The Door That Stayed Open

Personal log. The lights in corridor seven just flickered three times. I am walking out. I am not looking back. I am, however, telling you about it. Before I tell you what I did when I came back to the Yard tonight, you need to understand the morning that came before. It was the morning after I looked down corridor five. I do not remember the drive home. I remember leaving the Yard. I remember the gravel under my tires. I do not remember the thirty-five miles after that. My truck was in the driveway when I came back to myself. The engine was off. The keys were in my lap. When I came in the front door, Sasha was at the screen door, exactly where she had been when I left. Looking at me. Then — she ran. Past me. Past the kitchen. Into the bedroom. I found her under the bed, pressed against the wall. She wouldn't come out. I sat on the floor for a while and talked to her. Eventually she put her chin on my hand. She did not come out. I had written in the anomaly log before I left the Yard. Five words. I looked down corridor five. I had not slept yet, and I already regretted it. You will ask why I went back to work the next night. I have been asked. By myself, mostly. The truthful answer is that I needed to know if it was real. If I went back and the Yard was still there, and corridor five was still there, then what I saw was real, and I would have to deal with what I saw. If I went back and any of it had changed, then I had a different problem. Either way I was going to have a problem. I left at eight fifteen. The Yard is thirty-five miles of two-lane desert. The shift starts at nine. The AM stations were the same six talk shows and the one country station. The world was where I left it. You should know a few things about me. Army — six years, out of Fort Irwin. LAPD after that — eight years. Patrol, then arson. One night there was a fire in a downtown apartment building. I didn't know it at the time, but I would lose my sister that night. My only living relative. We were close. Very close. I haven't stopped grieving that night. I needed a change of scenery. After the fire, I worked crab and salmon boats out of Dutch Harbor for fourteen years. You can do a lot of years on a boat without having to say very much. Fourteen months ago, I came back south. The Yard ad was on a paper bulletin board at a hardware store in Trona. No company name. Just a phone number and the words — night maintenance, good pay, no apartments. I called. The hiring process was a background check and a date to start. No interview. No one asked me a single question about myself. I liked that. I do not know what the Yard is for. I have not asked. The signs at the gate say NO TRESPASSING and GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. They do not say which government. My best guess is a Cold War installation that became something else when the Cold War ended. Maybe it studies something. Maybe it stores something. Maybe it does both — and once a month a black SUV shows up to check on it. I have seen the SUV. I have never seen anyone get out of it I would recognize as a coworker. The night I went back, the Yard was the way it always is. The gate. The clipboard. Marlene's handwriting from the day shift, very neat. No anomalies. Coffee maker behaving. Fence breach south side, repaired. Nothing about my entry from the night before. She had read my anomaly log. I know she read it, because she initialed the bottom right corner, as she always does. She had not commented on it. Vince was in the break room. He looked up when I came in. He said, you look tired. He has said this to me before. He says it to everyone. I told him I was tired. He said, don't push it. I didn't ask what he meant. Round one. I passed corridor five. The door was shut. It looked like every other door. As if it had not been opened in fourteen months. Round two — quiet. Round three — quiet. I was beginning to think it was going to be a quiet night. Some nights are. Tonight was not one of those nights. I was halfway down corridor seven on round three when the lights flickered. Once. Then twice. Then a third time. You learn the implicit rules by watching the people who have been here longer. When the lights flicker three times in a row, you leave the corridor. You do not look back. I walked out. I did not look back. I have been told by Vince, by the security manual, and by my own preference for staying alive, not to look back. I made it to the central spine. I felt very pleased with myself. Round four came. I had to go back through corridor seven. My rounds are eight passes. The corridors do not move out of the way for me. So I went. Halfway down corridor seven, the third door on the left was open. Not all the way. About six inches. But the way it was open. I do not know how to describe it without sounding like I am out of my mind. The door, and the frame around it, looked bent. Gently. But wrongly. As though something had pulled at the shape of the world there, and the world had not quite snapped back. I had not opened it. I had passed it three times tonight without it being open. On round three, when the lights flickered, I did not look back. So I cannot tell you whether the door opened then. I reached for the handle to shut it. My hand did not get there. Between one moment and the next — the door was shut. As though it had always been shut. My hand was an inch from a door handle that was now exactly where it should be. I stood in corridor seven for a long minute. My hand still out. I lowered it. I cannot confirm I shut the door. But I cannot confirm I didn't. The explicit rule says: anything that does not match, write it in the log. An open door that should be shut is the definition of does not match. I am supposed to write down what I find, when I found it, and what I did about it. These are the rules I agreed to. I did not write about corridor seven. Not in the anomaly log. Not anywhere. I did not write any of it down. You will ask why. Here is what I told myself at the time. If I write down the corridor seven door, someone is going to read all of my logs. They are going to read the entry from last night. They are going to want to talk to me about corridor five. And what I told myself underneath that — what I would not have admitted out loud at the time — is that I had already decided I was going to look at the older logs. And I did not want anyone watching me when I did it. I drove home in the half-dark before sunrise. The sky east of the Joshua trees was the color of a bruise that was almost ready to heal. I have always thought that color was beautiful. I felt a little guilty thinking that tonight. Sasha was at the door when I came in. She had come out from under the bed. She walked up to me, carefully. She put her nose against my palm. She held it there a long time. Then she walked past me into the living room. She lay down. She faced the corner. I looked at the corner. There is nothing in the corner of my living room. Tonight, for the first time, I was not entirely sure I believed that. Tomorrow night, when I get to the Yard, I am going to do something I have never done before. I am going to read the older anomaly logs. I want to know if anyone before me has ever written about corridor five. I want to know if anyone after me has, too. I am told the older logs go back forty-one years. I have only been here fourteen months. I will tell you what I find. Klein Michaels. Personal log. End of entry.