The Blue Door

by Joan Sutcliffe
 
The eyes were sky blue, actually more a blue-grey shade in full light, like the flower I used to call lady’s mantle. That was only momentarily though, as at the next splurge of illumination they disappeared. In fact the whole face has disappeared, and I am left looking at the ancient woodlands, now almost eerie, wrapped in their solitude. No squirrels, no birds, no breeze, just a strange shaft of dusty sunlight gliding through the oak leaves where the apparition had been moments ago. At first I thought I recognized the features, especially the craggy jaw and the oily black hair. But it couldn’t have been - Alphonse died years ago. I remember his mother singing at the funeral, a tragic lament that haunted my sleep for weeks after.

A feathery touch on the back of my neck temporarily halts my musings. Before I can turn, however, I feel the grip of cold fingers probing like ice picks into my shoulder, and instantaneously I become aware of the sharp scent of jasmine piercing my senses. There is no mistaking that overwhelming fragrance.

Time collapses. We were jerking along the uneven roads, avoiding the jay-walking cows, the car wheels dropping into potholes and bumping against fallen rocks, our heads aching from the nauseating sweetness of the jasmine garlands encircling our necks. The day was like a furnace. It was stifling inside the car, the windows closed tight against the beggars swarming against the sides whenever the wheels slowed, scrawny arms pounding the doors, finger nails scratching at the glass. The terrible expression of desolation in eyes huge from starvation was unnerving, but we felt too sick to do more than feebly gasp for air where there was none, only the heavy flowery fumes.

There is no doubt, it was an unforgettable journey. When I mentioned it later, though, as a “via dolorosa” to Alphonse, he gave me a strange look as though he had no idea what I was talking about.

Returning to the present from the trail of memories I suddenly become aware of standing free, no hand on my shoulder, no touch on my neck. Emboldened, I turn around. There’s a strange ethereal haze, almost like gossamer-thin smoke, swirling through this primordial forest. Colossal trees crowd the space, draped in flimsy shawls of hanging moss, and giant cobwebs looking like tattered rags droop from ancient pines heavy with needles.

My attention is suddenly drawn to a sturdy trunk round which someone is peeping at me. Or, am I mistaken? At closer range, there is no one there. But wait….. those eyes, those same blue eyes are definitely peering now round the peeling bark of the tall white birch….. now instantaneously jumping to slink round the knobbly ash tree right beside me. But again, I seem to be hallucinating. Whatever I thought I saw, has gone.

The sunlight has dimmed dramatically now. The forest seems to be closing in on me, and I was not wrong at all. Every tree has become the sinister backdrop for prying eyes, bodiless eyes. Stark fear grips me. I am all alone in this dark and menacing place of exceedingly old growth that is alive with a myriad accusing eyes.

The silence is suddenly broken by a voice, clear as the crack of frost on a winter’s night.

“Why did you leave me?” It is unmistakably Alphonse’s voice. I spin round. There is no one there, no one at all.

“Why did you leave me alone with those dark priests?” Again a piercing demand, sharp as a knife.

There is absolutely no other being in this place but myself. I am aware however of a solidifying atmosphere, an invisible something, an unworldly presence. There is a ghostlike shimmering, almost as though a spectral image is forming.

“You were supposed to watch over me. I trusted you,” the intonation is unbelievably sad, instilling a lump in my throat so that I am unable to reply.

“Now I am dammed for ever. I am lost. I have become a restless spirit with no home, no place to find comfort, nowhere to feel safe. It is your doing…. You owe me…. owe me…. owe me.” From a heart-rending pitch, the tones crescendo into a dreadful howl that roars through the woods like a ferocious beast.

Perhaps I have lost my perception of time, for suddenly I am back at the temple in Kanyakumari. Thousands of feet stumbling on the shiny black stones, shiny with centuries of footsteps walking the same path, hollowed out in places with the unending tramp of devotees teeming in the millions day after day. We are jostled along with the crowds, worshippers in white tunics, sadhus in orange robes, young women in gorgeous saris and old women fingering prayer beads, ascetics in just a loin cloth, tourists, hippies and just the plain curious. The air is pulsing with vitality. It is like entering a gigantic cave. The walls breathe antiquity, shiny with the constant brushing by of the multitudes, black with years of incense and candle smoke. The ringing of small hand bells, the repetitious chant of mantras, along with the excited chatter of the throngs of people echo in chaotic profusion in the cavernous space.

It was a wondrous experience. That is…. until Alphonse noticed the blue door. It was hidden away in a sort of niche, obviously not meant to be part of the regular temple going process. Sometimes later, looking back in retrospect I wondered if it really was there, if in fact a door existed at all. My mind was so spaced out at the time and my senses stupefied by the exquisite strangeness of the whole spectacle.

Anyway it seems we must have gone through the door, because I do remember being in a sort of cell-like room with a black marble slab, and there was a small circle of archaic looking priests sitting cross-legged chanting in a monotonous drone. They looked up at us, and one of them said something which I didn’t catch. The next thing I recall, however, is Alphonse stretched out on the black marble as though it were a bed, and I do have a vague memory of making a deal with Alphonse if he were to undergo some experiment. Alphonse was quite excited and the same priest ordered him to bring his mind to rest, giving him a mantra to repeat. He brought out a sparkling crystal suspended on a long chain, which he swung like a pendulum above Alphonse’s head, all the while mumbling strange words to induce a trance, he explained, so that Alphonse’s spirit might leave the body and fly to wonderful places. The continuous motion must have sent me off to sleep.

I awoke to the old priest tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to leave. “Your friend is in my care,” he said, “and is travelling in his astral body to the psychic realms, where he is communing with the souls of wise Mahatmas. Your presence here will only be an impediment to him. He will rejoin you when he returns.” 

