Behind the Door

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “Did that thing do…that…to them?” Bill asked.

  “I think so,” she replied. “We can’t let it do that to anyone else.”

  “So…is it safe to move it? I mean, what triggers it?”

  It took all her stubborn Ryan will for her to answer, “Let’s see,” and walk over to it. In her experience, there usually was some catalytic event that set off such objects. It was an educated guess that just picking it up would not be enough to unleash what was inside. It was still a guess, though.

  “Go outside, both of you,” she said.

  “Kathy, wait a minute—”

  “Do it,” she said, and was relieved that her tone had convincingly left no room for argument. Toby followed Bill outside to the driveway, where they watched her with anxious expressions.

  She picked up the box.

  She thought she heard the guys outside exhale a collective sigh of relief.

  It thrummed with life in her hands and was alternately cool and warm to the touch. It aroused a revulsion in her that she could almost taste, and she resisted the urge to hurl the box against a wall and smash it. The thing inside knocked against the lid as if trying to get out. That was good; that meant the lid was locked, and also suggested that the wood, flimsy as it looked, was perhaps the one thing protecting her from what was inside. Maybe the Kilmeisters had opened the box. Maybe that was what had killed them. Another guess….

  Very gently, she turned the box over. She noticed an inscription on the bottom written in the same set of runic symbols carved around the stone frame of the Door in the woods. She’d spent a significant amount of time trying to translate the runes around the Door after her first visit, and thought she might be able to make out what the inscription said if she could compare it with her notes.

  A rattling sound drew her attention away from the box, and she looked up to see the garage around her had come alive. The tools hanging on the walls, picking up on the humming of the box, were rattling on their pegs, threatening to fly loose. There were shears and axes, screwdrivers and hammers, jars of nails of various lengths, extra saw blades…a lot of very sharp things, trembling with murderous excitement.

  And Kathy and that damned box were standing right in the center of them.

  “Well, shit,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Kathy!” Bill called.

  “Ms. Ryan, I think you might have another problem on your hands.”

  “Thanks, Holmes, Watson. I’m on it,” she said evenly. She took a tentative step forward and the nail gun fired a warning shot past the tip of her nose. She froze. To her right, the table-saw blade began to shake.

  The garage door rumbled and slid forward an inch.

  Slowly, very slowly, Kathy lowered herself into a crouch.

  “Bill,” she said, “I need you to take the box.”

  Bill started forward warily, his eyes on the tools.

  “No, don’t come in here. I’m going to slide it out to you.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “Stop fucking around,” Bill said through his teeth, “and get the fuck out of there.”

  “I will. But take the box first…you know. In case.”

  “Kathy, don’t do this….”

  “If this box doesn’t make it back to the Door, then what happened to the Kilmeisters could happen to a lot more people. In fact, I can guarantee it will.” Seeing his expression, she added, “Please, Bill. Do this for me.”

  His expression softened. “Okay,” he said softly. “Give it here.”

  Kathy slid the box along the floor. It skittered a few feet and tipped over. She held her breath for a second, but it remained closed. Still, it was too far for Bill to reach.

  “Dammit,” she spit. “Hold on.” She crept forward and had just closed a hand around the box when a sharp bolt of pain in her hip made her cry out. A hammer clanged to the floor beside her. Quickly, she grabbed the box and shoved it the rest of the way. Bill leaned in, snagged the box, and pulled it over the threshold just as a rain of nails fell to the cement where the box had been.

  Kathy had a moment to feel relief before her right shoulder erupted in fireworks of pain that radiated down her back and arm. She reached around and felt the handle of a screwdriver; a good portion of its tip was buried in her shoulder. She wanted to pull it out, but thought the better of it. Instead, she army-crawled forward. Above her, the garage door rumbled again, falling like a guillotine halfway between the ceiling and the ground.

