Part 1: Beyond Reason’s Reach
“There was room only for the simple courage required to embrace the unknowable as the unknowable.”
Brilliant sunshine snuck through the blinds, rousing Sam from his slumber. He squinted against the amber rays spilling across the tightly tucked sheets and militantly organized nightstand. A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes — the familiar start of another tension headache he’s grown to know so well.
With a grunt of resignation, the stocky 34-year-old peeled himself from the starched sheets and allowed his bare feet to land on the vacuum-groomed beige carpet with a soft thump.
He stood up in nothing but a pair of faded blue boxer briefs and scratched at his lightly furred paunch as he shuffled towards the bathroom, the only hint of casual dishabille in the otherwise aggressively tidy apartment.
Glancing down, he gave his gut a bemused pat. A smirk tugged at his mouth as he tallied one more piece of evidence of his middling years. He needed to cut back on Diane’s donuts at work.
With a sigh, he began his ritual of shaving, showering, and transforming into a starched model of corporate America. After togging himself up in a dress shirt, pressed slacks, and sensible shoes, he made his way into the kitchen.
Despite the lack of the apartment’s square footage, not a single item was out of place. No orphan sock or piece of junk mail littered the immaculate hardwood floors or granite countertops. Even the sofa cushions remained ramrod-straight.
Moving with the muscle-memory of decades’ worth of mornings, Sam filled the kettle with filtered water and set it to boil. While the blue flames licked up around the kettle’s underbelly, he lined up his French Press and travel mug.
He measured out the ground coffee with a practiced hand. His nostrils flared as he breathed in the rich aroma, and delighted in one of the few remaining simple pleasures in his monkishly regimented life.
When the kettle reached its screaming crescendo, Sam poured the steaming water over the grounds and watched the dark stream bloom and crest around the filter. He gave the brew a few meditative stirs before pouring the concoction into his mug, securing the lid, and hoisting it up to his perpetually pursed lips.
As the first rejuvenating sips of Sumatran roast cascaded over his tongue, he felt himself settling into the reassuring inertia of monotony. His shoulders unlocked a degree as he returned to the living area, ready to pack his briefcase for another marathon of spreadsheets and TPS reports.
It was at that moment, when Sam’s meticulous existence flipped upside down.
He froze mid-sip. Coffee dribbled down his chin as he stared at the far wall in abject stupefaction.
There, embedded into the wall like an extruded growth, loomed an ornate wooden door.
Its frame stood resolute among the untouched furniture, like it’s always been there and will always be there.
The obsidian finish shone with an impossible polish, as if lacquered by the loving brushstrokes of a master painter.
The mug slipped from his hand and splashed across the floor. Sam scarcely noticed the scalding liquid running down into his dress shoes and soaking his socks.
Every synaptic pathway in his brain shorted out, leaving a single stunned thought that echoed through the smoking ruins of his mind:
What in the ever-loving fu — ?
He took a few cautious steps forward and ran trembling fingers along the door’s inlays. Esoteric symbols wound in mesmerizing geometric patterns like the entire surface were a labyrinthine encryption. He traced the grooves over and over, searching for any recognizable symbols.
As far as he could tell, the construction appeared modern, but the markings were so archaic they could very well predate most modern runes.
He circled the rectangular frame, examining every centimeter in feverish detail. Not a single nail — not a single screw — anchored the frame to the wall. Only a flawless fusion where the wood melded into the drywall.
Sucking in a breath, Sam seized the ornamental door handle, which was carved in the shape of a twisting serpent. He pulled and pushed with all his weight until his face turned red.
“Is this…is this some kind of joke?” he muttered through clenched teeth.
The prospect that this was some kind of joke gnawed at him. His colleagues at the lab were always pulling juvenile stunts like this, like a bunch of overaged frat bros. In fact, last week one of his coworkers planted cress seeds under the keys on his keyboard. When Sam arrived back at work on Monday, a mini-garden on his desk greeted him.
But, deep down, a small voice inside him knew this couldn’t be another lame prank. The sudden materialization of this ornate, seamless door embedded into his wall went way beyond the realm of office pranks. And it threw itself boldly — garishly even — into his personal space with militaristic permanence.
He had become so focussed, studying every line and curve, that the sharp rap of knuckles against his front door made him start. He blinked hard, trying to regain his sense of reality, before striding over to see who was.
When he peered through the eyehole, his shoulders slumped as the familiar pockmarked face of his landlord, Artie, filled the fisheye view. He cracked the door open just enough so the gap didn’t reveal his uninvited guest.
“Everything okay, Sam?” Artie’s gravelly voice rumbled through the narrow opening. “Did ya hear or feel any, y’know, rumbling last night?”
His forehead creased as he processed his landlord’s words. “Uh…no, Artie. No rumbling or anything out of the ordinary over here. Why?”
The landlord’s meaty silhouette shifted as he scratched his unkempt silver beard. “Huh. Well, we had one helluva earthquake at around 3am — damn near knocked me outta bed! Thought for sure it rearranged some of the units’ walls, at least.”
A spike of panic lanced through Sam. “Oh, uh, nope, didn’t feel a thing. No damage I can see.”
Artie leaned to the side, squinting through the shielded gap. “You sure about that? It was a real doozy — ”
“Yup! I’m sure!” Sam blurted. He instantly regretted his outburst, clearing his throat before continuing in a more measured tone. “Everything seems intact.”
The landlord’s watery eyes narrowed further as he dipped into an unconvinced grunt. For an agonizing second, Sam was certain the old goat would attempt to muscle his way inside, earthquake inspection or not.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Artie shrugged and stepped back.
“Alright, well, just let the office know if you notice any cracks, water damage — that sorta thing. “
“Yup! Will do. Thanks, Artie.”
Before the landlord could reply, Sam had pulled the door closed and twisted all the locking mechanisms into place.
He let out the breath he’d been holding and rested his forehead against the cool wood.
That was too close for comfort. Just a few more inches and Artie’s nosiness may have spotted the interloper squatting in Sam’s living room.
As the landlord’s footsteps faded down the hallway, Sam turned his attention back towards the Door. It seemed to almost vibrate with renewed energy now, as if fueled by the brush with discovery.
Sam needed answers.
