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CAOIMHE
...And well, I was told to come to you, you see. 'parently your lot are into all this sort of thing.
ARCHIVIST
This is our particular purview, yes... however, I am afraid you've come at a rather inconvenient time. If you could just follow the stairs back up, Rosie will be able to take your details...
CAOIMHE
This is important! I didn't come here out of the goodness of my heart. I've been trapped in some bastard corridor for fuck-knows how long, I want to go home and call my parents, but I was told to talk to you so that is exactly what I've come to do. But if it's so inconvenient... [sound of a chair scraping back]
ARCHIVIST
Ms Ní Bhraonáin. I... Apologies. For any offence caused. It's been a long... [composing himself] Please. Would you like to make a statement?
CAOIMHE
…Sure. What's the harm. Into that... thingy, yeah?
ARCHIVIST
If you would be so kind.
CAOIMHE
No bother to me.
ARCHIVIST
Very well then. Statement of Caoimhe Ní Bhraonáin, regarding a second-hand book. Statement recorded direct from subject 12th July 2017. Statement begins.
CAOIMHE
So... where do you want me to start?
ARCHIVIST
Why don't you tell me about the bookseller? You implied he was involved somehow.
CAOIMHE
OK. Sure. I never got his name. He was always just the 'Not-Today-Thank-You' man. Which is daft, I know, saw the fella at least twice, three times a week, but it... we had a little routine. And I reckon, if I'd asked him his name, it would have ruined it, the patter we had, the easy nattering of two people who are comfortable being almost strangers. Middle of the afternoon, pottering down the street, I'd see him coming, idly peering in shop windows and never buying anything. I knew him by his clothes. Grandad-wear, looked hand-me-down– I mean, not poorly kept like, but a bit scruffy, like one of those well-off people who've so much money they don't know how to dress themselves properly – and then topped with a jaunty little bow-tie. And his hair of course. I'd have said he was in his late forties, maybe edging into his fifties, but his hair was this vibrant white, and on nice days it caught the sun. ‘Suppose he bleached it religiously, 'cause I never saw any roots, though it would have been rude to ask.
So, I guess you maybe want some context for your records. I'm a member of the wait staff – head waiter if I want to blow my own trumpet – at an upscale restaurant near Leicester Square. You'd know it to see it, right by the National Gallery. We're a pretty swanky place, so we get all the posh toffs who think they don't need to reserve a table, some folks who channel in before an opera show or the theatre. My shifts change depending on when I'm needed, which, sure, is fair enough in hospitality. I'd a few jobs before this, and this was definitely the one I'd stuck the longest. It pays the bills and I work hard and send money back to my folks. I've been here, what, must be going on eleven years now – I was eighteen when the Crash happened, so I left to find work like everyone else. Most of my year at school did the same, heading off to England or Scotland or Australia – and there wasn't exactly surplus employment in the Gaeltacht before the Crash anyway. . I'm happy enough here. Maybe it's not what I would've chosen, but sure you know yourself, you take what you get handed, and sometimes that's how it goes.
One of my jobs, unless I'm busy running around dousing fires the other wait staff have started, is to change the menu outside. On the wall, we've a framed box protected by plastic that shows the menu, and I'm the one who changes it over to the dinner menu while we're tidying up from lunch. It's a simple job, thirty seconds, but it always takes me about ten minutes. Call it a little me-time. I change it over, mechanically now after doing it so many times, and then I take a few minutes, enjoying the sensation of being in the fresh air. It's my smoke break if you like, and I reckon I'm entitled, especially when I'm working a double – I'm one of the few front of house staff that don't smoke so it's a welcome pause in a long day. I look out at the tourists ambling past, and I've got one of those faces because they always seem to come up to me and ask for directions to the Eye or the Palace. I don't mind so much. Most of us who've moved to London all remember being lost in our early days, and nothing makes you feel more like a local than pointing out the way to local landmarks. So, all this means, unless it's fierce busy, I'm usually outside the same time every afternoon, taking a sec to watch the world.
That's when I first saw him. He was strolling along, minding his own, and his gaze happened to accidentally snag on me. A mistake of course, but it'd been a quiet lunch and I'd slipped outside to get away from fuckin' Sean and his stupid stories, going on and on about some shite or other he'd apparently done the previous night, so I clocked his gaze, and gestured to the menu as if inviting him in, thinking I could at least have a punt for a customer to break the monotony of the shift.
The man shook his head, didn't even slow down, and he responded very politely, in that apologetic sort of way that only English people have really cracked, sounding sorry without really being sorry, saying 'Not today thank you, my dear.' And off he went. And fine, grand, didn't bother me, I didn't even think of him after that.
Except turned out he walked that way a few times a week. Always around the same time, and I'm always surprised I'd never noticed him before. An' I don't know why but when I saw him again, I caught his eye, indicating I recognised him from before, and trying to tempt him with the menu. I got a small smile of recognition and a soft 'Not today thank you, my dear,” and then after that, that was it. I saw him maybe two, three times a week, and I'd make a play at trying to sell the highlights of the menu, knowing he'd never bite, and he'd give that genteel smile of his and tell me 'not today thank you dear', before dropping some compliment about the specials of the day, or making some blithe comment about the weather, and then he'd be on his way. It was nice to see him. Even if I had a manic shift, if my manager was being an arse or if Sean was driving me up the wall, seeing him settled me. He'd give me a smile, like he'd know how hard the day was, like he sympathised, and that always made my shift a bit easier.
We didn't talk about much – he'd politely ask me about the day, and he'd remember what I'd told him the previous time, which is more than I would have expected. He'd an astounding memory for names, recalled all the daft little details I'd mentioned off-hand. I'd ask him where he was off to, and he'd always say the same, getting a stretch of the legs, going to the park to feed the ducks. Which OK, those ducks are fat as and clearly don't need any help on that front, but he seemed to like the routine of it, and I think he had a mate or whatever he met there. He'd always glance at his pocket watch – I usually find lads who wear those insufferable, but it suited him down to the ground so I didn't mind it so – and sigh that the time was getting away from him, that he'd be late for meeting his friend.
