"The Lost Door" - Chapters 1 thru 4

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Chapter 1:  Prologue: And Sometimes the City Dreams

     The asphalt burned through the night, drizzle-slick and steaming, a wasteland of obsidian and glass, features lost to the broken reflections of the night sky littered with streetlights, traffic signals, and the colors of discordant neon.

     The street was quiet at this hour, Mr. Liu’s walk home from Shanghai Imports where he worked second-shift making fortune cookies uneventful. Nighttime in the city is not the fevered hustle-and-jerk darkly imagined by the twisted romantics, nicotine-amped alcoholics and soul-scarred artists searching for meaning in the pain and darkness of the secret underground world: whore havens, gang sprawls, shooting galleries, and darkened conclaves of organized crime.

     Sometimes the city slept.

     And sometimes, when she slept, she dreamed.

     Clouds of steam caressed his skin with the unsubtle persuasion of an alleyway diva vying for attention, eager to earn a place in his mind, a corner of his heart, and just maybe the means to escape. But he paid it no mind, pushing past as his breath mingled with the saturated air, visible in spite of the heat.

     Yes, sometimes the city would dream.

     His building was old brick the color of scorched clay, a three-story walk-up of narrow hallways, sturdy steel doors and stout locks, the only sound his footsteps and the jingle of keys, the click of locks: one for the outer door, a second for the inside hall, two outside of his apartment. And once inside, three deadbolts and a chain.

     The city could be fitful when she dreamed, sometimes thrashing against her restraints.

     Once inside, Mr. Liu hung up his coat, the shirt beneath sticking tightly to his skin and darkened with sweat. It was too hot for a suit coat; he should not have worn it. It was not even necessary for his job at Shanghai Imports. But habits are hard to break, and there is dignity in a job one wears a coat to, even if only to hang the coat in a locker shortly after arriving for work, not putting it on again until after he left. At work, Mr. Liu wore an apron tied over a white overcoat buttoned to the neck, nitrile gloves, and a hairnet; he had been bald for many years, but the company had strict rules about proper head-covering.

     But walking to and from work, Mr. Liu wore a coat, indulging in memories of better times.

     The apartment was small and hot, dry in spite of the humidity saturating the city. Stripping off his clothes, he wandered naked around the tight collection of empty rooms. His wife had passed away many years ago. His granddaughter would visit him sometimes, but she always called first, and she always knocked. And she never visited at night.

     His son never visited at all.

     Liu kept a small table by the window for writing, the glass covered over in yellowed rice paper, the room a sanctum from the world outside. At the desk, a pen, a pot of ink, a tablet of writing paper; all suited to more noble purposes once.

     Sometimes, the city dreamed.

     He set a match to a candle and let its aroma overtake the lingering smell of sulfur and sweat, the omnipresent odor of wet garbage rotting in the miles of alleyways and streets of the dreaming city without. He breathed deeply, the air smelling like sandalwood and cinnamon, and the darkness of the city retreated, allowing him to see distant horizons in his mind, lands far away. He sat upon the stool, listening to the stillness surrounding him, hearing the beat of his heart, the sound of his breath, the secret song of the universe.

     Her whisper was faint now, as if from very far away. Soon, he feared, it would be gone.

     Sweat ran down his scalp and neck, across his chest and back, armpits and groin.

     And still, he waited.

     Perhaps it was already too late. Over and over he breathed in the scent of the candle, and he listened to the night, and he waited.

     And he waited.

     Sometimes, the city dreams.

It was almost dawn before he reached for the pen, dipped it to the waiting ink, and placed it on the paper: 

               Someone will ask you for assistance.

                    Your journey begins with her.

     Mr. Liu looked at the words on the tablet, studied them, listened to them repeat over and over in his mind. He thought it more elegantly phrased in Mandarin; thought it would sound more beautiful in French, English too unsubtle. But they spoke neither Mandarin nor French in the Americas—did not want to—and no good would come from these words if they were not understood by the one they were meant for.

     He reached to the small box on the side of the writing table where he kept a collection of the tiny blank slips of paper that cookie fortunes were printed upon, and he took one, very carefully printing the fortune upon it in an excruciatingly tight, neat script, letters like grains of sand, lines thin as silk.

