The Door

The gleam caught his eye. The gleam caught it but the door held it.

It wasn't a large door. Your average sized man would probably have to stoop to pass through, but it was a door nonetheless. A door that Chester Craig had walked past probably a hundred times on his way to the hospital but like much of the fabric of the mundane, it was something your eyes saw and then slipped over. Your brain registered their existence; photos on the wall, a mirror, a vase gathering dust in the hall. Long enough for your subconscious to acknowledge all was well without letting your eyes dwell. They were part of your tapestry of reference; holding things in shape without too much thought. But today, the door made him stop in his tracks, a hundred yards from the bus stop.

He checked his watch. 8.15. The bus wasn't due for ten minutes, he always made sure he was early. He glanced around. An old lady walking her dog over the road; a slouched youth, face shrouded in a hoodie in the bus stop ahead, very few cars on the road. A light rain had started which wasn't really surprising for January. Chester approached the door.

It had once been green, but years of neglect had left the wood faded, peeling and rotten in some places. Probably once a vibrant apple green it was now the colour of a mouldy Golden Delicious; a nondescript piss yellow. It was set into a high wall which, again was something he had not really thought about as he passed it on his daily commute. The wall surrounded an old sanatorium which had been disused for over 20 years and weeds, brambles and nettles had sprung up in joyous abundance. Tall sopping boughs of willow, hawthorn and horse-chestnut crowned the wall tops, nodding silently in the fresh morning breeze like the fringe of some giant creature. 

He carefully trod the undergrowth to the sides, trying not to get his shoes too wet. Nubuck was a horrible material, but the shoes were a gift from his mother so he felt obliged to wear them when he visited her. The weeds around the entrance looked trampled as if he wasn’t the first to be standing here, wondering.

As he was now near enough to touch the door, he realised what had caused that gleam, this drizzly morning. Although the door itself was in poor repair and was almost an extension of the tangle of tenacious greenery at its foot, the handle by contrast was a polished beacon of brass. A bright shiny solid knob shouted at him from half way up the door. He glanced round again, sure he was being watched and the magnet of the door handle was merely a ruse for a prank. Nothing had changed. The old lady had crouched to fill her plastic bag with the contents of her dog's digested breakfast and the zombie in the Skrillex hoodie was still half dead. 

There was no sunlight, yet there had been a definite flash on that door knob. As if the door had been closing.

He frowned, looked back to the door handle and reached out to it. Hesitantly, he closed his hand around it. Still slightly on edge, he expected a jolt of electricity but nothing came. Remarkably, the metal was warm to the touch, and dry. Expecting a cold wet thrill of brass, he was pleasantly surprised. Did he have time for this? Not just in terms of the bus but in his life?

He was 42, divorced, and living alone with no sign of a partner on the horizon. He had few friends and spent most of his days in a waking coma shuffling between his flat and his mortgage advisor job at the bank. Once a week he visited his mother at the care home, a shadow of her vivacious former self slipping quietly from this world in the ravenous grip of dementia.

The most exciting thing that had happened to him recently was finding a ten pound note plastered to the recycling bin as he retrieved it from the wrong house after the clowns from the council lorry had mixed them up again.

So yes, he decided. I may be thinning on top, with a fast developing paunch, my prospects for bedding a Love Island contestant pretty low and my one remaining relative failing to recognise me with each passing month but I sure as hell have time for this... whatever it is. 

A small buzz passed through him and he barely recognised it as excitement. What exactly he should be excited about at 8.20 on a rainy Monday morning he wasn't sure but this bright brass door handle had pierced his gloomy routine and piqued his interest.

With a fleeting thought about trespassing, he grasped the handle firmly now and turned, expecting resistance; a stiff, rusty creak; perhaps nothing at all - seized up after years of neglect, but the handle moved as smoothly and silently as his own front door.

There was a faint snick as a latch mechanism detached and Chester, for the last time glanced over his shoulder. The road behind was deserted. Even traffic had stopped. The old lady had gone and clouds of vape surrounded Skrillex on the bus stop seat, his back now to Chester.

He pushed the door. The crack widened an inch and he glanced down. He fully expected to have to shove the door past tenacious knots of grass, nettles, thistles and all the other vegetation that had barred his passage so far, but the door moved effortlessly and the floor beyond was clean white slab. 

