The Door

by Tony Harmsworth

  ‘Not sure how legal that is, Henry.’

  ‘Well, the property is derelict, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still owned by Caruthers and Basing and they could complain about invasion of privacy.’

  ‘What, really?’

  ‘Yes, but, as you say, it’s a derelict property so who is going to do the complaining? Keep clear of that cottage where the old lady lives or she could get funny about it, though.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  - o O o -

  The following morning, I took Addy for a quick walk down to the beach promenade then left her in our walled garden and set off for the convent with my new toy fully charged and ready to go. The instructions said I’d get about twenty minutes from a full charge so I resolved to keep it to less than fifteen for safety.

  At the bottom corner of the property, where the path behind Abbess Road met Station Road, there didn’t seem to be anyone about, although there was some light traffic going into the town centre. It was a little too public so I walked briskly along the footpath to the bottom of Convent Lane, where it backed onto the rear gardens of the Abbess Road properties. It was really quiet here. Ideal.

  I slotted the phone into its housing on the controls and switched on. The drone gave me an image of the bottom of the wall running alongside Convent Lane.

  Being very cautious and not making any sudden movements, the drone climbed vertically. I watched the screen image to observe how the perspective changed.

  At four feet above the wall height, I rotated it anti-clockwise and the convent garden came into view. In front of the machine were some trees which were sorely in need of pruning. I increased the altitude until I was above the height of the tallest branches, then rotated the view left and right.

  To the left, I saw the inside of the wall running away towards Station Road. As I swivelled to the right, the extent of the orchard became clear. It was all badly overgrown and what had once been a half acre vegetable garden along this bottom end of the compound, was now just a mass of shocking magenta willow herb which must have taken years to spread so thickly. I brought the view back to parallel to the bottom wall and then moved the drone forward into the garden. It hovered about twenty feet or so inside the property, then swivelled back to the right and there was the chapel.

  It appeared to be intact. It was constructed of the same stone as the wall and sported a red roof which was overgrown with lichens and moss.

  I pointed the craft in the approximate direction of the convent house and could see the roof and several windows overlooking the garden. These hadn’t been bricked up, boarded up or broken.

  What about the mystery door or gate or whatever I should call it?

  I swivelled back in the approximate direction of the centre of the Station Road side of the property. I could see the top of the wall in places, but the fruit trees were too high to let me see to ground level and the mysterious, vanishing green door itself.

  I rotated it back towards the convent and increased altitude to some fifty or sixty feet, but the image broke up and left me with a blank screen. I saw it was facing directly towards the convent even though I’d lost the picture on my phone.

  It continued in that direction until almost out of sight, then, as it began to be lost beyond the treetops, I made it hover, did a three sixty degree rotation, then a further one eighty, to point it back towards the bottom wall. I breathed a sigh of relief when it returned to view. I swivelled it towards where the gate had been, tipped it forward to look down, then brought it back over roughly where the chapel was. While still over the property and now in plain view, I dropped it almost to wall height and it continued its return. Once it was over the wall, I held it stationary before bringing it back to earth, safe and sound. Phew!

  ‘What are you doing?’

  A man standing in his Abbess Road garden, just a few yards from me.

  ‘Oh, hi. I was looking at the walled property on Google Earth and decided it’d be fun to fly the drone over it to see the chapel in more detail,’ I said cheerfully, hoping it was a pleasant enquiry and not the beginnings of a complaint.

  ‘What chapel?’

  ‘There’s a chapel in the grounds. Presumably that’s where the sisters conducted their services.’

  ‘Oh. Right. That’s interesting.’

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Three years. Didn’t know it was a convent. You used the past tense. They’re gone, are they?’

  ‘Yes, apparently, they all died of tuberculosis.’

  ‘Good God! All of them?’

  ‘Yes. It’s very contagious if you live in close quarters to each other.’

  ‘I must go and look at it on Google. Interesting. Thanks.’

