I am the door
Stephen King Richard and I were sitting on the porch of my house, watching the dunes of the Gulf. The cigar smoke curled tamely into the air, the mosquitoes away. The water was a cool blue color and the sky was a deep blue color and authentic. It was a nice combination.
"You are the door," repeated Richard thoughtfully. Are you sure you killed the boy ... and that was not all a dream?
"It was a dream. And do not kill him ... I told you so. They did. I am the pert. Richard
sighed.
- Do you buried?
-Si.
- Do you remember where?
-Si. "I rummaged in his breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette. My hands were clumsy with his bandages. Stung me horribly. If you want to see it, you bring the "buggy" in the dunes. You can not push this, "I pointed my wheelchair," through the sand.
The "buggy" Richard was a "Volkswagen 1959" with tires as big as pillows. He used to collect the timber that brought the tide. Since he had left his business of estate agent in Maryland, lived in Key Caroline and produced sculptures with the logs from the beach, which he sold to tourists at exorbitant prices winter.
He puffed on his cigar and looked at the Gulf ..
"Not yet. Do you want to retell the story?
sighed and tried to light my cigarette. I took the matches and he did. I took two puffs, inhaling deeply. My fingers itch was maddening.
"Okay," I said. Last night at seven I was out here, overlooking the Gulf and smoking, as now, y. ..
"Go back behind," he urged.
- More behind?
"Tell me about the flight.
shook my head.
-Richard, we have reviewed over and over again. There is nothing ...
His face was wrinkled and cracked as enigmatic as one of his wooden sculptures polished by the ocean.
-You may remember, "he said. Now you may remember.
- Do you agree?
"Maybe. And when you're done, we will go looking for the grave.
"The tomb" I repeated. The word had a hole accent, atrocious, darker than anything else, more scary than anything else, more even than that creepy dark ocean where Cory and I had sailed for five years. Dark, dark, dark.
Under the bandages, my new eyes searched the darkness blindly bands imposed on them. Stung.
Cory and I went into orbit Saturn driven by 16, that commentators termed the rocket Empire State Building. It was a mole, yes sir. Compared to him, the old Saturn 1-B looked like a toy, and dragged him to keep half of Cape Kennedy had to throw from a silo of seventy feet deep.
flew over the Earth, making sure all our systems, and then shoot us. Heading for Venus. The Senate stayed behind, debating a bill on new budgets for exploration of deep space, while the NASA clique begged us to discover something, anything.
"No matter what he would say Don Lovinger, the wunderkind of Project Zeus, every time he took a few drinks. You have all artifacts, plus five TV cameras and a gorgeous refurbished telescope with a trillion lenses and filters. Find gold or platinum. Better yet, find some nice and stupid blue men, so we can study them and exploit them and feel superior to them. Anything. To begin, we would be satisfied with the ghost of Snow White.
Cory and I were eager to please, a little as possible. The program of deep space exploration has always been a failure. From Borman, Anders and Lovell who had entered orbit around the Moon in 1968, and had found an empty world, hostile, like a dirty beach to Markham and Jacks, landed on Mars that fifteen years later and found a frozen wasteland of sand and a few battered lichens, the program had been a costly fiasco. And there had been casualties. Pedersen and Lederer, which would revolve around the sun forever because everything went wrong in the second last Apollo flight. John Davis, whose small orbiting observatory had been punctured by a meteorite, although there was only a thousand chance that such an accident occur. No, the space program did not prosper. As things stood, the orbital flight around Venus would be our last chance to claim victory.
was a trip of sixteen days, we ate a lot Concentrate, play many games of cards, and we are a cold-infecting each other and from the technical point of view was a breeze. On the third day we lost a transformer of atmospheric moisture, we use the auxiliary device, and that was it, except a few trifles, to return. We saw Venus grew up and spent the size of a star of a twenty-five cents and then to a cloudy crystal ball, exchanged jokes with the control of Huntsville, listen to tapes of Wagner and the Beatles, automatic monitoring devices I covered everything from solar wind measurements to deep space navigation. We practice two course corrections midway, both infinitesimal, and after nine days of flying Cory left the ship and the ASP retractable hammered until it was decided to operate. It was not anything unusual until ...
"The AEP-Richard interrupted me. What is that?
