Volume3 Chapter 42 : jacobs further adventures

The doorkeeper grabs Jacob and pulls him back to the door that had previously bulged inward and pushes it outward. Before them is a boat; sitting at the gondolier's perch is a skeleton. The skeleton sits motionless like a bad children's toy.

The doorkeeper steps onto the boat, motioning for Jacob to sit. "Dave, don't play dead."

"That's not real; it's even got wires holding it together," Jacob comments, leaning close.

"Dave is not funny. He thinks he's funny. Not funny," the doorkeeper says, waving his hand in front of the skeleton.

"Look, there are injection molding marks," Jacob points out.

"Dave, this person peed in the door; I want him gone. I can't make him go unless you row. You row, and we go. We go, Jacob go." the doorkeeper motions.

Jacob reaches out and touches the sternum of the skeleton and pushes lightly. A dark red light flashes in his eyes, and he yells, "Who's your daddy?" before cackling like a bad Scooby-Doo villain.

Jacob, terrified, falls over backward into the inky black water and sinks down.

"Bad Dave," the doorkeeper scolds and jumps into the water, swimming down until he can grab the unconscious Jacob. A grate at the bottom of the inky river flows with thousands of gallons of water per second; the metal grate is rusted open. The water is swirling down into a brightly lit place, the light shining brightly in the inky blackness.

The doorkeeper blinks at the void and tries to swim away, but he is sucked down and through.

Jacob spits up the black waters. The noise is deafeningly loud; his brain stops registering the noise, and he feels an inner quiet. "Never knew this existed!" the doorkeeper shouts.

"This is new!" he shouts as Jacob throws up more of the black fluid.

"How do we get out of here?" Jacob asks, looking over to the dimly lit shadow.

"Must be a way," the doorkeeper states, holding out a hand.

Back in the gas station

Josh Gas, approaching the door. "It was pretty funny to take a fake door to the camping trip. I would have loved to have taken you, but you know, no walls and all." He looks at the quiet door; something is wrong. The door is too motionless. The restroom sign on the door is scuffed and slightly tilted. Josh's instincts kick in.

He straightens the sign.... then he deals with the rest of his nagging instinct.

"I have some chili dogs done; they are getting old; I might have to throw them out unless someone wants them," he shouts, but there is no movement from the door. A pit opens in his stomach as he feels fear boil up inside him.

Josh points at the door. "You're an imposter. What have you done with my friend?" he shouts.

The door is motionless. Josh watches the door for thirty seconds. "What if you're not an imposter but something is wrong with the doorkeeper? Maybe he is sick… if I ate as much junk food as he does, I would get sick too." Josh touches the door lightly. Nothing happens.

He grabs the knob firmly and opens it. Inside he sees a closet filled with clothes he has never seen before. "Doorkeeper?" Josh shouts and leans into the doorway. He steps inside and pats the walls; they feel real.

"Doorkeeper?" Josh whispers and watches as the door closes itself, leaving him standing in the dark. He shouts, "Doorkeeper?" before fumbling for the door handle. He opens the door and steps back out into the gas station.

"I don't know what to do," Josh whispers. He wishes his girlfriend Trish was here, but she took off to go investigate a possible rogue vampire to the south. He stares at the door for a moment before realizing that modern technology is awesome.

He picks up his cellphone and dials her number. The phone rings three times, and then she picks it up. His skin prickles at the sound of her words. "Hey, did you miss me already, hunk?"

"Yes, no, hey, the doorkeeper has gone missing, not the door, just the keeper. What do I do?" he asks her.

She is currently half asleep in a shitty motel room, nothing like the Ranch Motel. She sighs and misses the bed of her rented room. She sighs again at wanting to be wrapped up in Josh's arms while he gives her the fuck of her immortal life.

"What did you say?" Trisha asks. "Oh, the door is missing? Maybe the other gods did something? I don't know, but be safe."

"I will try. Let me call Jack Harrington; he might know what's going on. I'll call you later," he says before ending the call. He picks up the old plastic landline phone and dials the ranch. It rings once before Jack Harrington answers the phone.

"Don't tell me there is another emergency," Jack Harrington grumps, looking at the post-action report from the united forces.

"Maybe? The doorkeeper is missing. The door is here, but the keeper is gone. Trish says maybe a god has done something?" Josh says, trying to keep the concern out of his voice but failing.

"Really? I'll ask some questions, but I haven't heard any activity from the gods today. Last I heard, they were trying to figure out how to null a consummated marriage." He rubs his head and then sits on the line quietly for a few seconds before asking, "Is there more?"

