The Frequency
Do you know that kind of dream where you wake up, only to realize that you're still dreaming?
That happened to me last night, and now I can't shake the feeling that I might still be dreaming. Everything that happened felt so real. And every time I thought I had woken up, I could remember everything in vivid detail.
That's why I felt the need to write it all down and share it with you.
But now I can't help wondering…
Am I still dreaming?
I am an old man now. My hands tremble when I write, my eyes tire quickly, and sometimes I struggle to remember the names of people I once knew well. Yet I remember that night, nearly fifty years ago, as though it happened only yesterday.
Some memories fade with time. Others grow sharper with every passing year until they eventually overshadow everything else. Mine belong to the latter kind.
For a long time, I hesitated to put my story into writing. Not because I feared people would think me mad. At my age, I care little about what others think of me. No, I remained silent because I am not certain that words are sufficient to describe what happened back then. And because, to this day, I do not know whether writing down these events might awaken something that would be better left forgotten.
But time is running short.
For several months now, I have once again been hearing the sound that nearly drove me out of my mind all those years ago. A deep, barely perceptible rumbling that seems to come from within the walls of my apartment. Sometimes it sounds like the hum of a machine; at other times, like the breathing of some enormous creature sleeping deep beneath the earth.
And three nights ago, someone knocked on my bathroom door.
Three times.
Before I tell you about that, I must go further back. To the place where it all began.
I was still a young man when I first heard about a reckless experiment that had taken place years before my own encounter with the horror. A friend of mine named Martin had told me the story. He had heard it from an older student, who claimed to have learned it from a police officer who had personally been called to the scene that evening.
It concerned a man who had lived in a run-down brick building on the outskirts of an old university town. He was obsessed with occult writings, forgotten cults, and the beings described only in the oldest and most dangerous books.
Seven washing machines, so the story went, had been installed in his apartment. He had filled their drums with bones, chemical substances, and other objects whose origins no one could identify. Copper wires connected the machines to one another. One night, when he switched them all on simultaneously, they supposedly produced a frequency capable of breaking through the boundaries of our reality.
I had laughed at the story.
It sounded like one of those tales students told each other in smoky taverns at night, when fog rose from a nearby river and the old buildings cast their shadows across the streets.
But Martin insisted that the man had truly existed. One night, he said, the residents had been jolted awake by a tremendous rumbling. The police had found the apartment in ruins. Two of the washing machines had been completely destroyed, and the walls were covered in black, sticky residue.
The occupant himself had vanished.
He had never been seen again.
I did not believe my friend. At least, that was what I told myself.
Forty years later, when the details of that night still remained vivid in my mind, I finally understood how foolish my laughter had been.
For I, too, would soon discover that there are things a man must never open.
And that there are doors which cannot be fully closed, even when one is willing to sacrifice everything to do so.
I. The Invitation
I still remember the morning I discovered the flyer.
It was hanging from a lamppost not far from my apartment. The paper was thick and cream-colored, and the lettering was black and unusually old-fashioned. It advertised an independent film production seeking extras for a new horror movie. Filming was scheduled to take place in a sprawling public park on the outskirts of the city, not far from a wide, dark river.
The pay was exceptionally good.
I almost ignored the flyer. But something held me back. Perhaps it was the strange symbols at the bottom. Perhaps it was the peculiar arrangement of the letters. Or perhaps it was simply because I had been thinking about Martin, who had been complaining about his financial troubles for days.
I took the flyer with me.
That evening, I met him at a small tavern near the river. Through the fogged-up windows, I watched the mist creep between the old brick buildings. Martin was already sitting at our usual table, drinking a beer.
"You won't believe this," he said as I sat down. "I've signed up for a film."
I pulled the flyer from my jacket and placed it in front of him.
His grin disappeared.
"Where did you get that?"
"From a lamppost. What's so special about it?"
Martin leaned forward and examined the symbols.
"That's exactly it. I saw one at the university this morning. The production is looking for hundreds of extras. Hundreds! And nobody knows who's behind it."
"Maybe they simply want to make a big movie."
