The Gatekeepers

It was just another night of May.

The weather was strangely damp, in spite of the season. Broderick hid himself under the blankets and thought about the following days. His father had decided to move to a better job, in a better company in another place, far away from there. The prospective of living in a bigger city scared him, but not as much as dwelling in a urban jungle of grayness and cold floors. "You'll do good, Rick. You'll do just fine" said his father. Rick was not that sure.

He loved that town. Ballburg was nearly a village, and even as time passed it did not grew nor diminished. It felt like it would be eternal and forever like it always was. Rick loved how the stars could be seen at night, how the willows grew in the sidewalks, when it rained and it washed all the way through St. Antonia Street; the smell of new made bread from Big Al's family bakery, the secret hideout he built by himself near the woods, where he kept his comics and some cookies and other provisions, just in case of an incoming end of times.

However, he had to follow his father and it seemed definitive. The day before he had avoided saying goodbye to his friends and spent the whole day in his bedroom, peeking throught the window to see if anyone would come to talk to him. Big Al came once, but did not insist, and left soon afterwards. Rick felt a little bit upset and disappointed. Maybe Big Al should have insisted more. No one came for him, though he was certain that their departure from that small town would have been news heard anywhere. Maybe even noticed in the newspapers that day, he wondered.

He could not sleep, at any rate. The blankets felt too warm and he felt his skin clamp with sweat. He threw them aside and opened his window. Outside the night was rather muffled. The neighborhood seemed quiet, except for some cats that querreled once in a while in a roof somewhere. The wind was not blowing, the trees were static and the stars seemed painted in the sky, pale and faint. Beyond the limits of Ballburg he saw the only road that crossed the town silent without cars nor trucks. 

But then, Rick noticed the slightest trace of gold crossing somewhere near the woods. He realized that that happened oddly near his private hideout and found that queer. Perhaps he should check that out? It would be his last night there anyway. Once, he tried to sleep over in the hideout without his father knowing, though he was quite unsuccessful. Amidst his not so comfortable sleep in a bed of leaves, he heard someone shouting his name in the woods. Afraid of being discovered, he simply ran back home, where his father was waiting, in disbelief and anger. Rick was grounded for two weeks after the incident, but at least his hideout was not found.

Grabbing his backpack and flashlight, he sneaked out still wearing his pajamas, though he had the care to put his sneakers on and to stuff his towel inside one of his pack pockets. He crept carefully until he reached the front door, and then he was gone.

Rick knew every single street that existed in Ballburg, mostly because of his walks and plays with Big Al and Alan and Fra. Everybody would know that they were playing, not because of the noise or anything, but because they used to use the whole town as playground for their games. It could represent both the smallness of Ballburg - often called Smallburg, for all that mattered - or the grandiousness of the children's play, which seemed much more accurate, since the town were not that small either. Should he know his way, he would remember very clearly about each time he had first found them, as Jacko The Pirate or Eddie Dane the Gunslinger or Sir Plume of Roundhill, and so on. 

Lurking behind the barber shop and following the alley that led to the gas post of Mr. George, he found no one. Blessing his luck, he even stopped moving so slowly and started to walk swiftly and more unworried. The road beside the gas post was flanked by high grass, and in a sharp turn to the left where the "Welcome To SmBallburg" stood he strode.

Walking past the grass and shrubs that hindered his movement was not a challenge for him, he had done that so many times before. Soon the unseen path followed towards the woods, which lied tall but compact in the far borders of town. Rick would soon find the right rocks and figure the way to his hideout. He was searching for anything that would seem to be the source of that golden light, but he did not see anything out of usual. The trees were broad and had sharp leaves, hiding the night sky from him as he entered deeper in their grounds. The earth was moist as if it had rained, but Rick did not know if the rain had happened at tall. He held his flashlight tight and decided that that would be the right time to light it up. Turning on the cranky switch took a while, but he finally did it and pointed the mechanic light towards the dark under the leaves.

There it was, his private bunker. Cleverly built in the middle of three particularly big oaktrees that grew too close to each other, he fixed the wooden roof with some scraps from the carpentry and did some personal decoration in its insides. Up the den he had spread many leaves and some mud as camoufflage, and at its sides he nailed the sheets of some sort of rough plastic used in tents. It was more a hole in the ground than a lodge, but it seemed to work as hideout just fine.