The few things I did know about him were scant: he liked to feed the ducks, he was particularly partial to gravlax – I'd nearly tempted him once with one of our dinner specials – and that he owned a bookshop in Soho. And that's why I'd thought to go to him when, when all this happened.
Now, I love books. I spend my time not at work hunting the charity shops, and on my road, I've got both an Oxfam and a British Heart Foundation, which is right handy. I'll read anything, I'm soft for a good adventure novel or two, but I'm not picky. I'll even look in the battered fifty-p book bins where the pages are all fucked up, the front cover's torn, the shop isn't holding its breath for anyone to give it a home, and sometimes I'll deliberately give those ones more of a look 'cause I reckon they need someone giving them a try. I sit at home, and I carefully peel off the stickers on the back while I'm on the phone to Mam, and she's nattering away about Dad, or the local gossip she's heard from the people she sees at church, or what happened on the latest episode of Ros Na Rún or EastEnders, stuff where I can make little noises like I'm listening.
About – what, well, must be about two weeks, huh – about two weeks ago, I found a hardback of Borges' Labyrinths. I used to have an old Penguin copy back home, but I hadn't bought it in the move because I'd lent it to my cousin and never got it back. I already had two other books in my hand, one rescued from the scrap bin, the other part of a series I'd been collecting, and I flipped the Borges over, surprised to see how cheap it was. It was a solid, heavy book, fancy looking, leather bound, and I wondered if it might be a rare edition or something – there wasn't a publisher's stamp or an ISBN or anything like that. That sorta thing doesn't much matter to me personally, but I knew it looked like a bargain, and figured I was due a new copy anyway, so I bought it. Gave the woman a fiver for the three, popped them into a plastic bag, then went home.
That night, I flicked through my finds on my sofa – my flatmate was visiting family that week, so I had the place to myself. I peeled the price sticker off a battered Derek Landy and an almost-new Margaret Atwood, then, putting them to one side, inspected the Borges.
It was… it was an unusual book. There were no publisher's notes at the beginning, the book itself had gold-gilded pages, and was a little knocked-about in the way you expect old books to be, but on the first few pages when I opened it, there was nothing there, except an ornate black and white bookplate, which read 'From the library of Jurgen Leitner' in curling calligraphy. There was finally, a table of contents after I'd flicked through a few more blank pages, and I smiled as I recognised a few of the names of stories I'd forgotten about. It was evening, and I'd had the morning shift so had the rest of the night to myself. I got myself a coke from the fridge, settled back into my lumpy sofa, and I turned to 'The Library of Babel', an old favourite of mine.
It wasn't as I remembered it. See, Labyrinths, I don't know if you've read it yourself, but it's a collection of short stories by this Argentinian writer. You'd probably call it magical realism now, and they're all pretty unusual, all about the nature of reality and language, etc, and when I was a teen, I'd thought they'd been 'deep' you know. One of the most well-known stories is called 'The Library of Babel'. It's about – it's definitely about, because I had to look up the plot on Wikipedia afterwards – a library, in which there are an infinite number of books, and these books contain every possible ordering of language; most are gibberish, strings of meaningless letters peppered with punctuation like computer code, but the narrator hypothesises that some of them have – randomly – reproduced every combination of language ever, and so somewhere in the library there will be, like your Shakespeares and your Wildes and your Heaneys, all of it random. It's not really a story, it's more of a philosophical problem about the nature of an infinite universe masquerading as literature, but it's interesting enough.
That wasn't what I was reading. Borges' narrator, after describing the library and its various inhabitants, its ideologies, its sects, gives an anecdote about one of his fellow travellers in the library, searching as they all are for answers. He watches as the man – older, squinted eyes from ceaseless reading – approaches a door in the wall. It's a – it's a stark image; the narrator describes how the man stands with a book in his hand, open like he's reading a gospel from the pulpit, how he's sweated so much his hair is slick, how his body lurches in irregular sobs like he's gagging on them, standing like a penitent before the closed door. From his book, grasping it so hard in his nails have started to splinter at their beds, he reads the words he's found, the meaning from out of meaninglessness.
'Come away o human child,' the man sobs to the yellow door with the matte black handle that sits innocuous in the infinite library, ‘to the waters and the wild, with a faery hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.'
It's a Yeats poem. I had to study the fucking thing at school. It's some of that romantic shite where they all got themselves riled up talking about fucking leaves or streams or whatever, about the purity of nature, the innocence of childhood but also the potential for deception. Your bog-standard fae story. The sort my nan, when she was alive, would have believed in, fairy rings and changeling children and all that.
The man doesn't read it in the airy whimsical way it’s intended. The narrator is very clear. The man cycles around and repeats it over and over, his voice straining like he's being strangled but somehow getting louder, until he is shouting it, without intonation, without pauses – comeawayohumanchild – nothing but a breathless, screaming fear over and over and over. He bangs his fist against his chest, following the rhythm of the rhyme scheme, and eventually there is a crunching splintering sound as he manages to snap his own ribs and still he continues, wailing, blood trickling from the sides of his lips and dripping onto the book in time with his hits.
Finally, the door opens, and something beckons him inside. Many boned, stretched out like a shadow. The man follows as though in a trance, suddenly deathly silent, and the door closes behind him. And that's the end.
I was unsettled. Course I was. That's not what I remembered. The style was right, the pattern of writing, but – and I looked, I looked up the plots on Wikipedia, I flicked through a few of those short stories, and they were all the same. People driven mad, lost in their personal labyrinths, trapped somehow as the walls tighten around them, and always somewhere a yellow door standing sentinel off to the side. I stopped reading after a while.