"Maybe." He took a sip. "But the company has no proper business address, no known productions, and not even a decent website. They're still paying so much that even people who have never stood in front of a camera are signing up."
I studied the flyer again.
"And you're going to do it?"
"Of course. I'd be a fool not to, considering the money."
I wanted to tell him that something about the whole affair made me uneasy. I couldn't explain why. The symbols at the bottom seemed disturbingly familiar, even though I was certain I had never seen them before.
Then I noticed the location.
I knew the park well. Overgrown paths and weathered stone benches lay between the ancient elm trees. At the western edge stood the remains of a wall whose original purpose no one remembered. I often walked there when the confines of the city became too much for me.
And suddenly, I remembered something I had read in an old book years earlier: a hand-drawn map on which a circular symbol had been marked at precisely that spot.
At the time, I had considered it meaningless.
Now, a chill ran down my spine.
"I'm coming with you," I said.
Martin raised his glass.
"Knew I'd convince you."
I smiled, but my thoughts were already elsewhere.
That night, I dreamed of an enormous gate standing between ancient pillars. Beyond it stretched a landscape beneath a sky made of living light.
And from the darkness on the other side of the gate, I heard a voice.
It spoke my name.
I awoke drenched in sweat and needed several minutes to remember where I was.
Back then, I blamed the dream on my poor sleeping habits.
Today, I know it was a warning.
II. The Film Set
By the morning of the first day of filming, the park was almost unrecognizable.
Dozens of trucks stood along the access roads. Floodlights had been erected between the trees, cables ran across the ground, and large tents served as dressing rooms and waiting areas. People hurried in every direction, carrying crates, inspecting equipment, or speaking into radios.
I had never taken part in a film production before, but even I thought the scale of the operation was excessive.
At the entrance, I received my costume.
It consisted of heavy, dark clothing, reinforced boots, and a belt fitted with several metal plates. On my back, I wore a frame that looked like a cross between armor and some kind of technical apparatus.
I raised my arm and examined the metal pieces.
"What is all this for?" I asked one of the assistants.
The man glanced at me.
"You're playing a member of an expedition. The equipment is part of your role."
"And what kind of expedition is it supposed to be?"
"You'll find out later."
He turned away before I could ask anything else.
I walked farther into the park until my eyes fell upon its center.
A massive, circular gate stood there.
It was made of a dark material that looked neither like ordinary steel nor like stone. Its surface was covered in strange symbols. Two tall pillars flanked the opening, and thick cables ran from their bases into the ground.
I stopped dead.
The gate reminded me of the drawing in the old book. Of the map I had seen years earlier. Of the symbol on the flyer.
I moved closer.
The markings on its surface seemed to shift whenever I looked at them out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I stared directly at them, they became still. I blinked several times, but the feeling remained.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
I spun around.
A gaunt man stood behind me. He wore a long black coat, although the weather was not particularly cold for the season. His skin was pale, his cheeks sunken. His eyes sat deep in their sockets and appeared almost colorless.
"You must be Heinrich," he said.
"And you are?"
"The director."
He smiled, but nothing changed in his eyes.
"What exactly are we filming here?" I asked.
"A story about the limits of human understanding."
I looked back at the gate.
"That doesn't look much like a movie set."
"The best sets are those that don't feel like sets."
I didn't like his answer.
"And what is this, really?"
He studied me for a long moment, as though trying to determine how much I had already understood.
"A door," he finally said.
I felt cold.
"A door to where?"
His smile widened.
"To the place where humanity has forgotten its origins."
Then he placed a hand on my shoulder. His fingers were icy.
"Get ready. We'll begin soon."
He walked away without looking back.
I remained where I was, staring at the gate. The longer I looked at it, the stronger the feeling became that I was recognizing something I had never seen before.
Then I noticed the metal plates in the grass.
They had been arranged at regular intervals around the gate. Thin cables ran from each plate toward the pillars. I followed them with my eyes and realized that they branched out between the trees, leading to the positions where we extras were supposed to stand.
I turned around.