     Finished, he raised it up for inspection, gently breathing upon the ink, blowing it dry…

     … And he discovered something unexpected.

     A second slip of paper stuck to the back of the first as if eager for the feather-light touch of the pen, the purpose of the words, the significance of potential made actual. What is the use of paper if there are no words upon it?

     He thought about this for a long time also, wondering what it could mean and listening to the nighttime city, the stars, the universe as it turned.

     “Perhaps.”

     And so he wrote the fortune again, a duplicate of the first.

     He would take them both with him tomorrow, and, while bending the hot cookies around the thousands of other mass-produced fortunes offering only philosophic notions and useless advice, Mr. Liu would insert these two very special fortunes into two of the cookies and leave them to find their way. Fate would guide them along their path. He had done all he could; he was only a scribe of the messenger.

     Then Mr. Liu went to bed and fell asleep.

     This is what he did every night.

     Sometimes, the city dreams.

Chapter 2:  The Hollander's Tale

     Everyone calls me the Collector.

     It’s not my real name, of course, but that doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t know it if you heard it.

     I was a reporter.

     No, I was a writer. A staff writer.

     Don’t wonder if you ever read any of my articles. You didn’t. I was never famous, and they were shit anyway. Most of what I did was buried in the C and D sections back when they had those, stock filler that seldom garnered a byline—at least, not one you’d remember. Middle sections. Middle of the page. Middle of the road. None of that matters now. I realize how stupid I was, endlessly pursuing fabricated news, scribbled half-truths and outlandish rants, ignorant streams of insensibility outdated within hours of being committed to paper, chemically-bleached scraps of falsehoods and opinions crumpled into loose balls of piffle and flung out at the masses like pellets in a stocking pond, gobbled down in an endless pursuit of whatever reinforced the prevailing whim. It wasn’t informative. It wasn’t enlightening. It wasn’t truth. It was nothing, a distraction. I just didn’t know it. I was ignorant.

     Like you.

     But this is different. I’ve seen through it all. The veils and the smoke, the little distractions that capture our attention and lead us away from what’s real like a street hustler playing the shell game with us while his accomplice works the crowd, lifting wallets, stealing watches.

     There is more to reality than meets the eye.

     How do I know? Because I’ve seen it.

     Why should you believe me?

     Because I’ve seen it!

     I saw the beginning. And I saw the end. And I’ve gathered the stories along the way like I promised I would, taking them from the few who would know. The dying and the lost, their tales passing away like love’s last breath gone to the wind. I’ve traveled to the way-back when the pieces first started falling together even as everything else was falling apart. Some stories I found. Others I stole. Some truths are not shared openly outside of dreams and nightmares.

     If you don’t like it, you can go to hell.

     Or maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t realize you’re already there and have been since before you can remember.

     Let me remind you of some things then. Things you might have forgotten. Things you may simply have failed to notice because you were distracted by the noise and nonsense around you. It begins where it begins. There was a beginning before just as there are things that will come after, but I’m done apologizing.

     It begins in the Pacific Ocean. There is still water there. It won’t always be so, but that’s another story.

     A small feeder vessel, the Hollander, pulls through the dark at a lazy fifteen knots. She’d set sail under capacity, no one in a hurry to get three hundred and seventy containers of mixed consumer products to the US port in San Francisco: plastic models, print cartridges, rubber pet toys, adult novelty items, lawn furniture. The sooner she arrives, the longer she sits and waits; no one in Asia is looking for anything from America right now, and the captain knows he’ll lose money if he’s forced to return with anything less than three-quarters capacity. Increased mooring fees and currency fluctuations means he will only lose more for getting there faster, so he takes his time, even taking on passengers in Fiji to cut the losses.

     Nothing uncommon about taking on a couple passengers.

     But there was nothing common about these two.

     Passage was arranged by a garishly attired dwarf who spoke lavishly and wore comically large sunglasses and a pirate’s hat. His draping patch coat, once yellow and red and blue like a clown, was weathered and faded to the color of old cotton, dried blood, and the winter sea. A sad clown.

     The captain disliked him, this short, talkative, sad-colored clown. But the dwarf paid well and requested only privacy for himself and one other. The captain bunked them in an empty hold: bare steel walls, some packing crates to sit on, an oil drum of scrap to burn if they had a mind to. Normally, the crew used empty holds for card games or whoring, if one was available.

