The Gates - Book 1 (Chapter 2)

If you’re new to The Gates, start here at Chapter 1.

Chapter 2

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Simmy awoke to a bang. At first, his thoughts went straight to the previous evening when he had fallen out of his bunk during the last storm of the season. He wondered if it had returned. No, this was too faint to be that he thought to himself, that storm had hit the dwell with such force that six huts were washed into the sea, ripped cleanly from the boards that held them down. Luckily no one had been hurt. Because the dwell is a floating city in the middle of the Ardiun Sea, all of its inhabitants are natural-born swimmers and have been taught from a young age to hunt and dive to great depths in just a single breath. So it was with great ease that the inhabitants of the huts managed to swim to shore safely.

 'bang' there was the noise again, this time even fainter than before. 'bang'. 

The noise was getting quieter as it rang through the hut and Simmy could not pinpoint the source from where it was coming. He pulled back a newly replaced woven cover from the bed and stepped onto the icy-cold wooden slat flooring. He reached for the white robe hanging on the bedpost and slipped his ever-increasing cold feet into the warmth of the boots he had sitting in place at the end of the bed. Simmy, a tall skinny teenage boy stepped over to the bedroom door. 'bang'. This time the noise caught him off guard and he momentarily lost his footing and he stepped back. He moved back to the other end of the room and the bedside table, there leaning against it was an antique wooden cupboard about the height of a door but no wider than two feet. It is well worn and stained by the years that cold, wet air had been seeping into every pore before drying out again in the summer heat. Sometimes Simmy thought it was only in one piece thanks to the copper banding that was used to hold the wooden pieces together. It was a gift from his father and was passed down from his father before him going back 3 generations. Inscribed on the side was each member of the family; Eldonni, Elonia, Elrik and finally Simmy. It was Simmy’s only worldly possession and he guarded it as such. Within the box held all the fishing equipment Simmy had made over the years. It contained; 2 rods, 6 baiting flies, various fishing tools and hundreds of hooks in various sizes all handcrafted out of metal and wood. He undid the lock which was brand new and made of copper so it gleamed against the old wood. He opened up the doors and looked for the most important piece of equipment he had inside. He pulled back his hand and in tight grasp was a large knife the size of his forearm with again a gleaming copper handle. He held it firmly in his hand and he looked down at the intricate patterns and shapes that patterned it. With the knife in hand, Simmy headed back to the door and placed his head firmly against it and listened for the noise. He was not met with any more banging, instead just the quiet calm of the sea brushing against the side of the house and the dweller’s walkways. The smell of the salty air crept through the keyhole which he never locked but still no sound and there was no sign of anyone in the adjoining room. He raised the knife above his head in an arch ready to attack, mustard up the courage,  reached down with the spare hand and held the door handle. With one more deep breath, he twisted the handle, pushed the door outwards and stepped into the dark room.

The room he entered was the main living quarters of his hut, Simmy shares his hut with his father Elrik who must have still been asleep in his bed. The room is an open-planned kitchen and sitting area. The room seemed eerier than usual and to make him feel the tension even more there was no light. His dad would always leave the fire burning but it was completely out. The window shutters were closed and the candles on the shelf above the fireplace were burned down. It looked as if his father had stayed out late and maybe not even come back. The candles were the same fresh new ones Simmy had put out for dinner. He scanned the room waiting for the inevitable attack from an intruder but it never came. 

Even after all the years growing up here in the dwell where there was never any crime, you should always be weary of the few days after a big storm. The storm would occasionally catch a rogue ship on the sea and is the only landing location for hundreds of miles, strangers could be washed up and cause trouble breaking into huts. He moved over to the side table following an imprinted mental picture of the room to avoid hurting himself in the darkness. Once there he stumbled around looking for a new candle in one of its drawers, then using a match he had in his robe pocket, lit it. With the light now filling the room, he could see it for all its modesty. It did not contain much, only that which he and his father needed. There is the table he just got the candle from and above that was a shelving system containing various items that Simmy used to make his equipment and various scrolls that he learned the dwelling history from. In the middle of the room are a few chairs arranged in a circle, this is his father’s entertainment area. He would frequently have other Elders from the dwell over for drinking and smoking their pipes. Further, just past the circle is the unlit fireplace.  Simmy walked over to it and replaced one of the dead candles with the one in his hand. Simmy still had not heard a bang since walking into the room and deduced that whatever was making the noise was gone. He walked over to the window facing the sea and opened the shutter. They were swollen from the wet air and required a good tug before they came loose with a horrible squeak. He looked out to the vast darkness of the ocean, there was nothing but the wonderful blue glow of the moon. He went around the room checking the other two windows again being presented with the sea. After a few minutes, he finally decided that no one was wandering around outside and it was more than likely safe to take a step out. He looked over to the door of the shack and what he saw caused him to stumble back to the middle of the room banging into the nicely arranged chairs causing a massive crashing sound. Blood was leaking under the bottom of the door and into the room. It was moving as if it had a life of its own and it was heading straight for him. He shuffled around the room looking to avoid the blood but it kept diverting to follow him. The smell was horrible, it reminded him of the animal carcases near the butches, It hit the back of his throat and he gagged. After a moment he decided that he could not avoid the blood and instead looked at the source of the trail and headed to the door. As He tried to get closer the smell got worse and the taste was getting more unbearable. He tried to take another step but failed and had to take a step back to re-gather himself. He took a deep breath and closed his lips tight together, then with the spare hand that was not on the knife he covered his nose and took two large steps reaching the door.

