The common perception among the masses is that the world is by and large what we see and feel with our eyes and hands, with a small but measurable bit of reality lurking in the corners of science books and laboratories that will never impact our lives beyond what new types of plastic will be created in some particle accelerator in Europe.

My name is Benjamin Holst, and there was a time that I believed this as well. Wrapped in my own preconceived notions of safety and normalcy, I managed to spend a comfortable twenty-four years, growing up in a middle class home in the South. Going to school, graduating, dropping out of college and getting a job that paid just enough to firmly entrench me in the debt that was the hallmark of my generation.

Predictably, I reach a point every night before I fall asleep that I wish I could hear my phone ringing and assume with some certainty that it was in fact a collection agency, harassing me to pay off the huge bill I earned fueling my then-addiction to various online role playing games. I then suddenly realize that the existence I stumbled into is far more rewarding and terrifying. The stigma of social failure no longer has the heavy burden attached to it that I was raised to fear. Instead the fear of falling into an endless torment at the whim of forces that mysteriously failed to appear in the textbooks of my youth is the thought that grips me as my eyes drift shut.

The first hints that the world didn’t work the way I had hoped were probably available to me at a very young age, but it wasn’t until two years ago that the significance of those hints became apparent to me. Initially, when my uncle was placed under observation at the Still Waters Mental Health facility, the news registered in my mind as yet another fact. To say that I had a familial relationship with the man would have been a stretch, at best. Beyond that he was my father’s brother, I knew very little of him. He had suffered from the effects of schizophrenia much of his adult life, and carrying on a lucid conversation with him was a battle of wills, as he exhibited a generic mistrust of others, and an extreme distrust of his own family members. In his mind, everyone was out to get him, and thus any conversation was an attempt to infiltrate his mind and turn it against him. Eventually, learning to emulate this distrust, and internalize the thought process that leads to it, would be the only way to maintain my sanity. The exact same reaction in two people, one a psyche spiraling out of control, the other coiling tightly in defense.

As my fathers health began to fail in his later years, I began driving him to his monthly visits with Uncle Chuck. I managed to wait in the lobby for three visits before my father asked me to join him in the day room to visit. I challenged that my presence would exacerbate Uncle Chuck’s hostilities. For a moment my father’s face registered agreement, but this quickly melted into a resolve as he returned fire-- “It almost certainly will, but I’m don’t have the strength I once did, and I could use the support.”

The basic thought terminating cliche of ‘I can’t do this alone’ was effective enough to get me in the door, even as afterwards my mind clicked back into gear to form the obvious question of ‘support for what?’ Thankfully, for my resolve, I would not have to wait long to have that question answered. Unfortunately, this answer would also shortly lead to the unraveling that defines my present.

The initial pleasantries of greetings and the call and response diatribe of ‘how’s the food’ and ‘are they treating you well’ quickly shunted into the conversational flow that the casual ear might have perceived as a average as any chatter amid the din of the room. My ear, being within the conversant range, was not gifted with the ability to ignore the truth of the matter. My uncle’s whispered hostility and threatening tone hinted at in the background chatter of so many family functions could only begin to describe the actuality of his subtle shifts. As I remained a passive listener, I began to understand the gentle weaving of logic that actual pervaded his stream of consciousness. The slight turns of phrases that set up tripping stones for the tongues.

 ‘You know that’s not what I meant’

 ‘Why would you think I said that’

‘But I didn’t mean to say that’

By the end of the first visit, I had a deeper appreciation for guiding dialog than I ever had before. But with that appreciation also also began my creeping awareness of motive in both my father’s conversation and my uncle’s avoidance. There was a subtext there that I did not fully understand. Indeed I was only passingly aware of it, at this moment viewing more of a figment of my abused imagination than as a tangible facet of the visit.

As my inclusion in the visits became less a novelty and more a fixture, I was inevitably drawn into the fray. While at the time the answer to ‘Support for what’ seemed to have taken a life time to develop, in retrospect I find myself amused at just how quickly it was revealed to me. That subtext was hinting at something that had to be protected. Something that had to be kept hidden. Something that my uncle had.

My early naivete assumed that there was some actual heirloom, or document, perhaps even something as simple as a photograph that was the abstract ‘it’ lurking among the other trivial statements they passed back and forth. Perhaps all this hostility was not an artifact of schizophrenia, but rather genuine concern for something to be taken from him. My father’s health was not going to improve, neither was my uncle going to be released from Still Waters, so this supposed transfer of item was either going to have to happen soon, or it was going to happen without my uncle being able to do anything about it. Given the vaporous nature of what ‘it’ was, I was at a loss for speculation.

Our monthly visits bled together in my mind. I had yet to flat out ask my father if what I was beginning to piece together was real or in my head. He wasn’t making any sort of advances in including me explicitly in his efforts, yet clearly my presence was requested as ‘support’. It seemed rather pointless to try and support something you were not being included in. However, with a single slip of the tongue one unremarkable spring afternoon, my uncle seemed to confirm my suspicions:

“Maybe he should have it.”

