I. Revulsions of the Kyphotic

Before he could speak his father’s name, Lucasse needed to down a glass of cold milk and alcohol. The combination of liquids soothed his chest, stomach, and bowels where it then exited in a very brief but loud fecal exorcism. During that process, he was able to utter the word that was the closest thing to a curse that was ever expelled from Lucasse’s lips.

“Maurent.”

There. He spoke it. He said it into the broken air. He said it into the corner of his room, the corner where the wallpaper was stripped away by the insects and where layers stains of unknown origin combined to form abstract pornography.

Lucasse waited.

He waited for no specific result, no specific end to his ongoing turmoil. Every incident in the past had been different, every result a separate personal cataclysm independent from the last yet related by a similar set-up: the milk and alcohol ritual. An outsider would not have thought each episode to be linked but Lucasse knew better. He knew the truth.

Or rather the truth he wanted to believe: that his father’s eyes would come back to look after him.

For years Lucasse had been a guest in his Aunt Eurice’s home in a town he had never heard of before coming to visit. The name of the town was generic and one Lucasse had a difficult time remembering. In fact, there were times he had suspected the town did not even exist prior to his arrival as if it had been invented simply to accommodate his needs. Lucasse usually shrugged off that arrogance until the next time he took a walk around the town and felt that same feeling of newness that was out of place in a town that looked so ancient, so colonial. Most of the buildings were supposedly built two centuries ago yet they held a fresh presence, an almost psychic weight of modernity that should have been alien to such structures.

Lucasse had once taken a walk through a small patch of woods that led to a large farm house. Nothing seemed peculiar until he walked alongside the house and felt a severe pain in his temple. At first he thought it was the sunlight piercing his eyes but realized the sun was hidden by a bulbous cloud like a child hiding from its mother. As the mystery of the pain swirled in his head, all sounds of nature ceased. It was then that Lucasse knew it was the house itself that had somehow struck him. It was the house that was telling Lucasse it was not what it seemed to be. It was not an old house despite its appearance and its half-page of faux history in the brochure available at the town hall. Through pain it was spilling its ancient secrets, a newborn revealing its true nature through anguished howling out of mouth of blood.

It was a cranky newborn made of wood and paint and its primal cries had pierced Lucasse, causing the pain in his head. After walking around to the back of the farmhouse, he decided to knock on the door to see if anyone lived there who could provide him with answers. If they couldn’t offer that, then maybe they’d give him a drink of water or perhaps, if they were liberal about such things, a small drink of alcohol. Any kind would do.

Three knocks on the door brought nothing but a wind chime’s weak song. Lucasse opened the screen door and stepped into the porch. It smelt of moss and blown-out candles. Magazines were strewn across the floor. All of the titles had been cleanly cut off with a razor. Lucasse crouched down to pick one of them up but found it stuck to the floor by a yellowish gummy substance.

He wiped his fingers on his shirt and stood up.

The door to the house opened on its own, revealing a tenebrous chamber that was nothing like the inside of any house Lucasse had ever known. It was more like what he imagined a stomach of a whale would look like: humid, dank, and dark with swollen shadows.

“Hello?” he said to the blackness.

No voice answered. There was only the chimes again, brief and weak but sinister in a way only soft sounds could be, like the footsteps of a home invader or the sharpening of a butcher’s blade.

“Anyone here?” he said. “I was just wondering if I could have a drink. I’ve been walking for a long time.”

No answer.

But the shadows at the heart of the room started to spread, making everything darker. Lucasse didn’t think that was possible: shadow within shadow within shadow within an even darker shadow.

Then he found himself lying on the couch with an icepack on his forehead.

“Where am I?”

A voice from behind him said, “You’re home.”

It was his Aunt Eurice. This was her house.

The shadows above him swayed with the sound of chimes.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Aunt Eurice said.

That is when Lucasse fell asleep.