Castle Paradox

[Bob the Hamster]

This was written in May 2004 based on the prompt "The Hall at the Top of the Stairs"

The Second Attic

My very first childhood memory is standing at the foot of the attic stair with a fireplace poker in my left hand the Janitor's Ring of Every Key to Every Door in my right hand. I remember it clearly, though I remember nothing that came before it. Nothing of my parents, nothing of my first six years in the OHRRPGCE, nothing of how I came into possession of the Janitor's Keys, and nothing of what inspired in me the mad urge to climb the stair and see the attic.

The attic stair was a crudely built affair, more a slanted ladder with handrails than a stair, built of two-by-fours nailed together and all painted red. The paint was thick, of the sort that neither cracks, nor peels, but merely sags a little with age.

Each step I took drew a squeak from the stair, each nail screaming a little warning, a warning that this was a place that lost little boys were not to go. Each step I took drew a jingle from the Janitor's Ring of Every Key to Every Door. The jingle was a sound that grown-up men made when they walk, not a sound that I should be making. The keys were whispering of my guilty theft.

The air was dusty and dark at the top. A sea of motes swam in the beam of light below my feet; the beam of light from the eight-pane window in the hall below. Outlined in the dark, framed by the dull red heads of the handrails, was The Door.

"Bernocelli's Winery, dash, Nine-teen-oh-eight" I read aloud, spelling out "Bernocelli" slowly. The words on the door meant nothing to me at the time, but I have since taken them to mean that a hole in the door had been patched with wood scavenged from a crate used to store bottles of wine.

I shifted the fireplace poker under my arm, and with both hands I grasped the keys, and stared at them, wondering which to try first. The door was locked with a big heavy tarnished-black padlock through a loop of similarly black metal that protruded through the edge of the door.

I looked for a big heavy tarnished-black key; but there was no such key. There were long bent skeleton keys, small keys with jagged teeth, Keys round, and square, and angled. But there were no heavy keys. No keys that looked as if they belonged with the lock. So I shut my eyes and picked a key. It was a tiny bronze key with a single tooth protruding from a stout hollow neck. It should have belonged to a music-box, but I tried it anyway, and somehow it fit perfectly, and it clicked as if the lock wanted to be opened. And as the key turned, the lock fell away from the loop, and fell down between the rungs of the stair, and flashed for an instant in the beam of light before striking the wooden floor with a sharp thud. I stared down, heart beating, wondering if anyone had heard it. And when the disturbed dust motes in the beam of light finally calmed their swirling and resumed their gentle lazy dance, I looked again to the door. I had to pull it towards me, and take two steps backward down the stair to make room for it.

The opening, like a gaping mouth, waited to swallow me. Voiceless wind blew outwards at me, ruffling my hair, and making me shiver, and I wanted to go away, back down the stairs, back down to the lower floors where I belonged, but here was the opening, waiting for me, as inviting as it was ominous, singing of the unknown, smelling of mildew and silverfish. And so I entered.

I was ten paces down the hallway before I remembered the flashlight. The keys jingled round my wrist as I turned back towards the door. The flashlight would be back there, down below, laying in the dust on the floorboards at the base of the stair. I only had two hands, and somehow the fireplace poker had seemed more important at the time. Why had it?... And the hair on the back of my neck stood up, as I realised that I had turned my back on the darkness. And I spun, and gripped the fireplace poker, and stared into the darkness, shivering, scared, determined. Yes, that was why I had come. There was something up here, something that lived in the darkness. Something that came awake after midnight, and descended down into the OHRRPGCE. Something that prowled the halls and haunted my dreams. I couldn't use the flashlight. It wasn't real in the light, it was only real in the dark. If I went back for the flashlight, the attic would be empty. I wouldn't find it with the light. It would not exist if I was holding the flashlight, and you can't kill what doesn't exist. I had to find it and fight it in the dark, on its own terms, or my dreams would never be free from its power.

"I'm not afraid of you!" I whispered, in a voice so small that it was only audible in my head.

