I work at a national park you’ve never heard of. We aren’t allowed to acknowledge the doors in the canyon walls

There are doors on the sides of the canyon walls. 

You don't open those doors. You don't pay them too much attention. But twice a month, when the moon is cut perfectly in half, you do go lock those doors.

“Ah, I get it,” I said my first week stationed at the park. “Initiation. I'm the new guy. Your egos demand some benign rite of passage before I'm allowed to make friends with you all.”

My chief ranger didn't smile. She didn't even blink.

I held up my arms in surrender. “It’s fine. Really. I did my time in a frat. I'll do whatever you tell me if it makes the other rangers happy. Want me to watch these doors every night instead of sleep? Paint chicken's blood on them? Whatever it is, I'm game.”

And I was game. Extremely so. My position here was only a seasonal one. If they wanted me to commit murder for them, commit murder I would if it would keep me here longer than the summer.

“Stay away from the doors,” was all Chief told me. 

That was that. 

They weren't a joke. I realized that quickly. The doors in the canyon walls were no joke, and neither was the park. The other rangers were nice enough―morning greetings at employee housing and all that―but Ebony Gorge itself, the actual park… the longer I worked there, the less it made sense.

In the mornings, the birds were silent. From sunset until nightfall they would chirp, but otherwise, they would only stare from the trees. 

Visitors never came twice. In the online reservation database, there was no record of somebody staying at our campsites more than a single time, and none that I spoke with in the visitor center mentioned a previous visit. Not once.

Even the landscape ignored logic. The surrounding terrain was desert, steep mesa cliffsides and textured, sandstone hoodoos. Within the gorge itself, though, it was lush green forest. There was no grand river to supply the water. It hardly rained. And yet, somehow the foliage thrived.

Looking back now, I should have been more suspicious when I got the job.

The National Park Service isn't the military, which sounds obvious but is actually pretty misunderstood. We aren't assigned anywhere. We don't get deployed or stationed or signed on for a contractual quantity of years. Most of the time, we apply for job listings the same as anyone, and the competition is stiff. You'd be surprised how many people dream of being an underpaid, overworked government worker.

I shouldn't have had much of a shot at this position, even if it was seasonal. During my university summers, I would volunteer at the state park near my school, but apart from that I didn’t have the right qualifications. I’d studied biology. I worked in a nutrition research lab for three years. Sure, I spent my time off backpacking, but when I applied to be a ranger at an unlisted National Park, it was spur of the moment, on a whim, zero expectations.

After a round of interviews, the job was mine. 

I was so excited, I barely blinked when they informed me the park I would be working at was named Ebony Gorge. A park I’d never heard of, without a single mention anywhere online. And when I arrived, and there were doors pressed into the canyon walls, I still didn’t blink. 

That's what you do when you're desperate, and you only have one chance left. You don't flinch. You merely look the other way, with a smile on your face.

Some had brass handles. Some had hinges. Some were made entirely of wood, or metal, or were simply the outline of a door painted on the stone like petroglyphs. They had only two things in common. They were all far from any public walking trail, and they were all firmly shut.

I’d come to Ebony Gorge to hide from my real life. I was so relieved that I’d been accepted, that I was alright following the cryptic rules. I could ignore the oddities. I refrained from questions about the occasional purple pulsing vein on a tree or who was responsible for the ten-foot-tall cairns you would sometimes come across deep in the backcountry. The ones dripping with blood. 

I could stand ignoring the doors, because staying here was worth it to the alternative of going home.

Until it wasn’t.

-----------

“Next time is your turn,” Winona (our chief ranger) told me days before the next quarter moon. “End of the week.”

Then a few days later: “Get lots of sleep. You’ll need it.”

The day before my turn in the rotation, she even mentioned it twice. “Tomorrow.” And later, “Be ready.”

By the end, I couldn't help but laugh at her concern. Winona was less talkative than a boulder, and yet here she was, fretting about the effectiveness of my daily planner.

“Don’t worry, Winnie,” I told her. “I'll remember. I swear it on―hang on, what was your religion again? I swear it on whoever that deity was. Reassuring, yeah?” 

“It's Winona.” The lips on her ever-expressionless face turned downwards. “Better yet, Chief.”

“Uh. Right.”

Despite my insistence, however, I was caught unaware when she shook me awake in the dead of the night.

“Agh, I overslept! I'm coming.” At least, I tried to say that. In my groggy state it came out as something more akin to, “Srrvverslpp Mmcmmin!”

I followed her to the ranger station, locked my radio onto my belt, and grabbed the set of bone white keys from the wall hook. By this time, I was fairly cognizant once more. “Shouldn't I have a partner?”

“Not tonight. He can't make it, and the east side ranger already left. Let's just call this your initiation.”

“I see what you did there.”

“Go quick. Make sure you lock all of them by sunrise. If it gets light before you finish, stop immediately. That's not the preferred outcome, but they should technically already be locked. Absolutely no touching the doors themselves. You remember which way to turn the key?”

