Two Souls,
One Door:
BEYOND
by
Christopher Goodrum
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the Publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published January 2017
Copyright 2017 ©, Christopher Goodrum
Ashelon Books
19920 67th Ave NE, Space 50
Arlington, WA 98223
www.kieltok.wix.com/ashelonbooks
[email protected]
Also by Christopher Goodrum
The Legend of the Dragonskinner
The Dragonskinner and the Hanging Stones of Wiltshire
The Dragonskinner and the Mirrors of Transparency
The Order
with Julianna Goodrum
The Leaping Lepre of Letterfrack
Short Stories
Addison Jane and the Christmas Chase
Alice’s Strange & Peculiar Easter
Into the Void (Short Story Series)
Two Souls, One Door
For No One in Particular
Two Souls,
One Door:
BEYOND
“This is futile. You know this.”
“Do I? I don’t know. This seems like the best thing to do under the circumstances.”
“Circumstances,” Savannah chuckled. “You certainly have a strange definition of the word.”
“What would you call it?”
“I dare not say in the presence of innocent ears.”
“I’m not as innocent as I look,” Kaleigh snidely replied. Despite her appearance…the yellow and white sundress, the flats, and braided brown hair…Kaleigh wasn’t known for her pure heart and obedience. She was adventurous, curious, and inquisitive. Fearless, in a way. That was not to say she wasn’t afraid of anything, but the enveloping darkness, fear of supernatural creatures lurking in the shadows, or the anxiety of death or injury wasn’t something she lingered on. The discovery of new places and new things. Things she had never seen before. That was what life was about for her. Sometimes that got her into trouble. Sometimes more than she bargained for.
“This is still pointless. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but we are never going to get anywhere. How many times do I need to explain it to you?”
“I don’t accept that,” Kayleigh replied. “If there is a way in here, there’s a way out of here.”
“The only way out of here,” Savannah began, her tone turning sour, “is through that door.”
Savannah pointed behind them the double door in the distance, free standing and isolated from any wall of structure. The edges around it glowed with a bright green light as if the door eclipsed the brightest star in the night sky.
“We don’t know where we are.”
“At least we know where we are not,” Savannah replied.
“Yes! As charming as this place is, it is certainly not Paris.”
In truth, they were nowhere. Nowhere in particular. Nor did they know how they arrived there. A vast, endless void surrounded them. An expanse of nothingness absent of natural light or physical dimensions. The darkness seemed to stretch into eternity with no horizon, no sky or ceiling, and no visible floor. But there was substance to the void. There was a sense of direction and orientation. They could tell what was up or down, left or right, but that was the extent of it. There was gravity and there was a solid foundation to walk upon. Aside from the door, there was nothing else.
But now, the door was fading away, slipping back into the darkness.
“What if it had opened,” Savannah asked.
“It never opens.”
“But this time…what if it had opened this time?”
“I’m not waiting for that door anymore,” Kayleigh declared. “All it does is tease. Tease us for no good reason. I have better things to do than wait for a door that may never open.”
“Like what?”
“Like…like…” Kayleigh couldn’t think of anything. For a moment, she thought she had something in mind. A couple of things in mind, in fact, but now that the moment called for her to identify and itemize what they were, they slipped her mind.
Kayleigh was a young, Southern gal who had a sharp wit and (according to her grandmother) moxie. She didn’t quite know what that was suppose to mean. Was it to imply spunk, spirit, and sassiness? She wasn’t sure, but she wore it like a badge of honor.
At twenty-two years of age, she didn’t have to worry about too many things. She had a job, learning the difficult task of being fiscally responsible and managing bills when she barely made enough to square away everything each month and still have money to eat. The single life treated her well enough. No cheapskates or lugheads knocking on her door. Her roommate was a saint: a born again Christian who paid her fair share of the bills and rent on time, lived cleanly, and got along with her.
Life was good… life was good.
Now…
“Much of life is lost in waiting,” Kayleigh quoted. Although, she couldn’t remember where it was from, or even if she quoted it correctly.
“How poignant,” Savannah remarked. “And ironic.”
They continued to walk, away from the door that faded away into oblivion as it had so many times before. The odd thing was, like the many odd things about this place, each time the door opened, it maintained its distance from them. It wasn’t so much that it was moving along with them, but rather it would appear at a precise distance from them. They lost count how many times the door appeared, never opened, and then disappeared. Dozens of times, perhaps.
During their time there, it was the only thing that kept them relatively sane.
Silence filled the void, weighing heavily on them with a lingering soft humming that reviberated in their ear drums. It wasn’t maddening as long as they didn’t focus on it or talked, but they had already been talking for hours. Hours of walking and talking that resulting in the same outcome: finding nothing. Literal and absolute.