So there it was. A single comment with only the slightest hints of ambiguity, as opposed to the dense stew of generalities that dominated most of these sessions. Though I still did not have a grasp on exactly what ‘it’ might be, the thought that some how I was to be the one to come into acquisition of ‘it’ made me feel as though perhaps I had succeeded in supporting my father. Before I could finish appreciating the though, my father agreed-- ‘Yes, he should.’

They both turned to look at me. It suddenly occurred to me that I was less ‘support’ than I was ‘bargaining chip’. Perhaps it was my total lack of understanding of what was about to happen to me that made me the more viable target for ‘it’. What I did understand well enough was that there had not been an obvious resolution between them regarding my uncle’s suggestion and my father’s agreement. That this was not the time to speak up regarding my own thoughts as to if I understood or accepted it myself.

The proceeding seconds felt uncomfortably long as I writhed in indecision about the correct course of action. I attempted to steel my face into one of acceptance, managing a slight nod while simultaneously producing a slight shrug in hopes of conveying an attitude of approval while maintaining a sense of detachment to the whole affair. Given the undercurrent of hostility, I hoped to convey that I was willing to take ‘it’, but likewise untroubled by the thought of not taking ‘it’ as well.

I often question if this had been the deciding factor, or if I ever had a choice at all. In light of the path that I found myself on soon after this visit, I’m not sure that it matters one way or another, but there is always the basic instinct to know, and I suspect that regardless of what knowledge is presented to me, I will always question that point. I have begun to lean toward the belief that I have never had a choice, not even before I was born. That my very existence was to lead to this set of actions, and the fallout created there by.

As soon as I had finished my carefully choreographed shrug and nod, the barest glint of a smile ripped across my uncle’s face. This was a wholly unfamiliar configuration of his face. Starting at the corners of his lips, pulling tightly against his teeth then curving ever so slightly upwards, as his upper lip likewise flattened downward, the grin that pressed itself against his face had an unnerving effect. Perhaps this had been his intention all along. Perhaps these sessions had been less about my father convincing my uncle as they had been my uncle convincing my father.

‘Good.’

‘I’m glad we agree’

‘I suppose we should leave now’

‘Yes, you should’

And with that short exchange, the visit was over. My uncle stood from the table and walked away without any further acknowledgement. No further hints to me as to what I had agreed to, or what had been chosen for me. We promptly left and headed back to the car, where we sat in silence as we drove. With my place apparently secured in whatever transfer was yet to come, I waited to be included by my father. When, after many miles, he failed to show any intent to be forthcoming I dove headlong into the forefront of my confusion: ‘So what is it?’

I suspected that from his avoidance initiating the conversation in the first place that his response would be any be anything but helpful or enlightening. I had felt like an accessory from the onset, a pawn in some sort of power struggle between he and his brother. Now that the question was on the floor, my place was about to be proven.

‘A doorway’

The simplicity and un-illuminating nature of his response left me just as much in the dark as before I asked the question. I waited yet again for him to shed some light, but still the silence persisted. Assuming that without my continual prodding I would get no further assistance, I resolved myself into further interrogation. But how to proceed? My initial instinct was to return the statement as a question, illustrating my complete lack of understanding. I did not like this option, as it made me feel weak, so I pried at the single word to try and reveal more meaning.

He said ‘doorway’, not ‘door’. By this perhaps he meant the ‘it’ was in fact the passage itself and not the physical object. Certainly the purpose of a door is provide transit between two locations, and the object itself is non-important. As though a door is a task, not a thing. If I am to regain some semblance of control over myself, then I must choose an interpretation and stick with it, so with this decision I attempt to shorten the discussion with assumptions: ‘To where?’

‘Somewhere you shouldn’t go.’

‘Then why give it to me?’

‘To make sure no one enters.’

‘And what if they do?’

‘They die.’

‘How?’

‘Slowly.’

His persistence with terse answers spoke more than his words did, though not by much. He was frightened, though I couldn’t decide if it was the fear of this doorway, or for my future ownership of said gateway. In fact I still had not concluded if we were discussing a physical passageway or some metaphor for something as of yet unexplained. The suggestion that those who passed through the door were killed in some way suggested a physical door, however that my uncle was in possession of said door and was some how able to prevent it from being traversed while yet being in residence at Still Waters suggested something metaphoric. Unless, of course there was some doorway at the facility that I was somehow expected to guard from those residing there, a though which didn’t warrant much further exploration, but that I none the less chose as a segue into injecting a lighter tone into our conversation.

‘So are you suggesting that I move to Still Waters?’

It seemed to work, as the suggestion brought the first noticeable positive emotion I’d seen in my father since we first left our home many hours ago; a single chuckle. Regretfully this illusion on my behalf was quickly corrected when his answer displayed that it had not been a moment of amusement for him, but rather of disappointment.

‘I’m sorry you have to be a part of this.’

