A Crack in the Wall (A Newt Run Module)
By Chad Inglis
Copyright 2012 Chad Inglis
The house had other apartments but he took the one in the basement because it was all he could afford. It was a good size, with two rooms, and also had the advantage of its own kitchen, which meant that he wouldn't be forced to use the one in the main house when he wanted to cook. In this way he would also be able to avoid the other tenants, who he had no interest in meeting; after the break-up all he wanted was time alone, to try to come to grips with what had gone wrong, and decide where (if anywhere) he could go from here. Actually, the basement was perfect for him, and at first he couldn't understand why it was so cheap. Then he noticed the crack in the wall.
It was about two feet long, a jagged line running through the brickwork next to the stove. The edges were crumbling, and while it was not wide, it was obviously deep: there was a small hole in the center of it, no more than a finger's-width in diameter, but which was absolutely black, as if it passed straight through the wall and continued on into nothing.
"What's that about?" he asked the landlord.
"Damage from the last earthquake," the landlord said. "When it rains there might be some leakage, but we've had the building inspector in and he said there's no safety concerns. Let me know if it gets any worse."
He said he would, and then asked about signing the lease, which they did at the kitchen table, a slight smell of mould, or damp earth lingering in the air around them, like an unseen mist.
The door swings open and after it is the black face of the hallway. I take off my shoes in the dark, breathing shallowly on the stale, musty air as I grope for the light switch; the single, naked bulb stutters into life. There is a dark skitter of motion in the corner as a cockroach runs from the light. I pass into the kitchen and go to the sink for a glass of water. My eyes move to the crack. A slight trickle of water is seeping from the lower edge. The bricks surrounding it are damp with moisture, and a small amount of wet dust has crumbled onto the floor. Coming closer, I notice that the water has an orangish tint to it, as if it's saturated with some dissolved mineral.
I'll have to call the landlord about it tomorrow, but for now I leave it, getting some things out of the fridge to prepare dinner. As I cook, my gaze continually returns to the crack, and the narrow, wet stain on the bricks; there's an impulse to try to dry the wall with a cloth, but for some reason I'm reluctant to go near it again. My face tightens, and instead of eating at the kitchen table, I take my plate into the opposite room and sit down at the couch.
My thoughts turn to my old apartment, and I think again how far down the ladder I've fallen; this place is a shit hole. The ceilings are too low, and there's hardly any natural light. The tiles in the shower are spotted with mildew, and there's the smell of dampness and mould that only seems to be getting worse the longer I stay here. The only consolation is that I didn't have a choice. There was no way I could stay where I was, not after she left.
Once we returned from the capital things between us went from bad to worse. We'd spent a year in an apartment the size of this room, everything crammed together, the kitchen next to the closet-sized bathroom, our bed serving as a couch as well as a place to sleep, and living like that, confronted with the fact of her whenever I turned my head, took a toll. I tried to look at the situation positively, telling myself that at the least we were getting a good education about one another, but we must not have been paying attention, because things fell apart almost as soon as we got back.
Neither of us had wanted to leave the capital; the living conditions had been cramped and we'd had our share of arguments, but we'd both been working in our fields and we had friends there. Things only changed when the trouble started, and one by one the people we knew began to move away. Eventually we had no choice but to leave ourselves, which was an easier decision for me than it had been for her; I had a job waiting for me, while she was a film-maker, or she wanted to be, and she spent the majority of her time volunteering on any shoot that would take her. In the capital she'd done well enough, but there just wasn't enough work in town to keep her afloat. It didn't help that we moved into an apartment above our price range - despite what I was making, I couldn't have supported her even if I wanted to (which I didn't), and I told her that she needed to find a job. Surprisingly, she agreed, and the following week she was hired at a small cafe. It wasn't much, but at least she would have earned enough to chip in on rent. Who knows, maybe if she'd stuck with it we'd still be together. As it turned out, a friend offered her the chance to DP on his vanity project, an independent movie he'd been saving up for nearly ten years to produce. Naturally she took the offer, quitting her gig at the cafe before she'd collected a single paycheck. Of course her friend couldn't pay her anything, but he was planning on entering the film in a festival in the capital, and the exposure would be good for her.
As far as I was concerned that was last straw, and I told her she'd have to choose the project or me; as it turned out, giving her an ultimatum had been a bad idea, and she moved out the following week.
It would be very easy to blame the breakup on her, but that wouldn't be fair even if it was true. The fact was I brought it on myself. I couldn't accept coming second to her job, and without her around to help with rent I was forced to break the lease on our apartment, the end result of which is that I wound up living alone in this fucking basement. I thought I knew what the word meant, but that was just arrogance: the reality is I've only learned what it is to be alone since I moved in here.
I shake my head; thinking along these lines is a good way to waste a life. With an effort I pull myself off the couch and enter the kitchen. By now, the trail of water leaking from the crack has made its way to the floor, and the bricks around it are as livid as the margins of an open wound. I take a step toward it, and then another, before I realize what I'm doing and force myself to stop. I turn away, and open the fridge for a beer. Behind me I hear a voice, muffled, but unmistakable, as if someone was shouting through the wall. A tremor passes through me, and I slowly turn around: there's no one in the room, but the sound comes again, softer this time; finally it dawns on me that it must just be the people upstairs. I take the beer with me to the living room and finish it and two others before I go to bed. Lying in the darkness, I listen to the sound of the voice, or voices upstairs, sometimes dimming, now growing louder, as if they were in the middle of a heated argument or crying for help.
I roll onto my side, and cover my head with the pillow, but I can still hear them. Sleep, the possibility of sleep, begins to drift further and further away, until I find myself rolling from one side of the bed to another, my body as tight as a coiled spring. My eyes wander to the clock at my bedside, the red numbers like searing brands in the darkness. After a long time the voices stop, the people upstairs in bed at last, but by now it doesn't matter. I'm awake, and there's nothing to do but lie here or get drunk. I have work in the morning, but I decide that going in with a hangover has to be better than trying it on no sleep. Quickly I leave the bed and return to the kitchen. I don't switch on the light. I don't want to see that crack again. Not tonight.
In the dream he is standing in the bathroom. The fluorescent strip light flickers unsteadily above the mirror. He looks at his face: it no longer seems like his own, but rather the face of a stranger, a mask that was affixed at some point during the night without his being aware of it.
He reaches for the tap, intending to turn on the water, and notices the skin on his fingers is dry and flaking. It's because I touched the crack, he reasons, and carefully he peels a bit of skin from his thumb. It doesn't come easily, and he's forced to tear off a slim wedge along with it, just next to the nail. He grimaces (sees the mask grim
acing in the mirror); the pain is sharp and acute. He puts his thumb in his mouth to soothe it, but then hastily takes it out again, worried that he might swallow some of whatever's on his skin, the fungus or mould he's picked up from touching the crack. He spits into the sink, and continues to pick at his skin. It comes away from his thumb in thin tatters. A spot of blood appears, which he squeezes until it blossoms into a drop. He wipes it away, picking frantically, and all at once ripping back the skin from his thumb nail to his knuckle. He gasps in surprise and pain: his thumb looks like a skinned fruit. Still he goes on, tearing the skin from his hand, one piece at a time, the blood dripping steadily now, staining the basin of the sink a vibrant, lucent red. When he finally stops, it's as if his hand is a slab of bloody meat; the pain of it is shocking. With his good hand he presses one of his nails into the flesh of his palm. Slowly (as if it's being done to someone else) he watches himself tear the muscle away. Beneath it there is nothing, not even bone, only darkness, a rent in the fabric of things, or a tunnel with no end. In the mirror the mask is