The Gate Opens
Chapter 3
The black sky swirled like rolls of tar paper and blankets of gray cotton. As they stepped off the bus at Bobcat Street, the heavens opened and a deluge of angry, cold rain jettisoned at them and nearly swept Esther down the steep road. A quarter mile of running furiously through the storm lay ahead of them to their street, and another eighth of a mile up Bell Branch, before they stamped their feet at the front door. As they stepped inside and drenched the old wood floors, the sky cleared and the rain turned to a light drizzle.
“Well, how do you like that?” Marian said, flinging water off her arms.
They scampered upstairs, shivering and grumbling, to their rooms to change their clothes.
Later, Herbert found Esther reading in the living-room next to their mother. Mr. Dolor was away at work for a few more hours. Herbert lowered his head and peered through the window. “Where’s Marian?”
Esther didn’t look away from her book.
“I believe she’s upstairs, dear,” Mrs. Dolor said.
“She’s writing a play,” Esther added, face down.
Herbert’s eyes widened, and he pursed his lips, scrunching them up to the top of his left cheek. He paced around the room like a puppy, searching for nothing apparent.
“Esther—,” began Herbert in a childish tone.
“It’s too muddy outside, Herb,” she said, still fixed on her book. Only Esther and Mr. Dolor called him Herb, which he didn’t mind giving the exclusivity of.
The porch door out the back of the kitchen creaked open and slammed shut. Esther finally looked up from her book. Herbert was gone. She returned to the book. Then back to the door. Her mother was watching her.
“How was your first day of school, sweetie?” Mrs. Dolor asked.
Esther shrugged.
***
“The great swordsman—no, the Pirate, Herbert the Heroic, battles Aaron the
Atrocious to the death! A battle of wits and ends!” He swung a long stick in the air over his head and thrust it down onto a make-believe enemy. “En garde, you stupid fat-head!” The stick hit the side of the poplar in the backyard and shook a tulip from a branch.
“It looks like Aaron the Atrocious has no chance,” a friendly voice called from above.
Herbert faltered, tripped on his own feet, and looked up the tree. Marian was dangling her feet from a low branch with a notebook and pen in her hand, smiling at him.
“Mom said you were upstairs,” said Herbert.
She shrugged. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” Herbert retorted, and then lowered his arms and swung his stick through the air again, valiantly. “I’m Herbert the Heroic. I don’t get scared.” He hit the trunk and Marian went back to her writing. Next thing he knew, a frisbee hit him in the back of the head. He turned round to see Esther giggling with her hands over her mouth.
“Oops,” she snickered. “I didn’t mean to, I promise.”
“I thought it was ‘too muddy’,” said Herbert.
In a moment, the two were running about the tree, while Marian wrote her play on the lowest branch. The yard between the poplar and porch became an office where they pushed imaginary paper and faxed faux documents; Esther was the boss, and Herbert was behind schedule. The muddy pile of walnut branches became a tar pit surrounding a volcano where a Tyrannosaurus Rex lived; Herbert was the dinosaur, and Esther was the wizard who would zap it to smithereens. And the tree-line was a racetrack, and the frisbee a flying saucer; Marian joined in the race as each of them took turns outrunning the alien attack.
The frisbee spiraled left on a wild wind and flung through the forest line, deep into the honeysuckle and rhododendron. Herbert bumbled through the tall elms and pushed the maple branches away from his face. The dark green rhododendron moved with his touch as he snatched the bright red frisbee; it scraped and rattled against something smooth and hollow like a wooden beam. His lips curled; his eyes flashed; and he cocked his head. Pulling down a string of honeysuckle branches wrapped up by trumpet vine, he revealed a large wooden gate, framed by worn wrought iron. Stepping back he saw black iron spires extending beyond its top into finials eleven-and-a-half feet high; its iron face was decorated with peculiar shape that confounded him. The sides of the gate sat flush against rectangular brick pillars, three-and-a-half feet in diameter, that joined an old brick wall. Covered in lichen and spindly vines, the wall cut a few feet deeper into the lush forest, before turning sharply and running the entire length of the private wood.
“Come here!” He shouted to his sisters at the edge of the forest. The girls fought through the dense brush and found their little brother standing in front of the massive door at the edge of the Smoky’s. “Let’s get it open!” Herbert cheered.