The darkness said nothing.

I stood and stared until my eyes adjusted and the shape of the attic hall resolved itself. The ceiling was high and slanted, and the insulation hung limply between the rafters. On either side, both right and left, the hall was lined with narrow doors. Each door looked a little different. There were words on some of them, strange words printed on bits of wood-- wooden patches nailed over holes. Some doors had so many patches on them that they were more patch than door. Some of the patches extended across the door-frames, and were nailed into the wall. There were patches on the walls too. The one nearest me read; "Higgs Soap, the Best Soap!" The next read "W.E.L." and had the top half of a picture of a horse and rider.

At the very end of the hall was one door. It too was patched, most prominently with the red octagon of an upside-down "STOP" sign.

The floor creaked beneath my feet, and I took a step forward, and another, advancing with patience and determination towards the last door. It would be behind the last door. I just knew somehow. The other doors, ahead of me, they were nothing. Not worthy of consideration. And as I drew parallel to each door in turn, I would not look at it, but keep my eyes fixed on the inverted "STOP" sign, because the other doors were nothing. But as each door passed behind me, it became something. Each became an empty space in my mind, each a burning black rectangle, radiating the fear of the unknown, and raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

I gripped the fireplace poker tight. I felt the weight of it. I shook the Janitor's Key's once around my wrist. They jingled; a bright sound and a real sound. Not a sound for nightmares. I held my breath, and pulled opened the STOP door.

And what I saw next I did not understand.

Behind the door was a staircase. The stairs were not like the red ladder-stairs I had climbed to reach the attic. These were real stairs, from wall-to-wall, built right into the floor and carpeted with musty mottled brown carpet. There were carved handrails on both sides, and the stairs rose six steps before turning to the left, and I could see the edge of the first step of another flight of stairs just like the first.

I looked back over my shoulder, at the attic hall, flanked with its double-row of patched doors, now stripped of their power of fear, now that I was looking at them. Above this hall, the roof came to a peak, and there were the rafters like ribs. The peak of the roof of the attic hall was the highest point of the OHRRPGCE. The should be no higher point. There was no bell-tower, no steeple, no turret, no tower. There was not even a chimney.

I turned my eyes back to the stair in front of me. Now alongside the fear in my heart burned a new sensation, an excitement. Here was the stair to the attic-above-the-attic.

I stepped through the door, and one after another, climbed the six steps, and looked to my left. Six more steps, and to the left, the edge of the first step of a third flight. My fear flickered and died, and the joy of exploration exploded out to my every extremity. I knew now I was climbing into a magical place. I felt as if I was a mighty adventurer, the fireplace poker a shining sword, the Janitor's Ring of Every Key to Every Door a magical talisman to guide me.

I hurried up the second flight of steps, and took the third two-at-a-time, and so with the fourth and the fifth and the sixth flights, but I paused at the seventh. This was different, longer, and at the top it opened into a dark void, darker than the darkness that already surrounded me.

This flight I took one step at a time, and with each step, I found it was harder and harder for me to see what was ahead of me. My eyes were already as sensitive to light as they could be, wide like a night-owl's, but by the time I reached the top, I was stooping and feeling each step with my outstretched hand, the keys around my wrist rattling muffledly against the carpet on the stairs. The carpet was think, and not threadbare like the carpet in the halls of the OHRRPGCE below. This was a place were few feet had ever walked.

When there were no more steps in front of me, I stopped, and stood on the edge of the void. My eyes had failed me completely here. My skin told me the air was moving, and my nose screamed something to me that I did not understand. There was a distant, yet sharp smell here that I could not place, but that sent shivers down my spine. And after the shiver in my bones had receded, a new shiver began, outside of me, a shivering sound, that grew to a rattle, that rose to a churning roar, far away, but approaching fast, zigzagging through the shapeless darkness, coming for me. I turned towards it, and held the fireplace poker in both hands. How I wished now for the flashlight. How could I fight an invisible fiend? How could I defend myself blind? And the cacophony raged closer, like an earthquake, a pack of wolves, a gunfight, a freight-train, and a screaming demon all rolled into one. And before I could move it was upon me, and past me, and down the stair behind me, down, right, down, right, I could hear it, feel it through my feet, spiralling down the flights of stairs below, and in the distance I felt as much as heard the STOP door slamming shut and clicking, and then the horrible horrible sound turned and spiralled back up again, returning to me.

