The Door

The Door has many rules. Do not look at the Door. Do not talk about the Door. Definitely do not talk to the Door, and if the Door itself talks, do not listen to its whispers. Do not open the Door, and do not go through the Door, not frontwards, backwards, sideways or any other way that could possibly be conceived of. In fact, do not go near the Door for any reason, and and do not breathe near the Door. A thousand little rules, for something that appears quite toothless.

Its appearance then, to help with avoidance. It is a simple affair. The wood had been bright red once, but after an indeterminable number of years, the color had become faded and worn. White stone formed the frame, each irregular block stacked on top of another. It may have been pristine once, but is now yellowed and grimy with age.

It was in the middle of nowhere, remembered by no one. The surrounding land was a fertile, overgrown sea of green. Here and there the crumbled remains of walls and buildings peaked through the foliage. The air hummed and buzzed with thousands of bugs. Except for the area directly around the Door. That small circle of land was completely and utterly dead, as if even nature knew to avoid it.

But this is not the full picture. A door, a single surviving remnant of a long dead structure, surrounded by reclaimed ruins, is hardly cause for all these rules and superstition. Perhaps if there was something behind it, but there are no walls. The secret of the Door lies lies through it, not behind.

It is a room, and it feels small and claustrophobic, despite the fact the walls cannot be seen. There is light, but it is difficult to say where exactly it comes from, and in any case it is not enough to illuminate the room. Only enough to extenuate the shadows. Any potential visitors would notice none of this. Their eyes would undoubtedly be glued to the creature that called the place home.

He is called the Silver Prince, and his impressive bulk is held aloft by five arms. They stretch off into the darkness from different angles of his body. His eyes, of which there are seven, are locked on the Door, and have been for a very long time. Waiting for it to open. Waiting for prey.

The Prince had not eaten in many years. Prey was on the other side of the Door, and therefore had to come to him. It would happen. It had to. It was how he himself had wound up there, after all; despite the rules surrounding it, someone always got curious about the Door. He had been lucky, and quick, and now

Jason Hill

the space was his. Prey would find its way in. He would wait and wait and wait, and when he had all but given up hope, the Door would open. Either the prey would come in, or it would be waiting outside. This is how it has always been.

The prince shifts his bulk, bracing with three arms on the clammy walls of his prison. With the fourth and fifth, he reaches out reverently to the Door. The hands came within a hairbreadth of the corrupted wood, but never actually touched it. The Door could not be opened from this side; even touching it was painful for him. Not as painful as the Doors’ refusal to open, of course. Not as painful as the hunger eating away at it from the inside. But painful nonetheless.

But then, for a moment, pain. Blinding, searing pain, running up the Prince’s arms like a cleansing flame. He recoils in horror with an awful screech, and the room quivers in sympathy with its prisoner. Then the Prince realised what it meant. The Door had touched the Prince’s fingers. He had made contact, though he went no closer than was usual in his hourly pleas for succour. In other words, the Door had opened.

Taloned fingers slipped around sun faded wood, and the SIlver Prince pulled himself into a world that was no longer green. Five eyes blinked under the glare of a sickly yellow light before taking in a scene that was almost more depressing than the room had been. Structures poked out of the snow like the ribs of a long dead colossus. The burned out remains were hundreds of feet tall, looming over the Door with barely constrained hostility. This was not a world of life, of prey, and it hadn’t been for quite a while. Which raised a very simple, but veryimportant, question: who opened the Door?

No one had entered it, and no one was waiting. These points stuck in the Prince’s mind as he took a few tentative steps into the city. Eyes blinked and rolled in the weak sunlight that was still much brighter than anything he was used to. Maybe it was this that staggered him and kept his eyes cast low. Maybe he was too focused on the questions in his head. Either way, he did not see the eyes watching from the ruined buildings. Eyes that watched his every move with a feral hunger.

They were human once, these ghoulish monsters. But time changes all things. They were cadaverous, their ribs poking through taunt skin. Mad eyes rolled in sunken sockets, and rotten teeth gnashed and ground in hunger. A hunger that was just as terrible as that of the Silver Prince, if not moreso.

They came as one, a pack of nightmares that ripped and tore at the Prince. He tried to fight. When that did not work, he tried to run. And when running failed, the Silver Prince died.

The ghouls ate well for the first time in ages. But as the food ran out, their eyes turned to the Door. Food had come from there. They did not quite know how, as noting could be seen on the other side, but they had all seen the Prince enter

their world. Perhaps there was more food on the other side?

The pack moved towards the Door. slowly at first, but gaining certainty with every step. The leader enters the Door, caution thrown to the wind at the prospect of food. He disappears as he crosses the threshold, but this does nothing to deter the rest.

On the other side is a suffocating darkness, the dim light available to the Prince nowhere near enough for the newcomers. Unlike the world they left, the air is hot and humid. The walls are slick and close. There is a sound very nearly like the rumbling of a stomach. Unseen, the Door closes.

Poetry