He raised his head and, suddenly fearful, hesitated. He put his eye to the crack and peeped, like a small child looking for Christmas presents in his parents' bedroom. His breath caught in his throat at what he saw. Expectation, based on the overgrown state of the property, was dereliction; the crumbling remains of a building, given over to passage of time and march of weeds; smashed window panes, rendered sightless eyeholes by adventurous stone throwing kids; once manicured lawns two feet high with wildflowers; faded and peeling paintwork; rusted garden equipment.

None of these sights greeted Chester's inquisitive one eye and, awe-struck, he pushed the door wider.

He was looking out onto a terrace. Expensive Italian marble flags were neatly pointed and stretched to an ornate stone balustrade. Either side of him were achingly white stucco walls. Beyond the balustrade was the ocean. He could hear it crashing and foaming as it broke, somewhere, he imagined far below, on a rocky shore. The sun was low, either rising or setting he was unsure but fearfully hot. The white walls screamed with an intensity of colour that made him squint. He could smell the lemon trees, shaded in neat brick-edged beds on the right side, somewhere a guitar was faintly playing and gulls wheeled and shrieked against the cobalt blue sky.

His senses and mind wheeled with the sudden change in scene. He closed his eyes, fearing a seizure or aneurism had brought this madness to him but even with his sight removed he could still hear and smell.

He pulled the door to with a thud and stood in the drizzle again, his heart racing, unable to comprehend what had just happened. A minute passed and he realised he was still holding the handle. Over his shoulder the bus arrived and Skrillex shuffled on, exhaling the last of his vape in the drivers face. Somewhere a voice cried, the bus Chester, you'll be late! But it was a very small voice. A voice he didn’t really care to listen to right now.

The bus rumbled off with a swish and a hiss-crump of closing doors.

He turned his attention back to the door. With less hesitation this time, he turned and pushed it wider.

The Mediterranean scene (he decided, there and then it must be Southern Spain, Italy or a Greek island) was as before and mesmerised, he put a foot across the threshold and into the world beyond. A second foot joined the first and he was standing inside this strange place. He looked down and wasn't surprised to see his Nubuck shoes, soaked with rainwater had been replaced with open toed Birkenstock sandals. His legs were bare; he was wearing khaki cargo pants. His coat was gone, in its place a white linen shirt. 

His raised his left hand to his head and felt long hair, tickling his neck. He'd never had long hair in his life but here it was, below his collar and cascading down to his shoulders.

His right hand he realised was still gripping the door handle. He released it shyly, still numb, expecting the ruined sanatorium to pop back into view once he let go, as if severing the link to this inexplicable dream sequence. The door on this side he noted was set into the same brickwork as its opposite but painted white. Clean. Sterile. No ivy, vegetation or decay. 

The dream, if it was, persisted. No overgrown ruins or cobwebbed windows, just that jaw-dropping view across the ocean. He made out small boats in the distance, charcoal etched onto the blue, white sails full and tiny islands, hazy in the ozone. Also, unnoticed before he could see a figure in white seated in front of the balustrade, a large sunhat raked back against their shoulders. In the shade of a large blue parasol, their arm rested on a small table, forefinger looped through the handle of a coffee cup, thumb tapping the top. The figure had its back to him but Chester emitted a small gasp.

Suddenly it was 1986. The summer holidays stretched out in front of young Chester in a way they never would again in later life. He was yawning, and rubbing sleep from his eyes as he blearily walked through the kitchen to their sun lounge. He felt the breeze through the French doors and could see his mother sitting in exactly the same way. 1986, when… well, when she still had control of her mind. She was sitting on their back patio, with her hand on her morning coffee mug, listening to Radio 2, her restless thumb tapping in time to the tunes that Ken Bruce played. 

"That you, Chessie?" she'd say without turning. "There's fresh orange in the fridge and I got your Coco Pops out. Shut the kitchen door before it slams, chicken"

"Ok, ma" said the now-Chester, the image of his childhood fragmenting as he spoke aloud.

He shook his head, whether to clear the memory or the current scene he didn't know but it brought back the absolute reality of what was happening. He took a step forward, feeling the full glare of the morning (it was morning now for sure) sun on his face. He squinted and tapped his breast pocket where (of course) a pair of Wayfarers were clipped. He put them on and turned to the door.