“It’s not ours,” answered Marian.
“Whose is it?” replied Esther quickly, eager to get inside as well.
“No one will ever care that we opened it,” added Herbert. He shook with excitement. In his guts, he knew it was not right to try entering a gate that was not his. But ever since seeing the finials peaking through the shrubs (which he now realized were what he saw the night before), he wanted to get beyond it, into the forest and explore. Now that his sisters were with him, the thought urged him to near joyful madness.
“Well,” Marian interjected. “I don’t think it’s right for us to go into someone else’s yard…or property…or whatever this is.”
“It’s the Smoky Mountains, Marian,” answered Esther. “They belong to everyone!”
“No, they don’t.”
“Well, they should! Anyway, I don’t see any harm in going inside. After all, it’s here in our backyard.”
“Maybe Mom or Dad know—”
“—What are you talking about?” Herbert jumped in. “This is just like Kyle’s grandma’s house at the end of the street in Cocoa. Those old orange groves that we played in. Nobody ever cared, and we made lots of forts inside.”
“That place gave me poison ivy,” Esther mused.
“I’m not saying that it is that place. I’m saying it’s like it.”
“Well, that gate was only as tall as Ess,” said Marian. “I don’t think you are getting over this thing, and I don’t see a handle anywhere.”
Herbert looked over the gate and sighed. Marian was right; the whole thing was solid oak and iron connected at perfect seams to the brick wall on each side; and all of it was twice as high as any of them.
Esther stepped closer, close enough to smell the old earth between the wood beams. She brushed her fingers along the peculiar designs and shapes. Dirt fell between her hands and the gate. Marian watched and examined the strange shape with her.
“Looks like a gravestone,” she guessed.
“No, I think it’s a fountain,” Esther corrected. “Look here at the water spout.”
“Don’t touch it!” Marian warned.
Esther chortled. “Why not?” She laughed. “Although,” she whispered to herself, “it does look like this bit of arm or limb is some sort of lever. Hmm. Interesting.”
While the girls examined the worn images closely, Herbert busied himself around the corner of the gate,trying to locate another passage over the brick wall. The rhododendron, weeds, and shrubs covered most of what he saw, but he was sure it led on infinitely in each way. Perhaps if he could climb a tree! But that thought frightened him when he imagined getting stuck on the far side. He banged his fist on the wall and wondered if he could climb the shrubbery and eroded blocks.
Something was rubbing against his ankle; crouching down he found an oblong stone protruding from the wall, filthy, covered in dirt. He scraped the wet dirt from its ridges and blew the soot away; it was a delicate little thing, made of soapstone, about the size of his palm, shaped like the growling face and torso of a cougar. Surrounding the figurine was a flamboyant iron circle, similar to the gate’s appearance. It was a pretty thing; the sort of trinket that would impress his mother or sisters. But for Herbert, it did nothing more than give him a step-up to climb the wall. He placed his foot on the figurine and lunged upward, grasping and flailing at the vines for support.
Ka-Chink!
Herbert’s foot slipped, and he slid to the ground; the little figurine had broken from the wall. His eyes got big and shot up and down the wall to see if his sisters or any apparent person had seen him, for upon looking at the thing closely, it was obvious how valuable it was. The white and gray cougar figurine rolled over in his hands; its emerald eyes flashed at Herbert and he felt ashamed for breaking it; the whole backside of the animal was broken. It even flayed out in broken spikes like he must have smashed it on a rock when it hit the ground; though he couldn’t find anywhere hard enough to do such a thing.
While he examined the broken figurine, a thunderclap roared from deep within the forest and shook so violently the trumpet vine fell off the wall and gate. Smoke, dirt, and ash erupted from underneath the doorframe and smothered the children in a gaseous cloud.
“Oh, my—cough!—goodness!” Esther shouted and backed her hand away from the gate. “What did I—cough! cough!—do?” She exclaimed.
Herbert stretched out his arms and tripped his way back to his sisters in the cloud.“What is going on?” He shouted, stuffing the figurine under the back of his shirt.
“Ess!” Marian shouted “What—cough!—happened?”
“I don’t know, maybe—cough!—maybe I shouldn’t have touched it. Or—I don’t know.”