He tapped out a number on his phone and raised it to his ear with a steadying exhale. It rang once, twice, before a familiar jovial voice sounded on the other end.
“This is Captain Charlie of the SS Get-A-Life. Who might this be attempting terrestrial hailing protocols?”
Despite himself, Sam felt the faintest twitch of a smirk tug at his lips. He could count on Charlie to be Charlie, no matter annoying it could be.
“Listen up, because I’m being totally serious here, Chuck. There’s something over here that wasn’t here last night. I’m talking about something that makes zero sense,” he said. “Which is why I need to know, straight up: is this some sort of elaborate prank you’ve cooked up with the rest of those jackasses from the lab?”
Charlie let out a confused chuckle. “Uh. Ok. I have no idea what you’re going on about, Samwise. Have you had your coffee yet?”
“So you have no idea what I could be referring to right now?” Sam pressed.
“Dude, I’m in the dark here.”
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, look. You just need to get over here as soon as you can,” he said finally. “I need some answers for what I’m looking at.”
Another pause, heavier than the last, before Charlie responded. “Say no more. I’m coming over right now.”
With that, Sam ended the call.
The minutes oozed by until another sharp rapping echoed from the front door. Unlike Artie’s demanding knuckles, the syncopated rhythm was unmistakably Charlie’s secret knock, an old call-and-response they created from their childhood.
Without a second’s hesitation, Sam crossed the room in a few strides and pulled open the door, ushering his tall, ginger friend inside. He took a single sidelong glance back towards the Door.
“So. Care to explain?” He slammed the front door behind Charlie.
“Ah, dude,“ Charlie whistled, shooting Sam a look. “You, ah — you got some kinda next-level redecorating kick I don’t know about?”
“Was this your genius idea? Because if it was, you guys have seriously crossed a line this time.”
Charlie shook his head, eyes owlishly fixed on the Door. He waved Sam off as he approached and traced the grooves.
“You know me, Sammy. I can’t keep my big mouth shut about something like this.” He knocked his knuckles against the wood. “This…this is something else, man.”
“No,” Sam said. “This has to be the brainchild of Brian or Jay down in IT. Or maybe Kyle finally took his hazing obsession to a whole new level of demented?”
Charlie continued to shake his head, eyes still gawking at the Door. “You know full well those were just run-of-the-mill pranks. Y’know, like putting cling wrap over the toilet seats in the lady’s room, or filling someone’s cubicle with packing peanuts. This,” he said, waggling a hand at the Door. “This doesn’t look like any prank I or anyone at the office would cook up. I mean, it’s not exactly, like, humorous. No one’s gonna sit around and laugh about how they installed a door to nowhere in your apartment.”
“Oh, am I supposed to just believe that this — this thing magic’d itself into existence?” Sam could feel his cheeks flushing as defensive skepticism bubbled up.
A glimmer of fascination twinkled behind Charlie’s irises as he turned towards his friend.
“Maybe this is something beyond stupid pranks,” Charlie said. “Like, maybe we’re witnessing something out of the realm of what science can comprehend or explain away.” A note of over-the-top awe crept into his voice. “Like a rift into another dimension? Y’know, like that wardrobe thing in that kid’s book.”
“Narnia?” Sam scoffed, rolling his eyes so hard it strained his ocular muscles. “Have you been microdosing your coffee again? Because you sound higher than Mr. Tumnus tripping on ‘shroom tea.”
Sam shot a contemptuous glare at the Door. “This is the real world, in case your Lord of the Rings LARP groups forgot to remind you, not some fossilized 1940s kids’ fantasy.”
“Ouch, okay, low blow, man,” Charlie retorted with a grin, rubbing the scruff peppering his jawline.
Seeing the door handle, he gripped it and pulled with all his weight, grunting with exertion. He stepped back, pushing his hair out of his face and eyeing the door up and down before his gaze settled on the keyhole.
He dropped to one knee and mashed his eye socket against the small opening. After a moment, he pulled back, the skin around his eye and cheek bearing the distinct imprint of the carved etchings that surrounded the keyhole.
“Dude, I think there’s, like, space back there. And not just the space between the walls, you know?”
Sam rolled his eyes again. “Oh, so now you’re an expert contractor and a D&D dungeon master?”
But Charlie was already waving him over urgently. “No, man, I’m serious! Lean in and check it out for yourself.”
With an exaggerated groan, Sam crouched down until his own eye met the keyhole. He saw only black. Was it even a real keyhole to begin with?
But then, a whisper of a breeze drifted across and caressed his eyeball with an unexpected coolness. His stomach flipped. The airflow, that subtle cross-current of respiration, felt far too vast to be coming from a tiny space; it felt like it was coming from a cave.
He pulled back and met Charlie’s excited gaze.
“See? It’s like there’s a whole other space on the other side of this thing!” Charlie exclaimed in a hushed whisper.
Sam’s brow furrowed as the analytic part of his mind strained to rationalize the what Charlie was saying and what he felt.
“That’s — no, that’s impossible,” he murmured half to himself. “There’s no space there. It’s just the…what’s it called: interstice. On the other side is the bedroom.”
Charlie just shrugged, equal parts bewildered and enthralled.
“Well, you’re the paragon of logic and reason here, Professor Skeptic. You explain it.”
Sam felt a reactive snarl curl his lip as the defensive habits drilled into his psyche since childhood resurfaced. Throughout his bumbling teenage years, the brilliant but dweebish Sam had served as a constant target for every meat-headed jock’s ridicule.
Being a husky brain on the scrawny body made him an irresistible magnet for endless swirlies, wedgies, and backhanded taunts. So Sam threw himself into science as both a sanctuary and a weapon against the onslaught. If the outside world was determined to mock him at every turn, he’d triple down on calculated rationality and obliterate their ignorance with pure objectivity. He didn’t kill with kindness; he killed with logic.
No mystical or supernatural realm would ever breach Sam’s fortifications. To even entertain such delusional fantasies would be to admit defeat against the dregs who had tried so systematically to shatter his self-worth.
“You think I can’t spot yet another ploy to make me look the fool?” he said, voice dripping with disdain as his gaze bored into Charlie’s. “This has ‘orchestrated gaslighting’ written all over it. I refuse to play into whatever the gang has cooked up this time. I’m sick of it.”
