NO ENTRY

Walata knew something was wrong when all the windows of his house shone only a flat, gray light, and nothing more. None of the frontyard trees or neighbors' houses. No matter how he pried and struck at the windows, they refused to move—clamped as they were on their sills. Despite all the clutter of his life crowding the halls, they felt empty, hollow. Why should they feel empty?

A chill deepened through him as he wandered the lifeless rooms. Frostbite sunk sharp fangs into the rotting flesh there.

There was somewhere he needed to be. Something called to him.

Finally, he came to the front door, though what greeted him there was anything but what he was familiar with. Rather than wood with chipping paint, it was subtle crystal tinged blue, surface and form utterly smooth. Written in sharp yellow letters in its center were the bold words, ANSWER HER CALL.

Walata's hand hesitated over the knob for some time. The patterns dancing through the innards of the door bore into him an irresistible rhythm. He could stay in that house a thousand years, but nothing would come of it. All futures led through that crystal frame.

He laid his skin to the surface, and warmth hummed through it. He saw rather than felt himself turning the knob and pulling the door open.

Beyond shone sunlight, bold and true. Walata covered his eyes until they adjusted to the calm sands and rolling waves of a beach. A house stood proud at the crest of a mass of stone rising from the sand. Brick was its make, only two storeys, and topped with a shingled roof. Identical to the first house he had bought. The one in which he had raised a daughter.

"It can't be," he breathed. It was exactly as Janni had dreamed of so long before–the only change being the fullness with which reality had rendered the old crayon lines.

His legs carried him through the portal, and as his fingers drifted from the handle, the door slammed shut with an ethereal ring. He spun to find the air still shivering with the sound. The door remained, but the words read, IT IS TIME TO LIVE.

Walata stared at it, troubled, until the familiar creaking of the front door came from the hill. "Dad!" his long-dead daughter cried.

There should have been a shuddering beneath his ribcage and yet the flesh there was still. His blood did not flow. He clutched his chest and thought, That’s it, then. I’m dead. A pang went through him for Feneha, but he knew she would mourn with strength. And besides, their daughter was there, waiting for him.

He turned to see her. She was just as she was the day she had died–wearing a brilliant suit of gold-and-red, propped on heels, and long hair braided into swirls on either side of her head. Her mother had helped her with the outfit, just before her festival date had picked her up. Seeing her then, Walata imagined they had both made it, not only to the venue, but to the rest of their lives.

It was strange. He had always felt it terribly tragic that she had died in the suit she so loved, but seeing her then, he could only smile at how easily she breathed in it. If there was anything she deserved to wear in the afterlife, it was precisely that.

"Janni!" he cried back.

She ran to him. He would have moved, but the shock had locked him within himself. Her hair swam merrily through the warm wind, and a smile baked itself onto her face.

Though she was only half his height, she crushed him in a hug. If his lungs had worked, the breath would have been knocked out of him. The embrace spread a warmth through him he had long forgotten–the warmth of holding a shivering form who had no other capacity in such a moment but to love completely. Tears should have come, but he supposed that was yet another cost of death.

Janni disconnected herself and pinched her nose in humor. "You got so old!" she laughed. Then her expression shifted to sadness. "Did it really take that long? I lost track of time...."

Walata put a hand on her shoulder. "Forget that. Let's get inside. Oh, I'm dreadfully tired." And it was true, he was. Not physically, of course. More emotion had channeled itself through him since walking through the door than in the past year.

She brightened at that. "Yes! We can make sandwiches, and you can tell me all that I've missed! It's all I've been thinking about." Her eyes drifted to the door behind him, a curious look tugging at the seams of her happiness. "That's interesting."

Walata glanced behind to find the door just as it was the last he had seen it. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'll tell you later."

Time passed. Maybe it was days or weeks, but the sun there did not turn, trapped as it was at its zenith, cursed to shine heat down forever.

Walata had a lifetime to tell, and so the stories flowed. As each ended, Janni demanded another. What had happened to her best friends? Had Mom ever gotten that raise, or had she finally quit? Had they gotten any new pets? What about her younger brother, Samaza? And on and on and on, and the more he told, the greater grew the hunger within her starry-eyed gaze.

One of the only times she faltered was when he told her how they had moved after her death. A chill seemed to spread through the house at the falling of her smile, but it only lasted an hour or so. However shallow its heat, the sun there seemed able to warm anything.

Never did they approach her death or any of the aftermath.

Hungry as she seemed, they both needed breaks to stand and stretch their legs; to breathe in the eternal summer. Sometimes they played whatever games lay around, though so few were fun to play with two. Walata finally taught her proper chess. The TV still worked, so Janni showed him her favorite shows.

Walata walked the beach at times, and it was there he noticed something that troubled him deeply. No matter which direction he walked, he eventually came back to the house on its stony hill. The beach showed no sign of curving, and neither was the distance terribly far. He discovered there was a point where he could stand and see the house, very small, when he looked in either direction.

It shook the soul within the shell of his body, and he tried to cross the grassy-dunes behind the house to see what lay beyond. It took longer, and just as he began to worry if he might get lost, the dunes ended. There only lay another beach, and rising up out of it was a mass of stones with a brick house.

The door always stood there. He had stopped trying to puzzle what its words meant–he was living there, and that was all that mattered. His walks never again led him so far from the house.

During one of the thousand lunches they shared, the time when they ate sandwiches, he remembered something. "Was the door always here?"

Janni hesitated before answering. "Yeah. I came through it, just like you did."

"What did it say before you went through?"

She thought for a moment. "'WHAT YOU WANTED'. It was right, but it wasn't all I wanted. You weren't there, for a start."

"It said something different before I got here, didn't it?"

A troubled look swept over her, and she lowered the sandwich to her plate. "Yeah.”

A moment of silence. “What did it say?”

Janni’s gaze had turned as plastic as a doll’s–so pinned was it to the table. “It said, 'NO ENTRY'."

Some time later, Walata returned from a walk to find a note written on lined paper on the dining room table. A weight pulled on his heart and dragged the rest of him to the chair already pulled out.

Dad,

I can't take it anymore. I've been here so long. I hope you can forgive me for this. I understand if you don’t. The door's been calling me since you got here, and I would bring you with me, but its call is only for me. I feel it. I'm so sorry. I love you.

He slammed it back to the table and ran out the house, nearly tumbling down the stone hillside. The door was there, and as he ran to it, he saw the words had changed, still bold and yellow.

NO ENTRY, they read. No matter how much he pulled on the knob and pounded on the ringing crystal, it refused to open; and as he despaired in the sand, the gentle sunlight pouring down burned his soul.