by Brad Ashlock
“Our guess?”
“We were free as long as our bodies were at rest in the hills of our land. We’re trapped beyond the door with little Meeko Russell. Lusker, in all those years, became very powerful down there.”
“Where does the door lead?”
“I’m not sure. I think it’s a prison. It think whatever was beyond the door was put there for a reason. I don’t think it’s from our universe. It got into Lusker and it got into those dogs. It brings out the worst in whatever it touches.”
“What is it?”
“We don’t know. Some kind of presence.”
“Why me?” Naumkin asked, sitting now on the log he had once meditated upon. “Why of all the people in the world do you want me to do this?”
“The power of the door to influence our world weakens as it radiates outward. That’s why I can talk to you right now. We’re close. If you were in Chicago or Russia, this conversation would be an impossibility. I’ve been trying to get your attention for weeks. Influencing things, like the fine needles that fell out of your coat in a perfect pile, the book with the clues, and—”
“And all the dreams.”
“Yes. You were blocking me. That’s why it was so hard to get through.”
“So when I first dreamed of Lusker…”
“He was trying to get to you, too.” He’s been so preoccupied with Gordon Dudley, he was easy to block. I’ve spared you many a nightmare, my friend.”
“How can you talk with me so easily now?”
“When you met the talking dogs, the light switch was turned on, I suppose. It put enough kinks in your logical brain to hear me.”
Naumkin rubbed his eyes and stood again. “So I have to go down there and somehow get the girl?”
“Yes. And once you’re down there, I won’t be able to help you. Not really help you. You’ll be on your own.”
“I’ll be able to find her?”
“I can point you in the right direction. Lusker’s finished toying with the Dudleys. He had no use for the girl and was going to kill her. The thing, the presence, whatever it is, wouldn’t let him. It wanted the girl for itself.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It has her in its lair.”
“What lair?”
“A labyrinth. A maze of doors that lead to many different worlds.”
“The Everywhere Doors?”
“If you like.”
“Let’s say I rescue the princess from the dragon. How do I shut the door leading to our world?”
“You have to return the relic to the burial mounds. The relic should be near the door on the other side.”
“I can’t do this. I’m an old man. I take heart pills, for Chrissake!”
“You’ll be different on the other side, Tigran. Trust me.”
“What about Cal? Surely, he can’t come.”
“You’re the master, he’s your apprentice. He’s already chosen to go with you. You must take him.”
Naumkin frowned. “I understand.”
“I know you do. I know you understand sacrifice.”
The medicine man puffed a stream of smoke at Naumkin’s face.
Naumkin awoke. It was almost six in the morning. He swung his legs out of bed and felt his forehead. It was coated in thick sweat. He pushed himself off the edge of the bed and staggered to the bathroom. After closing the doors so as not to awaken Cal, he turned the light on and looked at his reflection in the mirror. What they were going to attempt today wasn’t crazy. It was pragmatic. He was used to this kind of game. He splashed cold water on his face and slicked his gray hair back. He was a stranger to his own eyes.
He woke Cal and they breakfasted at McDonalds. They talked for a couple hours over coffee and Egg McMuffins, a little about chess but mostly about what Naumkin had dreamed and how they would get to the factory past the dogs and to the magic door therein. They stopped at a sporting goods store and Naumkin purchased two shotguns and two boxes of shells.
“Looks like you’re a hunter, after all, Cal.”
“That or puppy chow.”
They drove back to Naumkin’s, loaded their guns, and secured them to the back of the ATV with bungee cords. The morning was terribly cold. They went back into the house and dressed for the weather, then headed out to the field on the ATV. When Naumkin drove up the pile of boulders to get to Dudley’s woods, Cal squeezed him tight. He drove up to the fallen maple that served as the imaginary gateway to the woods. Right now, he mused, it certainly could be classified an Everywhere Door. Maybe even a Nowhere Door. He wanted to take the ATV as close to the pines as possible before disembarking. It would be difficult on the steep slippery hills.
“Hold tight,” he said and pushed the throttle. The four-wheeler catapulted beneath the fallen maple and up the steep hill before them, its engine roaring, its tires rolling over skinny trees, the world blurring by in streaks of white and brown. Naumkin weaved between the larger trees as they careened pell-mell down the other side and up again on another sheer rise. Naumkin could feel butterflies in his stomach; the fear had turned into excitement. He felt invigorated.
As they gently rolled across the top of a hill, Cal tapped Naumkin’s shoulder. The chess master slowed to a stop and looked to where the boy was pointing. The wild turkeys were in the valley below, their heads bobbing up and down coordinated with their toy soldier strut. Naumkin, smiling, continued along the top of the hill and down to the dead trees below. He parked the ATV near the stump he had meditated on so long ago, another eon, it seemed. He had talked with the medicine man in his dream just last night here. Naumkin felt dizzy for a moment, shook it off, and, cowboy-like, swung his legs over the ATV and planted his feet into the slow. Cal hopped off and they got the shotguns.
“Do you smell it?”
Call took a deep whiff and said, “Pine.”
Just over that hill. Too many trees to ride through. We must walk from here.”
“How far?”
“I don’t think it’s far. I’ve only been through the pines once.” Naumkin’s voice wavered.
“Are you afraid?” Cal asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
“I should be, but I’m not. I feel angry.”
“We both have to snap out of it. Take our nervousness and channel it to our awareness. Just like at the board.”
They scaled the hill, pulling themselves up by dead branches and fallen vines until reaching the crest. Naumkin covered his mouth and nose with his hand. Before them stretched the pine forest. It went on for miles. Only about a quarter of the trees were harvested for Christmas. The rest simply grew tall and coated the air in the smell of sap and needles. Naumkin took a step toward the pines and froze. The terrible memories of he and his father surrounded by pines paralyzed him. He fell to his knees and leaned against the shotgun.
“What’s wrong? Cal asked, sinking to his haunches alongside his teacher.
Naumkin put a hand over his own eyes. He was ashamed. He wouldn’t allow Cal to see him cry. The boy put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Naumkin?”
Naumkin looked to the boy and tried to smile. “This reminds me of something very bad.”
“Worse than what we’re going into?”
“Yes. Worse.” Naumkin stood and sighed. The pine taste burned his tongue. “But it is my burden. I will carry it alone.” He took a step. Then another. He looked back to Cal. “Aren’t you coming?”
Calvin Burgess began to understand his teacher’s trepidation of the pines. The trees were beautiful, green and tall. He liked the smell, the rusty cones, and the nest of fallen brown needles around every trunk. The trees were very close together, and he and Naumkin had to constantly push the flexible twiggy branches out of their faces. The eeriness of the pines came mostly from the quiet they seemed to guard. Cal felt like he was in church or a library. More like church. There was something solemn and portentous about the silence; a kind of hush that put pressure in your ears and, if yo
u so much as opened your mouth, pushed down you throat like a dragonfly.
The silence shattered when an animal bolted form the brush and almost collided with them. Naumkin fell back into the snow and Cal screamed. They watched the deer bound away; it disappeared back into the silence. Cal began to laugh, but shut up when he noticed Naumkin’s eyes. They were wide with fear.
“The deer is being chased. Something’s coming,” Naumkin whispered, pulling Cal down to the snow beneath a pine tree.
Just as Cal flattened his body against the ground, three black shapes emerged from the trees about ten yards away. Still hot for the deer, they didn’t even hear Naumkin and the boy click their shotguns off safety. As the three dogs rushed past, Naumkin and Cal took aim and fired. They had inadvertently both shot the same dog. Without so much as a yelp, the back of the dog’s head blasted apart and its left hinde leg was blown off. The bang of the shotguns echoed throughout the forest, and snow from the pine fell down upon Naumkin and Cal’s heads.
The two other dogs spun around, kicking up a splash of snow, their eyes wide and white like saucers. Naumkin, standing, pumped the shotgun and blasted another dog. Its chest exploded like a watermelon and the dog cried out, dead before its vociferation dwindled to a whimper. The last dog turned back around and ran for cover, but Cal was chasing it now, shooting and pumping the gun, the spent shells dropping behind to smolder near his footprints. Naumkin followed as fast as he could past the two dead curs. He saw Calvin standing now in a clearing, the barrel of his gun asmoke.
“Did you get it?”
Cal turned around, his chest heaving from the run, his face flush. “Got. Away.”
“Damn. Then they’ll be ready for us. It’s OK, Cal. We got two of the bastards. Three to go. We did well.”
“Boy, that thing could run.” Cal looked down at the shotgun. “I like this.”
“We were very lucky to come upon them like that.”
“I need some more shells.”
They reloaded the twelve-gauges, and backtracked to where they had been. Pools of darkening gore encircled the felled dogs in the clearing. Their wounds, no longer pumping blood, steamed. Cal knelt beside one and put his hand on its muzzle. He pulled back its lips and examined the curved canine fangs.
“Get away from that!”
Cal pulled his hand away and the lip slid back over the tooth. “I wanted to see one change.”
“There’s nothing to see. It’s instant. And they’re not changing. They’re dead. We must continue.”
They walked back into the dense area of pines. It went on for acres. They took a break in a clearing at the bottom of a hill; there was a large fallen pine jutting from the snow. They sat upon its trunk and leaned back on its dead branches. Even though the sun had risen from morning to early afternoon, the air seemed to get colder. A gray haze had descended over the sky, making it feel like night was about to fall. The dimness descended upon Naumkin like a big crow; it picked at his eyes and whispered forebodings into his ear.
