by Z. M. Wilmot
III
We returned the following day. Valerie passed by us on the first floor, but she merely glared and walked on. We made little of it as we descended the stairs down to the lower floor, making our way hurriedly over to the door. We had no bags that day, so we did not have to stop to drop them off at our table. We walked directly up to the invisible threshold, stopping for an instant before walking the rest of the way to the silver door. We halted in front of it, as we had done the previous day. I did my best not to look at the grotesque imagery that covered its entire surface, but still caught a few horrifying glimpses.
The two of us stood where we were for several minutes, scarcely moving. Unnerved by the silence, I eventually broke it. “So what do we do now?”
Jack did not reply for a moment, but reached his hand out and placed it upon the door’s surface. I gasped at his boldness as he looked at me, grinning childishly.
“It’s warm. Feel it!” Before I could react, he grabbed my hand and thrust it against the door. He was wrong. The door wasn’t just warm. I almost let out a shriek of agony as I felt a searing pain shoot down my arm as unimaginable amounts of heat passed through my hand. A terrified look crossed Jack’s face, and he hurriedly jerked my hand back and asked me what was wrong. The heat stopped the instant my hand left the door, but the pain continued. A few moments later, I fainted.
I imagine that I gave poor Jack quite a fright. I woke up what seemed an instant later, with a slight pain in the back of my head. I sat up, for I had fallen upon the floor. The room was dark, and Jack was gone. I slowly got to my feet and looked around, and was immediately gripped by fear when I realized I was no longer in the room. I soon discovered, however, that I was. It had a rather strange appearance in the dark, making it almost unrecognizable. The door was still there, and I walked up to it cautiously, careful to make as little sound as possible. I thought I heard noises coming from inside it. I turned my ear towards the door, and placed it as close as I dared without actually touching the silvery surface.
I heard what sounded like a faint scratching on the other side. After several moments, the sound of something heavy and metallic being dragged across the floor reached my ears. Then there was a low growl. Frightened, I backed away, but in doing so caused my hand to brush against the door again. There was no pain this time; I merely lapsed back into unconsciousness.
When I awoke again, the dim lights were back on, and Jack was standing over me, a worried look upon his face. He was shaking me, asking me if I was alright. I sat up and replied that I was fine, then quickly remembered that he had abandoned me. I turned on him in anger, and asked him why he had done it.
He looked puzzled, and said that he had done no such thing. I asked him then where he had been, and why the lights had gone out, and he said that he hadn’t gone anywhere; according to him, I had only been out for a minute or two. I contradicted him, and we argued heatedly. Gradually, it occurred to me that perhaps I had suffered a hallucination after I had fainted. I suggested this to Jack, and he readily agreed. After mutual apologies were offered, we were friends again. My episode unnerved him greatly, however, and we both left the room, spending our time instead looking for Valerie elsewhere in the library. We failed to find her.
As we left to return home that evening, Jack asked me if I thought that my dream meant anything. I shrugged, and told him probably not. I always had possessed an overactive imagination. He laughed and agreed, and we spoke no more of it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that what had happened was meaningful in some way, however. I was reluctant to return to the door the following day, but Jack made me promise to go back with him before he bid me farewell.
IV
And so there we were the next day, back in that room, standing in front of the door. It took a bit of cajoling from Jack to get me to approach it again, but approach it I did. We stood in front of it, neither of us daring to reach out and touch it.
After several moments, I asked what he wanted to do now. Jack put one hand on his hip and stroked his chin with the other. He suggested that we try opening the door. We both stared at it, I doing my best not to look too closely at the hideous images on the door’s silver surface, trying to find a way to open it. There was no doorknob.
Jack then suggested that we try to push the door. I shook my head at this; I was unwilling to even take another step closer to it. Understanding and possibly worried about what would happen to me if I touched the door again, Jack walked forward himself and pressed his shoulder against it. It did not budge in the slightest. He tried harder, and he grunted as he strained. He gave up after a minute or two, and turned to look at me, saying that the door wasn’t going to open that way. I nodded absent-mindedly in agreement, for though I had tried my best to avoid looking at the door’s terrible illustrations, one of them had drawn my gaze.
