When I was a child I often wished something terrible would happen to me, so that someone would take care of me, and that I could accept their help without guilt. I wanted to have something to point at when asked why I was unresponsive that day, or looking unappreciative. I wanted something my parents would believe. I would have given a leg to this wish, had I the choice.
I once told my parents I was in a bout of heavy melancholy, this was when I was 16, I believe, and they didn’t believe me. But it wasn’t so much that they didn’t believe, so much as they couldn’t. Something within stopped them from seeing my sincerity as I broke their illusion of a happy eldest. Otto must have felt the same way, only they would have understood, brother, had you told them. There was a cabin waiting out in the woods for them to see. I never had a cabin. I was the cabin.
My father sees my cabin now, but it’s too late. There’s nothing to be done. His experience no longer outweighs mine, not in any applicable way. Still, there is a plan. Whether it will yield any results is yet to be seen.
We’ve gathered all the information we can from Anne’s writings, and one stands out above the rest, the obvious centerpiece, this Isha she speaks of. Based on the date of her fourth entry, she claimed to have been responsible for the earthquake here in 1906, and why shouldn’t we believe her? The fire at Axell’s can’t be considered a coincidence anymore, not with this name, flame-mother. Whatever is behind the power of this book has the ability to manipulate the real world and is doing so with increasing frequency.
Surely, Anne didn’t invent this power herself. Years pass between entries, then she starts writing in riddles, as if putting into practice something she has painstakingly studied. There must be some occult spider web in this city, woven in secret, which gave Anne this poison. Backrooms of stores, cellars, houses belonging to servants of the Void, people who’d rather see the world burn than continue in the hands of humanity. And as of the third of March, they are still here. Perhaps it was Anne herself who burned down Axell’s shop. The last 45 days have been a great many things, a haze of memory comes to me now, but one thing they have not been is predictable.
On the fourth of March, the day after my last entry, I returned to Miss Coen, who sat waiting for me at the door. She must have seen something in my eyes, for her smile faded into worry, and she beckoned me inside with an embrace.
I had come to know the Coen house well in the two weeks after we’d met. The narrow entryway is stacked on both sides with books on everything the world has to offer, the utilitarian staircase leading up to where I wasn’t allowed to go. The smell, goodness, the smell. The Coen house always smells like baking - chances are something was, courtesy of Mary’s mother - and of unadorned wood. Mary’s father told me it was unfinished inner walling and I can’t be surprised. The Coens aren’t wealthy, not of coin, anyway, but they are rich in heart. There are two younger sisters, Eliza and Lucile, who are four and six years younger than Mary, who is my age almost to the day. The two littles sleep in one room, the parents in another and Mary all by herself, though she doesn’t miss the company. I’ve yet to see her room, but I’m told it’s small enough with one.
I mention the Coens for two reasons: one, the Coens’ company has been about the only pleasant thing I’ve seen in America, not counting the Fair, and two, father Coen is a teacher.
Arthur Coen teaches Contemporary History at San Francisco Polytechnic High School, where Lucile the youngest is a junior (Eliza and Mary had not attended on account of the building being demolished in 1906 and not rebuilt until last year). He certainly looks the part of a history teacher, often sporting a tweed jacket and pants, his black but greying hair combed back to reveal a substantial widow’s peak. Mr. Coen took a liking to me, it seems, so much so that he has on multiple occasions questioned me on my experiences in the war and Island, despite the fact that we had, up until then, been talking over a peaceful evening supper. I graciously waved off mother Coen’s reasonable and considerate concerns about my not wanting to talk about it, instead taking the time to show them I had no such fear. In fact, I discovered I took a strange pleasure in it, having never truly spoken on it, and the family didn’t seem to mind. This first time was the 27th of February, before the fire at Axell’s, and so the Fair was still doing its job uplifting my spirits.
I explained what had happened, through my perspective, being careful to steer clear of the diary and any of the more harrowing details. Only after the ladies of the table showed signs of attention and none of awkwardness did I stop with the latter. By the end, as I came to Mary and I’s parting at the Fair, the table was cheerful again. Mrs. Coen got up from her chair and embraced me, and Mary afforded me one of her incredible smiles. Mr. Coen was the most jovial of all, smiling across his handsome face and asking for more details, even then.
He raised a glass and toasted to the Blakes, all of us joining him happily.
Mary asked her father if I would be of any help to him in his class. He laughed, saying he was surprised he didn’t think of it himself. Surely there was a way, he said, and told me to meet him there at the school the next morning at seven o’clock.
Waking up at half past five is no way to live, but it was the only way I’d make it to the school from the Duval apartment on time. I arrived ten minutes early to find Mr. Coen on the stairs of the front entrance.
“Well, son, nothing like a brisk morning walk to work, is there?”
“If there is something else like it, I don’t want to know.”
He laughed at that.
“Come with me,” he said, and led me into the as yet empty school.
