The Forbidden Door

The morning hawks picked away at roadkill pulled to the ditch by orange garbed workman. The upper half of critter remains smiled with its tongue out and eyes eaten. It’s lower body remained kneaded into the pavement with patches of fuzz tickling the burning tires of travelers.

Grain elevators at the end of town streamed grain dust into the backs of red trucks coated in gravel powder. The operator watched the sunrise over steaming coffee. The billboard on the entrance of town just barely lit up at the bend of the road. “Welcome to Historic Elkhead.” Below the billboard, a blue linoleum sign gave the route to “Cannistrom”-the town founder museum. Beyond the billboard he saw the morning bridge lights still reflecting in the river. The clock struck seven am.

School bells rang. Kids lined up and entered their institutions, but for two.

One of the missing teenagers dropped his bag from the bridge and watched it tumble to the whirlpools cycloning in the toxic brown river waters. He leaned over the edge and picked a shallow spot where sand and rocks flared. His heart raced. He wore a hoodie that reached his knees and he secured it around his body with a belt. Sweat dripped behind his ears. His palms left streaks of anxious sweat on the rails.

“If you’re going to do it, then what are you waiting for?” a voice called from the other end of the bridge. A year’s worth of unkempt growth crowned his head and hid his eyes but for slivers of green. “Maybe you need a push.”

Nettle leaned over further. His hands gripped the rail. The tangled drawstrings around his neck dangled like a necklace. The river hushed below. Something fat and white bobbed up and down. He sighed for his friend to hear.

“This time I mean it, Zen.” he told his friend. His friend shook his head, his clothing torn up- not from expensive design, but by wear over time. His jacket started as  green fatigues, but as he smiled with egg yolk caught on his chin fuzz, Nettle saw it became patchwork of several garments sewed with clumsy needle work done by the wearer himself.

Nettle looked away from his friend to the river. The white thing stopped bobbing. It grinded against a row of shoreline limestone.

“Wonder who it is?” Zen inquired, leaning next to Nettle. He pulled a cigarette from a pack and lit it. A necklace of car icons peeled from steering wheels and clutch heads hung from his collar. He nor his folks drove any of the luxury brands he ordained himself with. Metal stitching secured the strand of his ankle monitor.

“Another person from the city jumped into the river.”

“Don’t you know that all the towns along this river dump their sewage in this? If you want to drown, don’t drown in this. This river is shit river.”

“At this point, the status of the river doesn’t concern me.”

“It will. Those whirlpools will suck you under. This fall is far, but you'll only break your ribs, maybe your spine if you're lucky, than you sit at the bottom of that river sucking up whatever the city dispatches. I’m glad I decided to skip today…. There’s a secret I want to share.”

“What is it”

“I can’t tell you. We have to go to the meeting room first, and then we can talk about it”

“Should we tell someone about that guy?”

“Yeah, afterwards.”

Zen pulled on Nettles arm and he followed him into town.

The truants loitered in the empty parking lot of the thrift store. They started to discuss their options when an old lady with varicose veins netting her under chins slobbered pleas for them to leave. Zen put his hands in his pockets and stared at her. Nettle didn’t know what his friend might try. Zen kept a knife hidden in a hallowed pen in his back pocket ankle bracelet strapped on.

Zen’s eyes widened as harsh words passed his mind, but he cokced his headback, crossed his arms. “You got it,”  he told her with unforgetting eyes and they walked off.

Nettle sighed. Zen pulled out two cigarettes from them to enjoy. Zen smoked his away. Nettle’s cheeks filled up with smoke and he blew it from his nostrils.

“That’s not how you do it.” He said. “You’re wasting the tobacco.”

They walked down the strip of downtown. A mail lady entered the jewelry store. Zen peered into the lawyers office next door. Blinders sealed the window tight, but he caught a peek of a dark office lit only by the dim glow of a computer screen. “This is the guy my mom went to when she wanted to sue the Walmart for not salting its sidewalk.”

“They didn’t?”

“Of course they did, so she brought her own slush and slipped on that.”

“Did she win the case?”

“No. The lawyer don’t like sketchy shit.”