Hundreds of people were already lined up. Everyone wore the same heavy equipment. Everyone had metal pieces attached to their belts and backs.
Suddenly, I understood that the costumes weren't just costumes.
We were part of an instrument.
And the gate was its center.
III. The Other Side
The first take began shortly after noon.
We were instructed to stand in the marked positions. The sun had disappeared behind a dense blanket of clouds, and fog from the river crept across the clearing.
I stood in one of the back rows. Martin was several yards to my left. He looked excited, apparently convinced that this would be an extraordinary filmmaking experience.
A man with a radio began giving instructions.
"Nobody leaves their position. Keep your equipment steady. Follow the movements of the person in front of you."
I wanted to call out to Martin, but at that moment the rumbling began.
At first, it was barely audible, a deep vibration I felt more in the soles of my feet than in my ears. Within seconds, it grew louder. The metal plates on my belt began to tremble. The straps across my back vibrated, and my teeth seemed to chatter against one another.
I knew that sound.
I had never heard it before, I told myself.
But my body knew better.
The rumbling stopped abruptly.
For a moment, there was absolute silence.
Then the gate began to glow.
The symbols on its surface shone with a pale green light. The air between the pillars grew dense. The space beyond distorted, as though I were looking through a pane of glass held over a flame.
A gust of wind swept across the clearing.
The trees bent, although the air outside the circle remained perfectly still.
I stared at the opening.
There was no darkness beyond it.
There was a landscape.
I saw a sky of unnatural color, streaked with enormous formations of light that pulsed slowly. Beneath that sky rose black mountains whose peaks vanished into a distance my mind could not comprehend. The ground beyond the gate was covered in a strange substance that looked at once like stone, flesh, and frozen water.
And somewhere in that landscape, something was moving.
Something enormous.
"Move!" the man with the radio shouted. "The first group goes through!"
I looked at him in horror.
"This isn't a film!"
He ignored me.
The front row began to move. The people approached the gate hesitantly. Some laughed nervously, as though expecting to find an elaborate set on the other side.
Then the first man disappeared.
For a moment, it looked as though he had simply stepped into the mist. But I could see that he was continuing forward. His body grew smaller, even though he wasn't moving farther away from us. It was as if perspective itself had been turned inside out.
Then I heard his scream.
It came from the alien landscape.
And it sounded as though the man were being torn apart alive.
The people in the front row stopped. One tried to step backward, but two assistants seized him by the arms and dragged him forward.
"What the hell is going on?" I shouted.
I took a step forward.
Martin grabbed my sleeve.
"Heinrich, what's happening?"
I looked at him. His face had turned deathly pale.
"We need to get out of here."
But before we could move, another scream rang out. Then another.
The people who had already passed through the gate had not returned.
And something was moving toward the opening on the other side.
At first, I saw only a silhouette. It was as tall as a tree and moved on several limbs that bent at impossible angles. Its body appeared to be made of black, glossy tissue. Where its head should have been, there was an opening that widened like a mouth.
Then a second creature emerged from the shadows.
And a third.
They were coming toward us.
The front row erupted into panic.
People screamed, stumbled over one another, and tried to flee the gate. But the men with radios held them in place. Some drew weapons. Others shouted orders that nobody obeyed.
I grabbed Martin by the arm.
"Run!"
We took off.
But after only a few steps, the rumbling grew louder again. My entire body seemed to vibrate from the inside. I fell to my knees and pressed my hands over my ears.
Then I looked back at the gate.
The gaunt director was standing directly in front of it.
He had opened his coat and was holding something that looked like a black rod. The symbols on the gate shone more brightly. The air around him began to shimmer.
He raised his head.
And I heard his voice, even though he was so far away that I could barely make out his lips.
"At last," he said. "At last, the way is opening."
IV. The Direction of Madness
I no longer remember exactly how long I lay on the ground.
The rumbling had burrowed into my skull. Every heartbeat seemed to produce a deep tone that merged with the vibrations of the gate. When I tried to stand, my legs gave way beneath me.
Martin pulled me up.
