by R Magnusholm
The Door to September
An Alternate Reality Novel
R Magnusholm
Edition 1
© 2020 R Magnusholm
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission. Door to September is a work of fiction. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
1.0.0.0.5
CONTENTS
1: A Fork Bomb
2: Holly Save Us
3: Are We in Hell?
4: Wild, Wild Woods
5: Water, Water Everywhere
6: Not Any Damn Nudist
7: Make Shelter or Die Trying
8: If I Wake up Dead
9: The Second Sun
10: The Pimlico Corrida
11: Trailblazers are Us
12: A Lucky Shot
13: The Raven Tribe
14: Another Day, Another Failure
15: Stupid Birds
16: Bowing the Drill
17: That Spark
18: Assault on Camp Bramble
19: General Buttnaked
20: On Cavemen and Zen
21: Murphy’s Law
22: Talking with Wolves
23: The Dream Walker
24: Born to Kill
25: The Song of Meat
26: Bad thing. Danger.
27: And Now You See Me
28: Arrows Versus Urso Sapient Scum
29: A Hasty Counterattack
30: Life in Reverse
31: Gnorrk the Woodlander
32: Premonition
33: The Rout
34: The Needle
35: A Life Too Smoky
36: Gnorrk Dreams of Fire
37: On Borrowed Time
38: Fort Bramble
39: Run Spot Run
40: Gnorrk the Merciful
41: Painting the Snow Crimson
42: Isn’t it Ironic?
43: Ursine Prometheus
44: To Make Fire
45: The Growly Song of Fire
46: The Winter Everlasting
47: The Sunset Clan
48: The Day of Angry Birds
49: The Salmon War
50: Meet the Salmoners
51: A Line for Captain Ahab
52: The Fish Heart
53: The New Arrival
54: A Working Model
55: The Ra Sails Again
56: The Compromise
57: Gnorrk Conquers All
58: The Grass Soap
59: Calm Before the Storm
60: The Ursines are Back
61: The Storm
62: Gnorrk The Siege Master
63: By Jove, it’s a Bonfire
64: Shades of Sound
65: Before Dawn
66: The Siege
67: Blasters and Balderdash
68: The Cat and Mouse Game
69: Singularly Bad News
70: The Thirst
71: The Turbulence
72: Bury Me under a Hazel Tree
73: A Hasty Departure
74: A Coin Toss
75: The Tiger Grease
76: Watery Glades
77: Roving on the River
78: The New Salmoner Chief
79: Blood in the Water
80: The Wild Oats
81: Running with Bulls
82: The Wind
83: A Rotten Day
84: The Blasted Tub
85: Fire for Effect
86: The Fiery Standoff
87: By Axe and Flames
88: And the River Took Them
89: Hate Most Savage
90: Paint it Red
91: You Die Now
92: The River Flows Wide
93: The Kingdom of Pines
94: My Land, My Home
From the Author
Copyright notice
Notes and references
Chapter 1
A Fork Bomb
Friday, 13 March
John Summers crumpled the company dismissal letter and stuffed it into the inner pocket of his jacket. As he gathered his possessions into the cardboard box, thoughtfully provided by management, his fellow office-drones studiously avoided his gaze. He didn’t blame them. It could’ve been any of them in his place.
He wrapped his Arsenal tea mug in a spare shirt, laid it atop his breakfast bowl, and closed the box’s lid. That was it. He’d cleared out his desk. Heavyhearted, he loosened his tie, slung his rucksack over his shoulder, and picked up the box. Time for the walk of shame.
The spring sunshine cast golden gleams over the office desks. His ex-colleagues spoke into phones, peered at computer screens, and gossiped beside the photocopier. A picture of normality. Trudging down the center aisle, John wished he were invisible. An insurmountable chasm separated him from his former coworkers. They belonged here. He didn’t.
In the hallway, a fluorescent light above his head flickered. Sizzling like a lit fuse, the lamp went out. Shadows leaped over the walls. For an instant, it seemed to John that a hungry black maw gaped around him. He flinched. Ever since the cheapskate director had fired the maintenance manager, the place had been falling apart.
Up ahead loomed the final exit—a mahogany rectangle with a glazed panel running up the middle. A portal to a bleaker reality.
He gripped the box under his left arm and reached for the door handle. What would he tell his wife? And how could he look into his children’s eyes? There’d be no trip to the Canary Islands this year. Worse, if he found no comparable job, there’d be no more pony-riding or ballet-classes. And what would the neighbors think?
“Here, let me help,” a female voice spoke behind him. Liz from Accounting. She held a canvas bag in her chubby hand, apparently on her way to buy milk for the office tea club.
He moved aside, and she pulled the heavy door open.
“Thanks,” he said distractedly.
As he stepped through, his stomach gave a sickening, greasy lurch. His vision wavered, and the world dissolved into acrid smoke and a flash of orange light. A roar like that of a cannon filled his ears. A rush of hot air pushed at his back, booting him off the premises. The next moment the ground opened, and he was falling, falling, the pathetic box still clutched under his arm.
