Nobody else screamed when the door suddenly appeared in the air between 221 and 223 East Baxter Street. A few people turned at looked at me, and my brother scooted quickly down the bench to get away, but the noise of the town's Independence Day parade and the brass band playing on the pavilion a block away all served to drown me out in a wall of sound.
People near me turned back to the show, and I was left alone with a mystery just a hundred yards away.
The cherry red door stood straight up in a frame of some dark, expensive wood. It wore a polished brass knob and a matching knocker shaped like the face of a snarling gargoyle, looking for the world like the front door of some renovated Gothic house minus the fact that it bore no locks.
The crowd roared when the varsity football team charged down the street around a parade float teeming with cheerleaders. Not even my brother noticed when I slipped from the bleachers and stepped into the street, darting around gleaming helmets and leaping over barricades. I thought at least the cop standing on the other side would stop me, but I ceased to exist as soon as I chose to engage the door.
I reached it in a matter of minutes, and I pondered my options a moment more. Nothing special stood behind it, yet a cold draft seemed to pour out around the frame. The salty reek of fish and ocean waves filled my lungs as I drew closer, and I found myself freezing up as I reached for the knob.
A strange door had appeared in the middle of a parade that only I could see. Even if I could open it, did I have that right? What lay on the other side? What came to visit my little town and what were they here to do?
Could I live with myself if I didn't try to find out?
The high that day was 93 degrees, but the metal handle felt like it had been submerged in ice. I wrapped my fingers around it and shivered, and I braced myself...
Just as something knocked from the other side.
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