The Door to Lost Pages (2 page)

It is said, in one version of the tale, that in those days humanity had taken to burying its dead in the ground. No longer did the people surrender the corpses of their loved ones to the Green Blue and Brown God’s acolytes, who would then offer the bodies to their God.

And so did Yamesh-Lot begin harvesting the dead.

From deep in the pit at the heart of the world, Yamesh-Lot’s tendrils burrowed into the earth—far beneath the Godmoat that shielded the world from his darkness—and then back up again, near the surface, careful to avoid the Godpools and the network of underground rivers that connected them. He sought out corpses, found them, wrapped his tendrils around them, and pulled them to him.

Yamesh-Lot poured a portion of his dark essence into each. The corpses grew new eyes: ebony orbs that marked the lifeless, reanimated husks as his.

The enslaved corpses marched toward the subterranean Moon, which rested on its earthen cupule, shielded in the depths of the dark abyss from the ravages of sunlight. They climbed onto the Moon, and there they laboured for their master. Their fragile bodies could not withstand for very long the grind inflicted upon them. Fresh workers were constantly needed.

The workers extracted from the Moon’s bowels an ore that Yamesh-Lot forged into weapons: ebony swords that cut through any light and withstood contact with the Green Blue and Brown God’s holy waters. He had long envied the swords with which the Shifpan-Shap—those warriors of the Green Blue and Brown God—attacked his nightmare hordes; the dark god’s soldiers were too insubstantial to carry such heavy instruments and were thus unable to fight back effectively.

Once the Moon had been stripped bare, Yamesh-Lot raised an undead army that, moonswords in hand, rampaged through the mortal lands of the Green Blue and Brown God while, in the sky, the Shifpan-Shap were occupied by their nightly struggle against the dark god’s legions of nightmares. There was a scourge upon the lands as people were set upon by the corpses of their former neighbours, families, and lovers. The world was blanketed by human screams; but even that could not stir the Green Blue and Brown God to intervene directly.

When the moonswords pierced skin and touched human blood, Yamesh-Lot’s nightmares finally found a path to the world of dreams. Thus did Yamesh-Lot’s tendrils of fear and dread slither into the minds of humanity; finally, the dark god fed on the sweet essence of living mortals; it was a delicacy whose smell had long teased him with its succulent aroma.

But there are other versions, other stories, other outcomes, other delusions, other myths. . . .

Now, most of the time, Aydee has no reason to think of the man and the woman. Occasionally, she spots someone walking down the street who for some reason or other—a piece of clothing, a hairstyle, a frown—sparks an unpleasant memory. These are not unwelcome incidents. They remind her that the man and the woman are nothing but a memory to her, that she has succeeded in stepping into another life.

Aydee: that was her secret name, the one she’d given herself. No-one knew of it, especially not the man and the woman who’d given her that other name when she was born.

For the first ten years of her life, Aydee lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with that man and that woman. The man made good money. He had a job that required him to wear a suit and tie—he sold something or other, stocks, buildings, insurance, whatever. He shaved every morning, except for the moustache that was much too big for his small face.

Most of the money from the man’s job went into business suits and cocaine. The man and the woman rarely slept, rarely ate, and rarely thought of food at all. Occasionally, the man or the woman would order pizza or bring home TV dinners. Even then, she wouldn’t get enough to satisfy her appetite.

The woman had the habit of letting small change accumulate at the bottom of the cutlery drawer. Aydee would pilfer it in order to buy lunch at school. Aydee didn’t know if the woman noticed that Aydee took that money. Aydee was always careful to leave enough change in the drawer so that it would look undisturbed. Still, she sometimes had enough left over to buy a snack on the way back from school.

Most weekends, the woman would get on the bus to see her mother and bring Aydee along. Aydee and the woman rarely exchanged even a word during these bus rides. Aydee passed the time reading off the street signs, like a countdown to armageddon.

Fat and mean-mouthed, the woman’s mother chain-smoked so carelessly that she often had at least two cigarettes going. Every time they visited, the old crone would spew hatred from the moment they stepped in the door to when they left. She’d start with that “no good husband” of her daughter’s. Always the same litany: “Did you have to marry one of
them
? They look at you, and all they see is a slave, you know. That’s all they’ll ever see.” Then she moved on to immigrants, neighbours, family . . . she never ran out of spite. While the old crone ranted at the younger woman about this and that, she would serve Aydee platefuls of food: tomato-lettuce sandwiches, homemade cookies and doughnuts, fried eggs and bacon, chicken noodle soup, fruit salad, chicken with gravy, meat pie, apple crumble . . . There was cigarette ash in every mouthful. Still, Aydee ate. The old woman, chiding her daughter for Aydee’s thinness, would always insist that they take some food back with them—but that invariably angered the younger woman, who screamed back that she knew how to take care of the girl. It was an argument that the old woman always lost. Aydee knew the old woman didn’t really care about her. All she wanted was to dominate her daughter. Aydee was just the most convenient weapon. Every visit resulted in the same fight.