For once, the usually glib Charlie found himself at an uncharacteristic loss for words. He opened and closed his mouth a few times.
When he found the words, he spoke in a tone so subdued it was almost unrecognizable as his own. “Have I ever intentionally tried to embarrass you, Samwise?”
Sam’s jaw clenched as a flurry of retorts beat against the inside of his skull. Only through sheer force of discipline, he swallowed them back. As obnoxiously as Charlie could rile him with that stuck-in-adolescence mentality, deep down, Sam knew the man’s core decency well.
“You’re right,” Sam sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You wouldn’t do something like this — whatever the hell this is.”
The two friends regarded each other and the Door, feeling the weight of the impossible growing.
Charlie let out a low whistle and rocked back on his heels. “Well, I don’t know about you, but this groovy mystery is already making my head spin.”
He shot a glance at his wristwatch before grimacing. “Listen, maybe we can Scooby-Doo this later? We’re gonna be late for work. Wanna carpool?”
“Work?” Sam snorted. “Work is low on my list of priorities right now.”
Charlie’s jaw dropped. “Wait. You’re just gonna no-show and blow off Warnick’s quarterly preview? After he threatened to disembowel the next slacker who pulled a stunt like that?”
“You think I care about that windbag’s tantrums?” Sam said, shooting a look of disbelief at Charlie. “Or the minutiae of protein denaturation models while there’s…” He waved his arm towards the Door. “…THAT going on?”
Charlie didn’t answer. Sam’s reputation as the consummate workaholic was legendary. He’d jump at the chance to pull triple shifts at the lab, calculating kilobase distances on strands of DNA like a savant while the rest of the boys skipped out for happy hour at Hooter’s.
To see him dismiss his professional obligations shook Charlie’s core almost as much as the Door itself.
He managed a measured nod of resignation. “Okay, you’re the lead architect on this acid trip, my friend. I’ll make your excuses, I guess. I’ll ask around, see if I can find the perp for ya.”
“Appreciate it, Chucky,” Sam said, as he let Charlie out, but a deep recess in his mind knew Charles would not find the Door’s creator.
Sam settled onto the sofa, first perching on the edge, then sinking back until his shoulders melted against the cushions. From this angle, with the morning sunbeams cutting across the polished contours, the Door radiated an almost magnetic beacon.
A single bead of sweat wormed its way down his temple as he puzzled over this riddle. For the entire civilized world outside these walls, this wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. And yet stand the anomaly did, buttressed against his entire rationalist framework like a jagged bulwark.
That was the paradox now splitting his mind into diverging streams: One current pulled him towards the calm of rationality, while another flowed in the opposite direction with insistency towards mysticism.
His fingernails dug crescents into his palms as he struggled against the mounting pressure. He would solve this riddle at all costs, even if it meant shaking the bedrock of rational beliefs he based his entire existence around.
Allowing this Door to exist without an explanation was not an option.
Sam’s first order of business was to get behind the door; this meant a quick stop to the local True Value store.
An hour later, he returned with an armful of supplies: a pry bar, hammer, drywall saw, a large blue tarp, and a sturdy wooden ladder. He snuck around the back of the apartment building and up the stairs, being careful not to draw Artie’s attention.
He propped the ladder next to the wall in his bedroom, directly behind where the Door had fused itself with the living room wall. Ascending the rungs, he pressed his ear against the surface, percussing with a knuckle for the hint of a hollow void. A few experimental taps reverberated with the expected dull thud. Sam wedged the pry bar’s curved lip underneath a seam and gave a smart tug.
A large chunk of drywall cracked free and revealed the usual latticework of wooden studs beneath. Sam felt a wave of relief that everything appeared as it should: no dimensional rift, hidden chamber, or Charlie’s portal to Narnia.
With renewed gusto, he sawed away more sections until a broad swath of wall revealed itself. Miles of electrical cables wove between the studs. PVC and cast iron piping for water and waste. Fiberglass insulation stuffing every nook. All utterly mundane and devoid of any mystery.
Except for one thing that he expected to find, but didn’t: the keyhole.
Sam turned back towards the living area. Leaning down, he eyed the Door’s keyhole. Just as before, the same whispery waft of stale air caressed his pupil, and the darkness beyond remained dark and deep.
Curiouser and curiouser, he thought.
Inspiration struck. He searched his bedroom closet and found a metal coat hanger, which he straightened out into a rigid steel wire and fed one end into the keyhole. To his surprise, the wire kept going, unobstructed. Running around the corner, the other end did not stick out from the back of the drywall.
He continued feeding the wire through the keyhole, letting it slip and fall into the blackness. He strained his ears, expecting to hear it clattering just a few feet to the floor on the other side, but no sound came.
Puzzled, Sam walked around to the other side. Again, no sign of the wire anywhere. He ran his hands along the drywall and studs, feeling for any hint of the hanger.
His head reeled with the paradox. How could an object appear to exist on one side but not on the other? The scientist inside him recoiled at this blatant dismissal of the basic laws of reality.
Still, he steadied his nerves once more with a cleansing breath. This was simply another question to untangle.
Over the following days, Sam found any answer increasingly elusive.
At first, the door seemed inert; its inlaid geometric patterns remained fixed in place like all ornate woodwork should. And he could prod and examine every inch of its surface without the slightest hint of movement or alteration.
But soon, a far more ominous presence emerged.
Symbols Sam didn’t recognize — or perhaps didn’t even belong to any known alphabet — bled across the wooden face as if etched by some unseen hand.
At first, they vanished within seconds. Then they lingered longer before fading, like they were determined to burn their message into Sam’s consciousness. Other times, they flowed and pulsated.
Then they grew more brazen.
Cruel laughter, like an echo of Sam’s childhood, would ring out. Sometimes it was a bout of chuckling, or a cruel whisper of “Hey, Lardo!” or “What a dumbass!” like it came from someone — or something — behind the door itself.
Sam’s heart seized in his chest each time. Those sneering epithets were the same ones used against him by his schoolyard tormentors all those years ago. But why would they manifest now?
Or perhaps most disturbing of all, visions of young Sam and Charlie as gawky thirteen-year-olds would flicker to life and play out across the door’s polished face, like an old home movie projection.