-An experiment frustrated. NASA jargon to describe the Deep Radio Antenna ... Pi Irradiábamos high frequency waves to anyone who would deign to listen. "I rubbed my fingers against his pants but it was useless. In any case, the pruritus worsened. The same principle of a radio telescope in West Virginia ... you know the one listening to the stars. Only instead of listening, transmitting, especially the deep space planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus. If there is intelligent life in them, at that time was taking a nap.
- Is the only thing left was Coy?
-Si. And if you entered an interstellar plague, telemetry not detected.
-also ...
"Never mind, I went on angrily. Only interested in the here and now. Last night they killed that guy, Richard. It was nice to see ... or feel. His head ... exploded. As if someone had hollowed out his brains and would have introduced a hand grenade into the skull.
"Finish the story," said Richard.
I cast a hollow laugh.
- What do you tell?
We went into an eccentric orbit around the planet. A radical wave, downward, ninety percent ten miles. On the second pass our peak was higher and the lower perigee. We had a maximum of four sockets. We walked four. We take a good look at the planet. More than six hundred photos and God knows how many feet of film.
The cloud layer is composed in equal parts of methane, ammonia, dust and flying shit. The whole planet looks like the Grand Canyon in a wind tunnel. Cory estimated that the wind was blowing at about nine per hour near the surface. Our probe transmitted throughout the descent and then faded with a groan. We saw no sign of living vegetation. Spectroscopy detected only traces of valuable minerals. And that was Venus. Nothing at all ..., with one exception: it scared me. It was like turning around a haunted house in the middle of space. I know this is not a very scientific definition but overwhelmed by the fear I lived until we moved away from there. I think if we had stopped the rockets, I would have slain in the midst of the fall. It's not like on the moon. The moon is desolate but relatively antiseptic. The world we saw was totally unlike anything seen before. Maybe it's a lot that is covered by the cloud cover. It looked like a disembodied skull ... This is the only analogy I can think of.
During the flight we learned that the Senate had resolved to halve the budget for space exploration. Cory said something like "seems to return to the era of weather satellites, Artie." But I was almost happy. Perhaps the space is not a good place for us.
Twelve days later, Cory was dead and I had been crippled for life. All my misfortunes occurred during the descent. Parachute failed. How about this irony? We spent over a month in space, had gone further than any other human being, and all went wrong because some guy in a hurry to take a break let some strings are tangled.
The crash was violent. A crew member said one of the helicopters we rushed the sky like a giant baby with the placenta waving back. When we hit I fainted.
regained consciousness while carrying me on the deck of Portland. They had not even had time to roll the red carpet that theoretically should have run. I was bleeding. Bleeding and took me to the hospital on a red carpet was not even remotely like me redder ...
-... I spent two years at Bethesda Hospital. I was given the Medal of Honor and a fortune and this wheelchair. The following year I came here. I like to watch the rockets take off.
"I know. "Richard paused. Show me your hands.
-No. "The answer was immediate and vehement. Might not allow them to see. I warned you.
"It's been five years," said Richard. Why now, Arthur? Can I have it can you explain?
I do not know. I do not know! Perhaps that, whatever it is, has a long gestation period. And who can say also that I polluted them in space? That, whatever, could be in place in Fort Lauderdale. Or maybe this porch. Whatever.
Richard sighed and looked at the water, now reddened by the setting sun.
-I try to believe you, Arthur, I do not think you're losing the key.
"If necessary, I will show you hands I said. It took an effort to speak. But only if it is indispensable.
Richard stood up and took his cane. He looked old and frail.
"I'll get the" buggy "and the dunes. Look for the boy.
"Thank you, Richard.
He walked to the rugged trail that led to his cabin, he saw the roof of this looming on the Dune, which spans almost the entire width of Key Caroline. The sky had become an ugly plum on the water towards the Cape, and the roar of thunder came faintly to my ears.
not know her name but I saw the guy once in a while, walking along the beach at sunset, with l sifting under his arm. The sun had tanned and had dark, almost black, and always wore frayed jeans, earwigs in the thigh. Key Across Caroline is a public board, and one day nothing encourages a young entrepreneur can raise up to five dollars, patiently sifting sand to find buried coins. Sometimes he waved and he answered in like manner, both with disdain, strangers but brothers, eternal inhabitants of this world of waste, of "Thunderbirds" rowdy tourists. I guess living in the small village clustered around the post office, half a mile from my house.