The halls were unnaturally barren for their lack of students. I recall as an infantryman the feeling of being in a usually full building outside of usage hours and the feeling of indescribable fright it gave me. This was quite the same. Rarely does one find themselves alone in a school, or in any large station of temporary dwelling - a railroad station, barracks, or the like - yet the feeling comes back to you almost immediately, this blanket of doom, along with the memory of all past moments like it. Among the creeping tendrils the hallways sent searching through my mind, I found some unfamiliar factor. I knew from the moment I walked through the doors of San Francisco Polytechnic that I had found the right place. I was so sure of this that I shut my mouth about it. In precedented times I may have expressed my crude uncomfortability with the place to Mr. Coen, who would have taken it as normal first-day fears, yet here I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut.
No more lightly do I write this next piece than an old man writes the epitaph of an old friend: This moment, this small moment of clarity which allowed me to circumvent a great many strifes and may have been the sole reason I sit writing here today, this moment which was borne of my own personal will and reason, is now, in retrospect, incredibly strong evidence to myself that I am on my own. No supernatural force compelled me to make this decision, to help me on the right path, other than my own instincts detecting the very energy which opposes me. I know certainly now that the only use this journal has for me is in its keeping from German hands. It is the fact that it is in my possession and not theirs that makes it useful to me, not as protection, not as a weapon, but as prevention.
Coen brought me to his classroom. It was, to my shock, no different than the classroom I had sparingly visited as a child. The education system, as I’ve learned, is largely based on the German education system, same as the French. This shouldn’t have been a great surprise to me, yet it was. I was brought almost to tears by the mere sight of what I perceived to be a French classroom, in all ways identical to the ones I’d seen in Tulle, placed, unchanged, in San Francisco. It is one thing to replicate the ornate marbling of a Parisian pavilion using the might of a thousand men, but to recreate the exact smell of blackboard chalk, the wooden desks marked with children’s use, the wall-sized world map placed in exactly the same place, this was another matter entirely.
He showed me through the room, though this didn’t take long, and sat on his desk, asking if I had any questions for him. I asked what exactly I would be doing. Though the general idea seemed obvious to me, I still had no idea what I was to say and when. Coen told me, in a quiet tone of voice altogether different from what I had become accustomed to - what I suspected to be his ‘teacher’s voice’ - that I would be sitting to the side, behind his desk, and following along thoroughly with the lesson until I was called up to give my part. He asked me what quality of student I was, and I told him truthfully about my lack of formal education, relatively speaking. I told him I was proficient in reading and writing French and English, as well as being moderately versed in European military history, French art, and particle physics to the level of a curious layman. He said it would be enough, even going so far as to commend me for striving for knowledge, despite my lack of opportunity. I can’t say I don’t feel pride for this personal quality of mine, so hearing it from him set my mind at ease.
I took my extra seat behind his desk, where I would wait only a quarter hour before the first of Coen’s pupils started trickling in. Earlycomers, I believe, for the majority all came in at the same time, five minutes after. Coen sat only until this crowd shuffled in, all only barely pushing into their teenage years, at which point he stood and took his place in front of the blackboard. Coen picked up a piece of chalk and wrote my name - Charles Blake, that is - in neat cursive. Never before had my new name been written down in public and seeing a stranger’s surname next to Charles gave me a jolt of guilt. I don’t know why.
“Students,” he said, pacing, “I’m proud to say we have a guest in today’s lesson, a young man with an incredibly interesting story. Do any of you know what happened in France this past winter? Yes, Mr. Weir?”
“There was a war.”
“Yes, a war! Do you know how the war turned out?”
“France lost, I believe.”
“Good, Mr. Weir, exactly right. France lost the war and that is no small thing. It never is. Does anyone know what has happened to France since the war ended? Mr. Wentz.”
“My father told me France doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Your father is correct, Mr. Wentz, in a way. France, the buildings, the art, the food, that is, are all still where they were last year. The difference is the name. The land once called France is now part of Germany. Can anyone tell me what this process of taking over a country through war is called? I don’t believe we’ve learned this word, so unless Ms. Johnson has taught you it. I don't expect anyone to get it right. Try it anyway. Yes, Ms. Dunhill?”
“Annexation.”
“Excellent, Ms. Dunhill! Annexation.” He wrote the word on the board and twenty children copied it. “Annexation is a very real, and more often than not a very difficult experience for those on the losing side of a war. Imagine, if you will, a war between Canada and the United States of America. This is, of course, preposterous, considering the fact that we are allies, but please, imagine this war. Imagine now that America has lost this war. It is, again, preposterous for America to lose such a war, but picture it in your minds. And again, imagine the reality where Canada, having won a land war against its militarily superior ally, decides to take America and, rather than allow it to function as it once did, now under Canadian law and governance, Canada erases the name United States of America and all of its economic and governmental identity. Canada,” he said, underlining the ‘annex’ part of annexation, “annexes America. How would you feel, had this happened this January? Ms. Ferguson.”
“Embarrassed.”
“Mr. Thomas.”
“Frightened.”
“Mr. O’Hare.”
“Angry.”
“Embarrassed, frightened and angry. Can we all agree on these feelings?” The class agrees. “Then you must be able to understand how my good friend, Charles, feels. Charles?”
I stood on my cue and walked over to him.