One episode even showed a trio of thick-necked high school jocks shoving a puny Sam into a locker while Charlie watched helplessly from the sidelines in a chokehold. Each time the bully’s face filled the projection, his mocking roar of “nerd!” echoed with stunning fidelity.
Of course, he experienced all these moments first-hand in his youth; but to have them violently resurrected through some unseen force toying with his emotions felt like a sadistic violation.
Charlie stopped by after one of these remixes to find Sam hunched over his once meticulously organized desk, now buried under a cluttered sprawl of web printouts and half-finished mugs of coffee.
“Woah, Samwise,” Charlie frowned, eyeing his friend with a sympathetic wince. “You’re looking a little frayed around the edges there.”
Sam barely registered him. His haggard eyes remained glued to the Door’s undulations as another abstract symbol formed and collapsed into tendrils of scrollwork.
Charlie sloshed through the wreckage of reams of paper and plopped on the couch.
“I swung by to see if you wanted to get lunch,” he started. “It kinda looks like you haven’t left your pad in a while. When did you last take a shower or — ”
“Three days,” Sam murmured without inflection.
Charlie’s face screwed up in a squirm. “Yikes. Have you even slept since — ”
“No time for sleeping.”
A pause stretched between them.
“Hey, buddy. I’m getting worried about you, man. This ain’t healthy. What if we just — ”
“Don’t you dare say we should just ignore this,” Sam growled through gritted teeth, his eyes boring into Charlie’s. “How can you look at what’s going on here and not see that everything is on the line?”
Charlie blanched and shrank back at the sudden outburst like a scolded dog.
Sam brought his trembling hands together in a pleading steeple. When he continued, his voice took on a plaintive edge.
“This Door’s very existence is an affront to everything I’ve based my fundamental beliefs on. If it truly is some sort of anomaly that defies all known physics and rational constraints — ”
He swung his arm towards the Door with wild eyes.
“ — then what am I left with? Everything I’ve staked my reputation on for decades could be reduced to ash. That’s an unbearable notion to me, Charlie! I would end me. My entire identity would collapse into — into nothingness!”
By the end, Sam was nearly shouting. A moment passed before Charlie found the courage to speak again.
“I’ll pretend to understand that. But what you say is not true, is it?” he ventured. “Just because this thing seems to operate outside of our understanding invalidates nothing. Maybe it’s just exposing a higher paradigm of physics we haven’t conceived yet? Maybe it’s just…inexplicable?”
His face lit up as his idea blossomed into words, and he continued.
“Like, I remember reading about these theories of higher spatial dimensions beyond what we can perceive. Maybe this Door is accessing a — a hidden vector of reality?”
Sam recoiled at the suggestion as if struck. He unleashed a hollow, bitter laugh.
“Jesus Christ, Charlie. Listen to yourself.” He stared at his friend askance. “You’re falling back on century-old mystical pseudoscience that should’ve been buried with the New Age movement and Uri Geller’s spoon-bending bullshit.”
Sam jabbed an accusatory finger at the Door.
“What’s next? Telling me this is some sort of shaman’s portal to the lower spirit realms? Hell! That’s it! Maybe it’s the express stairway to Hell?”
His voiced edged closer to a deranged growl.
“If you trot out one more fatuous appeal to join your cabal of woo peddlers, I swear I — ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Charlie interjected, throwing up his hands in surrender. His eyes had gone wide with concern. “Dude, chill! I’m not trying to drag you into some hippie cult like The Source Family or whatever. I’m just — I dunno — trying to brainstorm here.”
Silence.
Charlie continued. “Look. This isn’t like you to flip out like a freakin’ lunatic or something. I’m just trying to help you make sense of this, not push any whacko theories on you.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, as he looked his friend in the eye.
“But you’ve got to admit, no matter how crazy it sounds, something inexplicable is happening here. And the Sam I know, the guy who knows more about quantum mechanics than I’ll ever hope to understand, would be the first to explore it from every angle — any angle. Not just dismiss any possibility out of hand that doesn’t fit into a nice, neat little box.”
Sam was about to object, but Charlie raised a hand to stop him.
“I’m not saying you need to buy into magical mumbo-jumbo or whatever. But don’t shut down the prospect that there could be a bigger picture, you know? Keep that giant brain of yours open, even if it leads you down some weird paths for a bit.”
He flashed a reassuring smile and continued.
“It’s okay to say ‘I don’t know’ sometimes, man. Isn’t that the beginning of wisdom, or something?”
Sam’s brow furrowed as he shook his head vehemently. “No, that’s unacceptable. Everything has an answer; everything has an explanation. The universe doesn’t just ‘alien’ things into existence with no causality or reason behind it. That’s madness.”
He fixed Charlie with an intense stare. “There is an underlying answer here, even if it’s not obvious yet. Some logic that can solve this goddamn thing. I refuse to just throw up my hands and surrender to the ‘I don’t know.’ If I take that path, before you know it, I’ll be on my knees mumbling Hail Marys and gouging out my eyes as penance.”
Charlie extended his hands again in a pacifying gesture. “Okay, okay, you’re the Cosmic Unifier here, not me. I’m just saying, maybe don’t get so hyped up over it that you self-destruct, you know? But you gotta start taking care of yourself first, okay? When was the last time you went into work? Everyone’s been asking about you.”
Sam’s expression softened as Charlie’s words broke through his mania. A large exhale escaped his lips, as if releasing a long-held breath.
“I submitted a leave of absence request,” Sam said, his voice sounding strained. For a man renowned at the lab for his unwavering devotion to his research, putting work on total hold like this was unheard of. He could practically see the stunned looks and whispers already circulating.
Dr. Warnick, Sam’s perpetually demanding boss, must have been gobsmacked to get such an unexpected email. He could picture that solitary vein pulsing in the man’s forehead as he inevitably fired off an outraged response in excessive ALL-CAPS, per his trademark style.
Sam tugged at his sweat-stained collar, feeling like a stranger in his own body. “You’re right…I’m sorry I snapped at you like that,” he said. “I just let this damned thing suck me down the rabbit hole.”
Charlie rose from the couch and gave Sam’s shoulder one last squeeze. “I’ll let you get back to it. But please, try to get some actual sleep soon, bro. For my sake, at least? We can’t have you going Section Eight on us, Samwise.”
