The Door

The ancient door looms above him. It's ominous simplicity is a striking contrast to the intricate and decorated catacombs that led here. Months, years really, of research into the surviving esoteric texts ........ and it leads to this? A stair of simple metal grating that spans a black gap about two meters wide. The top riser ends at a rectangular door of matte metal, steel maybe, though how it has not tarnished through the ages is impossible to know. For certain some technique of the ancients that has been lost, along with true death and the light of the sun itself.

He climbs the steep stairs, each riser a half meter tall but only fifteen centimeters wide. His fingers grip the grating like a ladder, pulling as much as stepping. With each stair the pressure grows. The air feeling more viscous with each movement forward. It envelops him now, sucking him up more than pushing him down. Squeezing every bit of him forward, upward. He has spent nearly every moment working for this, planning, obsessing, preparing. He struggles now, crying out, but there is no one to hear him. They all fled days ago, one by one as the dread slowly mounted. Their commitment proven lacking, their obsession incomplete.

His hand touches the door. It is hot, as if a furnace rages behind it. He does not burn. When he pulls his hand away there in an imprint left in the surface. It is as if the surface is made of sand, molding to the pressure like wet grains on a beach. But when he looks again, it too is the same untarnished metal. The ridges and whorls and creases of his palm print stand out clearly in the surface. He places his hand back there and it fits perfectly, deforming further to accept him deeper. His hand sinks now to the wrist and the heat grows more intense. It should be cooking him alive but he is unmarred and finally knows that the rituals were of true antiquity. His face now presses into the surface. The soft touch on his cheek like that of a new lover, learning his features with her hand in the dark.

The last trace of the man's foot disappears into the doorway without a sound. no evidence is left that he was ever there, his pack and belongings abandoned days ago.

The doorway is unmarred in the absolute black.

to be continued......