It was the lumberjack.
When I stopped walking, he looked back.
The way I knew he was real was that he wasn"t holding a double-edged axe, like all the lumber-jacks from my childhood did.
He wasn"t lost, either.
"Tad," he called back to me.
That"s my name.
I looked away and he was gone.
He"s not on any of the recordings, either. I checked.
What Ben thought I was doing, stopping like that in the hall, I don"t know.
I did cry that night though, for some reason. Finally Hendrikson came over to my bunk and laid down beside me and touched my shoulder like he does, and then that made me cry more and harder.
It"s nothing unusual in the bunker, though, crying like that.
You just have to ride it out.
That night I didn"t dream of the sheep in the diaper, but I wanted to. I don"t know if that counts or not.
If you look at the structure long enough, you lose a kind of perspective and it just becomes a tangle of rust-colored lines. They don"t move or anything, and it"s all in your head anyway, but it"s like if you say a word enough times, it starts to lose meaning. And then, the next time somebody says it just in normal conversation, you"ll get a dull jolt, like you"ve got a funny story a.s.sociated with that word, but then you won"t be able to remember it and people will just think you"ve maybe had enough to drink already.
That"s how it is with the structure. You get drunk on it. And then you laugh a little, because, for the four of you, it still is what it always was: a prison.
But then you think maybe it"s more, too.
And you don"t tell anybody, even your best friend.
And it"s winter of course, but this is Wyoming, too. Even when it"s not winter, it"s winter.
Whatever you"re planning, though you"re afraid to even say it in your head, because somebody might steal it Russell messes it up by making everybody get their gear on and do the drill he made up. All it is is walking up and down the halls of the path of rocks we"ve laid out to the north of the structure. They perfectly mirror, down to the inch, the floorplan of the structure. To the east, in more rocks, is the slightly smaller floorplan of the second floor. To the south, the single room of the third floor the watchtower, Russell calls it. He"s the only one who can stand there.
We didn"t use the land west of the structure because Russell"s superst.i.tious.
And, though the rocks are tall, still, we have to dig them out until our mittens are crusted with ice.
What Russell thinks is the same thing he always thinks: that he"s cracked the code, figured it out.
So what we do is tie strings between two of us, while the third watches the structure and Russell directs.
The idea is that when we unlock whatever"s here, there"ll be some glimmer or something in the real structure.
Russell"s theory is that whatever happened, it wasn"t because of the structure, but because of whatever pattern that one inmate walked the day before the prison fell down on him.
By the time we"re done, our eyelashes are frozen stalks, our beards slush.
In the kitchen, Russell tries to stab his wrist with a dull fork, but his blood is sluggish, his skin over it calloused, tired.
Hendrikson says if we don"t make him clean it up himself, he"ll never learn.
We don"t write any of this down in the log.
My daughter is almost nine. I say this out loud to Ben one night, but he"s sleepwalking, sleep-monitoring, so I don"t think it really registers. But then he says her name back to me in his toneless voice.
I stand, watching him adjust a dial, and, because it"s either hit him in the back of the head or walk away, I walk away.
If you make your hand into a fist and blow into the tunnel of your palm, you can calm down from almost anything. It doesn"t matter what your other hand"s doing. It could be playing piano or cooking bacon or any of a hundred other things.
What I finally decide is that Ben saying my daughter"s name like that, it means something. There are no accidents in the bunker. Not after nearly nine years.
Instead of just leaving Hendrikson without saying anything, I walk by his bunk to tell him bye while he"s sleeping, but see that he"s pulled the covers up from his feet. What"s under them, tucked up against his wall, are powdery-white bricks, like the kind you build a fireplace from.
I stare at them and stare at them.
In the pictures we have of the old prison, before it crumbled, it"s made of these exact same bricks.
What this means, G.o.d.
Is the structure growing back?
Are all the men going to still be inside, sleeping, or will they be dead?
But Hendrikson.
What I think is that whatever bricks the structure"s been able to call across the void to itself, he"s been sneaking them back to his bunk.
Because he doesn"t want our watch to be over?
Because he"s afraid of the structure ever getting complete?
I lean against the wall by his bunk. I"m sweating.
In the bathroom, I towel it all off, keep nodding to myself, about what I"m not sure.
Ben tells me nighty-night as I shuffle past his chair. Like every other night, I don"t say anything, just keep moving, a moth with no wings.
In the snow and the wind I just stand for a long time, my fingertips shoved up into my armpits, my breath swirling away to wrap around the planet.
The night I saw the lumberjack, I remember all the turns I made. It"s something you learn to do, something you learn to do without really meaning to.
And I know that Ben"s watching me, and know that he knows I know he"s watching me, so I try to just stare straight ahead, not shake my head no or anything.
And then I duck into the wind, walk ahead to the structure, and step through the east-facing cell I started in that one night, and, and the trick is, I think, the way I remember it anyway, is that I"m mopping, and that I keep looking back to see my trail of wetness, and that"s how I remember.
Two hours later, he"s standing there at his end of the hall, the lumberjack. Manny.
