told me that night that he was tired of my ‘sin’ and ‘inhumanity.’ Said alcohol and the ‘harlots’ upstairs were turning the town into a mess. So I tell’s him, my bar’s just fine- it’s what this town needs, considering the drought and all. The dry and thirsty men can come to the bar to quench their thirst and such. So he looks me in the eye, and he’s tells me he’d show me a dry spell. So he waves his hand, and laughs real eerily. Real creepy, that laugh.” The listeners murmured in silent agreement.

“I told him to get the hell out of my bar, and he tips me a wink and tells me things will be real dry round here for a while. Then he leaves, and next thing I know all my beer’s gone!” The crowd raised an uproar at this. “All seventy barrels in the cellar, and not a drop of alcohol in ‘em! As if all the beer just vanished in midair!”

“Don’t forget the ladies, Joe!” a hipster cried. Joe looked down upon the listener and stared. But others affirmed this call, so Joe continued.

“And the ladies. I didn’t want to say anythin’, but if you insist I’ll say a word or two. Well that same night he came in and the beer vanished, the men upstairs with the girls come flyin’ out of the rooms all at once, screamin’ the damn same thing.”

“What’d they scream Joe?” the crowd cried.

Joe leaned in, his eyes bloodshot. “That there were crawlies in the ladies’ privates.”

The crowd was silent in shock. “All the ladies fled town!” Joe continued. “They don’t want to stick around with that kind of sorcery about. So the town’s dry now!” He lifted his arms in the air. “No ladies, no booze! What does it say then?” The crowd erupted in anger, but Joe lifted a finger in the air to silence them. After a moment all was quiet.

“We can jibber and flam about this all we went, but I’s been saying this past week somethin’ needs to be done about it. It’s time the wizard pays for it all, yeah?” The crowd began to shake their heads and stomp their feet. It was a scary sight to see, dozens of men and women thundering about.

“Then there’s one way to do it then!” Joe cried. He gestured to the scaffolding he stood on. “The door’s to the clock tower’s locked with his magic, sure. So build this fucking tower and let’s rise up to meet him! At the top of the clock tower! What do you say we burn ‘im down!?” Joe threw his arms in the air, his voice cracking with the words ‘burn ‘im down.’ The response from the crowd was tremendous.

“Burn it down! Burn it down! Burn it down!” they chanted. Now the maintenance men moved to the base of the scaffolding where construction tools lay. They began to work. Andrew watched and said:

“They’re building it up. They’re making it into a tower.”

“With wheels,” Nick added, observing the tower’s base. “Come on Andrew. Let’s get out of ‘ere.” The two boys turned to leave. As they rounded the corner around a tall brick house, another hipster-looking fellow nearly crashed into them. The newcomer skidded by the two boys and called to them:

“Be here by two tomorrow boys! That’s when the wheels start turning and we burn ‘im down!”

VI

The two boys sat on Margaret Smith’s front porch, observing the street. It was nightfall at last; the sunset had dragged on for over an hour. Margaret Smith, a bumbling woman plumper than her nephew, treated Andrew with cordiality and kindness. Andrew had asked Nick to keep his guns a secret from his relatives. He also hid his gun in a small purse Nick had lent him once they entered the house. Part of Andrew, after seeing the riot today, wanted to break the entire gun charade, but he knew better.

There’s work to do here, he thought to himself as he sat down at the dinner table. I’ve never fired a gun aside from my dad’s rifle, but there’s work to do here. I’ve got to play this part, to myself and others.

So he played along and kept it all a secret, thanking Margaret Smith graciously for the food, which was delicious. Her husband, Theodor, was the town postman and apparently still working. At one point during dinner, Margaret brought up Joee Freeman and the riot.

“You’d be best to stay away from all that, Nickolas,” she advised. “I know they’re your friends and all, but what they’re doing is bound to make a bad mess. And the mayor won’t stop ‘em neither. I always thought Joe Freeman ought to be locked away, what with the awful things that go on in his bar. And now look what he’s doing!” She banged her fist on the table for emphasis. Andrew jumped a little, and Nick cracked a grin. “Say, Andrew, where’d you say you’re from again?”

“From town, Aunt Margaret,” Nick answered in Andrew’s place. “From the north quarter, on Begrimble Street.”

“Oh, quaint area,” Margaret said, though her eyes said differently.

“I don’t want to intrude-” Andrew began. His mother had taught him this much politeness.