Sam gave a weary nod as Charlie saw himself out.
As the door clicked shut, Sam turned his bleary gaze back to the Door, watching its hieroglyphs kaleidoscope across the surface.
Charlie was right about one thing though: Sam needed rest. But sleep would be elusive until he could jam the jagged edges of this mystery into a seamless, unified theory.
With a grunt, he reached for another printout.
Mainstream scientific explanations provided no insights, so his search took him to fringe theories. He scoured conspiracy forums until his eyes strained from staring into the monitor’s glare.
Sam scoured the darkest corners of the internet, where paranoid minds congregated like rats. On one forum, dedicated to exposing shadow government machinations, a thread caught his eye.
“They’re testing it on us…a way to infiltrate our minds…”
Accompanying each rant were blurry photographs and eyewitness accounts too disturbing to be dismissed as mere fabrications. Door after door, manifesting out of nowhere in people’s homes and workplaces.
Each one looking slightly different, yet all bearing the same unmistakable aura of wrongness. Asymmetrical patterns crawled across their surfaces like Sam’s. While none matched the ornate, obsidian majesty of his, the resemblance was still chilling. Like a synchronized blitzkrieg of the damned unleashed across the world to sow seeds of psychosis.
Every fiber in Sam’s being rattled with denial at what he was seeing. These couldn’t be real; they were digital boogeyman meant to be laughed off and dismissed. And yet the dull ache blooming behind his eyes told a different story. One that gnawed at the guardrails of his reality with an increasing menace.
Part of him recoiled at the prospect of some worldwide conspiracy orchestrating this invasion of portals. But a darker part wondered if he’d finally tumbled all the way through Alice’s rabbit hole and into a hellish Neverneverland.
Commenters alleged that the purpose of these gateways was to monitor and even infiltrate the public’s consciousness on a mass scale. “They want to gaslight and destabilize our grip on reality itself,” one voice warned. “First, they get these doors into our living spaces, our most private sanctuaries. Then who knows what kind of mental violations and mind-hacking they can perpetrate?”
What if this Door was in fact an experiment in mass Gaslighting? Some psy-ops campaign orchestrated by amorphous Powers That Be to upend the populace’s foundations and reduce them to suggestible puddles?
The more Sam dwelled on it, the more it seemed to make sense.
He began recording every detail about the Door in a journal, searching for patterns and hidden symbolism that could reveal the larger conspiracy at play. When laughter echoed through the apartment, he traced it with directional mics. He recorded looping videos of the rotating geometric designs, applying filters to eek out any encrypted messages.
One night, after hours hunched over his laptop reading dense academic papers linking ancient pre-Colombian iconography to theoretical physics, he heard it: a low, rumbling voice reverberating from the very walls themselves.
“ABAMWAS SANNA CASPHO OBLOB ATHAM…”
It repeated the same indecipherable litany over and over, growing louder and more insistent with each monotone. Sam felt the syllables lancing into his skull like jackhammers.
He didn’t know how much more of this torment he could withstand before snapping completely.
When Charlie stopped by later that week, the state of the apartment and the state of Sam’s mind clearly never made it out of the rabbit hole.
Charlie’s eyes roamed over the haphazard piles of paper scattered across the place. Corners of webpages and scribbled notes peeked out everywhere, bearing phrases like:
“…interdimensional psychotronic mind control technologies…”
“…secret 4th Reich/DARPA research into pocket dimension gateways…”
“…Freemason/Illuminati oligarchs’ mass reality dissociation agenda…”
His brow raised as he picked up a pamphlet-like document. The cover featured a pair of trapezoid shapes with an eye in the center — the all-seeing eye of conspiracy lore. He flipped through pages of dense text covering obscure topics like ancient occult symbolism, CERN suppressed dimensions research, and vortex mathematics.
“Uh…Sam?” he said, turning towards his increasingly unrecognizable friend. “Is this the stuff you’ve been looking into? Because it seems a little…out there, man.”
Sam’s bloodshot eyes flickered up from the laptop. “Out where?” he mumbled.
“Like, get the tinfoil hats and pith helmets ready ’cause we’re skipping Wonderland and going down the Qanon rabbit hole now,” Charlie said, dropping the pamphlet back onto the table. “This is all just whacko conspiracy theory crap.”
That finally got Sam’s full attention. His shoulders stiffened as he fixed Charlie with a warning glare. “Those aren’t just unsubstantiated claims, they’re meticulously researched explorations into…”
“Into shadowy overlords mind-controlling the masses?” Charlie couldn’t help but interject with a bemused snort. “Or Masonic cults using sacred geometry to hack human perception? Come on, Sam, don’t tell me you’re buying into this insane stuff.”
Sam’s jaw clenched as his defenses reared. “Who’s to say what’s insane when something as outrageous as that — ” he jabbed a finger towards the Door,” — exists? If the fundamental laws of nature can be violated, who’s to discredit ANY theories about how or why?”
He rose from the couch. His manic intensity gave him the air of a deranged street raver. “You think it’s so far-fetched that there could be power-hungry groups hellbent on fracturing our core assumptions? On dismantling our confidence in verifiable, consensus-based reasoning as a prelude to enslaving the world in some unimaginable fashion?”
Charlie’s bemused expression slipped into alarm as Sam ranted. He watched his friend pace the room, each step adding to his agitation.
“Look, I know things are getting pretty twilight zone around here,” Charlie said. “But diving into paranoid delusions and garbage isn’t going to — ”
“So I’m just supposed to shrug my shoulders and say ‘I don’t know?’ Isn’t that what you want me to say?!” Sam spat. “Embrace a new age of ignorance? Huh? Embrace God?”
His voice dropped to a guttural rasp as he advanced on Charlie, their faces now mere inches apart. “I have to preserve what’s left of my credibility — my identity — even if I have to plumb the darkest, most blasphemous depths to find answers others are too weak or closed-minded to accept!”
Charlie stepped back, trying to create some space between them. “Easy, man. Like I said, I’m not trying to convert you to some cult here. You know me better than that.” He spoke like someone trying to talk down a jumper standing at the edge of a cliff. “I just think you’re going way too far with this conspiracy stuff.”