The door had two latches both of which had large metal keys protruding from them. The hut used to only have 1 but lately, there had been a strangely high amount of disappearing items in the dwell and the Elders were yet to find the individual responsible. He reached for both keys one at a time and unlocked the door and with a pull opened it. The door now released from its restraints fell open with speed given to it by the weight from the body laying against it. The body fell inwards onto the floor face down. The smell that accompanied the body added to the air and made Simmy instantly sick, unable to control himself; he was sick all over the back of his body.

Simmy's father 'Elrik' must have heard the commotion because he came storming into the room tripping over his robes. He was a very tall man and had to constantly bend down to move through the hut. In his rush to investigate the noise and make someone pay for waking him, Elrik kept banging his head against the roof which only made him grow even angrier. Simmy tried to avoid waking Elrik up from his sleep for any reason, no matter how small something was, he avoided it. On many occasions, Simmy had managed to sneak in and out of the hut to explore the dwell or to improve his fishing skills without Elrik catching him or even finding out. There was just once when he was caught and the beating that followed gave Simmy more motivation and respect for the art of sneaking, which he was now as a confessed expert.

“What is going on here boy, why are you crashing around” Elrik finally shouted after he had regained his footing and advanced further into the room.

Simmy could not speak through fear that if he parted his lips just a millimetre to speak the smell would once again make him throw up all over again. Elrik pulled out some glasses from his robe pocket and once the ancient spectacles were resting on the tip of his nose, he saw the body lying in front of the door just behind Simmy.

“What the hell is this Simmy? Who is this man? what have you done?.” He commanded. Simmy was still frozen and afraid to talk. Elrik grabbed Simmy by the neck of his gown and shouted right into his face firing speckles of spit all over his face. 

“Boy you answer me right now, what is going on here” 

“The man, the, the, the man, he came through the door, he just fell, I heard noises, I was sick, I think he is dead” Simmy finally answered sporadically and flustered trying to get all the information out as quick as he could. Elrik kneeled beside the body and flipped the man over with one swift movement. For a tall Elder, Elrik was always strong. The wooden floor where the body had fallen was now swollen with the blood and water he had brought in with him. Simmy looked at the blood and noticed that the pools that had been following him around the room had vanished leaving only one pool. He could now for the first time also see the stranger's face. Across the man's face was a tattoo in green ink. The curiosity now bubbling up inside him took over the fear of being sick again and he walked back over to the body. He stood and took in the man’s appearance while Elrik seemed to be checking the stranger’s life signs. He and Elrik got in even closer to inspect the tattoo more and as Elrik leaned onto his chest the stranger spurted some water. Elrik jumped up from the floor and turned to Simmy. 

“Boy I am off to get the physician; you stay here. And boy! Do not touch this man, do you understand?”

“Yes Sir” Simmy replied. 

“I mean it. Do not touch a hair, it looks like an outsider. They could be carrying any disease.” Simmy just nodded to his father then stood up from the body and collapsed down into his father's wooden chair and watched as Elrik left the shack now in his outward political calm manner he liked to present when not in the safety of his shack.

Simmy shifted his weight from side to side in the chair as he sat agitated by the stranger half dead on his floor. Strangers as we established earlier are very rare and almost unheard of in the Dwell, not uncommon after a storm but still unlikely. 

The clock on the shack wall indicated that only 2 minutes had passed since Elrik left. It felt like an hour to Simmy as he sat staring at the body, looking it all over.  Elrik had to go all the way to the other side of the dwell which was at least a 10-minute walk usually, 5 at a jog. However, that was not the way Elrik moved. Even now when someone lay dying on his floor, he did not rush. Instead, he walked with confidence that stated I am important and the world will wait for me. 

==

While time passed slowly for Simmy, temptation and curiosity started to seep into the forefront of his mind, and a flutter of questions were filling his prefrontal cortex. Then before he knew it the brain had already chosen Simmy’s fate and he was up and walking over to the man. He got close enough to look at the tattoo once again. It crept across the stranger's face originating from behind both ears. It was patterns of twirls that congregated to a singular point in the middle of the man's forehead at which point it joined into a uniformed Triangle.