Herbert shoved the figurine deeper into his pant’s pocket and wondered like Esther if he had something to do with it. For all intents and purposes, the giant sealed door was happy and quiet until he attempted climbing the wall and broke a strange piece from its exterior.
An earthquake shook again, and the three Dolor children stared in wonder; a cracking, creaking old hollow sound filled their ears; the smoke cleared enough to see that the four-inch thick doors had split open and flung wide; colors of green, violet, marigold, and orange melted through the haze like a rainbow coming up from a waterfall; it was so thick and misty, they could feel the color; it traveled up into the sky and broke the dark rain clouds in half, letting the sunset break through in orange and pink behind the children.
The children hadn’t a moment to consider its majesty because the earth continued to shake, albeit less powerful than before. A repetitive boom, like the rumble of a locomotive across an open plain, was thubbudy-thubbudy-thubbudying toward the gate; but it wasn’t a train or machine. It was the galloping feet of a gallant unicorn that tore through the gate and reared on its hind legs; a cotton white mane and tail draped across its fine jet black hair; the horn on its head glowed silver, like mercury, in the sunshine; its whinny thundered, and the kids cowered underneath its weight of glory. The beast took off north, galloping across their yard, veering slightly out into the street and cutting hard west along Happy Valley Road toward Maryville.
“Oh, my Lord,” said Marian.
“A unicorn!” Esther gasped.
The girls didn’t enjoy the sight of the unicorn’s gallop for long. Herbert was tugging at their sides and stammering something inaudible. A deep whine, like a bull or whale, erupted from the forest as a large ape-like creature walked out of the gate; it was ten-feet-tall, with gray and yellow hair sifting through the haze. His eyes were slit like a cat’s, but the pupils slanted like offset blades; they blazed white at the children. It didn’t say a word or make a noise. However, just from looking at the creature’s studious behavior, the children knew it could speak and comprehend. It dragged behind itself the carcass of a nine-point buck; the children backed out of its way as it exited the tree thicket, into the Dolors’ backyard, and lifted itself onto the low branch of the poplar—the same branch Marian was sitting on just a few minutes before. With effortless grace, it flung itself and the deer onto another branch and sailed into the air, landing on the metal roof, and stomped over the crest of Herbert’s bedroom. Petrified, the children refused to say a word or move until, minutes later, they heard the thing’s booming howl echo from far away.
“What did we open?” Marian asked.
“Ew! What is this stuff?” Herbert gasped.
What he meant by “this stuff” was a thick fog that had flowed out of the gate, very different from the smoke and haze that filled the air; it spread only a few inches off the ground and covered their ankles as it careened down the hill and across the lawn toward the southwest. It felt tough and thick against their skin, smooth like oily wax, ready to trip them; a noise clicked in the fog that gave it a life of its own—a mechanical tick-tick-tock. tick-tick-tick-tock.
“It’s an enchanted forest,” Esther thought aloud.
“I sees it! I sees it all!” A voice shouted at them from the yard, beneath the poplar tree. “I sees what you-all dids!” The Dolors turned to see, at their dismay, Aaron leaning on his bicycle, red hair bouncing this way and that, and pointing—similar to his buffoon dance at school earlier that morning. He dropped his bicycle into the deep mud and whistled snidely; his face all crooked with a grin as he skipped to the tree line.
“What are you doing here?” Marian asked.
“Is this what you-all do in Cacowa?” He asked, grinning. “Breakin’ open ‘chanted forest gaps that ain’t belong to ye’ns and let loose monsters?”
“Who said it was enchanted?” Marian fired back.
“She just did, briggoty britches,” Aaron gawked, pointing at Esther.
“Yeah, well—who says we broke it open?”
“I’ was prolly good ol’ Herbie who brokes it!” Aaron shouted.
“I didn’t do it!” Herbert hollered, clenching hold of the figurine in his pants pocket and intensely deliberating in his thoughts if it was he that did it.
“Marian,” Esther whispered. “Something else is happening.”
As Aaron approached the children, a blue mist had displaced the dense, low fog and filled the air around the gate. The children braced themselves. What was this new thing? A unicorn, a big-foot-like creature jumping as high as their house, a ticking oily fog that scraped along the earth. Now, a smell of lavender and honey tinged their nostrils. It brought a sensation that calmed them, and though they had every reason to be afraid, they could not; it felt like wading in water that is cool and gentle yet hides mysteries unknown.