“Oh, so anything that doesn’t conform to your narrow view of reality is just a kooky ‘conspiracy,’ is that it?” Sam asked with dripping condescension. “Why is it so hard to imagine there are groups or forces we don’t fully understand operating behind the scenes? Manipulating our perception of the true nature of things?”
Charlie opened his mouth, but Sam cut him off, his voice rising in pitch and intensity. “No no, let me guess: you’re going to say something like ‘dude, you’re talking like a homeless guy ranting about chemtrails.’ Well, kick me onto the streets then, because I won’t stop until I expose the reality this…this THING is trying to blind us to!”
In that moment, Charlie saw how frighteningly unrecognizable his oldest friend had become. This manic, wild-eyed stranger shouting was like a twisted funhouse mirror reflection of the Sam he grew up with.
This man before him barely resembled the good-natured, pudgy Sam from just weeks ago. It was as if some dark presence had invaded his psyche and was voraciously consuming him from the inside out.
Charlie lifted his hands. “Okay man, I hear you. This whole situation is far beyond what either of us can fully comprehend right now. But you need to take a step back from all this.” He gestured around at the scattered papers and scribblings. “This isn’t helping.”
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Charlie pushed on. “I’m worried about you, Sam. Really worried. You’re running on fumes, surviving off coffee and conspiracies at this point. How long has it been since you slept?”
Shaking his head vehemently, Sam turned away, his gaze refocusing on the Door’s surface. “Sleep is a luxury I can’t afford right now,” he muttered. “Not while reality itself hangs in the balance.”
“Reality?!” Charlie blurted out a shocked laugh. “Dude, listen to yourself! You’re acting like a lunatic — no, you’ve been acting like a lunatic.”
“Look at this!” Sam shoved a printout into Charlie’s hands.
It showed a grainy image of an ornate wooden door, not entirely dissimilar to Sam’s, jutting out inexplicably from the brick wall of what appeared to be an alleyway.
“And this…” Sam rapidly flipped through more pages covered in images and text, dense as a psychological operations manual. Each one documented another impossible door sighting: embedded in the side of an office building, fused into an elementary school’s hallway, even integrated into the hull of a cruise ship.
“Don’t you see? It’s not just my Door. There are hundreds… no, thousands of these things manifesting all over the place!”
Charlie furrowed his brow as he examined the images, trying his best to keep an open mind despite how far-fetched it all sounded.
“Okay, let’s say I buy that these are legitimate,” he began slowly. “What’s your theory here? You think this is part of some coordinated….what? Dimensional breach? Reality hacking by the Illuminati?”
A contemptuous sneer flickered across Sam’s face. “In your narrow worldview. You think this is either an alien invasion plotline or a bad Dan Brown novel?”
He stabbed a finger at the printouts. “The truth is likely far more insidious than some stupid science fiction show! This has all the hallmarks of a colossal conspiracy to gaslight the entire population into questioning objective reality itself!”
Charlie’s expression hardened. “By who? The Reptilians? The New World Order? Your vaunted ‘they’ pulling the strings?”
“I don’t know the specifics yet,” Sam growled through gritted teeth. “But there are patterns in the data, codes and symbologies embedded in each Door’s designs that I’m still trying to decrypt — “
“Oh, here we go again with the codes and symbology!” Charlie threw up his hands in exasperation. “Wake up, Sam! You’re chasing ghosts!”
The two friends glared at each other, an unbridgeable chasm yawning between them. Finally, Charlie sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Look, I want to have your back on this. I really do. But you’re displacing all your fears about the Door onto a conspiracy theory. It’s like…like you’d rather fight an entire cabal of puppet masters than deal with the fact that maybe, just maybe, there are some things in this universe that defy logic.”
Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Charlie kept going.
“You don’t need to narrative-cast this whole thing as some contrived, convoluted plot by god-knows-who. That’s just your brain trying to impose order on something disordered.”
Charlie set the printouts down and locked eyes with his friend.
“So that’s it then? You’ve made up your mind. I’ve lost my marbles, is that it? Good ol’ rational Charlie is washing his hands of his old friend because he’s just too far gone?”
Charlie opened his mouth to respond, but Sam interrupted him with a dismissive wave. “Save it. Clearly, you’re too caught up in your sheltered mindset to comprehend what’s at stake here.”
Sam stepped over the papers, closing the distance between them until they were face to face again. “Maybe you’re content playing your Xbox and rearranging your Hobbit figurines while the very foundations of our civilization are being dismantled. But I won’t be! Not until I drag the truth kicking and screaming into the light!”
Charlie could only stare back, momentarily stunned into silence at the waves of deranged vitriol washing over him from his oldest friend — his Samwise.
Finally, he managed a slow shake of his head.
“I’m gonna go now, Sam. Before one of us says something, they really can’t take back.”
He turned and headed for the door, stooping to grab his jacket. “But please, for the love of God, get some sleep. Eat something. Take care of yourself, man.”
The door clicked shut with a finality behind him.
A stillness gripped the room, smothering it in an apocalyptic silence, broken only by Sam’s sawing breaths. His chest heaved in strained tempos as if jackbooted phantoms marched across it. He simply stood there, tendons standing out in stark relief along his corded neck.
Then the dam burst in a supernova of primal fury.
A guttural bellow exploded from the deepest caverns of Sam’s being — the tormented roar one would expect to hear echoing from the pit of an erupting volcano.
His arm performed a whipcrack across the desk, scattering every pen, paper, and knickknack in its path. Notebooks flew in spirals, their pages doing lazy revolutions. Half-filled coffee mugs achieved temporary levitation before crunching into the hardwood in explosions of ceramic shrapnel.
The flurry of stationery swirled around Sam in its own miniature cyclone. He stood panting at the vortex’s eye like a pillar amid the debris storm.
Charlie’s plaintive pleas for self-care and sanity rang out from the debris like muffled screams through a shot-out windshield. A part of Sam’s tattered humanity distantly registered their echoes, pleading for him to claw his way back from this abyss.
But, no. There could be no heeding such pleas now. Not when the hunger from the Door had metastasized into the only burning imperative left. Whether fueled by design or the conspiracies of nameless interlopers, the secrets had consumed Sam’s entire existence.
