“Don’t go through the door in the woods,” said the girl from the occult club.

  The lights were low, and a fog machine was filling the room with stinking fumes, and she spoke from behind a frankly ridiculous getup. She was speaking at the Club Rally, an annual event held at Dawson University, where each club comes together to show their exploits over the past year. Feeling bored and dreading studying for finals, Harley had opted to ignore his troubles and attend- but unfortunately, now he was just bored and stressed.

  That changed when the girl concluded her story. Up until this point, she had been on the yarn of a dreadfully generic scary story, probably ripped from an old internet forum; but these concluding words felt more… real. As though she was adapting an irrelevant story to hold a relevant lesson at the end for the students at Dawson. It had spiraled from a generic monster-in-the-woods to a story of people from the university going missing, and as it picked up Harley found himself genuinely intrigued. Now at the end of her story, with several campers missing, she concluded with these words of warning.

  Harley leaned over an nudged one of his friends- Percival.

  “You wanna get shitfaced in the woods and find that door?” Harley asked him.

  “Hell yes,” Percival laughed, and then they dapped each other up.

  “Where the hell are we going?” groaned Kyler, who bore down upon a map he held in his hand. Over his shoulder, Andrew held a flashlight to give him light, as it was now the dead of night in the forests around Dawson.

  “Dude…” Andrew chuckled, “I can’t fucking see straight right now. There’s like, five maps.”

  They were, unsurprisingly, lost. Despite their drunkenness, they had entered the woods prepared; thick clothes to protect against the northern midwest winters, and plenty of food and water to last a night. The worry was that someone would start panicking- especially in their drunken stupor.

  “Are you stupid?” Percival lightly smacked Kyler on the back of his head, and grabbed the map out of his hands. Andrew timidly traced the flashlight to follow the map as it changed hands. “We gotta be right… here!”

  Percival jammed his finger into the compass rose in the corner of the map.

  “Percival…” Harley put his hand on Percival's shoulder. “That’s the compass, sweetie.”

  “Oh. Well, you do it, Harley!” He thrust the map into Harley’s hands, and Andrew continued to absentmindedly trace the light to the map.

  “Shit,” Harley mumbled, as he too struggled to parse the information of the map. He flipped it up, down, left and right, and then looked at the trail ahead of them. The path forked in two directions- left, and right. He glanced back and forth between the two, before finally saying “right is right?” and embarking down the right path.

  Through the darkness they trekked, the four of them: Harley, Percival, Kyler and Andrew.

  Percival was a tall, bulky man, aged twenty-four, with long black hair. His major was currently undecided, and had been that way for a long time. Harley had known him for nearly a decade now, and in that time he’d gone through about ten jobs- not a bad rate until you learn he was unemployed for half that time. Percival can’t exactly keep a job, for reasons that the other three pretend are beyond them.

  Kyler was a tall and skinny guy, age twenty-two, with short and wavy brown hair. Of the four, he was the only one with a STEM major- Computer Science, in fact. Out of anyone the other three knew, even the ones they knew only as classmates or past acquaintances, Kyler was the only person they’d personally met and also genuinely respected- maybe even looked up to. He often took it upon himself to do things that were challenging, even for him, all so he could learn from the experience. It was commendable, really, even though they also thought the speed at which he learned was complete bullshit.

  Then there was Andrew. He was short and unhealthily skinny, the kind of guy you worried about when you saw him with his shirt off. He was also twenty-two, and his major was also undecided. Unlike Percival, Andrew had a major before now- and he had a different major before that, and a different major before that. In all honesty, none of the other three could recall a time Andrew had stayed committed to anything for longer than a year- not a job, major, or even a girlfriend.

  And then there was Harley. He was a man of slightly below-average height and slightly above-average weight, not quite short and not quite large but definitely not tall nor skinny. His hair was short, spiky, and blonde, and he was twenty-one years old. Harley was the ideas guy of the group, and was always the one to make plans and round people up in the group chat. Going to the lake, hitting up the ice cream shop, starting a D&D campaign- all of that was Harley’s idea. That’s what the other three liked about him, he got them moving when they needed it- though sometimes he was a bit too eager to do things.

  The four of them continued their trek into the darkness, undaunted by the growing wildness around them as they ventured- unbeknownst to them- deeper into nature. They continued down the trail for nearly fifteen minutes, before Percival loudly clapped his hands to bring the group to a stop.

  “O-kay, this was the wrong trail,” he declared.

  “What makes you say that?” asked Harley, a little to prideful to admit if he’d been wrong.

  “It’s been, like, an hour, and we’re nowhere closer to home,” answered Percival.

  “An hour? Fact check that,” Andrew sharply barked at Kyler.

  “It has definitely not been an hour,” Kyler nodded and checked his watch, “it’s been… fifteen minutes.”

  “Same difference,” Percival shook his head. “If we were going the right way, we’d be back by now.”

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “It definitely took us longer than fifteen minutes to get out here,” commented Andrew.

  “But we’re on the circle trail,” corrected Percival, “and that means that if we’re going the right way, the longer we go, the closer we get!”

  “Yeah, so we just have to keep going in this direction, duh!” sneered Harley.

  “That’s not- that’s not right at all!” shouted Percival.

  “Look man,” Kyler put his hand on Percival’s shoulder, “you know that one image with the guy walking away from the wall of diamonds and the other guy still digging towards it? We need to be the guy digging towards it.”

  Percival brushed Kyler’s hand off. “Have you seen the version of that image where it’s all in the one guy’s head, and he’s just digging through straight rock with no diamonds in sight? That’s what we’re doing now.”