The earth slammed into him.
Darkness.
***
John came to and extricated himself from a holly thicket that had lacerated his face and hands. How long had he been lying there? His head spun in drunken circles. Bewildered, he stared about himself. Serrated glossy green leaves. Branches, more branches. Bushes.
Goddamn thorns.
What the hell? The office faced onto a city street, not any sodding park. The nearest park was what . . . two, three hundred yards away? Perhaps there’d been an explosion, and the blast had thrown him all that distance . . .
A bomb? No, not plausible. Wouldn’t he be hurt a lot worse? Smashed into a sack of splintered bones and pulped flesh, maybe. His hands stung from a dozen shallow slashes, and his right foot ached when he put his weight on it. But that was about it.
John picked up his box, and something rattled inside. He laughed, a brittle sound. Great. How’s that for ironic, friends and neighbors? Ten years of loyal service and all you take home is a carton of smas
hed crockery. Har-dee-har-har.
He was about to inspect his collection of broken porcelain when he heard a muttered curse. Liz’s voice. He peered over the tangle of brambles.
She sat in a small clearing amid the thorny thickets, staring vacantly at her phone. “Damn, no signal.” She dropped the device in her lap and lifted her eyes.
In her mid-forties, vivacious, with a husband and two children, Liz was on the plump side of life. Her usually tidy pants-suit was rumpled, white blouse creased, torn, and stained with berry juice. On one foot she wore a low-heeled black pump. The other was clad only in a short beige sock. Her blonde hair was matted with blood on one side.
“Hey.” He limped over and knelt beside her. “Hey, you’re hurt.” He pushed her hair aside and gently probed around a shallow cut above her ear.
“Ouch.” She sucked in her breath. “Careful.” Her eyes darted between his face and the surrounding foliage.
“Just a little scratch. But the bleeding’s stopped. You okay?”
“My hairdo is totaled, but I’ll live,” she said shakily. She stared into his face, and her eyes narrowed. “Hold still. You’ve got a twig up your nose.”
“Oh.”
Liz reached over and pulled it out. She examined the thin flexible stick with distaste, then dropped it. “You look like a cat got you.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled, holding his bleeding nose. “Two inches up and it would’ve been my peeper. Any idea what happened?”
“I followed you out and . . .” She struggled to her feet and gazed about herself. “And then I was here, in this park. Except it’s no park I’ve ever been to.”
That should teach you not to follow underperforming managers, he thought. “I wonder where we are . . .”
Liz walked over to a drooping tree branch and plucked a handful of leaves. She turned and held them up, her face drawn and solemn.
For a long while, neither of them spoke. Birds twittered, and a brisk wind sang sibilantly in the treetops. John stared at the yellowing leaves in her hand, and a lump rose in his throat. Something about those leaves was fundamentally wrong. But what? And how could it be so quiet? No sound of traffic. No familiar din of the city.
He strained his ears for any sounds of civilization.
Nothing.
The air seemed colder than it had been earlier that morning when he traveled to work. And it smelled wrong—too fresh somehow. It had been sunny, but now pewter-gray clouds chased each other across the sky. Deep inside him, something bleak and ugly began bubbling up through the foggy layers of confusion.
Liz inclined her head and said, her voice cracking, “It’s not just where we are, but when.”
Speechless, he stared at her as numbness crept up his legs to the pit of his stomach. No, this couldn’t be happening. Could it?
“That’s a birch tree,” she continued. “I’ve got one at the bottom of my garden. Birches are not supposed to have any leaves in mid-March. And these are already turning yellow.”
John dropped his gaze. Freshly fallen leaves covered the ground. He kicked at a puffball, producing a small brown cloud of spores. Puffballs only grew in fall. As a former Boy Scout, he knew that much.
He gazed at the sky with mounting dread. It should’ve been morning, but the sun was already setting. He pulled his phone out—11:02 a.m. No signal. Suddenly, telling his wife there’d be no foreign vacation this year became the least of his worries.
Chapter 2
Holly Save Us
Liz, her face pale and lips trembling, dropped the birch leaves and watched them drift with the wind. No longer her usual cheerful self, she hugged her shoulders and shivered.
We must do something, John thought. Anything. Not just stand here. Movement was life. “Let’s go,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel.
“Go where?”
His gaze fell to her feet. “To look for your missing shoe.”
They limped around the clearing in silence for several minutes, peered into thickets, checked behind tree trunks. Nothing. The sky turned lead-gray, and along one side, presumably west, ran a band of sour yellow light.
As John kicked apart a drift of fallen leaves, from within a dense stand of yews came a dry crack of a breaking branch. He and Liz exchanged a glance.
“Hello. Over here,” Liz yelled. “Help. He-e-lp!”
More branches snapped as someone or something crashed through the thickets, the noise gradually receding. The hope drained out of her face.
“An animal,” John said. “A deer probably. A whole herd, by the sound of it.”
