Intrigue (Stories of Suspense)

by Aaron Patterson

  The Door's enormous archway was rounded in a giant semi-circle at its top, and along that frame, in more than a dozen languages, were engraved the words:

  WILL OPEN FOR ONE

  ON THE THIRD SUMMER SOLSTICE

  Everyone had assumed that "the third summer solstice" meant the third one after A-Day. Like the rest of the world, Zak was immediately captivated by it. Where had it come from? Where did it lead to? Was it sent by another race? Was it conjured into existence by magic?

  Zak nervously shifted his feet as the impeccably dressed young commissioner continued his meticulously prepared speech. Zak still had no idea how this young guy before him had been chosen to oversee the Doorway Project, as it had been dubbed via international council, and he really couldn't bring himself to care. He was here to get close to the Door, and maybe, if he was worthy enough, to open it.

  Only one...

  The commissioner droned on at a podium erected mere feet from the artifact's threshold. Zak's mind wandered as he glanced at his four competitors who stood two a piece on either side of him, shoulder to shoulder, all five facing the Door.

  There was Samora, the South African woman, who never stopped smiling. Niklas, the severe German man who seemed incapable of smiling. Ilsa, the Swedish, blonde, and requisite "pretty face" competitor. And Peng Rui Bai, the astonishingly brilliant, elderly Chinese man.

  Zak was the only one among them not carrying the responsibility of representing his country. Though born in the United States, he'd been a drifter his entire life, galloping off from one exciting place to another, determined to see every nook and cranny the world had to offer.

  He harbored the secret hope that this might give him an edge over the others. After all, who better to take the ultimate plunge into the unknown than a man who'd never settled down?

  "The time is upon us, at last," the commissioner said with great reverence. "Would the five candidates please step forward?"

  Zak's heart fluttered again as he took four steps forward, matching the others. All of them now stood within teen feet of the Door; it was closer than anyone -- aside from the Project's council and a handful of scientists -- had ever been.

  He had to fight the urge to rush forward and throw his shoulder against the Door with all his might. But would that open it? The question of how the Door would be opened had often filled his thoughts in the wee hours of the morning. When would the commissioner explain it?

  Of course, that thought only entered his mind when the more dominant one managed to step aside, however briefly. What is beyond the Door? Who would send such a thing to humanity, and why?

  Only one...

  "Each of you will be given twelve minutes -- no more and no less -- to make your attempt," the commissioner explained. "If you fail to open the Door, you will be dismissed from the Project. Assuming you survive the attempt, of course."

  "But, sir?" It was Samora, raising a hand with a question. The gathered crowd of thousands, along with the millions that watched via television and Internet around the globe, dropped their whispers to nothingness, all still and silent in anticipation of what Samora would interrupt this momentous occasion to dare ask.

  "Yes?" the commissioner replied, straightening his tie and trying to mask a slight frown.

  "How do we open the Door?"

  I can't believe she asked that! What a preposterous thing to blurt out!

  Yet it was the very question on the mind of every single person on the planet. How could it not be asked?

  "Hadn't you guessed by now?" the commissioner replied with an arched brow. "That is precisely what we are all here to discover."

  "You mean," Zak suddenly cried, "you don't know how we open it?" In all this time, it had never occurred to him that it would be up to the competitors to figure this out. He had assumed that they would all be given the same instructions, each try their hand, and the Door would allow whichever one of them it deemed most worthy, to enter.

  "Of course not," the commissioner replied. "The Door has been examined by the greatest minds this world has to offer. Though clearly technological in origin, no moving parts have been detected within the structure, nor any sort of control mechanism.

  "Simply put, we have no idea how it is to be opened. Perhaps you are to simply nudge it. Maybe it reads the fingerprints on your palm, or the retinas in your eye. Possibly there is a controller device, hidden where only one of you can find it. Or perhaps you simply walk into it. It is a profound mystery, but we believe one of you will solve it this very hour. And then the world will know."

  "But I thought 'only one can open it'?" Zak replied.

  "Open it, yes. But we believe that once open, we can keep it open indefinitely, so that any who wish to, may enter in."

  Zak was thunderstruck. This had never occurred to him, either -- that more than the "one" who opened it would be allowed to pass through the Door and learn its secrets.

  He watched in stunned silence as Samora was first up to make her attempt. She walked all the way around it, ran her fingers all across its smooth, cold surface. She tried pressing her entire body into the Doorway, then just one hand. After twelve minutes of this, her time was up.

  The crowd cheered her anyway as the commissioner quietly directed her out of the immediate area. Next up was Niklas, the German. He tinkered around for the first six minutes, using some small tools he had brought along in his pockets, and tried prying the Door open. When that failed, he stood before it defiantly, hands on his hips, and strained his eyes and his brain in the direction of the archway, as if trying to will the Door to open.

  He failed as well.

  Zak's turn came, and he found his hands shaking as he stepped forward and reached up at long last to touch the Door. He wanted to embrace it, to internalize it, to somehow make it a part of him. But he felt the pressure of the ticking clock and ran out of ideas. Devastated, he was escorted away into the crowd, while only a handful of onlookers cheered.

