Episode 63 · Open the Door

Soles went to the slab.

He put his right palm on the roots.

The warmth came faster than on Thursday. It was no longer a surprise. It rose through his palm, his wrist, his elbow, and in his chest the place that had widened widened again. Not much. A finger’s width. Enough for him to know it would not close. The pain in his ribs went quiet while his hand stayed on the stone, the way a dog goes quiet when someone bigger than its master walks into the house.

The dust rose. Every lantern flickered at once. The slab drew back without a sound, a hand’s width, two, a step.

The lawyer picked up a lantern and went through the gap without looking at Soles. One of the men from the wall followed him.

Soles kept his palm on the stone. On Thursday the slab had stayed open only while a hand held it. If he let go now, the lawyer and his man would be shut in on the far side, and on this side would be the others: Krista with a hand on her shoulder, Tesa bent over her broken hand, Maxim on his knees. Soles did not know what the men around them would do to keep a door from closing on their master.

He counted. Seconds. Breaths. The lawyer’s footsteps beyond the slab, crossing the round room, passing the man carved on his back with the tree growing from his chest. The steps stopped, turned, went on. A man searching. Then left, toward the low gap the size of a pantry door.

They stopped.

The silence on the other side went on so long that Soles heard water drip from the ceiling behind him. One drop. Another.

Then the steps came back. Faster.

The lawyer came out through the gap with the lantern in his hand. His man stopped beside the opening, facing the room. The lawyer was not smiling anymore. His face was the same, the same pleasant features, the same smooth skin, but without the smile it belonged to someone else. He stopped close enough for Soles to feel his breath.

— There’s a chest in there, he said quietly. Closed. The lid put back neatly. Nothing inside. Only a stain on the bottom. Oil. Long, curved. About a palm and a half.

He held up his free hand, fingers together, to show the length.

— Oil doesn’t stay fresh on wood, Mr. Soles. Something wrapped in oiled leather lay there until very recently.

His eyes went to Soles’s jacket. To the place under the arm, against the ribs.

On Thursday Soles had closed the lid so that no one would see at a glance that the chest had been opened. He had thought about the lid. He had not thought about oil.

— Search them, he said, still looking at Soles. All of them. Him first.

The faceless man took his hand off Krista’s shoulder.

Then, in the round room beyond the gap, came a sound that was neither footstep nor drop.

A long creak. Wood on stone.

They all turned. Even the men from the wall.

Through the gap between the slab and the wall, part of the round room could be seen, faintly lit by the lanterns. On the nearest wall, among the rows of signs, where there had been no door, a door was opening. Narrow, old, wooden, with iron hinges. Beyond it was light. Not lantern light. A warm afternoon light, with dust floating in it.

A smell of melted wax and old paper reached the chamber.

Krista dropped her notebook.

— I know this place, she said, and her voice broke. I’ve never been there. And I know it.

The faceless man had stopped halfway to Soles, one hand still raised. He was looking through the gap at the wooden door. So were the men who held Maxim and Tesa. So was the lawyer, the lantern hanging by his leg.

Maxim lifted his forehead from the floor. The man behind him did not push it down again. He had forgotten Maxim for as long as the door stayed open.

Krista took a step.

— No, Soles said.

She did not hear him. Or she heard and it did not matter. She took another step, then another, arms at her sides, face turned toward the light, the way you turn toward a voice calling you by a name only one person ever used.

— Let her go, the lawyer said quietly.

The faceless man lowered his hand.

The lawyer was watching Krista. The anger had gone from his face, and so had the smile. What replaced them was colder than both: interest. The interest of a man who had spent weeks at a door with a chisel and a drill and now saw, for the first time, that beyond it there were more doors.

Krista passed Soles, so close that her hair brushed his cheek. She did not look at him. She went through the gap, into the round room, past the carved man with the tree in his chest, and stopped on the threshold of the wooden door.

Soles could see part of her. A shoulder, a cheek, a hand lifted and stopped a finger’s width from the frame. Beyond her, in the afternoon light, stood a long table covered in paper. A candle burned half down in a tin holder. Someone sat at the table with their back to the door, bent over a sheet, writing.

Soles could not see who. Only a bent back and a hand moving slowly across the page, as if each letter cost something.

The door had not been there on Thursday. Krista had stood in that same room with her phone raised, and the wall had stayed a wall. Whatever had changed since Thursday had changed in her, not in the wall.

— Krista, he said, louder.

Krista’s hand came down on the doorframe.

The person at the table stopped writing.

And the lawyer turned back to Soles.

— Him, he said. Now.

The faceless man came. He did not hurry. He had no reason to. Soles stood with his palm pressed to the slab and could not take a step. If he took his hand away, the stone might close, and Krista would be left on the other side, with that door open in front of her and whoever sat at the table.