Doorways
for the Dispossessed
by
Paul Haines
For
a long time I used to go to bed early.
I relished any chance I
had to practise. But not now. Caffeine, sugar, speed; anything
to keep me from going back there. Exhaustion is here living with
me though it goes by another name, creeping behind my eyes, and
pulling me down.
Sleep,
Richard.
I know I’ll have to go
back soon and I don’t want to. I can hear it whispering. There
are too many doors still open . . .
I'd
met her when travelling through India. Her name was Monika; she
was in her late 20’s, green-eyed, tall, lean and tanned, her
English blurred with Italian and something Eastern European. She
was searching for spirituality. I was looking for drugs and sex.
In particular, sex with her.
We sat side by side on the walls of the fort in Amritsar,
smoking hash and talking, as the sun slowly burnt off the
horizon. Her skin warm upon mine as our arms brushed when she
leant closer to pass the joint. The smoke curled off into the
twilight, and the first stars peeked tentatively above. I
dragged deep. Tonight could be the night.
‘Have you travelled far?’ Monika asked.
‘I’ve seen a bit. About a third, maybe. Still got two continents
to go.’
‘You’ve seen a lot then.’
‘Not really, the world is a huge place. I don’t have enough
money or time to see it all.’ I passed the joint back, trying to
get some eye contact. ‘I’d love to though.’
‘Yes.’ She stared out over the village below. ‘Time and money.
It all comes back to that, doesn’t it?’
We sat in silence for the next few minutes as the night rushed
down to meet the desert.
‘Do you remember your dreams, Richard?’ she asked.
‘Sure. Most of them.’
‘I met a man, a
sadhu,
when I was in Varanasi. He claimed to be able to travel in
dreams.’
‘Yeah?’ Now I did have eye contact. She was looking for
something, sarcasm, cynicism, or maybe something simpler;
belief. Back then I’d say anything to get a root. ‘Tell me
more.’
‘He began to teach me. The first step is to realise you are
dreaming and not wake up. Once you know this, then it’s all
about control. You must hold your left hand up to your face in
your dream. It must be your hand.’
‘Your hand? Why your hand?’
‘The sadhu
said it was because you never look at your hands in dreams. It
is a detail you would never remember, never think of. He said
you need to be able to master the smallest detail before you can
journey. Once you have your left hand, you must bring up your
right, and when you have mastered this task, you are ready for
the next step.’
‘And you can do this, can you, Monika?’
She nodded and smiled, her teeth straight and white. ‘It took me
many months, but I can do it. It’s very difficult to stay in a
dream once you know it is one.’
‘I know what you mean.’ All those dreams, all of them; I’m
surrounded by gorgeous women and I’m about to cum, lots of
those; it’s the rare double album of my favourite band, cheap
and in mint condition and I don’t know any of the songs; my life
is how it should be, happy, content, my furtive male hungers
satisfied; and then I realise them for what they are – dreams
and I wake, never climaxing, never fulfilling. I don’t tell
Monika any of this though. She’s searching for something much
deeper than what can be found in my shallow life.
‘It’s the next step I’m working on now,’ she said. ‘When you
take your hands away from your face there will be a door. And if
you can open it, behind it lies your destination. You can step
through and you will be there.’
I tried to keep the scorn out of my voice - after all, tonight
could be the night. ‘Like what? As a ghost? Can other people see
you? Are you real?’
Monika shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Richard. The
sadhu
did not tell me what I would be like. He said the place would be
real; it would be as it is now. He also stressed that you must
close the door when you leave, that they shouldn’t be left
open.’
‘Why?’
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. He just said you must close it. Why
are you looking at me like that? Don’t you believe me?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ There were a lot of people travelling the
East who believed in all that mystical shit. Looking for the
inner ‘soul’, who they are, what they are, where they fit in the
cosmos, one with God, whichever one it was; all that
unattainable, born-again shit. I just wanted to fuck her.