It was weird. It was clearly not Borges, so it was… I don't know, some indie unpublished author trying to get more people to read their work? Some mistake at the printing press? Whatever it was, I wasn't having any of it. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling in my throat, and I had to double check my front door was locked, suddenly paranoid something might have crept in while I was reading.
I put the book down, and watched TV instead, distracting myself with the football before I went to bed. I tried to shake that creeping feeling the book had left me with and played about on my phone for a bit before I went to sleep. I had twisting dreams of forking paths and fractals, of stairs that went down without stopping, spiralling down and down into basements that were never reached, a helter-skelter that looped around and around, of a yellow door that stood slightly ajar.
So much so, one dream lapping palimpsest over and into another, that when I woke up around three in the morning and saw the door to the right of my own bedroom door, I thought my dreams had bled over into wakefulness.
It was closed. The room wasn't bigger, the wall didn't look any wider than it had when I went to bed. It slotted in like it had never been otherwise. But there hadn't been a door there, I knew, I knew.
My heart seized in my throat. I was lying on my back, neck elevated by my pillow and I stared. Watching the door, and god, my teachers at school would have been proud then because I recited every prayer I remembered from plodding assemblies, and I don't think I've ever been as fervently religious as I was in that moment, waiting for the handle of the door to shift, or rattle, for the door to push outwards and present some hideous reveal, praying with a manic trembling terror.
I have a bedside lamp, and after a while I got brave enough to push my hand from out from under the covers and turn it on. The door was – it was as it was in the stories, painted with broad strokes of a dark yellow, the handle a round matte-black knob. I know – I know what you're going to say, you've got that look on your face, but I wasn't, I wasn't dreaming.
The room was warm. A thick, muggy sort of heat. My heating's on a timer, see, clicks in about six, so I've a thick duvet to ward off the night-time chill. There was a noticeable heat radiating outwards from the door, and I was sure if I got up, if I placed my palm on the handle, it would be like touching metal left to bake in sunlight.
I wasn't going to touch it. I sat for the rest of the night, not daring to go to sleep as dawn failed to completely break up the shadows in the room. The door didn't open or change. There was – I thought at points – creaking sounds like settling wood but it sounded so similar to a growl of a stomach that I thought it must have been me.
It was the book. Of course it was. I wasn't daft. I don't believe in all that stuff, or I hadn't, but funnily enough, you'll believe in all sorts of things when there's a creepy door appeared in your room straight out of a book.
It was then I thought of the guy, the Not-Today-Thank-You fella. He had a bookshop. Antiques and second-hands and unusual printings, that sort of thing. Maybe he'd know something about it. I thought... look, it was late and there was a creepy fucking door in my bedroom, and I had the craziest notion that I just couldn't shake that if I chucked the book in the bin, it would just come back to me, that that wouldn't be enough. And I've seen enough horror films to know that if I tried to destroy it, it probably wouldn't go well for me either. This is the logic I was going off at the time, I'm not saying that it made sense or even that it was true, but I had no clue what to do. I thought I could find out something about it from the fella, or even if I was lucky sell it, but... I... for some reason, I knew if I went and told him, he would be able to help. That if I took the book there, the door would be gone, it would stay gone, you know what I'm getting at? I don't know why I believed that so strongly. The guy looked like he probably thought the Radio 4 Book at Bedtime could get a little scary. But the more I considered the idea, the more committed I was. I'd take it there. I'd find out, I'd find out something, surely he might know something that could help.
I decided to take it first thing in the morning. I had an afternoon shift later in the day, and I wasn't keeping this thing for any longer than I needed to. I sat in bed, seeing the light behind my curtains begin to relieve some of the darkness in the room. At one point, I had to get up, grabbing a change of clothes, so I could get out of the room, and my legs shook as I walked towards my door – my real bedroom door, and opened it. Nothing untoward popped up on the other side, and I had a quick wash and changed out of my pyjamas. I was almost beginning to calm down – maybe I'd been over-reacting, if I went back into my room, and there wasn't a door... and maybe I had been dreaming. I really wanted to have been dreaming.
But then I turned, toothbrush still in my mouth, and I almost screamed when I saw the two doors leading out of my bathroom. The same yellow door, snug against the wall as though it had always been there. It was faintly ajar. And I wanted, I wanted to go in, I wanted to see. But I wasn't wasting time. I grabbed my phone, my keys and wallet, grabbed that bloody book and shoved it into my handbag, double checked the colour of my front door and left.
Outside, it was easier to breathe. I kept looking around for any doors, any intrusions where there shouldn't have been any, but if there were they were well hidden. I'd calmed down enough to check Google Maps for this shop: A. Z. Fell's and Co. It had some pretty shocking customer reviews, mostly to do with the attitude of the owner, who was alternately described as reticent, standoffish or simply just absent. That made me smirk actually, imagining this curmudgeonly old academic waging his own passive-aggressive war against customers. I didn't think the Not-Today-Thank-You guy was that interested in his online presence, if he knew he had one at all.
It took me about half an hour to walk to Soho and locate the shop. It was down a run-down little lane, a bit of a rough part of the neighbourhood, but the shop looked as I would have expected, flaky paint, a bit dusty, a spider's web beginning to floss over the corner of the main display window. It looked closed, but it was early yet, not quite eight o'clock, so I hadn't expected it to be open.
I was surprised to see that there was someone else outside the shop door. Fiddling with the strap of their bag, then rifling through a cavernous laptop bag and muttering to themselves so they didn't see me right away. I was... look, it was early and the shop wasn’t open and now there was this stranger lurking outside and looking shifty, so I wasn't too polite in asking them who they were and what they were doing. The guy jumped a bit when I approached him, clearly caught out by my tone, but he told me with a nervy stammer and a tentative smile that his name was Martin. That he was trying to get into contact with the owners of the shop, only they weren't answering when he knocked. He didn't look like he was very surprised by this, I think he'd tried....
