The Door: The Door, #1

By B.W. Thomas

It's late, you're walking down a quiet street toward home. The still of the night is awoken only by the sound of gingerly rustling leaves and the soft echoes of your shoes' soles hitting the pavement beneath you. You've walked this route so frequently, you can name the owners of every sleeping car you pass by. Everything is as it always is.

Then you spot it. There, standing straight up in the middle of the street is a solid cherry wood door. The gold handle flickers ever so slightly courtesy of a single shimmer of light from the nearest street lamp. To either side of the door is the street, exactly as you'd seen it a thousand times before.

Only one question comes to mind, do you open the door and walk through?

Max Jorgens did and what he found on the other side would change his life forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.W. Thomas
• Release date: May 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224945450

Book preview

ONE

Most Thursday nights I walked to, and from, my local tavern, the Booze Explosion. It was a short three blocks from my home and was the perfect weekly escape from real life. Over the years, I’d met and made friends with dozens of people there. Many would disappear from my life in much the same fashion they’d first appeared, out of nowhere. For three of us though, Thursday nights became something more, something kindred.

Travis Rogers was in his second marriage. He was 36 with a three year old daughter from his first marriage. Travis was an introvert at heart. With us, he never seemed to shut up, but around others, people didn’t even know he was there at times. Ten years earlier, his father retired and gave Travis control of the family hardware store. In his spare time, he was an amateur photographer. He’d fill his social media feeds with nature and real life photos he would take when he found inspiration. He was good enough that he made sure to put a TKR logo stamp on anything he put out in the world.

Then there was Will Lomas. He was single and did anything and everything he wanted to do. He was the guy that I, and everyone else who knew him, lived vicariously through. Every story he told would top the previous one. He had a knack for adventure and his storytelling capabilities were legendary.

It was one of those Thursday nights during football season where the nights seemed to last longer than they did the rest of the year. Will had just secured another promotion which came with a giant raise. Generously, he covered half of our tabs for the evening, which wasn’t that small of a number after we drained the local craft IPA tap.

I didn’t even recall the game ending. Sometime around 11:30 I remembered I had to work the next morning. After handing out drunk hugs to my comrades, I staggered out the door for that short walk home.

The first couple blocks were a straight shot west. That part of the walk always went by quickly. Barnes Road was another block to the south after the double stop sign corner. Shannon and I started calling it the double stop sign corner a few years earlier after a hit and run crash twisted the oncoming stop sign. Years later, the city still hadn’t fixed the angle of the sign, rendering it useless as it faced the same direction as the sign for the opposite coming traffic. That sign was the only dimple in our otherwise perfect neighborhood.

Shannon was the love of my life. We’d been married for 17 years and together three before that. A couple friends from our earlier lives set us up at a local college baseball game. It sounded cliché, but I knew she was ‘the one’ the moment I met her.

She had a knack for finding the beauty in things that others could not. She found us the house on Barnes Road that just called out ‘this is home.’ The sidewalks were flanked by elm trees and a couple conifers. Nine of ten houses on the block were mostly built with brick, including ours. The driveways were a bit short, forcing our neighbors to park some of their vehicles on the opposite side of the street from our home.

As I passed under the elm trees I found myself reflecting on what life had handed me. I had married the woman of my dreams, I had two fantastic kids and I loved my job.

Our daughter, Danika, had recently turned 16 and was anxious to get a car so she wouldn’t have to borrow ours. She had lettered in three sports in her sophomore year at Kelton High School. She was a great student and active in all sorts of clubs, most of which were centered around her volunteering frequently at homeless shelters.

Outside of the grades, Dmitri was practically her polar opposite. He was in 8th grade and was devoted to music. He played guitar for the middle school band and used our garage as a practice pad for his punk band. He was a straight A student targeting a full ride to Northwestern University. His extracurricular activity time was low and he wasn’t quite what you’d call a people person. In his downtime from studying and music, he and his friends would play video games together, usually while they were at their own homes. I liked to mess with him and call it V-Games instead of E-Games.

Life couldn’t have been more complete.

A couple houses away from home, I cut through the sleeping cars to cross the street, passing Mr. Snelker’s forest green PT Cruiser which sat directly opposite our neighbor’s driveway.

Before emerging from the shadow of the elm tree that bordered Mr. Snelker’s sidewalk and Cruiser, I saw it.

There, standing straight up in the middle of Barnes Road, was a door. It was cherry wood. The wind bristled gently through the trees, freeing the closest streetlight to cast its low glow across the door’s gold handle, creating enough of a slight shimmer to nearly twinkle.

I came to a stop five feet from the door. My natural instincts made me wonder if that door was real or if the copious amount of alcohol I’d just consumed was taking its toll on my brain. I stepped gently to my left, then to the right, peeking around each side of the door and glancing back to see if anyone else was around to witness whatever was going on.

After what felt like an eternity, I took another step closer and reached my left hand out to touch the frame. Touching the door and realizing how real it actually was sent an alarm through my arm. I withdrew as quickly as I would have had the door been aflame.

What... the.... fuck? I mumbled to myself. I briefly shook my head to snap out of my alcohol induced daze as a last ditch effort to regain focus on reality. My hand returned to the door jamb and slowly traced the left side of the frame up to the top, which sat about 12 inches above my head. With my left hand softly pressed against the door frame, I slowly glanced around the left side of the door.

Somehow seeing exactly what I expected to see on Barnes Road surprised me.

It’s a door, again mumbling to myself. But how... I don’t.... What???

