The Seventh Door

by Bryan Davis

  While Walter worked on the password with Ashley and Larry, Matt drew his mother’s hand close and kissed her knuckles. “Lauren said to tell you she loves you.” He nodded at Dad. “Both of you.”

  “Those were her last words?” Dad asked.

  “Not exactly.” Her dying voice flowed to mind as if she were whispering at this moment. Matt bit his lip hard. It would take every ounce of restraint to deliver this message without breaking into sobs. “She said . . . ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’”

  Mom drew her hand away and began crying anew. Dad rubbed her back and spoke softly into her ear.

  “I have a solution,” Thomas called from somewhere in the gathering.

  Matt perked his head up. “The password?”

  “No, no. I’ll wager that no one will guess that.” Thomas stepped closer, guided by Mariel. “I know a way to stop the missile launches and perhaps resurrect Lauren, both by the same method.”

  “You do?” Matt shot to his feet. “How?”

  “According to those who can see, the solution is right before your eyes.”

  Mariel swatted him, her red eyes afire. “This is the worst time to play games.” She waved a hand toward the seventh door. “Thomas says if you open the door and release the locusts, they will terrorize the people. No one will be able to launch the missiles.”

  “Tamiel mentioned something like that,” Matt said, “but can the locusts get to Washington that fast?”

  Thomas shook his head. “Washington is not the issue. The U.S. would be more likely to launch their ground-based missiles, because they are the most vulnerable to the supposed Russian attack. The submarine arsenal is hidden, so they are safe. This is merely a guess, of course. I have very little knowledge of nuclear defense procedures.”

  Matt nodded. “Well, a lot of the ground-based missiles are in this area; the locusts won’t have far to go to disrupt the launches if the command centers are close by.”

  “What about Lauren?” Mom asked. “How would releasing the locusts resurrect her?”

  Thomas turned toward the door, apparently guided by his sensory abilities. “Supposedly the seventh door leads to Abaddon’s Lair. That is the realm of resurrections, though perhaps it is presumptuous to assume that God would guide Lauren’s spirit there when so few have been chosen for resurrection. Still, an extraordinarily high percentage of Bonnie’s relations have been so chosen, I assume because of the prophecies surrounding her life and purpose, so maybe instead it would be presumptuous to assume that Lauren wouldn’t go to Abaddon’s Lair.”

  “Enoch said as much.” Mom brushed away more tears. “One problem. Resurrected souls on Second Eden acquired a new body from the soils of the birthing garden, but resurrections here always had the dead body around, like with Lazarus and me and Billy.” She lifted Lauren’s limp hand. “Do you think we would have to carry her body into Abaddon’s Lair?”

  “Most likely,” Thomas said. “It would be tragic to go there without her body and find out upon arrival that you need it. Besides, so far I have noted many close parallels with your journey through the circles of seven. This appears to be yet another. You died in the sixth circle. Lauren died at the sixth door. Billy carried you to the seventh circle. Now someone must carry Lauren through the seventh door.”

  “And here’s another problem,” Ashley said as she stepped closer, Tamiel’s phone in hand. “I synched Larry, but he can’t break in. He tried more than a thousand combinations of the number string. Larry believes the numbers have a pattern that suggests geographic coordinates instead of a password.”

  “Coordinates?” Matt reached toward Walter. “Let me see those numbers.”

  Walter gave him the scrap. “Larry says if they’re coordinates, they point to a spot in the middle of the Indian Ocean.”

  Matt searched the numbers for . . . Yes, 4403 was there in the middle of the string. “They’re Second Eden coordinates. Semiramis told me she put a deadly device in Second Eden, and she baited me with a string of numbers that were part of the coordinates. I thought it was just a ploy to get me to let her go, but I guess she was telling the truth.”

  “So we have to send a message to Second Eden.” Walter took the paper. “We’ll get Larry to work on it.”

  Matt inhaled deeply. Maybe Lauren didn’t die in vain after all. If she hadn’t killed Tamiel, they never would have found his note.

