There was a note. On the door. A note on the door. There are never notes on the door. There is never anything on the door. Things. Things do not belong on the door, except for hands—and this is only when they are knocking—and keys. And the only time you should ever expect to find a key in the door is when a single, familiar pair of hands places it there. I should know these hands quite well, for they are my own, and I am certain they have been involved in no note-placing whatsoever.
It was there, though. No doubt about it. A large, cream-colored sheet, tacked into the wood with a single red stud that glared at me with an eerie disdain.
I drew closer to the door, apprehensively—you cannot, no matter the circumstances, leave a note on a door unattended; it was written to be read. It was placed on the door to be read. As our respective suspicions neared, I could begin to make out the words bound across the top of the note: shaky scratches imploring whomever may come across their biddings, “Do Not Enter.” It was a simple enough instruction, yet it stood atop several more paragraphs of what I could only assume to be various demands, specifications and such.
I crept further forward, closing in on the glarer.
The note began below, once again, “Do NOT Enter”—this time the phrase had been reinscribed so deeply upon itself that the paper had begun to give way, revealing shreds of dark oak in its absence—“without explicit permission. See permitted travelers index below.”
My eyes dropped instinctively to the words below, where I expected to find further instructions, or perhaps some sort of emblem from which I could trace the origin of the note. Instead, I was met with a strange-looking directory. There were long strings of words—names, dates, places, phone numbers—crammed hastily amongst one another, strung together by thin streaks of tangling arrows. A grand compiling of lives, each reduced to a dash of ink. Micro-tellings of decades that would now live forever in their puny umbral reductions. The thought of it all was quite repulsive.
I traced the page for any sign of familiarity. There must be a reason for the note. People do not do things without reason. And things are not done without doers. Things are done by people, and people leave signs. So I set out to find this sign, and then to find the culprit.
I was somewhere near the middle of the page, beginning to doubt my theory when I noticed it: my name—which itself bears no real importance here—had been hurriedly scribbled onto the note, wedged between words. I blinked, staring at the letters. It was my own name, beyond any doubt. My own name, affixed to a curious string of numbers. There was no date, nor was there a location, as the rest of the names had. It was only my name, coupled to what appeared to be a phone number. I was certain that I had never encountered this number before in my life, but here it was, staring me down with an impenetrable stillness; daring me to pull my phone from my pocket, begging me to release its voice. How could I not? I need to know. I need to.
I dialed.
The line rang, and then it rang, and then it rang again. Why is nobody picking up? Phones are supposed to be answered. Why give me the—
“Hello.”
Usually, when people answer the phone they will answer with a question. “Hello? Who is this?” Things of that sort. This was a different hello—a calm, knowing hello. An aged greeting between two people—something less than friends, but something more than strangers. It was the type of hello that demands some previously agreed upon response, of which I was wholly without.
Fortunately, my silence didn’t seem to bother the phone-talker as he carried on, seeming almost pleased by the airspace that my hesitance had awarded him.
“Well? You must have called for a reason. Everybody calls for a reason. Nobody callin’ for no reason. So, what’s yours?”
Why did I call? I must have had a reason; he was right: nobody calls for no reason. The more I tried to pinpoint this reason, however, the more it withdrew from my thoughts.
“It’s ok if you don’t know. Y’all never do, you know? Well, I guess you don’t.” He chuckled with an accent that reminded me of my father: that same thick, southern drawl coated his words as he spoke to me; every sentence jostling around in his throat before it was set free.
“It’s got a tennency to be the same, is all I’m meanin’ by that. Y’all is always hatin’ it here, but never wantin’ to leave. You do hate it here, huh? You wanna leave?”
I did hate it here. I did want to leave. Why is it so hard to say yes? “Yes I hate it I hate it I want to leave I want to leave!”
“Well?”
I faltered. In all my time at the door I had never considered the possibility of an end. I… we… do not end. We continue, just as does the time. This is our job, continuing. Continuing to guard the door, continuing to separate the time. We protect the Current, so that there may be the Before and After. Still, in all my years here, I couldn’t say that I had enjoyed myself once.
“Course if you is likin’ it here, though, I don’t mean to be disturbin’ you and all.”
His words slapped me back into place. I couldn’t bear the thought of the phone-talker thinking I was content here—let alone liking it.
“Yes!” I sputtered.
“Yes? Yes what?”
“Yes I hate it. I hate it here. Yes I want to leave.”
“Right, that’s well enough then. Aaaaan’ I’m takin’ it you’ve found your name on the inn-ex?” He didn’t wait for a response. “All that you gotta do now is write down where you wanna go and when, you know?
I didn’t know, but I took it that this wasn’t the kind of thing I should ask. Even so, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had stumbled upon the note-leaver. How else could he know that my name was on there? I need to know. I need to.
“Did you leave me that paper? The one on the door?”
“Ahhh. Yep, that was me all right. See, I was doin’ my rounds—through time an’ whatnot, you know?—when I seen you at that little desk of yours—you know the one right by the door? And you was lookin’ so low down an’ beat. So, I come back through here once you was gone, and I left you that paper, yeah? S’pose I thought you could use it, you know?”
I sup-posed that this note-writer would be a terrorist of sorts, if I were to adhere to workplace standards. And, in turn, I supposed this would in turn make me a terrorist as well. A weak-kneed deserter, if nothing more.
“Oh! Hey! Make sure you is keepin’ that pen real close to your own name, yeah? Don’t want to send no one else nowhere, you know?”
I kept it real close to my own name. Charleston, SC. March 1st, 1999.
The next note did not twist and swing through the air like the last, but plummeted from the sky with the weight of its every word, landing directly between my feet. This one was smaller—barely a quarter sheet—and had been folded into an elegant spiral that unfurled gently below me as I knelt to read it.
You may leave. Thank you.