Chapter 2 – Chap 2

The unknown turned out to be a hallway.

A dimly lit corridor lined with identical rough-hewn doors stretching off in either direction. The walls were ramshackle and papered in a worn patterned baize that was mildewed and torn haphazardly in places. Long jagged shreds lay scattered across the cobblestoned floor underfoot.

I called Don’s name softly a few times.

Nothing.

Leaving his tie looped around the handle of the door I’d come through, I set off down the hall. It was slow going in the weird semi-twilight that infused the place. I tried counting the endless parade of repeating doors but, after a while, I gave up and just focused on walking. Putting one foot slowly ahead of the other; ears straining for any sign of Don.

I was debating turning back and trying my luck in the opposite direction when someone stepped out of a recessed alcove ahead of me.

It sort of looked like a man.

Disproportionately long limbed and thin, like a child’s drawing of an adult it didn’t broaden at the shoulders or narrow at the hips but kept the same disturbing width all the way to its feet. The face was like something roughly hammered out of sculpting clay—all smooth cheeks and forehead, the eyes just shallowly thumbed suggestions and the mouth an ugly uneven line.

It moved toward me; its head bent awkwardly to avoid the ceiling. A walking nightmare dressed in an un-finished red and gold bellhops’ uniform stitched together piecemeal.

“Going down?”

It spoke in a halting kind of guttural wheeze that stank of stale air forced from a drainage pipe.

I opened my mouth to scream but my throat seized up—grinding and clunking uselessly behind my tongue. Frantically, I shook my head as I backed away.

“Going down?” It grunted again, stepping aside to reveal a flakely gilded art-deco elevator cage ringed by flickering low-watt bulbs that buzzed and zapped intermittently. An unfinished lump of a hand slid the elevator door open with a jarring clang of metal on stone.

“So many years alone. So many years without visitors. Now two in such a short time. Marvelous.” A hideous bloated tongue squirmed provocatively in the gap of its lips.

My feet slowed their involuntary retreat. “You—you’ve seen Don? My husband?”

“Oh yes,” it said, hissing over the s like a snake. “We’d hoped it was the boy finally returning, but what a treat the other has been. Your husband. Yes.”

“Where is he?”

The creature gestured toward the elevator.

“Down with the others. I can take you. Or we can play up here. There are many other doors—with other pleasures behind them. I could show you.”

I shook my head.

“You—are you him? The demon? Maxwell’s demon?”

It stared down at me for a long time unblinking.

“I am the doorman.”

“Alright,” I said. “Take me down, then.”

The elevator was paneled in rich dark wood and the ancient machinery clanked and groaned as it juddered downward. I pressed myself into a corner and anxiously watched the long serpentine back of the doorman as it hunched over; clumsily working the old lever with its misshapen hands while other floors flew by—disorienting glimpses of dark meandering hallways and cavernous empty rooms—before being swallowed from view.

Had we been falling for hours, I wondered, or only days?

Then, with a shrill shriek of protest the elevator cage ground to a halt and the door was hauled open. We were in another hallway, identical to the one we’d left behind. Just plain rough doors disappearing into the dark.

“Welcome,” said the doorman with a flourish, “to the All The Way Down. Every doorway a delight.”

“Where’s Don?” I asked, indicating the emptiness. “You said he was here.”

“So, I did.” The doorman drew a long brass skeleton key and waggled it at me. “Let’s see if we can find him.”

It approached the nearest door and inserted the key. Drawing the bolt with a leaden clunk, it swung open with a creak. Inside, a small windowless room sparsely decorated. A strange woman—middle-aged and starting to sag—writhed nakedly in the middle of the floor. Her heavy lacerated breasts swung like pendulums; blood flecking off in great arcing droplets that misted the walls and floor like pelting rain. Bulging eyes wet with tears stared while her mouth worked soundlessly around the dirty ball gag stopping her up. On the floor between her sweat slicked thighs squatted an ugly black thing—like a dwarf or a homunculus whose flayed skin was crisscrossed with the black and gold scar tissue of a burn victim—working a wicked looking bladed instrument at the woman’s exposed labia with frenetic passion; small burbles of insane laughter escaped it with every surgical thrust.