I took a battered photo out of my wallet and gave it to Monika.
It showed a younger me, lying back on a recliner next to a pool.
Behind me, a gum tree towered over ferns banking a small creek.
‘If you want to see where I live, then check this out. There’s
something to the right of me, just out of the photo. When you
get there, tell me what it is.’
Monika laughed. ‘Look how young you were. You must be only,
what, eighteen then? You are funny. Now I must go to bed and
practise.’
At first I thought she meant with me, but she put the photo in
her pocket, kissed me gently on the cheek and walked back to the
hostel. I lit up another joint. Tonight would not be the night,
but at least she would have something to remember me by, even if
it was ten years out of date.
We travelled together for the next few weeks,
making our way down to Bombay. She would ask me how my dreams
were going, and I would tell her I was still trying to bring my
left hand up. The craziest thing was that it was true. I could
picture my hand in the dream, yet I would get too excited when I
understood what was happening and wake up. My nails, bitten and
uneven, my lifelines, even the silver Celtic ring I wore. And
Monika? She was still trying to form a door. It could have been
great between us, but the lust of the beast was too strong in my
blood. For all my efforts, I still hadn’t managed to get any
more intimate than a kiss goodnight; she was infectious and
unattainable, and eventually frustrating. I needed more than
friendship.
Monika and I parted ways when I headed off to Goa with a young
blonde German girl, who had found what I was looking for. In the
weeks that followed I lost myself in ecstasy-fuelled nights, and
bhang-lassi days, loving all and being loved. This part of the
world catered for all of my worldly desires and I soon forgot
about Monika, and hands, and doors. I lived for the me in the
now. There was no time for dreams; I was living them.
My eyes are full of sand. Grain after grain
scrapes raw against flesh as my eyelid closes, briefly, only
briefly. I am not ready. Sleep calls me. What happened to you,
Monika? Did you forget to close them too? Dragging me down . . .
London had reality strip me back to my bones and leech the sun
from my face. Grinding away at low-paid bar work or dull,
well-paid bookkeeping tasks kept me going, and for all the
urgency that surrounded me, I felt myself worn-down and slowly
bludgeoned into a corporate slavery. I’d arrived broke from
India, and seemed to be barely keeping my head above water. I
shared a room with too many people, I owned nothing in a city
that boasts of wealth, and it was always cold and wet and dark
and crowded. Most people I knew were scrounging to earn enough
for their next trip away, somewhere magical and ancient,
primitive and spiritual, and I think I was finally beginning to
realise what they were looking for. I’d been there, I’d almost
had it, and with a Western indignity I had abused it and myself,
losing sight of what was within reach. Karma, finally, for me
was real and believable, a tangible essence reaching out and
making me pay for my highs.
At my lowest ebb, and after a year and a half since I had
last seen her, I received an e-mail from Monika. Her message
was short:
Hi Richard,
Long time no hear. The gum tree has been
cut down, there’s only a stump now. It’s a gazebo, and
it overlooks a small pond that is fed by the creek. It’s
real and you can do it. Open your mind. Believe.
Thinking of you,
Monika xx
I read it three times. Dad had cut the tree down a few years
ago because its leaves choked the garden and filled the
pool. He had built the gazebo and dug out the pond before
he’d even planted the tree. My first instinct was that she
had called my parents. She hadn’t. She’d been there, had
seen my parents, she described them to me, she’d heard them
talking, and they had never seen or spoken to her. It was
real.
Monika sent me another message with an attachment: a recent
picture of her standing in front of an apartment block,
stone and ivy, shuttered windows.
Start with what you can
see. Come and visit.
There was no address.
I believed. I wish to God I never had.
Sleep
now. You owe me.
I can hear it - the one who calls itself Zaehner, I don’t
know what it is - whispering, clawing at the inside of my
head, persuasive, insistent, insidious. It wants to be me. I
can’t find all the doors I’ve left open and I’m scared to go
back in. I might not come out as me, but then, that is the
deal . . .