  Ashley lifted the phone to her ear. “I have some good news. Larry spoke a coded message. Jared and Marilyn have been home. They’re working on some kind of secret project, but Larry didn’t want to risk giving the details. He just said they need transportation, so if we have a spare dragon, they’d appreciate it if we sent one their way.”

  “Check this out.” Darcy pointed at a dark spot on the grass. “Arramos was spraying something here. It really stinks.”

  Dad limped over and crouched next to the blackened blades. “Male dragons have a scent gland they use as a marker.”

  “Enoch said the drones are trained to follow a scent,” Mom said. “It’s a good bet they’ll be back.”

  “No use wasting time.” Matt unhooked the key ring and looped it over his fingers. He then slid his arms under Lauren and lifted her. “I’m going through the seventh door.”

  “So am I.” Dad straightened, wincing with the effort. “Bonnie, you and the others can go with Elam and Sapphira back to Second Eden to warn them about the device. The portal isn’t very far and—”

  “Dad, I can’t let you go with me.”

  He cocked his head. “Why not?”

  “Supposedly there’s a bottomless pit behind the door. An abyss. Tamiel called it the forever fall. It’s too dangerous. You need to be with Mom.”

  Mom rose and touched Dad’s arm. “He’s right. We should both go.”

  “We are wasting time,” Thomas said. “Open the door and release the locusts. Otherwise it will be too late to do any good. Then you can look inside and decide who should go.”

  “He’s right.” Matt carried Lauren to the door. With broken vines framing the arch, a lock twice the size of a man’s hand, and the eerie words spelling out a fearsome warning, the door seemed more formidable than ever.

  “My mother has to open the lock. According to Tamiel, she’s a star fallen from Heaven or something like that.”

  Mom took the key ring from his fingers. “I suppose we have no choice.” When she grasped the melded key, the colors pulsed like a luminescent heartbeat. “I dreamed about these colors. Each of the seven ovula had one of them, but yellow is missing. All seven were necessary for the complete purity of the eighth ovulum.”

  “The lock is yellow,” Matt said, “so it must be the last piece of the puzzle. Maybe you being the eighth ovulum is the reason you’re the only one who can use the key.”

  She turned a tiny knob above the keyhole. When a blocking plate slid out of the way, she pushed the key into the lock. Her facial muscles straining, she grunted, but the key didn’t turn in either direction. “According to the dreams I had about the colors, yellow stands for patience. I suppose that means we have to wait.”

  Matt shifted Lauren again. An urge to complain about the loss of time seemed overwhelming, but that might work against the whole patience idea. He shoved the urge away and stayed quiet.

  Leaving the key in the lock, Mom stepped back. “While we’re waiting . . .” She slid a beaded necklace up over her head and put it on Lauren. Now draped over Lauren’s chest, the beads glowed, each with an individual color. As Mom fingered a yellow one, she blinked through a new cascade of tears. “I suppose we’ll see if these beads really have resurrection power.”

  Soon, the yellow in the lock bled toward the key, turning the lock gray. The key ceased pulsing and slowly faded to transparency.

  “It’s invisible,” Matt said.

  “Just like the purity ovulum.” Mom felt for the key, grasped it, and turned it. The lock clicked, and the curved shank popped up from
the body. She shook the lock away from the chains, withdrew the key, and set the ring over Matt’s fingers.

  “When you are ready,” Yereq said, “I will open it. It is better that I risk any initial danger.”

  Matt hiked Lauren’s body higher and stepped back from the threshold. Now all that remained was to pull the rings and see what lay behind the mysterious letters—Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.

  He nodded at the seventh door. “Open it.”

  Chapter 23

  THE ABYSS

  Yereq grabbed a ring on each door, set his feet, and heaved. The doors gave way and swung open. Blinding radiance poured forth, a wave of pure light. Yereq ducked and jogged out of the burst of energy. Smoke followed in a billowing stream and intermixed with the light.