Alphonse did catch up with me the next day. He was somewhat distracted for the rest of our journey, in fact for the whole remaining part of our trip. It was supposed to be a pilgrimage to holy sites, but after that he seemed totally uninterested in anything spiritual. He took to frequenting all the bars and night clubs of whatever area we were staying in and indulging shamelessly in ribald jokes. Out of character with his usual mild self he would take offense at the most innocent remark and explode into virulent outbursts of anger.

For the following couple of years I saw him rarely, for his nature was much changed, and we seemed to have little in common any more. I was sad though when I learned he had died. There was a mystery surrounding his death, and his mother would tell me very little, so I never knew the why or wherefore of it.

“You are not listening to me,” suddenly I am jerked back to the present again by a pleading voice. “You escaped, you got away free. You’ve lived your life to the full, enjoying affluence and the company of friends, music and poetry, all the things we used to love.”
 
There is a tragic sigh and the sound of heavy sobbing. Then right in front of me in the hazy space between the gnarled oaks an outline is taking shape, and I see a filmy figure surrounded by a veil of mist. Immediately I recognize him - Alphonse - Alphonse as I once knew him, in those dear old days of innocence and harmless joy. But the form will not stay firm, it is trembling and flickering between visibility and invisibility.

“Alphonse, tell me what happened,” I have to discover the truth, before the simulacra, or whatever it is, disappears entirely. “How did you die?”

There is a terrible wail, but now the image is gaining clarity. It is like we have both passed through the mist, and are now standing face to face in some strange realm, and I can see him as clear as daylight - tall stance, black hair, casual dress. But the face is gaunt and twisted in agony now, and the grey blue eyes hold a haunted expression.

“I never died,” he cries.

“But I saw your coffin. I went to your funeral. I put flowers on your grave.”

“That was not me,” he bellows. “That was the monster who stole my body and ravaged all my dreams, who broke my mother’s heart and turned my fine physique into a drooling invalid with his disgusting and ghoulish appetites.”

He is angry now, and his next words resound a note of terror. “Sodden with drink and stinking from the rotten meat he wolfed down, the innocent women he raped he drove my senses into oblivion and my poor body into the ground.”

“What do you mean?” I gasped.

“I am not dead. I am here, trapped in the dark currents of the earth, a lost and lonely vagabond without a body, roaming the wastelands of hell.”

His words spill out in a fury, “O, I know what hell is! It’s the no man’s land where the astral shapes of decrepit corpses howl out their misery to a moonless sky, where scavenger mongrels drink the blood of babies under the eyes of a pitiless god, where time stretches long and unending….” By now he is beside himself, choking on tears.

”What do you mean “stole your body?” I am feeling bewildered, and he is becoming incoherent in his terrible grief.

“It was you who let that evil monk put me in a trance, and then you left me. I was defenceless against terrible demon forces, and I couldn’t get back into my body. It was horrific. I kept trying but something kept pushing me out. I was screaming out from the darkness for you to help me, but you didn’t care, you just…. you just….”

“Alphonse, I am sorry. I couldn’t hear you, really I couldn’t, and I didn’t know what was happening. But you did come back the next day. Remember! We took the train up to Varanasi.” I am absolutely stunned by what I am hearing.

“Damn you! It wasn’t me. That was some ghastly dead entity, an earthbound soul who entered my body and wouldn’t let me back in. Now I am a wandering ghost formless and homeless. For years I have been roaming this desolate unworldly region where no one can see or hear me.” His despair is absolute.

But I am aware now of some intangible threat. No longer am I sure I’m seeing him properly, and my heart is throbbing with an alarming intensity, as though I can feel what is coming next. It seems he is enveloping me, and for a moment I cannot breathe. Goose bumps rise on my arms and my body is turning cold. 
“You owe me a body….” any reminiscence of friendship is gone now. “I need a body. I have to go back and find that blue door again. I have to confront that black relic of a priest, then I know that I can put the time back.”

I cannot see him now, just feel the pressure of touch, like an icy blanket enshrouding me. “I need your body…. I lay claim to it…. it is my right.” His voice is gaining strength, booming in my ears.

“No, no, Alphonse, it won’t work. That is not…. not the answer. Let me go, please let me go” for I can feel a desperate struggle taking place in my mind, as though some other being is taking over my thoughts. Suddenly I find myself considering, “I must vacate this body. It’s only fair to let Alphonse have it.”

“All I have to do is find that blue door again.” Was that his voice - or my voice?

Stark naked panic brings me back to my senses. There is a contest of wills, a psychic wrestling match, dark and violent, a mental fight of titanic strength in the battlefield of my brain. It is a life or death struggle, and I mustn’t give in.

Suddenly I am running from the forest, headlong and furious, as fast as I can, my heart pounding as if it might burst; that baleful cry “you owe me…. owe me…. owe me….” following after me and echoing from every tree. 
I am still running - running every day of my life, forever looking over my shoulder, eyeing every stranger with distrust, often certain I am hearing a voice when I am totally alone on a street corner or sitting by myself on a park bench. I am afraid to read a mystery novel in case it ends in suspense. A knock on my apartment door can set my pulse racing, and I am always hesitant of going through any door, whatever its colour. Sometimes I wake screaming in the night, and know that I have been dreaming of that accursed blue door. There is no haven left anywhere for me now. And I can never go back to the forest again, that beautiful old forest that I used to love so much. 

Bio

Originally from Yorkshire, growing up in the untamed countryside of the Bronte's where she enjoyed the romantic literature of that period, particularly that which gave voice to the restless spirit seeking the mysteries of its own source. This led her into the field of eastern philosophy and mysticism, and for many years she has been a keen student of Theosophy, as introduced to the West by H.P. Blavatsky.