The Room Of Doors

 

 

Unlike what Alice thought, there is no cupboard behind the door, only pitch darkness, darkness so dense that no light penetrates through it. Don tried shining his flashlight but the darkness merely swallowed the beam of light.

“I wonder what’s in there,” asked Van. He stares at the open doorway expecting some strange creature or a supernatural entity sticking out a clawed hand.

“Don’t go there, Van. I don’t reckon it’s safe,” Alice warned.

“Looks like it’s some sort of entrance to an abyss,” Cara suggested.

“What do you think guys, shall we go now,” Van said, and three pairs of hands pulled him away from the doorway.

“You are not going young man,” Alice nagged.

“What if something dangerous is lurking there?”

“Don, if something is in there it should have come for us when we opened the door,” Van explained.

“Hey it’s Ana!”

Everyone turned at the doorway after Cara said those. And even through the darkness, they could see Ana at a distance entering an unseen corridor.

“SHE GOT TO GET OUT OF THERE,” Don bellowed. He drops Van and bolted into the doorway.

“Hey wait up,” Van shouted. He got up and quickly went after Don.

Cara and Alice look at each other, their faces incomprehensible.

“Boys,” Alice muttered, and they dived into the darkened doorway.

And Kirsten is the only one that’s left. As a top student, she wasn’t supposed to do stuffs like this or be involved with people like them. But what’s the use of turning back now if she didn’t know the way. A mouse passes near her feet, and Kirsten freaks out.

“Wait, I’m coming!” She screams. She closes her eyes and charges into the open doorway.

Van and the rest are expecting nothing but darkness. To their surprise, they are now in a spacious hallway, more like an old-fashioned tunnel. Unlike the dingy hallway where they came from, the tunnel lacks dirty floor and cobwebs. The walls and the arched ceiling are made of large slabs of granite.

“I didn’t know there is a place like this in school,” Van said, eyes gazing blankly at the ceiling.

“I don’t think we’re still in school.”

“You’re right Cara, the school can’t hold something as vast as this,” Alice replied. This tunnel is a long one, so long that it simply stretches into the darkness.

“This can’t be real,” Kirsten muttered to herself. Everything she discovered today is hard to digest as if reality had distorted itself.

“We don’t need a flashlight here,” Don said while stowing his flashlight away in his back pocket.

“Yeah, because there are candles above us…”

“You mean floating tongues of light Van,” Cara added.

And what Van thought as candles are actually tiny flames that actually float in the ceiling. The frightened Kirsten let out a tiny squeak.

“Please tell me we are dreaming,” said Van, his head swimming and turning. He will never watch another fantasy movie again!

“Where’s the entrance?” Kirsten shrieked. They look behind and only saw a solid wall.

“We’re trapped.”

“Let’s find Ana Alice, maybe she knew the way out,” Van suggested.

With the entrance blocked, they have no choice but to move forward. No one dared to look back at the stone wall; they have a nasty feeling that the wall is following them. And not too very far away, they saw a cast iron gate at the left wall of the tunnel with a large metal face.

“How should we enter this,” Van said, for the gates have no latch or lock.

“It’s not polite to stare boy…”

Alice, Don and Kirsten all run in different directions for the metal face suddenly talks!

“Just checking how we should get it,” Van replied.

“And why should I let you in?”

“We are just looking for someone, did she came this way,” Cara asked.

“Ah yes, she told me you are coming,” the metal face replied. It disappeared and the gates open.

“She, does he means Ana or the girl in black?” Van thought.

Van and Cara are the first to enter the gates. Kirsten and the rest hesitated, yet no one wants to be left out here with the metal face so they follow with their eyes closed.

Van and the rest then emerge into a vast chamber or a void perhaps for there is no floors, walls or ceilings here. There are only doors here, lots and lots of doors floating around like hooded ghosts. Van approaches the nearest one. The door must be more than eight feet tall for it towers above Van’s head. Carved around the decorated knocker is an inscription:

 

Any one of us, but remember to bow your head when you enter.

Now what does it means? The last thing Van wants is to decode a riddle in the middle of an alien world. Van sees another door floating behind it. The door is identical to the first one and upon closer look it also had the same inscription. The same goes for the one in his left, the one behind him and the other one a few paces from him.

“Hey, something is written on the door,” Van heard Don spoke. All the doors here might be the same, down to the cryptic inscriptions around their knockers.

“The exit,” Kirsten exclaimed.

“Anything wrong Kirsten,” Don asked.

“I know how we can get out of here!”

“How sure are you?” Don frowned.

“You still don’t get it do you muscle-head? Everyone, listen here,” Kirsten shouted. She draws herself to full height, and she now looks like her old and haughty self again.

“Now what,” Van muttered.

“I never expect you to get it, so I’ll explain it to you nice and slow,” Kirsten started, “see the doors around here? One of them will get us out. All we have to do now is to find the right one.”

None of the people around are impressed. Not only that it’s not clear how it should be done, but it’s also insulting enough to be called muscle-head and to be addressed like inferiors.

“What are you planning Kirsten,” Cara asked.

“Do the most obvious thing. Examine the doors for clues, the real one should be distinct from the rest.”

“Kirsten, it will take us forever to check all the doors here,” Alice replied while looking around at the innumerable floating doors.

“And all the doors here might be identical,” Van added.

“Firstly let’s try this one, there is something written around the knocker. That must be it,” Kirsten said without even listening to Van.

And before Van could explain to her that many of the doors here also have inscription around their knockers, Kirsten is already opening the nearest door.

“Just bow your head when you enter, that’s what the inscriptions on the doors said,” Van just reminded.

“What for, the doors isn’t that low. Common sense Van,” She replied before entering the door. Unable to stop her, the rest have no choice but to go after her. They could only hope that Kirsten’s foolish act won’t get them into life-threatening situations.

The good news is nothing clawed or scaly is waiting for them behind the door. But they are back to the same room of doors where they came from.

“Wrong choice,” Alice said, unable to hide her glee.

“Let’s try this one,” said Kirsten, still in high spirits despite of her blunder. But the result is just the same. Kirsten tries various methods like marking the door where they came from, or doing crazy statistical calculation that only she could understand, but in no avail. In the end she collapses on the floor with an air of a defeated prize fighter.

“You do it!” She snapped at Van as if this is his fault.

Van is not sure what to do, but the inscription said that they must bow down when entering.

“Any one of us, but remember to bow your head when you enter,” Van said, and this gives him an idea.

“Let’s try he nearest one, but we must bow our heads,” Van suggested.

“Van I told you before, there is no point doing that, the doors here are not that low,” Kirsten insisted.

“Kirsten, please understand that we’re already out of options,” Cara interrupted. His friends do what Van said and they march into the nearest door with their heads bowed low (the protesting Kirsten was forced by Alice to bow her head).

And they made it.

They are no longer in the room of doors. They are now facing a staircase that stretches high into the darkness above them. His friends are so impressed that they took turns giving Van high fives.

“Actually the instructions are literally written on the door,” Van chuckled.

“Really,” the sour Kirsten interrupted, sounding as if Van just made a lucky guess.

“Yes, we are only being asked to follow what we are being told.”

“Van, you and your friends don’t follow rules yourselves,” Kirsten replied.

“Kirsten, we ended up there in the restricted hallway because someone lured us. You in the other hand intentionally copied answers from your seatmate,” Cara said, infuriating Kirsten once more.