I took every opportunity to practise in those days. I stuck
to bar work in the evenings, it afforded the best REM
moments, late morning, late afternoon, eyes bulging under
closed lids, a little booze, a touch of hash, and I became a
regular entrant into the world of dreams. It took me a month
before I could bring one of my hands back into my dreams,
another two before my right hand materialised. It wasn’t
easy, sleep was often interrupted, a factor, from sharing a
flat with seven others, that gradually became intolerable. I
worked fewer hours and went out less. While those around me
partied and drank and fucked and travelled to Amsterdam and
Morocco and Spain and Greece, I slept and dreamt.
By the time the weak English summer tiptoed back, I had
managed to form a door. A simple white door, wooden, with a
copper latch, standing solitary in a field of grass. I
opened it and stepped through into Monika’s world.
It was as her photograph showed. A two-storey stone block
apartment building, not built in this century, with vines
creeping over and across the walls. A narrow cobblestone
path lead between similar buildings, down to what appeared
to be a market. Old women called ‘Hola’ to each other from
balconies and I realised she didn’t live in Italy at all. On
a nearby wall a Matador danced with a bull, the poster
declaring to all the bullfight this weekend in Sevilla.
People passed me by, oblivious. I could smell the heat in
the air, hear fragmented Spanish conversations as people
walked past, I could almost taste their cologne and yet I
couldn’t touch them. My hand passed through them as they
lived their lives, oblivious to me. I was here, I was real,
and yet I wasn’t.
Behind me stood my door, and people passed through it as if
it didn’t exist. Never once did it occur to me I was
dreaming. This was real for me, why would I think to wake
up? Monika. She would be here too. I looked for her door, a
door of this world, a door on the apartment, and knocked. I
knocked again, this time louder. Either nobody was home, or
they couldn’t hear me. I suspected the latter. I tried to
open the door, but my fingers slid around the handle,
refusing to find purchase.
I stepped back and looked up at the building, trying in vain
to peer into the windows. As I was about to give up a window
near the top opened and Monika looked out. The photograph
had been recent, she looked the same. Beautiful, restless.
‘Monika!’ I called waving my hands up at her. ‘I’m here.
I’ve made it!’
She looked past me, through me, down the cobbled street.
‘Hola,’ she waved, and a woman from a balcony across the
street called back. The rest was lost on me as they
conversed in Spanish. Monika didn’t know I was there, she
couldn’t here me or see me. I appeared to be a passive
observer here, unable to affect those around me. I watched
her as she spoke and when she closed the window and didn’t
come out I wandered down to the markets and immersed in
smells and colours, food, textiles, people and eventually
found myself being drawn back to my door. It started as a
niggling feeling and quickly became too insistent an urge to
ignore. My feet moved quickly over the cobblestones, almost
floating, and the door came rushing up to meet me. I stepped
through, closed it behind me, and woke up. I had been asleep
for no more than an hour and I had spent half a day in
Spain.
I wrote to Monika, describing what I had seen. She told me
of the places she had been and the people she had met, most
of the destinations from an image she had focused on before
sleeping. I didn’t tell the people I shared the house with
what had happened, they had begun to think of me as
reclusive and eccentric. ‘Weirdo’ was a term I heard used on
more than one occasion when they thought I wasn’t there.
I travelled more often; safe places to begin with, the
Spanish Steps, the Vatican, Berlin, and the pyramids. I went
to shows at the Edinburgh festival and even followed my
flatmates on their regular excursions. Sometimes I felt that
I was not alone, that there were people with me, doing the
same thing, but I could have been projecting what I was
missing; food, drink, and sex, the purely physical
pleasures. My sexual appetite had not been diminished of
course, God forbid the day. My job as a barman kept me in
bed with numerous women, most of them young Aussie and Kiwi
backpackers out for a good time. I wanted more though. I was
lonely travelling by myself.