ARCHIVIST
[interrupting] I'm sorry, did you say Martin?
CAOIMHE
[dazedly, as though coming out of a trance] I... What?
ARCHIVIST
[insistent] Martin. Martin Blackwood.
CAOIMHE
Sure, that's him. He's the one who told me to come here and ask after you.
ARCHIVIST
And you couldn't have... I don't know, led with that?
CAOIMHE
I didn't have the chance! Reception told me you were here, and you were all stressed and pissy, and then you were all sit down, let's take a statement!
ARCHIVIST
I would have assumed you might have at least mentioned ... You know what, fine. It's fine.
[quieter] He's OK?
CAOIMHE
Yeah, I mean, relatively.
ARCHIVIST
Relatively? So... I mean, has he been hurt, has he been taken, is he...
CAOIMHE
Well I'm sure he's less than stellar after those corridors, but physically, he's grand enough.
ARCHIVIST
What... what happened? It's – it's been weeks. I – we thought... We didn't know what had happened.
CAOIMHE
If you'd let me finish.
ARCHIVIST
Right. Right.
[sighing, straightening in his chair] Please, continue with your statement.
CAOIMHE
So this Martin told me that he was looking into having a chat with the guys that ran the shop, a Mr Fell and Mr Crowley. I hadn't heard of the second one, but I described my Not-Today-Thank-You guy and we worked out that his Mr Fell was one in the same. I asked him what he wanted to ask about at such an early hour, and he got a bit evasive, said he'd been reading up about them – that they feature in some of your records here – and that he wanted to ask them some questions. I've heard of the Magnus Institute of course, I mean, if I'm honest, you guys have a reputation for getting all the weirdos who've seen pictures of their loved ones in slices of toast and stuff, but Martin seemed like a nice lad, genuine. He looked tired, like he wasn't sleeping well. So when he asked me what I was there for, well, it wasn't hard for me to admit that I'd got this book the day before. About the Borges stories that weren't as I remembered, about the door in my room.
His face… his face changed as soon as I mentioned the book. Hardened with something like dread. His questions got insistent, and he asked me what colour the door was. It seemed really important, and his sudden change in manner made me anxious. I told him it was a dark yellow, and he swallowed and asked me if there'd been a name plate at the front of the book.
I started going into my bag, intending on showing him the book, and I said I thought it'd been something Scandinavian. I said the name Jurgen Leitner and he moved forward immediately – I think he was trying to stop me from opening the book – but the movement was so sudden that I took a few steps back. I didn't notice anything odd until he stopped dead and his face paled, and he told me, very shakily, not to turn around.
It was then I noticed the ground wasn't as hard as it had been before. Softer, no longer tarmac. That the light was different, electric rather than the weak daylight of standing outside. That Martin was standing in front of me, but between us was a painted oblong frame, as though of an open door that I'd just unknowingly walked through.
Of course I turned round.
I was in a corridor. It was like a hotel corridor. Perfectly straight, broken up by lights every ten metres or so, those bowl-shaped ones connected to the walls, the light soft and muted. The walls were a minty green, the carpet, I think- I think it was beige, something unmemorable. I was so shocked, I didn't move, and then I felt Martin walk up behind me, yank at my arm, tell me to move, to get out of here. I recovered enough to come to my senses, to realise that whatever was here, wherever I was, I needed to leave.
When we turned around, the door was closed. It was still there, a dirty yellow, panelling and whorls in the wood. There wasn't any handle to be seen.
I banged on the door. Course I did. I shouted and kicked it and hit it till my fists throbbed and my throat croaked. Martin was swearing at himself, but he didn't try hitting the door – he knew it wouldn't help, I got the impression. I think he mentioned you, said that Jon wouldn't be happy he'd got himself trapped in these bloody corridors again.
Eventually I calmed down. I wasn't going to help anyone by panicking. Took a deep breath, and turned to Martin. 'You know where we are?' I asked him. 'You know what's happening?'. He nodded miserably, and said we were in the corridors. That we wouldn't be getting out if it didn't want us to get out. I wanted to laugh at him, but he was deadly serious, and I was too shocked to be questioning that. I could only process one terror at a time.
I pointed down the corridor and asked him if we should walk, and he said it didn't matter either way. So we walked.
The corridors, they weren't creepy. I mean yeah, ‘course, weird corridor accessed via book, that's, that's odd. They stretched on and on, broken up by intersecting corridors that led off to the right, those lights on the walls. Sometimes there was a door, or at least the structure of a door – none of them had handles, and it was a particular cruelty, seeing those, feeling my heart pick up hopefully, each time the disappointment that came with it.
In between each of the lights, dead centre was – I'd thought they were artworks originally. You know how hotels have those deliberately unthreatening pieces of art, nice scenery, people on sailboats, abstract colours, a cliched black and white photo of some local monument. But I looked closer, and most of them were photos, images of the corridor we were in. Exactly the same corridor. Minty green walls, beige carpet, the line stretching on and out of frame. And at random intervals, every so often, there was a mirror, in place of those corridor photos. I didn't like looking at those. My reflection... There was my face, sweaty and nervous, but my mouth didn't sit right on my face, and the image... shivered sometimes. Martin nudged my arm, told me we should try and ignore them, and I was relieved to break my gaze away from my own unsettling reflection.