I ran.

I ran blindly, away from the noise, thought I knew it was faster than me. I ran into the void, thought I knew this was where it was strongest, and I was weakest. I ran because I didn't know what else to do. The sound overtook me, and I found myself falling, and rolling, and then pressed up into a corner where two walls came together at a sharper angle than real walls should ever come together. The sound closed in on me, wailing, and shrieking, clicking and booming, and I felt hot breath on my face, and I smelled the smell that I had smelled before, stronger now, salty, sweet, and sickly, and I shrank into the sharp corner as far as I could push myself, holding the fireplace poker between myself and it, knowing it was futility, sensing now the true frightful power of the Nightmare. When it had prowled the halls of the OHRRPGCE on dark nights, it had done so subtly. When it had invaded my dreams it had done so fleetingly. But here, now, it was neither subtle nor fleeting. It was Incubus.

Adrenaline bolstered my strength, and fear sapped my strength, but with what strength I had I stabbed out with the fireplace poker, and felt it spear something hard and heavy that yielded only just a little, and before I could draw another breath, the poker was wrenched from my hand, and I heard the creak of metal bending and the snap, and the dull thud of the pieces being flung aside.

And it came so close to me, that thought I could see nothing else, I thought I could see my reflection in its terrible eyes, and I shut my own eyes tight so I would not have to look.

And for a long time, nothing happened. All was silent, and the scent of blood faded, and the stirring of the air ceased, and I thought I could see a distant light. Clean, soft, normal light.

I opened my eyes. There was the swaying beam of a flashlight-- my flashlight.

The Janitor gently kicked aside a fragment of the fireplace poker, and then stood over me, looking down, flashlight angled away, so as not to blind my eyes.

"Are you all-right?" he asked, extending his hand to me.

He waited while my breathing returned to normal. I had been hyperventilating a moment before.

"Yes. Sir." I said.

He helped me to my feet, and led me by the hand out of the corner. "This is no place for children." He said. "You should be in bed right now."

"But... But..." I stammered. "It's still here somewhere! It will come after me!"

The Janitor stopped, and released my hand. "My keys." he said.

I stared into his eyes, and shrank back. There was a frightening brightness to his eyes. The Janitor was magical. As magical as this place. As magical as the second-attic. As magical as the Nightmare.

Shivering, I held out The Janitor's Ring of Every Key to Every Door. He took it from me, and the keys jingled softly in passing from my small hand to his great hand.

He spun the keys around, and now they sang like a cascade of bells. "You don't need to be afraid. It was me that sealed the Nightmare here, it was me that patched the doors and locked them. As long as I keep the keys, it may come no closer to you than a dream-- and even the worst dream ends in waking."

And the Janitor took my hand again, and lead me through the second attic, and down the long stair, and through the real attic, and he waited at the top of the red ladder-stair while I went down and found the big black lock and brought it up to him, and he locked the attic door.

"Why did you let me steal your keys?" I asked him as he led me back to my room.

The Janitor smiled. "Why did you leave behind your flashlight?" He asked.


End

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Commentary:
I was totally happy with how I started this one... but I hate how I ended it. Seems like a total cop-out. Any suggestions on how I can fix/restart this thing?

In my opinion, the point where it all goes wrong is "And for a long time, nothing happened. All was silent, and the scent of blood faded, and the stirring of the air ceased, and I thought I could see a distant light. Clean, soft, normal light. "

[Pepsi Ranger]

I gotta start with one grammatical call, as I'll forget it if I don't mention it now: