The Odd Onward Door
By:
Geron Kees
(© 2017 by the author)
The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's
consent. Comments are appreciated at...
GKees@tickiestories.us
Derry Hamlyn stood on tiptoe to see
across the field of Indiangrass, looking for some telltale sign as to
where his friend, Caleb Jameson, might be hiding. At fifteen, Derry was
tall enough - taller than Caleb by an inch - to see across the waving
grass; but only just, for the grass was tall, too, and wide and deep,
spreading as far as the eye could see across the rolling New York
countryside. It was the perfect place to hide. The gentle summer breezes
moving eastward across the summer-blue, cloud-flecked sky pushed the grass
in lazy waves that perfectly disguised other movement, and for all Derry
knew, Caleb could be clear to Long Lake by now.
Or not.
Even as Derry pushed himself up on his toes again to take another look
there was a faint sound to one side, and then an explosion of movement in
the grass, and Caleb leaped out at him, his face set in a devilish grin.
Derry flinched, raised his hands instinctively to protect himself from his
friend's lunge, and then burst into laughter as Caleb grabbed him and
whirled him around. They fell into the depths of the grass together,
rolled among the dense ground cover and then stopped, Caleb laying partly
atop Derry, a huge smile on his face. He looked down at his friend, then
dropped his head and quickly kissed him.
Derry returned the grin, pushed his head up and kissed his best friend
back. It was a part of their lives now to share such closeness - a secret
part, yes - but still a part that was wonderful and warm. Caleb - or
Cally, as Derry called him - had proved to be as exciting a companion as
Derry could ever have dreamed of finding.
"Surprised you," Cally said, slightly breathless from laughter.
"I could smell you, I just couldn't see you," Derry replied, grinning.
Cally smiled, and rubbed his face gently against Derry's. "Mmm. I can
smell you, too."
Derry nodded, pushing back with his own face, inhaling the pleasant scent
of Cally's skin, feeling the light traces of sweat between them.
"I found something I want you to see," Cally said then, lifting his head.
His grin turned into a frown. "Something weird, over by the woods."
"Weirder than you?" Derry asked, still grinning. "I don't believe it."
Cally sighed, and offered another quick kiss. "I'm serious. There's
something strange there."
Derry realized then that his friend wasn't playing. Cally had a great
sense of humor, but he could switch very quickly to his more sober side,
and not always be apparent about it at first. Derry nodded. "So...what is
it?"
"I don't know. Kind of a mound in the earth. I mean...it looks like the
rest of the hill, until you look at it from just the right angle. Then you
can see that something is there."
Derry grinned, and jumped to his feet, pulling at Cally in the process.
"Well, show me!"
Cally laughed, bolted upright, and took off running, and Derry immediately
gave chase. His bare feet, toughened by a month of summer's contact with
the ground, found their way through the grasses easily as the boys crossed
the great open field and then entered the tree line at its edge. Cally
slowed then, searching the ground ahead of them, and finding a
pressed-down spot in the undergrowth and leading Derry into it.
"You came all this way?" Derry asked, amazed. "While I was standing there
looking for you in the grass, you were over here in the trees?"
Cally tossed a grin over his shoulder. "I was circling around so that I
could surprise you. I did that, remember?"
Derry laughed. "Yeah. You did. You sure took the long way around to do it,
though."
"Well, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have discovered this."
Cally stopped, and now Derry stopped, too. He looked about them, but could
see nothing unusual at all. They were at the base of a small hill that
rose up in the woods, which was covered with small plants, but no trees.
These little hills were a common feature thereabouts. Derry's grandfather,
whose land this was, called them 'knobs', and generally viewed them as
irritants where they appeared in the fields, because they blocked the
progress of his tractors. Derry had read that this portion of the state
was cave country, and that sometimes these knobs appeared above limestone
formations holding caverns. When Derry was younger he had dug into a few
of the knobs closer to the house, in the hope of finding a way into the
earth below; but the only result had been hours of labor and a hole in the
ground that went nowhere. His grandfather had finally commanded him to
stop making holes unless he intended to fill them back in, and that pretty
much ended that exploration.
This hill seemed much like the others that Derry had examined, save for
the fact that it was here among the trees and not out among the grasses.
He ran his eyes over it, then looked at Cally and shrugged. "I don't see
anything unusual."
Cally tossed his head to one side. "Come on around here."
He led Derry around the base of the hill, then stopped. "Now look up."
Derry reexamined the hill now, his eyes roving across the top of it. It
did look amazingly regular in its roundness, but so what? Some of the
other knobs he had seen were also surprising in their geometric
perfection. Nature was every bit as competent as men to make things of
amazing symmetry. She just chose not to do so with the boring regularity
that her offspring seemed to favor.
Cally could obviously see the doubt in Derry's eyes. "I know - it's really
round, but it's still just a hill, right?" He nodded. "But then I saw
this."
He took Derry by the hand and led him further around the base of the hill.
Derry could see where his friend had come through here before, but likely,
no one else had in the longest of times. While Derry felt he had been
every place a boy could go on his grandfather's land since he had started
walking, he knew that the reality was that he and his friends had always
largely stuck to established trails and not wandered about in the places
where poison ivy and poison sumac dwelled. Some of his grandfather's woods
were seriously overgrown at the ground level, and great care was needed to
pass through them. Others, more regularly visited and used by the family
over the years, were more easily passable. This particular area was of the
former variety, and Derry now looked anxiously about, hoping that he and
Cally had not already walked through some of the poison weeds.
Cally saw him peering about and laughed. "I looked when I came through
before. I don't want a rash any more than you do."
Derry felt some relief at that. "I wouldn't worry so much if I had long
pants and shoes on."
Cally nodded, and drew Derry to a stop. "Look."
He pointed to the ground, where a large rock lay, dirt-side up. Next to
it, and slightly uphill, there was a hole of equal size, and it was
obvious that the rock had been dislodged from its ancient resting place
and rolled.
Derry settled to a squat and examined the rock. It was a large one,
probably at least twenty pounds in weight. The side now facing up was
encrusted in still-moist earth and the tiny rootlets of growing things.
But it appeared to be just a rock. A big one, but big rocks were
everywhere on his grandfather's acreage.
Cally squatted beside him. "What do you think?"
"What made you turn it over?" Derry asked, curious now.
"I didn't mean to. I stepped on it as I was coming through here and it
came loose. I nearly fell on my ass."
Derry couldn't help grinning, feeling that it would be a damn shame for
any harm to come to his boyfriend's especially pleasantly-curved butt.
Cally broke out into a laugh, perhaps reading Derry's mind, and gave him a
fond a little nudge. "Leave my cheeks out of this."
Derry grinned and nodded. "Until later, anyway." He indicated the rock
with a wave of his hand. "I don't see anything special about it, though."
Cally rolled his eyes. "Not the rock, dum dum. The hole. Look in
the hole."
Derry bent and looked within the cradle that had been the rock's resting
place. There was dirt there, that looked like it had been disturbed, but
otherwise he could see nothing...or, wait. He peered closer,
finally seeing what Cally meant.
There was dirt there, yes. But underneath it was a very regular-looking
surface, that looked like more rock. But it looked smooth.
"Touch it," Cally whispered.
Derry extended a hand, lowered his fingers into the hole, stopped short of
touching that odd surface within. Something about it disturbed him. Cally
saw his hesitation, grunted, and placed a hand upon Derry's own and pushed
gently until Derry's fingers touched down.
The surface was cold. Maybe chilled would be a better
word. But that was to be expected of anything under the surface. There was
a surprising difference in temperature between the topsoil and the dirt a
mere six inches down.
But smooth?
"What is it?" Derry asked.
"You tell me."
Derry rubbed his fingertips over the surface now, feeling the amazing
regularity of it as his fingers brushed the dirt covering it downward. "I
don't know."
Cally reached into the hole again and pulled at the edges, revealing more
of the smooth surface beneath. Derry viewed that with shock, his eyes
suddenly moving upward and his gaze running over the oddly even crest of
the little knob. "You think the whole thing's like this...under the dirt?"
Derry asked, a combination of thrill and unease passing through him at the
same time.
Cally looked startled, as though the notion stunned him - but at the same
time, Derry could see that the idea was not new to his friend. Cally was
just a little shocked to hear it voiced out loud.
The other boy gave a slow nod. "Kinda scary to think that, but yeah, I was
wondering if the whole hill was like this."
Derry blinked again. "Like someone made it."
Cally just nodded.
For a moment Derry's mind seemed to balk at the idea; but then, he
remembered things he had read over the years, and a new idea took hold.
"Maybe it's Indian. Oneida, or Mohawk. I read once that they left mounds
all over the state." He looked up at the perfect curve of the hill above
them. "Maybe this is one of them."
Cally looked doubtful. "Indians? Why would they make mounds?"
"They buried people in them," Derry explained.
Cally shook his head. "I've heard of those. But they're dirt mounds, not
mounds made of stone - aren't they?"
Derry shrugged. "I dunno. Who knows what they could do?"
Cally digested that, and finally shook his head. "I don't think they could
make a whole hill out of polished stone, Derry. Indians were kinda
low-tech back then."
Derry actually agreed with that. But then what?
"You think it's hollow? Maybe there's a way in."
Derry patted the smooth surface at the bottom of the hole again, and was
certain that there was no easy way of going through it. Whatever it was
made of, It simply felt dense and tough, not something you were going to
make a hole in with a pick and shovel.
Cally jumped to his feet, and Derry followed. "Let's walk around it,"
Cally suggested, starting off.
"Watch for poison ivy," Derry commanded, not wanting to spend the next few
weeks in misery.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Come on."
They circled the hill slowly, and as they did so it became even more
apparent in Derry's mind that the little knob was amazingly hemispherical
in shape. That it was somehow a made thing was becoming clear to him.
But...made when? And by whom?
The earth that covered it could not be very deep, which would explain
the reason that only small ground covering foliage grew upon it, and no
trees. And despite the fact that it was a hill itself, there was higher
ground beyond the knob, and rainwater would tend to wash down and around -
maybe even over - the little hill, if there was enough of it. How long
would it take for the earth to cover such a mound in dirt to six or eight
inches in depth? Certainly not overnight. Trees would grow and die, whole
forests rot away and be reborn; the winds would blow and the rains would
come and go; it would take a very long time, indeed. But how long?
Five hundred years? A thousand?
There were many places in the world where the ancient works of men had
been dug up after thousands of years of hiding beneath the soil.
Sometimes, those sites were quite deep. And quite ancient. But still, they
were the works of men. The creepy feeling that Derry had been
trying not to acknowledge - that the mound might not be the work
of men - began to fade. He grinned. The ancients had shown
themselves to be extremely clever engineers. The great pyramids of the
Egyptians at Giza had originally been sheathed in a covering of white
limestone, polished and smoothed nearly to perfection. Much of the casings
had been cannibalized over several thousand years by the locals to
construct other buildings, resulting in the lumpy, stepped appearance of
the pyramids today.
But once, they had been magnificent. And they were built by men.
There was a slight depression in the ground ahead of them, but Derry paid
no attention to it until he and Cally both stepped into it.
Crack! There was the sudden sound from beneath their feet of
something breaking, followed by a sickening lurch, and then a general
sagging of the soil underfoot.
And then they were falling. The ground gave away, and they plummeted into
the earth below.
Or so it seemed in that instant. Derry let out a yell and grabbed at
Cally, but he no sooner pulled the other boy close when they stopped
moving with a jarring bounce, which caused them both to sit down hard. The
earth had collapsed downward a distance of maybe three feet, and then
stopped.
"Oh, shit!" Cally yelled, hugging Derry to him. "Are you okay?"
Derry nodded, squeezing the other boy to him just as fiercely. "Are you?"
"Yeah. Scared the crap out of me, though."
"Me, too." Derry laughed then. "You should see your face."
Cally snorted, but his eyes held humor now. "What happened?"
Derry shrugged, easing his grip on his friend. "I don't know. Something
gave away."
They carefully climbed out of the hole. The process was accompanied by
more alarming creaks and groans from beneath them, along with movement
that firmly suggested that there was still some space beneath them, under
whatever they had been standing upon.
They reached ground level, stood up, brushed each other off, and examined
the hole before them. It was long and fairly narrow, and the ends of
timbers now protruded from the dirt along the edges. Derry stooped and
examined them, noting the moist, soggy appearance of rotten wood at the
edges, with dryer, more brittle wood further in.
"Spent," he pronounced. "This is a cover of some kind. Must have been here
a long time, to be this far gone. It was even sagging under the weight of
the dirt on it. I saw the depression before we stepped into it, but
couldn't tell what it was."
"We're lucky we didn't fall through," Cally said. "No telling how deep it
is underneath."
Derry grinned, and grabbed at the end of one of the stouter timbers. "Sure
there is. Help me lift."
Cally gave a little laugh, but bent down and also grabbed a timber. They
tried to stand, lifting as they did so, and both of them grunted under the
unexpected weight.
"Must be a ton of dirt on this!" Cally exclaimed, through gritted teeth.
Derry strained with all of his might, and slowly the timber rose upwards.
As it came up so did the ground they had fallen into; and as the soil slid
to one side the load lessened, until finally Derry could peer beneath the
wooden cover.
"There's steps!" he yelled, redoubling his efforts.
It was apparent now what had happened. The cover had collapsed until some
central timber had encountered a step a short way down the flight. It had
been enough to stop their plunge, but also explained the wobbly sense that
there was more open space underneath them.
Cally yelled, strained, looked downward. Where he was standing, there was
a step only about three feet down. "Hold onto it, Derry! If I can get
underneath, we can tip the cover over!"
Derry strained, nodded, and groaned as the load increased. Cally slid down
into the stairwell, got underneath the cover, and started to push upwards
again. More dirt slid off as the cover stood up now, until it was light
enough that Derry could jump down into the stairwell and push from below,
too. The cover soon stood perpendicular, and the boys leaned forward, gave
a last mighty heave, and the cover fell over into the weeds, accompanied
by a small burst of dust and debris, which sprinkled down onto the steps
at their feet.
The stairs were uncovered.
Derry looked down them, could see now a short landing at the base of the
steps, confronting the dark, rounded shape of a doorway that led beneath
the bulk of the mound.
The way inside had been found.
Derry looked at Cally, who was grinning. "We're gonna at least look,
aren't we?" Derry asked his friend.
"Hell, yeah." Cally's grin expanded. "Try to hold me back."
Derry put out a hand and did just that. "Wait. We can look, and see what
can be seen. But if we're gonna go inside some dark hole, I say we go back
to my house first and get a flashlight."
Cally nodded, but his eyes held delight. "I'll go for that. I'm not
crawling around in the dark with any skeletons or mummies, I can tell you
that now."
They headed slowly down the steps. Around them, in the woods, birds called
to each other, totally unaware that anything unusual was happening below.
In fact, the summer day did not seem to acknowledge in any way that the
lives of Derry and Cally were about to change forever.
They reached the bottom of the stairs, and approached the dark doorway.
But...it did not look like an open doorway at all, where one could see
light scattered within, gradually fading to darkness. It simply was
blackness, there across the threshold, so solidly dark, in fact, that
Derry could only suspect a closed door painted the deepest black he had
ever encountered. He frowned, and put out a hand to feel it as he
approached.
But there was no door.
With nothing there to impede his progress, his hand simply disappeared,
and then his arm right up to the elbow, as if it had been neatly severed
from his body. Cally gave out a yell of alarm, and Derry snatched his hand
back - only to find it still there, fingers and all.
"What the hell was that?" Cally demanded, grabbing Derry's arm and
examining it closely. "What did you feel?"
"Nothing. I didn't feel anything. It was like nothing was there."
Cally released Derry's arm and stared at the blackness, frowning. "That
was creepy. Um...hold on a second."
Cally turned and raced back up the steps, only to return moments later
with a length of slender branch, perhaps three feet long, with a small
tuft of leaves at one end. He squeezed past Derry, and held the branch out
before him. "Now let's see this again."
Cally pushed the tufted end of the branch at the doorway, and the darkness
ate the branch without so much as a murmur of effort. Cally pushed the
branch all the way in, almost to where his fingers gripped it, and then he
slowly withdrew it again, until it was all out. They examined it then, and
could see no change in the branch whatsoever.
"I could already tell you it didn't hurt anything." Derry said then. He
held up his hand. "Everything still works."
"'Cept your head," Cally kidded, handing Derry the branch.
Derry sighed, took the branch and tossed it up out of the stairwell. "Now,
what?"
"Now this," Cally answered, and before Derry could stop him, his friend
was leaning his head into the blackness of the doorway. Cally's head
disappeared, looking to have been severed cleanly from his neck. Derry
grabbed his boyfriend and yanked him back, and Cally reemerged, looking
none the worse for wear.
"I didn't feel a thing, Derry. Just like you said." Cally's eyes held
wonder. "There's a kind of hallway inside, and it's light enough to see."
His eyes fastened on Derry's. "I think we should go in."
The smallest trace of fear clutched at Derry, and now he realized he had
been hoping that the strange cloak about the doorway of the mound would
keep them from going within. The strangeness of that doorway was not lost
on Derry. He didn't believe in magic - not really; but that some force was
at work here that was neither plain nor easily understood was certain.
"Indians didn't make this," Derry said, sure of that fact now.
Cally compressed his lips, licked them and nodded. "No. I don't think so."
Derry nodded. "Okay. Here - take my hand. I'm going to step through the
black. If I squeeze your hand, pull me out, and hurry up about it."
Cally looked stubborn. "Why should you go first? I have just as much right
to be vaporized as you do."
Derry laughed, feeling some of the tension leave him. The feeling that that was not going to happen to
either of them was strong. He could see just the smallest bit of worry in
Cally's eyes, and he realized now that that worry was for him.
Cally was worried that something might happen to Derry.
Derry leaned forward, quickly deposited a kiss on Cally's lips. "You're
sweet, and I love you."
And then he turned and stepped through the doorway.
It was like stepping through any doorway. Almost. Suddenly he was in a
hallway, that turned right from the door and followed the curve of the
mound above around and out of sight. The light seemed to come from
everywhere - the walls, the curving ceiling, and the floor beneath his
feet. It was soft, totally lacking in the glare of electric lighting, but
afforded enough light to see by. The hallway looked clean, the walls and
floor smooth and unmarked by time - scarcely what one would expect to find
inside a long-buried mound found in the forest. Even the air smelled fresh
and clean, without the slightest hint of the mustiness that time could
bring.
Derry turned and stuck his head back through the dark. Cally started, but
then grinned at him. "You don't look dead."
Derry grinned. "I'm not. Let go of my hand for a minute, okay?"
"Why?"
Derry sighed. "I want to make sure I can still get back through the dark
without any connection to the outside. We'd be in some real shit if we
both came in and then couldn't get back out again."
Cally's eyebrows went up. Obviously, he hadn't thought of that
possibility. "What if you can't get back out?"
Derry grinned. "Then you'll be out here to go for help."
He could see that Cally didn't like that idea. "I don't know, Derry. Maybe
you'd better not."
Derry sighed. "Come on, man. If I don't come right back out, stick your
hand through, I'll grab it, and you can pull me."
"Oh. Okay." He could see that Cally still was not reassured; but the other
boy nodded and released his hand. "Go in, and come right back out again."
Derry nodded, and pulled back through the dark. He immediately leaned
forward again, and was once again outside from the waist up. "We're cool.
Come on in."
Cally grinned, and Derry stepped back as his friend moved forward.
Briefly, they were separated by the odd blackness; but then Cally was
coming through, looking quite like a magician walking through a wall.
Derry laughed as his friend moved to stand next to him. "That is just
awesome, the way that works. It looked like you just stepped through a
closed door.
Cally gave him a little shove, and then just as quickly pulled him closer.
"I was a little worried about you."
Derry was touched. "I'm okay. I'm not leaving you. Promise."
Cally grinned. "Let's see where this hallway goes, huh?"
They followed the hallway around the curve, finding no doorways or other
openings in either wall. There was a sound-deadening quality to the place
that silenced their footfalls, even though their bare feet made little
sound against the smooth floor. Even their whispered conversation sounded
mute, as if the smooth walls contained no power to echo their words about.
It was somehow eerier in Derry's mind than if their voices had
reverberated, and again he felt that slightly cold feeling at the bottom
of his heart. He half expected to see some ghostly form materialize around
the curved hallway ahead.
But nothing like that happened. Derry was just estimating that they had
circled halfway around the mound when the hallway before them suddenly
ended up ahead. They looked at each other, somehow sure that this was not
all there was to this place, and sure enough, as they neared the wall they
became aware of an opening to their left. They drew up to it, and peered
around the edge of the opening.
A large, circular room lay beyond, lit by the same soft luminescence that
pervaded the hallway.
Over by the far wall stood three tall, elliptical frames, their lower
halves rooted firmly in the floor. The center frame looked directly at
them, while the frames to either side were slightly angled to conform to
the curve of the wall. Each frame held within its bounds an area of total
darkness, just like the one that had cloaked the doorway into the mound.
To either side of the outer frames, racks of shelves laden with all manner
of things stood, as well as the quite familiar shapes of several chairs,
and a table. It was totally at odds to what Derry had expected to find,
which had varied in his mind from elves manufacturing shoes to alien
visitors plotting the overthrow of the planet.
There was no one there, and no place to hide that he could see. The room
was totally silent save for the sounds they themselves made, and as he
looked about, the small fear that had been building inside Derry began to
evaporate away.
They were alone.
"What the hell is this?" Cally asked, sounding disappointed. "It looks
like the storeroom at my father's shop." Cally's dad owned the machine
shop in town, and Derry had to smile at the comparison. The inside of the
mound looked very much like the storeroom, with the notable exceptions of
the frameworks filled with darkness.
"What about them?" Derry asked, pointing at the ellipses. "They can't be
more doors."
Cally shrugged. "Why not? They look a lot like the one we came through to
get here."
Derry shook his head. "They can't be doors. Where would they go? I mean,
the wall behind those frames is the inner wall of the hallway we walked
around. If you went through that wall, you'd just be back where we
started."
Cally frowned. "Oh, yeah. I see what you mean."
He started across the room, and Derry followed him. They came to stand
before the center framework, with the canted frames of the other two to
each side of them.
"Heck, they're not even in the wall, Derry. Look."
But Derry could already see that his friend was right. The frameworks,
which looked a part of the wall from the other side of the room, now could
be seen to be standing about two feet away from the back wall. Derry moved
to an end one and carefully looked behind it. The back looked exactly the
same as the front, a great half-elliptical frame filled with blackness.
He went back to stand next to Cally. "They do look like doors, anyway."
Cally grinned, and stepped towards the center one, extending an arm in the
process. "One way to find out."
Derry reacted without thinking. He lunged forward and grabbed his friend,
and stopped him before he could stick his hand into the blackness.
"What'd you do that for?" Cally complained, looking irritated. "I was just
gonna see --"
"I know what you were gonna do," Derry said, cutting him off. "Don't you
think it's a little crazy, sticking your arm in before we test it?" He
waved a hand at the three frames. "These aren't in some wall. These might
be something totally different than the way we came in." He shook his
head. "They don't go anywhere,
Cally. What if it's something else here? Something dangerous?"
Cally compressed his lips, but then nodded. "Okay, that's smart. I
guess we should test it first. " He grinned then. "Thanks."
Derry rolled his eyes and sighed. "You're gonna scare me to death, if
nothing else."
Cally laughed, but looked sympathetic. He grabbed Derry's hand and pulled
him back the way they had come. They trotted back around the outer
hallway, out through the black door, and up the steps to the woods. There
they gathered a few more branches, breaking them directly off of small
trees so that the leaves would be fresh. Then they carried their load back
down the steps, and around to the room with the three doors. That Derry
was starting to think of them as doors was telling; he now thought that
they were doors of some sort -
just not doors like the one by which they had entered the mound.
Inside the circular room again, they laid the branches on the floor, and
Cally grabbed one up from the pile and approached the left hand doorway
with it. "Ready?"
Derry went to stand beside him, nodding. "Go ahead."
Cally grinned, and pushed the leafy end of the branch at the blackness
within the frame. Once again, the branch disappeared within, plainly
revealing that this was indeed another doorway of some sort. Cally pushed
it in until his fingers were about six inches from the blackness, and held
it there.
"Hold it like that for a minute," Derry suggested, unable not to grin.
"Just remember to let go if something grabs it and pulls."
Cally's eyes widened, but he nodded. They stood silently for a minute,
until Derry began to feel foolish. Clearly, nothing was going to happen.
"I guess you can pull it back now."
But Cally didn't move. Instead, he turned to look at Derry, his eyes
puzzled. "Something's happening. The branch feels...it feels cold." The
puzzled look suddenly changed to one of alarm, and then Cally was stepping
back, drawing the branch back to him. The end of it no sooner cleared the
blackness within the doorway before Cally released it with a startled
squeak, shook his hand, and clutched it to his breast. "Damn, that's
cold!"
Derry stared at the branch where it now lay on the floor. The leafy end,
green with life only moments before, was blackened, crisp, and covered
with frost. Even as he watched, the crystals of ice turned to water and
formed a pool underneath the end of the branch. Derry looked up at the
doorway, full of blackness, and knew then that it was not a place they
wanted to go.
Cally turned to him, looking distressed. "That could have been my arm,
Derry. Thanks."
Derry just nodded. Cally had been about to put his arm through the center
doorway, not the left one - but the results might have been the same.
"We'll be more careful now, okay?"
"Fuckin' right, we will," Cally answered, nodding. Yet he swallowed,
squeezed his fingers together one more time on the chilled hand, and then
bent and drew up another branch. "We'll try the center one now."
This time, after the branch had been held through the darkness for a full
minute, Cally was unreactive. He just shrugged when Derry looked at him.
"Don't feel a thing."
"Okay. Bring it back."
Cally nodded, and slowly pulled the branch back to them. It reemerged,
looking exactly as it had done before it had gone through. They examined
it, touched it, could find no change in it at all.
"Okay, put that one on the floor and get a new one for the last door."
Cally nodded, exchanged the just-used branch for a fresh one.
The right-hand door proved to be just like the middle door. The branch
returned looking unaffected.
But Derry was thinking now. "This is like the movies, Cally. We have
something on the other side of these doors that we can't see or test, and
that might be dangerous for us. The one door with the ice was enough for
me. I don't think we should just stick a hand through this time."
Cally frowned. "The branches came back okay."
"Yeah, but that just means the temperature is pretty close on the other
side. What if there's no air to breathe, or something even worse? We
wouldn't know until we walked through."
Cally made a face. "Too late then, huh?" He frowned. "What we need is a
way to see the other side first."
"We could stick a camera through, somehow." Derry nodded. "Yeah. That
would let us see. But we still wouldn't know if the air was good."
Cally rolled his eyes. "This isn't Star Wars, Derry. You talk like it was
an alien world on the other side."
Derry did not laugh. "Think about it, Cally. That door with the ice -
whatever is on the other side of that blackness is so cold it froze that
branch in a minute. The only place like that on Earth right now would be
the south pole. So at the very least, it goes somewhere pretty far away.
It doesn't have to be another planet. We could die at the south pole
without even leaving Earth."
Cally looked at him askance. "For all we know that doorway leads to the
dry ice freezer at MacDonough's Meats in town. It doesn't even have to be
the south pole, Derry."
Derry finally allowed a smile. "You just made my point. We don't know
where it goes."
The lighthearted look on Cally's face slowly went to a frown. "Okay, okay.
I guess we need to see what's on the other side of these doors first."
"Okay, we'll work on that." Derry pulled his cell out and looked at the
time. "We got all afternoon for this. I say we go back to my house for now
and see what we can think up."
Cally nodded. "Okay. But first, let's see what's on all these shelves."
The walked around the room, examining the items on the shelves. Much of it
consisted of closed gray cases large enough to store almost anything. The
cases all seemed to be locked, and how to open those locks was not
immediately evident.
There were also rows of things that looked strangely like canned and
packaged foods, except the cans were not metal, the packages were hard and
unyielding, and the labels were not readable.
"What language is that?" Cally asked in a hushed voice, obviously a little
subdued by plain evidence that this wasn't just some secret government
place that had been somehow forgotten about.
Derry shook his head, gazing at the odd symbols that marched across the
face of the can. That they were an alphabet of some sort seemed clear. The
symbols varied, and repeated in the sequences of words written there; but
what language this was, and what the words meant, was impossible to know.
Derry was no language expert, but he loved to read, and he had seen
examples of other earthly alphabets. Nothing on the face of the can looked
familiar.
Cally was quiet as he examined the cans. "Doesn't look like anything I've
ever seen."
"No."
"What do you think it means?"
Derry shook his head. "I don't know." He looked around the room. "We'll
just have to figure it out as we go along."
Cally put out a hand, laid it on Derry's arm. "Are we gonna tell anyone
about this place?"
Derry bit at his lip, thinking. If he told mom and grandad, they might
call someone. Derry just knew that something like this could not be kept a
secret once it got out. And once it got out, the last people anyone would
be letting inside the mound would be a pair of fifteen year-old boys, even
if they had been the ones to find the place first.
"If we tell people, they'll keep us out of this place. We won't get to
explore it."
Cally nodded. "I know. I was thinking the same thing."
That made it easier. "Well," Derry said, smiling now, "then we just keep
quiet about it for the time being."
"Okay."
Derry grinned. "I was thinking something else this place would be good
for."
He stepped over to Cally, put an arm around him and pulled him close.
Cally came eagerly, a smile spreading across his face. "Yeah? What would
that be?"
Derry kissed him, and dropped a hand down to explore his boyfriend below
the waistline, to which Cally made appreciative noises. "Mmm. I could get
into this. Only --" Cally turned his head suddenly and looked over at the
black veils cloaking the three doors. "Only, what if you just can't see
through the doors from this side? What if --" He suddenly grinned at
Derry. "What if there's someone on the other side, watching us?"
Derry laughed. "Well, if he's behind the left door, he's a popsicle, so we
don't have to worry about him." He shook his head. "I kinda feel like, if
there had been anyone there behind the other doors, they'd have grabbed
hold of one of those branches to let us know. Right?"
"Maybe," Cally admitted. His eyes held mischief now. "Maybe not. Maybe
they're pervs, and they just want to watch without us knowing."
Derry smiled, closed his eyes, and leaned his cheek against Cally's. "Want
to watch what?" he whispered.
Cally lowered a hand and began to mimic Derry's explorations. Derry
sighed, loving every bit of the touch. "Oh. That."
They sank to the floor, and were soon lost in each other's embraces.
"My phone doesn't work," Derry said, after they had dressed again. He'd
pulled it out to check the time, and to see if there had been any texts or
calls while he was silent. But the signal strength meter
clearly showed that he had no connection to the outside world.
Cally pulled out his phone and checked it, and frowned. "Mine's out, too.
No bars at all." He looked up at Derry. "Because we're inside this place?"
Derry considered that. There were parts of his grandfather's land with
poor reception, but he had never found a place with no reception at all.
"Maybe." He glanced over at the doors full of blackness, and tossed his
head at the exit hallway. "Let's go. We need to figure a way to see what's
on the other side of those doors, anyway."
They followed the hallway back around and exited the mound. At the top of
the steps, Cally paused. "Somebody covered this up once. Looks like a long
time ago. They didn't want it found."
"Yeah. I thought about that, too. Do you think we should cover it again?"
Cally frowned. "Well, if we're gonna be coming and going, something with a
ton of dirt on top of it would just be a pain. If we want to cover the
steps, it has to be something easier to deal with."
Derry looked at the length of the stairwell, then around at the
surrounding woods. "No one comes this way, ever, as far as I know.
But...you never know. I think it should be covered, just in case." He
grinned, a sudden idea forming in his mind. "I might have just the thing
at the house. Let's go."
The made their way carefully back to the edge of the field. It wouldn't do
to leave a path that others could easily follow, and even though Derry's
grandfather no longer worked the land, he still had a tendency to walk
around it and inspect things fairly regularly. He had just done that the
other day, in fact. Derry had no idea if his grandfather came into this
part of the woods or not, but they couldn't risk the mound being
discovered - at least before they had a chance to explore it.
As they stepped into the field again, Derry pulled out his phone. The
signal looked good now. "I guess the mound cuts out the connection
somehow," he decided. "That kind of sucks, because I was thinking of an
idea to see past the blackness of those doors." He considered that, then
nodded to himself. "No, it'll still work."
Cally looked interested. "Yeah? What?"
Derry grinned at him. "You remember that dumb selfie wand my mom got me
for Christmas?"
Cally laughed. "The one that pulls out in sections to make it
longer? Yeah, I remember it."
It was a gimmick, really, made by some smart guy to capitalize on the
selfie phenomenon. You clipped your phone into a holder at the end of the
thing, then pulled it out - it telescoped into three sections - and then
you could take selfies of yourself from several feet away. Selfies of
yourself holding a selfie wand, that is.
Derry nodded. "I was thinking I could clip my phone in it, pull out the
wand, and stick it through one of those black doors, and share the video
on your phone through the cloud. But if we can't connect to each other, we
can't do that." He smiled. "Just have to do it old fashioned, and record
the video on the phone, then pull it out and rerun it."
Cally rolled his eyes. "Well, duh. I would have thought of that first,
before sharing the video, anyway."
"That's cause you're low-tech at heart," Derry kidded.
Cally looked around the tall grasses, but they were quite alone in the
vast field. He danced around, pushed his crotch against Derry's butt, and
grabbed Derry's hips and banged their bodies together. "I'll
low-tech you right in the butt, if you don't shut up."
Derry wiggled his cheeks suggestively against his boyfriend and laughed.
"It's not your turn. But I'll keep it in mind for the next time it is."
Cally laughed, came back to Derry's side and put an arm around him. "You
sure make me happy, Derry."
Derry sighed and put an arm around Cally and drew him close. "Get mad at
me if I said I loved you?"
"I guess not," Cally returned, trying to frown, but unable to hide the
smile underneath of it. "If you're into all that gay stuff."
Derry laughed. "Aren't we gay?" he whispered, leaning closer.
"You are. I'm just a guy in love with a gay guy."
Derry laughed again, and laid a fierce kiss onto Cally's cheek. "I'll take
what I can get, I guess."
Cally grunted, but his arm tightened around Derry as they moved on.
They had the sense to separate long before they got within sight of
Derry's house. Derry never knew when his grandfather would be out and
about, or sitting out on the front porch. And Derry's mom, who sold real
estate, could show up at any odd hour of the workday. Derry hadn't worked
up the nerve to tell his mom about him and Cally yet. His feeling was that
she would accept it, and they would go on.
His grandfather he wasn't so sure about. He was old - like sixty -
although it was kind of hard to tell, the way he acted sometimes. He was a
lot of fun, really, always cutting up and playing around with Derry. He
was more like a friend than a grandfather, sometimes.
And Derry had always figured that coming out to his friends would be the
hardest part of being gay. Derry had never heard his grandfather say
anything specifically bad about gays, but he had never had any sense that
the man was exactly in love with the idea of them, either. Derry did know
that his granddad loved him; it was visible in the man's eyes
when he spoke to Derry, and apparent in every action he took with regards
to his grandson's life. Ever since Derry's dad had died when he was four,
Derry's grandad had been there for Derry and his mom. It was a
relationship that worked for all of them, and Derry was not of a mind to
upset things if he didn't have to. Keeping his relationship with Cally a
secret was something that rubbed against his natural inclination to
include his mom and grandad in his life; but it was a secret he felt best
kept in order not to upset the peace that they all lived by. For now,
anyway.
The tall grass ended and they crossed a bit of garden still waiting its
summer planting of beets and green onions, and moved onto the green lawn
about the big old Victorian house that was the only home that Derry had
really ever known. It perched atop a small hillock, surrounded by a spread
of graceful old red oaks, resplendent in its fresh coat of white paint and
scarlet trim. Grandad took good care of the place, no doubt, and Derry was
more than a little proud to live in such a fine house.
Cally, who lived across the distant state road at the end of the long
driveway, also lived in a big old house, and it, too was quite splendid.
Both houses had once been the centers of working farms, and both houses
seemed quite satisfied to spend their retirement years as homes to people
that loved them. Both homes commanded large plots of land, and both homes
had been in the same families for more than a hundred years.
They crossed the lawn and bounded up the steps to the screen door, went
inside, and then bounded up the staircase to the second floor. Cally
followed Derry as they went down the hallway and around to Derry's room.
They'd no sooner gone inside when Derry heard is grandfather's voice
calling up the stairwell.
"Derry? Was that you? Or a herd of elephants?"
Derry grinned at Cally, and went back into the hallway. "It's me and
Cally, granddad. Sorry. Hope we didn't wake you up."
"Wake me?" the man's voice floated back, sounding surprised. "Who sleeps
at this time of the day?"
Derry laughed at that. More then once, before school had let out for the
summer, Derry had come home on the bus and found his granddad asleep in
the wicker rocker on the front porch, or on the couch in the back den.
Derry's granddad still got up with the sun - but he didn't always make it
through the whole day without a little afternoon nap. If he got caught at
it, he would snort and just say he'd been resting his eyes. But Derry had
heard him snoring away more than once, and had never been fooled by the
denials.
What the heck? Granddad had worked hard since he was not much older than
Derry was now. The man had every right to take a nap in the afternoon if
he felt like he needed one.
"Did you eat lunch?" granddad called again. "There's chicken for
sandwiches in the refrigerator, if you guys are hungry."
"Okay, granddad. Thanks!"
Derry went back into the bedroom and pushed the door to, but didn't latch
it. They weren't going to be there long enough for privacy to be an issue.
Derry went to his closet and dug out the selfie wand. Besides being a
little gimmicky to use, the wand was a color that was suspiciously pink,
and Derry had always suspected that the thing was meant to be used by some
girl in taking pictures of her and her friends in their latest new
clothing. Derry might be gay, but carrying around stuff that was pink was
just a little too gay for his tastes.
But now the device might actually prove useful. Derry dug out his cell and
clipped it into the holder at the end and tightened the clamp, plugged in
the cable, and then turned the holder around on its swivel so that it
faced away from the handle. Then he pulled the wand out to it's full three
feet of extension, and pointed the lens at Cally. "What do ya think?"
Cally shrugged. "Looks to me like it will work fine. How much video will
your phone record?"
Derry shrugged. "It'll be enough. I don't have a ton of apps or pictures
on it. A couple of minutes is all we really need to see what's there. I
have more than enough memory for that."
"Cool. Wanna grab one of those sandwiches your grandpap was talking about?
On the way out, I mean?" Cally patted his stomach. "I haven't eaten since
breakfast."
Derry laughed. "Me, either. We can do that...oh. Remind me we need to go
to the barn before we head back to the mound."
"Okay."
Derry retrieved his cell and put it back in the pocket of his shorts,
collapsed the selfie wand and tied the wrist loop at the end of its handle
to his belt, and then motioned for Cally to follow him downstairs.
Derry's granddad was in the kitchen brewing coffee. He was a big man, with
dark brown hair shot with gray, and a mustache that always seemed to be
fighting with the rest of his face for dominance. He had pleasant blue
eyes and a smile that said he meant every word of it when he showed it to
you.
"Hey, fellas. What's up, Cally?"
"Not much, Mr. Hamlyn. How are you?"
"Oh, I'm good. How's your dad doing these days? And your mom?"
"They're good." Cally grinned. "I'll tell them you asked."
Derry's granddad nodded. "Okey dokey. So...what are you two up to? See
you're both absorbing a lot of sun. That'll catch up with you by the time
you're my age, if you aren't careful. Derry, are you using sunscreen?"
Derry rolled his eyes. "Granddad, you sound like mom. Do you want to sound
like mom?"
His grandfather laughed. "Nope, not me. Forget I asked. Look like a prune
when you're old, if you want. It's no skin off my teeth."
Cally smiled. "We're both wearing sunscreen, Mr. Hamlyn. Derry's just
kidding you."
Derry opened the refrigerator and looked over the shelves. "You said there
was chicken. I don't see any chicken."
His grandfather laughed. "In that big bowl on the top shelf that says
'chicken' on it."
"Oh. Well, why didn't you say?" But Derry was grinning. He and his
granddad always played like this. He grabbed the big Tupperware bowl and
carried it over to the counter.
"Be careful when you open that lid," his granddad said, straight-faced.
"It's not dead yet, and that was that ornery hen with the big white flash
on her breast."
Derry feigned horror. "You killed Winona? She was my favorite hen!"
"She was talking bad about you, Derry. It had to be done for the good of
all of us."
Derry looked forlorn. "She owed me money, granddad. Now I'll never get it
back."
Cally's eyes were wide, and going back and forth between Derry and his
grandfather, and the expression on the boy's face made it obvious he
didn't know if what he was hearing was serious or not. Derry and his
granddad both looked at each other and started laughing.
Cally made a face, realizing he'd been had. "Aw, you guys suck. I was
almost starting to believe you had a talking chicken."
They all laughed. Derry grabbed a loaf of bread from the pantry and a jar
of mayonnaise from the fridge, and got to work making sandwiches. "You
want one, granddad?"
"Nah. I had soup for lunch today. You know us old people. Chicken's hard
on the teeth."
"You're not supposed to eat the bones is why, granddad. I keep telling
you."
Derry's granddad gave himself a little smack on the forehead. "That's
right. I'll remember next time, Fred."
"My name's Hank, granddad," Derry said. "You forgot again."
Cally finally waved his hands in the air. "Will you two cut it out! I'm
starting to feel like I'm the crazy one here."
"Was there ever any doubt?" Derry's granddad asked, grinning. "I mean,
you're the one that hangs out with Hank here."
Derry laughed, but nodded his head. "Okay, we'll cool it. We were just
having fun with you, Cally."
Cally made a face, but couldn't hide his smile. "You guys are nuts."
Derry's granddad smiled. "Seriously now, what have you guys been up to
today? Pretty out, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is," Derry agreed. "Me and Cally have just been running around
the fields more or less, enjoying the sunshine."
"Good day for it. Wish I could just run around and enjoy the day. I have
to fix that fence over by the side of the house again. The red keeps
running through it. That darn horse hates fences."
"I don't blame him one bit, granddad. You don't ride him enough anymore.
He's probably just bored."
"Yeah, I know." Derry's grandad brightened. "Hey, there's an idea. I'll
get the saddle on him and take him for a run to the river and back."
Derry grinned. "There you go."
The older man looked pleased with himself. "You guys going back out
again?"
Derry nodded. "Just as soon as I get these sandwiches made."
"Lock the front door when you go," Derry's granddad said. "I'll be gone an
hour or so. I doubt your mom will be back until dinner. She's showing that
place out in Cooper again." He turned to go, heading for the back door.
"There's some drinks in the fridge. Leave the beer - that's mine."
He went out, letting the back screen door slam behind him.
Cally looked at Derry. "You two are crazy."
Derry laughed. "We're just playing. My mom says that granddad is in his
second childhood. He's just having fun. He's cool."
Cally nodded. "Yeah. My granddad just sits around and watches old movies
on the TV. He's not as fun as your granddad."
Derry cast a fond look at the back screen door. "My granddad's a
one-of-a-kind."
Over on the counter, the Mr. Coffee gave a little snort and started
squirting brew into the pot below. Derry looked over at it and shook his
head, smiling. "Well, it'll be there for him when he gets back."
Derry finished making the sandwiches, handed one to Cally, put everything
away, and then dug out a couple of lemonades from the refrigerator. "Come
on. Barn is next. Oh...wait a sec.""
Derry ran to the front door, locked it, and returned to the kitchen. They
went out the back door, and Derry pulled the big door shut, but left it
unlocked. As far as they were from the road, the idea that someone might
come along and go in was just ridiculous. The nearest town was a drive,
not a walk, and no one was coming out this way just for the drive.
They crossed the backyard just as Derry's grandfather came out of the
stable riding the red, who looked full of fire and delighted to be going
out. The older man waved, and then gave the animal a gentle squeeze with
his legs and an encouraging whistle, and off they went.
Derry went around to the side of the barn and went in through the shop
door. Cally eyeballed the place, even though he had been inside many times
before. There was, it was said, at least one example of every tool ever
made in this shop, and Cally believed every word of it. He had been
present when Derry's grandfather had crafted all sorts of cool stuff, from
axles for their go-cart racer in sixth grade to frame parts for the
neighbor's tractors. The man was a plain wizard with tools, and still made
stuff out here for the house and the stables, and of course did all the
work that kept their various vehicles running.
Derry passed through the shop without so much as a peek at the awesome
stuff in it. He was used to it, and it was no big deal. He set his drink
down, went on into the storage area, went up to a cabinet, opened the door
and dug inside. A moment later he reemerged with what looked like a large
rolled up tarp - except that it was camouflage-colored.
Cally gave a little laugh, coming closer. "Hey, isn't that your old tent?"
Derry nodded, grinning. "Yeah. I figured if we opened it up, it'll be long
enough to cover that stairwell. We can stake it in place and throw some
branches and stuff on top. Nobody's ever gonna get close enough to see
what it is."
Cally reached out and fingered the material, smiling. "I remember all the
times we slept out in this thing." The smile turned to a grin, and
he leaned forward, lowering his voice. "You kissed me for the first time
in this tent."
Derry sighed. "Actually, it was you that kissed me. But...yeah. We'll be
careful with it. I don't want to tear it up."
Derry closed his mouth on his sandwich and let the thing hang there for
second while he got the rolled up tent under one arm. Then he grabbed the
sandwich, bit into it, and grinned. "Come on."
As they passed through the shop again, Derry retrieved his lemonade, and
then they picked up a half dozen short wooden stakes from a mound of them
in a bin, tucked them under what arm space was available, juggling
sandwiches and drinks, and headed outside. They crossed the lawn again,
and then the tall grass, which moved gently out of the way as they passed.
The sun looked down, warm and summer golden, and unconcerned with the
boy's plans.
No one had been near the mound, of that they were certain. They sat on the
edge of the stairwell a moment and finished their sandwiches and drinks.
"We're not gonna cover the whole thing, are we?" Cally asked.
Derry shook his head. "Now that I see it again, I don't think the tent
will be quite long enough. That's okay. If it's just mostly hidden,
someone could walk right by and not see it."
The first thing they did was clean off the old wooden cover and break it
up. It had been constructed of rough-hewn wood lengths and thick laths
nailed across the supports, but was so rotten that it proved easy enough
to break up. They laid the wood on the ground among some brush and covered
it with leaves and dead branches, and then spread out the dirt that had
been on top of the cover and spread leaves over that. One thing there was
plenty of in the woods were dead leaves.
Then they laid out the tent and used a rock to stake one end down by the
mound, and rolled the material along the sides, staking it midway, then at
the other end, as far as it would go. There was a space about three feet
long at the head of the stairwell left uncovered, but that was just enough
room for them to duck underneath and get down the steps. After that, they
walked back ten feet and looked at their handiwork.
"Shit, you can't see it now, and it's not even covered," Cally said,
grinning.
Next they went around and found some branches and carried them back and
laid them across the stairwell where it was covered by the tent, then
found some low brush and added that, too, and finished with a liberal
covering of dried leaves. They were careful to go off a ways to get the
cover, so that no one's attention would be drawn to the fact that someone
had scavenged stuff near the mound. In combination with what was already
growing on both sides of the stairwell, the entry was now invisible even
to someone walking by a few feet away.
"What about the rain?" Cally asked suddenly. He looked at Derry and stuck
out his bottom lip. "That old cover couldn't have been water tight. I'm
just realizing how clean those steps were, for having been hidden away
like that for years. Kinda weird, huh?"
Derry had not though of that himself. That the entry to the mound was
still so spotless after years of concealment did seem pretty odd, now that
he thought of it. He shrugged. "Maybe elves come and vacuum it twice a
week."
Cally rolled his eyes. "If we see elves on the other side of those doors,
I'm going home and going right to bed."
Derry poked him, laughing, and headed back to the stairs. "Ready to see
what's on the other side of those doors?"
"Yep. Lead on, McGruff."
Derry just sighed at that. They could apologize to Shakespeare later.
They ducked through the opening they'd left, and carefully picked their
way down the stairs. It was much darker there now, with only scant light
coming in through the opening they'd left at the head of the stairs. Derry
couldn't even see the blackness that filled the doorway at the landing,
and stepped right through it into the softly-lit hallway before he even
realized he was there.
"Whoa. That's a little startling," Cally said, coming through right behind
Derry and bumping into him.
"Makes it a little creepier, yeah," Derry agreed. He headed off around the
hallway, and Cally fell in beside him.
Nothing had changed inside the center room with the three doors. It made
Derry wonder how long the place had stood, just as it was. And who
the visitor had been who had covered the stairway. Hidden it, in
fact.
"Wonder who made that cover?" Derry mused, aloud. "It was pretty rotten,
but that doesn't mean anything. Untreated wood doesn't last but so long
outside."
"It was old wood," Cally pointed out. "I mean, unfinished. Like what our
barn is made out of. And that's eighty years old."
"Could have been anybody, I guess. Though eighty years ago this was still
our land - my granddad's father's land." Derry shook his head. "Whoever it
was, they kept it a secret."
"Yep. I see why they did. If the government learned about this, they'd
just move in and steal your land right away from you."
Derry nodded. He had a poor view of government, passed down from his
granddad. "Thieves, liars, and more thieves," granddad often said. "Pick
your pocket clean and then rob your house when you're not looking. And
that's on a good day."
A lot of people in these parts held a similar view. Heck. A lot of people
everywhere held a similar view.
"Whoever covered that stairway meant to hide the place for good. It wasn't
just disguised, it was buried. That means they weren't trying to come back
and visit."
Cally nodded. "In a way that's cool. They just left it for us to do the
exploring."
Derry laughed, and his eyes went back to the three doors. What made them
work?
"You think these doors use power?" he wondered, looking at Cally. "I mean,
like some of those gateways in the movies?"
Cally shrugged. "I don't know. If they do, there must be something here
that runs them."
Derry considered that. "Have to be something that runs a long time. Maybe
like atomic power or something?" He grinned then. "Maybe zero-point
energy. That would be way cooler."
Cally rolled his eyes. "Let's just see what's on the other side of the
doors, okay, geekboy?"
Derry laughed, and stuck out his tongue. Sometimes Cally seemed as
technologically intolerant as a caveman. Derry untied the selfie wand from
his belt loop and fished his phone out of his pocket. He set the cell into
the clamp on the end and tightened it in place, and connected the cable.
"How about just one minute at first?"
"Sounds good to me. Want to do the center door first?"
Derry nodded. "Then the right one. I don't know about the left one. I
don't want to trash my phone."
Cally frowned. "I'll bet a couple of seconds wouldn't hurt it."
"Maybe. Maybe we can use your phone for that door."
Cally laughed, and held up his hands. "Let's just do it."
Derry pulled the wand out to its longest length, then set the phone to
start recording, and walked to the center door and slowly pushed the wand
through. Cally pulled out his own phone and watched the seconds tick by on
the clock, while Derry just stared at the point where the wand disappeared
into the blackness.
His cell was now on the other side.
Derry
moved the wand slowly from side to side, so as to get a good view of
what was on the other side. Then he moved it up and down. Then he looked
over at Cally.
A minute seems like a long time, when you're actually waiting on it. Derry
kept letting his eyes slide over to Cally, thinking surely that one minute
finally had gone by. But his friend just stood there, watching the screen
on his own phone.
Derry was about to say something when Cally looked up at him. "Five
seconds. Four...three...two...one. Okay."
Derry backed up slowly, watching as the wand emerged. He halfway expected
the phone to be toast, or just gone - but it emerged from the blackness
looking just like it always had.
The boys moved away from the three doors, over to where two of the chairs
stood, and sat down next to each other. Derry laid a finger quickly
against the phone's case, but it felt neither cold nor hot - room
temperature, just like where they were. He stopped the recording and saved
the file, then looked over at his friend. "Ready?"
Cally nodded, and they hunched together so that they could both see the
screen. Derry started the file, and an image of the camera facing the
blackness of the doorway appeared on the screen, then began to move
forward.
The phone pierced the blackness, and then they were looking at another
room. It was different from the one they were in. It was larger, for one
thing, with a high ceiling and walls that were gray. Across from them
there was another row of black-cloaked doors, five in a row. Actually,
several rows of doors, he could see, as the camera panned slowly to the
left. The camera reached the end of its arc at yet another row of doors,
and then began to move back the other way. All the doors they could see
were filled with blackness. And when the phone moved the the other way, to
the right, more rows of five doors appeared, and finally a hallway, which
pierced the wall of the room and ambled off into the distance.
"That looks like it goes someplace," Cally said immediately.
Derry smiled at that, but didn't comment. He watched next as the phone
turned its eye at the ceiling - one at least twice as high as the one
there in the mound - and then came back down to examine the polished
floor. And then the phone pulled back, and the door on this side came back
into view.
Derry took a deep breath. Beyond this door, were many more doors. What
were they? Where did they go?
"This is some kind of transportation system," Cally said, shaking his
head. "Who knows where all those other doors go?"
Derry gave a little surprised laugh. Just when he thought that Cally
wasn't on the same page with him, there he was, in capital letters. Derry
leaned over and put an arm around his boyfriend's shoulders, and pressed
his face against Cally's cheek. "I'm so glad you're with me on this."
He felt Cally nod, and then the other boy's arm encircle him. "I know.
It'd really be scary to do this alone, wouldn't it?"
Derry pulled back and looked at him. "Do what?"
Cally stared at him, and licked his lips. "We're going, aren't we? To take
a look?"
There was a trace of fear in Cally's eyes, but much more wonder. And excitement.
Derry nodded, a smile spreading across his face. "Yeah. We're going. But
we can't just go through now. We need to set something up where we can be
gone for a day. Like an overnight camp out. We've done that enough times
before that no one will think anything of it. Okay?"
Cally nodded. "That's a good idea. How about tonight?"
"How about tomorrow night? We need time to think about this and be ready."
Cally nodded again, more slowly, his impatience showing now. "Okay." He
grinned. "Now let's look at that other door."
They repeated the process with the cell phone on the right-hand door.
Derry pushed the phone through, moved it slowly side to side, than slowly
up and down. Cally timed it at a minute, and then they withdrew the phone.
They went back to the chairs again and huddled together to look at the
screen. The file started, the black door approached, and then the camera
was through.
It was another room. The far wall was much closer this time, and the room
seemed barren. There were no other doors visible. In fact, there seemed to
be nothing there at all but an empty room...wait.
As the camera moved slowly to the right, something came into view. At
first glance it appeared to be a giant TV screen, but then with a start
Derry realized it was a window. A large
window.
Framed within, beyond the glass, an amber-hued late-evening sky hung
behind towers of stone. The towers seemed natural, but they also seemed to
be full of holes, from which flowed forth the steady yellow light of fires
or lanterns. All about the towers fluttered birds. Or...were
they birds? The wingspan of the creatures seemed enormous, and as
they darted about the darkening sky, Derry was certain he could see the
unmistakeable forms of legs hanging beneath the long bodies. But not the
legs of birds. These looked rather like the legs of men.
Derry paused the image, and he and Cally stared at it.
"Are those people?" Cally whispered. "People with...wings?"
Derry shook his head. "I don't know. It's too dark to really see. But...it
looks like...maybe."
They started the file again, watched as the camera panned left. A great
door set into the stone wall came into view, but this one looked to be of
stout wood braced with iron, through which the heads of rivets seemed to
show. The camera then looked up at the low ceiling, then the rough stone
floor, and then slowly pulled out and was back with them in the mound.
Derry and Cally both sat in silence for a moment after the file was done.
"That's not on Earth," Cally finally said.
Derry could only nod. "No. I think you're right."
Cally shook his head. "That room seems safe enough. Empty. I don't know if
I'd want to go through that big iron door, though."
"No. I think we should try the middle door first. Then think about the
door with the stone towers. And the...the birds."
Cally suddenly jumped to his feet, grinning. "Do you know what we have,
Derry? A way to go to another world!"
Derry nodded. "So it would seem."
Cally's face fell. "Well, you don't seem very excited about it."
Derry stood up, and put his hands on Cally's waist. "I am. I am excited,
Cally. But...I'm also a little scared. What we're thinking about doing is
dangerous. All kinds of shit could happen." He leaned forward and looked
into his boyfriend's eyes. "If we go...we might not get back."
Cally licked his lips. "I don't want that
to happen."
"No. Me, either. So we have to think about this and be very, very careful.
Okay?"
Cally watched him a moment, and then a small smile crept onto his face.
"We're still going to look?"
Derry rubbed at his nose, but nodded. "Yeah. You want to, don't you?"
"Sure. Um, if you do."
Derry suddenly laughed. "I love you."
Cally frowned, but then nodded. "Yeah. I love you, too, Derry. So we'll be
super careful, okay?"
Derry sighed and looked over at the last door. "I would like to
know what's on the other side of that one."
Cally offered his cell phone. "Wanna use mine?"
Derry smiled. "Nah. Mine's already ready to go. I'll just stick it in and
pull it out real fast."
They approached the left door, and Derry started his phone recording.
"Five seconds. Probably ruin it, but maybe not."
He sighed out a here goes nothin'! and pushed the cell phone
through, and moved it quickly back and forth, up and down.
"One...two...three...four...five."
Derry drew the phone back quickly, fearing what he might see. But the
phone was still there, and still working. Daintily, he slid his fingers up
the wand, until he was sure he was touching a part that had gone through.
It was cool to the touch - cooler than it had any right to be - but not so
cold that it was uncomfortable. Apparently, whatever was on the other side
needed more than five seconds to do its dirty work.
They returned to the chairs and sat, and Derry restarted the file.
This time, when the cell pierced the dark veil, what was there was
impossible to see. Derry had moved the camera so quickly that everything
seemed a blur. The five seconds of footage was over so fast that they
could not tell what they were looking at.
"I'll have to do it again, but not move the camera."
So they went back to the door, and repeated the process. This time they
left the phone through for ten seconds, seeing as it had survived the
first attempt with nothing but a brief chill. This time, Derry held the
wand steady, and then withdrew it as Cally called time.
They peered at the small screen as the file ran. Spread out before the
lens was a large room. But whatever was in it was hidden by a layer of
cold, blue snow, offering only the odd mound here and there to even
indicate that things were buried there.
The far wall was a giant piece of glass, or something similar to it. Right
in the center of the glass was a huge impact star, from which cracks
spread outward in every direction. The center of the star was a hole,
which apparently went all the way through. Beyond the glass was a dark
landscape, also covered in snow, with the jagged forms of rocks sticking
up here and there, and what looked like a ridge of mountains way off to
the left. The pale blue sky swirled with more snow, except for one spot,
where a smear of blackness showed through, and a tiny, brilliant dot that
could only be a far distant sun.
Derry let the file run and end, and then looked at Cally. "If we had just
stepped through, we'd probably have been hurt really badly. And if we
hadn't been able to step right back, we'd be dead."
Cally frowned. "That's really stupid."
Derry blinked. "You don't think that place could kill us?"
"No. I mean it could kill us. So why is that door open to a
place that is so dangerous? You'd think anybody that could make technology
like this would childproof it, right?"
Derry grinned. "You have a point. But we've just seen that that door is
open."
"Is it?" Cally said, getting to his feet. He walked over to the left-hand
door and examined it. Derry followed quickly, aware of his friend's
tendency to sometimes act before thinking things through.
"What are you doing, Cally?"
"Trying something." Cally extended his index finger like he was pointing
at something, and moved it towards the field of darkness in the door.
Derry immediately reached out and grabbed his friend's arm. "Are you nuts?
That place will freeze your hand right off!"
Cally shook his head willfully. "I'm not sticking my hand through. Just
the tip of this finger, and just for a single second." He looked over at
Derry. "What can happen? I'll get frostbite on my fingertip. Now take your
hand off."
Derry went to stand behind Cally and put his arms around his waist.
"Something happens and I'm pulling you right back."
"Okay. Now be quiet a minute."
Derry watched over Cally's shoulder as the fingertip went right up to the
darkness...and then stopped.
"What are you doing?" Derry whispered, after a moment.
Cally pulled his finger back, pushed it forward with more speed. It
reached the darkness, and simply stopped.
"It won't go through," Cally said.
Derry released his boyfriend and moved to stand next to him. "It won't?"
Cally splayed his fingers and attempted to push his whole hand through the
blackness; but it reached the surface and was stopped cold.
Derry reached out a hand and touched the darkness. It felt solid, just
like a wall. He formed a fist and rapped on it, feeling its solidity,
though the action generated no sound of impact.
"Oh, shit." Derry breathed. "That's really weird."
Cally blew a sigh through his nose. "No, that's really great! Don't
you get what that means? It means we can't accidentally go through a door
that will hurt us. There is
some kind of protection there."
Derry stepped forward, laid both hands flat on the darkness, and pushed
hard.
It was like pushing against a concrete wall.
Derry looked at Cally. "It means that gear will go through, but living
stuff can't. Look, but don't touch."
"The branch went through. Remember?"
Derry frowned at that blow to his theory. "Oh, yeah. Well...it must know
the difference between people and a tree branch."
Cally nodded. "Yeah. That's cool, isn't it?"
"Maybe. But what if the other doors are the same way? That means we won't
be going anywhere, Cally."
Disappointment flashed across Cally's face, and he backed up a step and
looked at the center door. "One way to find out."
Before Derry could stop him, Cally whirled his hand through an arc aimed
squarely at the center door. The hand reached the darkness, passed
through, and came right back out again on the other leg of the arc.
Cally grinned. "I guess that door is safe."
Derry clenched his teeth, but just nodded.
Cally came closer, stuck his face near Derry's. "Stop worrying about me.
I'll be okay."
Derry looked into his boyfriend's eyes, saw only excitement and happiness
there. His irritation at Cally's reckless act slowly faded, and he leaned
forward and kissed the other boy.
"Sleep over at my house tonight?" Derry asked. "We'll make plans. I'll
tell my mom and granddad that you and me are sleeping out under the stars
tomorrow night."
Cally nodded. "Yeah, I'll sleep over. That'll be cool."
Derry nodded, unclamped his phone from the selfie wand and returned it to
his pocket. Then he collapsed the wand and tied the wrist loop to his
belt.
"Come on. We should be getting back. You can eat dinner at my place, too."
Cally looked delighted. "I'm gonna sleep in your bed with you tonight," he
whispered, his eyes alight.
"We've done it before," Derry said, squinting.
Cally grinned. "But tonight is your turn."
Derry's eyebrows went up. "Oh, yeah." He smiled. "Cool."
They started back for the exit hallway, and there Cally stopped. He turned
and looked back at the three doors. "I just thought of something."
Derry smiled. "There's something new."
Cally grinned at him and gave him a little push. "Keep it up, geekboy.
I'll squeeze your peter off tonight if you don't shut up." He turned and
flexed the big muscles in his buttocks just to show he meant business.
Derry laughed. "Ooh, I'll bet that feels good!"
Cally gave him a little pout, and Derry stepped forward and touched his
arm. "What did you think of?"
Cally turned back to look at the darkened doorways. "That tomorrow night,
we really will be out under the stars."
Derry smiled, and nodded slowly. "Maybe. Maybe you're right. Let's go."
He put his arm around Cally's shoulders, and they left the room together.
*******
"Have some more roast beef, Cal," granddad said, waving a hand at the
platter in the center of the table. "Don't be bashful. Eat up."
Derry's mom smiled at him, too. "There's plenty, honey. Help yourself."
Cally grinned around a mouthful of Lima beans. "Thanks. I'm starting to
get stuffed."
Derry nodded. "Good dinner, granddad. The roast beef was really tender."
Derry's mom usually cooked the evening meal, but when she was going to be
late showing a property, granddad filled in very nicely. There didn't seem
to be a lot that the man couldn't do, if he put his mind to it.
"It was cheap, too. Got a four pound chuck roast for ten bucks. That's
pretty good, considering the way prices on meat have been lately."
Derry's mom nodded, her eyes bright. "You're a better shopper than I am,
dad. Maybe you should do the shopping all the time."
Granddad rolled his eyes. "You're not getting me that easy, little miss.
They're are some crazy old people in that market. They all have glasses on
that are at least an inch thick, and they don't pay attention to anything
or anyone. I was nearly run down by a weaving widower blindly pushing a
cart, more than once."
Everyone laughed. Granddad was known for his no-love-lost policy when it
came to shopping. He did it to help out, and because he wanted to eat like
the rest of them. But he didn't much like it.
"You guys are sleeping in tonight?" Derry's mom asked, knowing when to
change the subject. "Or outside?"
"We'll be in my room tonight," Derry returned. "We thought we'd camp out
tomorrow night, but haven't decided where yet."
"There's that good spot down by the river," granddad said. "Nice stone
ledge you can build a fire on. "
Derry shrugged. "Mosquitoes are murder down by the river this time of
year, granddad. We'll figure a spot."
"Oh. I didn't think of that. Well, just be careful where you build a fire,
okay? It's been more than a week since we've had any rain, and I've
noticed that things are getting pretty dry."
"We'll be careful, Mr. Hamlyn," Cally promised.
Granddad nodded. "Way this summer is going, it'll be fall before you know
it. I just can't figure out when these years started going by so fast."
Derry's mom laughed. "I've been noticing that, too, lately. I hope it's
not a sign I'm getting old."
Granddad made a slightly rude noise. "I've got shoes in my closet that are
older than you, honey. You're not even forty yet. Wait until you hit
sixty. That's when the party starts."
Derry's mom tsked. "Oh, dad, you're in really good shape.
There's nothing wrong with you, and you can outwork all these young guys
any day of the week."
Grandad grinned at that. "I can hold my own, I guess."
Derry smiled. "You've had a really good life so far, haven't you,
granddad?"
The man smiled in return. "Well...yes. I have some very special people in
it, and that helps a lot."
Derry understood that he was included in that assessment, and grinned.
"You've done a lot of things in your life, granddad. I just hope my life
will be as interesting and fun as yours."
Granddad smiled at that, and sighed. "My life has been good." He seemed to
consider that, and nodded. "When I was your age, Derry, my dad used to say
that life is like a hallway lined with doors. Some doors lead forward in
life, some lead back. Sometimes, you don't know which door you're opening
when you grab hold of the knob."
Derry and Cally looked at each other, both thinking about the strange
doorways hidden inside the mound. Derry nodded, turning his gaze back to
his granddad. "That's pretty smart. I can see how that would be, too. Some
doors, you never know where they will take you."
Granddad gave a little sigh. "I remember thinking as a boy that it would
be a lot easier in life if each of those doors had a sign by it, that let
you know what you were in for if you opened it." He shook his head. "Life
isn't like that, though. There's risk in every door you chance to open."
It was an unsettling conversation now, and Derry wanted to move away from
it. "Maybe it's better, not knowing."
Granddad frowned. "Derry, most of the time you don't know, and that's
where all the surprises in life come from. But sometimes...sometimes there
is just something about a door...some strange sense you get, where you
know that if you open it, magic things might happen. Some doors, you just
know that if you go through them, they will advance your life in leaps and
bounds." He smiled. "Move you forward. It's that odd, onward door that can
change your life. Knowing that door when you see it - that's the trick."
Derry looked at Cally again. The other boy looked a little pensive; but
then he grinned. "Sounds like an adventure to me, Mr. Hamlyn."
Granddad smiled. "That's a good way to look at it, Cal. An adventure. Not
enough of that particular animal in most people's lives." He made another
almost rude noise, his eyes moving sideways to take in Derry's mom. "Won't
find any adventure down at the supermarket, I can tell you that. Just
maniac old ladies running carts into you."
Derry's mom sighed. "I get the message. I'll do the shopping next week, I
promise."
"You sell the Istwhistle place yet?" Derry asked, glad to change the
subject away from doors.
His mom huffed. "I waited all afternoon for that yo yo who made the
appointment to show up, and he called at five o'clock and said something
had come up and he was still in Booneville, and could he reschedule? So
the answer to that is no, I have not sold the Istwhistle place yet. And
I'm not going to sell it, as long as the potential buyers are all idiots."
Granddad shook his head. "That's not fair, honey. Maybe the guy is just
busy."
Derry's mom's eyebrows went up. "Excuse me! His appointment was for two,
and I asked him to let me know by three if he couldn't make it. He waited
until five to let me know. That's just wasting my time, dad..."
Derry grinned at Cally, and then at his mom. "Can we be excused?"
His mom was about to say more, but her eyes bounced over to briefly smile
at Derry. "Sure. Take your dishes to the kitchen, okay? I think someone
left some ice cream sandwiches in the freezer, too."
"Thanks, mom. Thanks for the great dinner, granddad."
"Yeah. It was delicious. Thanks," Cally put in.
"All
part of the service, fellas." Granddad's eyes went back to his
daughter's. "Honey, sometimes people have lives, you know, and..."
Derry got up, grabbing his plate and glass, and motioned for Cally to
follow.
They rinsed their tableware and stuck them in the dishwasher, then went to
the freezer to investigate the matter of ice cream sandwiches. To their
delight, there was a whole box of them, and Derry handed one to Cally and
then took one for himself.
"That was a magic door, huh?" Cally kidded, grinning, indicating the
freezer door as Derry pushed it closed.
"Don't you start," Derry said softly. "That conversation with granddad
creeped me out enough."
"Why? He wasn't talking about our doors."
"I know. It just...it was just weird."
They headed upstairs and down the hall to Derry's room, and shut the door.
Derry kicked back on the bed and Cally sat in Derry's rocker as they ate
their ice cream. "You think what we're planning is stupid?" Derry suddenly
asked.
Cally paused in mid lick. "No. I think it's cool. Who wouldn't check out
something like this?" He shook his head. "Derry this kind of stuff only
happens once. If we don't try it out now, we never will."
Derry considered that, and realized it was true. If they continued to look
for reasons to put off going, they would eventually find one that was good
enough to accomplish just that result.
"I wonder where that place is - the one with the stone towers and the bird
guys flying around?"
Cally shook his head. "Even if we go and see, we'll probably never know
where in the sky we've been."
Derry looked over at his boyfriend. "You think we'll be going to another
planet?"
"I don't think there's any place like that on Earth," Cally said.
Derry nodded. "I keep thinking about that cover over the steps into the
mound. Someone put that there a long time ago to hide that place. That
means someone else knows about it."
"They're probably dead, Derry. That wood was old."
Derry nodded. "Maybe. Yeah, probably."
They finished their ice cream, and Cally got up from the rocker and went
and locked the bedroom door. He kicked his shoes off, and came back to the
bed and carefully laid down on top of Derry. Cally hugged him mightily,
and pushed his face into Derry's cheek and kissed him. "I love you," he
said softly. "I wouldn't dream of going off to the stars with anybody
else."
Derry laughed at that, but wrapped the other boy in his arms and hugged
him tightly. "Me, either. I'm just a little scared, is all."
Cally pulled back and looked at Derry. "Well, shit, so am I. That's what's
so cool. It wouldn't be fun if it was like walking down to the river for a
swim."
"I think swimming in the river is a blast," Derry returned.
"You know what I mean. If it was that simple, it wouldn't be so exciting."
"Yeah. I know." Derry nodded. "We have to plan this carefully. We'll take
our packs and our sleeping bags, and anything we think we can use. Let's
think about it first, okay?"
"Okay, geekboy. I can't wait to see what you think is important to take
planet-hopping. It's not like anyone has ever done it before."
Derry shook his head. "Someone has done
it, Cally. The people that built the doors have done it."
"Yeah, but it was probably like taking a bus to them. It wasn't
exploration, Derry. They knew where they were going."
"Well, it is exploration for us. So we need to take everything we can
think of."
Cally laughed softly. "I can just see the faces of those bird guys now,
when we come through, so heavily loaded with shit that we fall
right on our faces on their side of the door."
Derry rolled his eyes, but immediately realized that Cally had a point. If
they were burdened by too much stuff, it would limit their movement. And
they might need to move very quickly, too.
"Okay. Just what will fit in our packs. We'll leave our sleeping bags in
the mound."
"Why take them at all?" Cally asked. "That's just extra shit we have to
carry."
"We're supposed to be sleeping out, right? If we don't take bags, it will
look a little suspicious."
"Oh...yeah, right."
Derry suddenly pushed his head forward and grabbed Cally's earlobe between
his lips, and ran his tongue along the backside. Cally grinned and
squeezed his eyes shut. "That tickles!" he whispered.
"You want me to stop?"
"No."
Derry smiled. He'd thought not. He played with Cally's earlobe a while,
and then carefully kissed every inch of the other boy's face. Cally smiled
the whole time - when he wasn't kissing Derry back.
Derry got up and put a movie in, and turned down the lights. They laid
together in the bed and kind of watched Jurassic Park, and kind
of held each other, and kind of touched each other quite a lot.
Along about ten, granddad went by the door and called goodnight, followed
a few moments later by Derry's mom. They could surely hear the movie -
Derry had left it just loud enough to be heard in the hall with the door
shut. Derry knew that neither of them would think of opening the door.
Derry was old enough now for some privacy, and he got it, no strings
attached.
He aimed the remote at the TV and turned the volume down now that granddad
and mom had gone to their rooms, and he and Cally undressed each other and
made love. The window in the back wall let in the moonlight, and the same
window brought the faint sounds of the night to their ears. They were
peaceful sounds, and the perfect companions for what Derry and Cally were
doing together, exploring the beauty of each other's bodies. Derry could
hardly get enough of that these days - the wonder of touching another
person like that.
The wonder of being in love with someone.
It was late when they finished, and the boys crawled under a light sheet
and tangled themselves together, and whispered about doorways and stars
and the deep reaches of space, until their eyes grew heavy, and they both
fell asleep.
"How do I look?" Derry asked, putting his hands on his hips and grinning
mightily.
"Like Captain Geekazoid about to take on the Turdatrons," Cally said,
laughing.
Derry laughed, too, and peeled off the goggles and dropped them back on
the tool bench. "Can't see a real reason to take them, anyway."
They were in the shop, looking over the tools and stuff. There was simply
so much there that it was difficult not to see a use for
everything. So far, they'd picked out a small Buck knife in a sheath for
each of them, a powerful LED flashlight for each of them, a scratch awl, a
pair of diagonal side cutters, a screwdriver, a small hammer, a measuring
tape, a small keyhole saw, a spool of strong twine, and a shiny metal hand
mirror. These items were divided and went into their small backpacks along
with a lightweight thermal blanket each, a canteen of water, waterproof
containers of camp matches, a compass each, and a small first aid kit
taken from its mount on the shop wall. And of course Derry put the selfie
wand in his pack, in case they needed to see what was on the other side of
more doorways.
Derry also found a small can of white spray paint, and tossed it into his
pack, with the half-formed idea that they might need a way to mark their
trail back.
"I think that's enough," he finally said, hefting his pack. It wasn't too
heavy or cumbersome, and he didn't wish to make it so. He shrugged. "I
still feel like I can run if I have to."
Cally's eyebrows raised at that. "You think we'll have to?"
"No. Let's just say I don't expect it, but I sure as hell want to be able
to do it if I have to."
Cally nodded. "Makes sense, oh wise one."
Derry laughed, and gave his friend a fond pat on the arm. "My mom made us
some sandwiches. We'll take them along."
"How we gonna do that? Don't they have to be kept cool?"
"Yeah. They're in a little cooler. We'll eat right before we try a door,
and leave the cooler in the mound with the sleeping bags."
The exited the barn into the early afternoon sun. Granddad was over on the
side lawn on the little tractor, mowing. He looked up and saw them, and
waved. The boys waved back.
"I like your granddad," Cally said. "He doesn't really seem like an old
guy."
Derry grinned at that. "Well, most of the time he doesn't. Sometimes he
does."
Cally laughed. "Shit. My granddad acts like just walking around
is something that has to be planned first. Your granddad does all sorts of
stuff."
"Well, I guess. But your granddad is seventy. Mine is just sixty. Ten
years is a lot when you're old."
"Ten years is a lot when you're young, too," Cally pointed out. "That's
the difference between our ages and some five year old drooler."
Derry laughed. "Five year-olds don't drool."
"You never met my cousin Sarah."
Derry sighed patiently. "My mom says that ten years isn't that much when
you're middle-aged. She said that between twenty-five and forth-five
people are a lot alike. So I guess it's just when you're young and old
that a few years make a difference."
Cally leaned closer. "I'd rather be young than old."
"No shit, Sherlock." But Derry grinned. "Being older is pretty cool, too,
from what I've seen. You and me both will get there someday."
"Yeah. But not until we're old."
Derry rolled his eyes, but didn't say any more as they trudged back to the
house.
They'd left their sleeping bags on the kitchen table, next to the small
cooler holding their sandwiches. Derry's mom was off trying to show
another house, but had kissed him before she had left that morning and
told him to have a good time. Both she and granddad knew that they would
be camping out all night and would not be back until the next day. They'd
sort of promised not to leave the property, but as granddad had almost
nine hundred acres, that was saying something. But it made the adults
happy. Derry and Cally had done this many times, and now it was routine.
They ate some chips in the kitchen and drank some lemonade before setting
out. They'd already had lunch but felt it couldn't hurt to eat a little
more.
Then they donned their packs and grabbed their sleeping bags, and Derry
picked up the small cooler. It would be too much to carry if they were
going exploring, but they would be leaving the bags and the cooler inside
the mound. Derry felt a small flutter in his stomach at the idea that they
were finally on their way.
They circled around the house and waved at granddad again to indicate that
they were leaving. He grinned at them and gave them the thumbs up, and
Derry had just the smallest suspicion that granddad wished he was going
camping with them. In truth, had they really been going to camp out, it
would have been fun to have the man along, and Derry decided right there
that he would ask his granddad if he wanted to go with them the next time
they really planned to sleep out under the stars.
They crossed the lawn and entered the field of Indiangrass, and headed out
across the valley. It was another warm day, and the breeze once again
moved the grass in waves that seemed to give it life beyond that of just a
field of plants stuck in the ground. The field looked restless, like the
ocean looked restless, and Derry could almost imagine a giant shark
popping up before them, looking for lunch.
The house was long out of sight when they reached the edge of the woods,
and found the way in that led to the mound. They were careful not to kick
up the ground or undergrowth and so leave a trail, and when they got to
the overturned rock Derry carefully rolled it back into its hole and
gently packed the earth back around it.
The tent cover over the stairwell was undisturbed, and they ducked beneath
it and made their way carefully down the dim steps, until they once again
popped through the blacked out doorway into the softly lit hall beyond.
Derry stopped then, and turned to look back at the entry.
"What's the matter?" Cally asked, turning to look, too.
"I just had a thought," Derry said, looking at his boyfriend. "I wonder if
we're really inside the mound."
Cally squinted at him. "Of course we are. Where the heck else would we
be?"
Derry licked his lips. "Well, I agree we're inside something that's round
like the mound, and it probably
is a mound. I just wonder...I wonder if it's the same mound that's there
in the woods?"
Cally understood then that Derry was serious. He looked around the hallway
a moment, then back at Derry. "I don't get you."
Derry scratched his head. "The door we just came through looks just like
the three doors inside. But they all go to other places. They're like
gates...um, star gates." Derry pointed at the doorway they had just come
through. "How do we know that isn't one, too?"
Cally's eyes widened. "Oh, I see." He looked around the hallway again.
"You're saying we might not be under the mound in the woods, but somewhere
else."
"Yeah. We come in through that doorway, and we're here. But...where's
here?"
Cally shook his head. "I don't know, Derry. We saw the mound from
outside." He waved a hand at the walls of the hallway. "See, it's round in
here, just like the mound."
Derry nodded. "Maybe. Maybe I'm just thinking too much. Maybe the black
over the entry here is just to keep the bugs out." He sighed. "I was just
wondering."
But they were silent as they moved on down the hallway.
The center room looked just as they left it. A quick test showed the
left-hand door still closed to them. That was a relief, as they took that
to mean that they would not be allowed to go through a door to any place
that might instantly suck the life out of them. But Derry wasn't about to
stake his life on any of it, and once again spoke up for caution in their
experiments.
Cally nodded, grinning. "We'll be careful. I won't let you do anything
stupid."
Derry laughed. "Gee, thanks."
They sat and ate a sandwich each, and looked at the doors and decided
which one to try first. Derry wanted to examine the place with the other
doors, while Cally wanted to go straight to the place of the birdmen. But
it didn't take much to change his mind, once Derry pointed out that there
might be doors to even more fascinating places to be found elsewhere.
Derry tossed his sleeping bag on the table by the chairs and Cally
followed suit with his own. The cooler Derry left by his bag. They would
surely be hungry when they got back from a few hours of adventuring. Derry
took a last look at the shelves of what he now thought of as supplies,
arranged about the mound's center room. "I sure wish I knew what these
were for," he said, picking up one of the can-like containers and
examining the odd printing on its face.
"It could be a can of dog food, for all we know," Cally said, shrugging.
"We'll never know, unless we somehow learn to read that writing."
"Or open the can," Derry returned, spying a small indentation on the lid
he had not noticed before. It looked just right to push a thumb
into.
He took the can back to the table and set it there, and pushed his thumb
into the depression. The can made a small noise, the lid popped up, and
steam rolled out of the inside. A hot and spicy aroma immediately filled
the room - something between a sirloin steak and a Mexican fajita.
"Whoa," Cally said, coming closer to peer at the can. "That actually
smells good."
Derry nodded. It did smell quite good. The inside of the can
contained what looked like a stew, though what might be vegetables and
meat were not quite like anything he had ever seen before.
"Food supplies," he decided, looking back at the shelved cans. "Lunch for
weary travelers."
"Must have been free," Cally offered, "because there doesn't seem to be
any way to pay for the stuff."
Derry nodded, and went back to the shelves and retrieved another can.
"Come on, Derry," Cally said then. "You're not going to play with that
stuff now, are ya? Let's get this show on the road!"
Derry nodded, instead placing the new can into his back pack. It wouldn't
add much weight, and might prove itself useful.
"I was thinking we could show this to anyone we might meet," he said,
sliding his arms into the pack's straps. "Maybe we'll meet someone that
can read it. It might just show them we came from someplace familiar." He
centered the pack between his shoulder blades, pulled the front straps
together, and fastened the buckle that linked them together.
They checked each other's packs a last time, then went and stood before
the center gate.
"Maybe we should look first," Derry said suddenly. "What if someone's
there this time?"
Cally sighed. "Come on, Derry, stop stalling. Let's just go, okay? The
people that made these doors are probably all dead now."
Derry nodded, holding up a hand. "Okay, okay. But just step through and
stop, right? And be prepared to jump back if anything happens."
"I will, okay? Now let's just go!"
They joined hands, and stepped through the doorway together.