We walked. There wasn't anything else we could do. At first, we just followed the straight line, ignoring the right turns, but after a while, it didn't seem like it would make much of a difference. Martin got out a notebook from his bag, and a pen, and he drew a crude map of the directions we took. It looked a useless mess, considering none of the doors worked and the only direction we could go was right, and the lines quickly crossed over each other, and sometimes he drew an identical line as though we'd stumbled onto the same corridor, even though I'd have sworn it wasn't the same one – the images interspersed differently. At some point, the minty green had changed to a different colour, the beige darkening to a grey, and I hadn't noticed any point at which it had swapped. We kept walking, turning right sometimes, the corridors shifting from green to red or blue without noticing, Martin drawing his lines religiously, sometimes noting down the colours in cramped spidery handwriting. I didn't question him – it looked like it was helping keep him from panicking.
I asked him to tell me what he knew. He didn't want to, he was worried about freaking me out too much, but I wasn't going to be able to help if I didn't know, me not knowing wasn't going to make me less frightened, and I told him as much in fewer words, and eventually he agreed. So I asked him about the time he'd been here before. He said it had been the same from what he could see, endless corridors, all forking right, and that him and his friend had walked and walked. I asked him why he'd gone inside, and he made an unhappy noise, and said it had wanted them out of the way for a while, and when it had been done playing games, there'd been a door and they'd been back in the Archives. I – of course, I didn't understand – so there was a consciousness here? Like, the doors and the corridor were alive or something, or did something control them, or what?
He – he went into details that didn't make a lot of sense. I reckon you know more about this than me, so I'll try and repeat what I remember. He called it the Spiral, and it wasn't – he said it wasn't a thing, not exactly, more of a... concept, if you like. A concept of fear. I laughed at him then, but it was one of those nervous half-disbelieving laughs, and he didn't laugh back, and it died in my throat. Maybe entity would be a better word, he continued. He paused, and then stopping and starting, muddled through an explanation that these entities existed outside of our reality but were able to affect them by causing monstrous happenings or manifestations, like different symptoms of an illness. All sounded very Lovecraft to me, but I didn't interrupt him. He tried to explain that one of these manifestations of this – this Spiral, this fear of deception, this force that dealt in lies and hallucinations, was called The Distortion. It wasn't a person. He was insistent about that. He could describe how it looked as a human, long blond hair, round face, that it might even answer to being called Michael. Martin called him a creepy arsehole with weird hands, and he sounded so pissy at that that I had to laugh, although it clogged a little in my throat. I mentioned the book, about what this Leitner had to do with it, and he shrugged and said he guessed the book was designed catch another person for the corridors. I asked if Leitner was in league with it then, and he shook his head. He said that Jurgen Leitner was a stupid old man who thought he could own something he didn't understand, who had collected all of these strange books which could interrupt and damage and ruin our world in such ways. The books were just another way of finding victims for these Powers Martin had talked about. That there was no reason, there was never a reason why it chose some people. That it was bad luck, nothing more.
I asked him what... Michael, the Distortion, whatever the fuck it was called wanted... and Martin went quiet and said he didn't know. I asked him what happened to people who got trapped in these corridors, and he didn't know either.
We changed the subject after that.
Eventually Martin's map was a page full of lines, and he stopped trying. He faffed around in his bag, and brought out a battered little tape recorder, asking if I didn't mind him turning it on. Said his boss was big on recording things, some shite about it being as good an opportunity for research as any. I gave him a look, and he folded and admitted that if... if we didn't get out of here, he wanted his friends to know what happened to him. That he hadn't just abandoned them. I couldn't argue with that. The tape recorder clicked on.
Having the company made it bearable. Martin was a sweet lad. Wrote poetry, he said when we got onto talking about hobbies, and we discussed a few books we'd both read – he mentioned how much he liked Yeats, we bickered about that... and yeah, it was nice. He asked me questions about my name, and usually I get a bit shirty, but there didn't seem any point to, down here. See, I'm proud of my name. It's my bit of home brought with me. But here, I have to live with people uncomfortably asking how to spell it, or else giving it a go themselves and butchering it horribly, or there's always some twat making stupid little jokes when I give them the correct pronunciation. Fuck 'em. One of my bosses when I first arrived asked me if I could 'anglicise' it to make it easier for people, and I told him where he could shove it. My language didn't survive all this time just so I could erase it for some people's convenience. But Martin was really interested, completely sincere, and I got the feeling he was like that about everything. His name sounded like a wizard's apprentice in some sort of historical fantasy novel, I told him, and he looked really chuffed at that. He was about my age, and I remember thinking that if we got out of here, I could try setting him up with one of my mates. I asked him if there was anyone, and he got a bit flustered, super cagey. Awkward crush I think, someone at work.
I didn't know how long we'd been there. I checked my phone when we first started walking – and the lock screen photo, of me, my Mam and Dad on holiday in Galway, had been replaced by a photo of these corridors, identical to the pictures on the walls. It was the same for Martin's. I don't wear a watch - I'd be taking it off all the time for work so I fell out of the habit.
I was about to ask Martin if he had a watch or something, when the lights went out.
All the air went out of my lungs with a dizzying shock. There wasn't a flicker or even a click of electricity powering down or cutting out. The light just stopped.
The silence stretched.
Neither of us said anything. We were both listening, for any slide of scrape or scurry of sound, any indication we weren't alone in the corridor. I was breathing too loud, and so was he. The world had closed down to the air whistling in and out of our lungs. I moved my hand to fist in his coat sleeve, to anchor him to me, because god, I didn't want to be alone here.
I don't know how long we stood in the dark. Trying not to panic, terrified that something was here with us. That it could be right in front of me. I had flashes of every horror film I'd seen through the gaps in my fingers. A formless monster, its face almost nose to nose with mine. Watching my sightless eyes scatter about in the darkness, circling us carefully with a padding quiet, waiting for one of us to make a move.
