Kelley Armstrong - Broken

“Sorry,” Zoe said. “That must smell even worse to you. It’ll be better inside.” She paused. “Well, ‘better’ might not be the word. But it won’t smell of garbage. Will you be okay?”

I nodded. We came out on a street that straddled Cabbagetown and Regent Park. Like the portal street, this one was lined with Victorian homes, but these houses were like withered old ladies, traces of their former beauty still visible, but only if you strained to see past the signs of deterioration and decay.

Good bones, a Realtor would say. Farther down the road, the process of gentrification had already begun, putting a pretty face on the old gals to entice urban professionals who dreamed of owning a historic home without the inconvenience of hissing steam radiators and push-button lights. Here, though, no such process had begun. These old gals sat tight, comfortable in their squalor and decay, glaring down the road at their uppity neighbors.

“Here,” Zoe said, swinging open a rusted gate that led into a yard of weeds.

“So this woman…it’s a woman, right?” I said as we trekked through the yard.

“Umm, we think so.”

Zoe led us to the back of the house. She went to move an overloaded trash bin out of the way. Clay reached around and gave it a heave.

“Watch your arm,” I said.

Zoe slid into the space left by the bin.

“So this…woman,” I said. “What is she?”

Zoe knelt in front of a locked hatch. “We think she might be a clairvoyant. She seems to have some clairvoyant abilities, and the madness certainly fits that profile.”

“Madness?”

Clay shrugged at me, as if to say, after dimensional portals, zombie servants and half-demon serial killers, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Zoe was leading us down a hole to visit a white rabbit.

“Clairvoyants,” I continued. “They can’t see the future, right? More…lateral sight. Seeing things that are happening in other places right now.”

“You got it.” She undid the first combination lock on the hatch.

“And what they see drives them crazy. But…how crazy are we talking?”

Clay looked at me. “How crazy? They can’t figure out her gender, darling.”

“Okay, stupid question. Does she have a name?”

Zoe opened the second lock. “I’m sure she did. Once. We call her Tee. It’s-” Her gaze dropped with her voice, as if embarrassed. “It’s an abbreviation. Not my idea.”

The wooden hatch door was at least two feet by three, and when she tugged at it, she had to dig in her heels, her tiny frame straining with the effort. Clay leaned in and yanked it open.

“Thanks, Professor. Quite the southern gentleman today, aren’t you?”

She tried to sound like her usual jaunty self, but didn’t succeed.

A narrow set of stairs led down.

“She-Tee has the basement apartment?” I said.

Zoe shook her head. “She owns the whole place. Elena, you come first. I’ll help you down and Clayton can-”

“Elena shouldn’t be stooping to climb down rickety stairs,” Clay said.

“This is the only way in. The doors are bricked over.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

The moment I reached the bottom step, I gagged. Clay knocked his head on the low ceiling frame in his rush to get to me.

“I’m okay,” I said, trying to speak without swallowing or closing my mouth. I motioned for him to wait, hurried up the steps and spat outside. When I came back down, the gag reflex kicked in again and I hesitated on the lowest step.

“Come on,” he said, taking my arm. “We’re getting out-”

“No.”

I pried his fingers free, then walked into the room, taking shallow breaths, acclimatizing myself to the smell. As for what it smelled like-I pushed back the thought as the bile rose again.

“I can talk to Tee,” Zoe said. “You go outside, get some fresh air, maybe something to settle your stomach-”

“I’m fine. Just give me a moment to…get used to it.”

I peered around the room. It was midday and sunny outside, but only a faint glow shone through the window above, illuminating a scant few feet of dust motes. As my nose adjusted, my eyes did too, and I could see that we were in a hallway, barren except for neatly stacked crates. The hall was tidy, clean even. The smell seemed to come from a closed door down the hall, opposite the stairs leading up to the second level.

“No lights, I suppose,” I said.

Zoe shook her head. “Sometimes I bring a flashlight but…it’s better this way.”

“She-Tee doesn’t like the light?”

“Umm, not so much her…” Zoe slid off the crate and headed for the stairs.

ZOE LED US UP THE STAIRS, WHICH ENDED AT A LANDING. To the left was the back door, which was indeed bricked over on the inside.

We followed Zoe to the interior door. She did a fast patterned knock. As I waited for an answer from within, Zoe eased open the door just enough for her to slide through sideways. I grabbed the handle to push, but the door didn’t budge.

“Uh, there’s no way I can fit-” I began.

“Hold on.” She grunted, as if moving something. Another grunt, and the door opened.

I stepped in to see her restacking a pile of books.

“Hope that was right,” she murmured. “Tee hates them out of order. Is the smell better in here?”

The horrible smell from downstairs was now overpowered by another sort of rot. Mildewed paper. I edged in, banging my stomach on a stack of books.

“Hold on,” Zoe whispered. “Give your eyes a second. It’s a bit of a maze.”

Clay was breathing down my neck, but I waited, blinking a few times to adjust to the dimmer light. The windows had been boarded up, again from the inside, behind the blinds. To a passerby, it would look as if the shades were always drawn.

When my night vision kicked in, I found myself in a labyrinth of books, some stacked taller than me. A narrow passage snaked into the room. Zoe had disappeared ahead of us.

“Just follow the path,” she called. “It only leads one way. Pretty easy.”

I’m sure it was easy-for those who could turn without adjusting like a transport driver for swing room. After banging my stomach into another stack, I walked with my hands over my belly. By the time I caught up to Zoe, my knuckles were scraped.

“Stay close,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

“Good,” Clay grunted behind me.

Another few steps and the maze opened up into a second book-lined room. I tripped. Clay caught my arm, and I looked down to realize that the floor was carpeted with open books.

“Just brush them aside as you walk,” Zoe whispered.

A small noise to my left drew my attention. There stood what looked like a giant white nest. Moving closer, I saw that it was a pile of pages ripped from books. It was at least three feet high and twice that wide. Somewhere at the bottom, a happy mouse squeaked and burrowed deeper.

I squinted at the stack of dismembered book spines beside the pile-everything from cookbooks to popular fiction to history texts to automotive manuals.

“The answer is in there,” a voice whispered somewhere behind me.

I spun, but saw only books and darkness.

“It’s there,” the voice said, as harsh and scratchy as sandpaper rasping against metal. “I haven’t found it, but it’s there. I know it is.”

I stared down at the pile of papers, but the voice said, “It isn’t in those pages. That is, I don’t think it is. It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? How do you know if you’ve found the answer, when you aren’t quite certain of the question? Better to keep it all, just in case.”

I followed the voice to a shadow-wrapped corner. Something moved, then reared up, long, thin appendages unwrapping, like a praying mantis awakened from sleep. A face appeared in the darkness, a tangle of white hair nearly hiding the gaunt oval beneath. The head swayed from side to side, bobbing, weaving and snuffling, as the skeletal arms waved. Male or female? I couldn’t tell if it was even human, this insectlike thing .