ELDRITCH HORRORS: DARK TALES

The Door to Nowhere

by Blake Wilson

(Excerpt pp. 158-160, Eldritch Horrors: Dark Tales)

Sullivan’s Folly stood out from all the hills and gullies the trail had passed through. For starters, the large tress of the bush surrounded the hill in a ragged circle, but that was as far as they would come. A number of small shrubs eked out an existence on the hillside amongst the jagged rocks, but that was it. Up at the summit of the small hill was the White Door, just as I had been told. The years had aged away the paint and varnish, but it still stood strong against both time and the elements.

“It would make a good photo,” Maria was telling the others when I finally got to the top.

“Yeah, freaky,” Isabel added.

“Can the door still be opened?” I asked Cynthia, our travel guide for the afternoon.

“My brother and I tried that last time we were here, but we didn’t have any luck.”

“Maybe we could burn it down instead. It would make a nice campfire,” Paul said, moving close enough to Cynthia to get his arm around her.

“Please, Paul? No Vandalism today?” she pleaded.

I left the two to argue with each other on their way back down, heading over to Isabel and Maria who were take a closer look at the Door. The wood of the Door was rotting and splintered while the hinges had rusted over decades before any of us had been born. The frame bore indentations of what had once been deeply carved words. I was no student of linguistics, so the few remaining words could have been Russian, Arabic or Sanskrit for all I knew. They certainly weren’t in English Roman script.

“I wonder—” Maria said, eyes alight with curiosity as her hand went to the doorknob.

“Don’t, Sis! I have better things to do today than pick splinters out of your hands,” Isabel warned as she knocked Maria’s hand away. The younger twin backed away from the door, her eyes were still squarely focused on the doorknob she had been so close to turning. I felt a little of what Maria was feeling too, the itch to open this strange door and see what the fuss was all about.

“Are you guys going to help us set up the tents or what?” Paul called from down the hill, where Cynthia was beginning to pull the tents out from their covers.

“This is going to be a good place for ghost stories,” I said as the three of us made our way down the hill to help the others. Neither of them deigned to reply.

It took longer than I expected to set up, but after that, things started to go a bit more relaxed. The beer came out of the esky and the bags of potato chips came from everyone’s bag. As the sun set over the tree line, we gathered some loose branches for kindling and started a campfire, contrary to the summer fire bans. Although the bird cries and the wind rustling through the trees was unsettling, as the night progressed I grew more accustomed to the unfamiliar setting. The alcohol more than helped, off course. As the evening progressed our conversations descended into nonsensical tangents and obscure movie references.

Anyway, after a few hours of this I bid the others goodnight and stumbled back to my tent before I could be embroiled in Paul’s drug use in Isabel’s game of “truth or dare.” The ground of the tent was rock hard, and it seemed like hours until I fell into a drunken slumber.

I was awakened by the Light. It shone right through my eyelids and retinas, straight into the brain. Screaming, I bolted upright and clutched my eyes, trying to block the burning white railroad spikes shoved through my eyes. In my convulsions, I managed to knock the tent down over me, not that I cared one iota compared to the overriding pain coming through my corneas.

(...)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Paul S. Kemp:
One Thousand and One Words

W. H. Pugmire
Recompense of Sorrow (brand-new Sesqua Valley!)

Ron Shiflet
Out of the Frying Pan

Don Webb
The Jest of Yig

Gary Hill
Rest in Peace, Jeremy Randall

Simon Bleaken
Ashanna's Whispers

Leigh Blackmore
The Return of Zoth-Ommog

Thomas Strømsholt
Devouring Darkness Hovers

Benjamin Szumskyj
A Haunting From Beyond

Linda Navroth
The Specimen

Dan Clore
The Dying God

Blake Wilson
The Door to Nowhere

Paul Mackintosh
The People of the Island

Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
The Bibliophile