“Right to lock.”

“Twist left to lock. Have you been listening at all?”

“Sorry.”

“What are you waiting for? You're late enough as is.” 

“Sorry!”

But even as I stumbled towards the door, frantic to please as ever, there was one more thing I had to ask. “You said they should all be locked already―and if one isn't?”

“They will be.” She paused. “But if one isn’t, you run. You run fast―or you don't. It's really the same either way.”

What did that mean? “I'm not sure I―”

“Now, go.”

“Agh! Sorry!”

I went.

The night was dark. That's a silly thing to say, but there's a galaxy of difference between the blackness of the suburbs and the blackness of a designated dark sky national park. My light shone red on ridged tree trunks, as twigs, leaves, and dirt crunched underfoot. 

I reached the first door quickly―a cedarwood frame with gold trimming. I stared at it. We weren't supposed to look at them directly, but tonight was different. The longer I stared, the harder it was to even tell if the door really existed. Perhaps it was merely a crinkle in reality. A mirage in the universe.

Even after months of working at Ebony Gorge, I’d never been able to shake the feeling of eyes on my neck. It didn’t matter how many solo hikes I went on. They watched from the trees, the sky, the ground, in the day and at night. Could there ever exist a worse sensation? Being perceived.

Tonight, as I stared at the door, it stared back.

I inserted the key, careful not to let my hand brush the actual door, and twisted left. My beating heart calmed. 

Easy enough.

The process went smoothly. Ebony Gorge was big, but another ranger was already covering the east side, and I had one of the ranger four-wheelers to drive me between locations. I went door to door, locking as I went (checking at least), determined to prove myself my first time in rotation. Sometimes, an hour would go by between stops, miles of hiking, but there was more than enough time to make it to every location. Enough time for me to realize…

There were no cricket chirps near the doors. No rustling in the underbrush. The closer you got to them, the less even the wind would blow. 

I took longest at the door that was only a drawing on the rockface. For several minutes, I frowned at it, before finally noticing a hole in the painted doorknob, just where a keyhole should be. When I inserted the key, it twisted with the satisfying chink of a lock being turned just like the others.

One more door, and I would officially be done.

I was so ready to finish, I barely saw the door itself as I approached. It was the furthest into the woods, nearly two miles from any sort of service road. My nerves mingled with the relief of knowing I could finally go back to my lodge and crawl under warm sheets. It wasn’t until I’d nearly reached the door that I realized what was different this time.

It was open.

That couldn’t be right. Winona had said they would be locked. I was so close to being done, and this was my very first rotation. What were the chances? Would she blame me if she found out?

You need to run.

Instead, I stood there. 

Not a bird flapped its wings.

Not a leaf rustled.

And then, from the pitch black opening beyond the discarded doorway, came a breeze the temperature of a summer’s day. Warm, heavy, and sticky. A second later, it stopped. It came once more. The intake-release of it was familiar. Like the push and pull of a heating vent in the winter. Like something that I was at the cusp of remembering but couldn’t quite name.

Run. Go. Run now.

Footsteps started. Not mine. Somewhere far past the lip of the doorway, bare feet slapped on bare stone. They grew louder, more frantic, speeding up. They drew closer. Closer. Nearly here.

Just before the pounding reached me, I threw myself at the door and hurled it shut. Something slammed at it from the other side, but I was already inserting the key, twisting it left, slumping to the dirt, leaning against the canyon wall, listening at the door, heart pounding, listening, listening…

Some minutes passed, at least ten. Finally, there was the muffled sound of the thing on the other side of the door padding back the way it had come. I waited at least another half an hour, there on the ground, in the total silence of the night.

It wasn’t until I’d hung the bone white keys back at the ranger station and was in my bed, moments from passing out, that I finally realized what the breeze from the doorway had reminded me of.

Breathing.

I got what sleep I could, then reported for my shift just after noon. Before I headed to the visitor’s center―my post for the day―there was a conversation I needed to have first.

“Something happened last night,” I told Winona in her office. “Something you should probably know about.” 

I steeled myself to explain the situation, already bracing for her subsequent reaction and blaming, but she spoke first. “Whatever it was, you'd better at least have gotten sleep.”

“Sleep? Why? What for?”

She blinked at me. “Goodness, and you were so annoyed when I kept reminding you. Your shift locking up? Tonight? Every quarter moon?”

“No.” Even as I protested, every ounce of dread from last night returned. “But you woke me up hours ago. I slept in, remember? That all already happened last night.”

“Couldn’t have. Quarter moon’s tonight.” 

“You woke me yourself,” I tried one last time.

She glanced at her bulletin board and my gaze followed hers. A calendar was thumbtacked to it with a bold blue circle drawn around today’s date, the quarter moon.

“I couldn't have woken you.” Winona’s face darkened. “I was asleep the whole night.”