They passed the banks. Three structures in a row. All three sleek and immaculate from recent renovation. They still smelled drying caulk. Radio antennas and satellites extended from the roofs. Red neon told the time. School started without them. Zen watched the sunrise from dripping red pomegranate juice to a yellow lense burning through the clouds escaping towards the dim west. Purple clouds swelled into gray and white currents. Sun rays flooded the street. Shadows of dull light posts and mailboxes extended like hidden blades. Nettle walked on, paying no notice to  nature around him.

New cars pulled into the bank lots. The weather plane flew overhead. He watched them with thoughtful patience, calculating the physics keeping the aircraft airborne.

Nettle stopped on the sidewalk and looked into the antique shop. Both entered, and quietly went to a stack of yellowed comic books. “These are from before the Comic Code Authority!” Nettle told his friend as they thumbed through them. “Joe Simon, Carmine Infantino, William Gaines- these are good ones.”

The blue hair came from the counter. She looked at Zen’s untreated mess of black hair. His moustache looked more like dirt than facial hair. She ushered both of them out to the sidewalk. Both watched their reflections in passing windows. Zen distributed two more cigarettes. He fluttered some wash beaten dollar bills. “We’ll buy them on our way back. That’ll really scare her.”  They finished the cigarettes, found the alley and followed it to the end where the railroad killed the way forward.  and left the conscious eye of public.

The truants raised their collars, and slid into a trail through weeds that thickened with bushes and spider webs. Once out they came to their meeting room. The brick floor survived. Speargrass stalks and tickseed flowers broke from between the blocks. Burned blocks paneled the border between overflowing grass blades and tarnished crossbars. When they stepped on, cindering air escaped from the sinking blocks. Ash spat from their steps. They sat under the chimney. Zen looked around for the thoughtful poetry he scraped into the throat. A vandal drew over his verses with the collision of spray paint genitals. He tried to rub it off, but his sleeves wore away the brickwork. He wore away half the wall before the wind shrieked and shivers filled their cover. A gust of alfalfa rich wind hurled inside. Loose mineral funneled up the chimney and growled through holes and slips in crumbling mortar.

They pressed against the firebox filling. When the wind stopped, they felt warm again, so they relanced and finished their conspiracy.

“-those rumors might not be silly after all. My grandma told me about it.”

“What’s inside?”

“I don’t know. She told me she was never aloud to see… but i have ideas.”

“Gargoyles? Rockets?”

“Dead bodies- people murdered by the city hundred years ago, covered up and forgotten about. Until today.”

“Now that sounds interesting.”

They smoked two more cigarettes each, left the butts in the hearth, and re entered the bushes and snags of slender branches. “My grandma is one hundred and ten years old. I don't know if she’s lost her mind, or if she remembers wrong or what. So sorry if this is a waste of time.”

“I’m just happy to be out of the house. Won’t you get in trouble?”

“This?” The ankle bracelet blinked. “What’s my parole officer going to do? We only meet on Wednesdays.”

They stomped down a slope, using tree roots, they guided themselves down to a narrow creek. They followed a paddling turtle up the stream. A bike wheel spun in the swallowing mud. They hopped over rocks and tree trunks. Empty blue beer cans hung from branches like ornaments. Empty shotgun shells lay split in the grass.

Zen stopped and encroached onto the shore. He peeled away branches, and gestured at an alley cut into the overgrowth.  “Just as grandma said.” They krept with light steps. The sound of the road and town slipped behind the moaning of swaying tree limbs and the crackling of leaves falling to the ground. “It should be close by.”

Nettle shivered. His feet sunk in mud. He trudged after Zen covered in burs and torn spider web. The scent in the air ripened. Both truants detected spoiled baby formula but saw no children nor belongings to a caregiver-Only grass and bush that grew to their shoulders and hanging vines.

Nettle shoes slipped from his heels. Zen wore boots and crushed anything in his path. Nettle tied his shoes once more, but the backs scraped against his achilles tendons until the flesh reddened and split. The cold air chilled his flesh so that when the blood dripped he felt it itch down his tendon to the bottom of his heel. The blood remained, itching his foot with a sticky resilience that he only satisfied by peeling his shoe away and scraping it against some fallen lumber.