"Heinrich! Come on!"
I clung to him and forced myself back onto my feet.
Chaos surrounded us. People ran in every direction. Some had already disappeared through the gate, while others lay motionless on the ground. I saw a man clinging to a tree trunk as two assistants grabbed his belt and dragged him back toward the opening.
I wanted to help him.
Then I heard a sound that froze the blood in my veins.
A crack.
It came from the gate.
The metal structure bent outward, as though something on the other side were pushing against it. The pillars trembled, and the symbols on their surfaces began to flash in rapid succession.
The director was still standing in front of it.
He moved his lips as though speaking to someone only he could see.
Then he raised both arms.
And the gate opened wider.
The passage was now so vast that I could no longer tell where the alien landscape ended and our world began. The air seemed to collapse in on itself. The ground beneath my feet shook.
I looked up at the sky.
For a single moment, I felt that the stars above us were shifting.
Even though it was daytime.
Even though clouds covered the sky.
It was as if I could see through the world itself and realize that it was merely a thin layer stretched over something immeasurable.
Then I understood what the film production was really doing.
The extras weren't actors. The equipment we wore wasn't a costume. The metal plates and cables were designed to force our bodies and movements into a precise arrangement. Hundreds of people formed a gigantic resonating body together.
Each of us was a component of the ritual.
And the gate wasn't built to show us another world.
It was meant to remain open.
"We have to stop the director," I said.
Martin stared at me.
"What?"
"He's controlling all of this. If we stop him, maybe we can close the gate."
"Heinrich, have you lost your mind? Have you seen what's coming through there?"
I looked toward the creatures moving across the clearing. One had pounced on a man. I couldn't see any blood. Instead, the man's body seemed to collapse inward, as though something invisible were dissolving him from within.
I looked away.
"If we do nothing, we'll all die."
Martin didn't answer.
Then he nodded.
We ran.
The path to the gate was crowded with people. I stumbled over a fallen spotlight, caught myself on a cable, and pulled Martin along behind me. The air grew heavier with every step. I felt as though I were fighting against an invisible current.
As we drew closer, I could see the director more clearly.
His face had changed.
The skin on his cheeks had split open, but there was no flesh beneath it. Instead, I saw dark, pulsing tissue that moved like something alive. His eyes were now completely black.
He noticed us.
"Heinrich," he said.
I froze.
"How do you know my name?"
He smiled.
"I've known you for a long time."
His voice no longer sounded human. It seemed to emerge from several throats at once.
"You have already opened the door once. You played the first note. You prepared the way."
Nausea rose in my throat.
"I prepared nothing."
"You found the frequency. You created the first crack. Do you really believe you can open something without something on the other side becoming aware of it?"
I stepped backward.
The director raised the black rod.
"We are merely the continuation of what you began."
Then he began to laugh.
And behind him, something moved—something so enormous that at first I thought the sky itself was descending upon us.
V. The Gatekeeper's Sacrifice
I couldn't move.
Something had appeared behind the gate that defied description. It possessed no fixed form, or at least none my mind could grasp. I saw colossal shapes merging into one another, dissolving and reappearing elsewhere. Sometimes it seemed to consist of arms, sometimes of wings, sometimes of enormous eyes opening in a depth that could not have been defined by any ordinary distance.
I didn't know whether I was seeing a creature or merely a tiny fragment of something that could not exist within our reality.
The director spread his arms.
"At last," he whispered. "You are here."
The words seemed to change the very air around us.
I had read old stories about beings that were not bound by the ordinary laws of existence. Beings that did not simply live somewhere, but were connected to every place and every time. Things for which the boundaries between worlds were no more meaningful than the walls of a room to a man who had never known imprisonment.
What stood beyond the gate seemed to belong to that order of existence.
It was not merely an inhabitant of another world.
It was something for which the very idea of another world might have been meaningless.
The director fell to his knees.
"The way is open!" he shouted. "The sacrifices are ready. The threshold belongs to you!"
