Through the cellar

Never before had he seen this door cracked open. Clark had always assumed the cracked rotting wooden door hiding in the back of the wine cellar led nowhere and was just there for decoration, it's what he had been told after all. When he'd first started just over a year back, he'd asked Jerry, his boss, about the oddly placed door and he'd said the whole time he'd been working here at The Hecate Inn it had been locked with no living memory of a key.

The old wooden door had five strong sturdy vertical oak planks, with three wide horizontal planks at the top, middle, and bottom, each with a long hinge, holding the vertical ones in place with a chunky metal bolt for each plank. The top left corner of the door had a hand carved ornate indescript pattern of swirls, and it had a large iron swinging handle below the middle horizontal plank.

Clark had tested the handle many times before, but not once had it had any give at all, let alone turned or made any indication there was an internal latch.

Today however, was different.

Clark had been tasked with getting a few bottles of vintage merlot for a very wealthy couple, “and be quick about it.” Clark mumbled in a quiet high pitched voice as he slumped down the stairs, mimicking his ass-licker of a boss trying to please the richies.

After flicking the light switch at the top of the stairs, making his sarcastic comment, heading down the creaky wooden staircase and swinging around the arm of the banister at the bottom as he made his way to the back of the wine cellar, he couldn't stop thinking about how much he hated this job. At the age of 19 and having been here for two years, still all he's doing is running errands his boss is too lazy to do.

Clark's eyes glued to the shelf at the back containing the vintage wines, a layer of dust on the shelf where none of the night shift had cleaned it properly in months, his trained eyes flitted across the bottles finding the wines in question. He grabbed two bottles, wiped the dust off with a dirty rag he kept tied to his waist, held them both in one hand so he didn't have to piss about with the latch at the top of the staircase and turned to head back up.

"And be quick about it", Clark mimicked again as he headed back towards the stairs, thinking about how much better his life would be if he was somewhere else, he wished for a miracle that could take him away.

It was the unusual light that caught his eye, and had him double take at the old door. A strange orange-yellow glow was pulsing behind the door like a heartbeat, the light streaming through the ajar door, fading and increasing in brightness.

Was this his moment? His way out? The answer to his prayers of a new life? He'd read books and seen movies where people found magical worlds beyond seemingly ordinary objects or places, bridges, trees or wardrobes. Clark had always thought those stories could never just appear and there must be a shred of truth to them, was this the truth? Ever since he was young he'd desperately been looking for hidden secrets everywhere he went. He pressed random bricks in walls looking for a secret door, or he'd pull out a book from a shelf, hoping it would make a click. There were many times where he'd convinced himself he was telekinetic, and tried to move objects, but at no point had any of that worked.

So this must be it, his reason. Smiling, Clark took a few steps towards the door and stretched his unladen hand out, giddy with excitement. As soon as his fingertips brushed the deep rough ridges of the old wood to push the door further open, and step into this future he'd declared for himself, Clark felt instantly nauseous, as if every internal organ had been manipulated, stretched and squashed, pushed and pulled, rotated and somersaulted.

The crushing feeling inside him resulted in Clark collapsing and curling up into a ball, dropping the bottles of wine in the process. Uncontrollably shaking, his insides still churning, Clark's world slowly faded into darkness.