His gasps hardened into a rictus of determination. The hunger to decode the Door’s secrets had become an all-consuming frenzy. A part of Sam’s rational mind dimly registered Charlie’s pleas as they pounded at the inside of his skull like a trapped chimney sweep. But that voice of self-preservation grew fainter by the moment.
If unraveling this mystery meant surrendering the last shreds of his identity — his sanity — so be it. That idea no longer concerned him. No cost could be too extreme.
The Sam that was will keep clawing away at the last shred of mysticism until it lay in ashes at his feet, or the truth lay unfurled before his eyes.
Brilliant sunshine pried through the blinds once again, rousing Sam from his prone position on the living room floor. Dried streaks of drool caked the corner of Sam’s mouth as he moaned and cracked his eyes open.
He squinted against the amber rays spilling across the disordered battlefield of crumpled papers, scattered notebooks, and tepid coffee mug rings staining the hardwood. His entire body ached as if beaten by a mob of rabid capuchins.
He pushed himself upright into a seated position, massaging the throbbing ache in his temples. The events of his mental collapse rushed back in disjointed fragments: his feverish journal scribblings, his venomous fight with Charlie, his manic raving about shadowy conspiracies. And overshadowing it all: the Door. That damnable, implacable Door.
Sam swiveled towards the Door, dread curdling in the pit of his stomach. What fresh torment would this obscene invader manifest today? Voices whispering from the other side? Grotesque sigils oozing across its surface like drying pus?
Instead, its face remained as bland as a slab of wood had any right to be. Devoid of any hint of the malice Sam knew lurked within its shadowed heart.
Charlie’s words suddenly crawled up from the back of his mind: “It’s okay to say ‘I don’t know’ sometimes, man.”
“I don’t know…” Sam heard himself murmuring the traitorous words. They felt like a sin on his tongue, a surrender to the forces that had sent him tumbling down this rabbit-hole of escalating psychosis.
A knot of tension twisted in his gut as the full weight of how far he’d let himself slip finally landed. He had disintegrated into a howling vortex of paranoia, shredding what tattered scraps of credibility he’d started with. Even his closest friend didn’t avoid becoming collateral damage.
All for dead ends. All for this hateful lump of carved tree matter.
A scream of impotent rage ripped from Sam’s throat with an animalistic fury that shook the walls. He snatched up the hammer lying nearby and charged at the Door, his free hand clawing at the air like a feral creature unshackled.
“You son of a BITCH!” The bellow resounded from the deepest pits of his marrow as wild blows rained down upon the Door’s surface. Chunks of polished oak exploded outwards in splinters with each impact.
“No more of your GAMES! No more goddamned PUZZLES!” Sam’s mouth twisted as spittle flew with each bellowed word. Red mist clouded the corners of his vision and his heart thundered like a kettledrum in his ears.
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE!” Each syllable dragged itself from his vocal cords with a viscous rasp of finality. “AND I DON’T CARE!”
He fought past the burning ache building up in his arms. He kept pounding away until the Door’s intricately carved patterns dissolved into a pockmarked mess. Still, the Door stood firm, taunting him with its smug refusal to yield even an inch.
Finally, Sam stepped back with one last hoarse roar. The hammer slipped from his sweat-slicked grip as he sucked in air. He huffed as if in the aftermath of battling some primordial beast.
His need for nihilistic destruction seemed temporarily sated, replaced by calm. The door was just there. No longer provoking the frantic desperation to solve its riddles. Just a hateful wooden object.
A bitter chuckle, as raw as an open wound, rumbled up. He flashed the Door’s ruin a smile. The convulsions of anger had passed, replaced by…what? Resignation? Begrudging respect for its impassivity?
For now, the equilibrium between Sam’s psyche and the Door’s mysteries reached an uneasy truce.
Then the Door gave a subtle twitch.
Slowly at first, hairline cracks began knitting themselves together with a series of faint pops, like ice fracturing in reverse. Jagged holes melded together in a liquid dance, reconstituting the surface into an immaculate shine. Within moments, the patterns remade themselves.
Sam’s mouth hung open as all the fury drained from his body, replaced by awe and defeat.
The Door’s mysteries were truly inexhaustible.
For the first time, he felt no gnawing compulsion to dissect the Door’s latest mystery. He simply stood there and let his eyes languidly trace the re-birthed patterns. A deep sigh exhaled from his core, expelling years of pent-up tension and resistance.
His head gave an infinitesimal nod to acknowledge some invisible truth. Fingertips then extended to ghost across the carved whorls with reverence.
“I don’t know…” The phrase was heavier than it should have, but it was being weighed down by the gravity of complete submission.
Sam leaned forward until his forehead came to rest against the Door’s cool wood with a dull thunk. For a moment, he remained and let the Door’s presence flow into him.
“Maybe that’s the point?” His voice came up muffled but resolute. “Maybe this fixation kept me from…from just experiencing you for what you are?”
Drawing back, he appraised the Door with a look, as if truly seeing it for the first time.
A faint smile played across his lips. “I don’t know…” he repeated, this time with acceptance. “I simply don’t know.”
The words had scarcely left his mouth when a soft click sounded, like the latch on a door being undone from somewhere deep inside the wood’s knotted heart. Sam stepped back as the Door creaked open a sliver.
His breath hitched. There it was at last — the literal and metaphysical gateway he’d been so desperate to access, now unfolding before him.
Trepidation lanced through him as he extended his hand towards the serpentine handle.
A shock ran up his arm, as if the Door had completed some unholy circuit lying dormant for eons. Sam flinched.
With a subtle pop, the Door winked out of existence.
Sam stood there in front of a plain white wall.
But its departure was not an absence; it was the grandest revelation of all.
A stillness enveloped Sam, but not the empty hush of a vacuum, but the womblike peace before the big bang.
He breathed deep, allowing his senses to calibrate to this new reality. The air carried a subtle charge, like the crisp renewal that always followed a thunderstorm.
It was as if a veil had parted to reveal…everything. Facets of Creation unfolded around him in labyrinthine dimensions that bloomed and encapsulated one another. Higher realms vibrated with the unseen yet perceptible hum of deeper truths underlying all existence.