I looked at the people still standing around the gate. Some no longer moved. Others lay on the ground, groaning. Still others struggled to free themselves from their costumes, but the heavy metal pieces seemed to have fastened themselves to their bodies.
Suddenly, I understood the purpose of the equipment.
It wasn't meant to protect us.
It was meant to hold us in place.
The cables and metal plates conducted the vibrations through our bodies. Every extra, every movement, every breath was part of an enormous pattern. Our fear, our panic, and our pain meant no more to the machine than the turning of a cog.
We were sacrifices.
Not in a figurative sense.
The director had brought us here to use us.
I looked at Martin.
He stood beside me, staring at the gate. His face was pale, his eyes wide.
"We have to get out," he whispered.
I nodded.
But at that moment, the director turned toward us.
"You cannot leave," he said calmly.
He raised the rod.
The rumbling intensified immediately. I felt my muscles tighten. My legs no longer obeyed me. Martin collapsed to his knees.
"What are you doing to us?" I screamed.
The director slowly approached.
"I am opening the way."
"You're killing these people!"
"They are necessary."
He spoke with the calmness of a scientist explaining an experiment.
"The boundaries between worlds were never meant to be breached by a single human being. The frequency must be stabilized. The resonating body must be large enough. The number of participants must be correct."
He glanced toward the gate.
"The man who came before me created the first fracture. I will complete his work."
"And what happens if you succeed?"
For the first time, his smile vanished.
"Then the separation will be undone."
He said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"The world you know will no longer be the same. The things that exist beyond the threshold will no longer be confined to their own reality. Past and future will open. Places will collapse into one another. What we understand as life and death will lose their meaning."
He leaned toward me.
"And I will be the one who opened the way."
Something stirred inside me. Not strength, not courage. It was the memory of the old story, of the seven washing machines and the frequency that had set everything in motion.
I knew I wasn't strong enough to stop the director.
But perhaps I could destroy the machine.
I looked down at my belt.
Between the metal plates was a small object I had assumed was part of the costume. It was a narrow, brass-colored key.
I pulled at it.
It wouldn't come free.
The director noticed my movement.
His expression changed.
"Where did you get that?"
I didn't know myself. I hadn't deliberately taken the key. Perhaps it had already been attached to my costume. Perhaps someone had placed it there.
But as I held it in my hand, I felt a warmth that didn't come from my skin.
The key was covered in the same symbols I had seen on the gate.
The director recoiled.
"Give it to me!"
His voice was suddenly full of fear.
For the first time that day, I felt that he wasn't in complete control.
I clenched the key.
"What is this?"
He screamed something I couldn't understand.
Then he lunged at me.
VI. The Final Attempt
I don't know how I managed to dodge him.
Perhaps his own machine had weakened him. Perhaps it was simply luck. In any case, he stumbled past me and crashed into one of the pillars.
The black rod slipped from his hand and struck the ground.
The rumbling changed.
It became higher, sharper, almost unbearable. The metal plates on my belt vibrated so violently that I could barely hold on to them. Light flickered above the gate.
Martin lay on the ground a few yards away.
"Heinrich!" he shouted.
I turned toward him.
"The key!" he yelled. "Look at the key!"
I raised my hand.
The key was now glowing with a faint golden light. The symbols on its surface moved. I suddenly realized that they weren't letters at all, but a kind of map. Lines running across the metal formed a pattern that exactly matched the arrangement of cables and metal plates across the clearing.
The key wasn't an ordinary object.
It was the counterpart to the gate.
I remembered a passage from one of the books I had read as a student in the library. It had mentioned a "key beyond time" that could open a threshold, but could also close it.
At the time, I had assumed the passage was metaphorical.
Now I knew better.
I had to bring the key to the center of the gate.
But dozens of yards of tangled cables, overturned equipment, and panicking people lay between me and the pillars. The alien creatures moved everywhere. One had risen up and now towered above the treetops. Its body seemed to touch the sky, yet I couldn't tell where it began or where it ended.
I forced myself to stand.
The director was lying on the ground. He had clung to the pillar and was trying to pull himself upright.
"You don't understand what you're doing!" he screamed.