There was a buzz and a pop like a shorting fuse. I swallowed a scream, and Martin jumped. At the end of the corridor, a light flickered on. There was a door where there hadn't been one before, right at the end. The light above it washed over the paint in the sickly green of an emergency exit light. Its ragged halo of illumination bathed the rest of the corridor in the same unhealthy pallor, the light glinting uncomfortably off the mirrors. I risked a glance out of the corner of my eye, to the photo on the wall nearest me. The corridor in the picture had the same blocky light, an insidious green. It didn't say EXIT, didn't have the symbol of the little white man running, but it was obvious that's what this was meant to be.
I would have grabbed the chance, if Martin hadn't been there. It sounds – sounds stupid now, and I'm not one of those people who loses their heads in a crisis, I'm not. At least I thought I wasn't. It was a trap, of course it was. But that dark had been so final. So absolute. I wanted out of here, I wanted something other than the endless corridors and now, now there was a door, and it had a handle, and I didn't know what was behind it, but sure, it couldn't be worse than this.
I must have made a motion to move, an aborted gesture forward, because Martin looked at me and shook his head, telling me not to. His expression was peaky in the washed-out light, and his eyes were as wide and frightened as mine must have been, but he kept shaking his head. Don't, he pleaded. It's what it wants. It wants us afraid, panicking and confused, that's what it feeds on. These are its corridors, it doesn't want us to leave.
I paused, and it was long enough to cast doubt. The light went out again, and this time I made a sound. I don't know whether it was because of the dark, or because the only escape we had seen had vanished. It was the only sound, a desperate noise, and it travelled wrong along the corridors. My heartbeat was so loud, I put my hand to my chest, and felt it thundering through my shirt.
I felt Martin shift closer to me. He was a tall lad, and I could feel the tremors coming off him along the side of his body that stood against mine, ripples like disturbed water. I held tighter onto him and wondered if I'd die here.
Then the floor in front of us creaked.
Far off in front of us, where I would have said the exit door had been. And still there was no light. Another slow creak, the sound of weight being put onto a weak floorboard, someone walking up a staircase and putting their foot in the wrong place. Then another, closer. Another. Deliberately slow, pacing. Martin made a choked noise beside me.
A creak like a groan. A faint metallic clatter, the same sound as when someone holds cutlery in one hand and they scrape together. A snap like ribs shattering, like the man in the story I'd read, the terror in his bulging eyes. Come away o human child, I thought again.
I... I panicked. I'm not proud – I... I didn't understand... that place, what was inside, what was walking towards us... I just...
I yelled as I punched the mirror to the right of me. I think I had the delirious notion that it might hurt it, these corridors that were somehow connected to it, or even that I could use one of the pieces of glass to defend us. The sound split the silence. I don't know why I yelled. Fear, I think, I was too frightened to be angry, but then it was surprise because the lights shocked back on with all the suddenness of a collision. The mirror split under the force, and the splintered face around my fist gave a fragmented smile, not my smile, not mine, and I screamed again, even louder, in pain now, as my hand sunk into the slashed glass, claiming my fingers, my wrist – Martin shouted my name, grabbing my arm and pulling it out and there was resistance there, the glass closing around my hand like teeth. The shattered face in the mirror – and it was my face, but then no, it wasn't right, it didn't fit together properly – kept grinning, and grinning, and it had forgotten to include eyes, so there was nothing but that mouth, that stretched and yawing mouth, and I whimpered as my hand tore free, bloody and scored with cuts.
Martin had tensed up beside me. I didn't notice for a moment. The pain in my hand was a throbbing shock, and I didn't see that the photos of the corridor, those perfect replications recreated in each picture along the walls, that they'd changed.
When I finally turned, there was a figure there, halfway down the corridor. It wasn't... no, it had the shape of a man only in as much as two arms and legs and a head count as humanity. It had stuffed itself into what it thought a body looked like, for it bulged and strained at random places like there were growths pushing out from under its skin. Where it didn't bloat, its skin hung limp and flabby like an ill-fitting suit. It was tall, taller than Martin, but hunched over so its head was held where it's chest would be, its neck arched in a way that looked broken. Its... its hands were the same size as its chest. They had too many bones in them.
It laughed like a headache.
A lot of what happened then... I can't picture it. Not well, with this strange dizzying focus, you know? Where one thing comes to the forefront, a detail, a sensation and the rest of the world blurs into background static. I remember worrying with a sort of delirious wildness that my legs might seize up so I couldn't run, or they'd go beneath me and I'd be on the ground as the thing stalked closer. I remember it looked at me, its too smooth face like a lacquered floor, reflecting the hall lights as it moved, one eye protruding from its face like a bulbous frogspawn, the other like chewing gum, after you've blown it into a bubble and it's stretched out and popped.
It saw Martin, and it slowed in obvious delight, although it kept walking in its slow rolling lurch of a way. It said something about how lovely it was to have visitors from the Archives, what a nice surprise his book had brought. Martin was using his arm, pushing us both into walking backwards away from it, and I think he was trying to reason with it, saying how we'd really need to be getting back, how Beholding would react if it knew the Spiral had taken one of its assistants – I think he was floundering to keep it distracted while he thought of a plan, though none was clearly forthcoming.
The thing gave a short laugh, like the sound of dropping something, and cooed. It said – it said that the Archivist could do with losing one, that surely he had so many that he wouldn't mind if he kept him. It said the Archivist could listen since Martin had so kindly brought a recorder, so he could know what fun we would have.
Its long fingers were numerous, twitched like live wires, and they flexed eagerly.