  Clearly, he wasn't the popular favorite.

  Ilsa tried caressing the door, running her fingers along the engraved letters across the arch. Then she did something that made the entire crowd laugh out loud and then boo and hiss: she kissed it.

  Peng merely stepped forward and sat before the Door, cross-legged. He appeared to be meditating, though later he would tell the press that he had been doing complex calculations in his head, in the hopes that the Door would recognize his intellect and grant him access.

  The hour came and went, and all five candidates had failed. Quite uncertain of what to do next, the commissioner called the proceedings to a close and vowed to meet with the Doorway Project council immediately, to determine if there had been some kind of error in reading and understanding the inscriptions.

  Zak found his way back to the nearby hotel where the selection committee had housed him and his fellow competitors. He passed by the four others at one point, arguing loudly in the hotel lounge over what must have gone wrong. But he kept walking, until he reached his room, where he collapsed on his bed.

  His tears ushered him into unconsciousness.

  ***

  Zak awoke long after dark that night, and flipped on the television. Every network was airing news specials about the Doorway Project's failure to open the artifice. The competitors were demonized, the Project was scrutinized, and the commissioner was ostracized. The Door itself was called a twisted hoax meant to drain the world of goodwill and money.

  Zak wandered to his second story window, where he could see the Door, reflecting the moonlight. It stood all alone in the night, long since abandoned by the spectator throng and apparently, the Project council as well. In fact, the entire courtyard was utterly... deserted. All alone it sat.

  Only one...

  Alone!

  Zak gasped and glanced at the digital clock by his bed.

  11:49 PM.

  He wasted no time; he ran out on the balcony adjacent to his room, to avoid Project security downstairs, and climbed down a drainage pip
e to the ground below. He landed with a gentle whoosh and ran through the darkness for the Door as fast as his legs would carry him. He approached the electric fence that had been placed around the courtyard and climbed a nearby tree to get over it.

  His thoughts returned to the inscription...

  WILL OPEN FOR ONE...

  "Who goes there! Halt!" screamed an angry male voice from behind. He knew it would be the Project's security detail, who monitored the round-the-clock perimeter around the Door's courtyard to ensure no one tainted or sabotaged the mysterious device.

  "STOP RIGHT THERE!!" another voice shouted, and then there were footsteps falling fast somewhere behind him. Zak thought he might have heard the sound of gun safeties being clicked off.

  "If you approach the Door, you will be shot dead!" an authoritative voice announced. But it was still far behind, like all of the other sounds. He had too much of a lead, he could only pray it was enough, that they would be unable to get close enough to the Door before he reached it...

  It was twenty feet away now, and he could almost feel it. The wind rushed through his face and his dark hair, and there were dogs barking in the distance to his rear, but he thought only of the Door and this one, last chance at achieving the impossible, seeing something no one else had ever seen...

  He stretched out his hand as he neared the door. His fingers only inches from the door, there was suddenly a light brighter than any he had ever seen, and he thought for a moment that perhaps he'd been shot in the head. But then he saw that the Door was the source of the light.

  In the next second, the security men watching would see only the light flash out, and Zak swallowed by it.

  ***

  Zak stared out in wonder.

  Around him was a place like nothing he had ever seen, like nothing that could ever be described in words. It was a place of delight, beauty, mystery, and awe, full of colors beyond the spectrum, sounds to both please and terrify, and smells of every kind.

  The very ground he stood on seemed to glow. As he was noticing this, a very old man approached him, leaning on a wooden cane that looked like a tree branch. He wore overalls and a red flannel shirt, as well as a straw fedora atop his snow white head.

  "Welcome," the old man croaked, wheezing for breath and leaning heavily on the cane.

  "Where is this?" Zak asked, jaws wide with amazement.

  "You have come," the old man replied, "to the center."

  "The center of what?"

  "Of everything." Zak thought he detected a grin buried amid the withered man's features.

  "Meaning what? Does this place have a name?"

  "It goes by many names. Atlantis. Narnia. Never-Never Land. Outer space. The center of the earth. A galaxy far, far away. Everyone calls it something different, but it is a real place -- as substantial as the air you breathe. You are standing on the most priceless land in the universe. The most fertile soil in all of creation."

  "I don't understand. Why am I here? And what does it mean?"

  "As a very wise man once wrote, it means that your arrival does not herald the end of this story, but the beginning of all others. From here, the greatest adventures have yet to be born into existence. But this is a precious, innocent place. It requires the presence of a Caretaker. You listened, followed, and refused to fail. My time has faded. You are the Caretaker, now."

  Somehow, Zak knew. Untold possibilities filled his mind, and he knew them to be all of the great stories still waiting to be written.

  The old man began to stoop until he was on one knee, and Zak helped him lower to lie on his back. "Protect this place! Keep it safe! Without it, life would falter and end. Guard this treasure, this repository, with everything you hold dear to you, so that it will always be available to the makers, the creators, and the dreamers. And one day, another will come to take your place."