It was just like entering the mound. One moment they were before the door,
and the next they were in a large room, with rows of doors everywhere
about its interior. A barely audible hum filled the air, and again the
lighting was more than ample to see by, but seemed to come from everywhere
about them.
"Cool!" Cally breathed, grinning. "Wonder where we are?"
Derry turned and examined the door they had just emerged from. Unlike on
their own side, where the door had been in the center, the door they had
emerged from was at the right end of a series of five doors, all standing
in a straight line. He glanced around, and quickly counted two dozen more
sets of five doors each, spaced about the room. A hallway led off to the
right, wider and taller than the hallway leading into their mound. But it,
too, seemed to vanish around a curve a short way inside.
Derry set his pack on the ground and fished out the can of spray paint. He
turned and bent down and sprayed a quick arrowhead on the stone floor,
pointing at their door. "So we know we have the right one," he said to
Cally, who had watched him in silence.
"No argument from me. With all these doors here, it's the safest thing to
do."
The doors had a small platform before them, which was one step up from the
floor that ran between groups of doors. They walked out and stepped down
onto the floor. Derry turned in a circle, slowly, taking in the room in
which they stood. It was large, but the only way out of it besides the
doors themselves seemed to be the hallway off to their right.
"That way?" Derry asked, pointing
Cally nodded. "Lead on, MacGruff."
Derry grinned and shook his head, but started off in the direction of the
hallway. Cally fell into step with him, reached over, and took Derry's
hand in his. Derry just smiled, and squeezed his boyfriend's fingers.
The hallway was not long, and deposited them on a landing above a great
round room that was itself filled with more sequences of doors. An enormous
room, that stretched out below them, like looking across the expanse of a
dozen indoor football stadiums from high up in the seats.
But what stopped them in their tracks, and took their breath away, was the
great domed ceiling, as transparent as glass. It looked out upon
star-filled space, and upon another world, hanging above them in that
greatest of nights; a great, banded giant of a planet, looking like every
picture of Saturn that Derry had ever seen.
Because this planet had a ring, every bit as wide and beautiful as
Saturn's own, comprised of many smaller rings, each one nested inside the
other, some darker in color, some lighter. There was the faintest sense of
motion from the planet, as if the great bands that girded it turned slowly
above its surface.
It could have been Saturn, but it plainly was not. For when Derry turned
his head to the left, a star could be seen - a sun - distant, the size of
a basketball, but absolutely red in color.
"The sun is red," Cally said softly, staring.
Derry nodded slowly. "That's 'cause it's not our sun, Cally."
They stared at the distant orb, and apparently were able to do that due to
some filtering agent within the material of the skydome itself. Surely to
gaze upon a naked sun so close by would be impossible, otherwise.
Derry swallowed hard. "Either this giant planet is close in to the star in
its orbit, or that is one very big sun."
Cally gave a little laugh. "Always the geekboy, aren't you?" But he put an
arm around Derry's shoulders, and pulled him close. "First time I ever
stood under a red sun with you, Derry. I want to remember it." Then he
turned his head and kissed Derry's cheek.
Derry smiled, and returned the kiss. That Cally was a little overwhelmed
by their discoveries here was obvious.
"We might be the only human beings for light years around," Derry
whispered into his ear.
"Wow," Cally breathed, staring up at the distant sun. "This is cooler than
cool."
Derry looked around the great room again. Their hallway had come out atop
a flat area that was linked to the floor below by maybe a dozen steps.
Their height gave them a grand view of the entire complex. He could see
other hallways atop other landings spaced around the great room, and
suspected now that there were also rooms at the end of those hallways that
held more doors, just like the smaller room they had just left. Looking
about the floor of the great room below Derry could see what must
certainly be hundreds, if not thousands, of the five-door sequences,
arranged in curved lines that radiated outward from the center of the
room.
"Shee-it," Derry whispered, "there's got to be thousands of sets
of doors here, Cally."
Thousands of sets of five doors. And, if each door went to a
different place, then tens of thousands of worlds to visit.
Cally licked his lips. "These people sure knew how to get around.
I wonder how they kept track of it all? There has to be a system to
show people where all these doors go. Don't ya think?"
"Yep. But whatever it is, it isn't like they put a sign by each door or
anything obvious. Probably computer stuff of some kind."
Cally frowned. "Now that I think of it, your woods is kind of a weird
place to put an intergalactic bus stop, isn't it?"
Derry smiled. "Interstellar, maybe." He nodded. "Yeah, it is
kind of weird, being out in the boondocks like that. But who knows how
they did stuff, or why? Maybe, a long time ago, they had a town there or
something."
"Something else I noticed," Cally said. "We don't know what the door
people looked like, but everything we have seen so far looks like it was
designed for people to use. Our people, I mean. The doors are
the right size for us, the steps are the right spacing for us to use -
everything looks weird, but it also looks familiar."
Cally had a point, Derry realized. Everything they had seen had
obviously not been designed to be used by beings the size of elephants, or
walking on six legs, or even beings with wings, like they had seen through
the door with the stone towers. Everything was the right size and shape to
be used by humans.
He shrugged. "Just more of the puzzle, Cally. We'll need time --"
Derry broke off as Cally suddenly gasped and grabbed his arm. "What?"
Derry whispered, a sudden chill running through him.
Cally looked scared. "I saw something move down there," he
whispered, pointing at the great expanse of floor below.
Derry turned his eyes that way, searching. "Whereabouts?"
Cally pointed, and Derry followed with his eyes.
It was some distance across the floor, and Derry didn't immediately see
anything. He let his eyes rove, and was just about to say that he didn't
see movement, when he did. Just for a second, down in one of the curved
aisles of doors. A flash of gray, moving quickly. Derry stared at the
spot, but due to the curve, he could not see all the way down into the
aisle. He turned his eyes instead to where the aisle merged with the
center of the great room - a place filled with oddly-shaped equipment that
defied naming.
And then he saw it, just briefly. It emerged from the aisle and moved in
among the equipment in the center, and disappeared again.
Cally squeezed his arm. "Did you see it?"
Derry nodded. But what he had seen...he wasn't sure. It had looked as
large as a horse, but had moved on many legs, like a spider. It had been
gray, but not the gray of animal flesh. It had not looked like flesh at
all.
It had looked like metal.
Derry's eyes searched the center of the room, but
he could not see down into the spaces between the towering machines. "I
don't know where it went," he whispered.
Cally just shrugged, his eyes continuing to search as well.
Suddenly, the place which had seemed so cool and so exciting felt...scary.
Derry looked around the big room again, and squeezed Cally's arm. "Let's
move back to the other room, okay?"
"Look!" Cally hissed, pointing.
Derry's eyes followed, and he could see down into an aisle below them.
Just coming around the curve into view was the thing they had seen, moving
along at a frightening pace. It still looked like a giant metal spider,
but the central body was sharply elliptical instead of round, and there
didn't seem to be a head like a spider would have. The metallic-looking
legs were a blur, and even now Derry could hear an odd thrumming sound, as
if many metallic feet were striking the stone floor.
Suddenly, Derry's eyes jerked ahead of the thing, to where that particular
aisle terminated below.
It came out right at the bottom of their steps!
"It's coming here!" Derry
hissed, grabbing at Cally's arm. "Let's go!"
They turned and ran. The hallway seemed a lot longer on the way back, and
as they reached the smaller room full of doors, they heard a sound from
the hallway behind them that could only be the metal spider bounding up
the steps.
"It's coming!" Cally yelled. He stopped and turned to look, and Derry
stopped with him. "Let's go!" he yelled, grabbing Cally by the arm.
And then there it was, racing down the hallway towards them at startling
speed. Derry tightened his grip on Cally's arm and yanked him onward, and
they both turned and fled back towards the doorway.
The sound of thrumming feet behind them became a roar, and Derry could see
the thing closing on them in his mind's eye. They passed several rows of
the doors, and came to the one that Derry thought was their row. Cally put
on a burst of speed then, leaped up the step and fled to the end door in
the line of doors, and plunged into the safety of its darkness.
At the last second, just before he followed Cally through, Derry looked
down at the stone floor below.
There was no arrow painted on the floor. As he dove into the safety of the
darkness, one thought burned through his mind:
It was not their door.
*******
Derry fell, how far he could not tell, but far enough to jolt him
severely when he landed. His forward motion carried him into a roll that
spent some of the downward motion, and he wound up seated with his hands
behind him acting as props. For a moment his head whirled, and then
stilled.
Wherever they were, it was fairly dark. Derry sensed walls around them,
and some light came in from a huge rent in the far one. Derry
immediately looked around, feeling a sudden panic because he could not see
his boyfriend.
"Cally!" he hissed. "Where are you?"
But then a blob of darkness only a few feet away moved, and then Derry
could see the dim shape of the other boy as he sat up. "I'm here. Derry?
Are you okay?"
Derry scrambled over to Cally and grabbed him, and hugged him dearly. "I'm
okay. Are you?"
"I think so. Maybe a little bruised. What happened?"
"We went through the wrong door," Derry said miserably. "And we fell when
we came out on this side."
Cally hugged him, and they exchanged an intense kiss.
"What was that thing?" Cally demanded, when they finally separated.
"I don't know. It sure was fast, though."
Cally pulled away, and Derry could could see him shrugging out of his
pack. "What are you doing?"
He heard Cally make a little sputtering sound. "Getting my flashlight,
dummy."
Derry rolled his eyes at his own stupidity; and then he was getting his
own pack off and feeling inside.
They came up with their flashes at the same time, and the room was
suddenly bathed in light.
It was not a terribly large room - maybe thirty feet on a side. The
ceiling was quite high, though. There was a regular doorway in one wall,
but it was twisted and crushed, with huge cracks in the wall around it.
The floor they were sitting on was slightly canted, and when Derry pointed
his light upward he realized with a shock that the floor they were seated
upon had fallen from ten feet above them. The steel framework that had
once bore it still jutted from the around walls above, and parts of the
floor still clung to the wall here and there.
Derry pointed the light behind them, but only more destruction was evident
there. "Where's the door we came through?" he wondered aloud.
"Up there," Cally said glumly, pointing his light upwards.
Derry turned himself around more and peered after Cally's flashlight beam.
There, a good ten feet above them, was a small length of old floor still
attached to the wall, and set into the wall at that point was the
dark-filled outline of a star doorway.
Derry pointed his light all about beneath the section of still attached
floor, but could see nothing that they could use to climb back up to the
doorway.
"I thought a door wouldn't let us go through it there was danger on the
other side," Cally said then.
Derry shook his head. "We only assumed that. A door let us go from the
mound to the big place with all the other doors, but that giant
spider-thing was there. And now a door let us come here. We could have
broken our necks falling."
"Maybe it only won't let you go if there's no air, or the temperature is
too far away from one you can live in."
"Yeah, or maybe the door to that frozen place was just busted," Derry
said. "We just don't know."
Cally sighed. "We've got to go and find something we can use to climb up
to the door."
"And just go back to the spider?" Derry asked.
Cally glared at him. "You want to go home, don't you? I'm sure our door
was just at the end of the next row, is all."
"You hope," Derry said.
Cally's face knotted up. "Stop being so negative, Derry! You can be a real
asshole sometimes, you know?"
The shock that Derry felt was tangible. It was as if Cally had smacked him
across the face. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Cally stared at him, and then swarmed closer, and then was wrapping Derry
in his arms. "I'm sorry, too," he said softly. "I didn't mean to yell."
Derry hugged his boyfriend, and nodded. "I'm just a little scared, I
guess."
Cally didn't say anything, just nodded.
It took them a minute to get themselves going. But they finally stood, and
brushed each other off.
Derry pointed at the large rent in the far wall. The light coming in there
seemed to be getting brighter. "That looks like the way to go."
They headed over to the wall. It was actually a little farther than it
looked, which turned out to be good, as that made the huge crack in it
larger, too. When they got to it it proved to be wide enough for them to
squeeze through. Derry peered into it, amazed at the thickness of the
outer wall. "Must be five feet to the other side," he told Cally. But he
squeezed into the rent, and Cally pushed himself in behind him. They
worked their way through, and came out into weak sunlight.
It was cool, and a light breeze ruffled their hair. They had emerged into
a tangle of unfamiliar underbrush, but Derry saw that, by keeping close to
the wall, they could push their way through. But first he stepped to the
right of the rent in the wall, and fumbled with the zipper of his shorts.
"That looks like a good idea," Cally said, coming to stand with him. They
hosed down the underbrush, and both sighed when they were done. "My dad
always said I'd leave my mark in the world," Cally offered, zipping up.
"He didn't mean this one, but I guess it's all the same."
"Just saying we've been here," Derry returned, smiling. "Since we don't
have a flag, it's the best we can do."
They laughed, and then followed the wall out towards the end of the
building.
They came out onto a city street. Or, the remains of one. Tall buildings
of unfamiliar design pushed their ways up into the cool sky, which was
itself an odd violet in color. The tops of the buildings were shattered
splinters, and the wide ways between them were full of debris. Areas that
might have been little parks here and there showed as snarls of
undergrowth climbing the flanks of trees with pale green leaves, which
themselves somehow looked stunted in the weak sunshine.
The towers stretched away towards the horizon, silent in their majesty,
forlorn in their desolation. Once, this had been a great and grand city,
but now...
"I wonder what happened here?" Cally asked, staring about them like a
tourist just landed from the sticks. But the unease in his eyes was not
the look of a holiday traveler, but that of a wanderer come upon a scene
of death.
Save for the sound of the wind moving among the buildings, the city was
totally silent. It seemed to be just after dawn, and the odd violet sky
was continuing to lighten. A rose colored light could be seen far off down
the avenue - perhaps the rising sun coming to morning.
Derry shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But it looks to have been
bad."
They walked out into the avenue, and Derry could immediately see it had
not been designed for automobile traffic. There were too many benches, too
many fountains and little parks, for that sort of traffic to have ever
flowed here. This was a city for foot traffic, and perhaps public transit,
if the stairs leading down into the ground nearby were any indicator.
Signs by the steps told of something - schedules, or directions, or maybe
even where they happened to be in the city. But the language was again
unfamiliar, and not the one that was used to mark the cans of food they
had found inside the mound.
"This isn't a planet of the door people," Derry said. "If that language is
anything to go by, anyway."
They turned and looked up at the building they had come out of, memorizing
its likeness. That would not be hard, for its design was slightly
different than the other buildings, and it seemed to be in a lesser state
of destruction than most of the other towers. And, just a few floors up,
there was a giant sign with the half-ellipse of a star doorway on it, with
little glowing lines radiating outward.
"This way to the gates," Cally said, shaking his head. "Man, this place is
a mess."
Derry nodded. The abandoned city was impressive because they could still
see what it must have once been, but it was also depressing in what it had
become. Only the walks seemed undamaged, just covered in debris. Derry
squatted and ran his hand over the pavement. It seemed to be made out of
the same stuff the floors and walls of the mound had been made of, and the
huge building underneath the red sun. It looked like rock but it now
seemed it wasn't. The building they had just exited had been made of
something different, more like the concrete they were used to seeing back
home. That building was twisted and split, though not nearly as badly as
the other towers. Yet the streets and walks, even covered with debris,
still looked new.
"I'd be willing to bet if it was just concrete these roads and walks were
made from, this place would be a lot more overgrown. There isn't a crack
in the ground anywhere. All the trees and undergrowth come up in the
little unpaved rectangles of the parks."
Cally looked about and nodded. "That could mean this place has been like
this a lot longer than it looks. I was gonna guess, but now I can't."
Derry was about to reply when a distant, keening sound split the air. It
was a solemn wail, starting high and moving lower on the scale. It made
the hair on Derry's neck stand up, because all he could think of was that
the sound came from something alive.
Cally turned to look at him, his eyes wide. "That was creepy as shit."
"It didn't sound close, at least," Derry returned.
Another wail came to them then, from another direction, and a little
closer. It, too, started high and descended the scale, and then cut off.
"Was that an answer to the first call?" Cally asked.
Derry shook his head, his eyes moving over the shattered towers. "I think
we need to find something to get back up to that door. Come on, let's look
around."
They turned and went towards the front of the building that held the door,
this time approaching what was the original front entry. There were large
doors there, now hanging askew on their mounts. Derry pushed between them
and entered, and Cally followed.
Directly inside, along one wall, stood a bench of some kind, constructed
of a yellow hardwood, and easily ten feet long.
"What about that?" Cally asked, noting the slatted backrest. "We could
climb that, I think."
Derry nodded. "Yeah. Except I'm not sure it would fit through the crack we
came out of." He frowned. "I have that little saw in my pack. Maybe we can
cut the front legs off of it. Come on."
Derry grabbed one end of it and lifted. It was heavy, but not terribly so.