“Charles is French. He escaped here to San Francisco after France was annexed by Germany and has graciously agreed to speak with us today.”
It was then that I got my first real look at the class. These children weren’t scared. They showed no outward empathy to my situation. I forget how children are. A child can in the same moment be both momentarily hypnotized by the present and completely oblivious to it. Would they, many years from now, remember the day the Frenchman visited their class? Hell, would they remember Mr. Coen? Whether they would, they were presently enamoured with the spectacle and waited in silence, shaking excitedly for my first words.
“My name is Otto.” I cupped a hand over my mouth. What had I done? Was it me who had said it? It became clear to me then that the forces of evil would not let up, even as my imagined allies faded away.
“Please, excuse me,” I said, both to the children and to Coen, who had heard my stories and understood. “My name is Charles.”
A young girl in the front row raised her hand.
“Why did you say Otto?”
“I’m sure it was a simple mistake,” Coen started, but I cut him off with a hand.
“It’s alright, Mr. Coen. I’ve been asked not to spare you all the truth, within reason, so let me try. Please, Mr. Coen, stop me if I go too far.” He nodded to me. I continued. “I once had a little brother, Otto, who was only a year or two older than any of you. He lied to the army in France, saying he was of age in order to be conscripted. Otto didn’t survive the war. His name never leaves my mind. I apologize for bringing it into my introduction.”
“That’s quite alright, Charles,” Coen said. “Would you like to start with questions?”
“Yes,” I said, regaining my composure. “Questions, please. I’ll answer as well as I can remember.”
A slight, quiet boy in the back raised his hand.
“Why are you alive?”
I put a hand up to Coen, who I could sense was about to reprimand the boy.
“I said I would answer questions, and I’ll do just that. May I use your map, Mr. Coen?” He nodded. I walked to it and pointed to northwestern Africa, which was labeled French North Africa. “This is a very recent map, is it not, Mr. Coen?” Again he nodded. “Until 1912,” I said, “this upper corner of French North Africa was called Morocco. Morocco was an independent nation, same as America. In 1907, France went to war with Morocco and, after five years of battle, annexed it. I was exactly the right age to be eligible for mandatory military service - do you know what mandatory means?”
Ms. Ferguson raised her hand.
“Required.”
“Yes, thank you. I was required to join the army just as this war was being waged and fought there until it ended. I want to ask you a question, if Mr. Coen would allow it.”
“Of course.”
“Alright, then. How would you all feel, had you been one of my companymen just as the war ended, France having won? Yes?”
“Happy.”
“Ecstatic!” The class laughed at that.
“Relieved.”
“Good! Many of my companymen felt exactly as you describe, happy to have won, ecstatic to have defeated the Moroccans and relieved that the war was over at last. I myself only felt one of these three. Relief. I was relieved it was over and that I could go home. Those of my companymen who felt all three stayed with the army after their mandatory two years service. I left as soon as I could. Two years after the war in Morocco another war began, the war in Europe. I’ll respect Mr. Coen’s request not to hide the truth from you when I guess that none of those men now live. It is likely I am the last of my company.”
A deathly silence fell over the classroom.
“You’re a coward.” The little boy in the back had found his voice. A few of his classmates hurled insults far beyond their years at him, some cheered in agreement. Coen had to cut them off with a raised voice.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy.
“Otto Green.”
“Otto, I’m going to tell you something no adult will tell you for another few years, but something I believe is both vital and true. There are no cowards in war. There are men who’ve been tricked and there are the men who invented the trick. I was no longer tricked and so I couldn’t be in the war.”
“Any other questions?” Mr. Coen called. I don’t remember much of the rest of the day, or any of their other questions. One was enough.
The end of the day came quickly. Coen sat me down, both of us having moved our chairs to the front of the class as soon as the children had gone.
“How do you feel about today?”
“I’m tired, Coen. Gravely tired.”
“Do you think you’d be of any value here tomorrow? Here, in this classroom with me?”
“No.”
He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair.
“So be it. We’ll find another, more permanent place for you. How would you feel joining the school caretakers?”
“The cleaners?”
“Yes, the cleaners. Would that be below your pride?”
“I was an infantryman, Mr. Coen.”
“So you will be again, Charles, though the work here is easier, I can assure you of that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He stood up and walked to the door.
“America was not a peaceful country when I was your age. It still isn’t. Follow me.”
We made our way through the emptying hallways in a blur. The straggling students made way for us by virtue of their own speedy escapes. The trouble of a day’s work was at an end for them and there are few who overstay their welcome while at work, especially of their own free will. The students of America are no different than the young men and women of France, of Germany, a thought that terrified me as we slithered our way through the quickened crowd, while I grew exceedingly desperate to get to safety. No danger approached us, but still I felt a sting of fear grab at my heart. I asked Coen if anything had happened in the school as of recent, any strange goings on I should be made aware of. He told me the obvious: the school, the original school which was destroyed, reduced to ruins, laid behind our feet. His pupils, the first class in since the reopening, spread stories of ghosts roaming the halls, tapping from underneath the floor. A few had claimed to see a physical apparition in the cracked-open door of a caretaker’s office. One brave child opened the door after seeing a peeking eye and found nothing inside.