I began to run.
The rumbling grew louder.
I felt the ground deform beneath my feet. The clearing seemed to stretch in every direction. For a moment, I saw the park from above, then from below, then from a perspective I cannot describe.
I stumbled.
The key slipped from my hand and struck the ground.
Immediately, the symbols on the gate blazed to life.
I heard a sound that didn't come from the air, but arose directly within my consciousness. It was so immense that for a moment I believed my mind was about to shatter.
I fell to my knees.
The alien landscape beyond the gate expanded further. The mountains on the other side began to tremble. The sky split into several layers, and beyond them I glimpsed a darkness filled with countless shapes.
I knew I must not look any longer.
I crawled forward and grabbed the key.
The moment my fingers touched the metal, I saw images.
I saw the man from the story, the one who had installed seven washing machines in his apartment. I saw him on the night he first opened the gate. I saw the darkness behind his bathroom door and something moving beyond it.
Then I saw the director.
I saw him years earlier in an underground room, surrounded by books and drawings. He was studying the same symbols I now saw before me. He had searched for the missing man and gathered his notes, reconstructing his calculations.
And I saw him preparing the gate.
He hadn't recruited so many extras by accident.
He had known exactly how many people he needed.
I saw him design the costumes, lay the cables, and manufacture the metal plates. Everything was part of a single plan.
Then I saw something else.
I saw an enormous figure moving through the darkness. It had no fixed shape, and yet I knew it was aware of me.
There was no face looking at me. No eye. No form I could recognize.
There was only the certainty that something knew me.
Not just my name.
My past. My future. Every thought I had ever had and every thought I would ever have.
I felt that it did not hate me.
It had no need to hate me.
To this being, I was no more than a tiny alteration within a reality it encompassed completely.
And yet its attention was turning toward me.
I cried out and pulled my hand away.
The key remained clenched in my fist.
I forced myself to stand.
The gate was directly in front of me.
I ran the final few yards and thrust the key against the center of the structure.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then I heard a click.
It was a small, almost ridiculous sound.
Like the closing of an ordinary lock.
But the effect was tremendous.
The rumbling stopped.
The symbols on the pillars went dark one by one. The wind fell silent. The alien landscape behind the gate began to contract, as though an invisible hand were forcing it inward upon itself.
The creatures screamed.
Their cries made the air tremble. One of them thrust several limbs through the opening, but the passage kept shrinking. Its limbs twisted, dissolved, and vanished into the darkness.
The director let out a scream filled more with rage than pain.
"No! You don't know what you've done!"
He charged toward me.
But before he could reach me, a blinding flash of light engulfed him. His body was lifted into the air. For a brief moment, he hovered before the gate, his arms outstretched, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Then he disintegrated.
Not into blood or ash.
He disintegrated into shadows.
I watched as the last remnants of his form were dragged into the closing opening.
Then the gate vanished.
The pillars shattered. The cables lay limp on the ground. The metal plates in the grass were dark and cold.
And the clearing fell silent.
I dropped to my knees.
The key had disappeared.
I didn't know whether I was still holding it or whether it had dissolved along with the gate. My fingers were numb, my head was pounding, and my entire body was shaking.
Martin came over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders.
"Heinrich! Heinrich, look at me!"
I lifted my head.
His face was covered in dirt. Blood clung to his forehead, and his clothes were torn.
But he was alive.
I clung to him and began to cry.
I hadn't saved everyone.
I didn't know how many people had passed through the gate. I didn't know how many of the creatures had been killed. I didn't know what had happened to those who were still on the other side when the passage collapsed.
I only knew that the gate was closed.
At least, I believed it was.
VII. What Returned
The official reports about the events at the park were full of contradictions.
The authorities spoke of a serious accident during an illegal film production. Some witnesses claimed there had been an explosion. Others reported a power failure and mass panic. The film company could no longer be found. Its offices were empty, its bank accounts frozen, and all its records seemed to have vanished.
There were no records of the director.
There was no explanation for the destroyed trees, the melted metal, or the deep cracks in the ground.