My jaw is trembling, my heart in my throat.
Where I don"t belong, I know, is Wyoming.
All he"s doing is staring at me, too. To see each other, we have to look sideways, not straight on, like we"re each suspicious.
For him, I think, it"s still the night he came to salvage metal.
What I am, then, is an authority, the owner of the structure maybe, who saw flashlights bobbing through all this sc.r.a.p metal.
I don"t know where the prisoners are, or the guards. Or West Virginia.
What I do know is that I"ve left my coat by Hendrikson"s bunk. Or in the bathroom.
The way I know this is that Manny approaches, keeping close to one side of the hall, which is as open to the wind as any other part, that he approaches and offers me the second of the two flannel shirts he"s wearing.
I take it, wrap it around my shoulders without pushing my hands through the sleeves, and Manny nods to me, smiles with one side of his face.
According to our training, the shirt I"m wearing isn"t a shirt, but an artifact to be catalogued, processed, dissected.
But it"s warm, from him.
I close my eyes to him in thanks, and then, when he"s shuffling away, looking for his echo, waiting for his voice to come back to him, I get him to turn around somehow. Not with my voice, I don"t think, though my mouth"s open. But it doesn"t matter. What does is that he waits for me to make my way closer, still pushing the idea of the mop, and then takes what I give him, holding it tight by the corner, against the wind: a picture of Sheila.
For a long time he studies it, then looks up to me, and then, behind him, there"s a brick along the edge of the hall where there"s never been a brick before.
I only notice this because I"ve been trained to.
"Yours?" he says, holding the picture up, and I nod, say that she looks like her mother, that her mother"s a real beauty, and then I look behind me to the idea of the trail of wetness, just so I don"t get lost in here like he has.
When I come back around, he"s gone.
What this looks like to Ben, I have no idea, and don"t care either. We don"t make eye contact as I pa.s.s his station anyway. At the kitchen table, Russell has all of our pills, antibiotics and vitamins and mood-regulators, lined up in the floorplan of the structure. What he"s doing is taking them one by one, as if he"s walking through. Since the last two times, though, they"re filled with confectioner"s sugar. He"ll get a cavity, maybe.
I don"t make eye contact with him either, just feel my way to my bunk, lean over Hendrikson to put this next brick with all his.
"Yours," I whisper, almost smiling, and he stirs, feeling me over him, but doesn"t wake, and, truly, I don"t know how long we can go on like this. But I don"t know what else we could be doing, either.
Portal.
J. Robert Lennon.
J. Robert Lennon (1970 - ) is an American author known for idiosyncratic fiction that sometimes intersects with The Weird and what might be called the New Gothic. He has published a story collection, Pieces For The Left Hand (2005), and seven novels, including Mailman (2003), Castle (2009), and Familiar (2012). Castle, in particular, will be of interest to readers of weird fiction and shares commonalities with the fiction of writers like Brian Evenson. The story included herein, "The Portal," from Weird Tales magazine, evokes the darker side of tales by Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson while being entirely Lennon"s own. Lennon directs the Creative Writing program at Cornell University.
It"s been a few years since we last used the magic portal in our back garden, and it has fallen into disrepair. To be perfectly honest, when we bought this place, we had no idea what kind of work would be involved, and tasks like keeping the garden weeded, repairing the fence, maintaining the portal, etc., quickly fell to the bottom of the priority list while we got busy dealing with the roof and the floor joists. I guess there are probably people with full-time jobs out there who can keep an old house in great shape without breaking their backs to do it, but if there are, I"ve never met them.
My point is, we"ve developed kind of a blind spot about that whole back acre. The kids are older now and don"t spend so much time wandering around in the woods and the clearing the way they used to-Luann is all about the boys these days and you can"t get Chester"s mind away from the Xbox for more than five minutes-and Gretchen and I hardly ever even look in that direction. I think one time last summer we got a little drunk and sneaked out there to have s.e.x under the crabapple tree, but weeds and stones kept poking up through the blanket and the bugs were insane, so we gave up, came back inside and did it in the bed like normal people.
I know, too much information, right? Anyway, it was the kids who discovered the portal back when we first moved in. They were into all that magic stuff at the time-Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, that kind of thing-and while Gretchen and I steamed off old wallpaper and sanded the floorboards inside the house, they had this whole crazy fantasy world invented back there, complete with various kingdoms, wizards, evil forces, orcs, trolls, and what have you. They made paths, buried treasures, drew maps, and basically had a grand old time. We didn"t even have to send them to summer camp, they were so...tolerable. They didn"t fight, didn"t complain-I hope someday, when the teen years are over with, they"ll remember all that and have some kind of relationship again. Maybe when they"re in college. Fingers crossed.
One afternoon, I guess it was in July, they came running into the house, tracking mud everywhere and breathlessly shouting about something they"d found, "It"s a portal, it"s a portal to another world!" I got pretty bent out of shape about the mud, but the kids were seriously over the moon about this thing, and their enthusiasm was infectious. So Gretchen and I followed them out across the yard and into the woods, then down the little footpath that led to the clearing.