I asked him if he believed in such things. He told me history is filled with ghosts. Time and time again, stories of spirits come up in disparate cultures, separated by time and distance, centuries and oceans. Recurring elements as these have a habit of hiding some truth, though the truth may not be how it seems. I asked if he knew anything about the fourth dimension and he admitted his ignorance.
“Talk to Yorke in the mathematics department. He’ll give you a conversation for the ages.”
“Do you have an explanation for these sightings? Is it imagination?”
“That I can’t say, Mr. Blake. I’m sure we’ll have an answer soon, though I doubt it turns out to be supernatural.”
Our conversation turned to the new school’s construction.
“How long did the construction last?”
“The school only opened again this fall, but I couldn’t tell you what year they started building. Say it started in ‘07, that would give you about seven years.”
“Seven years?” I’m sure the exasperation was plain in my voice as I said it. “Seven years to build a polytechnic? Where did the other four go?”
“There was some delay with the supply shipments and a few major shipment mistakes along the way. I’m told there were two exceptionally large shipments containing the wrong materials.”
“What did they do with them?”
“I believe they kept them, shipped them off for a steep profit during the city’s reconstruction.”
“Truly? Who did they sell them to?”
Coen rubbed his chin. “I don’t know.”
We had arrived at the last door on the right of a long, cul-de-sac of a hallway. Seeing as there was nowhere left to go, we stopped there.
“You’ll get a thrill out of this, Charles.”
He opened the door into a small, wood-panelled room the size of a washroom. The only occupant was an empty desk and chair, both of the same style as of a student’s desk, though larger.
“Where’s the thrill?” I asked.
“Where’s the thrill?” Coen copied, scoffing. “Charles, don’t you understand? This is your office.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“Never, Charles! This is your office and you will accept it at once!”
I was beside myself. Somehow, I was able to contain my surprise long enough to shake his hand and accept it. I had to. To find myself in such luck was a foreign feeling.
I settled into my new position, frequently being called to Coen’s class for questions, but I spent most of my time alone, cleaning after the denizens of San Francisco Polytechnic. It was hardy work, fulfilling like a thick stew, and the company I seldom held was enough. The days I remember most fondly were those when I was left to myself, unbothered, and allowed to establish my mental routine in peace. During these days I left the world of the diary, of Ashcroft, and found myself engulfed in the warm embrace of America. The work was secondary, really, to the quiet it afforded me, to the time it allowed me to exist, after so long, without fear. The world revolves around the dance of routine and chaos. The makeup of a man’s day is split between the two, and the makeup of the world is split between the men who are likely to choose routine and the men who choose chaos instead. I fall into the former category. I find peace in routine. I feel truly myself. There is an ebb and flow to the world, a cosmic back and forth of luck, and my loan of bad was paid during this time. I am a simple man. Every man is simple when he is happy.
Late into March I walked into the Duval apartment to my father looking rather grave. I asked what was the matter. One of the Deschamps ten - Alexandre, age four - has taken ill. Consumption. No one had any money for the treatment. I collapsed. Even now, working steadily as I had, I had no money to spare them. My father said the boy had two weeks. I became furious. Death by consumption in two weeks? Was God asleep? My father struck me in the cheek. He told me if the Deschampses are lucky enough to have half their children by the end of the year, the Lord is no longer simply awake, but showing off. He reminded me of the tiny apartment they had taken, five children to a room. There would be little room for isolation and soon they would all catch it.
“Good God,” I said, slumped on the floor. “How can we help?”
“Sometimes there’s nothing for it. I’ll take more hours but there’s only so much money in the world and only so little time.”
“Should we visit them?”
“That would do some good, Charles. Let us hope the world’s goodness has not been entirely depleted.”
We visited Alexandre from his doorframe, where he laid in bed in an empty room, which his siblings had deserted in favor of the humble common area where they now slept.
I offered Jean-Pierre what little money I could spare and he graciously took it. No quicker does a man lose his pride than when his children are in danger.
The visit was short. Alexandre needed sunlight and quiet, and we could give him neither. Suddenly, and without warning, darkness had descended upon us once again. We visited briefly with the Hugos, who had already come to see the Deschampses. Gérard and Catherine were in good health, though struck with sadness at the news. We could say little to each other, so we left soon after.
I asked my father a rather revealing question when we returned to our apartment.
“Was it my fault?”
He sat in his dining chair and lit a pipe, puffed it twice, and spoke.
“There is such a thing as fate. Not all things can be reduced to the sum of actions and even then, there are too many actions to consider, too many steps. Had John Ashcroft not found the diary, had he not given it to your brother, perhaps Alexandre could live. Had the tramp not taken Anne’s child, had she not descended into madness as a result, then yes, there could have been a better life for us all, back in France. Had Adam and the German not done all they had, your mother may still be alive. Not one of these was your fault. But you have, nonetheless, been burdened with the only means of setting them right, and it is your responsibility to see it through. Are you willing to carry on, even as the world rots around you, as your loved ones are taken one by one, as you wither away from it yourself?”