Stop! That voice again. What are you doing? What if you can't get out again?

"Do I want to?" he muttered. "Really?" 

Looking back through to the real world was a bizarre and disquieting experience. The full sun was now on his back, prickling his skin. A breeze had picked up and whipped stinging dust around his bare legs. Juxtaposed with this was the gloomy portrait frame of England on a Winter morning. So bright was the sun that he had to step forward and shield his eyes to make out the real world. It was still raining and dark. The odd car passed before him but otherwise, there was no signs of life. It was as if where he was now had life and that place back there was... dying. When did it become “that place?” asked the voice. 

The speed with which he had passed from curiosity through disbelief and to acceptance was breath-taking. He was a rational man, his job told him this. He worked with data; facts, figures, definite outcomes. This was the polar opposite. Not that he didn’t have a capacity for imagination; his favourite genre of fiction was fantasy. He immersed himself in Dungeons & Dragons as a child and had grown up on a diet of elves, dwarves, trolls, magic rings and spells. Tolkien, Lewis, McCaffrey, Pratchett, Gaiman... they could create magical worlds from words and bring them so vividly to life that readers believed. And to believe was to accept, surely?

But, the voice nagged. For every good part of the fantasy world, there is always the evil. Ying and Yang. Light and Dark. Balance.

He hesitated, wondering and the voice from behind gave him a jolt.

“Are you shutting the door Chester or do I have to do it myself?”

He whirled, but his mother (it was she, he'd decided) remained as before, watching the day unfold across the perfect vista, her hand still on the coffee cup.

Had he imagined it? He scoffed. What was imagining a voice when all this was taking place?

He looked once more through the doorway back to the mundane, all thoughts of the bus, work, his now-mother forgotten, he pushed the door closed noticing the flash of sunlight on the door knob as he did so.

As Chester closed the door he looked across the road one final time and saw a figure approaching the bus stop but, as realisation sunk in, the door leapt from his hand and thudded into the frame.

The wall into which the door had slammed glowed faintly green. He turned towards his mother but she had vanished

The gleam caught his eye. The gleam caught it but the door held him.

Final Solution

This is a short story I wrote for a competition with the subject of Murder set in the North West.

Ed Yorke loved puzzles. Sudoku, cryptic crosswords, logic puzzles; he loved the thrill of solving something that seemingly had no answer.

But tonight, he lay awake trying to solve a puzzle he knew had no solution. Except one. Ed was over a hundred thousand in debt and the guy he owed didn’t offer bankruptcy packages.

The cool blue digits of his bedside clock showed 3:34am. He slipped quietly out of bed, and looked back at the face of his wife, Amy. He didn’t dare kiss her for fear of waking her, so he just stared at her sleeping face.

His one and only solution. He’d been planning it for weeks, meticulously revisiting every detail until his head spun. But now… now the time had come.

Dressing quietly, he stole downstairs, through the still kitchen and out the back door. His bike, oiled and prepared was in the garage. Then he was cycling to South Shore. No lights. The night was still. He met no one. His mind was unusually calm and his breathing even, despite the exertion of pedalling into the breeze clipping off the Irish Sea.

Five minutes later he was on the promenade, cycling past the Pleasure Beach and South Pier until he came to the first slip road on to the beach. As he had planned, the tide was in. Abandoning his bike, he descended the worn steps, the waves smacking and slurping on the sea wall, the wind buffeting him harder now. He undressed, piling his clothes neatly on the step and removed his watch and wedding ring. Placing them on top of his note he paused, wondering if tears would come; if the enormity of his actions would suddenly overwhelm him. They didn’t. He just took a deep breath and tried not to think of Amy.

He stepped now, into the foaming waves, flinching as the cold water drilled through to his bones. When he was waist deep, he swam out about 500 yards until his feet no longer touched sand. Gasping and spluttering he turned and faced the shore again, treading water, letting the current carry him southwards toward the pier.

The massive structure loomed black against the lightening sky, like the skeleton of a long dead whale. When he was level with the end of it he struck back to the shore. Grabbing the end stanchion, he scrabbled around for the rope, heart hammering when he couldn’t find it. Then it was there and he pulled up the bin bag. It was secured at a height to make it invisible when the tide was out.