The haze thickened and bled out bizarre shapes in its cloud, lines and circles, curves and dimples; a translucent image, long and round, crooked and fuzzy, fifteen-feet wide; it came together slowly and sure, until it was right in front of them, and now the common, recognizable shape of a man; but he wasn’t a man at all; at least, he wasn’t whole like a man; you could see the light pass right through him, giving him a blue misty appearance. In fact, he was a ghost; but not the frightening kind you hear about at Halloween-time; kindness was in his eyes, and gentleness in his smile. The children perceived the ghostly appearance of deer-skinned garments around him; a leather sack over his shoulder; a long rifle resting in his arm; and a raccoon-skinned hat on his head that blew in the misty blue breeze.
“Hello ch’ldren,” the Ghost greeted and dearly shocked them. “You are younger than the last time I saw you.”
Marian broke the children’s gaping stare. “Begging your pardon, sir-Ghost,” replied she. “But we’ve never met you before.”
The Ghost smirked.
“Who are you?” Esther asked.
“I am David Crockett,” said the Ghost. “And you are the ch’ldren who thus op’ned the gates to ‘y enchanted forest.”
The Dolor children and Aaron looked at one another in disbelief.
“I’m sorry if we—” Marian began, before the Ghost interjected.
“The gate secures etern’ty’s affair. And now, henceforth, it is op’n. The gate keeps bay the world’s most vile creat’res. And now unto this town, it is op’n. With said gate ins’cure, th’se monsters roam freely. Favor ‘as looked upon thee, today, Dolor ch’ldren,” said Crockett, removing his coonskin hat and bowing. “The time is come. And you ‘ave the oppo’tunity—nay, the respons’bility—to mend such a crisis.”
“David Crockett,” Aaron whispered to himself. “My great-pawpaw knowed arything ‘bout him,” he addressed the others.
“Is that supposed to make you an expert?” Marian mocked.
“What does he mean ‘responsibility’?” Herbert asked.
“I dinst say I ’s an expert, you backlander,” Aaron replied. “I said my great-pawpaw knowed ‘bout him. I bets I could find a book—”
“Stop!” Esther shouted, for while Marian and Aaron were arguing, she noticed the Ghost had disappeared. This made the group even more afraid than anything else, as seeing something scary always feels less dangerous than the notion of something you can’t see hiding in the shadows. The kids looked about the gate and the forest entrance, cautious to enter it. Marian tried at pushing the door close, but it would not budge even an inch. Oak and walnut were hanging their branches through the clearing above the passage, and sunlight fell behind them. The smell of lavender and honey disappeared.
“Time to go inside,” Marian ordered. “Goodbye, Aaron.”
Herbert and Esther obeyed, bewildered and afraid.
Aaron was indignant, though. “You-un ‘eard what-all the Ghost said!” He yelled. “You gots ta shet dem gaps. Get dem creatures back-un and get dem gap closed.”
“He didn’t say that,” Esther replied over her shoulder.
“Why do you care, anyway?” Marian asked.
“Maybes I don’t wanna see my dirt land ever run wit’ wowsers and snawfusses,” Aaron responded. “Maybes it’s nunna you all’s business.”
“You’re right. It is none of our business,” Marian fired back. “The gate isn’t our property, and it’s not like we can do much about it. The thing won’t move. And…and…we are talking about strange creatures, monsters and ghosts. And we are just kids.”
“The unicorn was cool,” Herbert added quietly.
“It’s my fault,” Esther groaned.
“What do you mean?” Marian whispered to her.
“I must have done something,” she whispered and shook her head. “Maybe when I was brushing the dirt off of the gate—that little curve in the design. I thought it was a switch. I think I opened the gate with it.”
Herbert felt the cougar figurine under his shirt and pursed his lips, holding back his thoughts.
“Ess,” Marian said. “It could have been anything why it opened.”
“You all need ta figger dis out!” Aaron yelled at the group again from the top of the tree line.
“We need to go in for supper!” Marian yelled back as she slammed the door shut behind them.
That night, the Dolor children had a hard time sleeping again, but for entirely different reasons. And all of them thought they may have heard something large traipsing on the roof.
Keith G. Alderman 