“I don’t have the strength.”
“And yet you must find it. There is no other choice. Either you find the strength or the world falls into darkness, same as we have. Everyone will know our pain, our loss, then there will be no world left at all. You mustn’t give up on the light, even if you become blind to it. You will face far greater danger than this and you may have to face it alone, you against the diary. I will help you as well as I am able, with what the Lord has granted me, but you must understand what is to happen next.”
“What is it? What will happen?”
“The diary will do everything in its power to make you give it up willingly. Anything. It will twist your mind to believe it is the right thing, that it is the only way to save the ones you love. Charles, you must understand that I am already dead. There is no saving me. You can’t let it win. You must keep it, even as the world ends around you. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” I stood up and embraced him, as though I could keep him there if I held on tight enough. Already he felt like a memory.
Three days later he was dead. Epileptic seizure. He didn’t have epilepsy.
A week after that, six more of the Deschamps ten were ill and Alexandre was dead.
I spent little time in the Duval apartment if I could help it. Most of my waking hours were spent in the school. I slept on Mary’s floor. A vast emptiness had swallowed me. I no longer saw the world as Charles Blake - or even as Charles Duval - but as an observer to him, watching his actions as an audience to a play, cut off from its events, powerless to change course. I kept the diary in my right pants pocket at all times, even while sleeping. I didn’t have to worry about transferring it to new pants, for I never took them off. An invisible boule formed above my mouth’s hard palette, weighing me down and making my body seem alien to me, even though there was nothing there. My eyes slowed, my back bent, and my mind was never truly quiet. In my rare moments of lucidity I grabbed at my hair, my shirt, tears pouring from my eyes, and begged for relief, whatever form it may take. I wished, frequently, to die.
I sat at my desk one afternoon when a knock came on my door. Coen walked in, as put together as ever, closed and locked the door behind him, and embraced me from over the desk.
“I have something to show you,” he said. His smile brought warmth to my icy heart. Mr. Coen had become part of my routine, a constant in a world of uncertainty. I loved him as my own father and had grown to be a member of his family, though presently I wasn’t as attentive to Mary as I should have been. They all understood.
Coen walked around my desk and asked me to stand. He moved my chair away from the table and told me how sorry he was for all that had befallen me. Being as he wasn’t responsible for any of it, I told him it was alright. He insisted it wasn’t.
“You have been done a great many disservices by the world, Charles. I seek today to right the wrongs. I present to you an opportunity, one I know will interest you. Have you wondered why you haven’t seen or heard anything of Mary’s grandparents on my side, or of any of my relations before me? There’s a story there, but all that matters is the ending. I have no family left, all dead, same as you. I went mad with grief, every day being marked by increasingly darkened moments of clarity surrounded by a glassy haze. I was angry. I was furious! I wanted nothing more than to find the force responsible for my pain and destroy it. I have seen the anger in your eyes, I know it because it is mine. I’m going to show you how I’ve worked through my pain and I hope you can find your place in it yourself.”
He crouched down where my chair had been and ran his hand against the wood panelling. He traced his fingertips along one of the seams and his nails caught on a tiny chink in the wood. He lodged a finger as far as he could into it and heaved with all his might. In doing so, he loosened the seam, revealing a line of light underneath. Soon the plank rose off the floor, connected to four others. He placed the square off to the side, leaving a meter wide opening into a well lit room, almost identical to the one we were presently crouched in, but for a wooden ladder leading down to just behind the desk below.
I kept my face down so as to not show my terror to Coen. The underground system, it was real. And not only was it real, this system that had birthed the realized madness of Anne’s grief, but I was staring into one of the entrances, freely shown by my own friend. What could I do? There was only one thing for it.
“Fantastic!” I said, forging a smile onto my face. “This is where the extraneous supplies went, then?”
“Precisely right, dear boy, and this is only the beginning! I’ve locked your door, but keep your voice down when you answer me this: Would you like to join me downstairs?”
Within the steel walls of my mind I was suddenly overwhelmed with a mixture of panic and thrill. What a strange life to be living, that being welcomed into a hidden basement with the outward intent of joining a death cult would be an occasion for cheer! This, in no small words, was the first true step I’d taken towards solving the mystery, and so why shouldn’t I have been cheerful? I decided it best to let Coen see this celebration in my face and words. Did it matter what I was happy for?
“Yes!” I said, and repositioned myself to fit down onto the ladder. It was then I felt a familiar, now terrifying bulk in my right pants pocket.
I still had the diary.
I froze.
“What is it, my dear boy?”
“Nothing, Coen. Nothing, truly.”
“Please, Charles, call me Arthur. I think we’re past formalities now, don’t you think so? If it would ease your mind, I’d go down first. The ladder does look quite rickety, doesn’t it? Not to mention the fact that I’m now inviting you down into what very well resembles a dungeon!” He laughed. “Nothing to fear, my friend! Nothing at all to fear.”
He did go down first and it did ease my mind. He did not, at the very least, intend to close the opening behind me and trap me inside. On top of this, the facade had worked: he sounded just the same as ever, and free of suspicion. If he was to discover and read the diary, however, my protection would be at an end.