     Fuck ‘em. The dwarf paid well; the privacy of the empty hold was his.

     The little man’s companion was his opposite in every regard, a giant who stood head and shoulders over the captain and every man on his crew. But the giant never spoke. His face was disfigured, skin oddly colored. The dwarf claimed the giant worked in the Thai mines, suffering a skin ailment and injury in the process, but nothing contagious. The giant’s movements were slow, deliberate, as if holding himself in reserve. For what, he gave no indication. He was the hulking behemoth to the scurrying rodent.

     The captain liked the giant no better. If these two wanted privacy, that was perfectly all right with him. He only wanted their money; the less he had to deal with them, the better.

     The Pacific Ocean. Its name means peaceful.

     Its name is a lie.

     Pirates hit the Hollander in the middle of the night, nimble as spiders, quick as snakes; not uncommon in this part of the world. Ships are valued for their ability to transport contraband; the vessel’s crew and cargo is not so highly regarded. A passenger might be held for ransom. Europeans will pay for the safe return of a family member. Middle Easterners, too, if they’re able. Those that cannot are given over to the Pacific—the peaceful ocean. Despite the danger, the captain did not employ security. It would only inflate the cost of the run, and too many countries did not allow weapons in port; more money wasted on bribes. So he rolled the dice. No guards. No guns.

     Snake eyes.

     The crew—sailors, mechanics, and deckhands—are hunted down by the pirates and slaughtered with hatchets. The pirates carry an assortment of cheaply manufactured assault rifles, Chinese knock-offs, but ammunition is still expensive; blades less so. Bodies are thrown overboard, the holds searched.

     It is nearly twenty-seven minutes before a trio of pirates finds the ship’s only paying passengers. The hulk of a man sits wrapped in a blanket before a burning oil drum in the middle of the vast, empty hold, back to the door, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his disfigurement, protecting others from the sight of the grotesque malady afflicting him. The garishly attired dwarf—or was he a child in his ridiculous three-corner hat, patchwork coat, and wrap-around sunglasses; a silly child playing in costume—screeches at them in Filipino that they are to be left alone, that they paid for privacy, that this is all wrong.

     He doesn’t know what’s happened.

     He looks ridiculous.

     He sounds ridiculous.

     A sad, silly, ridiculous clown.

     The three pirates laugh. They do not understand.

     No one understands … until it’s too late.

     Unwilling to risk an altercation with the big man, the pirates unleash a short burst of bullets into the giant’s back, causing him to shudder violently beneath the wrap of blankets, the staccato of gunfire sending the world into icy-slick silence. Crouching behind the big man’s knees for cover, the dwarf looks out at them, sunglasses in hand, deep black eyes regarding them sadly, pityingly. “The Captain needs us,” he says, voice a raspy sound like words through river gravel. “You should have left us alone.”

     And then the pirates finally see, and they realize what is wrong about the dwarf. His eyes are of purest black like a rodent’s or a spider’s … and he has too many!

     The giant’s singular, fluidic movement is the cresting of a lunging shark, swift and silent and certain as death. He shrugs the bullet-riddled blanket aside as he stands, hat falling away to reveal inhuman features—inhuman because the giant is just that. Not human; not at all. The pirates see his face as he turns, they see the undamaged skin on his back—Impossible! What about the bullets?—and they see the glint of metal fixed forever into the monster’s flesh.

     And the pirates scream—less like grown men than small children; children trapped in a nightmare from which there is no waking.

     Then the killing begins.

     This is how the cargo freighter Hollander found its way to the northern coast of California four weeks later, grounded, hull torn open by the rocky shore. The ship was abandoned, no crew or passengers, all lifeboats accounted for, the cargo undisturbed. None of the plastic models, print cartridges, rubber pet toys or assorted adult novelty products is missing or out of place. Not so much as a single model Gundam, red jelly dildo, or piece of rubber dog shit is anywhere but where it should be. The news outlets dub it a modern day Mary Celeste. A ghost ship.

     They don’t understand.

     The Mary Celeste was found adrift between the Azores and the coast of Portugal nearly a century and a half ago without crew or passengers, no message left behind, no indication of what might have happened to them, the people aboard vanishing without a trace and leaving only a riddle that begged an answer.