  "I will," Zak found himself saying. "I promise."

  The old man took a final breath and closed his eyes before mumbling just above a whisper.

  "The Door always knows who to choose," he said as Zak held his dying hand. "I can see in you that it chose rightly, once again. You have been an adventurer all your life. Now, you are the adventure."

  Also by Robin Parrish:

  Dominion Trilogy:

  Relentless (Book 1)

  Fearless ( Book 2)

  Merciless (Book 3)

  Offworld

  Nightmare

  Vigilante

  http://www.robinparrish.com

  robin@robinparrish.com

  Deborah Provenzale

  Deborah Provenzale grew up in a small, rural town in Wyoming where her curiosity was insatiable and her only limitation was what the mind could imagine. She spent her childhood freely exploring the hundreds of acres of hills, mountains and canyons that abounded, on foot and on horseback, and as an early reader, she could always be found with a book, as well as penning her own stories for which she won awards and writing contests. Today, her love of discovery, adventure and intrigue drives her to answer the question "What if...?" not only in her writing, but also in real life, as she begins a new chapter of her own adventures within the lush landscape of beautiful Taiwan. Deborah is also the owner of Uncaged Book Promotions, a virtual book publicity consultancy.

  Deadline

  REBECCA PAMPILLON WIPED THE blood off the 8-inch blade with two swift strokes across the tall, dew-covered blades of grass. Her lean, athletic figure was a silhouette against the early morning sky. Crouched on one knee, as if in homage to the recently departed, Rebecca reached down and closed the lids over the lifeless eyes staring back at her.

  “May you rest in peace…” she whispered, as she kissed the deceased’s forehead, then rose slowly to her feet, “…and rot in hell,” she said vengefully through clenched teeth, as she gave the body one good kick that sent it rolling sidelong off the edge of the embankment. It would be a while before anyone found this poor sucker, and by then, Rebecca would be long gone like a shade in the night.

  Satisfied with the deed, she turned on her heel in one fluid motion that made her long, jet black hair fan out as she snapped her head around, then she walked away in long, purposeful strides. Not once did she look back; not once did she feel remorse for the life she had just taken.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 10TH

  “Aaaaaaaaaa!” Noel Casey screamed after ending the phone call she just received.

  “What?! What is it?!” Nate, Noel’s husband, said as he came running into the room with a look of panic on his face.

  Noel was leaning against the kitchen counter covering her nose and mouth with both hands, tears streaming down her cheeks and running along the trough formed by her index fingers against her face.

  “Noel, what’s going on? What just happened?” Nate said, frantically, his face contorted with worry and alarm.

  “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it,” Noel said in a muffled voice through her hands.

  “What?!” Nate was almost yelling.

  Noel looked at Nate, then removed her hands from her face so she could take a breath.

  “They loved it,” she said quietly, sniffing once and then using the tips of her fingers to clear away the tears.

  “What? Loved what? Who?” Nate said, exasperated and shaking his head in confusion as his heart continued to pound in his chest from alarm.

  “The publisher. They read my proposal, and they loved it.”

  Nate just stood there a moment, staring at her with his mouth half open and eyebrows peaked toward the center of his forehead. “The publisher? That’s who was on the phone just now?” Then, “They work on Sundays?”

  “Yeah, that was Mary, the publisher’s agent I met at the book writing conference two weeks ago. She said they loved the synopsis and think it has the potential for a best-seller. She wanted to know if I could have a complete manuscript to her in one month.” Then, with renewed excitement, “I’m going to be a published author, Nate!” Noel started to jump around and scream again.

&nbs
p; “Aarrgh, Noel, you scared me half to death! You can’t do that!” Nate scolded, now starting to laugh, partly with relief and partly with the wave of excitement that was emanating off of Noel. “Come here; give me a hug before I kick your butt. And congratulations, baby. I’m so proud of you.” He kissed her on the top of her head as she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest, screaming once again.

  MONDAY, APRIL 11TH

  Armed with a laptop and something that barely resembled an outline, Noel was ready to get to work. Having been laid off from her job at a flooring retail store just a month ago, and with no prospects for another job, this was the perfect time to focus on her debut novel. Nate was completely supportive of her writing endeavor. Bless his heart, he even offered to take care of all the housework and stay out of her hair for the month so she could stay focused. He had a buddy, Jeff, who lived across town near the office where he worked, so if Noel needed some extra space, he told her that he could hang out there anytime.

  Hands now wrapped cozily around a cup of hot tea with her laptop quietly humming on the table in front of her, Noel sat in the Jivin’ Java Coffee House on a rainy afternoon and pondered her story. Her heroine was loosely based on herself – 26 years old, long ash blond hair, blue eyes and about 5’6” with good muscle tone. Her heroine’s mannerisms and personality were also the same, except Noel made her smarter, sexier and way cooler, everything Noel fantasized herself to be.

  She had the general idea of how the story played out and already knew how she would kill off the seductive evil nemesis in the end. Now, she just had to bridge the gap and fill in the middle – in one month.