“Nonsense!” cried Margaret Smith, banging her hand on the table again. Andrew didn’t jump this time. “You’re welcome to stay the night, or as many as you’d like! Our home’s yours’, don’t you know it?”

Andrew hoped the same could be said of this new world. As he sat on the porch with Nick, hearing the torches crackle on the city streets and gazing up at the stars that belonged to a universe that wasn’t his, he sank deep into his thoughts.

There’d been a drought back home, and there was a drought here. Andrew began to wonder if these two worlds were connected by more than a door; maybe they were tied through fate, or something. Andrew didn’t have the faintest clue what fate was, but it sounded right.

Nickolas’ aunt had used the word at dinner. She’d started lamenting about the fate of the city, claiming the man in the clock tower would be the doom of them all. She said “that St. Gerardo fella” was responsible for the drought. After all, the townspeople had often seen him atop the tower at dawn, his hands outstretched to the sky, mumbling strange words in a foreign tongue.

“He’s from the west too,” she said with distaste. “He may be a sage and all, but I never liked folks from the desert and I never will.”

Andrew had lost all motivation to find him. Even with his six-shooter, what could he do against someone like St. Gerardo? He’d felt ten feet tall earlier; now he just felt small.

Nick looked over at him from his seat on the porch. “Andrew,” he said in a low voice. “What’s your world like? It’s just that, I didn’t get to see much of it, you see.”

Andrew grinned. “It’s sort of like this one, Nick, except…” Andrew looked up at the sky, with stars that burned eagerly and clearly above. He could see thousands of them. “Except you can’t see the stars like you can here. Cause of electric light, and pollution, I guess.”

“Hm,” Nick said. “How can you see your path without the light of the stars?”

For a moment, Andrew was silent. He thought about it. Then he stood up from his chair and stepped up on top of it, to get a better view of the street.

“You make your own path, that’s how!” he proclaimed. Nick watched him with wide eyes. “The stars don’t have to tell you where to go- you can make your own decisions.” He paused for a moment, thinking it over. “Yeah, that’s it. Nobody tells you who to be, you make your own path. Simple as that.”

“I dunno about that,” Nick said. “I was told I’d never be very smart, just cause I was born into farming folk. That doesn’t seem very fair. I’d like to go to school but I guess it wasn’t in the cards.”

They were silent for a moment. Andrew sat back down. “I guess that’s true,” he offered.

“And your gun!” Nick said, then covered his mouth with his hands. He looked around to make sure no one watched. No one did. He continued.

“Didn’t yer da hand your guns down to you? That’s the way of the gunfolk, yeah?” Nick’s eyes shone. The light of the fluorescent graffiti cast a multicolored shade upon the porch.

“Yes…” Andrew said, nodding his head slowly, playing the part.

“See? We’re the same! My parents gave me the farmin’ tools, yer’s gave you the shootin’ tools. I’d always heard stories about the ways of the gun-people, but there’s none in this world so I never knew it for sure. But I know somethin’ for sure: I was born to help, you were born to lead.”

Andrew peered off into the street. Suddenly, there was a pop and bang! that made Andrew jump a little.

“Ah!” Nick said, his face lighting up. “Somebody’s settin’ off sparkers.” Andrew heard the ensuing crackle of childhood a few blocks away. It reminded him of summer. At his own house, sitting on the back porch with his dad at night, admiring his mother’s garden in the moonlight. His dad would tip him a wink and pull out a firecracker from his work-bag along with a few matches.

“Want to see a bang, Andy?” David Tollson would ask, a big grin on his face. Firecrackers were illegal in New Jersey, so Andrew supposed this was his family’s best kept secret. He felt something ungraspable now thinking about it. If he were older or gone to school more he might have known it as nostalgia, but for now he decided no word could truly describe the pangs inside. He could smell the summer air, feel the grin on his own face as his father had lit the firecracker.

“Nick?” he said, his eyes still glued to the street.

“Yes?” came the reply beside him.

“Do you miss home?”

“Yeah.” Nick said. He paused for a moment. “Sunsetville’s good and all, but I’m no city-boy. If you think the sky is clear here, you should see down south of the city in the farmin’ lands. There you can you see other worlds as clear as the sun.”

With that Nick got up. “May I have your leave sir? I’m tired.”

Andrew smiled. “Go ahead, Nick. You have my leave.” Nick bowed, and walked through the front door. Andrew sat a little while longer, admiring the stars, soaking in the stillness of the night.