I followed him down and found myself, once again, in my office. Had the circumstances been different I would’ve marvelled at the sheer precision of the replica, and so I took some time to fake such a reaction for my guide.
“Entirely identical,” he said, rubbing the floor panels where the opening had been in the room above. “Along with the two shipments, we decided to add doubles of some of our actual materials for the school. In this case we spent no extra time or money designing this entry room, same with the others.”
I was sober enough from the shock to catch this chance for information, and I didn’t let it slip away. I was presently locked in a game of chess against an unknowing opponent. I set out my first pawn.
“Where are the others?”
“Each of the three other caretakers’ rooms, one for the principal's office and one under my classroom.”
Unbelievable! Right under his students’ feet!
“Each a perfect replica?” I asked.
“Indistinguishable in every way.”
“Do you use your other classroom?”
“We’ll get to that soon enough. Would you mind closing the panels over the hole after us? I’ll light a candle.”
He pulled a candlestick from a desk drawer and lit it as I went back up the ladder, shimmying the panelling back into place with a hardy click.
“Excellent! Now, on with the tour! Hold this, please,” he said, and handed me the candlestick. It smelled strongly of lavender.
Coen pulled an enormous keyring from his inner jacket and flipped through it a while before turning to me, laughing.
“Would you unlock the door, Charles? It should be the same lock as yours, only flipped backwards.”
I took out my office door key and inserted it into the door. It fit smoothly in and turned.
The door scraped along the top of a mineshaft, exposed stone and earth carved out into a hallway, veering off to the left and down ten meters ahead. I held the candlestick ahead of me, the lavender now offset by something I couldn’t identify.
“I can lead, if you’d like,” Coen said. I handed him the candle with a smile. “The decor isn’t exactly up to your French standard, now, is it? I assure you this is the worst of it. Your office was the last addition, and in quite a rush, I may add. Hidden or not, construction sites have deadlines and deadlines are not to be missed. Come, I’ll show you a much more pleasant room ahead.”
He led me down the shaft, the light flickering from his steps, casting his shadow across the stone around us. The tunnel was just tall enough to stand upright in and wide enough for one and a half men at shoulders with each other, so that the pace was naturally slowed. This gave me ample time for thinking. Most of these thoughts centered around keeping my nerve, but frequently the faces of my mother and father flashed in my mind. Young Alexandre and his six siblings, Mr. Axell, Otto, all of them taunting with their images, speaking, “Your path is painted in blood. Keep your wits or it will have been for nothing.” A harrowing yet encouraging thought, however morbid.
We turned the bend, though I could not yet sneak a glance over Coen’s shoulder to see what lay ahead. My feet suddenly found wood in place of stone, and we now tapped away down the tunnel. It was my luck that he hadn’t yet turned back to me, for I’m sure my fear was showing then. I challenge any warm-blooded creature to walk that tunnel and not feel exactly the same.
My fear only heightened as Coen stopped. The unidentifiable smell had grown as we walked, until it had become unmistakable. Formaldehyde. The stench perforated my very being, sticking in my nostrils and reminding me of the few times I’d encountered it, none of them positive. My heart struck against my chest like a stone as Coen turned back to me, handing me back the candlestick, which by this point we were lucky to have. Lavender and formaldehyde, a sickly yet much preferable combination.
“Just a moment while I unlock the door, Charles. Have you dabbled in science, dear boy?”
“Only vicariously.”
“And where did you learn to speak such precise English? You will make an outstanding protégé, I’m sure of it! Ah, here we are!”
The door creaked open, flooding the tunnel with the shine of electric lights, blinding me briefly to the inner chamber. Coen stepped inside and aside, allowing me a clear view as I went in behind him.
The room - its floor, roof and walls lined in white stone bricks - was a perfect square of 15 meter sides and a roof at least a meter taller than the tunnel’s. Along all the walls were white painted wooden shelves stacked with innumerable glass jars, all filled with various subjects floating in amber formaldehyde. Some jars were packed with many duplicates of the same little organs - I wasn’t yet close enough to see what - while others had only a single specimen inside. I wasn’t focused on the jars as I entered the room, however, but on what laid in its middle.
Upon marble slabs raised at waist-height from the ground, facing us sideways in a row stretching away toward the back wall, sat three women, asleep, heads bare, naked and with swollen stomachs. All breathed, shallow and steady, in perfect unison. The woman closest to us was no more than my age. Her face was calm. Coen stepped further into the room, walking to her and smiled at me.
“You look troubled, young master Blake! Let me ease your worries. These three women are volunteers in a cutting edge medical study being conducted by our group. As you can see, we are freshly stocked for the occasion and under the most qualified of supervision. Nine months ago they were impregnated of their own volition and by whomever they chose. Four months later they came here, laid on these tables, and were administered a highly secretive sleeping medicine, which was invented and is regularly brewed in this laboratory using the supplies here. Please excuse me for not telling you how the medicine is made, it’s not my secret to tell. For the following five months and another week after today, they have been and will be given a second medicine, the one being tested. These women believed in this study, Charles, and have allowed themselves to be a part of it of their own free will.