I decided to move back home. There was nothing in London
keeping me and I was definitely not taking advantage of
living there. Back home things would be cheaper; I could go
on the dole and do some bar work while I figured out what to
do next. I didn’t travel for the first few months back in
Melbourne, content instead to find some sort of routine,
some normality.
I thought about writing down some of my experiences and
began going through the email correspondence I had saved.
One of the first I read got me thinking about travelling
again. It was an early one from Monika. In it she talked of
‘the people she had met.’
How? I had never been able to communicate with anybody. I
had to ask her.
She sent me a photo of the Taj Mahal. The message said:
Hi Richard,
I thought you would never ask. Sometimes you don’t see
what is in front of you. Sometimes you just don’t
listen. I know we’ve both been here before, but a
familiar place is good for a first time. You never know,
maybe this time we’ll get a proper sunrise. Meet me
here. Your time 7:00pm.
Love,
Monika xx
I arrived half an hour before dawn. People
were already pouring in, cameras ready, sketchpads raised.
Indians took rupees from tourists and herded them into lines
for the perfect photograph. Last time I had been here the
smog and cloud had hidden the sun until it was well
overhead, denying me the pink and rose marbled marvel vista
that greeted the dawn for the deceased and beloved
Mumtaz Mahal.
I wandered around looking for Monika but she found me.
Something whispered in my ear. It sounded much like the
voices of the dead that are rumoured to be echoing in the
dome of the Taj’s tomb; faint and echoey. It whispered again
and this time I could understand it. It was my name.
‘Monika?’
‘I’m right here.’ The hairs on my neck tingled. ‘Can you
feel that?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s me. It’s my hand.’
‘Can you see me? I can’t see you.’
‘Be patient, Richard. It will come. You were always in too
much of a hurry.’
Something light brush against my lips. She closed my
eyelids. I could feel her breath on my face. It smelt fresh
and minty. My scalp tickled.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Helping you. Don’t open your eyes yet.’
‘Why?’
‘You ask too many questions. Because.’
We waited for what must have been only a minute, and a pin
prick of intense light shot through my head.
‘What the fuck was that?’ I tried to open my eyes.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘That’s just me. I’m giving you
something, from me to you. I’m helping you open the eyes
inside your mind.’
The tickling moved inside my head, and the blood behind my
eyes danced, thick and alive. I gradually felt her body firm
next to mine, and my hand reached out, groping her arm,
until her fingers entwined with my own.
‘Now,’ Monika said.
I opened my eyes as the sunrise crept across the marbled
surface of the Taj Mahal, infusing the stone with glowing
pinks and reds. I stood next to Monika, hand in hand, and
saw what I had been denied.
Monika turned my cheek gently with her hand, soft skin,
warm, and kissed me gently on the mouth. She kissed me
again, and our lips parted slightly, wet, searching, and I
kissed her back, her taste intense. My lips burned as we
pulled apart.
‘Wow. That’s like when I was fifteen.’
‘Fifteen?’ Monika grinned. ‘You were slow, weren’t you?’
I pulled her closer and as we kissed, her hand slid down my
pants, and curled around my erection. I hoisted her skirt,
rubbing my hand against her, hot and yielding, moist. She
moaned gently as my fingers kneaded her, at first slowly,
and then with more urgency. She pulled down my pants and as
I kicked my way out of them, she thrust her hips against
mine. I pushed back, feeling her groove, sliding, hot and
wet. I cupped one of her breasts, small and firm, the nipple
long and hard, fingers squeezing harder, harder.
‘Fuck me,’ Monika whispered, dragging us down, kissing,
stroking. ‘Here. Now.’
Her thighs wrapped around my waist and I slid into her,
soft, hot, wet, her hands gripped my buttocks, trying to
push me in deeper and deeper. I was a virgin again.