"No, that's it," Josh says and hangs up the phone.

"Maybe he is sleeping? "I don't know!" Josh says, looking at the hot dog roller thoughtfully.

He stands up determined and goes back to the door. He knocks on it loudly. "I am coming in!" he shouts and opens the door. He is looking into a mouth filled with endless teeth, row upon row and upon row. A tongue reaches out and wraps around him and yanks him inside the door.

The door shuts loudly.

Jacob hears the sound of a door slamming shut and looks around him. They are in a room that appears to be miles across, filled with sand dunes 150 feet tall. "Did you hear that?"

"Another intruder, and I am stuck here with you," the doorkeeper grumbles, marching across the sand. Following his instinct, he has never traveled this far from his door before. He longed for the comfort of his door. the safety of being on the boundary between two worlds.

Jacob stumbles behind him, trying to keep his footing in the uncertain sands.

Josh finds himself flying through the air; the thing that had grabbed him had disappeared when he tilted his head. His stomach did backflips as he flickered through 20 or so fractured worlds before he learned to keep his head angle stationary. "What is this madness?" he shouts as he is sitting inside the Victorian library that goes on forever. Its empty halls are lined with books and free of dust or the ravages of time. He takes his first step and heads deeper.

As he walks past the rows of shelves, he notices the book titles are just gibberish. The shelves are growing higher above him as he goes deeper. He comes to a door and turns its handle and goes deeper inside.

This shard of reality is dense, the air thick like molasses. He struggles through trying to shout for the doorkeeper, but no one can hear him.

at least so he thought.

In a world made of pipes and wires, the doorkeeper looks up and stares at a section of the endless void above his head. "Josh... NO, you shouldn't have come here! Who will guard the door? Who will protect me!" he bemoans and rushes forward, leaving Jacob to run behind him.

They make their way through the twists and turns of the pipe-filled world. occasionally swinging on wires to cross ravines. The doorkeeper is always moving quickly. But Jacob is slowing down; the doorkeeper looks at the human. He ponders leaving him behind.

"We are almost there, right?" Jacob wheezes. "I am sorry I am wearing out."

The doorkeeper smiles and sits down. "We rest for 5 minutes, no more." His mind was made up. As troublesome as Jacob is, he can't leave him inside the door. Besides, he is polite.

Josh gas moves in a fairly straight line. opening doors and going deeper, shouting for his friend as he moves. He reaches a garden path whose cobbled walkway is cut into the earth by thousands of years of use. He finds himself looking at the ass end of a triceratops. "What the hell?" he says, nudging the tail of the creature with his foot. The Triceratops lifts itself slowly from the ground, a row of white picket fences stuck to its face. It looks to Josh like the creature had run out of energy trying to free itself.

Josh moves slowly and calmly to the creature's face and pulls on the fence and finds it stuck. The creature shakes its head aggressively, and Jacob hums softly. He pulls out his multitool and begins unscrewing the screws. After he gets two of them out, the rest fall apart in his hands, the boards lying on the ground. The creature stands up and glares at him, then walks away calmly.

"Well, that was weird," Josh whispers and continues walking. The path ahead becomes sandy as he approaches a doorway buried in sand. He sits down and slowly scoops sand away from the door with his hands. After he makes a dent the size of a storage tote, the sand flows out and makes a hole just big enough for him to squirm through. The sand is hot on his hands as he climbs up into the desert reality.

"Doorkeeper!" he shouts loudly, the sound echoing in the room. He begins walking toward the center. "How big is this place? It's massive," he says calmly but with a growing concern that he has started talking to himself. Something about the emptiness of the space just invites the beginning of madness.

Jacob and the doorkeeper stand up and begin walking together again. They have reached a door with horrific teeth marks, like a 20-foot-tall toddler decided to teethe on the door.

The doorkeeper opens the door cautiously, and sand pours forth and flows out and down into the abyss as it hits pipe after pipe on its way to some unknown depth.

They wait 2 minutes while the sand equalizes and the doorkeeper pushes them forward.

"We have been in the sand room before," Jacob cries out in frustration.

"It was a bad turn; got to try a different door." The doorkeeper hushes him and moves into the room. He looks around the horizon and spots something moving on the sand. He crouches down and peeks his head over the sand occasionally. "I don't know what that is," he whispers to Jacob.

The lights begin to dim in the room as the figure gets closer.

The air gets colder.