Though beyond the reach of comprehension, the Door’s ultimate revelation lay in the periphery for any soul brave enough to confront the limitations of their perceptual shackles.
A tremor passed through Sam’s body as the final rusted links of rigid reductionism fell away and freed his mind from its compulsive quest for dominance over the unknowable. His obsession with control dispersed like a bad dream before the morning light.
Here in this new frontier, this space of potential and faith, he no longer felt the reflexive need to package every strange experience into sanitized, pre-approved containers his ego could process. There was room only for the simple courage required to embrace the unknowable as the unknowable.
Peace settled over Sam like a warm bath. He regarded the bare wall one final time and allowed himself a nod in gratitude at the Door’s ultimate gift.
“Thank you,” he whispered into the silence, though to whom or what exactly remained wonderfully and mercifully ambiguous.
A few hours later, Sam emerged from the bathroom like a serpent shedding its skin.
A towel clung around his waist as he caught his reflection in the bedroom mirror and did a subtle double-take. His eyes raked over the freshly trimmed beard — a minor violation of protocol that the fastidiously groomed Sam of old would have never permitted. He thought he rather liked it.
As he sidled up to the mirror, a series of expressions rippled across his face. First, the eyes narrowed to study this strange newcomer staring back at him, almost as if struggling to process and accept this leaner version of himself.
Then his face loosened. His mask of wariness melted into a warm smile as self-acceptance. Fingertips traced the newly exposed planes and ridges of musculature across his abdomen, grazing over the protruding knots of bone and sinew once obscured beneath thick, insulating layers of fur and fat.
“Out with the old…” he murmured to his reflected counterpart with the hinting of a sardonic chuckle. “In with the new.”
After tugging on a faded UT tee and some beat-up jeans, Sam ventured back out into the living room. Though the space fell well short of a return to its former militant orderliness, the mess had been at least marshaled into some semblance of post-apocalyptic rebirth.
Paper still lay strewn about in storm-tossed drifts, but pockets of ordered tranquility emerged from the mess like wildflowers poking through scorched earth.
Sam’s eyes eventually settled on the bookshelf, where a framed photo from happier days held vigil. Young Charlie and Sam. Two flushed, unkempt faces with dopey grins frozen in a moment of unapologetic juvenile bliss, as they reveled in the simple joys of friendship and a large Friendly’s Sundae.
A sudden pang lanced through Sam as a surge of gratitude welled up inside him. After the craziness and brouhaha, it was Charlie who had steadfastly remained his one fixed point, his lighthouse beacon in the blackest stretch of hopelessness.
Sam fetched his phone from where it lay discarded, only to find himself momentarily frozen with his thumb hovering over Charlie’s number in the contacts.
How the hell could he even begin explaining what had transpired with just words?
Fingers trembling slightly, he gazed back at the photo — and hit call.
It trilled once…twice…then the familiar drawl barked over the line.
“Samwise? Please tell me you’re back among the ranks of the relatively sane again? It’s been too damned long for my liking.”
The corners of Sam’s mouth tugged upwards into the faintest smirk as he settled back into the couch, eyes drifting in an unfocused ceiling-ward squint. A set of recalibrations flickered across his neural pathways as he processed just how far he’d fell and how distant those depths now felt.
Finally, he spoke with the quiet certainty of a man who had brushed up against the infinite and returned with the scars to prove it. “You were right, man.”
He could picture Charlie’s frown through the phone as those four simple words landed. An infinitesimal pause stretched out before being punctured by a low chuckle.
“Well, paint me stunned and cover me in sugar, Kemosabe. Don’t act so damn surprised that I had it right all along.”
Despite himself, Sam broke into a crooked grin and slowly shook his head. Even after witnessing the unspeakable, here was Charlie, once again being Charlie.
“Yeah…I really shouldn’t at this point, should I?” The words emerged as half-suggestion, half-weary resignation as Sam felt his friend’s stabilizing presence reeling him back from the brink yet again.
Then a thoughtful pause fell between them as Sam exhaled a colossal breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. In the stillness, it was as if entire vistas unwound and illuminated their bond anew.
Suddenly, a thought blossomed in the back of his mind and quickly took form.
“Say, you know how I always used to hate whenever you jackasses would pull one of your dumb pranks back at the office?”
“Used to?”
Sam continued, unable to fully suppress a Cheshire cat snicker from bubbling up. “Hilarious. Well, what if we got those jackasses back by…”
He then laid out an elaborately absurd prank idea that, to anyone unawakened, would have seemed like the harmless conspiracies of an overgrown frat boy. But to Sam’s newly un-tethered mind, this was something else entirely.
Sam’s cadence and tone took on a fevered enthusiasm more akin to a kid at the start of an eternal summer vacation.
On the other end of the line, Charlie let out a hooting guffaw that morphed midway into something like an impressed whistle. “Samwise, you beautiful diabolical genius, you! That shit is nothing short of pure epic-level mayhem!”
A grin split Sam’s face from ear-to-ear as he basked in the giddy validation. “How about I buy you a scotchy-scotch at Doyle’s? We can polish up the finer details.”
“Who the hell are you?” Charlie managed between tears of laughter. “It’s a work night! Sam doesn’t go out on work nights.”
“Ah, yes. Well…” Sam’s grin stretched into a wolfish smile as he rose from the couch with a sinuous stretch. “No. You’re right. But Samwise does. Just meet me there, okay, Chucky?!”
As he crossed over the threshold out into the world, each step ignited sparks of untapped mysteries that shimmered around him like arcing filaments. Everywhere he turned, the world itself thrummed and pulsed with the unmistakable telltale signs of deeper realities just beneath the surface.
It was as if the Door itself had been merely a tuning fork that shattered the bedrock of his former existence down to his core. Sam’s footfalls were no longer those of the shambling somnambulist, but a newly initiated brother-seer walking the path of awakening.
As he made his way into the sultry summer twilight towards his long-awaited reunion with Charlie, the evening breeze whispered its own sacred litany on the outskirts of Sam’s awareness.
Reverent hymns laced through the very portals of Creation itself to greet this newest initiate into the fold. One who would always stride amongst the ranks of those sworn to protect the holy inscrutable from the prosaic — not through ignorance or denial, but through the highest stance of wonder.