  Matt backed away and readjusted his hold on Lauren. The sky darkened. Gloom settled over the yard. Soon, the stream of smoke stopped, and ashy particles gathered into individual clouds, fist-sized puffs that hovered in place, growing brighter and brighter. They slowly morphed into winged insects that emitted a deafening buzz.

  One of the insects, an especially noisy one about two feet tall, flew closer to Matt and floated in front of his eyes, as if examining him with a probing gaze. This “locust” had a human torso, arms, and head, as well as an equine body and legs. A crown on its head, waist-length hair flowed around its body, and a long tail with a stinger at the end twitched as if ready to strike.

  More locusts descended and buzzed around Mom, Dad, and the others. As the insects pulsed with light, they stared with reflective compound eyes.

  The first locust slapped his breastplate, making a flesh-on-metal sound. With a louder buzz, it flew slowly back. The others followed, and the entire mass of clattering insects hovered in place. Numbering in the thousands, they faced the door as if waiting for something else to emerge.

  A growl erupted from the dark opening, growing closer and closer. A dragon’s head appeared, then its long neck and body. Sleek and black, this dragon looked more powerful than Makaidos or even Arramos. The locusts chattered wildly, as if cheering the dragon’s arrival.

  “Abaddon!” Mom took a step toward him. “I’m so glad you’re here. My daughter died, and I was wondering if—”

  “If I would raise her from the dead.” Fire spewed from Abaddon’s nostrils. “Your grief has addled your brain and made you overly presumptuous. I do not make such decisions.”

  Mom just stared at him, her mouth hanging open.

  “What? Agape at an absence of alliteration? Astonished at an avoidance of amicability?” He set his snout in front of her face. “As I warned you, I have changed. I am not the dragon who played word games with you in the depths of the valley. I am now the dread angel of the abyss, and I must fly with my horde to bring wrath to those who rebel against the Almighty, and because of certain circumstances, I will have to hurry if I am to quell the coming catastrophe. I have no time to spend chatting about the soul of yet another one of your relations.”

  “Leave her alone!” Matt yelled as he stepped closer. “Just tell me if it’s possible to get to that domain of yours, and I’ll look for Lauren’s soul myself.”

  “Ah! The Bannister I rescued from a drone a few days ago. I see that you have Bonnie’s boldness and bravado.”

  Matt growled. “Just tell me.”

  “It is possible to get there, but the way is harrowing. You are far more likely to die than to succeed, especially if you are carrying such, shall we say, deadweight.”

  “That’s not funny.” Matt took in a deep breath. “If Lauren’s soul is there, how would I find her?”

  “Search the statues, search the streams, rely on the residents, deliver their dreams.” Abaddon set his snout close to Matt’s ear and whispered, “If you go to my abode, I warn you, go alone. Carry Lauren’s body with you if you must, but hear this word of promise. If two living humans go, one of them will die. And speak my name to the guardians. It is the only way to survive. One of those guardians will not respect my name, so you will have to use your wits to pass.” He beat his wings and lifted into the air. The locusts swarmed around him, and they flew away at an incredible speed. The smoke broke apart and began to diminish.

  Matt laid Lauren’s body on the ground and reattached the key ring to his belt loop. “Someone watch her. I’m going to have a look inside.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Dad said.

  They walked side by side, Dad limping heavily, and stepped through the doorway. Daylight, though muted by the leftover smoke, provided a view of a huge circular pit, maybe fifty feet across that spanned all but a narrow ledge around the perimeter.

  Matt stopped at the edge and looked down. A stiff breeze fun-neled up and swirled, creating a tight vortex that tossed his hair and clothes. Pulsing red light below illuminated the rocky cylinder. Shifting shadows made it look like ledges protruded here and there from the sheer wall and then drew back in, like darting tongues of rock. Other shadows teased of the possibility that a door or a narrow passage in the rock might create an exit for an expert climber, but every hole and ledge might be imaginary. “Looks almost impossible to scale.”

  “And Bonnie couldn’t fly down there,” Dad said. “She can handle some pretty rough winds, but not if they’re spinning like that.”

  “Someone could rappel. The wind doesn’t affect a rope climber that much.”