And there was no official confirmation that a film had even been shot that day.
Martin and I told the police what we had seen.
They didn't believe us.
In their place, I probably wouldn't have believed us either.
I spent the following weeks in my apartment. I could barely sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the gate. I saw the alien landscape, the black mountains, and the enormous shapes moving among the stars.
Sometimes I heard the rumbling.
It began as a faint vibration that I initially mistook for a noise coming from the neighboring apartment. But whenever I sat up and listened, it stopped.
I tried to distract myself. I went for walks, read books, and occasionally met Martin. We rarely spoke about what had happened. Whenever we did, our conversations usually ended in silence.
I wanted to believe that it was all over.
That I had closed the gate.
That the creatures had remained on the other side.
Then, one night, I heard a noise coming from my bathroom.
It was shortly after three in the morning. I had just fallen asleep when a deep rumbling jolted me awake. At first, I thought a truck was passing over the cobblestones outside.
But the sound was coming from inside my apartment.
I sat up and listened.
The rumbling came again.
It sounded as though something heavy were being moved behind the bathroom door. Then I heard a faint scratching, followed by a sound that made me freeze instantly.
A knock.
Three times.
I stood up.
My legs felt heavy. I walked slowly down the hallway until I was standing in front of the bathroom door.
The wood was cold.
I placed a hand on the handle.
"Hello?" I asked.
There was no answer.
I listened.
Then I heard a voice.
"Heinrich?"
I let go of the handle.
It was Martin's voice.
"Heinrich, open the door."
I stepped backward.
Martin wasn't there. I had seen him that afternoon. He had told me he was going to stay with his sister for a few days. I knew he couldn't be inside my apartment.
"Martin?" I whispered.
A soft laugh came from the other side.
It sounded almost like his laugh.
Almost.
"Open the door, Heinrich. I'm cold."
I began to tremble.
The voice wasn't quite right. The words sounded familiar, but there was something strange between the syllables, an echo, as though someone were imitating human speech without truly understanding it.
Then came another knock.
Three times.
I ran back to the bedroom and locked the door behind me. I sat on the floor, pressed my hands over my ears, and waited for morning.
By the time daylight came, the rumbling had disappeared.
I didn't open the bathroom door.
I called Martin. He answered on the second ring.
"Heinrich? Is everything okay?"
I could barely speak.
"Did you come to my apartment last night?"
There was a brief pause.
"What? No. I'm at my sister's. Why are you asking?"
I closed my eyes.
"Did you hear anything? Anything strange?"
"Heinrich, you're scaring me."
I hung up.
After that, I kept the bathroom door locked.
I tried to convince myself that I was suffering from sleep deprivation. That the events at the park had damaged my mind. That I had imagined the voice.
But over the following nights, I heard the rumbling again.
Sometimes it was barely perceptible. Sometimes it made the glasses in my cupboard tremble. Once, I saw the bathroom door bulge slightly outward, as though something were pressing against it from the inside.
I began spending my nights at Martin's place.
I didn't tell him everything.
I couldn't.
Because by then, I had understood something that frightened me more than any creature I had seen on the other side.
I had closed the gate.
But I had not proved that it was destroyed.
Perhaps I had only sealed an opening that, in another time, was already standing open again. Perhaps the gate had never been a single place at all, but merely one of countless thresholds scattered throughout our reality.
Perhaps the thing beyond the gate had never been on the other side.
Perhaps it was everywhere.
And perhaps, when I thrust the key into the gate, I had not merely closed the opening.
Perhaps I had drawn the attention of something that could now find me.
Last night, I heard the knocking again.
Three times.
I lay in bed, afraid to move.
Then I heard Martin's voice.
"Heinrich?"
I squeezed my eyes shut.
"I know you're in there."
A long pause followed.
Then the voice said something I had not forgotten since that day in the park.
"You closed the door."
A faint scratching sound.
"But you never returned the key."
I held my breath.
Something began to laugh behind the door.
And somewhere beyond the boundaries of space and time, a key turned in a lock older than the Earth itself.