They had killed two dogs, but the one that had escaped would warn Lusker. What would be awaiting them? The old chocolate factory couldn’t be far. It was where Rogue Creek had terminated; it should only be about two miles away. What use would shotguns be against Lusker? Gordon Dudley had claimed that his bodyguard had emptied a gun into Lusker with no effect. Naumkin had to think. They needed a strategy. If they waltzed into the factory blasting, they might be able to handle the dogs, but what surprises would Lusker be cooking up right now as they rested upon the fallen tree? The dog that escaped Cal would have circled back to the factory in no time flat. What were the options? Few and all dire. They had to get to the sub-basement of the factory. Would every entrance be guarded? Even if they could slip in through some forgotten crack, the Everywhere Door itself would be heavily defended.
“We should probably get going,” Cal said. Naumkin agreed and they continued onward through the pines and hills. They were going on instinct, and somehow, maybe just by chance, or maybe because it wanted to be found, they decided to go up one hill instead of another; at the top looking down into a wide valley, they discovered, surrounded by pines, the dilapidated chocolate factory.
A high barbed wire fence surrounded the cluster of buildings. At every section of mesh fence hung a sheet of tin, what must have, decades ago, served as no trespassing signs but were now so rusted the warnings had become illegible. Naumkin and Cal were facing the front of the factory; it was only a hundred yards away. The façade looked like an unused set piece from the old German film, Metropolis. The building was divided into three major sections. The middle part was composed of an arch that rose fifty feet into the gray sky ; within the massive arch set thick glass blocks, like honeycombs, quatrefoiled in brass. They were dulled green and amber with age, and where the glass was missing, the empty frames looked like Jack-O-lantern eyes. Bracketing the arched half-oval filled with glass squatted two connected buildings. These were brick and windowless. From Naumkin and Cal’s vantage point, they could get an inkling of the building continuing back behind the arch into a flat warehouse section.
“We’re going in there?” Cal pointed doubtfully.
“It’s not what I expected. The walls are half collapsed. There must be a thousand ways in.”
“Like a Venus fly trap,” Cal said.
Naumkin tugged his glove halfway up his hand and checked his watch. “It’s almost one o’clock.”
“They must be waiting for us.”
“Yes. To go in or to go away,” Naumkin said.
“That is the question.”
Naumkin grinned. “You’ve become quite ardent lately. What ever possessed you to go running past Gordon Dudley’s bodyguard into the mansion?”
“Just sick of big people telling me what to do.”
“Then I better not tell you to stay here while I go down and check out the factory alone.”
“You better not.”
They went down the hill to the fence and quickly found a way through it. An entire section of fencing had rusted so severely at where it had been secured to its posts, that one hard tug peeled the mesh free in a tidy roll. This was to the left of the building. From this point of view, Naumkin and Cal could see the back part of the factory. Half buried in snow, it stretched back half a football field and was composed of the same worn gray brick as the squat buildings bracketing the grand arch. Small square windows, all shattered, broke the monotony of the brick only to become redundant themselves in their lifeless geometry. There were gently sloping mounds of snow on the flat roof; the wind played over the peaks, catching snow and casting it upward. Along this rear section of building were crates covered in rotten canvass tarps and ice.
“We’ll get to those boxes. Do you think you’re tall enough to look through the window if you stand on them?”
Cal bit his lip. “I don’t know. It’s pretty high.”
Crouching, they made their way to the crates. Naumkin tried to peel the tarp off one, but it had fused with the wood and ice. He looked up to the windows then down at Cal.
“It’s too high. I’ll have to do it.” Naumkin set his shotgun against the building and pulled himself up the first crate. It held his weight. There were about fifteen crates spread along the wall, stacked up to four high. Naumkin awkwardly pulled himself up to the next level and stood, gripping the edge of a rotten board of another crate while looking left and right for something he could step up on. The box beneath him groaned.
“You better get down, Mr. Naumkin. They’re starting to wobble.”
Naumkin looked down then back up to the window. “Just a couple more crates. I’ll be all right.” He pulled himself up another box, stood, and from there could touch the bottom sill of the broken window above. He looked downward. Cal was glancing left to right, shotgun in hand, eyes of a hawk. Naumkin took a deep breath and examined the crate he needed to pull himself up next to look into the factory. The top row of crates was not enshrouded in the grommet-punched rotten tarps
; the exposed wood-framed boxes were warped and flimsy looking. Rusty brads stuck between splintered boards like quills. He reached up and ran his hand carefully along the inside of the container. Despite his gentleness, he poked a finger against a nail and winced.
“Cal, I don’t think I can—” the rotten, age-hard tarp, stretched like a drum over the crate Naumkin was standing on, ripped. The chess master fell flat on his feet into the box, but then the whole stack collapsed. Cal jumped back. Naumkin was a silent passenger inside the crate all the way down, not making a sound until crashing into the snow. The crate he was in practically disintegrated on impact. Naumkin rolled to his hands and knees as wooden boxes fell all around him. He covered his head and curled into a ball, but had thankfully fallen out of range of the other tumbling crates.
Cal rushed to him. “Are you OK?”
“Snow broke my fall. I’ll be all right.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, yes!” Naumkin grumbled, getting to his feet and patting snow off his chest and knees. He looked back up to the window and frowned.