Zen came through the grass. “Come see it.” He lead him to a ten foot wide hole in the ground six feet deep with broken rungs leading below to a pool of blackened and rotten leaves. Nettle looked inward, than around. The trees looked ancient and overgrown. Their trunks pressed against other trees, strangling the smaller ones.

Zen hopped down the hole. Nettle called for him to stop as a solid, hollow collision echoed up. Nettle looked down to see his friend laying in the swamp of slimy forest debris. He held his head climbing back to his feet. Nettle took to the latter. Zen removed the leaves handful by handful until he found a table of solid iron. They plowed the leaves to the edges of the pit, revealing the face of the table, hinges in the center and a dinner plate sized disk rusted into the surface along a hollow notch. Zen tried at the disk until his wrist veins throbbed against his skin. Metal winds sliced into his thumb. He held the minor wound until the blood stopped. Nettle tried stomping on the table, pulling at the gap between hinges before giving up. He climbed from the pit. “Come up here, and look.” Zen climbed up the ladder, but the rungs slid from the dirt and he fell back down. Nettle lowered a hand and pulled Zen up. Both looked down and saw in the fledgling light escaping through gaps in the leaf cover filling in spaces on the tablet.

Cold wind blew. Not winter reminder, not a stream from a barren land, but something cold as graveyard clay. Their flesh tensed and their eyes watered. The wind slowed, and as it did the trees swelled, and grew a coat of purple blisters with pieces of hair flying from pale pores.

The characters they saw on the tablet confused them. At first they appeared as a foreign language, but then began to twirl and spin, even grow extensions or melt into another character. Zen slid out his phone to photograph the wonder. Roots sprouted from walls of the pit, vines dropped and tickled the backs of their necks. Zen’s fingers fumbled his device, but he caught it with his free hand over the pit. The pixels developed. The characters developed into sunlight patterns they recognized. “Condemned”. Faded etchings of skulls and war equipment emerged.

Nettle looked around them. “I don’t think we can leave. Where did we come from?”

Lilac mist rose from the fractured earth broken apart by the developing trees. The mist rose over the trees, and within moments they disappeared and the mist started to smell more like burning rubber as even the vignettes over their heads faded to a skeletal outline before vanishing in the mist.

Zen looked at the image in his device before the glass over the screen cracked in his hand, then silvery fluid boiled from the open ports. The device smoked from within until his burned his hand and he let it fall into the pit. It smacked the tablet.

While the truants cowarded, the phone continued to burn and melt to puddle of silver sludge sinking into the iron. Once  it fell through, a flight of whispers rose and filled the area. Glowing eyes floated around them. Snakes hissed. Wings flapped overhead. Nettle gestured from Zen to see below. A pale, soot covered hand rose from the hole to the the disk plates. Forest clearing screeches drowned out the whispers. The disk spun around in one direction, then turned several more times in the other direction. The disk clicked, than it shifted with the reek of unoiled rust along the network of slots in an unreasonable pattern until a resounding echo of clashing steel beams thundered the ground. The hinges sounded like crashing trains. Hot air blew from the pit in a wind of exhaust that looked orange and red in the lilac mist.

They looked down as it appeared to roll into darkness without impediment. The whispers became growls and forlorn pleas. The first skull to appear looked at the truants with ruptured veins in its eye sockets and mouth. A claw reached over, took hold of its chin and pulled it back down. Feet scuffled. Voices gagged and choked. A rope fired out and slid through the glass. Nettle grabbed it as Zen watched, looking for something heavy to drop down. The pale hands emerged, pulling on the rope, sinking spurs into the dirt as he climbed up the wall. His eyes looked squinted, but the truants saw when his head rose over the pit hollow and sunken sockets. The man wore a wide brimmed a hat and solid colored clothing covered in ash and gray scales. He dropped the rope down and watched the door reseal on the many souls crawling up.

The man sniffed. “You two. Boys. Thanks for helping me out of there.” He spoke like a swamp dweller, without warmth and comfort in his tone, he spoke with firm sincerity. “Now, I’m a busy man with a tight schedule, and I’ve lost some time since they last tossed me in there, but I never let a slave escape me, and I’m not going to start now. You boys hear me alright? I’m looking for someone.”

