The Midas Door (Chapter 1)

A Story by Matt Hawkins

Just an idea I'm toying with, may write more soon.

In 1965 a power shortage left houses in southern England in the dark for 6 hours, one summer night. The shortage was blamed on faulty wiring on a junction box maintained by a private company. Reports flooded in of strange noises and mysterious lights in the Selsey area, most were we

written off as youths using the blackout as an opportunity to pull some pranks, whilst other complaints were completely ignored. The inhabitance of selsey village were quick to blame the youths for the incidents and that was the end of it, within a week the event was forgotten.

The van pulled up to a small derelict house, secluded from the rest of the village by a long overgrown path that snaked it’s way into the surrounding forest, the vans headlights illuminated the side garage, it’s door a dark rusted brown, the window panes, at least the ones that remained were a stained green, moss had grown up the side of the building. Out of the van stepped three figures, one hooded and the other two in workmans coveralls, one of the workmen was holding whilst the other unloaded equipment from the van. They carried boxes of gear to the front door of the house. The house itself was two storeys and was shrouded by tree’s, moss had grown up the west side of the building as well, it’s windows were smashed in and it was obvious local vandals had taken to using it as target practise. The hooded figure opened the front door and pointed a flashlight around the darkened insides. A few minutes later the two workmen were signalled to enter the building. The hooded figure decloaked to reveal a woman in her 40’s wearing a lab coat, she continued to point the flashlight at random objects and wander room to room, inspecting things and muttering to herself. The other workmen silently started setting up equipment on the kitchen counter tops. After about 30 minutes of quiet whispers the woman withdrew a tape recorder from her coat pocket.

“The house is in excellent condition, this is the best I’ve seen since we were on the outskirts of Paris, the structure is weak on the upper floors but luckily the entrance should be on the lower floors...”

the phone rang, interrupting her. Both workmen froze and the woman nodded to them, one approached and answered.

“yes?… Yes… Okay”.

He put down the phone and said “transfer is complete”, the woman nodded again and put the tape recorder back into her pocket. She wandered into the far corner of the house in what was a living room and gasped as her flashlight revealed a locked door embedded in the floor. “Miles, get in here!”. One of the workmen picked up the camera and scurried into the living room, the woman stood aside to reveal the door, without speaking Miles took flashed some pictures of the door. It was square and covered in debris and had appeared to have aged greatly, a large padlock was visible holding it shut. “where’s the key” she muttered, wildly searching the walls. The flashlight beam slid across the floor until it landed on the bookcase not far from the trap door, “move it aside miles, the key must be in here somewhere”. Miles climbed over some furniture and over to the bookcase and gave it a shove, it shuddered slowly across the floor, it’s contents falling to the floor. He stood back and raised his camera again to take pictures of what lay behind the bookcase. She hurried over “get out of the way Miles, let me see!”. The flashlight illuminated a faint glyph, a figure of some kind, “we need to tear off this wallpaper, get to it miles, I need to check on the readings”. She waited for miles to leave, she tried containing her excitement, but pulled out the tape recorder again.

“I don’t believe it, after months of searching we have one, a real glyph, almost intact and preserved by some old wallpaper, I… i’m going to take some readings”. She stopped the recording and looked intenly at the glyph, rubbing her fingers across the faded, blackened wallpaper to the markings below. She breathed deep and finally broke her gaze on it to go back to the kitchen where miles was rooting through a toolbox and the other workman was finely tuning some mysterious equipment. “what do the readings say?” she asked, the workman said nothing but pointed to the screen, she adjusted her glasses and peered into the screen. “what does that mean, these seem irregular”, she queried, the workman continued to say nothing but turned off the machine and walked back to the van and started gathering more equipment. Loud scraping sounds eminated from the living room

“careful miles! it’s delicate, don’t scratch it, we may need to take rubbings of it”. Miles eased up and slowly chipped away at the wallpaper. She knelt down by the trapdoor and gently swept some of the dirt and debris off the door with her hands, revealing another, smaller glyph on the door.

“a midas door...” she muttered to herself as her thoughts wandered.

The next hour was spent uncovering the glyph and taking more photographs and measurements, occasionally more tape recorder memo’s were made until at 10:31pm they were ready to begin.

