"Please Keep This Door Locked at All Times" - December 26, 2024
A metaphysical quandary is presented to a college student about a mysterious door...
Every Thursday, Silver Gecko Publishing highlights one of my stories, either a work of short fiction, a novel, or an audiobook. This week’s selection is the short story “Please Keep This Door Locked at All Times,” from the anthology GHOST READERS AND OTHER STORIES, available on Kindle and in paperback.
This story goes back to my days at Bowling Green State University. I was getting a teaching degree, but I spend much of my time in the science department because of my concentration in Biology and Chemistry. In one of the big lecture halls (210 Math-Science), there was a door next to the stage with a note card taped by the handle.
The door is real. The sign is real. My curiosity was real.
I never investigated things the way Brandon Pierce does in the story, possibly for fear that the veil would be pulled back to reveal something incredibly mundane (like a chemistry professor with poor writing skills). Instead, this story was born.
This was in the 1990s. I went back to BGSU about 15 years ago, and the sign was still there. Not sure if it is now… but I always wondered whether someone ever opened that door…
…and I wonder what they found.
Enjoy!
-Kevin Carr
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Illustration by Pexels (@pexels-2286921) from Pixabay
Please Keep This Door Locked at All Times by Kevin Carr
Brandon Pierce felt like he was drowning. All around him, myriad heads bobbed like the waves on the ocean... different colors, different heights, different speeds.
“‘Scuse me,” a slender co-ed said, slinking by Brandon. As she passed, he caught a whiff of her scent: daisies, pot, and the heavy musk of body odor. Although the woman’s hair hung from her scalp like greasy strips of thin spaghetti and her bell-bottoms were several sizes too big, Brandon still thought she was quite attractive.
“I’m sorry,” Brandon said, not wanting to burn any bridges. The co-ed failed to notice the apology and moved on her way. “Christ,” Brandon whispered. Squeezing his way into the aisle, he attempted to escape the mad rush of people from the lecture hall. Never before had he felt intimidated by a room.
Brandon, a freshman at Bowling Green State University, would never have guessed that attending his first day of Chemistry 125 would be so traumatic, but he didn’t take into account the nature of the lecture hall. Math-Science 210 seated over 300 students, taking up the area of two large rooms on two floors. The entrance of the hall opened in the rear with three sets of double doors facing the front of the building. Two lengths of concrete steps carved double aisles down to the lower pit of the room where the lecturer stood at a thick, ebony demonstration table that suffered scars from years of spilt acids.
Caught in the current of the sea of people, Brandon moved with the flow. He glanced over his shoulder towards the front of the lecture hall. Although most of the students rushed up the stairs to the rear exits which led to the Union Oval (and into another one of those endless Vietnam War protests, no doubt), Brandon saw a few duck into a small door just to the right of the demonstration table.
Another exit, Brandon thought, stepping against the flow of traffic and forcing his way down to the front of the room. Figuring the door opened to a windowless basement offering only maintenance closets and overflow classrooms, Brandon knew he would have less of a crowd to fight.
When he reached the front exit, Brandon noticed a second door – larger and heavier than the exit – set into the wall slightly to his right. On the second door, just above the doorknob, was a small, dog-eared note card taped to the heavy oak. In blue magic marker, it read: “Please Keep This Door Locked At All Times.”
Brandon huffed. Over the past week, he had seen many doors with strict, no-nonsense messages like this one: “Do Not Enter,” “Keep This Door Closed,” “Authorized Personnel Only.”
“If it’s locked at all times,” Brandon said softly to himself, reaching a tempted hand to the knob, “how can anyone ever get inside?”
He gripped the doorknob lightly and gave a turn.
Nothing moved.
“Locked at all times, man,” Brandon heard a voice say from behind. He looked back to see a grimy student with a Grateful Dead tie-dye T-shirt smiling at him. Brandon smiled back. The Deadhead gave Brandon the peace sign and disappeared through the exit.
“Locked at all times,” Brandon said, stepping from the door and turning away. He didn’t think about the door again until decades later.
• • •
Brandon Pierce patiently looked at his watch. 8:52.
