by Ben J Henry
Alicia placed both hands on the wooden panels. The door was so solid—so intensely present—she imagined it pressing back. Closing her eyes, she had a vague sensation of the mind, or minds, that had created it. An innate energy vibrated through her fingertips, powerful and alive.
Taking a breath, she imagined herself on the far side of the door, visualising the structure behind her and the empty plains ahead. She willed herself beyond it, just as she had blinked to the edge of the cliff. But trying to cross this barrier through will alone felt like stretching a rubber band and it left her with a knot in her stomach. She opened her eyes to find Ryan watching patiently.
Taking a step back, she focused on the knotted surface and adopted the meditative concentration she had summoned when raising her oak from the hilltop. A fire spread across the panels and flames licked the wood, increasing in intensity until the heat of the inferno burned her face. When she let the fire die and laid a palm upon the panels, they were resolutely cool.
The pair stepped aside as the ground trembled and a cannon rose from the soil. Inspired by the castle that this door might have fitted, Alicia’s weapon comprised a wrought-iron chamber on a wooden carriage. She focused on the fuse protruding from a vent at the back of the chamber and it sparked into a flame that disappeared within the cylinder. With a resounding blast, the weapon fired. The cannonball left no dent in the wood and fell impotently to the ground.
Narrowing her eyes, Alicia watched a wick sprout from the cannonball, forming that quintessential image of a cartoon bomb. The bombs multiplied at the foot of the door until a considerable pile lay against it. Ryan and Alicia paced away as the young woman set each wick alight. There followed a tremendous blast as the agglomeration of bombs detonated, sending a sheet of soil and grass in their direction. The dirt settled and the pair uncovered their eyes to see that the bombs had merely exposed the length of these panels, continuing deep into the ground.
Frustration lined her face as Alicia turned to Ryan.
‘It won’t burn or crack. It won’t explode—how am I supposed to destroy a door that’s indestructible?’
Ryan pulled a hand from the pocket of his shorts and offered her a deck of cards. He asked her to pick one. Taking a card, Alicia took a quick glance at the six of hearts and committed it to memory, wondering why, of all the cards available, she had selected that particular one. Surely, in Vivador, chance did not exist?
‘Don’t tell me what it is,’ Ryan said, holding up his hand. ‘Now change it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Change the card. And show it to me.’
Alicia presented him with the ace of spades.
‘This was always the card that you picked,’ he said, taking the ace of spades and returning it to the deck.
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘Yes, it was,’ he said tranquilly. ‘There is no evidence that you picked any other card, and there never will be. All that exists is the present moment. The past, like your memory, is alterable. Anything here can be undone.’
‘I remember the card I chose.’ Alicia folded her arms. ‘The memory exists in my mind, as real as when I’m awake. If it exists in my mind, it exists here.’
‘Are memories so reliable? How certain are you that you can remember the card you chose? How certain would you be a year from now?’
Was this all part of an act?
Offer her the cards, said an elderly man with beady black eyes. Make her question her memories.
‘I bet you chose a red six,’ Ryan said with a small smile. Alicia furrowed her brow and then remembered their conversation about conscious pathways. His smile was little more than a lift of his cheeks and lowered eyelids, but she did not imagine it.
‘Who are you, Ryan? Where are you from—on Earth, when you wake up?’
A shadow crossed his face, erasing the smile. She followed his gaze to the floor, where a tiny lamb nibbled at the clumps of grass littering the ground.
‘I am a simulacrum,’ he said. There was no lilt in his voice or lift to his cheeks. ‘Conjured by the same minds that made this door.’
He lifted the animal into his arms and it nuzzled his neck.
‘I am no more real than this lamb.’
The outline of the lamb began to flicker and fade and, moments later, white smoke drifted into the air. Then there was nothing. In the silence that followed, Alicia studied Ryan’s glacial eyes, struggling to imagine that her great-grandparents had created them. Had his features been designed so that she would follow his every word? It felt powerfully arrogant to believe that this young man existed purely to tempt her.