Using the bag as a float, he swam back towards the shore, in the lea of this monstrous Victorian edifice, the dark underside a black and horrific unknown, the amusements and rides above, gazing down idle and silent.

He made for a concrete slip, leaving no footprints and sat shivering in the pre‐dawn. Ripping open the bag, he pulled out clothes and a leather pouch. Working quickly with numb hands, he dressed himself in the last things he’d ever wear. Joggers, sweatshirt and old trainers.

Making his way up to the road again, he stuffed the tattered bag in a rubbish bin and looked back. Somewhere beyond the pier were the clues to his ending. He’d set the scene, but scrambled the letters. Hope was all he had now; hope that things would play out as he’s designed; hope that no-one could figure out his puzzle.

He made his way through the quiet streets and back roads to his brother’s house. It was about an hour on foot. Slowing to a gentle walk for the last few hundred yards, Ed regulated his breathing and became more in control. This was the hard part. The physical part he’d coped with but now he needed mental strength.

He knew he had failed Amy. He had punched above his weight trying to get rich and tried his hand with the big boys; one big boy ‐ his brother. A bad investment and then drug money, armed robbery, illegal prostitution ‐ Ed had moved from desperately trying to get rich to desperately trying to pay his debts in a world he neither knew nor of which he wanted a part.

Leonard Yorke had always been the stronger, more confident of the two, growing up ‐ not just physically but mentally. He’d had the girls, got the breaks, made it rich with a barely legal import-export business. Ed had managed with his small security firm, but Leonard was a ruthless businessman. He had cut Ed in to his business dealings but warned him of the consequences. Brotherly love didn’t exist here and he’d kill Ed just like the others.

Leonard’s house was a million-pound modern property, set back from the road with a drive lined with neatly tended conifers. The house was protected by a CCTV and alarm system, but that didn’t concern Ed. He climbed the huge automatic gates and dropped lightly into the border on the other side.

Walking up the block‐paved driveway, he approached the large house. Leonard lived alone, a string of girlfriends flowing through his bed like the champagne that brought them there. But none stayed. Leonard liked his business and pleasure strictly separate.

Skirting the edges of the house, Ed found the alarm box, secreted behind some low bushes near the rear entrance. Opening his pouch, he removed the necessary tools and within a minute had deactivated the main alarm, punching in the master code and cutting the cameras.

Now he selected a spare key and was soon standing in the dark hallway. His heart was beating its way out of his chest and with blood rushing in his ears he was convinced it was as loud as an illegal rave. He forced himself to listen. Nothing.

Treading carefully, he made his way upstairs to his brother’s bedroom. Stopping outside, he listened and heard snoring. Opening the pouch again he withdrew a hypodermic containing a solution of Tetrodotoxin. Using the connections he had made through his illegal dealings, he had obtained a lethal dosage of the poison, taken from the Japanese puffer fish. His syringe contained 50mg ‐ more than the necessary lethal dose. He held the needle toward the floor and entered the room.

Dawn was just breaking through the open blinds, making Ed’s task easier. He stood a while at the bedside, staring down at the sleeping form. His own flesh and blood. His tormentor. The reason he was here. Ed’s only solution was the one in his needle. He smiled at the wordplay.

Working quickly, he injected Leonard’s thigh. He stirred as the needle scratched his skin, but Ed depressed the plunger without hesitation, quickly filling his veins with liquid death. Leonard’s eyes flew open as he fought for breath and found the eyes of his younger identical twin.

Paralysis came quickly though and even as he struggled to speak, his muscles began to lock up. Right now, his lips and extremities would be tingling, as the neurotoxin swept through his bloodstream. Symptoms of a puffer fish sting could occur within 15 minutes with death up to four hours later.

Ed was nothing if not thorough and had researched the subject with the same diligence he applied to his security business. Four hours wasn’t quick enough; Leonard had just received the venom of over ten thousand puffer fish.

Ed smiled as his brother slipped away, their lives now intrinsically switched. He had a few hours to finish setting the puzzle. The loose ends. CCTV tapes, a body and a few phone calls. But he was confident of pulling it off.

After all, he was already dead.