Something inside me told me not to take my hand away. Gingerly, I traced the top of the door frame to the right. Upon reaching the corner, I pivoted my head to gaze beyond the right side of the door.

Same cars, same trees, same houses, I muttered. Followed by another glance behind me to see Mr. Snelker’s PT Cruiser and the rest of comatose Barnes Road.

Other than the door at the tips of my fingers, everything else on Barnes Road appeared to be the same as it was when I’d left for the bar more than four hours earlier.

The wind reared up with a slightly stronger breeze causing a small, eerie chill to run down my spine. It was strong enough to rattle the leaves, once again freeing the street lamp’s glow. The solid gold handle of the door twinkled as though it was winking at me until the breeze receded. The gentle curve of the handle felt as though it was made for my hand.

This can’t..., I found myself talking slightly louder with each broken sentence, be real. That gold handle was inviting me to push it down, to free the door from its jamb and offer me yet another glimpse of Barnes Road behind it. My brain initially refused to allow my arm the satisfaction of pushing that handle down. I’d seen enough sci-fi and horror films to know that nothing good would come from me opening that door.

Maybe it was the loss of inhibitions from the bar, or maybe it was the undeniable opportunity to maybe, just maybe, witness something magnificent. It didn’t take long for my curiosity to take over.

TWO

Why would I even consider walking through that door?

Mumbling yet again, I answered my own question. The better question is why wouldn’t I?

Cautiously, I pushed the handle down and nudged the door open. Another small breeze allowed that street lamp to cast its light directly through the door frame creating a lighted path, inviting me through. Still looks like Barnes Road, still talking to myself, but suddenly my tone was confirming that curiosity had taken over.

Gripping the handle firmly, as though I’d get sucked into a vortex, I slowly pushed the door open further. Nothing in front of, nor behind, me looked any different than it did every other day since we’d moved into that house seven years earlier.

My proximity to the other side of the door was gradually closing. As the door opened further my body inched closer and closer to it. By the time it was fully ajar, my toes lined the base of the weather strip representing the border between its two sides. My heart was pounding so hard and fast I could hear it. My mind was littered with thoughts about what I was doing and how real it was. I imagined it was what Moonlight Graham felt like just before he crossed his own territorial boundary in Field of Dreams. The difference was he didn’t know what he’d find in a talking cornfield whereas I had no evidence of anything unusual beyond that door.

I took one deep, staggered breath, and in a motion that looked something like trying to cross a puddle without getting your foot wet and playing don’t step on a crack, my right foot had broken through to the other side. My eyes darted everywhere, eventually landing back on the open door. It was at that moment I found myself facing the door jamb, my right hand with a death grip on the handle, straddling the imaginary barrier.

Before taking the final plunge back into reality, I considered, ever-so-briefly, what that whole situation might look like if there was actually no door standing in front of me.

Still, I was hoping to see someone, anyone, witnessing the event to help validate that it was actually happening. When morning would come it would be just another hazy memory. One that my own blood-alcohol level could easily convince me never actually happened. Then there was Shannon, she’d fallen for many of my fibs previously but she would surely consider that one the king of doozies, the ultimate fable, worthy of every eye roll and cynical ok dear comment. If the door wasn’t there in the morning, I would have no evidence to make any sort of plea for understanding my story.

Evidence! I said in my own eureka way. I can take a picture, the excitement about something so ingrained into our social beings lit up my eyes.

SLAM!

My phone dropped to the pavement.

Without even realizing I’d done it, I’d fully crossed the little weatherstrip clearly serving as something of a before-and-after for the story that was developing in my mind. And the door just slammed shut. I was standing two feet from the door, there was no wind... it just shut.

I bent down, frantically feeling the pavement with virtually no light and my eyes staring so deep into the dark night where the door was standing you’d think I could see through it. It had also become clear that the trees were now aiding and abetting the door by denying any additional assistance to me from the street light.

When my fingers finally fumbled their way to my phone, I glanced down ever so briefly to confirm I had the phone in my hand. As my eyes shot back upward, the wind kicked back up to finally offer a courtesy breeze. During that brief glimmer of light, my finger found the shutter button and as I clicked, the wind silenced and the light evaporated one more time. It was as though that brief breeze rolled through like a sweetly blown kiss.

I couldn’t see the door anymore. It was dark, but it wasn’t there. I reached my arm out, crawling ever so gently toward where the door once stood.

Nothing.

My eyes surveyed everything I could see without moving the rest of my body a single inch. Within a few moments, I returned to my senses and brought my phone up, turning it back on and flipping to the photos app.

I missed it. I didn’t know how, but I MISSED IT! The picture was completely black

Back and forth my finger wagged between the recent photos. It was only pictures from the bar and that last picture of nothing.

Somehow my body was moving, I was subconsciously walking toward my house in a daze not knowing, not understanding, not... believing what just happened.

Before reaching the steps to the door, I turned and took one more look back to the street for any evidence of the door, and found nothing but Barnes Road.

I fumbled through my pocket trying to locate my keys, finally managing to open the door and set the alarm. I had even done it all without making too much noise. After setting my keys down on the sofa table that sat near the front door, I tossed my jacket on the arms of the treadmill, kicked my shoes off, and headed upstairs to the bedroom.

Shannon had remembered to turn the tv off before she went to sleep, so there was no light creeping under the bedroom door to guide me to its handle. I let out a deep, silent sigh, realizing the irony of not being able to see my own bedroom door standing in front of me in the pitch dark hallway. Shannon and