On weekdays, while the man was away at his job, the woman would spend the whole day cleaning, working herself into white-hot rages at the dust and grime that constantly undermined her efforts at spotless cleanliness. She shouted at the dirt in the corners; she screamed at the smudges on the floors; she hissed at the mildew on the bathroom tiles. She could not abide the slightest smear or dust. The apartment reeked of disinfectant. The woman fuelled her fastidious campaigns with a constant stream of cocaine and jumbo bottles of cola.

Aydee had taught herself to be meticulously clean and tidy. Thus, for better and for worse, Aydee was ignored, invisible.

On her tenth birthday, like most nights, the man and the woman were sitting on the living-room couch, watching television with the sound on loud. The one bedroom in that apartment was the bedroom of the man and the woman: a strictly forbidden zone. Aydee was allowed to sleep on the couch, but, often, she was forced to seek refuge in the bathroom. She would take off her shoes and lie down in the tub, inhaling the fumes of the various cleaning products the woman used to keep it sparkling white. That night, though, she just stood in the living room, between the couch and the door, watching the man and the woman. Waiting. Waiting for nothing.

The man was drinking beer; the woman, cola. It was past midnight; the bowl of cocaine on the coffee table was half full. They would still be up for hours, Aydee knew. They might even stay up all night. She was hungry and tired. In the fridge, scrubbed to an immaculate white inside and out, there were only more big plastic bottles of cola and cans of beer. She had tried to drink these before, but the beer smelled like piss and the soft drink felt like exploding sludge.

Her heart was a tight mess of knots, a heavy weight in her chest. She didn’t cry. She never cried.

She was hungry. She was tired. Enough; she’d had enough. There was nothing for her here.

She was ten years old, now. She didn’t need to sneak out.

Once, I was a ten-year-old boy. Father. Mother. No siblings. No pets. I begged again and again to get a dog or a cat. But my folks were firm on this one. Mom hated animals. She was scared. People can be so stupid.

The best thing my folks ever did for me was leave me alone. On days when there was no school—the whole summer in fact—I’d wander around the city, and sometimes even a bit beyond. Walking. Riding my bike. Taking the bus. Getting on the subway. The city itself was my best friend.

I never made any friends at school. I wasn’t picked on either. I was weird, but invisible. I’d learned early on to keep my weirdness to myself. I still remember the first time my mom pleaded with me to act normal, to stop embarrassing her by saying weird things no-one understood. I was only three years old. She didn’t threaten me, but the more she nagged me the less connected I felt not only to her but to everything around me, the more I retreated into my imagination. What was it about me that caused her so much distress? Was I really that different from the other kids?

It probably took her and my dad a bit over a year to begin to suspect how far I was roaming. They thought I was just playing outside—in the alley, or in the park down the street.

They made a big fuss at first. They yelled at me, something they rarely did. They made some sort of half-hearted attempt to restrict my comings and goings. For a few weeks they diligently watched over me. They demanded a strict accounting of my time. I was furious for a couple of days, mainly at the realization that they could exert such authority over me. I figured they couldn’t keep that up for very long. I was right. It was clearly more taxing for them than for me.

That was around the time I turned ten. Around the same time I discovered books. Looking at me now, you’d think I’d dropped from my mother’s womb right onto a messy pile of old, lurid paperbacks and arcane leatherbound tomes. But there were no books in the house I grew up in. The only books I remember from my early childhood are schoolbooks and dictionaries. Except . . . in fourth grade, there was an incomplete set of an old, battered encyclopaedia on top of an old filing cabinet in the back of the classroom.

Aydee was cold. She was feeling faint, hunger and exhaustion getting the better of her. She didn’t think to beg for assistance, food, or money. Nothing in her short life had led her to expect help from anyone.

She walked through the streets of the city. There were well-dressed men and women stepping in and out of cars. Brash young folk, not so well-dressed, hurried from here to there, or nowhere to nowhere, huddled in groups, hooting and shouting. In the doorways of businesses that were closed at this time of night, she noticed people wrapped in tattered blankets. Some talked to the passersby who ignored them; others faded into the shadows. Some were very old, older even than the woman’s old mother. Some were younger than Aydee.

No-one noticed her.

It was getting harder and harder for her to keep her eyes open. Her legs rebelled against her aimless wandering, urging her to stop and rest.

Aydee ducked into an alley where the intrusive glare of the city lights was diminished. Her back against a wall, she let herself sag to the ground and shut her eyes.