Rick crawled inside and saw his comics, half buried in soil and wrinkled by humidity. He cursed for having forgotten to put them in the plastic bag the last time he had been there, but nothing could be done then. He put them in the bag anyway, with a taint of annoyance in his face, and checked for the survival package he had hidden there. Food, water, a tiny medical kit, one battery, scissor, knife, a pair of clothes and socks, and that was it. Rick was especially proud of his insight of managing to think of a pair of socks, since it would be terrible if he had to keep living in a post-apocaliptic Ballburg wearing the same dirty ones.

As there was nothing unusual in the hideout, Rick crawled outside and began his search for the golden phenomenon. He had no idea of what that could be, though he expected very secretly that that would be the unrebukable evidence of life beyond Earth. Maybe he would ran into a couple UFOs and palaver with alien ambassadors from Venus, but he could not be sure. Once he saw this TV program lecturing that people should be skeptical and scientific, yet he had only the faintest clue of what that meant.

Striding in the woods, he held his flashlight and walked over the same places without finding anything different or extraterrestrial. But then he glimpsed a quick brightness right where the trees would end and the wide crops of corn would soon start to be visible, should the sun rise again in the next day. His pajamas were already soiled with black earth, but he did not care. He kept following invisible tracks among the oaktrees and then he divised a tiny golden streak gleaming in the night.

In the other side of the woods the air was much cleaner and fresher. The rambling of the breeze was soft, and the trees moved their leaves without much noise. However, Rick stared in pure bewilderment to a golden streak that crossed the nocturne darkness, crossing star and clouds in a perfect line. The streak would run again through the same route to form a square made bright. To Rick it seemed like a door being drawn with golden ink by God's hand. It was huge.

The light lines shone in the dark without going away. Its radiance grew stronger, and then it opened from the inside. Silently, a door made of the night and of the stars simply appeared out of thin air. Behind it, there was a light that overhelmed everything. Rick could only protect his eyes with the back of his hand, but after a while he was able to see what was coming from that door of wonders.

A shadow was standing. The shade of a giant, with limbs and head and body that resembled much those of a human, yet much bigger and strange. Its shapes were round and long, its features concealed in the shadows cast by the tempest of lights behind it. It just stood there for a long while.

And Rick just stared at him. He believed in every single detail of that mad appearance: it was there and it was truest than anything he had ever saw or heard or felt. Tears poured from his eyes, but he did not feel until his mouth tasted their unexpected saltyness.

"Who...who are you, mister?", a tiny voice claimed.

Rick woke up from his bewilderment and searched for the child that had spoken, only to notice that he was the one. He was speaking to the shadow giant under the threshold of light.

The shade did not move, but inside what was supposed to be his head a white globe opened and shone opaque. Rick felt his gaze upon him as if the weight of many ages were put over his back. He felt tired and weary and old. He wanted to scream, but he had no mouth, and no one to speak with. He was alone, yet everything happened in front of him, and behind him. He was supposed to be there and could not leave unless many weird and bizarre things would happen to everything and everyone. He was prisoner of the Door. He could not leave, never.

But he was leaving.

"THE GATEKEEPERS...THE GATEKEEPERS ARE LEAVING THEIR GATES"

Spoke the shadow giant. His voice was higher than heaven, deeper than hell; it spoke to grandest things and tiniest things, to the oldest things and newest ones, spoke to Rick and went deep to his heart and soul. 

And then he was gone.

Rick blinked many times, astonished with the vision of the door being left open, the golden lines fading in the twilight that preceded the sunrise and dawn. He felt a sudden emptiness in his chest, a sense of sadness and relief. Something that was always there had left forever, and all he could do was to look for something to fulfil that hole again.

He felt dizzy and sat under the branches of a silver fir that stood nearby. He scratched his eyes in a way that only children might fashion, and stared to the corn field that now could be seen in the rising sun light. If he focused for some seconds, he would see the faintest gilded lines still shining. Rick was amazed.

"I do believe it, yes I do" he said, in a half murmur.

"Hey-lo, yo'd betta believ', me-boy!" a voice behind him spoke. Rick turned horrified, just to see that the tree was moving its branches with almost a happy tone. It was dancing. 

"You! You talk!"

"Hell-ya, I do, I do ver' much! If thes' trees coul' talk, they say? Well-o, they'r now!"

And all around him the trees started to dance and chant with awkward voices that soon became choirs. Here and there stones would grow legs and walk as they wished. Butterflies soon appeared with tiny humanoid bodies, roaming randomly around the woods. From the corn field ahead, Rick saw wolves made of earth and mud sniffle the air, snarl at the trees and pack together to go some place else. Far in the horizon, clouds gathered together in the shape of enormously fluffy statues, soon to clash thunder and storm among themselves. Rick was overwhelmed. 

The Gatekeepers were really gone.