Brother, mother, father, lady friend and I appreciated the manor house through the drizzle as the engine emitted its last few rattles. I was sitting shotgun and disoriented in the extreme. I remembered arriving at the hotel last night, but the rest was gone.
“I must’ve got really drunk last night,” deciding not to bother with discrete questions.
“Yes. Yes you did,” said father without emotion, but brother and mother compensated with looks of amusement and disappointment respectively.
Mother got out of the driver’s seat and went to the trunk, unpacking. I looked at my bare feet on the dash and wondered what I did the night before. Startled from my thoughts by a shiver (I was clad in shorts and a t-shirt despite the lateness of the year) and the clatter of dock shoes on the pavement outside my window. A poncho drifted down to cover them transparently. (this last image I think derives from having watched the “Miss Twin Peaks” episode of “Twin Peaks”, in which the women have a musical number wearing transparent ponchos over their outfits). In a trice I doubled my wardrobe, largely escaping the rain.
We gathered around our belongings (to which mother was still contributing). The others had brought luggage and travel accessories … I had plants. By the looks of things, I had *had* plants. The weather, though spiteful, was not now cold, but they must have frozen last night (dammit, why did I leave them in the trunk?) and they drooped lifelessly over the rims of their pots like sleeping cats. It would take at least 4 trips to get them all inside, into the warmth, and pray that something had survived.
Not another car to be seen and we parked a good two hundred meters from the door. The others stoic, me sighing with a plant in each hand, puddles splashing under our feet. The door opened easily into a grand entrance hall, grander and larger to the horizon on the left, a sweeping stair before us leading to the second level and a plain white door. Burgundy was the color all around us: lush carpets, dark age-stained walls and portraits, shelves and shelves of leather bound books. Could it be that the lighting was gas? There were no windows but a slow pulsating glow illuminated the vastness to the left. But the stairs in marble, the door in cheap paint, gleamed white.
A patter preceded a small host of short stocky dogs that swept around us, heralding their owners, cousins. In fact on one cousin came to greet us, but was pleasant enough. Shooing away the dogs, the cousin led us up the stairs to the door, but turned to us before opening it. “We keep the dogs out. Cats may get in, but do not let the dogs.” After receiving a nod from each of us, the cousin opened the door and as our hands were full, shut it once we were all through.
We were now in a long hallway. Walls creamy with dark oak trim and doors of the same. Landscapes prevailed among the decorations, their frames in the same stle as the trim and doors. At the end of the hall was a door on the left. The cousin opened it.
A wasteland on the other side. Sand and rock like the surface of Mars and a slate-gray cloud cover boiling above. Some hundred meters away stood another door on a dark stone dais. Pillars on either side supported and arch, and all were white. Silence.
The cousin did not acknowledge our confusion, nor was there any move to move, but we huddled in the doorway. There was the sound of plugging in an input into a receiver whose volume was turned way up. mmmmm-BRK KROW KRKRK and shafts of green light appeared off to our left, some shooting from the ground, some in the opposite direction, but all crowned with individual thunderstorms. They formed a curtain of sorts, a backdrop to the archway, but you knew that they were advancing on it. If you were to see them from above, you would see one in the back, then two, three, four in rows towards the door.
Still, we did not move. mmmm-BRK KRIKRIK and like an old flourescent light another beam flickered into existence, closer to the arch.
“Beware. Strange beasts appear on the path to the door, much as those columns of light,” the cousin said at last. “Avoid them, and reach the door at all costs.” When we reached the platform the cousin stressed that the door was only to be opened from this side.
Now we found ourselves in the narrow streets of a bazaar. Then we all stepped through. People and sound and activity all around us. Sheer yellow buildings lined the alley we were in, colorful cloths hanging out some windows, and vendors lined their bases. The cousin’s smile spoke “Stay anywhere you like,” and then was gone.
The lady friend and I found a place to leave our belongings and she took my hand and pulled me through the streets, “There is a hill nearby where you can see the whole city and the wastes!” racing with a backwards glance and the giddiness of sharing something you love with someone you love. But my nature is contrary and I say “Why not just look it up online?” And I remember before I see the confusion on her face that there is no such thing as the internet.
We step through the door and I am in the barrens again with the lady friend. It looks the same. The translucent columns, still far off, but threatening, vascillate between being and non-being. I wonder what would happen if you touched one. We sat at the edge of the dais, holding hands, lost in the vastness around us. Like the entry hall, the place was suffused with an ambient light. No lanterns torches sun or stars. We then clapped our hands on our legs and rose. We had at least four trips ahead before we unpacked the car.