“Wrong room.” The doorman said, pulling the door neatly shut and blocking out the horrific tableau.

“Who—what was that?”

“Just one of the many amenities offered to our guests.”

“Jesus,” I moaned.

“Everyone has their needs. Us just as much as you,” it said, bending to open another door. “Your husbands are being met through here.”

This door opened into a motel lobby. Something like a 1970’s Howard Johnson’s motor lodge—with faux-wood paneled walls, ugly Naugahyde furniture and thick yellow shag carpeting that stank of cigarettes and dry rot.

Near the Formica reception desk, a tired-looking man with thinning blonde hair lounged in an armchair beneath a sun faded Nagel print. He wore an old-fashioned double-breasted suit and held something small and metallic—a gun like something a old timey gangster might use—jammed underneath his chin as he rocked back and forth mumbling to himself.

“Err, sir?” I took an uncertain step toward him. “Excuse me. Have you seen—”

The gun made an awful heavy CLACK as the man pulled the trigger and the hammer hit home.

“General Electric’s down one hundred and eight-six points,” he wailed hopelessly when the gun failed to go off.

I froze on the spot, looking around for help. “Sir? Can you look at me, sir?” I said, trying to sound calm. “My husband Don. He’s here somewhere and—”

“Dupont’s down one hundred and thirty-seven points.”

CLACK

I flinched at the sharp sound of another misfire. “Don’t. Please.”

The man ignored me.

“RCA’s down four hundred and seventy-nine fucking points.”

CLACK

There was another doorway up ahead past the man’s chair—swinging saloon-style doors straight out of a Western—lit by a flashing neon sign.

Seventh Terrace Bar

Music and the soft murmur of indistinct voices floated from the other side.

Excusing myself as best I could to a man who didn’t even seem aware of me—“Wait here. I’ll find someone for you.”—I slipped away into the cool dim of the bar just as somewhere behind me the gun went off with an explosive BANG.

I didn’t go back to look.

The Seventh Terrace Bar was a dark little island floating in a sea of smoke and glowing beer ads ringed by a semi-circle of green vinyl booths and scarred wooden tables. It stank like the trailer my grandma had lived in when I was a kid—old body odor and countless spilled drinks—and I was surprised to find some of the seats already occupied; dark silhouettes hunched silently over their cups while strains of Leonard Cohen groaned from an old Wurlitzer. In one of the booths someone was laughing.

Carefully, I threaded my way through the maze of tables to the nearest barstool. I had a sense of unseen eyes following my progress.

The man behind the bar was absently polishing a glass with a dirty rag. He looked up and smiled at my approach; his face collapsing into an intricate roadmap of well-worn grooves and yellow-brown liver spots.

“Welcome to the Seventh Tier. Can I get you a drink menu?”

“No. No thanks. I’m actually looking for someone.”

He shrugged. “Not a lot of new guests here lately. You sure you don’t want that drink? Last good mojito this side of Mexico.”

“Really, I’m fine. The man I’m after—he may have shown up a while ago. His name’s Don. Donald Weir.”

The bartender paused in pouring a splash of rum, bottle trembling, and repeated the name thoughtfully a few times.

“Don. Donald. Donnie and—” he froze, the bottle slipping from his hand to shatter with a discordant tinkle; a million glass pieces sluicing across the grimy bar. “—J—Jules?”

I stiffened at the sound of my name. “Yes? How did you—”

But suddenly I was seeing through the years of grime and neglect—through the threadbare clothes and broken capillaries around the nose—and found something familiar. Someone I knew.

“Donald?”

The bartender winced as if I’d struck him; eyes darting.

“Jules. Julia. You’re here. How? How can you be here?”

“Jesus, Don,” I leaned across the bar, scrabbling for his bony hand. His grip was clammy and strange. “I came to find you.”

The bartender—Donald—jerked away.

“You—you can’t be here. It’s not—you have to leave. Before they realize you’re here. Before you cant.”