“What exactly is being tested?” I asked, holding my voice from shaking, trying to feign simple curiosity. This was my second pawn, which Coen countered without knowing.
“My dear boy! There’s nothing to be afraid of! Your question will be answered in due time, and by someone much better qualified than I, so please, keep that curious mind of yours open and clear of fright. You are being welcomed into this group, unanimously, may I add, for your own unending benefit. Come with me, son. No time for lazing around!”
We walked past the three women without stopping. I took a look behind me as we passed the third. On the front wall, beside the tunnel door, there were two desks made of the same white stone, one on each side, layered with papers, jars and chemistry equipment, some empty and some full. I turned back around to get a passing glance at the shelves closest the exit Coen was leading me to. The jars I saw clearest were on the end of the left shelf. From bottom to top they were: twenty or so small hearts, of a scale befitting a small mammal; three bats, complete; an exceptionally large Catch Fly plant’s head, at least 20 cm across; all eight tentacles of an octopus, detached. The top shelf held the most interesting specimen of all, a human infant with two heads, premature or otherwise dead before proper birth, for it was too small for health. The faces were identical. Coen’s speed allowed me only a moment’s glance, but as I entered the newly opened door I swear I saw the little fingers on the right hand, already so close to the walls of his home, tap on the glass nearest me. A trick of the light? A loss of mental faculties? I don’t know. I heard the tapping, though faintly. I believe he was communicating.
The door was also white, painted wood again. I felt myself growing weary, not of body but of soul. I’ve seen men break in prolonged battle, and heard stories from my brother’s war of men turned to animals under the bombs. Stress on the mind. I felt it then, a twinge of it, from prolonged battle, from hitting my upper threshold. I wished for my mother to come save me. Men are limited creatures, limited by time, by will, but man is never limited in his mind’s ability to block, to remove. I removed myself from the dungeon, though my body remained, inching forward in time with Coen, unaware of my absence. The body is a separate beast to the man; the body does not need him. You cannot pick a body without a man inside out of a crowd, but you can tell if you listen hard enough. Their actions, their words, seem familiar, almost normal, as if there were an awareness behind them. This demeanor is familiar because, as you come to realize, you’ve met someone before who was exactly the same way. These people are common, bodies without men, bodies whose men have left them behind, saying “I don’t know how you can stand this, but I cannot.” It is sometimes possible to coax them back, usually by the body’s anger or fear. Bodies don’t need us, but they do prefer us. That’s why we exist. Bodies created us in the same way they created arms, so that they could feel. I was away from my body as we went through the next door and my body was not yet aware I was gone.
The room ahead was massive and perfectly circular, about 40 meters across, with doors in each of the cardinal directions. The walls were white brick once again, with pillars indenting out in regular intervals of two or three meters, stretching up along the domed roof, where they met at a white chandelier hanging above the center. Below it, illuminated and glistening, was a cobblestone circle, waist-high with a pit in the middle, which greatly resembled an enormous firepit, though the middle was clean and large enough to fit a man with arms outstretched. The cobblestone sat in a sunken pit in the center of the room, which laid a good meter below the rest of the floor. Above it, on the level we were standing, were three concentric rings of benches - pews - facing the pit. Between the rows walked a single man, who wore a dark brown cloak. He faced away from us, so that his drawn hood covered his face. He walked slowly, painfully, away from us, unaware of our presence.
“Doctor!” Coen said excitedly, raising a hand and walking to him. “Charles put that candle out, would you?” I did.
The man in the cloak turned and drew his hood, revealing the face of a skeletal old man I didn’t recognize. His hair fell in wisps on his nearly bare head, the tufts on his temples were snow white. He had the look of a home-weary Moses on his thirtieth year in the desert, battered but not yet finished. His eyes were sunken into his skull like the pit behind him and of the same lifeless color as the cobbles. If he had any strength in his youth it was all but spent, though his mind remained intact. The man was still inside the body, or he had recently returned after a long departure. His cloak, frayed and unpatched, seemed to suggest the latter.
“Arthur!” he said, his voice almost a whisper. Had the chamber not been completely silent I may not have heard him at all. “You’ve brought the boy.”
“Yes, of course, doctor! This is Charles Blake, our new initiate.” I shudder at the thought of having given Coen my real name, which would have resulted in the name Charles Duval ringing in that room. I was abusing my luck as it was. “Charles, this is Doctor Abraham, our medical practitioner and leader of experiments here in the group, including the one we stumbled upon on our way in.”
“Hardly a pleasant thing to happen into,” Abraham rasped. “What have you explained, Arthur, or do I have to do it all myself?” Despite his withering, Abraham had a decidedly keen sense of sarcasm. Again, his mind hadn’t given out like the rest of him had.
“Nothing besides reassurance of our good intentions. Abraham, would you kindly tell Charles what exactly those women are here for?”
“Always strung tight, aren’t we, Arthur? Loosen yourself, would you? Mr. Blake will get his explanation soon enough, and through something better than words.”
“Yes!” Coen said, shocked. “Of course! How could I forget?”