  “Fuck!’ she shouted, and a blaze of pain across the back of her calf made her whimper. She turned and saw the hedge clippers had sheared a bloody gash across the back of her leg. She leaned over to look at it when a thump in the wall tore her attention away. A small hatchet blade bounced off a metal leg of a shelf inches from where her head had been.

  She got on her knees and crawled faster.

  There was a clatter outside and then a metal garbage-can lid skittered to a stop beside her. She looked up to see Toby waving at her.

  “A shield!” he called.

  She gave him a small smile of genuine gratitude, grabbed the garbage-can lid, and held it in front of her like a shield, scuttling backward toward the opening. A crowbar glanced off the edge of the lid and clattered to the floor, followed by a number of nails and screws, some of which stuck in the metal. She moved faster, awkwardly dragging herself on one hand and her non-injured leg.

  When the saw the blade fly off the wall, she screamed and ducked behind the lid. She counted several seconds, waiting for the pain or the warmth of blood, but when she felt neither, she opened her eyes. Some of the blade’s teeth had chewed through the metal of the lid, but the latter had done its job admirably as a shield, stopping the blade from burying itself into her face.

  She allowed herself a little victory crow and a pair of pliers hit the lid, denting it. She launched herself backward on her good leg. The garage door took a few more inches of open space away. She scooted backward, telling herself with each rough grasp of that cement floor that she wasn’t going to make it, that she was too far away, that the door would close on her and break her spine, that—

  Her hand slid roughly over the threshold of the garage, and the door came down onto her lid, denting it. She let go. Strong hands grabbed her beneath her arms and yanked just as the force of the garage door sent the lid flying into the center of the chaos, and the door came crashing down.

  She sat on the driveway, breathing heavily and bleeding onto the asphalt.

  “Toby, get the duct tape in the back of the truck. Go now!” she heard Bill’s voice say behind her. She couldn’t stop staring at the closed door. Beyond it, she could hear the tools in an uproar, flinging themselves against the walls and each other. Their thumping and clanging made her feel cold all over beneath her skin.

  She felt Bill gently move her hair out of the way, then yank the screwdriver out of her shoulder. She muffled a cry of pain against the crook of her opposite elbow, and a moment later, heard the ripping sounds of duct tape as Bill patched her up.

  “Should hold for now,” he said over her shoulder. “Not as deep as I thought, but still….”

  She turned to him. “Thanks doesn’t seem like a big enough word, Bill. You saved my life.”

  “We should get you to a hospital,” he said, and although it was too dark to tell, Kathy thought he might have been blushing. Taping up the wound on her leg, he added, “But of course, you won’t go.”

  “Not now,” she said. “We need to get to the Heritage Center. We need to get that box somewhere safe. Where is it?”

  A bolt of panic seized her that was worse than the pain in her shoulder and leg combined. She didn’t see it—couldn’t see anything, particularly the glow of the box—but then Toby, who had been hovering near Bill in the dark, said, “It’s in the truck, M
s. Ryan. No worries.”

  “Call me Kathy,” she told him. “And thanks again. I never would have made it out without that garbage-can lid.”

  Though she couldn’t see him too well, she got the impression Toby was even more uncomfortable with gratitude than Bill. “Glad I could help. Do something right for once.”

  Bill and Toby helped her to her feet and guided her to the truck. She thought she could walk okay on her leg, but she moved more quickly with their help. The interior glowed a soft blue and Kathy saw the box on the passenger seat. She picked it up with one hand and could feel it vibrating again, this time in anger. Who knew what it could do to the truck? Force it off a cliff? Make it explode? As the guys got her and themselves into the truck, she looked around the interior, hoping for a bigger box, preferably made of lead or iron, something with the right properties to contain the one in her lap.

  There was a toolbox by Toby’s feet, large enough, Kathy thought, for the wooden box to fit inside.

  “Toby, hand me that toolbox, will you? Bill, what is that? Aluminum?”

  Bill shrugged as he pulled away from the curb. “I think so.”