He’s not real.
But if Ryan was no more than a simulacrum, why did she feel pity when she met his eyes?
‘Red,’ said Alicia.
‘Six,’ said Ryan.
She smiled and he frowned. He faced the door and the chunks of soil and clumps of grass soared back into place, as the explosion reversed. A second later, the damage had been undone and the ground restored. When Ryan returned his gaze to Alicia, his lips were parted and there was a subtle complexity about his expression, as if he were deliberating.
‘Have you ever had a number in your head, and wondered where it came from?’ he asked.
‘Is this another test?’
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s—come on.’ He nodded at the door, his face impassive but his deep voice impatient. ‘Just focus.’
She took a deep breath, acutely aware that her desire to destroy this door was not driven by the need to see her brother. She was determined to prove to Ryan that she was capable of solving this challenge. She was self-aware of how self-conscious she felt standing next to this handsome stranger. Seeking the approval of a man who did not exist.
If the Unbreakable Door would not burn or crack under cannon fire or explosives, she needed to be more creative. Aldous and Morna could not possibly have defended it against the infinite alternatives at her disposal. Laying her hands upon it, she felt that undeniable sensation of the door pushing back: a living resistance that its makers had instilled within it.
‘Designed to withstand anything…any attack…what did you say?’
‘The door was designed to withstand any attack that a human mind can conceive,’ said Ryan, watching Alicia scan the knotted wood, searching for hidden cracks.
‘Withstand any attack,’ she echoed, turning the statement in her mind like a cryptic clue, holding each word to the torchlight of her attention. And with every passing second she felt him judging her, while knowing that this was false.
Alicia turned to face the simulacrum. In his eyes, she searched for a depth that was not there. Any emotion was a lie, as the playing cards had been. Like the cards, which could be interchanged without a trace, Ryan had no tangible past. All that he had done in Vivador—all that he had been—could be undone.
Anything here can be undone: those had been his words. Her eyes narrowed and she stepped back to see the Unbreakable Door in full view. With her human mind, she believed the door to be made of wood—a solid, organic structure. Focusing on the panels, she imagined the fibres of this wood, and within these fibres lay the atoms that held it together. Within these atoms lay protons, neutrons and electrons—the basis of a scientific understanding that she had never seen yet believed without question. Alicia understood at that moment that the door was as real as she expected it to be. The harder the door was attacked, the stronger her belief that the structure was real. To attack the door was to believe that it existed. How can you destroy something that is not real?
‘I have no feet,’ she whispered.
As Alicia held the image of the door before her eyes, she did not push against it. She did not attempt to break bonds that did not exist. Instead, she chose to deny it.
There is no door.
As though a light switch had been hit, the door was undone.
She did not have a moment to enjoy her success, for she faced a figure who had been standing on the far side of
the wooden panels. The beautiful young woman wore a long sapphire dress that rippled like water in the breeze.
‘Rainn,’ said Alicia.
‘Alicia Crow,’ The woman’s smile was fierce. And then her large cerulean eyes were all Alicia saw, holding her as she had held the door.
‘She’s not ready,’ Ryan called by her side.
‘We’ll see.’
The pause that followed was as tense as the moment between an orchestra’s finale and the tumultuous applause of the audience. A rough grip on her upper arm and Alicia pulled her eyes from Rainn’s to find that Ryan had pressed something to her chest. It was the barrel of a gun. She raised her head and met his gaze, and in his eyes she saw fear. But was this any more than the mirror image of her terror?
She opened her mouth and Ryan pulled the trigger.
Breathe
At noon on a Sunday, shoppers washed along the rain-battered cobbles of the high street. Mothers spilled out of charity shops and into cafés, swapping gossip over the heads of toddlers that licked glazed buns as big as their faces. Couples dodged puddles and teenagers leaned against the pink arches of the Pepperpot, ignoring the greengrocers that arranged stalls of leeks and tomatoes on the raised platform of the old town hall. Sharing jokes and umbrellas, the residents of Godalming defied the unrelenting rain. Though the downpour was heavy, their steps were light, not one of them wondering whether their great-grandparents were preparing to kill them.
