The Semaphore

Pontis and Varia walked down a narrow hallway lined on all sides in soft red fabric.

If pressed upon, the velvety fabric gave a bit before densifying, yielding no indication of what lay beyond. It appeared seamless—one enormous piece of material—and dampened the sound of their footfalls and the susurrus of their breathing and the rustling of their clothes.

Up ahead, the same sour note played over and over, not so much luring them forward as impelling them to turn back; the atonal twang was so grating that it almost distracted Pontis from the rancid, carcassy stench that worsened as they went.

Almost.

Pontis led the way with his candle raised. Varia walked just behind, one hand on Pontis’s shoulder, the other clutching her walking stick.

Eventually—after ten minutes at their pace—the hallway began to curve to the right. It was gradual, and only discernible when their flickering shadows extended visibly further along one wall than the other. Then the curve of the hallway became more pronounced, and the floor began to slant downward.

“It’s full dizzying down here,” Varia said, tightening her grip on Pontis’s shoulder.

After another ten minutes of walking, the hallway curved sharply to the right and the floor steepened into a staircase. It coiled underneath itself, spiraling downward. From below, the bitter note repeated on end, and the stench of rotting meat and wet soil was so unbearable that Pontis and Varia held their breath in long intervals. They hesitated in mutual silence, peering down into the dark red. Then, in tandem, and without a word, they descended.

The staircase coiled tightly. Pontis’s candle flickered the otherwise pitch-black space into a guttering crimson.

“I true feel like I’ve been here before,” said Varia suddenly.

Pontis did not disclose that he, too, felt like he had been here before. That it felt so familiar to him it was as if he had never been anywhere else. The candle’s wax hardened on his fingers.

The staircase circled down and down. Varia remarked that at some point they were going to need to climb back up all these stairs, but stopped short of naming the secondary anxiety: that they would not be.

Then, all at once, the repeating note stopped. Their sensory fields were so limited in this dark, cramped place that the sudden absence of that simple sound was as jarring as a roof collapsing on their heads. They froze on the stairs. When the sound did not resume they continued slowly, plagued now by a new oppression: Silence.

Varia’s hand was warm on Pontis’s shoulder.

“The stairs have to end eventually,” Varia said, more to break the silence than provide an insight.

Of course the staircase had to end eventually. Everything ended eventually. The question was when. Pontis paused and eyed his candle’s flame; it burned in a perfect, unwavering oval. No air current. No temperature. No sound. Without the candle—halfway burned already—there was no light. If they went much deeper, Pontis reasoned, there would be nothing at all.

Then Pontis collided with something.

The impact snuffed the candle’s flame and thrust them into total darkness. Varia tumbled into him, and they both slid to the floor.

“Are you okay?” she asked from the dark.

Pontis groped out, feeling the soft fabric of the walls and then, where the staircase should have continued its descent, a hard, flat surface.

They helped each other stand. Pontis felt around for his dropped candle, and when he could not find it he struck a match. It flared, a pall of orange, and then settled.

Pontis held it up. Varia placed her hand on his back. The two stared ahead at the plain door at the end of the red staircase at the bottom of the hole in the woods. The kind of door one might find inside a normal house in a normal town or city. Arborvale. Or Lowood Den.

It was wooden, with a brass knob, and at first appeared painted a uniform white. But when Pontis found his candle and relit it, and they leaned in, holding the candlelight close, they found it was covered in lines—braided and branched like the pipes of Mondagreen’s engine, or the gold hatching on the glass cylinder at Hummel’s house—all a shade of white just brighter than the paint beneath it.

They stood for a long time, each entombed in his and her private thoughts.

“We’ve come this far,” Varia said finally. She reached around Pontis and took the knob. It turned readily, and the door opened outward, revealing a dim light beyond.

A concentrated waft of the rancid, rotting odor rushed out to meet them. Varia gagged into her hands. Pontis covered his nose and mouth. The skin on the back of his neck crawled down his shirt.

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The door swung open silently on its hinges, revealing a circular room with stone walls and a low stone ceiling. It was empty save for a small fire, which burned in an iron bowl inset in the floor directly in the room’s middle. On the opposite wall: another door that appeared identical to the first.

They crossed through the room side-by-side. The ceiling was low enough that Pontis could have touched it merely by reaching over his head. It, like the walls and floor, were pockmarked and caked in dust. Pontis eyed the fire. The flame was low and pale. There was no obvious source of fuel, no logs or branches nearby. As he stared into it, his eyes began to throb, and he looked away.

Another, greater waft of rotten stench met them beyond the second door. But they recoiled only briefly, overwhelmed instead by what they saw.

A forest of dead, white trees.

Heavy fog drifted through the ramous branches. The ground was covered in dry leaves. Overhead, the sky was gray, neither sun nor stars. When Pontis and Varia passed through the doorway and looked to the side, they found another rough stone wall extending around the perimeter of the forest and disappearing into the mist.

“Are we outside?” Varia asked, breathless.

Pontis peered around the murky forest. The white trees—beeches, he thought—looked like stalks of bone, ghostly shapes in the fog. He took Varia’s hand. The dry, dead leaves crackled under their feet.

