Earthquake House Extract: Spirit World

There is a part of Earthquake House that I really enjoyed writing, but I’m not sure how much of it will survive through the final edits. So, just in case, I am posting it, unedited, here.

A tiny bit of context: Earthquake House is full of doors to other worlds. These doors, and the places behind them, change every time there is an earthquake, as does the layout of the entire house. In this scene, the denizens of Earthquake House are visiting friends in a place they’ve named Spirit World, and they have Grace Charity, a young religious fanatic who found herself among them by accident, in tow.

Extract

She stumbled as she entered, because Catherine was pulling her from the front and Poppy was shoving her from behind. She found her feet, and immediately stumbled again.

Spirit World was a difficult place for the uninitiated to get used to. Alchemy had named is Spirit World because, when visitors from Earthquake House appeared there, they found themselves not in the land of the living, but rather in the hazy realm of the dead, the place where ghosts went when they weren’t ineffectively trying to scare you by opening and closing doors.

The land of the living was there, visible, but it was like a background layer that the spirits did their best to ignore. They walked through the living as if they weren’t there, and they completely ignored whatever geography the living were currently enjoying in favor of the landscape they lived in, as it had been when they’d died.

What Grace saw was a bustling, busy market, referred to as a ‘mall’ by the people who lived there, overlayed with a huge, old manor house.

The manor was where the Dihtyas lived.

The Dihtyas were a family of ghosts who had been killed millennia previously by Henry Dihtyas business rival who’d decided that the best way to determine who should have the monopoly on rubber production was to burn the Dihtyas house down while they were still inside.

Sometimes you could tell that they’d died in a fire. Most of the time they moved about their ghostly house, where they were doomed to roam for all eternity, without a care in the world, just as they had in life. But every now and then, especially when they were scared or angry, you could see telltale signs of their tragedy. Whisps of smoke curling form their hair, a previously perfect room blackened from the flames. . .

The house had been knocked down many centuries later and replaced with the mall now that buzzed busily around them. A construction worker who’d died during the building of the mall as well as teenager who’d had a fatal asthma attack on the premises haunted the mall. They could interfere more easily with the living because the mall was the place of their death. The Dihtyas could see these younger ghosts and speak to them, when they chose to, but it was much harder for them to interact with ‘those mall people’ (as Victoria Dihtya called them), so they didn’t bother trying.

“Welcome, friends!” said Henry Dihtya, arms open in greeting. “What a lovely surprise! We had hoped fervently that the House would bring you to us again soon, and here you are!”

Grace watched in horror as Alchemy stepped out into a thin air, a central space in the mall around which all the escalators turned brightly where you could see all the way down to the first floor and all the way up to the enormous, decorative skylight.

“Careful!” she said. She didn’t like these people, particularly, but that didn’t mean that she wanted any of them to fall to their deaths.

Alchemy ignored her and kept walking. Seconds later, they were wrapped in Henry’s embrace, clapping him hard on the back and saying loudly and obnoxiously how they wouldn’t have missed dinner that fine evening for anything.

“Look again,” said Catherine to Grace, pointing at the chasm Alchemy had just crossed. “Ignore the mall and focus on the manor.”

Grace stared and gradually realized that there was a manor there as well, overlayed on the mall, and that if she concentrated hard enough, she could see the manor while the mall faded into the background. Gradually her panicked breathing slowed.

“Good,” said Catherine encouragingly. “Hold onto the manor. The mall and the cave don’t matter.”

“Cave?” asked Grace, her heart leaping into action once more.

“Forget I said that!” said Catherine, putting her hands up. “Forget about the cave. It’s not important either. Just keep your focus on the manor. It’s really difficult to focus on more than one layer at a time, anyway, so if you keep grip on the manor, the rest of it is far less distracting. The manor is where we really are, anyway. We can’t seem to break into the other layers, even the one where everyone is still alive. It’s very strange, but it’s been this way for millennia, and we’ve learned to live with it.”

Grace hardly heard what Catherine was saying, because now she could see the cave too, the cave with people, if that’s what you could call them, hunched over and scrambling in the shadows, hairy, naked, old. . .

“Close your eyes!” said Catherine, urgently. “Close them now!”

Grace slammed her eyes shut, blocking everything from view and grabbing Catherine’s arm in fear.

“Deep breaths,” said Catherine. “Deep breath. . . That’s good, keep breathing.”

Grace clung desperately to Catherine, taking deep breaths until her heart rate slowed once more and she didn’t feel like she was about to die.

“Good,” said Catherine. “Now, keep your eyes closed, and listen very, very carefully.

“We are in a spirit realm in a world where ghosts are real. Long ago, before people could even speak, there was a cave here. A family lived in that cave, and they died. We think from spoiled meat, but it could have been some disease we haven’t identified yet. Thousands of millennia later, a big manor was built here, a manor that our very good friends, the Dihtyas, eventually lived in. They died too, in a fire. This is where we are now, visiting our old friends in their old home. There is also the mall, where the living spend their time in this world. It’s like a big market with many floors where they can buy anything they want. They don’t know we’re here, so we ignore them.

“Nothing in the other realms can hurt you. The only realm that’s real, when you’re here with us, is the Dihtyas realm. Now, I’m going to take your hands and lead you forward, one step at a time, across the very solid, very real wooden floor of the Dihtyas beautiful dining room.”

From the sound of her voice, Catherine was facing her now, holding Grace’s hands in her own.

“Take a step. Now take another. Your feet are bare, so you can feel the wooden floor under your soles. Do you feel it?”

“Yes,” whispered Grace, gratefully. She could feel the floor, solid as a rock, holding her up with ease.