At the traffic lights, Gus tugged the zip of his waterproof jacket over the rucksack pressed to his belly. Cradling the mound, he caught the attention of the elderly man to his right. The man eyed the bump, blinked, and returned to waiting for the green man.
Cars drove over a loose drain—thud-thud, thud-thud—drawing out the sound of Gus’s heartbeat as he recalled his exchange with Joe that morning. Returning from the well, he had entered their house to see the Murder Book on the living-room table. His uncle had found it, but had not driven to Melissa’s.
‘Yoga—you…’ Gus said, shooting Joe a quizzical look. ‘You could have handed it to Rainn? You’re desperate to hand it to Rainn. But you haven’t.’
‘That decision is not mine.’
As he stared at the symbol of an Order that had murdered his parents to protect a dream-world, a shadow in Gus’s mind darkened. He approached the liquor globe and poured his uncle a drink.
Joe lowered himself into the leather armchair and accepted the drink from his nephew. He lifted a photograph of Benedict and Sylvie from beside the crow in the bay window.
‘Every night I promise them I will keep you safe. But I can’t.’
Gus stared at the blinds, half expecting a ghostly figure to drift through the wooden slats. Joe took a long draught, his eyes on the photograph.
‘So long as Aldous and Morna live, they will hunt you and Alicia. Whether they mean to stop you before you take revenge, or convince you to join their Order, you will never be safe. Anna was right, we must find them. Not in Vivador, but here.’
‘Let’s hope those letters come with a map.’
‘You’ll return the book to Rainn,’ Joe said, tipping his tumbler in Gus’s direction. ‘I’ve blown up that well—that’ll please them. Nobody else can stumble across it now. You give them the Murder Book and that’s that. You’ll earn their trust. But let me go after those letters.’
When Gus spoke, it was not as a defiant nephew, but an equal.
‘All right.’
Tapping his foot, Gus waited a full two minutes at the traffic lights before realising that the elderly man had yet to press the button. Smiling, he leaned across, reached for the button and froze when a juniper-green Jeep drove past. Melissa Lawson was alone in the car and did not spot him as she continued towards the high street. Gus crossed the junction and picked up his pace.
Melissa’s house towered above the surrounding properties as if they had crowded around and taken a seat. While the neighbouring bungalows had character—walls so thick with ivy that the brick could not be seen; exposed wooden beams bisecting at uneven angles—the Lawson property was a wash of white with grey windows.
Gus slowed when he reached the driveway. Rather than Melissa’s Jeep, he saw a Tesla. He had expected Melissa to be present when he handed the book to Rainn—a glimmer of trust passing between them as he returned the evidence she had vowed to retrieve. His shoulders tightened as he approached the front door.
The lights were off. Perhaps Melissa’s guest had taken a stroll to Eloise’s cottage to confirm the destruction of the well? Spotting an ornamental stone squirrel between two flowerpots, he wondered how much trouble he would be in if he shattered the frosted panel and unlocked the door. He was here to return the book, not hunt for the letters; but if the house was empty, why waste the opportunity? He bent to seize the squirrel and heard voices.
Licking raindrops from his lips, Gus trampled the flowerbeds from window to window. He stepped around the side of the house until he spied a kitchen at the back. Rainn and Winter sat on high stools at a breakfast bar that split the room. Keeping to the corner of the window, he leaned his head back into the branches of the fir. The window was ajar and Gus listened to the pair as water ran behind his ears and down his collar.
‘—always like that?’ asked Winter, her dark hair disappearing against her black dress. The broad, gold belt around her dress matched her heels, and she would not have looked out of place on a catwalk. Her appointed mentor wore a sleek turquoise dress and perched on the stool with one leg across the other. Gus envisaged a flute of champagne in Rainn’s slender hand as she blew over the top of her teacup.