Boy, he thought to himself, looking at the single student in the array of seats in Math-Science 210. He’s really taking this one to the limit.
The student sat hunched over a packet of stapled papers open to the last page. He feverishly scribbled, punched some numbers in his graphing calculator and cursed to himself. The student looked at his watch nervously as he began to erase.
I know, Brandon thought. It’s those damn questions on pH buffers. They were murder for me, too, when I took this course.
Finally, the student wrote an answer down, looked over the whole packet, and seemed satisfied with his work. He stood up, gathered his belongings, and turned in his answer sheet, thus completing the first round of exams for the Spring 1998 Chemistry class. Brandon watched as the student walked up one of the curved flights of stairs to the rear exit. Then Brandon dumped the pile of exams between himself and five graduate students. The grad students, receiving the brunt of the work, left hurriedly with a sleepless night of grading ahead of them.
“See you, Dr. Pierce,” the last graduate student to leave said with a smile. Brandon waved to him as he tossed his own share of exams into his briefcase. He grabbed his coat and turned off the lights, ready to get home and grade them while watching late-night cheesy movie on the Sci-Fi Channel and drinking strong coffee with maybe just a bit of rum. Brandon always insisted upon having the exams back to the students as early as possible. He held them responsible to deadlines. Why should they not expect the same from him?
As Brandon pressed the clasps of his briefcase closed, a haunting snik echoed in the empty hall. Brandon felt a flicker of fear in his belly. The dark quarters of 210 Math-Science always made him shudder when alone. The high ceiling and concrete walls magnified and disguised even the smallest, most common sound. Windowless, the room was a tomb to Brandon’s every fear. Although tiny floor lights illuminated the stairs up to the ground floor, they seemed to increase the eeriness of the atmosphere, casting vague shadows on the desks and chairs around him. Through the fear-driven mirages in the corners of his eyes, he saw the swollen shadows seeming to shape-shift into various Cthulhoid creatures out of the brilliant, chilling Lovecraft stories he had discovered when he was in high school. His fears always abated when he glanced directly into the mirage, but other specters still loomed in his periphery – always too many to completely dispel. Unfortunately, there was no light switch at the rear of the hall where Brandon always exited, forcing him to leave under the cloak of shadows.
Gathering his gear and moving around to the front of the demonstration table, Brandon’s imagination broke from a jog into a sprint. The creaks and murmurs of the building settling rattled around him and stabbed at his mind, triggering reflexive fears.
“Quit it, Pierce,” Brandon whispered to himself. “Strap on a pair and stop knocking your knees like a snot-nosed kid. You’re a prisoner of your fears, pal. Maybe you should stop reading all that horror crap.” As if to announce to the room that he was indeed still afraid, Brandon began to whistle “O Danny Boy.” His fears held him prisoner, always creeping behind him in the dark with fangs dripping with strings of saliva.
Just as he approached the stairs, Brandon’s eyes fell to the second door to the right of the exit.
“Please Keep This Door Locked At All Times,” The Sign warned.
Brandon paused and cut off his whistling in mid verse. The Sign, the same dog-eared note card written with the same blue magic marker he had once noticed years ago as an undergrad. No one had replaced it in decades. He must have passed by it at least ten or twenty times every week for all the years he had spent at BGSU. But as far as his subconscious could remember – through his undergraduate and graduate studies, and through his tenure as a professor – The Sign had been there.
Brandon lost himself in thought for a moment, his paralyzing fears chased away by simple curiosity. Although he taught several classes in this room and attended the Campus Films movie series shown every weekend on the projection screen, Brandon could not remember ever once seeing someone concern themselves with – much less open – The Door.
Without really thinking, Brandon reached his hand out and gripped the doorknob. He gave it a quick jerk to the right.
Nothing happened. He sighed.
“Locked at all times,” he mumbled and then breezed up the stairs and out the rear exit, escaping the chill of the stark, empty lecture hall.