It was a non-committal answer to my question, but regardless highlighted the seriousness that he continue to maintain. As he drew a long breath for what I hoped would be the long awaited explanation for the last few months, I contemplated the various interpretations of his last answer. The most literal interpretation first sprung to my mind, that he somehow intended to have me committed in order to replace my uncle. This continued to seem the least likely, but as it was the simplest answer I could imagine, it still fought its way to the forefront of my mind, though once it got there it developed no further. No rational thoughts could follow my exploration of how exactly I might guard a door in a mental institution for fear of the death of all who enter. The other interpretation was more nebulous in my mind. The word ‘this’ seemed to carry all the weight. There was something on going which had to remain that way, and that somehow it would soon be my torch to carry. The stirrings to be ‘a part’ of something gently tugged at my mind, but before it could crystallize into a daydream he began:

‘Everything you believe is a lie, and the part of your self that tells you what is real is deluding itself just to keep you sane. Yes, we are sitting in a truck. Yes, you are my son. Yes, the Earth is spinning around the Sun. But what we lie to ourselves about is what really separates me, from you, from my brother, from every other soul that has ever existed, here or otherwise.

Our souls, the part of us that turns this lump of flesh into a different force from the lump of flesh sitting next to me, are endless currents swirling in a sea of awareness. The essence of that soul, what makes it you, or makes it me, is the way that it churns and reacts to all of the souls around it. A soul separated from that that sea perishes like a flame without fuel. It simply ceases to be. And if this happens while the body continues to live, then the person left behind doesn’t simply drop dead. No, there has to be some overriding physical force for a person to die, instead that person continues living their life, much the same as they might have always, but the part of their being that was eternal, the part that feeds your irrational, passionate, hopeful humanity, simply evaporates away. From that point on you are only your mind, trapped inside a rotting body. From that point, there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel anymore.’

The words turned in my head, and then the significance of the word ‘slowly’ hit me. Everyone is dying slowly, but that’s not the end. Something remains and moves on, except..

‘If you go through the doorway?’

‘Exactly.’

I was both intrigued and disgusted. His resolute acceptance that there had to be a soul, and that this was somehow essential to life as we expect it, was not the belief that I envisioned my father to have. I knew my father as firmly entrenched in the physical world. He was not a man to explore spirituality. This sudden departure from what I expected from him left me unnerved.

As I tried to push this dissonance to the back of my mind, a dozen new crept out from behind the soul eating door. Each new question spawned a dozen more. Quickly I was finding myself unable to keep track of what I thought I needed to ask, and in which order would be the most effective for extracting knowledge. A theory of operating began to form in my mind, exactly how such things might be possible, but that lead me directly to what I instantly recognized needed to be the first question.

‘How do you know?’

It seemed a reasonable request. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and he was going to need a mountain of evidence to back this up. First he needed to even prove that there was indeed a soul to lose, then that somehow this soul could be separated from whatever its host was, if they were not somehow intrinsically linked. Where my intital terror at the prospect of what had been suggested was, now there was a growing void of analysis.

‘Because I stepped through first.’

The first four words shattered that cold logic, and the fifth replaced it with terror anew. My father was already dead, knew it, and still had to watch himself fade away from those he loved. Beyond that, he wasn’t the only one he knew had done it. A sorrow welled up in me that betrayed my misgivings about the validity of the story. It took several moments to realize this sorrow was less rooted in the belief that my father had forfeited his soul, but more so that he believed he had done so. My desire to remain in control of myself worked to reassemble my logical armor and re-derive the path of questions I had begun to lay.

I had to assume at this point there was the potential for my father to have shared in the genetic predisposition that had resulted in my uncle’s current state of care. With my father’s sanity on the table, suddenly the weight of what I assumed was being laid across my shoulders began to lift. The most obvious answer was that there was no doorway that extinguished souls, only two brothers sharing a delusion.

The safety of this assumption wrapped around me and made me feel protected enough to issue the first challenge to the entire ordeal. With so many facets to attack, I decided to preempt them all by starting at the root of my issue.

‘I don’t believe you.’

My doubt was at the very root of the matter. So much hinged on so many prerequisite notions, that by ripping the very foundation out, nothing could stand in opposition. The burden of proof was on him. I had nothing to go on but his words.

At the time I was too concerned with understanding. I understood the world to run by rules that were testable, repeatable, quantifiable. Words were just the way by which we got close to the truth. Approximations of facts. But today, two years removed from the day I sat and listened to my father’s story, I know that sometimes words are all that matter.

He nodded and said, ‘I know. That’s why I’m taking you to the doorway right now.’

---

It would be both convenient and dramatic if I could say that we arrived at some desolate location and I was lead to an unassuming door in an abandon building, beyond whose threshold lay an enigmatic portal, red and swirling. But this would suggest that in order to protect these gateways, you could simply bar entry by covering them up, hiding them away, or destroying them.

Instead we arrived home, no different from when we had left. At the time we were alone and my father had me follow him to his home office. We sat in reasonably comfortable