“Hello? Hello? Is anyone here?” The voice calls out. I greet him, tell him it’s all going to be all right. Nervous type, I’ve seen plenty. Yes he’s in the good place. No the waiting period wasn’t a test, there’s an almighty backlog in the approvals office. Yes, he will, in fact see his wife. I tell him to be patient, there’s no sense rushing. Time is a product of the perception, but, alas this point seems lost on him. Very few figure it out so soon. I grab the gnarled wooden cane and pull myself erect. “This is the gate.” I stretch out an arm to point at the structure behind me. It is made of wood, or perhaps metal, or stone. It is ornate, or simple, it is large, decorative, plain and small. I tell the man he needs only to walk through the gate and keep going. It’s really quite simple.
The man looks perplexed. The lines in his face bunching around the eyes, then melting away. He looks at me, then at the gate, then back at me before saying “my good sir, I apologize for my ignorance but the door appears to be closed.”
I blink twice at him, and when glancing back at the door I realize he is right. “You’re right.” I tell him. A shadow crosses his face. With fear-laden eyes he begins to ask “does that mean...” but I shake my head as he trails into silence. “Nope!” I say, and brandish my polished silver cane. With a flourish, I tap the foot of the ivory rod against the warped wooden door and tell the fretful man “a simple push is often all it takes”. With a gentle shove of my moulded plastic walking implement, the door slowly opens. A grinding of stone against stone, a creaking of wood and rusted hinges, the soft hiss of electronically-controlled hydraulics, the door moves ajar, and then fully open.
“Right on through sir, pleased to meet you.” I tell the man.
He stammers, nodding profusely. “T-thank you...you as well... s-sir...” He says, then he tells me his name and asks if he may know mine in return. I stare blankly at him. After a moment I realize what he has asked, and apologize. “You can call me Doorkeep, but don’t worry about that, it’s time for you to move on.” The man pauses there, stretching the moments out. He takes a deep inhale, and tilts his head back with the long exhalation. When he brings his eyes back to me, I can see calm acceptance in them. We exchange a smile, then he crosses through the door and is gone.
Resting on my cane, I leaned against one of the archways of the gate. The next person to travel the path moved slowly, with their head down and hands clasped before them. Occasionally they would pause and lower themselves to their knees slowly, before bowing several times. A quiet one, I thought, the quiet ones were generally pleasant. As the figure approached, my eyes could identify them as a woman, and as she grew nearer my ears could detect a soft repetitive murmuring from her lips.
“Dear God, blessed lord hallowed be thy name, I repent in the name of your...”
She went on for a little while until I interrupted her gently. “Madame, hello there.”
Her eyes rose and seemed unfocused, before slowly coming to awareness and peering at me. She spoke in a low voice.
“Oh Lord! This is my place of judgment and I am prepared to repent of my sins! I beg only of your forgiveness for my mortal folly and...”
“Madame, I am not your lord. I am only the doorkeep here. This is the gate, you see.” I said, briefly indicating the gate with my plain black rod.
The woman appeared momentarily stunned, then she blinked and began to speak in a somewhat louder voice. “This is the gate... to the next realm?”
I nodded.
“So my judgment has already... passed?”
I shrugged.
“And I am not... presently... suffering from infernal torments here...” She said slowly while looking down at herself and the warped wooden floorboards beneath her.
“I guess not then.” I said.
“Then, this gate... could it? Could it really be? Does paradise lie beyond here?” The woman asked breathlessly.
“Madame, I’m just the doorkeep. I’m here to show you the way onward, but, not anything beyond that. You need only go through the door, it is simple, really.”
The woman turned to me with an enraptured expression. “Thank you. Thank you kind sir. I will remember this blessing you have given me. I have long waited for this, I shall not delay.”
Then she approached the ornate gilded gate, and, placing two hands upon it, pushed gently. The door gracefully swung open, and she stepped forward, vanishing from sight.
Returning to my vigil against the column of the gate, I couldn’t help smiling to myself. The quiet ones were so nice. The loud ones might berate and refuse to enter the gate without promises or assurances, but, there was nothing I could do but show them the way forward. Time took them all the same.
It was the next one which came along the path that showed early signs of being a loud sort. They spoke with considerable volume to themself. A woman... or perhaps a man... the voice rang through the din of the silent pathway. Merging with the song of birds and frogs, and whipped away by a winters gale, I cannot catch the words. As the figure approaches I watch them, their arms swinging about and head whipping from side to side, it is as if they are in a vicious and lively argument with several opponents.
“Absolutely not! Ah but this is certainly the place! Nay, dead? Throw this lunatic out! Get back you devil, back you go! Why should I when you seem to be the instigator of this, eh? It’s the end I tell you, bitter and brutal end. Silence! All of you shut it! There’s someone over there.”
The erratic movement of the arms had come to a frozen halt, with one index finger pointed directly at me. The figure stood with an animal stillness, wide eyes darting back and forth.
“Hello.” I call out. The figure spasms and cries out, then jerks itself back to a tense stillness. “This is the gate.” I say, indicating the gate with my carved legbone cane. The figure murmurs my words to itself, repeating them as if to understand. “Countless travellers have passed through this place, your delirium is not unusual.” I tell the figure. “You need only to cross through the gate and go on. Simple, really.”
The figure twitches and spasms. They murmur to themself, then their voice rises to a shout. “You! Liar! This cannot be the path! Betrayer! The gate is clearly shut tight! You seek to bide time until my execution! I will not have it! I should not be here! I will not be here! Goodbye!”
The figure pivots sharply, stumbling and arising to face the wooded side of the path. As they take their first step I push the gate with my cane, and the noise of it’s opening draws their attention. Head and body twist toward the gate, and I gesture briefly with my hand, saying “the gate is open, it just takes a simple push.”
The figure’s head snaps back and forth between me and the gate. Then, there is a sudden and profound change. The person’s head drops, their shoulders relax, their spine straightens, their hands unclasp. When they look back at me, their eyes carry a directness which belies any emotion.
“He comes.”
“I don’t know what you mean. You only need to enter the gate.” I tell the deranged individual.
“I can’t. You’d better go in there.” The figure says, the utter calm of their voice is beginning to unnerve me.
“You have to go in there, that’s all there is left to do.” I tell them. “But if you don’t, it doesn’t affect me, just do whatever you like.”
“You’d better go in. I can’t go in. He comes.” The figure repeated monotonously.
“What are you talking about, who comes?” I ask.
Suddenly the figure before me crumples like a rag. Their body vanishing into a pile of empty clothes on the rain-soaked tile beneath. A great roaring thunder echoes through the path. An immense rushing of wind, a calamitous falling of rocks, and a rending, splitting, tearing of metal. Suddenly alive with a fear I scarcely remembered, I got low to the ground and looked down the path. There was something at the far end, almost in view. Something moving closer. It rejected sight. I looked away in sheer panic. Moving on it’s own, my body jerks and stumbles toward the gate, falling back to one knee. As I rise, leaning heavily on my cane, I see the gate is beginning to swing close. I take one step, but it is closing too fast. Thinking quickly, I reached up and jam the cane into the heavy stone gate, hearing it creak as the wooden stave takes the strain. I shuffle another step, ignoring the shooting pains through my weak leg. Now directly beneath the archway of the gate, the roaring suddenly grew immense in volume. What possessed me then, I cannot say, but I twisted myself halfway around to snatch a final glance behind me.
With a prolonged splintering snap, the immense gate closed completely.