  “And have you seen the version of that image where it’s all that in the head of a guy about to hit diamonds?” Harley chimed in. “We’re in a loop here- I say we just keep going, because if we keep following trails eventually we’ll reach the lodge again. And like you said, we’re on the circle trail, so the longer we go, the more likely it is we get back.”

  Percival threw his head back in anguish and groaned. “Fine! But so help me god, if the sun rises before we get back- on finals week no less!- I will smite you with the force of a thousand suns! I will dick-slap you with enough centrifugal force to shatter concrete!”

  “I’ll take that bet,” chuckled Harley, and began to lead the group back along the trail. In less than ten seconds, a thud rang through the darkness.

  “...He’s dead, let’s go back,” Percival shook his head, then proceeded down the trail to see what happened to Harley.

  The breath caught in his throat as he saw what lay ahead of them. His blood ran cold, scanning the wooden door up and down. At the base of the door, Harley groggily rose to his feet, rubbing his nose. The other two caught up with Percival, and they too stopped in shock.

  A door was elegantly constructed, gilded along its edges with what seemed to be gold leaf. It was built right into the trunk of a massive tree, which seemed to act as the end of the trail they were on. Percival noted this meant he was right, and that they were on the wrong trail, but none of that mattered now. They were here, in front of the exact thing they were told not to find.

  “What the fuck?!” exclaimed Percival in utter shock.

  “It’s real?!” Kyler joined him. Andrew nudged Kyler’s side, and held his hand out. Kyler rolled his eyes, and put twenty dollars in Andrew’s hand.

  “So… we found the thing!” Harley tried to add positively. “I guess. Now what?”

  “...Open it,” Percival nodded to Harley.

  “Hell no,” he replied, “you open it!”

  “Okay,” Percival shrugged, and stepped forward, pushing his hand against it. There was no knob, but as he placed his hand on the door, it freely gave way. Despite that, Percival was hesitant to press forward, and pulled his hand away.

  “Is it stuck?” asked Kyler from over his shoulder.

  “No,” Percival shook his head, “but- what do you think is on the other side?”

  “Demons,” suggested Andrew, “who will take us to hell.”

  “It’s probably not that,” reprimanded Kyler.

  “Well, it’s probably not worse than that,” Harley once again added in an attempt to stay positive, even though he was pretty shaken by what they were going through at the moment.

  “I guess you’re right,” Percival sighed, and began to push on the door.

  Pale blue light flooded the forest, blinding the four college students. The door swung loosely on unseen hinges, opening to reveal a passageway constructed entirely from brown stone, supported by beams of some pale, cylindrical substance completely alien to the four. Hung on each side of the passageway were bronze braziers, which supported blue crystals that seemed to be the source of the light, as they glowed with an uncanny iridescence. The passageway continued forward, far deeper than the depth of the trunk it was built into, before reaching another, similar door some ten feet away.

  The four stood in stunned silence, their mouths agape as they attempted to process exactly what they were looking at. They stared into the passageway, then at each other, then back at the passageway, all without exchanging a word.

  Then, at last, Harley hesitantly stepped forward.

  “The fuck are you doing?!” Kyler grabbed Harley, holding him back.

  “Clearly, there’s something in there! I want to know what’s up.”

  “Dude! The entire point of the story was that people disappear when they go through the door in the woods!”

  “So what?” Harley wrenched his hand away. “We just… leave?”

  “Sure, I guess!” shrugged Kyler. “Beats going missing!”

  “But…” Harley turned to look longingly down the passage. “Who knows what could be down there? You’re not the least bit interested?”

  “Of course I am! But not enough to get killed over it!”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” nodded Percival.

  “But what it found brought it back,” Andrew added as he too stepped towards the threshold.

  “Wha- you can’t just add shit to an idiom!” shouted Kyler as he stepped forward to stop Andrew.

  “That’s actually the full version of it,” Harley smiled, and joined Andrew at the threshold.

  “Listen, you two- don’t go through.” Kyler stepped back this time. “Nothing on the other side can be worth it.”

  “It’ll be fine,” reassured Harley. “We can see the other door from here. We can just go through, and come back once we get a better idea of what’s on the other side.”

  “I- huh, I guess you’re right.”

  “In that case,” Percival stepped forward, “I’m not about to miss the discovery of a lifetime.”

  “Shouldn’t we have a rope, or something like that in case the doors close on us?” suggested Kyler.

  “If the doors close, I don’t think rope’s gonna save us,” Andrew mumbled, before he ultimately stepped across the threshold.

  “Whoa-” Kyler was shocked.

  Harley stepped through as well, and was then shortly followed by Percival.

  “See?” Harley held his hands up to show Kyler. “Nothing wrong at all. Come on, let’s check this place out!”

  Kyler sighed. “Fine, but if this kills us I’m haunting you forever.”

  Kyler stepped through the door, and the four of them proceeded down the hallway.

  “What do you think is up with this place?” asked Harley as he knocked on the stone walls and the pale material that held up the roof.

  “No clue,” added Kyler absentmindedly as he took in his surroundings. “We’re definitely underground, though.”

  “You think we’re gonna find dwarves down here?” asked Harley eagerly. “Gnomes? Goblins? Kobolds?”

  “Hopefully not,” groaned Percival. “I had enough of all that from playing D&D.”

  The four lined up in front of the door at the end of the passageway. They exchanged glances with each other, then with a sharp breath, Harley pushed the door open.