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diff --git a/29138.txt b/29138.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e57a5d --- /dev/null +++ b/29138.txt @@ -0,0 +1,644 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Doorway, by Evelyn E. Smith + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Doorway + +Author: Evelyn E. Smith + +Release Date: June 17, 2009 [EBook #29138] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOORWAY *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + _A discerning critic once pointed out that Edgar Allen Poe possessed + not so much a distinctive style as a distinctive _manner_. So + startlingly original was his approach to the dark castles and + haunted woodlands of his own somber creation that he transcended the + literary by the sheer magic of his prose. Something of that same + magic gleams in the darkly-tapestried little fantasy presented here, + beneath Evelyn Smith's eerily enchanted wand._ + + + the + doorway + + _by ... Evelyn E. Smith_ + + + A man may wish he'd married his first love and not really mean + it. But an insincere wish may turn ugly in dimensions unknown. + + +"It is my theory," Professor Falabella said, helping himself to a +cookie, "that no one ever really makes a decision. What really happens +is that whenever alternative courses of action are called for, the +individuality splits up and continues on two or more divergent planes, +very much like the parthenogenesis of a unicellular animal ... Delicious +cookies these, Mrs. Hughes." + +"Thank you, Professor," Gloria simpered. "I made them myself." + +"You must give us the recipe," said one of the ladies--and the others +murmured agreement, glad to get their individualities on a plane they +could understand. + +"Since most decisions are hardly as momentous as the individual +imagines," Professor Falabella continued, "and since the imagination of +the average individual is very limited, many of these different +planes--or, as they are colloquially known, space-time continuums--may +exist in close, even tangential relationship." + +Gloria rose unobtrusively and took the teapot to the kitchen for a +refill. Her husband stood by the sink moodily drinking whiskey out of +the bottle so as to avoid having to wash a glass afterward. + +"Bill, you're not being polite to our guests. Why don't you go out and +listen to Professor Falabella?" + +"I can hear him perfectly well from here," Bill muttered--and indeed the +professor's mellifluous tones pervaded every nook and cranny of the +thin-walled house. "Long-winded cultist! What is he a professor of, I'd +like to know." + +"Professor Falabella is _not_ a cultist!" affirmed Gloria angrily. "He's +a great philosopher." + +Bill Hughes said something unprintable. "If I'd married Lucy Allison," +he continued unkindly, "she'd never have filled the house with +long-haired cultists on my so-called day of rest." + +Gloria's soft chin trembled, and her blue eyes filled with tears. She +was beginning to put on weight, he noticed. "I've been hearing nothing +but Lucy Allison, Lucy Allison, Lucy Allison for the past year. Y-you +said yourself she looked like a horse." + +"Horses," he observed, "have sense." + +He was being brutal, but he couldn't help it and didn't want to. +Professor Falabella was only the most long-winded of a long series of +mystics Gloria was forever dragging into the house. _The trouble with +the half-educated_, he thought bitterly, _is that they seek culture in +the most peculiar places_. + +"I'll bet she would have let me have peace on Sunday," he said. "It just +goes to show what happens when you marry a woman solely for her looks." +He drained the bottle; then hurled it into the garbage pail with a +resounding crash. + +Gloria's shoulders shook as she filled the kettle. "I wish I'd decided +to be an old maid," she sobbed. + +A very unlikely possibility, he thought. Even now, shopworn as she was, +Gloria could have a fairly wide range of suitors should something happen +to him. She looked sexy, but how deceiving appearances could be! + +Professor Falabella was still talking as Bill and Gloria emerged from +the kitchen. "I believe that it is possible for an individual who exists +on a limited plane of imagination to transpose from one plane to an +adjacent one without difficulty ... Great Heavens, what was that?" + +Something had whisked past the archway leading into the foyer. + +"Don't pay any attention," Gloria smiled nervously. "The house is +haunted." + +"My dear," one of the ladies offered, "I know of the most marvelous +exterminator--" + +"The house," Gloria assured her coldly, "really _is_ haunted. We've been +seeing things ever since we moved in." + +And she really believed it, Bill thought. Believed that the house was +haunted, that is. Of course he had seen things too--but he was +enlightened enough to know that ghosts don't exist, even if you do see +them. + +Professor Falabella cleared his throat. "As I was saying, it is possible +to send the individual through another--well, dimension, as some popular +writers would have it, to one of his other spatial existences on the +same temporal plane. It is merely necessary for him to find the Door." + +"Nonsense!" Bill interrupted. "Holy, unmitigated nonsense!" + +Every head swivelled to look at him. Gloria restrained tears with an +effort. + +"Brute," someone muttered. + +But ridicule apparently only stimulated the professor. He beamed. "You +don't believe me. Your