When that afternoon and spent an hour ago I was on the porch, motionless, alert. A while ago I was on the porch, motionless, alert. A while ago that I had removed the bandages. The itching was intolerable, and is always relieved when they could see with their eyes.
was a feeling that remained unmatched in the world: as if I were a half-open portal through which spied a world that hated and feared. But the worst was that I could see, to some extent. Imagine that your mind is transported the body of a fly, a fly that looks at your own face with a thousand eyes. Then perhaps you will begin to understand why her hands were bandaged even when no one was around, nobody to see them.
started in Miami. I had to deal there with a man named Cresswell, a researcher at the Department of the Navy. I checked once a year, because for a time had all the access that is possible to have a secret materials of our space program. I do not know exactly what you want. Perhaps a sly glint in my eyes, or a scarlet letter on my forehead. God knows why. The pension charge is so generous that it becomes almost embarrassing. Cresswell
and I were sitting outside his room at the hotel, discussing the future of U.S. space program. It was about quarter past three. Fingers began to itch. It was not gradual. Was activated as an electrical current. I mentioned it to Cresswell.
"So touched a poison ivy in that scrofulous little island," said smiling.
"The only foliage that is in Key Caroline is a palmetto bush replied. Maybe it's the seven-year itch .- I looked at my hands. Hands absolutely vulgar. But I itched. Later
old document signed the same as ever ("I solemnly swear that I have not received any information disclosed or divulged susceptible to ...") and went back to Key Caroline. I have an old "Ford", equipped with hand brake and accelerator. I love it ... makes me feel self-sufficient.
The return trip is long, Highway 1, and when I left the road and I turned into the exit ramp of Key Caroline was almost crazed.'s hands stung me horribly. If you ever have to heal a deep cut or surgical incision, perhaps you will understand the kind of itching to which I refer. Something alive seemed to be crawling on my flesh and piercing.
The sun was almost hidden and carefully studied my hands under the bright lights of the board. Now at the tips of the fingers had a small red spots perfectly circular, slightly above the bud where they are fingerprinted and where calluses form when one plays the guitar. There were also red circles of infection between the first and second joint of each thumb and each finger, and skin that separated the second knuckle joint. I took the right hand fingers to his lips and turned away quickly, with a sudden revulsion. Within my throat had formed a knot of horror, cotton and suffocating. The points where the red marks had appeared were hot, feverish and the meat was soft and gelatinous, like the flesh of an rotten apple.
During the rest of the way I tried to convince me that he had indeed touched a poison ivy without realizing it. But in the back of my mind another idea germinated shocking. In my childhood I had an aunt who had spent the last ten years of his life locked in an attic, isolated from the world. My mother brought her food and was forbidden to pronounce his name. Later I learned that he had suffered from Hansen's disease, leprosy.
When I got home I phoned the doctor Flanders, who lived on land. I answered your call reception. Dr. Flanders was participating in a fishing cruise, but if it was something urgent Dr. Ballenger ...
- When Dr. Flanders return?
-Not later than tomorrow afternoon. Do you think ...?
"Yes.
slowly hung up the phone and dialed after Richard. I let the bell rang twelve times before hanging up. I stood undecided. The itching had intensified. Seemed to emanate from the meat itself.
drove the wheelchair to the library and took out the ramshackle medical encyclopedia that he had bought many years ago. The text was maddeningly vague. Could have been anything or nothing.
I leaned back and closed my eyes. I heard the old clock ticking ocean mounted on the shelf, on the other end of the room. I also heard the buzz of a fine and sharp jet flying to Miami. And the faint whisper of my own breathing.
I kept looking at the book.
Discovery slowly crept on me and then implanted with terrifying suddenness. Her eyes were closed but still looking at the book. What he saw was something vague and monstrous, a distorted image, dimensional, but still unmistakably a book.
And I was not alone in looking.
I opened my eyes and I felt my heart muscle contraction. The feeling was eased a little, but not completely. I was looking at the book, seeing with my own eyes the printed lyrics and illustrations, which was a perfectly normal everyday experience, and also saw it from a different angle, lower, and with different eyes. Not see it as a book but as something abnormal, something aberrant and intention setting ominous.
slowly raised my hands to my face, and had a grim picture of my room turned into a house of horrors.
I gave a shriek. Eyes
spied me through the cracks of the flesh of my fingers. And in that moment I saw the meat is delayed, fell back, as those eyes peered foolishly to the surface.
But that was not what made me cry. Had looked my face and had seen a monster.