  Toby handed her the toolbox, and with an apology to Bill, she dumped his tools on the floor and then put the wooden box inside, closing the lid and fastening the clasp.

  “Is aluminum some type of special protective metal or something?” Toby asked.

  “Not really,” Kathy said. “It’s too new an alloy to have any historical occult significance, but it’s been effectively used in place of mercury, which is poisonous, but believed to be significant when it comes to transdimensional transportation. Newer occult philosophies attribute some protective power to both mercury and aluminum, but I’m an old-school kind of girl.” She smiled at Toby. “I guess we’ll see if they’re right, huh?”

  Toby looked as worried as he did confused. “You’re the expert.”

  Chapter 14

  Deep in the woods of Zarephath, the Door hummed.

  What was left of Ed Richter in this world was tugged at by winds that kept sending the oak trees above into a nervous rustle and made the ropes that hung from them, the ones that had strung up Ed for a while, creak like old bodies.

  There wasn’t much of Ed for the winds to play with, just some scraps of flesh and a few bones that had been pulled out of his right leg. The animals, few that there were in the vicinity of the Door, might drag them off soon enough, but not while the Door emitted that hum that was almost words.

  There was a little blood too. Not much, not anymore, but a smattering on the fallen leaves which, this close to the Door, were in a perpetual state of late autumn.

  What was left of Ed on the other side of the Door screamed until his face changed into something that was nothing like a face and the soft parts of him were devoured by hungry, impatient gods.

  * * * *

  When Kathy, Bill, and Toby arrived at the Heritage Center, they were glad to see Sheriff Cole’s patrol car among others already parked. They were even happier to see the man himself in the basement, sitting on folding chairs with two women who he introduced to Kathy as Kari Martin and Cicely Robinson. The rest of the room was more sparsely filled than Kathy would have liked—maybe thirty-five of the sixty or seventy that had shown up for the town meeting. Odds were that far more people had used the Door, and thus were in danger of backlash, than the small group gathered and milling about the basement. What Kathy supposed the number meant was that a small town had grown somewhat smaller, and quickly.

  She recognized a few faces from the town meeting, including the lady with the alien shirt (now in a checkered pink and blue blouse), a few middle-aged men, and the little girl and her mother. It pained Kathy to see the little girl there and know that she still couldn’t follow through yet on her promise to protect the town. What bothered her even more was the idea that, given their presence, either the girl or her mother had used the Door, or both. All three prospects were equally horrible to Kathy.

  She set the toolbox at her feet and sat in one of the folding chairs behind the women. Toby sat behind her and Bill sat behind Sheriff Cole. Kathy’s presence drew the others in the room closer. Townspeople took seats in the surrounding folding chairs or hovered nearby in the aisle.

  “Hello, ladies,” Kathy said to the two women. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m glad Sheriff Cole was able to get you here safely.” To the others, she added, “Everyone, I’m happy you all made it here. I choose to find it encouraging that there are some of you, rather than discouraging that there aren’t more of you.”

  Her statement was greeted with cool stares and unsure grumbling. They were waiting on her for answers. Many looked exhausted. Some looked physically hurt.

  Cicely shivered, pulling her sweater tighter around her. Kari looked miserable. She also looked just about as badly beaten up as Kathy felt. Her face was an assortment of bruises and she clutched the side of her ribs as if trying to massage a persistent pain.

  “I got your message,” Kathy continued, looking at Kari. The other woman began a jumble of half-started sentences, mostly apologies and explanations, and Kathy held up her hand.

  “Look, it’s okay, Kari. May I call you Kari?”

  The other woman nodded. Kathy continued. “I figure you had your reasons, and I’d even go so far as to guess they were good ones, or seemed good at the time.”

  “What does she mean?” Cicely asked, looking at Kari. “Your reasons for what?”

  Kari’s eyes, red already from crying, spilled new tears. “I opened the Door.” There was a surprised gasp from those assembled nearby. Cicely in particular looked especially wounded.

