The Semaphore

Pontis emptied his bag onto the floor and pressed article after article of his clothing against Varia’s belly. Her wound was deep and wide. She sat on the floor against the wall just inside the tower, her eyes scrunched shut. Pontis fumbled to stifle her bleeding. He’d seen his Ma do this, press a wound with cloth. But Varia’s wound was worse than any Pontis had ever seen his Ma treat. Soon, every article of clothing he had brought with him was soaked through.

Pontis looked around for something—anything—to help.

They were in an enormous room—much larger than the outside of the tower would have appeared to accommodate. The floors were black and as smooth as glass. Large black columns stood in a semicircle. The ceiling yawned overhead, coalescing in a dome on which was painted a strange mural—the details of which Pontis did not have the time or attention to decipher. A gigantic white chandelier suspended from the ceiling’s acme, looming over the room like a phantom. A double staircase flanked the perimeter, leading to a landing lined with many doors.

The stench of rotting flesh was nearly unbearable. Pontis’s eyes were drawn to a massive white door on the room’s far side.

There was a long black table in the room’s center, its ornate base carved into complicated spiraling patterns. On either end of the table was a chair, and draped over the seat back of the chair nearest Pontis was an old, dusty green coat.

Pontis snatched the coat, sending dust into the air. He knelt beside Varia.

“Pontis…” Varia said, her voice hoarse. “You need to go…”

Pontis drew her hands away from the wound—appalled at how light they felt—and folded the green coat against her belly. She moaned. Pontis held the coat firm, expecting blood to seep through. But no blood appeared. Pontis pulled the coat back to check the wound, which bled in heavy runnels, but slid off the fabric of the coat like rain down a windowpane.

Varia’s cold hands found Pontis’s face. “I miss Lowood Den,” she whispered through dry lips. “I miss your sister. I miss my Mam and Pop.”

Pontis pointed at Varia, then at himself, and then off across the room.

“I think no, lovey-boy,” Varia rasped. “I think no…”

Pontis took a slow, shaky breath. They could not retrace their steps; the eyeless man waited just outside, his knife still wet with Varia’s blood. Pontis scanned the enormous marble room, looking for another option.

Atop the double staircase: a row of doors. Ten. Ten chances to escape.

He guided Varia’s hand to the green coat and pressed it there. She shuddered, but held it in place. Pontis lifted her in his arms. She felt so light, as light as grass. She closed her eyes and turned her face against his chest, her breathing shallow.

Pontis carried her.

#

Varia left a trail of blood on the black floor.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Pontis glanced back down from the landing at the room below. The black floor was networked with thin, complicated white lines. Briefly, Pontis tried to make sense of where he was. Briefly.

Each of the ten doors was identical in appearance to the others, but different than the doors they’d passed through before. These had no lines; they were simple gray doors. Normal doors.

Pontis adjusted Varia in his arms, eyeing each door for some indication of what might lie beyond. Varia made a pained sound, the tendons in her neck flexing. Pontis tried the first door.

It opened silently. Pontis lingered in the doorway, his brow furrowing. The room was small, with lime green-painted walls and a wiry gray carpet. There were two beds side-by-side, and a lamp on a table between them casting dim orange light from an electric light bulb. On the room’s right wall was what appeared to be a child’s drawing of a window overlooking a lawn, and a big yellow sun with a smiling face in the sky. The room smelled stale, as if someone had been sleeping in it for a long time with no ventilation. But it was empty, the beds unoccupied, their faded pink sheets unruffled. Besides all this there was nothing—no more doors, nowhere to proceed—and Pontis retreated to the landing.

This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The next door opened onto a kitchen: counters of beige tiles; a shiny steel sink; glass cabinets stacked with plates and bowls. There was a refrigerator—Pontis remembered these from school because he’d thought they sounded like a great idea—with colorful letters scattered randomly across its door. An oven; a rack of pots and pans; a clean stovetop; a row of stools at an island. Next to the stove was a platter with a large, cooked bird on it—the sight of it turned Pontis’s stomach—surrounded by small dishes of cranberry sauce and roasted vegetables and a large bowl of corn. Someone had prepared a feast, Pontis thought at first. But there was no aroma—neither of meat nor vegetables nor food at all. No steam rose from the bird or the bowl of corn.

Pontis peered more closely.