“This is ridiculous,” Savannah stated. “Simply ridiculous. We have been walking for hours. Maybe even days. Who knows? We don’t get tired in this place. We don’t even know how long we have been stuck here. If feels like forever and it might as well have been. I’m not taking another step.” And with that, she stopped, placing her hands on her hips in a defiant posture. It was anyone’s guess exactly who she was being defiant to. Kayleigh was the only person she had seen since she woke up in this nameless unknown.
The last thing she remembered was getting a wheelchair escort from the airport terminal. The flu hit her mid-flight and the passenger next to her, leaving her too weak to stand on her own. Everything was spinning, even in the wheelchair. She passed on the in-flight meal despite the long trek from Chicago to Los Angeles. She felt her stomach twist up in knots, her hands were clammy, and she was sweating as if she was sitting in a sauna. Her legs were weak and her mind clouted. Half the time, she didn’t know what was happening. She vaguely recalled being aware of the flight attendants and medics assisting her into the wheelchair and off the plane.
It wasn’t food poisoning. That much was certain. But whatever strain it was, it caused her to pass out. When she woke up, she was in the void. A void of nothingness with very little memory. She didn’t know who she was for a long moment, suffering
from some sort of delirium presumably brought on from the sickness.
There was confusion, disorientation, and eventually…panic. She screamed for hours, fighting the despair as best she could, but she didn’t know what she was despairing about. Was she in danger? Or simply lost? Was she alone in the darkness?
She later realized she wasn’t. There was another person in the void with her. A motionless body in the distance, slumped over and exhausted from crying, as well.
Carefully, she approached this new figure. She must have been a least a hundred yards away and could have reached this stranger in less than a minute, but Savannah was cautious. She didn’t know what to expect or who to expect. As it turned out, it was just a young girl in a sundress. The girl’s face was sunken from crying, her hazel eyes puffy, and cheeks red. Her long, light brown hair draped over her shoulders. She looked beyond inconsolable and for a long time, she didn’t look up at Savannah. She simply sat on the ground, hopeless and defeated.
“I’m Savannah,” she softly introduced herself.
The stranger finally looked up after a moment’s pause, moving her hair back behind her ears. She noted Savannah shoulder-length raven black hair, her green eyes, and her business casual attire. Savannah was dress in a dark grey pants, a light blue blouse, and matching pumps. The red longcoat was a bit out of place color and style wise, but she didn’t see anything wrong with the overall look. She figured Savannah must have just came from a job interview.
“I’m Kayleigh…I think. I seem to remember that is my name. Although, I don’t know how I could have forgotten something like that.”
Savannah helped her off the ground and offered a kerchief she had stuffed in her red winter’s longcoat. It was a thin, white cloth etched in yellow with her initials in one of the corners. She unfolded it from its perfect square.
Kayleigh graciously took it to wipe her face.
They had not been away from each other since, helping each other recover memories, trying to figure out where they were and how they got there, and helping each other not to panic…again.
That seemed like ages ago. And for all they knew, it was.
“Let’s go through this, again,” Savannah suggested. “Before we begin to forget.”
Kayleigh huffed. She didn’t see the point of going through with ths exercise so soon after the last time. What was it? An hour ago? Maybe three? They found their memories slipping away from them. And they were losing bits and pieces gradually over the course of their stay in the void. So far it was the little things like the first boy they had a crush on, or the last movie they saw, or their favorite dessert. But the last go around caused a bit of concern for Kayleigh as she couldn’t recall the name of her grandparents who lived just a few blocks away from her when she was growing up.
Unethusiastically, she began to recite. “Kayleigh Eloise Bennet. 619 Montgomery Lane. Born to William and Janet on October 25th. First grade teacher was Ms. Kensick. My first boyfriend was Sean McAllister. My first kiss was with Devin….Devin something…”
“Keep going,” Savannah urged.
“I hate chemistry, flan, funnel cakes, scones, and blueberries. Love peach cobbler, carne asada, and buttermilk pancakes. My dog died when I was fifteen. A beagle with one black ear and horrible breath. It smelled like death had a bowl of rotten garlic for breakfast and chased it down with three-day-old coffee.” She giggled. “I loved that dog. Loved him from a distance in most cases. A joy to be around if you had sinus problems and couldn’t smell a damn thing. Beasley was his name.”
“Good,” Savannah smiled. “Good. You remembered more this time.”
“I feel like I forgot some things.”
“No, no! I never heard the name of your dog. This is good. This is good progress.”
“What does it matter, anyway? I mean, why are we even here? Wherever here is. I need to keep walking. I need to see what is out there.”
Savannah frowned, confused by Kayleigh’s need and persistence. “There is nothing out there. What are you chasing, Kayleigh? This is just one big empty space. Like being locked in a closest of eternal darkness. And the only thing we know for sure is that there is a door that randomly appears and goes to Lord-knows-where. Do you really want to know where we are going? We are going nowhere. When the door appears, we are no further away from it. What we are doing is crazy and quite frankly, stupid.”