A crashing thump, and something struck through the mirror I'd shattered before. Me and Martin pushed ourselves back, further away, as something long limbed, full of angles was barrelling through, pushing through an immensity of body – I couldn't see, I didn't... there was a scrabbling, scattering movement and Martin yelled and that thing with too many bones in its hands made such a sound, a shriek like an audio system with the wires crossed and my ears burned, they burned and I was too tired to scream as it surged forward in a way that did not use its legs -
There was the sound of a door opening. A hand – a normal human hand clamped around my arm. ‘My dears, both of you, hurry,’ someone said, and we were being bundled away, our backs turned to that thing and its opponent, and a great weight of space and light blocked the corridor, so I did not see what made the thing scream so, I did not hear what thrashed and wailed, what responded with a chattering hiss – the arm pulled us back down the corridor, to the right back the way we'd come or maybe in a completely new direction... and there was a door, one of the doors like all the others, that we'd tried even when they had no handles, that had only served to torment us, only the handle was twisting and then I was on my knees, and someone was bending over me, a palm on my shoulder, telling me to breathe.
That thing, the door was closed but that sound... it kept shrieking, that sound crunching through me, but there was something hard and gritty below me, and it grazed my palms with scratches, and it hurt, the cuts on my hands and wrist and face hurt, and it grounded me somehow. I was bent double on the tarmac near the bookshop, and Martin was on his back, his legs having given out, panting and asking stammering questions that for the moment were ignored.
It shrieked and it beckoned and it wanted, it wanted what had been stolen from it, and my breathing wasn't calming, and I gasped at air that suddenly wasn't there, and I couldn't... I couldn't...
“It's Caoimhe, isn't it?” said a quiet voice next to me. No, quiet's not the right word. It was conversational, like someone talking softly to you outside a thumping nightclub, but it was a filling sound, that caught all the edges of my panic and showed them a stark light, like someone giving me the entirety of their attention, of being looked at and looked through. “You say hello to me. I must say I do enjoy our little chats. Your mother and father, they've been so terribly worried my dear, but you can tell them you are safe. That you are alive and whole and unclaimed. Breathe my dear, that's it.”
I did what the voice asked. In and out, my forehead pressed to the damp ground. Eventually, I remembered how it worked, and blinked and breathed and felt my aching bloody hands and realised I was alive.
I had stopped shaking when there was the sound of a door being wrenched open, that hideous shriek momentarily louder, and I looked up to see a man skitter over the threshold, slamming the door shut, and they put their weight against it, huffing, saying very loudly 'any time today angel, if you could bloody get on with it'.
There was a whoosh of something bright near me, and I saw my Not-Today-Thank-You guy, stupid little bow-tie, white hair and all, thrusting something down and the shrieking – cut off. Like a TV pressed to mute. I looked, and at his feet was a book, my book, charred and ruined and run through with – well, what looked like a sword that had been recently on fire.
And the door just wasn't there anymore.
The man who had come through the door, sleek black jacket, sunglasses covering his eyes, muttered something about how that would have pissed them off. He looked rather self-satisfied at that.
Martin had finally worked his way up to speaking. Sitting up, still trembling with un-bled adrenaline. He looked like he'd been on an all-night bender, hair all over the place, pale, shaky. I don't think I was much more to look at.
“You two...” he said, and both of them turned to look at him. There was an unsettling intensity to their gazes. “You're... You're Mr Crowley and Mr Fell, aren't you?”
The taller one – Mr Crowley – gave a laugh and made a comment about how formal it sounded. Mr Fell though smiled.
“And you must be young Master Blackwood,” he replied. “I do apologise that we've not been able to introduce ourselves sooner...”
He tailed off then.
Where the door had been, there was a man standing.
He was human. There was nothing about him that couldn't be. Good looking in a sort of Romantic way, long curls of blond hair framing a round and open face. He smiled, and his teeth were very white.
He tutted, and the innocuousness of the sound made me start.
'It's rude to interrupt you know,” he told our two rescuers casually. Like he was talking about the weather.
His voice wasn't right. Like hearing someone speaking through water, and the sound bubbled and waved, juddering like a stubborn engine.
“I do apologise,” Mr Fell replied, sounding incredibly unapologetic.
“Yet, you're keeping what rightfully belongs to me,” said the man reproachfully, looking at me and Martin. Michael, Martin had called him, hadn't he. Michael. Mr Crowley made a scoffing sound and said it clearly wasn't his day. He sounded even less sorry than Mr Fell had been.
“Bold of you to come into my corridors,” Michael said as though he was following his own conversation, and he looked at Mr Crowley with a focused interest. “More so than your kind usually are, lurking in corners and shadows. I would have expected your influence to be focused on the Archives. So many eyes all focused on the Institute, it's all getting very busy. The Great Unknowing is at hand, and the Eye's toys move to prevent it.”
I had no idea what was being discussed. I looked at Martin and he appeared equally confused.
“What is being planned for the Archives is not our concern,” Mr Crowley replied.
“No... no, it's not is it?” Michael looked interested. His smile was not a smile. “I'm not a me,” he continued idly. “Not really. Or a what. But you and your knowledgeable friend over there, my, you are such a twisting of lies and deceit that you've fooled even yourselves. Do you really think you are people? You've never been people, why convince yourselves now?”
“I would think that you aren't the one to talk about corruptions, Michael,” Mr Fell finally spoke. There was no kindness in his voice. He looked at the man like he could see right through him, and his words rung with a crackling weight that set my hair on end. “You aren't exactly unchanged, are you? Some thorn dug into the centre of you that you can't remove. So much anger, for what they did to you, for the lies she told poor kind-hearted trusting Michael Shelley...”
The man's face flickered in unhappiness.
“Stop that,” he hissed, and it was the first time he'd looked anything other than bored or mildly interested.
“I think it's time you were on your way, don't you?” Mr Fell prompted. “We'll be keeping what's left of your book.”
“And them?” Michael asked, looking at us.
“Not any of your concern,” Mr Crowley interrupted.
Michael shrugged as thought disinterested once more. “As if the Spider needs more flies. Alas. I would be careful though, with that one,” he gestured with long bony fingers at Martin. “So many Claims on him, so many eyes waiting to see where his allegiance falls.”
Martin sucked in an uncomfortable breath, surprised.