  Relieved he wasn’t going to cause trouble, I picked up my spy camera equipment and started homewards, wishing him a good morning.

  5 What IS Going On?

  After dinner, I turned off the television and told Hazel about my surveillance.

  ‘You do need to be careful, you know. There are laws about invasion of privacy and such like,’ warned my lawyer wife.

  ‘You won’t want to look at the video then?’

  She laughed and said, ‘Well… if I must.’

  I plugged the drone memory card into an adaptor for the television, opened the file and ran the video. It was surprisingly good quality.

  ‘There’s the chapel,’ Hazel said.

  We watched the sequence as it rose and looked towards the house. Hazel shouted, ‘Stop!’

  I paused the movie.

  ‘Rewind to where you turned towards the convent.’

  I did and returned to play mode, but with my hand on the pause button.

  ‘There!’

  I pressed pause.

  ‘What?’ I asked. I couldn’t see anything unusual.

  ‘In the upstairs right and downstairs left windows.’

  Good grief! There were people. They were clearly visible. In the downstairs window, we could see three or four people in a quite animated conversation. Another figure in the upstairs window looked as if he was on a mobile phone.

  I pressed slo-mo and the action moved forward in increments.

  ‘Oh, look,’ Hazel exclaimed, ‘the upstairs person has seen the drone. He’s watching it.’

  Unfortunately, at that moment I had rotated the drone and was bringing it back towards me so that was all we saw of the house. Then it turned to the right, where I wanted to see the hemispherical platform inside the vanishing gate.

  ‘Good God, Hazel. Look! There in the wall. It’s the green door,’ I said, hitting pause again.

  ‘Oh, yes. I can see it clearly. Henry, this is getting scary. What have we stumbled upon?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t like this one little bit. You shouldn’t have filmed it.’

  ‘No one knows it was me.’

  ‘The way that man looked at the drone. Don’t think he was amused.’

  I started the video again. The camera turned back towards where I had been standing. Abbess Road was visible over the wall. The drone approached the chapel and we distinctly saw a figure come out of the building and look up at it.

  I paused, rewound, and played the sequence again in slo-mo. It was a woman. She stepped out of the chapel, must have heard the drone, and looked straight up at it. Her gaze stayed on it as it flew overhead and we lost sight of her.

  As the movie sequence came to an end, we both sat in silence for at least a minute. We were dumbfounded.

  Eventually I spoke, ‘I suppose it could just have been coincidence that the owners were showing some people around while I was filming.’

  ‘Come off it, Henry. And the mysterious vanishing door or gate just happens to make an appearance at the same time? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  She switched into solicitor mode, looking at me incredibly seriously, ‘I think you shouldn’t have flown over the prop
erty and it’d be better to just forget about it in future. It might be some secret government project or something. You could get yourself in real trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I’m serious, Henry. You’re fortunate they didn’t see you. At the moment, you’re anonymous and I suggest you keep it that way.’

  ‘But the door? It proves there’s a door and, anyway, how can it possibly be there one minute and not the next?’

  ‘As I say – a secret government or military project. Don’t get involved!’

  ‘But the door. It’s beyond any technology I know of.’

  ‘Don’t get involved. Forget it!’

  ‘How can it be a government project?’

  ‘Henry! I know you. It’ll eat away at you. I’m telling you it could be dangerous and what you did was illegal. Forget it.’ At which point she put the television back on.

  I sat quietly. Thinking. She was right, of course. It was eating away at my curiosity.

  - o O o -

  The next morning, Hazel was away early to meet a client at court in London so I took Addy for a quick walk along the beach promenade, then grabbed our small digital camera and walked up to the convent. Surely whoever was there yesterday wouldn’t be there again – after all, the property was not habitable.

  I approached the wall at the location where I had seen the door. The old man we’d followed had disappeared through it. He must have done something to make it appear. We’d seen him fiddling with the stonework. Perhaps there was a secret stone which had to be pressed? What had he done to make it appear? There must be a mechanism.