He took out a hand drawn bill with a rather racist depiction of a slave to show them. “Seen this fellow? Took him wife and three babies with him. He’s hiding out in this town. You boys know where, and you’re going to lead me to his hiding place.”

“No, we can’t help you.”

“You can, and you will.” A revolver hung from his hip. He reached behind the gun, and pulled out two rope nooses. He took each truant by the head and tightened the ropes around their necks. Zen fought the entire time, pulling against the  rope, kicking and spitting- but nothing caused the man.

“Don’t be so sore now. I’m sure you’ve all heard of me before- I’m famous around these parts…. Or i used to be. Suppose that was years ago now.” He drove them from the lilac mists to the alley of growth and to the creek. Both friends shook and looked at each other for ideas but neither found any validation from the other. They marched at the mercy of their captor. “Name is Griffith Alister Cannistrom, if anyone asks.”

The truants swallowed. The town founder from the pioneer days when Indians still wandered the land was named “Cannistrom”.

The lilac mist faded behind them, but the forest now stretched for miles. More dams blocked the creek. More roaming beasts crossed the empty plains. The trees that they had climbed over stood erect. They even saw snow on the ground. The truants thought it only snowed in January. The moon in the sky glowed an August gold against the starving daylight above a cottage standing where only a chimney did before.

A dirty farmer sat to relax after a hard day of hand breaking work. When he looked to the trees he saw the trio walking towards him. He didn’t notice the two boys because he knew who came up his way so he stood up and cleaned his face with what little spit his glands provided him with.  He let go of the ropes holding the truants. He  sniffed the air in front of small farmer.

“It’s been a long day, but I detect from perspiration from the south. Maybe it’ll head north and water your garden.”

“We can use some more snow. Can I help you?”

“Yes sir, I’m here to reclaim property of Mr. Lunis Ellis.”

“No sir, no slaves come running through here.”

“My guides here-” he dropped the ropes. “-Say otherwise. Do I smell some cider?”

A woman inside boiled fluid on a cast iron stove.

“Excuse me, madam- but it's a chilly walk up your way and do you mind if I sample some of that you’re brewing?

Babies cried in the corner. The fireplace, he noticed, unlit. He scraped the mud off his boots and he stepped in, ducking to avoid the top of the doorway, then erecting once more. His head almost touched the rafters.

“That stove is full-warm.” He examined the  fireplace, tapping around with his boot. He let the woman pour him a glass. He sipped it, and asked for another. Once he drank three, he left the cottage, but returned with a bucket of well water that he poured onto the stove. No steam. He opened the oven, sifted through the ashes before removing the ash bin.

“There they are.” He pulled out the bones of two adult skulls and three tiny skeletons. He stored them in a bag, and left the cottage, walking back to the woods. Before he crossed back, he turned to the truants, and gave them each a .32 hollow point bullet from his revolver.  The slave catcher said one last thing. “Don’t come back.”

The slave catcher reentered the lilac haze and flames consumed the cottage. Without gradual fire climbing, the ignition started with spark and blossomed to consume the cottage. The truants gaped as the fire lasted five seconds before collapsing into a cloud of smoke that blinding and choked them. When the smoke cleared, only the chimney remained, the graffiti where they saw it last.

They walked back to the bridge as planned. The body still snagged to a rock. They went around the bride and went down to the shore. The body tilted on the rock like a door. They grabbed him by parment of his clothing and pulled, but nothing moved. They tried harder, than the body gave way- but not as they expected. They fell to the dirt. The person jolted to life in a screaming fit, taking nettle by the ears and forcing him under the copper colored current.

Zen rolled in the rocks, his head ringin from being struck by the stranger. Nettle kicked and splashed. The stranger kept  screaming and screaming until his adam's apples ejected from his mouth. Zen climbed to his feet, and undid the necklace. He wrapped it around the screaming man’s neck until he screamed no more. They waded into the river, and let go of the body. The truants watched it go down where a whirlpool sucked the body up. It circled around a few times before one the last leg sunk to the bottom.