The "buggy" in the dunes down the slope of the canvas and Richard was stopped by the porch. The engine rumbled intermittently. I rolled my wheelchair up the ramp to the right of the common stairway and Richard helped me get into the vehicle.
"Okay," said Arthur. You command. Where do we go?
I pointed toward the water, where the Dune finally starting to wane. Richard made a gesture of assent. The rear wheels spun in the sand and head. I used to make fun of Richard by his driving, but that night I did not. Had too many things to think about ... And too many things to feel. They were unhappy with the dark and I realized that was an effort to spy on between bands, demanding that they be removed.
The "buggy" it shook and roared through the sand toward the water, and almost seemed to take flight from the crest of the dunes lower. On the left, the sun went down with sanguinary spectacle. Directly opposite and across the water, the dark clouds moving toward us. Lightning zigzagged over the sea.
"Your right" I said. Next to that store. Richard
had the "buggy" with the rotting remains of the store, sending a jet of sand. He reached into the back and took a shovel. Winced when I saw it.
- Where? Richard asked blankly.
"There, I said, pointing.
He dismounted and advanced slowly through the sand, hesitated a second, and then stuck the shovel in the ground. I thought it was digging for a long time. The sand bouncing over his shoulder looked wet. The clouds were black and most were higher, and the water looked furious and unrelenting in its shadow and the sparkling reflection of the sunset. Long before
stop digging I realized that I would find the boy. They had changed places. Last night I had bandaged hands, so that they could see ... and act. If they had able to use me to kill the boy could also have done to move it, even while sleeping.
"There's nothing here, Arthur.
threw the dirt in the back of the buggy and sat down, tired, in the seat. The gathering storm moving shadows cast, semi-circular on the beach. The breeze was getting stronger against the sand ring rusty bodywork of the vehicle. I poked fingers.
"I used to transporting a thick voice," I said. They are taking over, Richard. They are forcing the door open, slowly. Hundred times a day I find myself standing in front of an object that I know as a spatula, a painting, or a can of peas, not knowing how I got there, and I have hands up, showing it, seeing it as they see it as something obscene, as something twisted and bizarre ...
-Arthur, "he muttered. No, Arthur. Not that. Under the fading light, his face was rueful. You said you were standing in front of something. You said to transport the body of the boy. But you can not walk, Arthur. You're dead from the waist down.
touched the dashboard "buggy" in the dunes.
"This also is dead. But when you ride can make it go. You could have him killed. I could not stop if I tried. "I heard my voice increased Volume hysterically. Do you not understand that I am the door? They killed the boy, Richard! They transported the body!
"I think I'd better see a doctor," she said quietly. Let's go back.
- Research! Ask for the boy, then! Find out ...
"You said you did not even know his name.
"He must live in the village. It is a small town. Question ...
"When I went to look for the" buggy "I phoned Maud Harrington. I know a person more gossip than her, throughout the State. I asked if he had heard a rumor that a boy had not returned home last night. Said no.
- But I had live is this area! I had to live here! Arthur
prepared to turn the ignition key, but I stopped him. She stopped at me and I started to take off the bandages from his hands.
The thunder muttered and growled from the Gulf.
had not consulted the doctor had not called back to Richard. I spent three weeks with bandaged hands every time he left. Three weeks with the blind hope they disappeared. They were not rational behavior, I confess. If I had been a healthy man who did not need a wheelchair to replace her legs, or had lived a normal life might have turned to the doctor or Richard Flanders. Even in my condition could have if it were not for the memory of my aunt, isolated, virtually turned into a prisoner, eaten alive by your own flesh is weak. So I kept a desperate silence and I asked the sky to allow me to discover one day, when I awoke, it was all a nightmare.
And little by little I felt. To them. An anonymous intelligence. I never wondered what they looked like or where they came from. It would have been useless. I was his door and his window on the world. Received enough information from them to feel the revulsion and horror, to know that our world was very different from theirs. The information also was enough to feel your hatred blind. But I kept watching. His flesh was implanted in the mine. I began to realize that I used, that I really manipulated.
he passed the boy, raising his hand to greet me with disdain as always, I had almost decided to call Cresswell, their number in the Navy Department. There was some truth in the theory of Richard, was sure what had possessed me had attacked me in deep space or in that strange orbit around Venus. The Navy would consider me but I did not become a freak show. I should not return to stifle a scream when I awoke in the dark and felt crisp monitor, monitor, monitor.