  I studied the wall carefully, but there didn’t seem to be any buttons or anything of that nature. Anyway, this wasn’t like a secret panel which hid itself, I had seen the actual gate itself that first day.

  I reached forward and ran my hand over the surface of the stones. I’d moved it about a foot, touching the surface, when my fingers seemed to slide into the actual stone.

  I couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t possible. It was a sandstone slab. Half of it felt absolutely ordinary – just like sandstone to touch. The stone continued visually, but there was a distinct edge to my touch and I could see that my fingers, and now my whole hand, were seemingly inside the stone. This was no simple trick. I quickly removed my hand and examined it to ensure it wasn’t hurting me. My hand appeared absolutely normal.

  Feeling the stone again, I came to the hidden edge of the block and my fingers, hand, wrist, and more of my arm disappeared into the wall. I ran my fingers up and down. The edge continued upwards, past another stone joint. I pushed in further, but there was something stopping my progress. I caressed the surface. It felt like wood. I compared the feel of the wood with the stone. Yes, it was definitely wood. I ran my fingers further across it and there was a join, like tongue and groove panels, before more wood continued. I had found the door, but it was invisible.

  As I touched it, my hand was in the stone several inches beyond my wrist and now some of the ivy seemed to be growing out of my arm. It was all an illusion of some kind. Quite extraordinary. I was fascinated and continued to trace the edge of the door downwards. At waist height, I encountered a cold metal knob – the door handle. I grasped it.

  All of a sudden, the door morphed into existence. The entire thing was visible, the arch, the frame, the gate itself. It had always been there, but the projection of the ivy clad wall normally hid it from view.

  I took my hand away and watched. Nothing happened for about ten seconds then the door gradually melded back into the stone wall. It was gone. Hidden from view once more.

  I reached inwards and found the handle again. The door instantly reappeared. I now knew how to make it appear, but still had no idea of the mechanism which hid it from view. This was either very high tech or paranormal. Which? To my mind, it was beginning to look less ghostly and more technological, but a technology far beyond anything I’d ever heard of.

  I took a step back and watched the door until it returned to its hidden state.

  What should I do? I needed proof – photographs and maybe a movie. I removed the Canon G12 from my pocket. Held it at arm’s length to take in as much of the wall as possible and started the movie sequence. I waited three or four seconds then reached in and grasped the handle. The door obediently reappeared.

  I released the handle, stood back so that I could keep the whole of the door in shot, and continued to film until it faded back into the stonework. While photography and films could be faked, what I’d taken here would be extremely difficult to explain away.

  I grabbed the handle and took a number of still photographs of the door before finally taking some close-ups of my hand moving into the stone beside the door frame.

  Now what? It was tempting to open the door and peek inside, but I wasn’t stupid. Hazel was right to warn me about potential danger here. Perhaps I should head home, email the images and movie to Hazel’s work email address for security then return to investigate.

  I decided to ensure that I could open the door. There was an escutcheon which indicated a lock. If it was locked, I was stuck anyway.

  Reaching in, I took the handle and the door reappeared. Tucking the camera into my pocket, I turned the handle clockwise and pushed. The door opened smoothly.

  Inside, the ground was covered in neat stone slabs with grass beyond. I looked around. No one anywhere in sight. I could see a path heading straight on which would be towards the chapel. Another path cut through towards the convent. Both the paths were overgrown but had obviously been used recently as brambles and nettles had been crushed.

  I stepped into the garden and stood on the slabs. I kept my hand on the door as I had no idea if I could open it from the inside, although it seemed likely. I could just make out the roof of the house and two dormer windows set into the pitched slates.

  That was enough. I wanted to get home to secure the evidence. I turned to leave and found the doorway obstructed.

