The scene was too detailed to be a place in a dream or part of the
hallucination-riddled world of senile dementia. He was not a demented
old fool, after all. Old, yes. A fool, probably. But not demented.
He returned his attention to the doorway again--and suddenly wondered
what it looked like from the side. He imagined a long tube of
perfectly nonreflective ebony leading straight off into the night more
or less like an oil pipeline stretching across Alaskan tundra, boring
through mountains in some cases and suspended in thin air when it
crossed less lofty territories, until it reached the curve of the
earth, where it continued straight and true, unbending, off into space,
a tunnel to the stars.
When he walked to one end of the thirty-foot-wide blot and looked at
the side of it, he discovered something utterly different from--but
quite as strange as-- the pipeline image in his mind. The forest lay
behind the enormous portal, unchanged as far as he could tell: the moon
shone down, the trees rose as if responding to the caress of that
silvery light, and an owl hooted far away. The doorway disappeared
when viewed from the side. Its width, if it had any width at all, was
as thin as a thread or as a well-stropped razor blade.
He walked all the way around to the back of it.
Viewed from a point a hundred and eighty degrees from his first
position, the doorway was the same thirty-foot circle of featureless
mystery. From that reverse perspective, it seemed to have swallowed
not part of the forest but the meadow and the house at the top of the
rise. It was like a great paper-thin black coin balanced on edge.
He moved to take another look at the side of it. From that angle, he
couldn't make out even the finest filament of supernatural blackness
against the lesser darkness of the night. He felt for the edge with
one hand, but he encountered only empty air.
From the side, the doorway simply didn't exist-- which was a concept
that made him dizzy.
He faced the invisible edge of the damned thing, then leaned to his
left, looking around at what he thought of as the 'front' of the
doorway. He shoved his left hand into it as deeply as before.
He was surprised at his boldness and knew he was being too quick to
assume that the phenomenon was, after all, harmless. Curiosity, that
old killer of cats--and not a few human beings--had him in its grip.
Without withdrawing his left hand, he leaned to the right and looked at
the 'back' of the doorway. His fingers had not poked through the far
side.
He pushed his hand deeper into the front of the portal, but it still
did not appear out of the back. The doorway was as thin as a razor
blade, yet he had fourteen to sixteen inches of hand and forearm thrust
into it.
Where had his hand gone?
Shivering, he withdrew his hand from the enigma and returned to the
meadow, once more facing the 'front' of the portal.
He wondered what would happen to him if he stepped through the doorway,
both feet, all the way, with no tether to the world he knew. What
