Every lock has a key. Every puzzle a solution. That’s what a key is, a solution to a puzzle. But not every key is mechanical and not every lock secures something valuable. Some locks exist to keep things in. Dark things. Secret things. Dangerous things. Things with terrible eyes and smiles with too many teeth.
Locks secure all sorts of things; boxes, chests, hearts, doors, gates.
This is the awful secret of space: anything that forms a border can form a frame, and that any thing that has a frame can be a door.
The math doesn’t lie. It cannot.
Every year thousands of people go missing and most of them are due to the usual mundane things. However, some wander through archways humming the right melody, or step onto the U-bahn with the correct amount of change in one pocket (all ferrymen have their tolls), or perhaps some other permutation of an infinite amount of possible combinations.
But one of them- one of them must have built a frame there. Something came through. Something from somewhere else. Something skirting in the corner of the door frames. Watching.
It started off as a shifting, lurking whisper. Slipping on the periphery of my vision, moving tangentially to consciousness and shadows. An imagined call of one’s name on the crowded Marktplatz. An echo on the æther.
Sometimes I see it in the corner of my eye, but like stars, never directly. I cannot tell you not to be wary. Only aware. Wariness implies possible preparatory action.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, and I am afraid. I am very afraid.