It showed what looked to be a massive wolf towering over a village of frightened people. A small group was shooting arrows at it, covering the flight of their companions, but it looked as if the wolf-thing, easily four or five times the height of the tallest man, was shrugging off its wounds. I heard Jack’s voice faintly in my ears, but it gradually fell from my hearing as I was absorbed into the image, leaving the real world behind me.
I blinked once, and the scene before me was transformed. No longer was I standing in front of a silver door on the bottom floor of an old library, but I was instead standing on grass and dirt, in the center of what looked to be a village from long ago.
The spell that the image had cast upon me was broken, and I was aware of my surroundings, no longer just focused on the door. A few yards ahead of me was a well in the old style, consisting of a circular wall of stones topped by a crude raised roof, with a bucket tied to a rope sitting on the damp grass nearby. Around me were several buildings, made entirely of wood except for the stone foundations poking above the dirt, with crumbling roofs and ill-fitting boards in the walls. I shook my head violently, hoping to clear whatever dream had taken hold of me, but nothing changed.
I walked forward past the well, wondering where I was and where all of the people were. I told myself, over and over again, that this was just a dream, that none of it was real, that the images on that door were making my mind work in strange ways.
As I continued to walk, discovering more buildings on both sides of the dusty street, I began to hear voices. I quickened my pace and hastened towards where it sounded like they were coming from.
They led me to an old building, almost completely destroyed. The walls had been smashed to splinters, and if there had ever been any floors at all, they were long gone. It was more of a hole in the ground than a house, the basement open to the sky. I peered down into the cellar, and then drew back, reeling in disgust as the stench of decaying corpses assaulted my nostrils. I gagged and then vomited, collapsing onto my shaky knees. I shivered in revulsion as I knelt there for several minutes, not believing what I had seen.
I eventually managed to pull myself together and get to my feet. I gingerly stepped over my vomit, and stepped again to the edge of the pit, covering my nose this time. The sight of dozens of corpses greeted my eyes as I gazed down into the abyss. They all appeared to be in about the same state of decay. Most of their flesh was still there, but it was vanishing at an almost visible rate as writhing maggots and droning flies worked their way through it.
Despite my covered nose, the sight still made me sick, and I vomited again, this time into the pit. The force of the action caused me to lose my balance, and I began to fall backwards. I let go of my nose and flailed my arms in order to correct myself, but instead was sent flying forwards, down three or so yards into the pit itself. I landed with a loud thud amid the soft bodies and wriggling things, and screamed in terror and revulsion. I vomited, again and again, all the while scrambling to get to my feet, but slipping every time as bones snapped, organs gave way, and blood spilled out onto the ground.
Less than half a minute later, I was sobbing, covered in vomit, blood, and rotting flesh, and
unable to get to my feet. I retched, over and over again, but no longer had anything left to expel from my stomach. I wanted desperately to wake up from this horrible nightmare, but I was beginning to believe more and more that this was no dream.
I don’t know how long I lay there for, but eventually I forced myself to move, slowly and deliberately. I got to my feet without slipping once, and searched for a way out, holding back my terror and panic. I spotted a series of what appeared to be handholds of sorts set into the far wall, and I carefully made my way towards them. Once I was there, I then slowly climbed up the side of the wall, and soon was on solid ground again, albeit on the opposite side of the house. The moment I was out of the pit, I crawled away from it, to where I would be in no danger of falling in, and let myself cry again for a few minutes. I wanted to go home.
It took me longer than I had intended to pull myself together and stand up. I began walking down the road I was on, parallel to the original one, doing my best to ignore the filth that I was covered in.
Half an hour or so into this walk, I finally reached the edge of the town, and came across a series of sharpened stakes, all pointed outwards. Many of them had been snapped in half, and I trembled to imagine what force it would have taken to do such damage.
My blood chilled at that moment, for I realized something terrible: the place that I was in now was the same as that place I had just seen on the door.
V
As soon as this information entered my mind, the world before me began to change. The broken stakes became whole again, and human figures began to appear all around me, shouting and running to and fro. They ignored me completely, and a few even ran directly through me. They were of Native American descent, it appeared, but they wore the garb of early European settlers. They lacked firearms, but several of them carried bows. I strained to understand their words, but they spoke in a tongue I did not recognize.