A low hum was being emitted from the speaker next to an oscillator, a series of wires trailed from behind it, spreading across the floor like vines, hooking up to various machines and sockets, a few even trailed back to the van. They had cleared the room of furniture and pointed spotlights at the glyph, it’s form was of a tall human like figure with some more glyphs circling him, their indentation in the brick work looked unnatural, far older than the surface on which they were etched. Several rubbings of the glyph were scattered about the floor in the corner of the room, alongside notes and measurements. The final light was switched on and she returned to the living room in her cloak, standing a few feet away from the glyph and waiting. The workman stepped into the room, carrying lots of heavy gear, thick gloves, a lead plated jacket and some dark tinted goggles, he was holding a strange contraption that vaguely resembled a fire extinguisher but appeared to be filled with a phosphorus gas. Miles stood in the doorway, his camera in his hand, he also wore goggles but his jacket was thick leather and he wore a form of apron. She stood back and allowed the workman to stand in front of her, she stepped to the back of the room and began adjusting some dials on one of the machines. “we’re ready” she said, as she flipped several switches and dashed past miles out of the room. The low hum of the oscillator began to rise in tone, the screen’s readings began to quicken in pace. Miles’ hand trembled as he raised the camera over his eye, looking down the viewfinder towards the glyph. The workman raised the nozzle of the contraption and waited. The tone continued to rise, sounding more metallic as it raised through the pitches, she sat at the counter, adjusting more dials on the various devices around her, occasionally skimming through her notes. The oscillator reached 52hz and an eerie warbling tone started to emerge from the speaker, “holding… now’s the time to go” she said, raising her voice over the tone. The workman flipped some switches on the contraption and signalled to miles. Miles skirted behind the workman and stood to his left with a clear view of the glyph. The workman activated the contraption, firing a phosphorus liquid at the glyph, it soaked the wall and was sucked into the grooves of the indentation, revealing many other previously seen lines. Miles waited, watching the lines expand as the glyph grew in size and complexity until it stopped as the phosphorus matter began to slowly fade. He snapped several photo’s as the humming intensified, before fading too.

Miles went back to the van to develop the photographs, whilst the workman removed the gear and began moving several speakers attached to the oscillator towards the glyph. After 20 minutes, miles returned, entering the room slowly gazing at the pictures he’d developed. “i’ve never seen one as complex as this Moira, not even in the textbook...”.

Moira snatched the photo’s out of his hand before he finished talking, reached into her pocket and withdrew an ancient diary of some kind and began comparing the photo’s with the diagrams depicted in the book. After several minutes of scrutiny, switching between the photographs, the diary and the textbook, moira muttered “88hz… and a spiral”. The workman nodded and set off into the living room, miles sat on a stool and examined the textbook again, whilst moira started adjusting the oscillator. The workman groaned as he knelt down and prized open a paint can of the phosphorus liquid and began drawing a spiral on the floor, unlike the liquid in the cannister this variety was dimmer and stayed phosphorus for longer, he groaned again as he got up and moved one of the speakers over to the spiral whilst the other two faced the glyph. He turned around to see Moira standing in the doorway. “You’re getting too old for this” she said bluntly. The workman stared at her, said nothing and walked past her to the kitchen and began adding more wires to the back of the oscillator. Moira sighed. Miles looked down at the textbook, the same way a child looks down at algebra for the first time, the glyphs depicted in the textbook clearly meant something but he know only moria could begin to understand what they really meant. She re-entered the room and sat down next to him and adjusted all the dials on the oscillator down to zero before switching the device on again, she glared at miles behind safety goggles. He hesitated and then reached into his pocket and donned his own set of goggles. She breathed deeply slowly adjusting the dial, the frequency rose slowly before hitting 88hz, a whining noise came from the living room, they both dashed in. the glyph was glowing again and the spiral on the floor was shrinking, unravelling before their very eyes. The workman stood behind one of the spotlights coldly examining the scene, Moira’s mouth dropped involuntarily as Miles fumbled with his camera, before he could take a picture, Moira slapped the camera out of his hands.

“You fool! You’ll ruin the procedure, what have I told you! NEVER during a procedure!” The camera shattered onto the floor. The light from the glyph grew blinding, a light blue light radiated into every crack and crevice in the room, the spiral was almost completely unwound, the tone was growing in volume, becoming uncomfortable. The spiral seemed to slow down as the last few inches slowly vanished, Moira and Miles held their hands over their ears as the tone grew agonizingly loud, Miles fell to his knees and curled up on the floor. The spiral, now too faint to even see over the bright blue light the glyph emitted had vanished, the workman walked past moira and miles, trembling on the floor, to the oscillator in the kitchen and flipped the switch on it. In an instant the light vanished and the tone stopped. Shocked, Moira rose from the floor and staggered over to the glyph, it had vanished, still partially blind she fell to the floor near the trap door and examined it, the smaller glyph had vanished too. A weak smile creeped onto her face. “We’ve done it”.

A crowbar was jammed between the padlock and the trapdoor and wrenched off easily. Moira’s smile grew larger and her eyes grew wider as the lock was removed, miles stood next to her, also mesmerised by the trapdoor. The workman approached, he leant down, removed his glove to reveal a scarred hand, a history of cuts and burns were imprinted onto it, he reached down and touched the metal, it glowed a faint orange and then slid open to reveal some stairs going down. He quickly replaced his glove in time to catch Miles staring at him, their eye’s met and Miles looked away. Moira held in a gasp of excitement. “we need to suit up...th... this is incredible, we’re going to be the first people to ever go through a midas door. Ever since we lost Francis in Paris, I thought it was impossible...”.