  “Sugar,” she said, and there was the slightest ice-sharp edge to her voice, “I told you that rule number one was that you never, ever open the Door for any reason. Ever.”

  “I was forgetting her,” Kari said softly. “My own daughter. I was forgetting all my memories of her because of how I worded the letter and I just wanted to get it back. I begged with them behind the Door, really pleaded for my letter back. I asked them to cancel it. I tried to bargain, offered a trade, anything. I even tried to dig under the Door, but I couldn’t reach and I thought, if I just opened it for a minute—”

  “So this is her fucking fault all this is happening? ’Cuz she opened the fucking Door?” one of the middle-aged men said. He was a big guy with an unruly gray beard and an ample stomach over which was stretched a T-shirt and flannel. The T-shirt read SEX MACHINE.

  “Sex machine, you got a name?” Kathy turned to the man.

  “Ted,” he said.

  “Ted. Easy does it. This is no one’s fault, okay? All of you have to understand something right now. If you blame or judge anyone in this room for their involvement with the Door, for whatever they asked to be undone or taken away or given to them, then we won’t need to worry about the Door killing everyone. You’ll do the job yourselves.”

  Again, the chilly silence, but Kathy could tell from their expressions that they knew she was right.

  “No blame, no judging, do you understand? The day after all this is fixed, you can go back to your lives and hate each other as much as you like, but tonight, and until we resolve this problem, no one here has any higher moral ground than anyone else. You need to work with me. We need to work together. I don’t care what bad you did. I want to see what good you can do.”

  Nods and murmurs of approval from the crowd satisfied her, so she turned back to Kari.

  “I need to know how long the Door was open and what you saw. I need to know what came through.”

  “It…it was only open a few minutes. Maybe five or six minutes, tops, and probably not even that long. It took some effort, but I got it closed again. I swear, I never meant for any of this to happen.” Her pleading gaze swept the assemblage. “I swear I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”

  “We know,” Kathy said in her
best attempt at sounding soothing. “Tell us what you saw.”

  “It was…another place. Another world, I think. Outside of our universe.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Kari’s hands fidgeted in her lap. “Everything was different in that other place. The air felt different. It was so quiet, except for the hum. The ocean, that limitless ocean, was so quiet, even though it was raging. And there were no stars in that other sky, just an endless expanse of black….”

  She thought a minute, then added, “Well, it was more like purple, but a shade so dark that it was just about black. There was nothing familiar about that sky. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “Did you see anything else?” Kathy asked.

  “A tower,” Kari said. “A dark gray tower with carvings on it. It had to be huge. I think it was the tower that created the humming that ate all the sound.”

  “Did you see anything living?” Bill broke in. “Any people?”

  Kari chuckled, but the sound stuck in her throat. “No people. Nothing like people at all. If those things I saw are the gods behind the Door, then we’ve been laying our secrets and sorrows and fears on an altar built for monsters.”

  “Can you describe them?” Cole asked. The others in the room were dead quiet, hanging on Kari’s words.

  “Brownish. They didn’t really have one consistent shape. I think their bones moved by themselves under their skin. And their eyes and mouths appeared and disappeared at will. They could reshape themselves as needed, to create parts like tentacles or…or wings.”

  She shook her head, the tears dripping off her chin. “I closed that damned Door before they flew out. I’m sure I did. Closed it right on one of them before it could push through. I swear not a one of those things crossed through that opening. So…how did they get here?” Her tear-streaked face held an expression so broken and confused that Kathy genuinely felt sorry for her.

  “Well,” Kathy said gently, “other dimensions are not beholden to the same rules of time and space that we are. Their physics and ours don’t always work the same. They could have come from under the Door, after some seal had been broken in opening it. Or you could have seen their escape out of order, chronologically. It’s hard to say for sure. But you’ve done really well here tonight. You’ve given us a lot of useful information.”