Outside The Lines

Eternity's Gate

Author's Note: This piece was written for Prompt 38 in the Paranormal Prompts book from the Paranormal profile, but is too long for the prompt requirements and cannot be cut for fear of negatively impacting the quality of the writing.

Author's Note Part 2, to clear up potential confusion: 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supremes, along with most other cars seen in America in the 1980s, have what are known as quad headlights, which are headlight assemblies of two adjacent rectangles on each side of the front of the car. For a visual clarification, feel free to consult Dr. Google.

           A quiet, peaceful night behind the wheel of my battered old matte-red Olds - what could go wrong? This one-eyed four-door '86 Cutlass Supreme had protected me since the day I was born and saved my life on multiple occasions, hence its missing right headlights and its nickname of "The Pirate". The remaining lights cast a comforting pool of light in front of me as I cruised down the abandoned road that I have always loved to drive down at night. It was my second home. Little did I know, however, that this night would alter my life irrevocably.

          It started out normally, but then things started to change. First came the cold. It was a warm summer night, but now I was shivering and strongly wishing that The Pirate's heater still worked, or at least that I had a sweater. Then the smell: a strange odor that I couldn't pinpoint at first but soon discerned as a musky, pungent smell that reminded me of my grandparents' garage full of fossilized cat waste and cardboard soiled with the aforementioned materials. For some reason, I have always liked that smell.

         But the strangest thing happened when I turned one of my favorite corners: for the first time in my life, the car went weird. It suddenly pulled itself over and refused to move. Then, without me lifting a finger, it opened the driver's door, which I took as a signal to hop out. I went to the front of the car to check its tires, but I felt compelled to stop and look at the headlights, which were flashing. I recognized the pattern as Morse code, which I had learned in order to communicate with a previous neighbor at night but had since become quite rusty. I pulled my cheat sheet out of my wallet, a piece of paper that was now worn and tattered with use. As I wrote down the flash patterns on my hand, I realized that The Pirate was quoting Tolkein: The way is shut. It was made by those who are dead, and the Dead keep it. The way is shut.                                   "What way?" I wondered out loud, to which the Olds responded by turning to illuminate a familiar dilapidated stone building by the side of the road that I had seen but never paid attention to. As I advanced toward the overgrown structure, the smell took on an overtone of old paper and the cold became a dry, palpable cold, like something that had evolved from death to a similar but vastly more complex existence. The car crept forward at my side, its engine noise the reassuring purr of an unspecified promise. Mist rose off the stones in the gleam of The Pirate's remaining headlight assembly and then gravitated away from the double beam. The mist suddenly took on the form of a robed figure with a pale blue glow and an orb of the same light for a left eye, holding what looked like a scythe over its right shoulder. The right eye was obscured by the hood of its robe. The misty figure then began to speak somewhat slowly in a deep, slightly gravelly bass voice that resounded more in the mind and internal organs than the ears, in a clearly-ancient language that I simultaneously perceived in my mind's ear in English, as if speaking through a translator:

            "Mortals, now is the hour. You are no longer what you were, nor have you completed the transition to your future form. You have reached the Gate of Eternity, by which you have passed, hardly noticing, for several a year on countless nights. You have passed the first stage, the recognition of the Dead." At this, The Pirate lowered and then raised itself on its front suspension in a sort of nod. The figure continued, "I am the Half-Light Watch, who guards this post of the Gate. I am a touchstone of Fate, through whom the Judgment of Fate is passed to those whom I encounter at their time. Both of your times have come."  With that, the Watch raised its arms upwards and in front of itself, and I suddenly found myself back behind the wheel of The Pirate, driving down the decrepit old road beyond the outskirts of my town. Ever since that night, The Pirate and I have haunted this crumbling and overgrown street, always trying to find out more about the Gate but banished into the shadows by the sunrise every morning, only to come out of dormancy at the next sunset, back where we started the night before.