“Stupid?!” Now, it was Kayleigh who was frowning, raising her voice in the process. “If you want to stay here, stay here. I don’t care. I didn’t ask you to join me. You found me when I was a mess. Comforted me when I woke up in this place. Gave me a shoulder to cry on when I thought all my sobbing was done and over with. But you don’t have to look after me. I am 22-years-old. I can manage.”
“I’m not saying you can’t manage. But we should stick together. I don’t know what’s out there. Hell, we don’t even know if we are the only two here. By the looks of it, we are, but who knows. Just because you feel the need to occupy your time by doing something so you don’t feel helpless, it doesn’t mean you can’t be sensible about what you are doing.” Savannah sighed, trying to keep her calm.
She was done lecturing. There was really no point in doing so with a girl she just met. Relatively speaking, there were strangers stranded in what seemed like a forsaken place for hours. Maybe days. The damnedest thing about it all was they never felt tired or hungry or thirsty. And it became extremely difficult to keep track of time…which was quite unnerving.
“Go on if you want to,” Savannah continued. “But when that door reappears and finally opens, you don’t want to be too far away from.”
“What does it matter?” Kayleigh throw up her arms in frustration. “Only one of us can walk through that door.”
“What are you talking about,” Savannah slowly replied. “What do you mean?”
“That’s the rule,” Kayleigh explained. Although, she didn’t know where this information was coming from. Her twisted in confusion, trying to understand what was happening as it was happening. She felt compelled to say the words that suddenly popped into her head. Was this what people called an epiphany, she asked herself. “The one rule. Only one person can pass through the door at the time of its opening.”
Savannah back away from Kayleigh. Her heartrate began to climb as her thoughts began to spin. It was bad enough they didn’t know what was going on or where they were. Now, she had the added spooky experience of Kayleigh’s words. “Kayleigh, I hope you are just messing around.”
Kayleigh’s eyes lingered, locking onto Savannah’s for a moment. Perhaps, the longest moment Savannah had ever experienced. “What did I just say?”
“You mean, you don’t know?”
“No, I know,” Kayleigh clarified. “I just want to make sure you heard what I thought I just said.”
Savannah slowly nodded. “I wish I hadn’t. Why did you say it?”
“I am not sure. I just felt…I had the need…” Kayleigh shook her head, trying to understand what happened. Finding the words to explain was even harder. “It just came to me. It just came out. Like suddenly remembering someone’s name. Like a distant memory, or a dream you forgot you had.”
A tingling sensation ran down Savannah’s spine. A cold chill coursed through her body like jumping into a cool swimming pool in the height of summer.
In unison, they turned around. Compelled by instinct as the door appeared. The perimeter of the door pulsated with a near blinding orange light. Under normal out-of-this-world circumstances, it would appear heavenly. A beautiful metaphysical experience rarely seen. Conversely, the door was another element in the this abstract and nonexistent plain of reality.
“It’s not going to open,” Kayleigh said.
“Be optimistic,” Savannah suggested.
“Be pragmatic.”
“I’ll be pragmatic when things start to make sense around here.”
The glow faded, returning to darkness as the door went with it. Blinking out of reality and sl
ipping back into the void. Nothing more than a specter. A false hope.
“See! It never opens,” Kayleigh declared. She lowered herself, sitting down on the cold floor. Marble, she thought, but it was a dark and black as the rest of the void. It felt good though. Like a soothe clothing on one’s forehead after a rough day. This day certainly qualified.
“Only one person can go through the door, huh?”
“What?”
“That’s what you said,” Savannah replied, folding her arms.
“I know what I said, but why are you repeating it.”
“Because it sounds important. What does it mean? Only one of us can go through. Why only one?”
Kayleigh shrugged. “Maybe it’s like taking a number.”
“Taking a number?! Do you see a number to take?”
“Why are you biting my head off about it, Savannah? You’ve been here longer than I have. Don’t you know?”
Pacing, Savannah closed her eyes, rubbing her left temple. Her patience was wearing thin and her blood pressure was spiking.
“Savannah Nicole Tennyson,” she began to recite. More to herself than to Kayleigh. “Born in San Francisco to Patrick and Phyllis on March…March…April? Sagittarius. When is Sagittarius? No Aries. Damn it, I knew this an hour ago.” She snapped her fingers as it came to her. “April 6th. Yes, April 6, 1982. No pets. Always wanted a rabbit, though. Only child. Wait, no. I have a brother. Lives in Chicago. I currently live in Los Angeles. I am not married. Been engaged once. Guy turned out be a major tool…”
Her attention was drawn away once more toward where the door had appeared. Kayleigh followed the interruption, as well. It was too soon for the door to appear. They knew that much. It never appeared in close succession before. What they saw wasn’t the door, however. In its place stood a three-foot-high wooden stand. Upon the stand rested an old, olive green-colored rotary telephone with a folded card, tented in front of it. A long, thin, frosted white-colored cord ran from the back of it, along the floor, and snaked into the indiscernible distance.
Two Souls, One Door: Beyond (Into the Void Book 2) Page 1
