“Lockbox” by E. Catherine Tobler
Edgar always knew. He had found the place, a ruin beneath the ground, after taking a wrong turning in the road. He wants to take her there, he says. She suspects it could be Exham Priory, a place of untold horrors. She is captivated by it on their first visit; dreams of it and of a strange, silver-haired woman named Margaret. They return, but this time, dream and reality blur, making her unsure of what is real, and what is not.
About the Author
Karin was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel WARCHILD won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both WARCHILD and her third novel CAGEBIRD were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies edited by Nalo Hopkinson, John Joseph Adams and Ann VanderMeer.
Synopsis
Edgar always knew. He’d found the ruin by mistake. He’d said he was helping some friends move, friends she didn’t know. A wrong turn led him to a street that fizzled out, there was no house Edgar could see until the ground crumbled under foot and he was standing in the shattered remains of what he first called a cathedral. Almost as though an entire abbey had been sunk to the ground for over a hundred thousand years.
They all thought he was taking the course of gothic literature a bit too literally, wanting to know if he’d seen any old men with forty-yard beards or women weeping upon moors. He called them imbeciles, not a single solitary soul. The way he looked at her, she knew he wanted to take her there and have her amongst the ruins. She wanted to know more about this ruin before she agreed to go. She’d known Edgar three years, this was their last at Uni until they parted ways, unless she followed him to London, a place she hated. Surely the place possessed a name, she pressed him. They searched the library for any trace of a name, asking the librarians there who said they’d never heard of such a place, but she saw it in their eyes, ‘I heard the unspoken words clawing at the corners of their closed mouths. I didn’t ask more of them, fearing they could not say’. They pored over maps together. ‘Exham’ she suggested, referring to Exham Priory, which had housed the worst of the worst, most depraved creatures.
A week later, and Edgar suggests taking her there. He wants to show her the ruin he found, whether Exham or not. Packing her camera, they leave Edinburgh far behind, the land they entered untamed, streets turning to dirt before they fizzled out. It seemed unlikely to her that Edgar had taken a wrong turn and found this place, but she didn’t question him. It was as he’d told her, the like nothing you could imagine, like a whole city submerged into the guts of the world. There were windows and doorways and the remains of a sloping roof. Edgar pulled her down a set of crumbling stone steps, into the building itself. He watched as she wandered. He pressed her into the ground from behind and took her camera, putting her hand on the warm dirt in front which felt strangely warm like spilled blood. They leave later, drunk on the world and each other.
She dreams of returning, of seeing a woman draped in silks rather than Edgar there, saying ‘This is not right’. She has silver hair and she thinks it is her aunt until she speaks. Her mouth did not move as she spoke. She began to see shapes within the shadow of her, almost as if many-limbed creatures moved inside her. She follows one such creature down the lady’s spine, it coils and bares its fangs at her. ‘Black on black, and blacker still.’ She wants to shout ‘Margaret!’ as the lady disappears, but it lodges in her throat. At the end of the corridor stood a door, a sliver of sticky light visible beneath it. Touching the door feels like touching fire and ice, screams beyond the door. Almost illegible letters were carved into the door. She cannot open the latch.
A fall from the bed wakes her. Her arm is bruised. Returning to the ruin in daylight, it is less hostile but no more welcoming. She finds the door of her dream, and Edgar places his hand over hers. It feels like fire and ice as in the dream. It opened easily with both of them, the stench inside was foul. The crypt inside was vast, vaults lining the walls, rats on the floor. Some vaults were inscribed with names. They go down more steps, into the heart of the priory. There was Margaret Trevor, a glory to be worshipped even in blood streaked hair, a gold and silver goddess while her husband cowered. He held his hands before his face, while she opened bodies lain on the altar before her.
When she thinks of what emerged in the woman’s hands, her memory forces it into a locked box, her blood feeling like water. (There are footnotes to the story, directly addressing the reader, where there is detail explaining that Margaret put the locked box under her skin, that Margaret turned into a many-legged creature, took Edgar into her mouth whole and spat him back out, changed).
They left, Edgar laughing, emerging into the sunlight, and that night, again, she dreams. Of Margaret whispering from Edgar’s mouth, and she knows the heat of parting sands, as though they are stretched out on that altar in offering. Margaret laughs, but when she wakes, she cannot remember because she has put that into the box too.
When Edgar tells her he needs to help friends move, friends he knew before her, she doesn’t mind, she has her studies anyway. She thinks back on the week but cannot place everything they’ve done. Then Edgar returns, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth, and — ‘(the gleam of fangs, and he’s coiled in the cradle of her hips, waiting to be born, waiting to be loosed — unspoken words in the corner of his mouth, his maw)’. He tells her he got foolishly lost and there was a place she needed to see…Edgar always knew.
In order to truly understand Lockbox, one must know that is was part of an anthology titled “She Walks in Shadows,” that was specifically written to both pay homage and lay claim to H.P. Lovecraft’s world by those typically excluded, women. In this complex narrative, written with footnotes as both a counter narrative and device to interrupt and enhance the horrors that lay within this story. Even the title of the anthology plays off one of Lovecraft’s canonical works, “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Lovecraft’s stories often contain fateful moments where characters are unable to avoid the horrors that will soon cross their path. Like Edgar who “stumbles upon the ruins.” In the case of this story, forbidden places connote secrets, often secrets centering around the unspeakable. Tobler goes to great lengths to go her own way, going to great lengths to make clear that not all horrific things happen at night or in the darkness. The narrator, aware of the possible horrors that took place over a hundred thousand years ago, decides to join Edgar despite what they may find, even giving herself over to him in the ruins themselves. This leads to a sequence that despite being interrupted footnotes and crisscrosses between actually happening or a bad dream, forbidden knowledge is acquired, and there will be a price to pay for that knowledge. For one character, horrific change, and the other, not only regret, but lifelong pain, knowledge, but a different kind of regret. That said, it is the women that torment and change the men, preying on their vulnerability, whereas the women stand the test of time while dishing out the unimaginable and lessons that won’t soon be forgotten.
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