  I jumped in shock. Two tall, grim-faced, slightly Arabic-looking men blocked my way. One was holding what looked like a blue water pistol, but I guessed it was somewhat more dangerous than that. The other pulled the door from my grasp and closed it.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I was just looking.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr. Mackay,’ said the man with the water pistol.

  It struck me as puzzling that he knew my name. As if in slow motion, I watched a finger close on the trigger. A jet of bluish, gaseous liquid hit me in the chest. It was accompanied by a strong aroma of juniper and that is the last I remembered.

  6 Imprisoned

  Too late for the adrenaline rush to be of any practical use, I was suddenly very afraid. Also, my head was thumping. I felt nauseous and as I forced my eyelids to open, they seemed gummy. How long had I been asleep? What had knocked me out?

  Gradually I returned to full consciousness. I was in a room devoid of people. No sign of my assailants and I was slumped in a chair. I shuffled into an upright position. It was an upholstered carver. Slowly I took in the detail of my surroundings.

  Victorian – that was the initial impression of the room. The walls were wood-panelled, but there was no ornamentation beyond the architraves around the doors, window, and top of the panelling. Pictures were conspicuous by their absence, less faded timber betraying their existence here at some earlier time. The mantlepiece was a bare length of wood, matching the panelling. Above it, darker timber in the shape of a crucifix was evidence of a large actual crucifix which was long-since gone. Even the furniture was plain. A desk on one side of the room in lighter oak or beech. A sideboard faced it against the opposite wall and that looked like mahogany, the wood panelling was pitched pine. Another carver sat behind the desk and there were four wheelback chairs along the wall behind me. The chairs were all in dark oak and appeared to be part of a seventies' Priory dining set, but the carvers didn't match and were more of a deep mahogany colour with green leather upholstery.

  It
was all a dreadful hotchpotch as if the styles and finish of the furniture didn’t matter and had been purchased at a car boot sale. Perhaps they had.

  There was not a single object on the desk, sideboard, or mantle-shelf. Very strange.

  The nausea had gone but my knee hurt. I must have fallen on it when they – when they – what the hell did they do to me? I tried to stand but found I couldn’t move. What the devil?

  I seemed to be stuck to the chair, yet I could move each leg individually, each arm could be raised without a problem and I could shuffle my sitting position, turn my head, and rotate my shoulders. Nevertheless, I was held firmly in a seated position. It wasn’t glue because I could slide my behind from side to side on the chair. I could lean forward, but if I tried to rise, I was held fast as if in quicksand.

  Realising my predicament elevated the sense of fear and dread within me. I had been captured and imprisoned by some people who were capable of making a door disappear from a wall. This was technology beyond anything of which I was aware. For the first time that emotive word “alien” popped into my mind. I told myself not to be stupid; that their swarthy skin was more likely to mean they were terrorists. Perhaps being alien was actually less scary, but the technology…?

  If they were more intelligent than us, surely I would be safe. Why would an advanced technology come to earth and then do us harm? We weren’t capable of harming them, so why harm us? Of course, in this situation, it wasn’t possible to prevent your mind wandering to the aliens in the film Independence Day. They were way ahead of us, but just wanted to take our world. The same with The War of the Worlds. Is that not what humans had also done from time immemorial? Britain conquering much of Africa and India and taking Australia and New Zealand from the native people. Didn’t the same thing happen in North America to the native Americans? In Central and South America, it was akin to genocide. Slavery. Slavery and genocide – that was what we, as supposedly intelligent beings, did to primitive peoples. Why should I believe that aliens would behave any differently?

  My mind turned to help. Hazel would, sooner or later, realise I had got into the convent garden and call the police. Or would she? She knew about the people I’d filmed and that memory stick was still in the house. How stupid I’d been not leaving a note of what I had planned to do. She’d arrive home and wonder why Addy was in the garden. Usually we gave her the run of the house unless we were going to be out for a considerable time. Would she think I’d gone to see one of my clients? Probably. She’d call me. Where was my phone?