  “True, but a climber could go down only so far. We’d never find enough rope to explore everywhere. It looks thousands of feet deep.”

  Matt pointed at one of the larger shadows that appeared for a moment then vanished. “That could be a hole of some kind. Maybe Yereq could lower me that far with a rope.”

  “Lower you?” Dad shook his head, laughing under his breath. “Oh, no. You’re not going.”

  “But you’re crippled. You can’t rappel with broken toes. I’m not in the greatest shape, but I’m self healing. I’ll be fine soon.”

  “Lauren’s my daughter. She’s my responsibility.”

  “What about my responsibility?” Matt pressed a thumb against his chest. “If I had been quicker, I could’ve stopped her from grabbing Tamiel. It’s my fault.”

  “She was bound and determined to give her life to kill Tamiel. No one could have stopped her.” Dad laid a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Listen, Son. Your mother is already grief-stricken. Lauren’s death probably crushed her song. If she loses you . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know if she could survive.”

  “She could. Mom’s strong. And besides, what if you die? That would be even worse. I can’t comfort her like you can. I barely know her. You two were separated for fifteen years. I’m not about to let you leave her now.”

  “Not about to let me—” Dad cleared his throat. “It’s not your decision. You’ll stay here while Yereq lowers me with the rope, then—”

  “Abaddon told me something.”

  Dad narrowed his eyes. “What?”

  “Didn’t you see him whisper in my ear? He told me a secret that’ll get me past their guardians.”

  “Okay . . .” Dad dragged the toe of his shoe across the rocky floor. “Let’s hear it.”

  Matt shook his head. “I can’t. I mean, I won’t.”

  “You won’t?” Dad glanced back at Mom. She knelt next to Lauren, whispering with Sapphira. When he turned back to Matt, he spoke in a stern but calm voice. “I understand your feelings about this, but as your father, I demand that you—”

  “Demand?” Matt pressed his lips together hard. The urge to yell at this man, this newly minted father who would pull parental rank on a son who was little more than a stranger, sent a hot shudder from head to toe. But he couldn’t spout off. That would be like barking at the drill sergeant—rude, disrespectful, and worthless. “Give me a minute to think.”

  “Go ahead. I think we both need to cool off.”

  Matt pivoted toward the abyss. What could he do? Everyone would probably agree with Dad, that
a teenager should give up his secrets and let the experienced warrior go on the dangerous journey. Yet, wasn’t it love that motivated this warrior to make the demand? Of course it was. And maybe love held the key to convincing him to relent. But could a son who barely knew his father come up with the right words? Maybe, but it would take a dose of his mother’s eloquence, the best key to his father’s heart.

  “Dad,” Matt said as he turned around. “I’m sorry about getting so hot about this. You have every right to make demands of me, but I need to explain something.” He wrapped his arms around his father and held him close. “You have a warrior’s spirit, a heart of gold. There is no way you could ever let your son go on this dangerous journey, to take your rightful place as protector of your precious daughter. That is a father’s duty. I understand that.” He pushed back and looked into his father’s misty eyes. “I inherited the same spirit, the same heart. I am a warrior. I love Mom, but you’re the one who bonded with her, and I just met her a few days ago. She needs you a lot more than she needs me. You know it’s true. Stay with her. Be her guardian. Remember, Arramos is still on the warpath, and she’s bound to be one of his main targets. You can protect Mom a lot better than I can. Chances are, I won’t be able to resurrect Lauren, but you can keep Mom alive. And if you die, she’ll die inside. After fifteen years of waiting for the two of you to reunite, don’t let that happen.”

  A tear trickled from Dad’s eye. He sniffed and looked away, his voice cracking. “You are truly the son of your mother.”

  “Then will you . . .” He dragged his shoe along the same line his father had. “Will you let me go?”

  Dad refocused on Matt and nodded. “Let me break the news to your mother. I’ll try to use some of your words, but it’s better if they come from me.”

  Matt tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move. The terror of the abyss ripped away any hint of satisfaction. “Let’s see if we can find a rope.”