The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [89]
His bed frame rises into a rickety canopy. Shredded fabric hangs from it, seemingly held together by cobwebs and dust.
On the opposite side of the room are a broken chair, a desk, and several notebooks. Each notebook begins with a single map of the hallways which he has explored. Following are scores of theoretical maps, numerous postulated sets of hallways.
His walls are bare. In the ceiling is a bank of twelve light bulbs, cradled in a depression of stone, bulbs abutted one to another. Five of the light bulbs have failed, two during Brey's lifetime. Brey will never forget the drama of those moments. The remaining light bulbs stay lit while Brey is awake, switching off when he lays down to sleep. The mechanism that regulates the light remains obscure to him.
Attached to the desk is a strand of fishline which wraps around the leg of the desk four times before being tied off. The line runs out under the door, down the hall, through empty intersections, toward the terminal wall. The line is neither taut nor loose.
He sits cross-legged upon his palette, pouring over his maps. All the maps partake of the same design, making it difficult to distinguish one map from another. If Brey's imagined maps were not clearly marked, he would find it difficult to distinguish them from his real map.
His imaginary maps contain imaginary keys in each intersection. All maps are gridwork. All are recorded on equally sized sheets of squared paper. The only difference between them is where Brey marks the location of the terminal doors.
The terminal doors are recorded on the imagined maps but have not yet been discovered in the hallways. The terminal doors exist on terminal walls, breaking the succession of blacked windows. The terminal doors stretch to the ceiling. They are two large, varnished doors, locked together. No light departs through their bottom crack. Some little light comes through the locks, outlining them, suggesting that something exists beyond. An eye to the keyhole, Brey believes, would reveal only an elaborate gearage.
The terminal doors must lead out of the halls. Otherwise Brey would not call them "terminal."
Perhaps through the terminal doors lies another set of hallways, organized according to principles of which his own halls are merely a shadow. The terminal doors exist: they have been discovered on all maps, excepting the actual map. Thus, they must eventually be discovered on the actual map. Thus, reasons Brey, they must be discovered in the halls themselves.
Before he collects all the keys, he hopes to find the terminal doors. When he finds them, he will attempt to escape through them.
Perhaps the terminal doors are hidden in a dark section of hallway. Perhaps he has walked by them, pressed against the opposite wall, again and again, unaware.
He returns to his room to find the door ajar, his father standing over his desk, thumbing through his map books.
"Brey, will you explain what these are?" says his father.
"Notebooks?" says Brey.
"You know what I mean," says his father.
"Maps?" says Brey.
"Maps?" says his father, crumpling them. "Maps of what, Brey? These are useless."
His Parents.
His parents live in the room adjacent to his own. They are withered of skin, but not of mind. They are the source of all his knowledge. His mother never leaves the room. His father rarely is to be found in the room. He wanders.
Brey has wrapped his mother's body with strips of sheets to protect her from rats. He has done thus at his father's request. Brey has never seen rats. He has read about them at length, and has learned about them from his father. His father wanders the halls looking for evidence of the rats.
"The rats," his father confides, "exist! I have seen them, Brey. Someday they will return to these halls."
Brey has not seen the rats. He has seen drawings of rats in his father's books about rats. He believes in the rats, though he has not seen them. He trusts his father.
"Your mother and I have killed rats," says his father. "Someday they will return for me or for your