And then the man was gone. The shadows that had started to bloat around Mr Crowley curled back up against him. Mr Fell sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose as though struck by a sudden pain, and said something about how that had been a close one, how glad he was they'd thought to bring the Desolation's artefact. Mr Crowley retorted something about how it was his excellent idea, and they bickered slightly, before they recalled we were there, and moved to help us up.
Mr Fell's grip was steady. My legs felt shaky beneath me, but I gritted my teeth, committed to standing, and he gave me a proud little look as I straightened to standing.
“Is... is it gone?” I asked, and Mr Fell said yes. Then I asked if it was dead, if the book was destroyed, and he looked sorrowful at that, and told me he wished it was that easy.
Mr Crowley held his hand out to Martin. Martin paused, and looked right at him, and made some comment about how dangerous it was to take people's hands these days. The laugh lines around his mouth had tightened unhappily. I got – this might be a bit of a personal comment, but I got the impression that frowning doesn't come naturally to him. Like he doesn't let his expressions show on his face. But he looked at Mr Crowley with such a hard look I didn't recognise him, and asked him who he worked for, which one of them they were part of.
No one, Mr Crowley replied. They weren't part of any of them anymore.
“You're in the Archives,” Martin continued bullishly, pushing. I think his insistence was surprising even him. “You and Mr Fell. You're in our statements, you've been noticed, recorded. You aren't avatars, I mean, I-I don't think you are, but you aren't human.”
“No,” Mr Crowley agreed. But then an odd expression crossed his face, almost wistful. “The line is so blurred these days,” he continued. “Humanity is a shore. The tide can pull you further from or wash you up on like driftwood. I don't think even your Archivist knows what he is any more.”
He's human, Martin replied stubbornly, and Mr Crowley smiled at that, and said with that sort of faith, he couldn't be anything else.
“So which one of them are you?” Martin asked after a brief pause. I'll be honest, I was only half listening. Swaying a little on my feet, dazed, and wondering why it looked like night-time when it'd been early morning when we'd gone through the door.
Mr Crowley paused – he didn't seem offended by Martin's lack of trust – but he gave a grin that tried hard to look rakish and just looked a bit dopey instead.
“You're looking kinda small picture here,” he said, not unkindly, but he stooped down on his hunches by Martin, keeping a respectful distance. He looked at Mr Fell, who nodded, and then back at Martin. He took off his sunglasses.
He had two eyes. Two human eyes, brown and uninteresting. He had two eyes and they were rounded, black marbles that caught the light. He had more than two eyes and they did not blink, and no light penetrated them and somehow all of this was true at once.
He smiled with teeth that were both square and white, and long and fanged and fat in his mouth. Shadows dwarfed over him in a way that could be wings or could be legs, before the after-effect faded.
He held out a normal, human hand to Martin.
“My name is Crowley,” he said. “This is my partner, Aziraphale. We are... we're something else.”
Martin paused. “Partner,” he began, “as in...?”
Crowley gave an exaggerated wink and Aziraphale made some fussy noise and went bright pink. And it was so... so normal, so human, that whatever bubble had been expanding burst. Martin took Crowley's hand and let him drag him upright. Then Mr Fell – Aziraphale picked up the charred book and the sword – Martin asked him something about if the Desolation knew he had that, and Aziraphale chuckled to himself and said what the Lightless Flame didn't know wouldn't hurt them, that it was best to keep this to ourselves, like it was some jolly secret or other – and they took us back to the bookshop. And... and that's it.
ARCHIVIST
That's everything?
CAOIMHE
Yeah. They sat us down in the backroom, and got out a first aid kit to patch up my cuts. Told us they'd found the book on the ground near the shop, that Aziraphale had known it was a Leitner and that he took particular delight in finding and destroying them. They'd apologised for taking so long, apparently it had been difficult to locate the right part of the corridors, and Crowley thanked me for breaking the mirror, which apparently had made it easier, although I didn't understand his reasoning as to why.
It was then we realised how long it had been. It had felt like hours, but it was nearly two weeks apparently. Eleven days of wandering. I wasn't even hungry. I was too numbed to think about that. I didn't even think about work or my family or my friends, I just... it took a while for it to sink in, is all.
Martin got all worried of course, was all up for haring off to this place, but he was dead on his feet and looking all peaky, and Aziraphale had told him rather sternly that he wasn't in any state to be running around, that he should have a cup of tea or something first. So I said I'd come here instead. Tell you where he was, what had happened.
ARCHIVIST
And where is Martin now?
CAOIMHE
He'll still be with those two. He said something about asking them a few questions for his records before he came back.
ARCHIVIST
Oh for... [sound of a chair moving, someone standing]
CAOIMHE
We've finished? That everything you needed?
ARCHIVIST
Yes. Thank you. You should go home Ms Ní Bhraonáin. I have other things to attend to. Namely, finding out whatever the hell has my missing archival assistant.
CAOIMHE
Now wait a – that's not... they rescued us! They're on your side!
ARCHIVIST
[dismissive] Their assistance proves little other than they consider themselves in opposition to the Spiral. That does not make them allies. That thing you glimpsed in the corridors, the entity that calls itself Michael, it's been known to provide us with its own version of help on occasion. That does not mean that it is a force for good, or that it can be trusted. There are forces at work, and they all have their own agendas. The same for those men. Whatever they might be, or whoever they might work for. And until I know, I will consider them dangerous.
CAOIMHE
Man, paranoid much? If it wasn't for them, we'd be...
ARCHIVIST
I am well aware of what would have happened, perhaps more so than you. However, in this line of work, no one does anything for free. And the timing of this intrusion, so close to the ritual... No. No, I think I better go and have a chat with these two. Straighten some things out.
CAOIMHE
D'you not, you know, want to turn off your gadget first?
ARCHIVIST
What – oh, right. Statement ends.
[CLICK]