It"s unclear what used to be there, back in the day-the land behind our house was once farmland, and the remains of old dirt roads ran everywhere-but at this time, a few years ago, the clearing was pretty overgrown, treeless but thick with shrubs and brambles and the like. We had figured there was just a grain silo or something at one time, something big that would make this perfectly circular area, but the kids had uncovered a couple of stone benches and a little fire pit, so clearly somebody used to hang around here in the past, you know, lighting a fire and sitting on the benches to look at it.
When we reached the clearing, we were quite impressed with the progress the kids had made. They"d cleared a lot of the weeds and saplings and such, and the place had the feel of some kind of private room-the sun coming down through the clouds, and the wall of trees surrounding the s.p.a.ce, and all that. It was really nice. So the kids had stopped at the edge, and we came up behind them and they were like, do you see it? And we were like, see what? And they said look, and we said, where?, and they said, Mom, Dad, just look! And sure enough, off to the left, kind of hovering above what had looked like another bench but now appeared more like a short, curved little staircase, was this oval, sort of man-sized, shimmering thing that honestly just screamed "magic portal." I mean, it was totally obvious what it was-nothing else gives the air that quality, that kind of electrical distortion, like heat or whatever is bending s.p.a.ce itself.
This was a real surprise to us, because there had been nothing about it in the real estate ad. You"d think the former owners would have mentioned it. I mean, the dry rot, I understand why they left that out, but even if this portal was busted, it"s still a neat thing to have (or so I thought at the time), and could have added a few thou to the asking price easy. But this was during the real estate slump, so maybe not, and maybe the previous owners never bothered to come back here and didn"t know what they had. They looked like indoor types, frankly. Not that Gretchen and I look like backcountry survivalists or anything. But I digress.
The fact is, this portal was definitely not busted, it was obviously working, and the kids had taken real care uncovering the steps that led to it, tugging out all the weeds from between the stones and unearthing the little flagstone patio that surrounded the whole thing. In retrospect, if I had been an expert, or even a well-informed amateur, I would probably have been able to tell the portal was really just puttering along on its last legs, and would soon start exhibiting problems, but in the moment it seemed thoroughly cool and appeared to be functioning perfectly.
We all went over there and walked around it and looked through it-had a laugh making faces at one another through the s.p.a.ce and watching each other go all funhouse-mirror. But obviously the unspoken question was, do we go through? I was actually really proud of the kids right then because they"d come and gotten us instead of just diving headfirst through the thing like a lot of kids would have done. Who knows, maybe this stellar judgment will return to them someday-hey, a guy can dream. But at this moment we all were just kind of looking at each other, wondering who was going to test it out first.
Since I"m the father, this task fell to me. I bent over and pried a stone up out of the dirt and stood in front of the portal, with the kids looking on from behind. (Gretchen stood off to the side with her arms folded over her chest, doing that slightly-disapproving stance she does pretty much all the time now.) And after a dramatic pause, I raised my arm and tossed the stone at the portal.
Nothing dramatic happened-the stone just disappeared. "It works!" Chester cried, and Luann hopped up and down, trying to suppress her excitement.
"Now hold on," I said, and picked up a twig. I braced my foot on the bottom step and poked the twig through the portal. This close, you could hear a low hum from the power the thing was giving off-again, if I knew what I was doing, I would have known that this was not supposed to happen, that it means the portal"s out of whack. But at the time it sounded normal to me.
When I pulled the twig out, it looked OK. Not burned or frozen or turned into a snake or anything-it was just itself. I handed it to Gretchen and she gave it a cursory examination. "Jerry," she said, "I"m not sure-"
"Don"t worry, don"t worry." I knew the drill-she"s the mom, she has to be skeptical, and it"s my job to tell her not to worry. Which is harder to do nowadays, let me tell you. I got up nice and close to the portal, until the little hairs on my arms were standing up (this is normal, by the way), and I stuck out my index finger and moved it slowly towards the shimmering air.
Chester"s eyes were wide. Luann covered her mouth with her fists. Gretchen sighed.
Well, what can I say, it went in, and I barely felt a thing. It was weird seeing my pointer finger chopped off at the knuckle like that, but when I pulled it out again, voila, there it was, unharmed. My family still silent, I took the bull by the horns and just shoved my whole arm in. The kids screamed. I pulled it out.
"What," I said, "what!!"
"We could see your blood and stuff!" This was Chester.
Luann said, "Daddy, that was so gross."
"Like an X-ray?" I said.
Chester was laughing hysterically now. "Like it got chopped off!"
"Oh my G.o.d, Jerry," Gretchen said, her hand on her heart.
My arm was fine, though. In fact, it felt kind of good-wherever the arm had just been, it was about five degrees warmer than this shady little glade.
"Kids," I said, "stand behind me." Because I didn"t want them to see what I was about to do. Eventually we"d get over this little taboo and enjoy watching each other walk super slowly through the portal, revealing our pulsing innards, but for now I didn"t want to freak anyone out, myself least of all. When the kids were safely behind me, Gretchen holding them close, I stuck my head through.