Cally got the other end, and they maneuvered it towards the door. It
almost would not fit between the two giant slabs, but they managed to
wiggle it through and get it outside. Derry turned, and they moved along
the front of the building towards the overgrown little park at the side.
Another keening reached their ears, this one much closer. A chorus of them
followed, from all different directions.
"I think someone knows we're here," Cally said, huffing under the load.
Derry nodded, turned the corner of the building, and they dragged the
bench back along the side. In a few moments they were back at the huge
rent in the side of the building. They stood the bench up on one end and
tried to work it through. It would not go.
Derry swore. "I'll have to cut the front legs off. Put it down." He swung
off his pack, and dug out the saw.
Whatever the bench was made out of, it was tough. The saw bit into it, but
it was slow going. Fortunately, the legs of the bench were not thick. But
Derry was feeling the strain in his arm muscles by the time the first leg
dropped away from the frame.
There was another leg in the center of the bench, and then a third at the
other end. Derry went to work on the middle one, and soon that fell to the
ground, too.
There was more keening, sounding much closer. Derry went to work on the
third leg, sweat now beading his forehead. "Almost there."
Cally looked nervously towards the street, and so was watching as
something large bounded by the opening in the brush. For a moment he just
froze; then he leaned over to get Derry's attention. "They're here," he
whispered.
Derry grunted, and the third leg fell away. Derry threw the saw into his
pack and shrugged into the straps, and fastened the buckle across the
center. "Come on," he hissed. "Help me!"
Derry backed into the rent, pulling, while Cally pushed. The bench hung up
on the tough walls, and Derry twisted it back and forth while Cally pushed
against it with all his might. Suddenly it gave, and started inwards. In a
moment they had it inside.
Derry had pulled his flashlight out of his pack at the same time as the
saw. Now he unclipped it from his belt and lit the way back towards the
far wall and the ledge above.
"I just realized something," he whispered. "Without a light, anyone could
walk through here and never see that star door above. It's blacker than
the night. Hopefully that means whatever is outside doesn't know it's
here."
Cally just grunted as they stood the back of the bench against the wall.
The end of it just touched the ledge of old floor above.
Derry grabbed the bench and steadied it. "Go!"
Cally looked over at the rent, and then nodded and started up. He was
halfway there when something large flitted by the rent in the wall,
momentarily cutting off the light. Cally gulped and swarmed up onto the
ledge, flipped himself about, and reached down to grip the top end of the
bench. "Come up!" he hissed.
Derry started up. The light from the rent in the wall blinked again as
something leaped past it, and Derry's muscles were energized as they had
never been before. He climbed recklessly, felt the bench sliding to one
side, then stop as Cally grunted above him. And then he was at the top,
and Cally was helping him onto the ledge. They both lay down on their
bellies, peering over the edge of the ledge. Again, the light from the
rent in the far wall flickered as something briefly blocked it.
Derry reached over the lip, found the end of the bench, and gave it a
push. He heard it slide along the wall, and then crash to the floor.
There was more movement at the rent, and then the light faded and
flickered, and Derry knew that whatever was outside was coming in. He
turned, cupped his hand around the end of his flashlight, and shined it at
the wall behind them.
The star door was right there.
Cally patted his arm, and Derry killed the light. Below them, something
was happening at the rent. It was hard to see exactly what because so much
of the light from outside was cut off...but Derry was almost certain it
was a head that appeared at the rent and turned slowly side to side, as if
trying to see into the gloom of the room.
Derry slowly extended a hand and touched the pack on Cally's back. He felt
around, and carefully unzipped the big back pocket, stuck the hand inside,
and found his boyfriend's flashlight. He withdrew it, and just as
carefully rezipped the pocket.
Below them, several somethings had come inside. Derry had the impression
of large creatures, walking on two legs, but covered in something dark,
like fur. The light from the rent continued to waver and fade as more of
the things came into the room with them.
Derry found Cally's hand in the dark and carefully placed the flashlight
into it. Cally closed his fingers around it, and nodded. Derry pressed his
lips right up to Cally's ear. "When I say now," he whispered.
Below them, the things by the rent in the outer wall froze, and Derry was
sure they were looking up at them. That implied a sense of hearing just
short of miraculous, if they had heard that oh-so-silent whisper. But the
things only paused a moment, and then they started forward...
"Now!" Derry bellowed, and thumbed the flashlight on.
Twin beams of intensely bright light lanced out and caught the five
hunters in their stark brilliance. Derry had the impression of triangular
faces covered in fur, tall ears with tufts of hair at the ends, large
black eyes, and the barest slits of mouths. The creatures were bipedal,
wore no clothing, and each carried in hand a short rod with a pointed tip.
Their reaction to the light was almost instantaneous. No sooner had Derry
gotten his look than the creatures shrieked out a horrible sound and fled
for the rent in the wall, pushing each other out of the way in their haste
to depart. There was a brief, mad scramble at the large crack, and then
the creatures were gone.
Cally suddenly gave out a soft laugh. "Holy shit, Derry. Those guys can
run!"
Derry closed his eyes, and put an arm over Cally and hugged him. "That was
a little too close for me. You want to head back?"
Cally blew out a sigh. "Yeah, I think I've had enough of this place, too.
Let's go."
They got carefully to their feet, using the flashlights to illuminate the
ledge, and stood before the dark-filled door that led back to the building
under the red sun.
"Shit! I just thought of something," Cally said. "What if that big spider
thing is waiting on the other side?"
Derry rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Crap. Should we use the phone and
look?"
Cally made a noise of irritation. "Aw...hold on." And then he leaned
forward and stuck his face briefly through the door, and then was back.
Derry barely had time to grit his teeth at the reckless act.
"The coast is clear," Cally said, grinning.
"Knucklehead," Derry grated. "Remind me to smack you silly when we get
home."
"Okay," Cally said, his grin expanding. "I'm looking forward to wrestling
with you, too."
Despite his irritation, Derry smiled. "Okay, let's go. As soon as we get
through, turn left, go for the next row of doors, and look for the arrow
on the floor in front of the end door this time."
Cally nodded. "Ready?"
"Yeah. Go."
They stepped through together.
The spider was there, waiting for them. Two tendrils of rubbery but tough
material burst from the fore of the thing and wrapped around them, pinning
their arms to their sides. They never had a chance to run.
Derry looked over at Cally, saw the look of anguish on his boyfriend's
face. And then a weird tingling ran through the tendrils, and Derry's body
grew numb, and then his eyes sank closed, and he knew no more.
Derry opened his eyes, and realized that he was not dead. He took a deep
breath, and slowly let it out again. Nope. Not dead.
He was laying down some place - some place comfortable. He turned his
head, and there was Cally laying next to him. His face was turned towards
Derry and his eyes were closed. For a moment, fear gripped Derry; but his
body felt oddly sluggish, and it was a great effort to move. But he
managed to get a hand going, and then an arm, and then he was touching his
boyfriend.
"Cally?"
Cally's nose twitched, and then one cheek, and then he opened his eyes.
"Derry? We're still alive?"
Derry nodded, relief flooding through him. "Yeah. How do you feel?"
Cally moved his head, which triggered a grimace. "Like an old banana peel
laying on the sidewalk."
Derry had to grin at that. "There's better ways to feel. But there's also
worse." He made an effort, and managed to sit up. The effort made his
vision swim and his head throb; but the condition quickly passed. "Man. I
feel pretty crappy, myself."
He looked around. They were laying on a soft, padded surface, like a
table, about waist-high up from the floor. The small room they were in had
a slightly bluish cast to the lighting, and the far wall seemed covered in
electronic equipment of some kind. Nearby, a long, large elliptical shape
rested against the other wall, function unknown. There was a fairly large
set of double doors in one of the other walls, closed, and with no
apparent way to open them.
"These people didn't believe in door knobs," Derry said, sighing.
Cally sat up, and then took his head in his hands. "Oh, mommy! I
promise I'll never drink beer again!"
Derry chuckled, and offered Cally a gentle shake of his head. "Take more
than getting kidnapped by a giant alien spider to put you out, huh?"
Cally began to grin, but changed it midstream into a frown. He looked
around the room, then shrugged his shoulders. "Where is it?"
"I don't know. Wasn't here when I woke up."
Cally looked upset. "I'm so sorry, Derry. I swear I didn't see the spider
when I peeked through the door."
"Probably hiding somewhere, waiting." Derry smiled, swung around and
dangled his legs off the table. "It doesn't matter, Cally. I'm just glad
you're... that we're both okay."
Cally grinned and swung himself off the table, came around it and stood
between Derry's legs while they exchanged hugs and kisses. "God, I'm glad
you're okay," Cally whispered.
Derry nodded, hugging his friend just a little harder. "Yeah, you, too."
He looked down from Cally's shoulder, spied their packs on the floor
beside the table.
They smiled at each other a moment longer, and then Derry slid off the
table. "Grab your pack. And then let's see if those doors will open."
They grabbed up their packs and shrugged into them and fastened the
buckles. But they only took one step towards the closed doors when there
was a buzzing noise nearby. The boys looked over at the big ovoid just as
it sprouted legs and raised itself off the floor. With surprising speed,
the spider moved between them and the door in the far wall.
Cally grabbed Derry and pulled him back to place the table between them
and the monster.
"Fuck! It was here the whole time!" Cally looked at Derry. "That's
probably how I missed it when I peeked through the door. It was sitting
someplace off to the side with its legs tucked in."
Derry nodded, examining the thing, which had simply stopped moving after
placing itself in the path of possible escape. It was plain now that the
thing was made of metal, and amazing in the way the legs were articulated
to move. Where the tendrils had sprouted to imprison them at the door,
there was nothing but smooth surface, causing Derry to wonder just how
that particular trick had been pulled off.
Even as he watched, an octopus-like arm extruded itself from the metal
shell higher up, and moved towards them. Derry and Cally both backed up,
but there was no place to go. The arm stopped about three feet away, and
the end of it suddenly inflated into a round ball. There was a brief
moment of silence, and then a voice spoke out: "Fraret."
Derry was so surprised that he laughed. "It talked!"
Cally nodded. "Wow."
The round end of the arm swung back and forth between them. "Ulbric'ta?"
The questioning tone was plain.
Derry shook his head. "Sorry. We don't speak that language."
Another arm extruded from the surface, came close, and the end inflated
and then flattened out, leaving a plane surface about three feet square,
like a TV screen. The surface of that square briefly crawled, and then lit
with a picture.
It was of a row of doors - one of the five-door rows that they had seen
all about this place before. The camera suddenly zoomed in on the
right-hand door, just as Derry and Cally stepped through it.
In the image, the boys looked around, and Cally grinned. "Cool! Wonder where we are?"
Derry looked over at Cally. "That was when we first got here!"
The image continued to follow them around as they went to the main door
room, observed the planet above through the great dome, and then as they
spied the spider moving towards them. And then the image followed them
as they ran back to the small door room and danced through a doorway
just ahead of the spider.
The metal spider arrived at the door, waited a bit, and then moved to
the end of the row, settled to the floor, and retracted its legs to
wait.
"That is why I didn't see the
thing," Cally said. He sounded relieved that it wasn't just a mistake on
his part. Derry just nodded.
Somehow, they got the impression that the image they were watching was
now speeded up - fast forwarded. The camera rotated back to watch the
door they had fled through - and then, just for a second - Cally's face
appeared, and his eyes flicked about. Then he was gone.
The spider's legs reappeared, it moved to stand in front of the
door...and was right there to catch them when they came through.
Derry frowned. "Wonder why we're being shown this? We know what
happened."
"Todar petche," the sphere spoke. "Alpa nof donsa
polligot."
The image on the flat surface vanished, and was replaced by another. It
was the main door room, and it was simply packed with people. Well...almost
people. At first glance they looked quite human; but as several passed
closer to the camera, Derry could see things that were startlingly
different. For one thing, the eyes of these people were all round.
Circular. And larger than a human being's could ever be. The other
facial features looked pretty much like anybody that Derry had ever
seen, except that these people seemed not to have lips at all. As they
spoke to each other Derry could see teeth in their mouths, and they
seemed a little wider than any teeth that he had seen before. But
other than that, they looked like people. Well, Earth
people.
Intermingled with the round-eyed folk were other creatures that clearly
were not human. Most seemed to move on two legs, but a few moved on
four. All gave the sense that they were people, and not animals. They
even caught a glimpse of some of the triangular-faced furry people, like
they had seen on the planet with the ruined city, strolling along like
everyone else. Except those on the screen wore loose-fitting jerkins
that hung down to their knees, and they were quite animated in speech,
talking and gesturing as they moved along. Clearly, people, and not
animals.
And there were more of the metal spiders. They strode about, apparently
assisting with moving things, directing people, and even carrying
people. Apparently a section of their backs could open, revealing a seat
wide enough for two. A number of the spiders went by, carrying riders.
It all looked very busy, very purposeful, very peaceful. People
going about their business, traveling from here to there, just like
you'd see in any airport on Earth.
But...again the scene seemed to speed up. The main door room remained
crowded at first...but slowly, the crowds thinned. The fast-forward
stopped, and they saw people running about while some kind of alarm
blared in the background.
And then, there were no more people. A few of the spiders continued to
move here and there for a bit, and then there were no more of them,
either. Well...save one, which appeared irregularly, moving about,
checking equipment, making the rounds of the building.
"This spider, you think?" Cally asked.
Derry nodded. "I think that's what were being told, yeah." He frowned.
"Maybe like a...a security guard, left running to watch the place."
"Where do you think the people went?"
"I don't know," Derry scratched his forehead. "A war, maybe? Who knows?
Something. Something major."
He shrugged. "Can't tell how long ago all that happened, just by
watching that video, either."
The video of the large door room cleared, and a picture of a single door
appeared.
"Irlyit," said the voice.
Derry looked at Cally, then at the spider. "Door."
"Door," the voice repeated.
The picture changed to one of Cally. Cally grinned. "Cally."
"Cally."
Derry's picture appeared.
"Derry," Derry said, grinning.
"Derry," the spider repeated.
A picture popped up of both of them together. Cally and Derry looked at
each other.
Cally worked at his bottom lip a moment with his upper teeth. "Well, it
wanted to know what each of us were called. Now it wants to know what
many of us are called."
Derry nodded. "Humans."
"Humans."
The picture changed to another door, and the camera panned down. The
white arrow that Derry had painted on the floor came into view.
"Humans door," the spider voice said.
"Yes," Derry said, feeling some small excitement now.
The camera panned to one side, and the door next to the one Derry had
marked came into view. "Humans door," the spider stated again.
"No," Cally said.
Next there was a shot of Cally and Derry walking towards the camera.
They walked up to it, and then the sequence repeated. Derry looked at
his friend. "What do you think?"
"Maybe it's asking us what we call walking?"
Derry scratched his head, watching the sequence repeat. It repeated ten
times, and then the 'screen', as Derry now thought of it, went dark. But
it relit immediately, and they were treated to a repeated scene of the
two of them walking away from the camera. After ten repetitions of the
one, the scene of them walking towards the camera started over.
"Come," Derry said then.
"Come," the spider repeated. The scene transferred then to the one of
them walking away from the camera.
"Go," Cally said, getting it.
The screen went black again, and then came back up with a picture of the
spider itself. "Difris," the voice said.
"Difris," Derry and Cally repeated, smiling.
The screen went dark and stayed dark.
The spider moved a little closer to them, and the voice globe hovered
near. "Cally...Derry...go...humans...door."
Cally gave out a delighted little noise. "He's asking us if we want to
go home!"
Derry nodded. "Or if that's where we're heading." He nodded again, and
pointed at the spider. "Yes."
The screen relit, and showed the scene of Cally and Derry coming through
the door from Earth the first time. It repeated several times, and then
suddenly switched to a scene of them in that very room, backs to the
wall, talking to the spider. That scene repeated several times, too, and
then the voice globe neared them.
"Cally...Derry...come...Difris."
The boys looked at each other. "What do you think?" Derry asked.
Cally blew out a little excited breath. "I think he's asking if we'll
come back and see him."
Derry laughed. "That's what I think he's asking. Damn if I don't think
he's lonely!" He looked at Cally. "Start talking."
Cally blinked. "Huh? What do you want me to say?"
"Just talk!"
A wild look came into Cally's eyes, but then he grinned. "Once upon a
time, there were three bears. A momma bear, a poppa bear, and a baby
bear..."
Derry pointed at Cally's mouth. "Talk."
"Talk," the spider repeated.
Derry waved a hand at Cally. "You can stop now."
The moment Cally did, the voice globe pointed directly at Cally's mouth.
"No talk."
Derry grinned. "Yes." He stepped forward a little, pointed at Cally,
then at himself. "Cally...Derry...come...Difris...talk."