• • •
The next day, after his Chemistry 125 class, Brandon retired to the Student Union to grab a quick lunch before his next class. As he carried his tray of fatty roast beef, rubbery carrots, and two chocolate chip Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, he noticed Dr. Vivian Bremer scooping mashed potatoes into her mouth at a table in the corner. To her right lay a stack of bluebooks. She swallowed her potatoes, then hunched down over one of the bluebooks and swatted at the pages with a red, felt-tipped pen. Even from across the room, Brandon could hear her swearing as she slashed her grading pen. Despite her ranting, Brandon walked over and stood by the table until she looked up from her work.
“Dr. Pierce,” the gruff-looking older lady bellowed. She was intimidating for most, but Brandon had a fondness for her. “You can answer this question, can’t you? What is Hume’s idea of cause and effect?”
Brandon chuckled. “Is this going to be on the test, Dr. Bremer?”
“Come on,” she laughed. “Your wheelhouse is chemistry, but you’re an educated man. Don’t you know?”
Brandon shifted his weight and looked up at the ceiling. “I seem to recall that Hume says that there is no cause and effect. Everything happens sequentially.”
“Correct-a-mundo!” Vivian exclaimed. “You win the prize. Have a seat and join me. I’ve been grading these Philosophy 101 exams all morning. I could use a break from this pile of crap.”
“You mean the food or the exams?”
“Both,” Vivian laughed. “At least I know what to expect from the cafeteria’s salisbury steak! I’ve seen the size of those cockroaches in that kitchen. But these exams are ridiculous! Can you believe that this one student said that Hume’s idea of cause and effect was ‘I think, therefore I am’?”
“Dreadful,” Brandon mused, salting his carrots.
“Well, he is a football player. I guess I shouldn’t expect much from those taking this as a ‘blow-off’ class.” Vivian removed her glasses and set them on the table. “I swear! Max, my Bichon Frise at home, knows more about philosophy than these people do!”
Brandon let a smile creep to his lips. Vivian Bremer had no qualms about making it known to the students that she knew they were blowing off her class. As well, she made the converse known to those who took her class seriously. Brandon always found her exuberance refreshing, even if she was a bit brash and bombastic at times.
“Well, now, Dr. Bremer,” Brandon said, tasting his carrots, wincing a bit, and then adding some more salt. “I have a question for you.”
“Shoot,” Vivian said, folding her fingers under her chin.
“What’s behind the door in 210 Math-Science?”
“Which door is that? You mean the exits?”
“No,” Brandon said, shaking his head slightly. “The exit in the front of the room is behind the demonstration table, but there’s a second door next to it. This door is larger than the exit, and there’s a sign above its doorknob that says to keep it locked at all times.”
Vivian thought for a moment, looking up to the ceiling. Then she focused on Brandon and said, “Yes. I know the door you’re talking about.”
“What’s behind it?”
“Have you tried looking in a window?”
Again, Brandon shook his head. “There are no windows. The room is in the basement. For all I know, it could open to a wall of earth.”
“Perhaps it does.”
Brandon gave Vivian a sour look. “This isn’t a cartoon,” he said.
Vivian scooped up the last forkful of her potatoes and laughed. “I have no idea what’s back there. I don’t even teach in the Math-Science building anymore.” Vivian took a sip of her iced tea and thought for a moment. Then, she said with a wily grin, “You really want to know what’s back there?”
“Yes?” Brandon said softly.
“Nothing is back there.”
“Nothing? What do you mean by that?”
“Theoretically, there’s nothing in that room – at least until you open the door and look inside.”
“What?”
“The observer affects reality, Brandon,” Vivian said. “You know that from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Whoever looks in that door will affect the reality of the contents.”
Brandon’s face showed a look of confusion. “What the hell are you talking about, Vivian?” he asked. “I ask you about a door in the Math-Science building and you start talking about Werner Heisenberg.”
“What do you expect from me,” Vivian chuckled. “I’ve been teaching philosophy here since before you graduated high school. Of all the people at this university, I’m gonna give you the most cryptic answer. All I can tell you – from the philosophical standpoint – is that whatever’s in there is indeterminate... if no one knows for sure. Schrödinger made that very clear with his cat.”
“Whoa!” Brandon said, holding up his hand. “Whose cat?”
“Schrödinger’s cat.”…