imagination cannot extend to the comprehension of +the multifariousness of space." + +"Nonsense," Bill said again, but less confidently. + +"I believe that I have discovered the Doorway," Professor Falabella +continued, "and the Way is Open. However, most people fear to penetrate +the unknown, even though it is to enter another phase of their own +existence. I do admit that the shock of spatial transference, no matter +how slight, combined with the concrete awareness of a previous spatial +relationship would be perhaps too much for the keenly sensitive +individualism ..." + +Bill opened his mouth. + +"I know what you're about to say, young man!" + +"You don't have to be a mind reader to know that," Bill assured him. His +consonants were already a little slurred and he knew Gloria was ashamed +of him. It served her right. He'd been ashamed of her for years. + +Professor Falabella smiled. His teeth were very sharp and white. "Very +well, Mr. Hughes, since you are a skeptic, perhaps you will not object +to being the subject of our experiment yourself?" + +"What kind of an experiment?" Bill asked suspiciously. + +"Merely to go through the Door. Any door can become the Doorway, if it +is transposed into the proper spatial dimension. That door, for +instance." Professor Falabella waved his hand toward the doorway of what +Gloria liked to call "Bill's study." + +"You mean you just want me to open the door and go into that room?" Bill +asked incredulously. "That's all?" + +"That is all. Of course, you go with the awareness that it is the +threshold of another plane and that you step voluntarily from this +existence to an adjacent one." + +"Sure," Bill said. He had just remembered there was a nearly full bottle +of Calvert in the bottom drawer of the desk. "Sure. Anything to oblige." + +"Very well. Go to the door, and keep remembering that of your own free +will you are passing from this plane to the next." + +"Look out, everybody!" Bill called raucously, as he pulled open the +door. "I'm coming in on the next plane!" + +No one laughed. + +He stepped over the threshold, shutting the door firmly behind him. A +wonderful excuse to get away from those blasted women. He'd climb out of +the window as soon as he'd collected the whiskey and give them a nervous +moment thinking he'd really passed into another existence. It would +serve Gloria right. + +For a moment, as he crossed, he had a queer sensation. Maybe there was +something in what Professor Falabella said. But no, there he was in the +study. All that mumbo jumbo was getting him down, that was all. He was a +nervous man--only nobody appreciated the fact. + +Taking a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket, he reached for the +lighter on his desk. It wasn't there. Time and time again he'd told +Gloria not to touch his things, and always she'd disobeyed him. Company +was coming and she must tidy up. Cooking and cleaning--that was all she +was good for. But this was carrying tidiness too far; she'd even removed +the ashtrays. + +And where did that glass block paperweight come from? He'd had a penguin +in a snowstorm and he'd been happy with it. This was too much. He'd tell +Gloria off. Stealing a man's penguin! + +He opened the door into the living room and bumped into Lucy Allison. +"Don't you think you've been in there long enough, Bill?" she asked +acridly. "I'm sure your guests would appreciate catching a glimpse of +you." + +"Why, hello, Lucy," he said, surprised. "I didn't know Gloria had +invited you--" + +"Gloria, Gloria, Gloria!" Lucy cut across his sentence. "You've been +talking about nothing but that dumb little blonde for months." Because +of the people in the room beyond, her voice was pitched low, but her +pale eyes glittered unpleasantly behind her spectacles. "I wish you had +married her. You'd have made a fine pair." + +Gently, caressingly, the short hairs on the back of Bill's neck rose. + +"Come back in here," Lucy said, hauling him back into the living room +where a number of people who had been enjoying the domestic fracas +suddenly broke into loud and animated chatter. "Dr. Hildebrand was +telling us all about nuclear fission." + +"Can't find an ashtray," Bill muttered, seizing on something tangible. +"Can't find an ashtray in the whole darn place." + +"We've been over this millions of times, Bill. You know--" she smiled at +the guests, a smile that carefully excluded Bill. "--I'm allergic to +smoke, but I never can get my husband to remember he isn't to smoke +inside the house." + +"Now take the neutron, for example," Dr. Hildebrand said through a +mouthful of pate. "What is the neutron? It is only ... What was that?" + +The wraith of Gloria crossed the foyer and disappeared. Bill took a step +forward; then stood still. + +Lucy smiled self-consciously. "That's nothing at all. The house is +merely haunted." + +Everyone laughed. + +"Forgot something," Bill muttered, and dashed back into the study. He +yanked open the bottom drawer of the desk. Sure enough, there was a +bottle of Schenley, nearly a third full. "There are some advantages," he +thought as he tilted it to his lips, "in having a limited imagination." + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ September 1955. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. + copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and + typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Doorway, by Evelyn E. 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