“Deer in Pimlico?” Liz burst into tears and slowly sank to the ground. She added in a thick voice, “If this is Pimlico.”
He sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Hey Liz, it’s all right. It’s only an animal.” She was shivering uncontrollably, and he noticed faint puffs of vapor accompanying his words.
The western sky turned the color of a livid bruise, and the shadows thickened. He looked at his phone again—only lunchtime and too early for nightfall. Either his phone’s clock was incorrect, or something had gone horribly wrong with the world. The ground under his butt was cold and damp.
He was considering checking the time on Liz’s phone, when from somewhere to the right came a furtive rustle. A small animal probably. Another rustle came from behind and then from the left. Liz stiffened against him.
“Just some hedgehogs,” he said, “or something . . .”
At the sound of his voice, the rustling stopped. Then a twig broke with a soft crunch. A bird burst out with a flutter of feathers from the thick growth of holly.
“John, it sounds like something is stalking us,” she whispered.
“It’s only a wood pigeon,” he said. But his eyes darted around, searching for a weapon. “It’ll be full dark in an hour. We better find a place to hole up for the night.”
“You wouldn’t have matches or a lighter?”
“Sorry, Liz. You’re stuck with a non-smoker.”
She uttered a high-pitched giggle that bordered on a hysterical sob.
John unfolded the flaps of his box. His cereal bowl and two plates had smashed, as had his glass jar of sugar. His red tea mug was chipped and had lost its handle. Reverently, he rewrapped it in his spare shirt. He dumped out the broken shards and held a dull cutlery knife that he used to spread butter and saw tomatoes in half. Not much of a weapon.
“Let’s go south,” he said. “If this is still London, the Thames is that way.”
They hobbled through a maze of thickets in the deepening dusk. A dead pine tree had fallen, crushing oak saplings. John picked up a long tree limb with a pointy end. A spear. Liz took a short, stout branch. A club. It was so dark under the trees he could barely pick his way.
“In here.” He indicated a narrow tunnel leading into a dense mass of holly. “As good a place as any.”
John crawled on his belly as spiny foliage raked his back. He held the sharp stick in front of him, ready to thrust. Within the bush, there was so little light he couldn’t see his outstretched hand. Liz crept behind him, pushing John’s box ahead of her. The tunnel widened into a low chamber covered with dry prickly leaves. The air smelled of leaf mold and something musky.
He lit his phone’s torch and took stock of their shelter. It was a roughly circular space seven feet across. Several thick boughs bisected it, making it hard to move about. The head clearance was too low to sit up, but they were sheltered from the wind. Apart from the one narrow tunnel, there was no other way in. John bent a branch overhanging the opening until it was effectively blocking the way, but when he released it, it sprang back like a catapult.
“Tie it down with something,” Liz suggested.
John slipped off his tie that had been lovingly selected by his wife only a few hours ago. He bent the branch down, and Liz tied it to an exposed tree root.
Some time later, they lay shivering on a bed of prickly dry leaves, and John spread his spare shirt over
himself and Liz for the scant warmth it would provide. Her canvas bag stuffed with more leaves made a rough pillow, but it was too narrow for two. His head kept sliding off. His right foot ached dully every time he moved it, which was often, as the cold and uneven ground made it impossible to keep still.
Liz pressed closer to him. “I’m freezing.”
“Hmm, a bit chilly. But at least we’re safe,” John said through chattering teeth. He hesitated, then turned to face her and wrapped his arms around her waist. It was like hugging a warm radiator, but his exposed back instantly broke out in gooseflesh.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The undergrowth around them rustled and crawled with life. Just some small animals, he told himself. Cute dormice and prickly hedgehogs scurrying about their secretive business. Foxes and badgers, too. Boars, wolves, grizzly bears, sabertooth tigers, velociraptors. His hand tightened around his pitiful spear.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop—
He became aware of an oppressive silence. All rustling had ceased. The small hairs on his arms stood on end, and his scalp crawled. He caught a faint coppery whiff that made him think of animal pelts and paws and muzzles stained red.
From the outside came a sinister sniffing, then a low growl, and something big and heavy began forcing its way into their shelter.
Chapter 3
Are We in Hell?
Midnight, Pimlico Woods
The holly branch that Liz had earlier tied to a tree root shifted. John grabbed and shook it. He was rewarded with an angry hiss as the intruder retreated. Obviously, the unknown creature didn’t like the spiny leaves thrashing in its face. The beast prowled around their thicket, snuffled, pawed the ground and growled.
Its hot musky reek grew nauseating.
“That’s no hedgehog,” Liz whispered in the dark.
“A badger then.”
“No. Bigger.”
“A boar,” he said, “A big, wild pig rooting for acorns.”
“Under a holly tree?”
“It might be digging for truffles,” he said.
“Since when do boars hiss?”
“Dunno.” His voice turned into a dry croak. “But if they can squeal, maybe they can hiss. Whatever it is, it can’t get in.”
“It will wait for us to come out.”