     The Hollander, however, offered a single clue: blood. Smeared across the walls, in puddles upon the floors, spattered against the ceiling. Nobody—and no bodies—just blood.

     This tantalizing detail was not lost on the media outlets reporting the incident—“Viewers are cautioned that some of the images you are about to see are extremely graphic, and parents are strongly advised not to allow young children to view these scenes as they may find them disturbing.” The disclaimer alone increases ratings by six points.

     Perhaps you forgot already.

     Such are the veils and the smoke and the carnival mirrors, the shell game of lies and disinformation that distracts you from the truth.

     Now wake the fuck up!

Chapter 3: Standing upon the Shore

     The station was quiet. Abandoned. Derelict.

     He gazed for a long time upon the empty tracks, rails cold, gone the color of old slate, victim of the station’s passing. Sunless. Neglected. It had been years since a train passed through. Distant memories of once-crowds lingered against the walls like absent shades, lost echoes of passengers coming and going, memories of thundering engines running day and night on clouds of diesel and ash. All gone now, phantoms of another time.

     But before that … and before that … it had been here.

     It had always been here.

     A way in.

     A way out.

     Doors are eternal.

     Only this door was gone, the station empty, the building scheduled for demolition. He’d read the postings glued on slick, waterproof paper to the hastily erected fences meant to discourage the curious. One more old building gone to ruin, soon to be rubble, returned to dust. Legal rhetoric accompanied each notice sufficient to dishearten even the most strident admirers of the aging Art Deco design, extinguishing whatever feeble torches they carried with warnings of exposed asbestos and the danger of falling debris. The empty building was little more than an eyesore now to the city at large, a safety concern, infested by vermin, a haven for the addicts and indigents, its antiquated design seemingly in defiance of every effort at repurposing. The surrounding neighborhood had followed the railroad’s downward spiral, the collapse of big industry and domestic steel, and could not have supported any business that might have taken the structure over. No chance at upscale gentrification. Even less at funding restoration, the misguided notion of historical significance.

     Nothing of historical note ever happened at Crossover Station.

     At least, nothing anyone knew about. True history frequently occurs in the margins and the spaces between the lines of text.

     The world had finally, once and for all, forgotten this empty corner of reality.

     Favoring his left leg, the tall man knelt to the concrete, setting aside the metal-capped cane but never far from reach. He placed his palms flat to the ground as if intending to pray; a laughable notion, for he knew the truth of what was listening … and what was not.

     And slowly, he drew his hands back across the concrete, skin scraping drily upon the surface. And when he raised them up, he saw a pale shade of dust discoloring his fingers.

     “How could it be gone?”

     The walls of the train station do not answer, only pull away and leave him in empty silence. Light filters sparingly through the milky, glass ceiling, grimed and greasy from the years of neglect. Some of the panes have broken, light landing in small, brilliant pools around the platform. But not much. Not enough to chase back the shadows. This was a place that wanted to be forgotten, even by itself; a lonely ghost aching for oblivion, its story told and retold and of no real consequence. Distant sounds of wings beating in the rafters, trapped in the darkness, powerless and ineffectual.

     The door was dead.

     He held his palms to his face and inhaled, catching the smell of the dust. It had been so long—so very, very long—but he knew it. He would know it anywhere. Finding his way to the dust was all he had known for almost two thousand years.

     The man licked his fingertips, tasting the flat whiteness that lingered, tracked upon the soles of one who had been there and come back. One who had found one of the mythic doors and walked through; found it again and returned.

     The dust tasted like forgetting.

     It no longer mattered; the door was gone, the way closed. The traveler had come here for something; he did not know for what. Regardless, the traveler had stumbled upon the God Slayer. For it was he who dwelled in the land of the dust. And now the traveler was dead. And the door was gone forever.

     Lost.

     But the dust remained, telling its own tale, an unfolding of secret properties like shadows in the darkness, raindrops lost upon the sea. It whispered to a notion: not all doors can be closed. Not for good. Not forever. Hidden away perhaps, or lost like secrets unvoiced for generations. It did not change the fact that a door remained. Somewhere. The dust promised, and the dust would not be denied.

     The dust tasted like forgetting.