"Cally...Derry...come...Difris...talk," the spider repeated.
"Yes," Cally agreed.
The screen lit again, and a parade of doors passed by, became a blur.
"Cally...Derry...Difris...talk.
Cally...Derry...come...go...come...go...come."
Cally clapped his hands together. "Is he saying he'll help us explore?"
It did sound like that. "Or maybe he wants us to go and check out what's
going on in other places," Derry supposed. "Either way, it sounds like a
good idea to have help doing it."
It would take a while, but Derry was sure they would be able to teach
the spider a lot more English. "Yes," he said.
The screen suddenly shrunk, and the arm supporting it withdrew back into
the spider's shell. "Cally...Derry...go...humans...door."
"Yes," Cally said.
The top of the spider's back suddenly slid back, revealing a wide seat
just like they had seen people riding in in the spider's videos.
"Come," Difris said. The spider squatted, dropping its body to the
floor.
The boys looked at each other. "He's offering us a ride," Derry said,
laughing.
They climbed aboard, and the spider raised up and moved towards the twin
doors, which parted to let them through. They emerged into a hallway,
and Difris took off. The spider could really move, and Derry found the
ride both exhilarating for the speed and quite amazing for the smooth
quality of the travel.
They wound their way through a few more hallways and then emerged into
the large, domed center door room. The planet above them glowed softly
in the red light from the distant sun as they made their way down to an
aisle and across the crowded center part of the room, which held
towering machines, small picnic areas, and some other possible amenities
that Derry could not decipher.
They wound down another aisle, swooped up some steps at the end, and
down a sort hallway to one of the small door rooms. And then they were
arriving before a set of five doors, and the boys were climbing out.
Derry went up the step and looked at the floor before the right-hand
door, and his arrow was there. He and Cally grinned at each other, and
then turned back to Difris.
"Cally...Derry...come...Difris...talk," the spider said then.
"Yes." Derry nodded. "We'll be back. Cally...Derry...come...Difris."
That seemed to satisfy the spider. It settled back, and its legs
withdrew, and once again it was a featureless ellipsoid upon the floor.
"He's gonna wait on us," Cally said, shaking his head. "Poor guy."
Derry nodded. "We'll come back."
They turned and faced the door - the door home. "Ready?" Derry asked.
Cally exhaled through his lips. "Am I!"
They joined hands and stepped forward, and then they were gone.
*******
The mound was just as they had left it. According to the boy's cells, a
little over nine hours had passed since they had departed Earth. It was
nearing two in the morning, local time. They found the cooler and
devoured the sandwiches inside, and then laid their sleeping bags one
atop the other, and crawled together into the top one.
"I can't believe all that we just did," Cally said quietly. "I'll bet
we've been farther than any humans have ever been."
Derry nodded. "I feel for Difris. I got the impression he was pretty
smart, for a machine. Maybe even smarter than us. Can you imagine being
alone in a place like that for...well, I don't know for how long. I'll
bet it's been a while, though."
Cally nodded. "We are going back, aren't we?"
"Yes. You want to, don't you?"
Cally nodded. "And we kinda promised. That's important. To me, anyway."
"Yeah, me, too. I don't want to leave Difris there all alone."
Cally grinned. "You tired?"
Derry sighed. "Damn right I am." He kissed Cally. "Not too tired to fool
around a little, if you want."
Cally nodded. "I want."
They did.
*******
They were tired by the time the reached Derry's house in the early
afternoon of the next day. They had had some sleep after their
play together in the sleeping bag late the night before, but not really
enough sleep for all they had been through. They were dragging a little,
and glad to be home.
They dropped their packs on top of the big hall cabinet by the door as
they came in, went to the kitchen, got some fruit and a drink each.
Derry's mom's car had been gone from the driveway, and they had seen
granddad driving the small tractor out front. They went up to Derry's
room.
"I'm beat," Derry said, laying out on his bed.
Cally came around and laid on the other side, feeling it was safe enough
to do with the house empty. "Me, too. I could take a long nap right
about now."
"Later," Derry returned. "We need to think about how we're going to go
back to see Difris. We can't just be disappearing for entire days
without our folks wondering what's up."
"Yeah. We'll probably just have to go and visit for a few hours at a
time. Maybe we can eventually make Difris understand that we're not all
that old yet."
They heard a door close downstairs, and Cally sighed and got up and
moved to the rocker.
"Derry? You up there?" It was granddad.
"Yeah, granddad. In my room."
They heard him coming up the stairs, and then he was at the door. He
smiled at Cally, and then raised his eyebrows at Derry. "You and I need
to have a talk, buster."
Derry sat up, alarmed. "What? Did I do something?"
Granddad held up a hand, which Derry could see now was bandaged. "I had
me a run in with a chisel in the shop last night, and when I went to get
the first aid kit, there wasn't any. You know where it went, by any
chance?"
Derry looked guiltily at Cally. "Um...yeah. I'm sorry, granddad. We took
it along with us, just in case."
Derry could see now that his granddad wasn't really on the warpath. This
was a matter of principle - Derry had taken stuff without asking.
His granddad grunted. "Did you need it?"
"No."
Finally, his granddad smiled. "Well, that's one good thing, anyway.
Where is it now?"
"In my pack, down by the front door." Derry jumped up. "I'll get it for
you."
His granddad waved a hand at him. "That's okay. You have company. I'll
get it." He cocked an eye at Derry. "Ask me next time, okay?"
Derry nodded. "Okay, Sorry."
Granddad shook his head, but smiled. And then he turned, and they heard
him going back down the steps.
"Oops," Cally said.
Derry nodded. "Yeah. We should have asked. I just knew he would say to
take it, so I did. I guess it's the principle of the thing."
Cally grinned, leaned slightly forward. "You are learning, young Jedi."
Derry snorted. "Now who's being a geek?"
They heard granddad coming back up the steps then, and Derry wondered if
perhaps he'd lost the first aid kit somehow and it wasn't in the pack.
That idea was bolstered by the look on Granddad's face as he came around
the door frame and into the room. He looked hard at Derry, and then at
Cally. Derry noticed then that he had Derry's pack by the straps in one
hand. Granddad turned, pushed the door closed, came over to the bed, and
laid the pack on it. Then he opened the flap, reached inside, and pulled
something out.
With a start Derry realized what it was: the odd can of food with the
alien script on it, that he'd taken from the shelf inside the mound.
Granddad held it up for them to see, and then pinned Derry in his gaze.
"You found it." He nodded, as if to accent the words. "You found the
mound."
Derry and Cally both gaped. "You...you know about it?" Derry
managed to gasp out.
Granddad sighed. "Sit down, Derry."
Derry sat back on the edge of the bed, and granddad sat, too. "How long
have you been going there?"
"We just found it the other day, granddad."
Granddad looked relieved. "Have you told anyone about it?"
"No."
Granddad closed his eyes, and blew a little breath out between his lips.
"Good. Don't."
"We weren't going to," Derry said.
Granddad sighed. "Derry, I can't emphasize this enough, okay? If word of
this thing gets out, we will lose this house and this land. The
government will march in here and steal it right out from under us. Do
you understand?"
"How can they do that, granddad?"
Granddad laughed. "Because they can. And they will
do it, too."
Derry looked over at Cally. "Cally and I already discussed this,
granddad. We thought the same thing - that the government would come and
take everything. We weren't planning to tell anyone about it."
Granddad nodded. "You need not to be playing with the stuff that's
inside that mound, okay? It's dangerous."
Again, Derry and Cally exchanged glances. "Um...it's a little late for
that."
Granddad's eyes narrowed. "My god, Derry, what have you two been doing?"
Derry licked his lips. "Just looking."
Granddad stared at him. "Just looking," he repeated. Then his eyes
slowly grew wider, and he leaned forward. "You two didn't go...didn't go
through a door...did you?"
Derry bit his lip, but slowly nodded.
Granddad's jaw dropped. "Without knowing what was on the other side?
Son, do you know how dangerous that
was?"
"Well, we had kinda seen what was on the other side," Derry explained.
He then went into detail on how they had used a phone and the selfie
wand to get a look at the other sides of the doors.
"Holy smoke," granddad said softly. He shook his head. "I never even
thought of that." He actually grinned then. "That's pretty sharp,
Derry."
Derry blinked at the sudden change in his granddad's demeanor.
"Um...thanks."
"You went," the man said, like he couldn't believe
it. He shook his head slowly. "And what did you see?"
Derry began to recount their trip, and then Cally joined in and helped.
They took turns telling about the ruined city and the fur people, and
the door station with thousands of doors, and the great dome that looked
out on a ringed planet. And about Difris, the steel spider. Granddad
just listened, with plain amazement written on his features.
"We promised Difris we'd be back," Derry finished, waiting to see how
his grandfather would take that.
Granddad stared at them a while, as if thinking. Or remembering.
"The left-hand door - still blocked?"
Derry nodded.
So did granddad. "You didn't go to the planet of the bird people?"
Derry gaped this time. "You know about them, too? How?"
This time, it was granddad who looked guilty. "Well...I peeked."
Cally laughed. "Oh, yeah?"
Granddad sighed, and nodded. "Well...I was fifteen, just like you."
Forty-five years ago.
"It was you," Derry said then. "You're the one that covered over
the steps leading into the mound."
Granddad nodded. "Yes. It was me." He shook his head. "It was 1972,
Derry. Apollo was going to the moon. Space was in everybody's minds. I
just knew that if people learned we had a doorway to another world here,
they would come in droves. And then the government would come, and build
fences, and keep everyone out. Including me." He looked around the
bedroom, at the walls of the house. "I love this place, Derry. I
couldn't allow that to happen."
Derry nodded, understanding that. "I know. It's home. I don't want to
see anything happen to it, either." Derry frowned. "You stuck your head
through the doors?"
Granddad smiled. "Well, the two that worked. I never did know what was
beyond the left door."
"A frozen world," Cally said. "A room with a big glass window, which was
busted. The room was full of snow. Cold." Cally winced. "A very
dead-looking place."
"Then I'm glad I couldn't go," granddad said.
Derry nodded. "Cally and I think that if the place on the other side is
too hot or too cold, or there's no air, the door shuts down and won't
let people through. Just cameras and stuff. That's how we saw."
Cally looked at Derry, and then leaned closer to Mr. Hamlyn. "Why didn't
you...why didn't you go?"
Granddad looked troubled by that question. "I wanted to.
I wanted badly." He sighed. "Maybe if I'd had a best friend to
go with me, I would have. But to go by myself...alone..." He
shook his head. "I just didn't quite dare."
Derry understood that. Without Cally to share the adventure with...the fear
with...Derry was not sure he would have gone himself. "I know what you
mean, granddad."
The man smiled. "I'm glad that you do, son. Because I've had some bad
moments over the years, knowing that place was right out there in the
woods, calling me. But..." He shook his head. "When I was your age, I
was just not able to go by myself. And telling someone I wasn't sure of
in an attempt to get someone to go with me...that might have meant
telling the world. There was too much at risk...and I chickened out."
Derry moved forward, took his grandfather's hand. "You can go with us."
Granddad gasped. "Oh...I can't do that, Derry. If you two were older,
maybe. But you're underaged. I can't go off exploring the unknown with
two minors in tow. It just...I can't."
Derry grinned. "Granddad, we've been. It would
be you going with us, not us going with you."
Granddad frowned. "You're splitting hairs, son. Legally, I'm the
responsible adult. I can't do it."
Derry felt a small fear now, that granddad would forbid them going back.
He understood what the man was saying, but...there was something
important at stake here, not the least of which was their promise to
Difris to return. Something had happened to the people of the doors -
something bad, Derry felt. Something so bad it had left ruined cities in
its wake, with the descendants of the furry, triangular-faced people
roaming about theirs, hunting with spears.
It seemed important to learn this history, so that they would know.
With so many open doors, it seemed very strange that no one was
traveling anywhere. Why not? Was there a danger? Was the Earth
in danger? Someone had to find out.
"Granddad," Derry said, squeezing the man's hand, and searching
desperately for some argument to change where he was sure now that the
conversation was going, " We have to go back. We can't just let all
these questions go unanswered."
Granddad shook his head. "No, son. No."
Derry closed his eyes, seeing it all crumbling away. Granddad would stop
them from returning, from investigating the doors, because he could not
see how important, how special, this was...
Something flickered in his memory...and then, Derry had the answer. He
smiled. "You remember the other night at dinner? When you were talking
about the doors in life?"
Granddad frowned, and licked his lips. "Yeah."
Derry nodded. "You said that, every now and then, you see a special
door in life, one you just know that, if you open it, magic
things will happen."
Granddad gave a small laugh. "Are you saying that this is one of those
events?"
"Yes." Derry nodded. "What'd you call it? The odd, onward door? The
one that goes forward in leaps and bounds, and changes your whole life?
How could something like this not be that special door?"
Granddad looked at him, thinking.
Derry leaned closer. "You had a chance at that door once, Granddad, and
you didn't take it. But that door was so special, so important, that it
came back again for you. You're getting a second chance at it, right now."
Granddad smiled, and then he laughed. "Smart little devil, aren't you?"
Derry grinned. "I'm your grandson, right?"
Granddad leaned forward, and hugged Derry, and Derry hugged the man
right back. "I love you, Derry," granddad said. "You understand that?"
They pulled apart, and Derry nodded. "Yes. I know you do. I love you,
too, granddad."
Granddad nodded. "I have to think about this for a while, okay? This is
too important for snap decisions."
Derry nodded, and cast a hopeful glance at Cally. The other boy smiled,
his eyes alight.
Granddad gave Derry's forearm a squeeze. "Promise me you two will not go
back to the mound without me, okay?"
Derry nodded. "Okay."
Granddad stood, and sighed. "I need to go sit in the rocker on the front
porch and think about this."
Derry took a breath, eased it out. His heart was beating fast, but he
felt a new confidence now. "Okay. We'll wait for you. I promise."
*******
Derry stepped through into the room of doors, with Cally right beside
him. They stepped forward to make room, and granddad appeared just
behind them.
The man stared about, obvious wonder in his eyes, and Derry thought how
young granddad looked just then. Maybe years didn't count at all when it
came to things like wonder. It was just there, the same in everyone.
"I'm here," granddad said softly, shaking his head.
Derry reached out and squeezed granddad's wrist, grinning. Granddad
returned the grin, and they all went back to gazing about the room full
of doors.
The steel spider was there, its legs retracted. But almost immediately
there was a soft whir, and the legs extruded, and the spider
stood up and approached the door. The arm extruded out front, the voice
ball inflated at the end of it, and it waved back and forth between
them.
"Cally...Derry." There seemed almost an eagerness to the tone of the
spider's voice.
Derry grinned, stepped aside, and pulled his grandfather forward. "Pat
yourself on your chest and say your name," Derry whispered.
Granddad's eyes opened wide, but he grinned. He raised a hand and laid
it on his breast. "Mike."
Difris pointed the voice ball at granddad. "Mike."
Derry and Cally both grinned. "We came to teach you some words," Cally
said.
The voice ball moved closer to him. "Ter'patsa nimen dul."
"He didn't get that," Derry said, laughing. Derry waved a hand at
granddad, then at Cally, then at himself.
"Derry...Cally...Mike...talk...Difris."
They spread out, and sat down cross-legged in front of the spider. The
spider responded by settling back and pulling its legs in, although they
did not disappear altogether. The voice ball hovered in front of them,
almost expectantly.
"Where do we begin?" granddad said to Derry. "Nouns will be easy. The
verbs, and adjective usage are going to be a little harder."
Cally shrugged. "There's time. We've got all summer."
Derry sighed softly. Actually, they had longer than that. This was just
the first of many days, and perhaps even many years. First they would
learn to talk, and in the process, learn to understand. Determining what
had happened to the door makers could prove to be a long and complicated
task. And that task had to begin somewhere.
"I guess we may as well begin with nouns," granddad decided. "Once this
fella knows what we mean when we mention a thing, it will be easier for
him to understand the links to actions and thoughts."
"I think he's pretty smart," Derry returned. "He probably speaks a bunch
of languages already, and that will help him to understand ours."
Cally leaned forward, reached across granddad, and gave Derry a playful
poke. "Way to go, geekboy."
Granddad laughed, and Derry grinned. This was going to be work, but it
was going to be fun work. They were making something here -
making a future.
This was another door they were opening, one to be explored. There were
no signs at this door, just a feeling. A feeling of good things to come.
And yes, there was some magic in
this door, too.
"Some doors, you just know that if you go through them, they will
advance your life in leaps and bounds. Knowing the
door when you see - that's the trick."
And Derry did know. The next steps were theirs to take. He raised his
hands, and touched Cally with one, and granddad with the other.
"Let's get started."
The End.
Posted: 02/15/19