‘Like what? The dried husk of a woman with the personality of a gargoyle and a face to match?’
Winter laughed. Her head bobbed up and down like a toy bird pecking incessantly at a glass bulb filled with water.
‘Never laugh at what people say.’ Rainn tilted her head to the right, studying the teenager. ‘They’ll think you’re easy to please. And if people think you’re easy to please, they’ll stop trying to please you. Just smile. Keep them guessing.’
Winter was silent for a moment.
‘Consider me counselled.’
From between the branches, Gus saw Winter’s desire to maintain the attention of this confident beauty. With an elbow on the marble counter, she surreptitiously checked her reflection in a glass jar filled with pasta. Rainn sipped her tea and asked a question that Gus did not hear.
‘Some old woman,’ Winter replied. ‘Mrs Wilfred or something. Jack talked about her like she was a real person.’
‘And what did he call these hallucinations? This Wilfred character, did she give it a name?’
‘She called it Vivador.’
Winter did not spot the flash of alarm in the woman’s eyes. Rainn opened a clutch bag on the breakfast bar and removed a packet of cigarettes. She withdrew a cigarette and flicked open a Zippo lighter of brushed sterling silver, visibly expensive. Rainn did not lift the cigarette to her mouth, but traced the flame up and down its length, watching it burn.
‘Reminds me of my grandfather,’ she said distantly as a sickly scent pervaded the pristine kitchen. ‘I lost my grandparents when I was thirteen. The house caught fire while I slept. I never knew Jack. I can’t understand your loss and I won’t pretend to. But I’ve wasted energy chasing questions with no answers.’
The cigarette was alight from tip to butt, disintegrating beneath a golden flame. Rainn dropped it on the marble, where it continued to burn.
‘Why is a volatile question that grows like cancer in the mind of the curious. You ought to do as I did, and move on.’
‘Anna Harrington died and that well’s been blown up. I’m the only one who knows that she talked to Jack about lucid dreaming. I’m the only one who believes that it’s all connected. And nobody is listening to me.’
Rainn plucked the packet of cigarettes from the counter.
‘Smoke?’ she offered.
‘No thanks.’ Winter shook he
r head, disappointment creasing her unblemished skin.
Rainn raised her tidy brows. ‘I guess I’ll have to find another way to kill you.’
Winter managed not to laugh.
Gus ducked, leaning back against the wall with the rucksack on his thighs, fearful that the beat of his heart might resonate through the glass. His mind reeled at an image of Winter collapsing on the white tiles, silenced.
If he knocked on the front door, he could return the book to Rainn and ask her to leave town. Joe would find a way into Melissa’s house, as he had done with Anna’s, and enter with a mobile scanner from his office, copying the letters while Rainn slept.
But would Rainn let Winter live?
Keeping low, he glanced around the back of the house. Details sharpened as adrenaline electrified his body. A set of double doors opened out from the kitchen to a conservatory. Through the conservatory panes, he spotted a narrow wooden door at the far end of the back wall, presumably the original rear door before the house had been renovated beyond recognition.
This is becoming a habit, he thought.
If this door was open, he could search the house while Winter divulged her secrets and dug her own grave. If he found where the letters were hidden, it might not be necessary for Rainn to leave Godalming. In Joe’s police car, he could escape to the countryside with Winter and Alicia, beyond the reach of the Order of Chaos. And from their hiding place, Anna’s letters would lead them to his great-grandparents.
Not daring a dash past the conservatory, Gus tore around the front of the house and down the far side, squeezing between an overgrown hedge and the brick wall to reach the rear door. The door was open and narrow steps led to a basement beneath the house. He took a breath; it was unlikely that the letters would be anywhere but the room in which Rainn was staying. Perhaps an internal door led to the heart of the house?