We made love in front of timed exposures and popping
flashes, in the water gardens amongst the fountains that led
to the monument.
We met once a week thereafter. We’d swap photos of places
we’d never been; the ruined rock city of Petra, the stucco
mosques of Timbuktu, the ancient Persian mud city of Bam,
Babylon, Kakadu, Mecca, Kathmandu; we visited them all. I
even walked on the moon.
I gradually became aware of other travellers, at first
indistinct and distant, eventually shapes became people and
people became faces and the faces became familiar; Asians,
Indians, Africans, Europeans. I formed friendships and took
lovers, I assumed Monika did the same, though I never
mentioned it.
I never got sick from the food or water, no diseases, no
malaria or yellow fever, no herpes, crabs, warts, no AIDS.
My life, as shallow as it may seem, was fantastic. I felt
complete, I wanted nothing more than I had. I would have
happily stayed there in the dream world if my subconscious
had allowed me to. But the door, ever the door, always came
rushing to meet me, swallowing me and shutting me off from
where I’d been. I would awake almost instantly, in a
sleeping bag on an old mattress I’d picked up outside the
Salvo’s, in a room devoid of possessions and decoration. My
flatmates didn’t mind; Dave was a junkie, and I didn’t know
what Stacey did. The place was cheap and I didn’t need much
besides food and water. Like I said, my life was complete.
Halcyon days. Days where confidence can turn easily into
arrogance, and you don’t realise until you’ve stepped from
one to the other. I took that step. I took many of them.
Karma comes back. It’s what Karma is. I have to sleep soon,
I must sleep.
Richard? Are you ready?
I think I’m about to pay the price for those steps…
It started, as always, with Monika. By telephone. It was
generally faster and more immediate than setting up a sleep
time convenient to us both.
‘Do you ever think of other places to go, Richard?’
‘Yeah, sure, all the time. I’m thinking about seeing some of
my own country again, maybe Fiordland, or the Sounds…’
‘No, that’s not what I mean.
Other
places.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Turn on your computer.’
She sent through a picture of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, a
terraformed Mars, a lost world teeming with dinosaurs. It
had never occurred to me.
‘These places aren’t real,’ I said.
‘Aren’t they?’ She also had the Koran, the Ramayana, and the
Bible. ‘There’s more. Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism. What
if we can find them?’
I realised then that Monika had never stopped searching.
‘They’re stories, Monika. Stories, that at their best,
explain away our fears and tell us how to live our life.
Give meaning to our world.’
‘How can you think that? What have you been doing for the
past couple of years, Richard? Was it just a story the
sadhu
told me? That I told you? You of all people should realise
that there is more to believe in. Has everything that
mankind has lived by for thousands of years been just
stories? I don’t think so.’
‘Do you know anybody who’s done this sort of thing?’
‘No, but I’ve heard of people who have. We can arrange a
meeting with one of them. His name is Dariq.’
It wouldn’t have surprised me if Monika had already had
contact with Dariq. Her accent got stronger the more she
became excited. She knew I would follow.
‘How do we get hold of him? Do you have his number?’
‘We can only meet him in the dream,’ she said quickly. ‘He’s
funny like that.’
‘Fine. When do we do it?’ I asked.
I should have done some asking around of my own, but I
didn’t.
We were told to meet Dariq in the rock-cut houses in Göreme,
somewhere neutral he had suggested. Neutral? I’d never been
there before; I’d thought it was the name of a pizza shop
back home. We sat huddled in the darkness of what appeared
to be a cave, overlooking a valley. My door shone behind me,
casting no light upon the cave’s interior. I couldn’t see
Monika’s but then she couldn’t see mine.
‘Where is this?’ I asked.
‘Cappadocia,’ Monika replied. ‘I think Dariq may be Turkish
and that’s why he chose here. He’s supposed to be very old.’