The food was not food at all. It was some hard material painted to resemble food, not unlike the props used in Lowood Den’s school plays. The glass cabinets with their stacks of plates and bowls were merely drawings, as were the colorful letters arranged across the refrigerator. The kitchen was fake—everything about it.

Tricks and obfuscations, Hummel had said of Hemmick craft.

Tricks and obfuscations.

Pontis lingered for a moment, holding Varia tight, and then continued down the landing.

The third room appeared to be a lawn, with fake grass and an inflatable pool filled with fake water. A white picket fence was painted on the walls. There was a doghouse in one corner, the name LINUS embroidered over its entrance, and a picnic table with a checkered tablecloth. A flagpole stood beyond the fence, a strange flag with red and white stripes and a blue square in one corner speckled with white stars. The ceiling was painted blue, with fluffy white clouds and another smiling sun. Pontis was reminded of the dioramas he’d made as a child, using old wooden boxes and paste. He’d used green paper to make grass, and cotton balls to make clouds. His Ma had always helped him, and these days he helped Harper with the same projects. This room—and the two previous—were just giant dioramas.

Varia shuddered in his arms as he carried her down the landing. Her lips were blue. Pontis had made a mistake. There was no way out—certainly not up here among these dioramas. He should not have brought Varia up here. They would have to brave the eyeless man in the misty forest, and retrace their steps. It was the only way.

He started for the stairs—Varia’s meager weight beginning finally to strain his arms— then froze when a door at the far end of the landing opened suddenly.

A shape started to emerge. Pontis ducked into the fourth room and shut the door.

The room was dim. Pontis scrambled for a hiding place, pushing back into the room’s recesses. He lowered Varia to the floor in a corner tucked away behind a shelf, and propped her against the wall. Her arms were limp.

Pontis held his breath and watched the door.

There were footsteps outside, scudding slowly on the smooth floor. Pontis’s eyes darted around for an escape, but there was no way out other than the door they’d just entered through. From his vantage in the corner, the room’s objects appeared as the outlines of shapes cut out of flat pieces of wood.

The footsteps stopped outside the door.

Varia whimpered. Pontis placed his hand softly on her mouth.

For a few seconds nothing happened. Perhaps they had avoided detection. Pontis took slow breaths. He would wait another minute, and then the two of them would continue their search for an exit. He needed to be patient. He would wait another minute.

The door opened, and a giant bird appeared in its threshold. Pontis sank back as the bird entered the room, backlit by the light from the landing. As it neared, Pontis determined that it wasn’t a bird but a man, in a long mask. He wore ash-colored robes. A headdress of sticks and stones flowed down his back to the floor, rattling as he walked. He limped slightly, his hands concealed within his long sleeves. He approached a wooden cutout of what might have been a table and stood there, his long mask turned downward.

Pontis took Varia’s hand.

“Knew we’d forgotten something,” the man in the long mask said, his voice gravelly. “So many doors. It burdens us to mind ‘em all.”

Varia’s fingers were limp. Her breathing was rapid and shallow.

“It’s the price of all this lonesomeness,” the man continued, his long mask trained on the fake table. “And yet it must be paid. And we are the one who pays it.”

He raised an arm. His sleeve fell away to reveal a hand and forearm covered in white tattoos—identical to the white lines on the doors and the floor downstairs. He pressed his thumb and forefinger together.

“Chalo-wē,” he said quietly, and then spread his thumb and forefinger apart. A thin white thread now ran between them.

“Perhaps in some low part of us, we longed for company,” he said. “It’s been deep long since we entertained.”

Pontis crouched in front of Varia, shielding her body with his. His heart beat so violently that his shoulders shuddered.

“But we can’t abide intrusion,” said the man in the long mask. “It’s to grieve that you’ll not go to Granmama. But we’ve enough already.” He fluttered his middle and ring fingers. The white thread between his thumb and forefinger vibrated, each vibration producing a bitter pluck.

“Casshawn

sul

relet.”

A sudden frigid wind rushed into the room, biting at Pontis’s skin and whipping his hair. He cowered over Varia.

“We cannot abide intrusion!” the man repeated, raising his voice over the wind. He shook his hand out and the thread disintegrated. “Now go die in the cold!”

There was a whorl of white, and Pontis was driven backwards into the howling wind. He clung to Varia with all of his strength, his fingers knotting into her hair, as together they fell into icy darkness.