     The man levered himself back up, straightening against his cane. He was tall, skin brown as the rich earth. He dressed darkly, from the long, coal-black coat of fine leather as soft as skin to his shirt the color of crow feathers and boots as dark as the night sea. Even the cane gleamed like a black, lacquered box, the top polished silver with veins of cobalt running like lightning in the finely etched lines. The man’s hair was a mane of thick dreadlocks worn with the proud grace of a savage warlord. Glancing back to the abandoned platform, one eye glimmering with knowledge as deep and vast as the universe, the other the color of foam on a storm-wracked sea, the center of a scar running from his forehead down through his eye and under his collar. Some claimed he could see into the world of the dead with that eye.

     He could not.

     Behind him, his companions stood in silence, attentive, one layered in oversized sweatshirts and jackets in spite of the heat, hood drawn up, sleeves pulled down so that only the fingertips were seen; impossible to know if it was a slight woman or a tall child. The other appeared a crude facsimile of his master’s indigent majesty, a reflection from a fey mirror: black t-shirt hanging loose over muscles corded like rope, pronounced veins and tendons wrapping his limbs like bundled wire, skin dark as creosote stretched tight and paper-thin, lines distinct to the point of anguish, head smoothly shaved, his expression a joyless smile beneath fiercely manic eyes.

     The Captain flicked his gaze at them before returning to the darkness of the abandoned station, the place of the dead door, the last one recorded. The only one that remained now—the only one even suggested by rumor, legend, or myth—was buried deep in the riddles and ramblings of a madman and secreted away for centuries, lost to everything and everyone. He feared perhaps it had been lost altogether, and this dread notion drove his hatred to new bounds over the long years of his unending quest, the route of madness.

     But the dust had promised him a way, and the dust would not be denied.

     The book had been found.

     He need only find a Pilot to fathom the madman’s riddles and open the door, and he and his would go through, and a reckoning eons in the making would be had. The God Slayer had brought down the world. It was time the God Slayer himself was brought low. The Captain had worked too hard for too long, and so much had been sacrificed. He would be denied no longer.

     “This way is closed,” he whispered, brushing away dust as white as old bones from his palms. “There is only the one now. All of the rest are gone.”

     The other two said nothing, only fell in behind him, footsteps light as ghosts.

     “We will never find it until the way is shown … but the way wants to be found. Chronicle is en route. We must gather the others.”

     Like some darksome bird, liquid-tar raven, the shining night sea, the Captain passed into the recesses of the empty train station and the two dutifully followed, the darkness swallowing them whole.

Chapter 4: The Thief

     The room felt … temporary.

     A small square of space, insignificant but for the position it occupied, the moment in time in which it existed, the few objects contained therein. A place in between. A stopover between once and after.

     She gave herself a moment to acclimate. Light. Air pressure. Gravity.

     Dust layered the empty shelves. The worn boards smelled old and tired. Milky glass, sunlight a golden glow that lit the dance of dust before her. It hung still in the air, glimmering quietly in the morning light, motionless, flecks trapped in amber. All of this was transient. Fleeting.

     All except for the books left behind on the table, placed in the sunlight, yet free of the dust. As if waiting.

     A trap.

     She looked at the table centered beneath the milky window like an altar, the books an interrupted rite momentarily unattended. Two paperbacks pushed aside, much worn and over-read, no gloss left on the covers, edges dark from turning, unable to sit flat. But the third was different. Centered upon the wood, its leather binding ancient and well attended, the skin of its pages centuries old. And beside the ancient, leather-bound book and the worn, paperback novels, something else.

      A compass. 

     She paused, eyes fixed on the leather cover. It was not why she was here, not what she had come for. But there was no denying it. She could smellit, the dust and the distance. Not the velvety dust of this world, but something much older. These books had traveled from very far away. They did not belong here.

     But there was something else, too; something deeper. Scent of spring rain, of vanilla and honeysuckle and cherry blossoms. And of sadness.

     “Broken.”

     The door opened suddenly, dust motes whirling in the sunlight like gold flakes suspended in oil, bubbles under the sea, startled into action.

     She looked back only once and saw him, saw the baleful stare, eye glimmering at her.

     Snatching everything from the sun-covered table, she turned and stepped back into the wall, and the way through closed behind her as if it had never been. Only a wall in a small, dusty room, solid and unforgiving.

     But it was done.