Wayne Batson - The Door Within

But something in the dream wasn’t right. The scraping sound was too loud-out of place in the hazy quiet of his dream. Aidan’s mind jolted to consciousness.

Opening only one eye, Aidan scanned the dark ledge lit only by the cloud-veiled light of the moon. There was movement in the corner of the ledge near his feet. A fuzzy basketball-sized black lump was scratching at the ground. Aidan sat there motionless, unsure of what to do, until the creature rose up on its hind legs and opened two pale yellow eyes.

“Aaah!” Aidan yelped, leaping to his feet and pressing his back against the wall behind him.

He looked again for the eyes, but they were gone. To be sure, Aidan waited a few minutes and then ventured toward the corner of the ledge. The creature was gone.

At that moment, the moon escaped the clouds briefly and rained pale light upon the ledge. Aidan looked more closely and saw…

“Fruit!” Aidan screamed aloud. Not caring where it had come from, he grabbed one of the four plump purple fruit and bit into it. Sweet juice trickled down his parched throat and all over his face and hands as well. It had a texture similar to watermelon, but the taste was different from any fruit he had ever eaten. Aidan’s skin tingled warmly as he ate the delicious fruit. Its juice seemed to flow directly into his achy muscles, completely renewing their strength.

When Aidan lifted the last piece of fruit, he discovered an arrow that had been gouged into the ground. It glowed palely, as if it had been painted with moon dust. It pointed to the narrow ridge to the right of the plateau.

Go that way? Aidan wondered. Why that way?

“Well,” Aidan said aloud, “I might as well go now while I have the energy.”

Pressing his back to the sheer mountain, he moved cautiously on a ledge just wide enough for his feet. Gravel and stones toppled over the ledge and disappeared into the inky black distance. Aidan could hear them clacking and ricocheting off the clefts and crags far below.

Following that arrow was another bad idea, Aidan thought. But almost as soon as he’d thought it, the ledge path widened a little and there was yet another glowing arrow-this time scratched into a rock that jutted up from the ground. His confidence restored, Aidan continued along the ledge. As he crept along the ledge, more arrows appeared, until the path began to rise steeply up the mountain. He turned for a moment to see how far he had climbed and became dizzy with the sight of the dark world beneath him.

Don’t look down, Aidan! he berated himself.

Aidan followed the arrows around a gradual corner. Then the path stopped, and Aidan was faced with another dead end. But it wasn’t a dead end, not quite. For there in front of him, in the side of the mountain, was a three-foot circular hole about waist-high. Several arrows all around the opening seemed to indicate that he should enter.

“No way!” Aidan said, his complaint bouncing off the echoing cliffs. “I am not going in there!”

Spooky basements and nightmares were bad enough, but venturing into a pitch-black hole in the side of a mountain with who knew what living inside? That was just plain crazy.

What if one of those little glowing-eyed beasties is in there? Maybe this whole arrow thing was a trap meant to lure me in!

Aidan thought there might even be a whole nest of those things in there, just waiting to tear him to pieces like piranhas on some poor critter that fell into the river. Aidan sat down with a thud and sulked.

I guess I’ll have to go all the way back, Aidan thought dejectedly. It was a LONG way back, with no guarantee that he would find another way over the mountain. Of course, there was no guarantee that this cave, or whatever it was, would lead to the other side of the mountain either. What to do? Neither choice appealed to Aidan, but going back seemed safer than a dark, mysterious hole!

Aidan knew what Robby would do.

That was the problem. Of course, Robby would go. Robby was brave. Robby was an explorer. And if Robby went in first, Aidan would follow. Aidan just didn’t have it in him to be the leader. Or did he? Aidan thought for a moment, and a burning sensation began to smolder in his belly. He remembered exploring Grampin’s basement. He had overcome that fear, and he was rewarded with the scrolls. Aidan looked again at the opening in the rockface. He felt he had to at least go into the cave a little. Okay, I’ll go in. If it seems to go nowhere, I’ll simply turn back.

Aidan jumped to his feet and walked over to the hole in the mountain. He peered in, straining to see anything that indicated its depth or whether it went straight in or curved.

Total darkness.

He couldn’t even tell if it was indeed a cave or a tunnel. But gathering all his courage, he took a deep breath and put one foot up on the edge. Aidan grabbed the top of the entrance and swung his other foot to the edge. Balancing precariously, he stared for a moment into the darkness, questioning all the time if this was a mistake he would live to regret.

Aidan took a couple of tiny squat-steps into the tunnel when an alarming thought occurred to him: He had left his precious scroll way back on the ledge where he had slept!

I’ve got to get it!

He tried to turn around, but the cave floor sloped downward and was slippery like a newly waxed floor. In trying to clamber out, he lost his footing and began to slide.

Aidan yelled and clawed at the edge of the opening, trying to gain a hold, but he failed. With a final shriek, Aidan rolled onto his back and slid helplessly down the tunnel into the heart of the mountain.

Carrying Aidan’s scroll like carpet installers delivering a huge rug, three of the dark, pale-eyed creatures came trotting along the path outside the opening to the tunnel.

The middle one hopped up on the first one’s shoulders, and the last one scrambled up atop the other two. With a wobbly effort, they hoisted Aidan’s scroll up to the edge of the tunnel’s opening. The scroll lay balanced on the edge until the top critter lunged upward to knock it forward. The scroll launched over the edge, but so did the highest creature!

Together, they sailed down the tunnel, following Aidan into the unknown.

A idan’s screams echoed as he flew down the smooth tunnel through the mountain. Nothing he tried could stop nor slow his descent, for the tunnel wound through the depths of the mountain at a steep angle. With every unexpected turn in the passage, with every jarring bump, Aidan expected to die. Smashed into a rock wall, skewered on a stalagmite, or wedged forever in some black crevice of the mountain.

How long can this go on? he wondered. And some distant part of Aidan thought, This would be kind of fun, if I wasn’t about to die.

Aidan blinked as the thin air whooshed past him. His view was the same, eyes closed or eyes open. Black. And still he slid.

Aidan strained his neck trying valiantly to see where he might be headed. At first, there was nothing. Then, far in the distance, he saw a few points of pale yellow light. Then there were more than a few. Then there were many. Aidan swallowed hard.

Before he knew it, he was right in the midst of them-like swarms of stars on all sides. Aidan whooshed through them, fearfully trying to figure out what they were. Some kind of luminous stones, maybe? Sparks? Subterranean lightning bugs? Or maybe…

Eyes! They are eyes! Aidan could see only blurs and flashes, but he felt sure they were eyes. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them winked and blinked as Aidan slapped and scraped to keep them away.

Fed by this new terror, Aidan thought that perhaps the little glowing eyes belonged to the parasites of a gigantic beast that disguised itself as a mountain! The tunnel was actually its enormous esophagus, and Aidan would soon enter the great beast’s stomach and be dissolved in its digestive juices.