Their shouts changed tone with a dazzling speed, and fingers began to point out towards the distant woods. I turned to follow their fingers with my gaze, and nearly screamed with fright.
The wolf-thing from the silver door stood at the edge of the trees, shaking slightly as it lowered its head in the direction of the village. Someone nearby uttered a ululating war cry, and a group of villagers charged forward at the beast.
The giant wolf threw back its head and let loose a terrifying howl, and in it I heard the echoes of death and despair. It leapt forward in great bounds, rapidly closing the distance between itself and the charging villagers. Many of my fellow humans lost heart and fled as the slavering beast approached nearer and nearer. The wolf spared none, and devoured all who attempted to fight it off. It made short work of those attackers who had fled as well, and then turned its hungry eyes upon the rest of the village. Its yellow gaze passed over both villagers and village, and came to rest on me. I fancied I saw a slight grin cross its features, and it began to walk slowly forward, directly towards me.
At that point, I turned and fled, not wishing to come to the wolf’s full attention. It was too late for that, however. As I looked behind me, I saw it loping forward more quickly, its eyes fixed upon my back. I picked up my pace, sprinting as quickly as I could away from the monstrosity.
I heard the splintering of wood behind me, and knew now what force had broken the stakes. My pace slowed as my body tired; I never had been one for athletics. I soon could go on no longer and collapsed onto the ground, panting for breath and turning to look at what I knew was coming.
To my astonishment, I saw a figure standing in front of the wolf, bedecked in what appeared to be some kind of ancient shamanic attire. It waved its arms wildly, and from the ground around the charging wolf tendrils of white light shot up, forming a massive cage around the beast. The monster slammed into the white bars of its prison and howled in agony and rage. Its hate-filled eyes shot death at me and the shaman before him, and it shook with the anger of all the world. The wind began to blow, and its howling filled my ears. Through the howling I heard a deep voice, whispering in my ear.
“You who are out of your time, it is you who must take my key and unlock that which holds me at the edge of all existence. All things must come to an end, and this world is no exception. Your race has only delayed its destruction.” A sinister laugh echoed on the wind, and I felt a weight suddenly make itself known in my pocket.
I watched the shaman walk around the imprisoned wolf, and I knew it had been the wolf-thing that had spoken to me. It looked at me with hunger in its eyes, and it was that hunger that remained in my soul as the glowing white bars of its prison expanded and blotted it from sight. There was a blinding flash of light, and then the prison was gone, in its place a massive silver cube.
As I got to my feet, I saw the years pass before my eyes. The shaman spent countless moons carving intricate designs into the silver, warning any who found it of the evil that lurked inside. The villagers all abandoned their town under the direction of the shaman, and the silver cube began to sink into the earth, until it was no longer visible. A town began to form itself upon the ruins of the ancient village, and with growing horror I saw a familiar building come into existence over the spot that the wolf’s prison had been buried: the city library.
My vision darkened at this revelation, and then I came to, still standing in front of the silver door. I blinked, then shook my head to clear it. I turned to look at Jack, who wore a worried expression upon his face. He asked me if I was alright. My voice shaking, I told him I was fine and not to worry. By this time, I believe, he had been thoroughly unnerved by my behavior around the door, and we both decided it would be for the best never to open it. He turned around to leave and called for me to follow him, but I told him that I would be a while; I wanted some time to recover. I politely refused his offer to stay with me, and he left reluctantly.
I remained where I was, staring at the door before me. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and felt the cold metal touch of an object that had not been there before. I withdrew my hand, grasping the silver key in it. I gave it hardly a glance, for it was merely a key. Certainly, it was six or seven times the size of a normal key and was made from a valuable metal, but it was otherwise perfectly normal.
It was then that I noticed, for the first time, that the door was not set flush with the wall, but that it was set into the wall, almost as if the wall had been built in front of the door.
Or as if the wall had been built in front of a large silver object with a rectangular opening in the shape of a door cut into the wall, revealing only a part of the larger mass that lay behind it.
There was, on the right side of the door, a carving in the shape of a keyhole. I stared at it for several moments, and then pocketed the key. I heard a deep voice whisper in the back of my head. “No. Now is not the time to end all things.” I smiled as I felt a dark presence settle in the shadows of my mind. It was right, of course. Now was not the time.
I would wait for the perfect moment.