Solomon's Grave

Something pressed into his left palm. He opened his hand, saw the key. Like the door, it was the right shape but oversized, a child’s toy rendition. There was no door knob. Rather, the keyhole was built into the black wood where the knob should have been. Light shone through it. Wherever the door led to, it was bright. Another room? Outside, maybe.

He turned around. Maybe he could walk out of this dream of his own free will. He had expected to be paralyzed, rooted to the blue floor, but he was able to turn. There was no other door. Just a wall. It might have been blue, like the others, but he could not tell.

It was covered with monsters scrabbling along its surface. Ugly, horrible things, some brown, others white with red splotches, others still darker or stained green. They had two arms and legs, or only one, or four, or six. He stepped back. They swarmed over the wall like wasps on a hive. Their heads were pocked, scarred, misshapen. Some of them had the distinguishable features of eyes and noses, other less identifiable orifices. All of them, though, were wrong. They were terrible, misplaced. And laughing.

They were laughing at him.

As a group, they scurried to the floor, flowing like mud around and behind him. The now-exposed wall was streaked with grime, smelled of old garbage and excrement. Nathan dropped the key and covered his face. As he sank to his knees, he felt their horrid presence pass by but never touch. They were too close to him.

“Nad ei tohi seda votit saada!” shouted a woman’s voice. The voice was young. He didn’t recognize it. “Nad avavad ukse!”

She must have been speaking to him, but what she said made no sense. The language sounded familiar, maybe Russian. The voice was urgent.

He pulled his hands away.

One of the creatures from the wall stood less than a foot away. Its brown and yellow face was malformed, looking like it had been pounded out of clay by an angry child. One milky eye considered him for a moment; then the bottom of the face split. More rotten garbage smell. It had opened its mouth to make more of that laughter-noise. Two chipped teeth were visible before it closed again and the thing reached down and grabbed at something in front of Nathan. It moved quickly and with the caution of a dog snatching food from its master’s plate.

It had the key. The mouth opened again, more laughter and more awful stench. It scuttled away, out of sight behind him.

Nathan pivoted on his knees and faced the black door again.

“Nad ei tohi seda votit saada!” The young woman screamed at him from her hiding place.

The wall where the door had been was gone, covered in the squirming, giggling bodies. Were they demons? In the past few moments, Nathan had forgotten that what he saw wasn’t real. If this was another dream, and it was, had to be, demons would fit in well with this recurring theme.

He shouted, “I want to wake up, now. I don’t want to see any more!”

The creature with the key slapped and punched at the others, forcing them to clear an area around the keyhole.

“Peatage nad! Nad avavad ukse!”

“I don’t know what you’re saying!” Nathan stared at the blue ceiling and stood. He was arguing with a nightmare! He didn’t even know what the woman was telling him.

The laughter in front of him changed to screams and shouts. He looked down in time to see the door swing inward.

Everything that happened after, happened in seconds.

Every detail etched in his mind one moment, to be lost in the next.

Beyond the door was beauty beyond beauty beyond beauty....

Nathan screamed. It was too much; the light beyond the door spilled over them, pushing the creatures back. They huddled in the center. Something moved behind Nathan, but his eyes were locked on the world beyond the door. No single detail could be grasped. Trees, then they were gone; hills traveling on and on forever with no horizon, also gone in a blink; light so, so, so bright; colors, figures beyond the door, standing twice Nathan’s height. He tried to focus on them.

These figures stood in rows stretching away as far as he could see, standing in twos and threes. Hair long and flowing, they disappeared, returned, women, men, bald headed with beards, naked, clothed, wings? No, yes. Anger from them, savagery, love, armed with swords that burned white with flame.

Too much. More sounds behind him. More of the demons filled the room around him. Nathan forced himself to look away from the door. Behind him the wall was gone. A long shadowed hallway, stretching to eternity like the world beyond the door. But in this direction was only black, with bodies of thousands of millions of creatures racing along the walls and ceilings toward him, around him, filling the room with their stench. Too many, they couldn’t be—

He looked back toward the door. The army of monsters poured through it, tarnishing the perfect light beyond. The tall men/women/angels fell onto the creatures and smashed them from existence. But more came from behind Nathan. More and more. Beyond the door was a war not seen in this universe since—

Nathan opened his eyes.

Windshield.

Reverend Hayden on the sign.

He was in his car. Staring at the church. Staring at the sign.

A sob hitched in his chest. Nathan reached up and wiped cheeks wet with tears. He wanted to get out of the car and start running because his heart was racing.

The engine idled. A song played on the radio.

His hand shook as he reached forward and turned the radio off.

Details of the blue room and the universe beyond the door flared in perfect detail one more time; then the dream began to fade.

He hadn’t fallen asleep. He had just parked the car. Couldn’t have simply dozed off. He remembered pulling into this space. Just a second ago.

But he had dreamt... hadn’t he? Another vision. A room. No, a light, along a hillside. Something terrible. Something beautiful.

He couldn’t remember. It had been frightening. At least, he thought so.

Nathan’s pulse slowed. He must have drifted off for just a second, gotten confused when he realized he was still in his car. He rubbed his face, remembered the tears. He’d been crying? Sleep tears, maybe.

No, he didn’t have another vision. Definitely not. More like an extended blink. Details of a large room came back to him. Must be thinking about the funeral parlor. Relief. Not a dream. That would’ve been the straw that broke the new pastor’s back, wouldn’t it? He turned off the car and got out. When he put the key into the lock of the side entrance, a pang of fear jabbed at him.

What was that about? He was just tired. Maybe take a quick nap, set the alarm for an hour later, then finish up Mr. Gipson’s paperwork.

By the time he closed the door, Nathan had forgotten the vision entirely.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Eastside Mall was a low-lying strip of five businesses, side by side along a narrow parking lot on Main Street. Like the rest of Hillcrest, this section of town was primarily residential, but the road’s small-town semblance of traffic served enough of a justification for the mall’s existence. The large sign, embedded in the sidewalk along the road, sported distinctly-tailored logos of each company, one atop the other. The topmost advertised the town’s one small convenience store The Greedy Grocer, followed by the lace-adorned Hair U Doing? salon. Below the hair salon’s name was a blank sign, then Thames Carpets and Breaker Mortgage Group. The signs cast the parking strip in a multi-colored hue, though with the exception of the men’s club set in the middle of the strip, The Greedy Grocer was the only establishment still open this time at night.

Josh Everson slid the door sign to its Closed position as the last customer pulled from the lot with his emergency milk ration. He flipped a switch beside the door. The outside light above the entrance turned off. At the same time, the large marquee at the side of Main Street went dark. It was wired to shut