As if that made any difference. He was late. We had sat here
for almost half an hour. Monika had initially been excited
and talked of the places she had in mind, particular
versions of what she thought were true, as far as heaven or
hell was concerned. I felt uneasy, and didn’t talk much.
Occasionally something hairy crawled over my skin and I’d
brush at it frantically only to find nothing there.
Eventually Monika also sat in silence. Every now and then I
saw her brush her arms, or shake her leg.
‘It’s almost like when you first feel the contact of another
traveller, before you’re made aware,’ I said. ‘Though this
isn’t pleasant, is it? It’s not like tickling or a light
caress. It’s like . . . ’
‘Something’s in here with us,’ Monika whispered.
Her hand fumbled for mine, finding my fingers
and grasping hard. Her fingers were icy. I reached out and
touched her face. She flinched away, but not before I felt
cold, clammy skin.
‘Monika, what’s . . . ’ And then something damp and freezing
wafted against my face, the last expulsion of breath from
the lungs of something long dead. I reeled, my stomach
retched, and the world around me wavered.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Monika sobbed quietly. ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Her body
trembled against mine.
In the dream world you can see things, hear things and smell
things. The only thing I had ever physically felt here were
other travellers. Something in this cave, hidden in the
darkness, thrust ice into my veins and muddied my insides. I
could hear laughter echoing in the back of my skull, coarse
and venomous.
‘Begone!’ A rasping voice commanded and the cave flooded
with light and warmth, and then back to darkness.
Candles flickered alight around the perimeter and a soft
glow spread over the cave. Ancient crosses had been carved
into the ceiling and walls. In the shadows before us sat a
dark-skinned man clothed in grey robes. His hair was thick
and dreaded, and woven into his long beard. Candlelight
glinted off his pitch black eyes and his lips peeled back
from long yellow teeth as he smiled at us.
‘I am Dariq. I have been searching for you.’ A voice of
sandpaper, coarse with unuse. He stared alternately between
us, and finally his gaze lingered on Monika. ‘You seek
guidance, yes?’ He hissed his esses.
‘Yes,’ said Monika. She unfolded her hand from mine, and
shifted her body, minutely, away from me. Her hand was warm
again.
Dariq nodded and drew a circular symbol in the dirt on the
ground.
‘This is a mandala,’ he said, swallowing her with those dark
eyes of his. He leaned forward and smiled. ‘I will help you
focus on it. It will become your doorway to many doorways.’
‘Yes,’ said Monika.
‘But we haven’t chosen where we want to go,’ I interrupted.
‘You choose after you step through this doorway,’ Dariq
said, dismissing me.
He swirled his finger through the dirt in the circle and it
turned opaque.
‘Oh my God, it’s beautiful . . . ’
‘What is, Monika? I can’t see anything.’
Her body spasmed and her head lolled back on her shoulders,
her throat upturned, artery pulsing. Monika swayed forward,
her head swinging towards the circle, her eyes rolled over
white. She moaned low and her body shuddered. I had felt her
beneath me when she moved like that. I had been inside her.
She was orgasming. Dariq leaned closer, and his tongue
flicked once over his thin lips.
‘Yeesss,’ he urged.
I still couldn’t see anything in the circle. Monika began to
keen and I reached out to touch her. Dariq’s hand closed
around my wrist, shooting pain up my arm, wrenching my body
by the shoulder, twisting me off my feet.
‘No,’ he said without taking his eyes off her. Something
moved beneath the skin of his face, another skull, another
being. ‘I do not need you yet.’
Monika’s body began to twist and screw, as if giant unseen
hands wrung her like a dishcloth, and her image wavered,
flickered, and began to flow into the circle inscribed upon
the floor of the ancient cave. The laughing in my skull
intensified, and hundreds of whispering voices chattered
unintelligibly beneath that laughter.
I writhed in the dirt, my free arm clawing towards the
circle on the floor. ‘Monika! Monika!’ I wanted to scream,
to cry, to break Dariq apart, but I couldn’t move. I lay
helpless, my stomach roiling and watched Monika disappear.
