Liminal (Doors of the Dreamer, Chapter 6)
Taste of home
Author’s note: For the month of July I am challenging myself to write and post one chapter a day every two days with minimal planning and outlining. You can read the first chapter of Doors of the Dreamer here.
They could see the city now. One more day of travel brought them to a suburban neighborhood.
“We won’t be able to avoid the monsters anymore. Keep your eyes open,” Lance said.
David nodded. “Are these homes empty?”
“Depends on what you mean by ‘empty.’ They have furniture, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But no one lives in them?”
“Monsters, sometimes.”
The streets were desolate. The houses were dark and quiet, though some of them had broken windows or doors hanging open. Lance was walking quicker now, his head always turning about. Eventually he stopped in front of a house on a block corner.
“Let’s clear this,” he said, gearing up.
The door was unlocked. Lance entered greatsword first. They moved slowly, checking one room at a time. There were two stories and a finished basement. The place was furnished as Lance had said, and thankfully it was vacant.
“Don’t turn on any lights and stay away from the windows,” Lance said. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Wait.”
David went back to the kitchen and turned a knob on the stove. Sure enough, the burner light flashed on.
“Let’s cook something tonight. I mean, actually cook.”
Crafting was convenient, but it lacked the capability to make more nuanced or complicated meals. Also, David missed eating food that tasted like it was made by a human.
Lance was indifferent. “Can you cook?”
“Well enough.”
David suggested making omelettes as the crafting system could only make eggs sunny side up. Lance must have been completely unoffended by the idea of having omelettes for dinner, as he merely nodded and started barricading the entrances to the house.
As with most evenings, they ate in silence. More than once Lance got up to peek out a window. After a week, David still could rarely read the man. The only thing he knew for sure about Lance was that he took everything very seriously.
“I’ll take first watch.”
“What do you mean, watch? Is that necessary?” David asked.
“Monsters don’t sleep. Someone needs to be awake at all times.”
David glanced pointedly at the pile of furniture blocking the front door.
“I’ll wake you up at 2,” Lance said.
David shook his head—but soon forgot his misgivings when he realized he could take a shower for the first time in a week. Lance gave him soap, the water was hot, and he enjoyed it for at least half an hour. He emerged feeling like a new man. The closet, like all the cabinets and drawers, was empty, but Lance had a few extra shirts. David decided they would have to stop by a clothing store while they were in the city. For a little while he wondered why a store—according to Lance, anyway—would have clothes, but a closet in a home wouldn’t. He decided to leave that kind of thinking to his humorless companion and went to bed. After a week of spending nights outdoors in a sleeping bag, sheets and a mattress felt like heaven. Living like a civilized person again had him in a good mood.
Next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake.
“What? What is it?” David sat up.
“It’s 2 AM, time to switch. Wake me up if you see or hear anything.”
David mumbled something and dragged himself to his feet. Lance disappeared into the other bedroom and David sat at the top of the stairs. It was eerily quiet. The lights were off, but the constant ambient light that permeated this world drifted in through the windows and made it look like a summer afternoon. It reminded him a little of his childhood home. He wondered if he would ever see his parents again.
David jolted awake. His shoulder hurt from leaning against the wall. How long had he been out? He checked his phone.
“Not long enough,” he muttered to himself.
He needed something to keep himself awake and pass the time. He began wandering about the first floor, opening and closing cabinets that he knew were empty. He checked the landline. Unsurprisingly, there was no dial tone. He checked the TV. It turned on, but every channel was blank. David patrolled the house like this for quite a while, thinking about nothing.
Then he saw movement. He froze. He waited and listened, but heard nothing except his accelerating heartbeat. Had he imagined it? He crept toward the window, adrenaline flooding his body.
There was a person on the sidewalk. A man—by all definitions, an ordinary man—walking past the house. Without thinking, David ran to the door and started pushing Lance’s barricade out of the way. He stopped himself just before turning the handle. Taking everything Lance had told him into account, he realized the probability of this being a human was low. However, in Doors of the Dreamer, there was no creature that could disguise itself in such a way. In fact, there was little subtlety in the monsters’ appearances either in the game or in this world—all sported fangs, claws, inhuman proportions, or some other grotesque features.
He decided there was only one way to know for sure, and he equipped his staff as he ran out to the driveway.
“Hey.” David didn’t say it very loudly, but his voice still echoed conspicuously off the neighboring houses.
The man, now with his back to David, did not stop. He tightened his grip on his staff. Was he in shock? Deaf, maybe?
“Divine lights.”
There was no time to get Lance, he judged, but he could handle this on his own. Divine lights would stay active for sixty seconds, which should be enough time to determine if this was friend or foe.
He hurried down the sidewalk after the man. When he was a few paces away, he called out to him again. Still no reaction. David circled around him and waved.
“Hello, can you hear me? Do you need help?”
The man continued walking forward, his eyes fixed on some point in the distance. David sighed.
“Don’t waste your breath.”
David about jumped out of his skin. Lance, fully armored, was trotting toward him.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said. “And you should fully gear up before interacting with a potential enemy.”
“I thought it was a person and didn’t want to scare him. What is this thing?”
“A zombie. At least, that’s what an old friend of mine called them. They’re mindless; they don’t respond to any stimuli. There’s quite a few of them in the cities.”
David scratched his head. “Why? I mean, where’s it going?”
“I don’t think it’s going anywhere, it’s just walking. As for why it’s here, I do have a theory. Are you familiar with the idea of collective consciousness? It’s possible that this world is a shadow of our world, so to speak, where beliefs about how society works are vaguely reflected. For example, a suburban environment needs people, and an urban environment needs even more. Thus, the zombies. It might also explain why electricity—”
“Is that one of the doors you were talking about?” David pointed.
Between two houses, planted in the dead grass, was a door.
“Yes.”
David approached it. It was similar to the black door he saw in the movie theater, only it had a wood veneer and an ornate brass handle. He opened it.
On the other side, it was a brisk spring morning. Everything was vibrant, almost overwhelmingly so. The colors, the smells—he thought he might be able detect a hundred different kinds of flowers. And the birds. He never imagined he would miss the sound of birds chirping raucously in the morning.
“The grass really is greener,” David quipped to no one in particular.
He walked out to the sidewalk. Dew covered the ground and a light fog blanketed the neighborhood. He spotted a young woman in athletic wear jogging toward him.
“Hello!” he said with a smile.
No reaction. Déjà vu.
“She can’t see or hear you. But be careful, you can still touch her,” Lance said. He knelt down and grabbed a fistful of grass to demonstrate.
David moved out of her way. “But this is our world, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It hasn’t changed, we have. Like I mentioned before, we’re in some sort of liminal state. One foot in this world, one foot in the other. We shouldn’t stay here long.”
“Why not?”
“You were attacked by something when you found the black door, right?”
“Yeah, a stalker, I think. It was invisible, just like…”
“Just like we are to that woman. And did it appear before or after you opened the door?”
“After. Almost instantly.” A chill went down David’s spine. “Are you saying that opening the door brought the stalker to me?”
“Maybe. The same thing happened to me. If imperceptible monsters were able to cross over into our world on a whim, don’t you think that would’ve made headlines?”
“So, what, the monsters only come through when someone opens a door?”
Lance nodded. “In folklore, vampires had to be invited into homes to enter them. I never understood that, but rules are rules. Come on, let’s go back.”
David took a deep breath, trying dispel his unease and savor what might be his last taste of home for a while.