My hands were stretched to the boy and realized I had not bandaged. I saw the eyes that watched in silence, in the twilight. Were large, dilated iris brown. Once one had punctured with a pencil and felt that I ran a foul odor arm. The eye seemed powerless fulminant with a hatred that was worse than physical pain. I did not prick.
And now they were looking at the boy. I felt that my mind is shot. A moment later lost control of my actions. The door was open. I ran to him on the sand, legs moving swiftly insensitive, as if they were logs driven by some mechanism. My own eyes seemed closed, and only those alien eyes saw: I saw a monstrous seascape alabaster surmounted by a sky like a large purple stripe, and I saw a cabin tilted and eroded it could have been the carcass of an unknown carnivorous beast, and saw a being abominable that moved and breathed and had under his arm a device of wood and wire, a device composed of geometrically impossible angles.
I wonder what he thought, this poor guy anonymous screening under his arm and pockets swollen by a multitude of currencies unusual sandy missed by tourists, what he thought when the last rays of sun fell on my hands, and flashing red and cracked his load of eyes, what he thought when suddenly your hands beat the air a moment before his head exploded.
know what was what I thought.
I had peeked over the edge of the universe and had seen neither more nor less than the fires of hell.
The wind tugged bands and streamers fluttering became smaller as the unrolled. The clouds had obscured the remains red sunsets, and the dunes were dark and covered in shadows. Marching and swarming clouds over our heads.
"You make me a promise, Richard," I said, raising his voice above the increasingly strong wind. If you have the impression that attempt ... to hurt you, run. Do you understand?
-Si.
The wind blew and waved his open-necked shirt. His face remained impassive, his eyes reduced to little more than two cavities in the premature darkness. Fell
the latest bands.
I looked at Richard and they looked at Richard. I saw a face he had known for five years and had learned to love. They saw a monolith living deformed.
"You see," I said hoarsely. Now you see them.
He left involuntarily. His features seemed dominated by a sudden fear disbelief. Lightning split the sky. Rolling thunder above the clouds and the water had turned black as the river Styx.
-Arthur ...
What was filthy! How could I have lived near him, how he could have spoken? It was a human being but a silent plague. It was ...
- Run! Corre, Richard!
And ran. He ran with long strides. He became a gallows towering against the sky. My hands went up, went up over my head with a gesture howling, fluttering, fingers stretched out the only familiar element of this nightmare world, stretched into the clouds.
And the clouds answered.
sprouted a huge beam, blue-white, which seemed to mark World's End. Richard reached, wrapped. The last thing I remember is the electrical stench of ozone and burned flesh.
I woke up on my porch, sitting quietly, looking at the Dune. The storm had passed and the air was pleasantly cool. He saw a sliver of moon. The sand was untouched, with no trace of "buggy" Richard.
I looked at my hands. The eyes were open but glazed. They were exhausted. Dozing.
He knew what he should do. I had to lock its door before they could finish opening. I had to shut it down permanently. Already beginning to see the first signs of a structural change in the same hands. The fingers began to shorten ... and modified.
In the room was a small fireplace, and in summer I had come to light a fire to keep warm humid Florida. I lit another now, moving fast. Not know how soon to grasp my intentions.
When I saw that burned voraciously Cuba I went to the kerosene that was in the back of the house and I soaked both hands. Immediately awoke with a scream of pain. I almost could not get back to the room, and fire. But I got it.
all happened seven years ago.
I'm still here, watching the launch of rockets. Lately have multiplied. This is a government that gives importance to space exploration. There is even talk of sending another series of unmanned probes to Venus.
found out the boy's name, though that does not matter. As I suspected, he lived in the village. But his mother believed would happen that night on the mainland, with a friend, and gave the alarm until the following Monday. As for Richard ..., well, people still felt that Richard was a freak. Think maybe back to Maryland or eloped with a woman.
I tolerate it, although I have a reputation for being eccentric. At the end of the day, how many will write regularly exastronautas elected officials in Washington to say it would be better spent on something else the money is allocated to space exploration?
workaround I very well with these hooks. During the first year the pains were excruciating, but the human body becomes accustomed to almost anything. I can not shave and even tied my shoelaces. And as you see, write either machine. I will not have problems to get me the shotgun in his mouth or to pull the trigger. You see, it started three weeks ago.
I have on the chest a perfect circle of twelve golden eyes. FIN
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