Dariq still held me in his grip and he turned to stare at
me. He laughed and it was the same laughter in my head. Wet
tendrils sprouted from his hand wrapping themselves around
my arm, creeping up towards my neck. Their touch burnt.
‘Your doorway is closing,’ he rasped.
One of the whispers in my head called to me. ‘Wake up.’
‘I will keep you here in case. Look,’ Dariq said pointing
towards my doorway. ‘It begins to close.’
I struggled to turn my head. The door began to fade.
‘No! You can’t . . . ’
‘Wake up.’ Whispers. Louder. ‘Richard.’
My feet swung towards the doorway but Dariq kept me pinned
to the ground.
‘Not for you,’ he said. His eyes were yellow, each slashed
with black.
‘Wake up, Richard.’
My body shook. I had to get to the door.
‘WAKE UP, RICHARD!’ my flatmate Stacey screamed as she shook
me.
I shot up off the bed, staggered round the room, arms
flailing, and crashed into the door.
Stacey grabbed me again, still screaming, her eyes red, her
face wet with tears. ‘He’s fucking dying!’ She beat her
fists on my chest. ‘Fucking help me!’
At first I thought she meant Dariq, but I couldn’t see him
in my room. But I was back, here in my room, my world, so he
couldn’t be there. My mind slowly came back to be my own.
‘Calm down, Stacey,’ I said taking hold of her arms. ‘What’s
happened?’
She pulled me down the hallway into Dave’s room. He lay
sprawled on the floor amongst his gear.
‘Shit, shit, shit. Have you called an ambulance?’
‘Of course I fucking haven’t,’ she cried. ‘Do you think I’m
fucking stupid? Do something, Richard.’
Stacey helped me drag Dave out onto the road where we left
him, hoping someone would stop and phone the cops. That day
I found out that Dave wasn’t just a junkie, he was a dealer
too, and Stacey and her friends, who worked the streets got
their hits from him. Dave’s habit probably saved my life --
it definitely changed it. It was the day I left my first
door open.
And the last time I ever heard from Monika.
It took until the early hours of the morning before sleep
finally overcame my fears, and I fell into a broken, haunted
slumber, where things unbidden crept into my normal,
everyday dreams. Things whose faces melted, and insidious
whispering frayed the mind, where talons clawed faces, and
shifting shapes fought for control. Creatures, like Dariq,
who could maintain physical contact with the dream world,
who could see other’s doorways, and enter them. Curious
creatures, hungry, envious.
You can achieve many things when you are driven, focused,
searching. I phoned Monika, I emailed, I wrote her, I
visited her house in dreams. I managed to contact the
landlord and discovered that Monika was behind on her rent.
The landlord discovered the apartment empty save for most of
Monika’s possessions. Dishes had grown mould and fused
themselves with the dishwasher. Clothes sat damp and musty
in the washing basket. No-one had been there in weeks. I
left the landlord my contact details in case Monika
returned.
Reluctant travels took me back into the dream world,
searching for Monika. I formed doors within doors,
frantically jumping from place to place, hoping to find her.
Many times I woke prematurely, soaked in sweat, still
shaking from things I couldn’t remember, leaving door after
door open behind me. Monika had not been seen or heard from.
Dariq was a subject of myth, everyone knew of him, but
no-one knew him and no-one wanted to. Monika had described
him as ‘very old.’ He wasn’t; he was ancient. Dariq was one
of the Dispossessed. A man who had been to heaven and hell,
or at least somewhere not of this world. Two rumours
abounded. The first was that on his return, he had found his
body possessed by someone else. The second was that he had
consumed his body in the real world. The result was the
same; Dariq preyed upon those in the dream world, burning
lives out as he lived in them, passing from one to another
as he needed, doing as he pleased.