As the mist drifted around them, a branch snapped off in the recesses of the forest. Pontis and Varia froze. The sound came again—louder—followed by the crunch of leaves underfoot.

Pontis and Varia ran. The mist was so thick that they could not see more than a few feet in front of them. Pontis instinctually drew his hunting knife from its sheath and held it at his side. Varia held her walking stick forward like a battering ram, her other hand gripping Pontis’s so tightly that his knuckles burned.

A huge shape rose up ahead. At first it seemed it might have been a trick of the mist. But as they neared the mist thinned enough to discern the looming thing.

A white tower.

They slowed to a stop.

The tower was taller than the tallest of the beech trees, rising over the skeletal forest like its king. Its surface appeared smooth but irregularly shaped, rock—or something—long blasted by wind. There were no windows, but at its base, directly ahead, was another door.

“Look,” Varia whispered, her breath on Pontis’s ear, pointing into the mist.

Something stirred, just yards away, in the swirling mist. It huffed and brayed, its dark eyes affixed on the two, and tousled its mighty antlers.

“An elk,” Varia said, and then sighed. “It’s just an elk.”

The elk stamped its hoof on the leaf-ridden ground. It lowered its chin, and then looked off into the roiling mist and reverberating rows of white beech trees.

Varia squeezed Pontis’s hand. “He’s beautiful…”

Something stirred near the elk. There was a blur of dark movement and the animal reared back, letting out a pained, bleating shriek. A fan of blood sprayed from a slit in its neck.

Varia and Pontis surged together.

The elk spasmed and collapsed, pawing at the air as blood geysered and bubbled. The mist swirled and displaced, revealing a tall man standing over the dying elk.

He was hairless and completely naked save for a white collar around his neck to which a white thread was fastened. The thread led off into the forest. His long knife dripped with blood. He stood facing Pontis and Varia, seeming to stare at them despite that he had no eyes.

Varia brandished her walking stick. Pontis gripped his knife—no more than a twig compared to the eyeless man’s blade—in his sweaty hand.

The eyeless man’s mouth curled open. A dark, pitted tongue protruded. The tongue writhed, seeming to sniff the air, until it leveled at Pontis and Varia. The man’s head tilted, and he stepped over the bleeding elk toward them.

Varia’s walking stick trembled. “Don’t come any closer!” she yelled, her voice shaking.

The eyeless man came closer.

“I’m warning you!” Varia shouted.

The eyeless man grinned or grimaced, exposing a track of gray, splintering teeth.

Varia broke from Pontis’s grasp and stepped forward. She swung her walking stick at the eyeless man’s head. The stick whistled through the air. Pontis braced himself for impact with the man’s head.

But it never arrived at his head. Instead, the eyeless man held its end in his hand, having intercepted it with such terrifying speed that Pontis could not process the movement.

The eyeless man took the stick from Varia with ease—like picking a berry from a bush, Pontis thought—and then squeezed it in his fist, crushing it like a bundle of straw. He dropped the splintered stick to the ground. His rutted tongue peeked through his flindering teeth.

Pontis raised his knife. His heart thudded in his throat. The eyeless man took wide steps toward him.

Varia stepped between them, her own knife drawn and raised.

The eyeless man swatted the knife from her hand. It flew off into the misty trees. He seized Varia by her hair and yanked her toward his blade.

Varia screamed.

Pontis rushed forward and drove his knife into the eyeless man’s abdomen. The steel folded like paper against his skin.

There is nothing not of this world.

It was enough, at least, to get the eyeless man’s attention. He released Varia’s hair and turned toward Pontis. Pontis scrambled back, dropping his crushed knife to the ground. The man advanced.

Pontis pivoted, motored by terror, fast enough to get behind the eyeless man. He took Varia by the wrist and pulled her toward the white tower. She screamed again.

The eyeless man was upon them as they reached tower’s door. Pontis grasped for its iron knob and managed to throw the door open. He shoved Varia through. When he looked back the eyeless man was lunging, his enormous blade carving a sinister arc directly toward Pontis’s face. Pontis was too late to follow Varia. He closed his eyes and shielded his head with his arms—a desperate, meaningless gesture. His last thought was of Harper, her face twisted in concentration as she shaded in the green of a wide tree.

There was a loud snap. At first Pontis mistook it for the sound of his own death. But the blade never struck him. And when he opened his eyes he saw the eyeless man midair, yanked backward with monstrous force.

The white thread, fastened to the collar and now taut through the mist and trees, had impeded his charge. He thudded onto his back with his own full force. For just a moment he was still, dazed from the impact. Then he was back on his feet.

Pontis did not give him another chance. He rushed inside the tower, slammed the door shut behind him, and collapsed against it.

Varia knelt, clutching her stomach. When Pontis touched her shoulder she flinched and gasped. She looked up at him, her eyes red and watery, her skin ashen and her lips sucked in. Pontis tried to help her stand, placing his hand on her side, but she screamed again, and when Pontis looked down at his own hand, where it had touched Varia, he found his fingers smeared with blood.