“How, indeed. How can you teach when you cannot recall anything? Arthur, I’d ask you to take a seat and Mr. Blake, would you come with me, please?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, stiff as marble, blood rushing from my face.
“What are you going to show him?” Coen asked.
“Only what he needs to see.”
Coen sat in one of the pews. I followed Abraham around the right side of the ring to the door opposite the one we’d entered through. We walked in silence. Passing the cobble pit, my body noticed my absence and began to lasso me back in fear, wishing for my guidance. Seeing its point, I agreed, so that when we came to the door I was out of the fog and into the dungeon. Abraham was a terrifying man, whose silence was worse than anything Coen had said. This was an important figure, perhaps a man who had encountered Anne Hudson, years ago. He kept his hood down, though it helped none. What could bring a man to such a position? Had it changed him? To be working underneath a school and remain unseen by the caretakers is no easy, idle task, one completed deliberately and unfailingly for grand motives, good or bad.
“Do I sense a drop of apprehension in your step, Mr. Blake?” His voice had turned to scratches in my ear.
“I’m overwhelmed, sir. I wasn’t given any warning before being brought down here.”
“That fool, Coen.” He smoothed the remnants of his hair down with his hand. “Even in the best of times this is no place for a surprise. He tells us you’ve sustained a great many losses. In this we are not quite so different.”
“My father, sir.”
“Indeed, your father, and your mother and brother as well. Coen, he hasn’t told you why you’ve been chosen for this group, or what you have been selected for, or much of anything at all, has he?”
“No, sir.”
“Behind this door you will find all the answers you seek, Mr. Blake, and more you’ve yet to reckon. Do you feel your loss deeply?”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel contempt for the force responsible for your suffering?”
This was an interesting question, considering the messenger. Did I feel anger? Was I angry at the book, at Anne, at him? I thought, at that moment, that I would be a fool not to be. I would, however, be a bigger fool if I were to sit contemplating it for very long. I knew the answer he wanted and I didn’t like it.
“Angrier than rain.”
“Then you’ve been brought to the right place. The world we find ourselves in was not made for men. Reality itself was built for little more than chaos, for dots bumping against one another, not for our logical minds. Cruelty is chaotic, so we live in a cruel world. Would Paris have fallen if sound minds prevailed? No. If logic had won the day there would be no war, yet here you stand before me, its orphan. I find no joy in our work. None at all. I am compelled to continue by necessity alone. The world cannot go on like this, co-habited by man. So, in this spirit we have concocted a plan, the fruits of which you will see now.”
Abraham opened the door. The light inside was dim and red. The room smelled of sulphur and gunpowder, the air was heavy with it, but there was something else, which, when mixed with gunpowder, sent warning signs through my body. It was the smell of death. Abraham closed the door behind us.
My eyes adjusted enough to make out the outline of something just ahead with a similar shape to the tables the women had laid on, only the subject was not atop, but inside it. The walls of the box were transparent, inked with the crimson of the lights, and within it I saw movement, like many tadpoles in a pond. Abraham stepped forward and I followed.
“I suspect you smell flesh here, don’t you, Mr. Blake? You were a soldier, surely you recognize it. We have flesh inside this container. There are two more just like it further inside this room, separated by great distance. Empty space and darkness, these are two things we have in surplus in this compound, and for good reason. Sit down on your haunches, Mr. Blake, and attune your eyes. See for yourself.
I crouched and looked inside. The container was filled almost to the top with fluid. There were tens of thousands of black dots swimming in it, following each other almost intelligently. As I watched I began to realize their play, their movement, was no play at all. Each dot moved independently of the others, each chasing or being chased. I watched as one dot closed in on another, narrowing the distance until they were one.
“Predators,” I said, transfixed.
“Some. Cannibals, if given the chance. They are opportunity hunters, feeding on that which is nearest. In these tanks that happens to be their sisters.”
“And outside?” My hands grew cold at my own question.
“That is none of your concern, Mr. Blake. They are still juveniles. Hatchlings, really, and without proper care they cannot survive to maturity.”
“What constitutes proper care, doctor?”
He laughed, loud enough to fill the room and startle me.
“Incubation, we hope. These tanks were meant for the task, but they have proven to be much too small, and the hatchlings much too violent, too competitive. We’ve opted for a more isolated, natural approach.”
My body realized, without warning, that I had gone again.
“The women.”
“Three volunteers for three separate specimens, each given their space and enough sustenance to grow. Three sisters, three mothers. These younglings lie in wait for the results of their older siblings, each hoping to be next in line. Mr. Blake, you’ve seen all you can today. I suggest you go home, rest, and wait to be called down again. The births are just a week off, and you have an important role to play.”
I stood, looking at his silhouette in the darkness.
“What would you have me do?”
I saw the white of his teeth show red in the dim light.
“You will deliver them.”
Arthur ushered me back through the tunnel, told me I could stay home tomorrow, and brought me out into my office once more. Before unlocking the door, he turned to me to break the silence.
“Did I make the right decision bringing you along?”
“Yes, Arthur, you did.” I was telling the truth.