I discovered that there were many of these so-called
Dispossessed, travelling the world of dreams, taking what
they wanted, being who they wanted, experiencing the real
world through the bodies of the unsuspecting and vulnerable.
And finally one who could teach me what I needed, crawled
into my mind through one of the many doors I had left open.
Zaehner.
I visited Monika a month ago. The landlord notified me that
she had been deported back to Romania, her home, after the
Spanish authorities realised they didn’t need to foot the
bill. A dirty shell of a building housing empty husks that
resembled people. A thick-set orderly who spoke little
English escorted me to a room with large windows that
several people sat staring out of. One of them was Monika.
Her skin was pale and what was left of her hair was thin and
greasy. Her face was pulled tight over her skull, any excess
flesh burnt away.
I sat next to her holding her hand like we used to. I could
barely feel the beat of her pulse in the small bundle of
bones that built her wrist. Her eyes stared vacantly,
nowhere outwards, and when I spoke she appeared not to hear
me. Her eyes were empty, vacant oily black pools. Once they
had been the green of the ocean in sunlight. Now they were
like Dariq’s. He had taken what he needed.
Across her cheeks, the blood vessels had burst into a myriad
of tiny, red stars. The universe had made its mark on her.
There was nothing here for me. Maybe she didn’t want to
return to her body, to this world. Maybe she couldn’t. I
hoped she had found what she was looking for. I made the
deal shortly after.
Courage can be hard to find. I’ve used up my pills, my
amphetamines, the speed. Zaehner is insistent now, demanding
I relinquish. I can hear it inside my skull, every second of
every day, excited, urgent, insane. It’s managed to destroy
the others that were competing for me.
Now.
The time is now. You must sleep.
Its voice is clear now, thick and heavy with lust.
The pact has
been made. You would not cheat me, would you?
I don’t think I can. I’m not strong enough yet. But I will
be. Zaehner has taught me much. I now have the ability to
manipulate the matter that exists with the dream world. I
can do what Dariq did, I can move objects, I can draw in the
dirt, I can summon candles and demons and light. I can see
other’s doorways, and step through those left open.
I can cause pain. I can kill. I don’t need my body to do
this.
Zaehner told me of a room, a hallway, with a hundred doors.
A hundred heaven and hells to choose from. One of these
doors leads to Zaehner’s world, its plane of existence. It
tells me that this hallway is the starting point for those
called the Dispossessed.
She
will be there. You will find her. It must be now, Richard, I
will wait no longer.
It claws at the back of my eyes, pulling me under.
Sleep.
I lie on my stomach on the mattress, exhaustion rolling over
me. This is the last time I’ll see this world with my eyes.
The paint is yellow and peeling. Ants make their way across
the wall from the ceiling duct to the window to the rubbish
bin outside. From where I lie I can see blood seeping into
the stained mattress. It trickles from my ear lobe where
fishing wire has been freshly threaded. When Zaehner awakes
in my body it will want to turn its head away from the wall.
It will want to see my world. The last thing it will hear is
the roar of the shotgun suspended above the bed as the
fishing wire pulls the trigger. I hope it feels my body
shredding.
This is not a suicide note. I’m going to close them all.
Sleep,
Richard, sleep and dream.
'Doorways for the Dispossessed' first appeared
in
Agog! Fantastic Fiction Agog! Press, edited by Cat
Sparks,
2002.
Paul Haines was raised
in the '70s, in the wrong part of Auckland, New Zealand.
Vowing to never call Australia home, he now lives in
Melbourne with his wife and a loving mortgage. Paul is a
member of the SuperNOVA writers group in Melbourne. He also
survived the inaugural Clarion South 2004 writers workshop
and won an Aurealis Award for the Best Horror Short Story
2004, and Ditmars for 2005 Best Novella and 2005 Best New
Talent.
Photo by Cat Sparks
Paul's first short story collection Doorways For The
Dispossessed will be published by
Prime Books in late 2005.
There's not much more about Paul Haines
here.
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