The stranger's face was also swollen from an obvious beating he had sustained. As Simmy examined further down the man’s body he noted the strangers' clothing. The stranger was wearing clothes he had never seen before. First was a bright white shirt except for the blood that had now stained it a dark red, there were rips in the clothing where the ribs were trying their hardest to remove the shirt from the man’s own body. His trousers were a navy colour which was not common for any dwellers Simmy knew of and they were tucked into a pair of black boots that were caked in mud which was also strange as there was no mud in this dwell and weird considering he came from the sea. ‘Surely the mud would have come off when he was in the sea’ he thought to himself. This man was from no tribe Simmy knew or had ever read about, not that he was an expert in the field of different dwellings across the world. Other than the water dwellers Simmy is a part of or the desert dwellers that come by to trade once or twice a year the greater world was a mystery that Simmy was trying to learn about in his own time when he sneaks into the library and reads the library Masters personal collection. 

The desert dwellers wore brown and cream-coloured clothing. Elrik had once told Simmy that a desert is a vast land void without water and scorched by the sun's constant rays which made the desert a yellow colour full of sand, a very fine substance like a sea but you can stand on it. Their clothing allowed them to hide from animals and other tribes when danger found them. 

This man also wore a waistcoat made of brown leather with 3 pockets, one on his breast and the others on his hips. The stranger's trousers were also held up by a belt that looked to be made of gold. Simmy had only ever seen gold a few times before and that is when the dwell celebrates the marking of 10 years passing. They bring out the golden fish effigy and celebrate for 3 whole days. It was not perfect and shiny like the effigy though, this one is aged and dented with stories that Simmy would probably never know off. Simmy’s eyes finally held their gaze over the man’s hand. It was clenched in a fist holding some type of tube which appeared to have some sort of scroll or paper inside the see-through container. 

==

Gold had peeked Simmy’s attention but paper as a material is the rarest for him and the other dwellers. Being in the sea makes it very hard to come by easily and the librarian is in charge of all paper that is found in the dwell. Only he is allowed to allocate its use from school books to even a form of payment. No one apart from him is ever allowed to touch the dwell’s paper stock directly. The scrolls and parchments containing the village’s history are never even allowed to leave the library's vault; permission to view them is by written consent from an elder of the dwell. Not in his lifetime had Simmy known of anyone to read them apart from dwellers training to be the next librarian or when he sneaks in at night. Simmy will be given access in 5 years when he starts his training to be an Elder of the tribe following in Elriks steps, but until then sneaking is his only option.

Simmy reached out to try taking the tube. ‘I will just have a look before my father gets back.’ He thought to himself. As Simmy’s hand tightened around the tube the man’s eyes opened and fixed their gaze on Simmy's face. The eyes glowed green and the tattoo across his face started to melt down towards his neck. It then started to flow down the stranger’s arm towards the hand that held the scroll that Simmy was now unable to let go of. Simmy started to pull away but it felt like his hand was fused with the container. He screamed as the green liquid flowed from the stranger's finger tops onto his arm. Simmy’s head flipped backwards and he was looking up at the roof as the green ink flowed up his own body and into his body through his eye sockets. Then as quick as it began it was over. The grip of the container subsided and Simmy was left staring at the stranger with the container now in his own hands and with the stranger's last breath he whispered one final phrase. ‘The librarian’.

Simmy stumbled back across the floor and instinctively threw the container under a chair away from him. He sat shaking and breathless, he had only ever experienced death once before and that was when his mother passed away a year before to the Cough. 

The Cough is an incurable disease that has been around for as long as Simmy’s tribe’s scrolls go back. It kills anyone that catches it and there is no known cure. The person who catches it will cough nonstop for days before they eventually cough up all their organs in a very painful death.

 It is said that there are people amongst the land dwellers that know a cure but because of custom and history between the tribes and dwellers, they do not help one another out anymore, especially to save one another. Each faction of people is left to their ways, neither interrupting that of the other and this has led to a long few hundred years of peace between all. The previous year, a severe cough outbreak nearly eradicated all inhabitants, including those who were previously in good health. His mother was part of this bleak moment of history.

Simmy, after regaining his composure, stood up and sat in front of the fireplace in his father's chair. He closely examined the tube that he retrieved from underneath it. It was a small triangle tube of some sort, made of a material Simmy had not come across before. The case was thin, clear, and easy to bend but strong enough to not break. It was sealed with a metal lock which had a small keyhole again in the shape of a triangle.

The man’s dying words were flying around inside Simmy’s head. ‘The librarian.’ He sat staring deeper into it. ‘Was he supposed to take the tube to the librarian?’ he thought. After all, he was the keeper of the town’s documents and most likely the person who would know how to open such a container. But then the doubt kicked in. Why was this man killed on his way to deliver it? Then more dangerous thoughts. Who killed this man and are they still around? Am I next? What happened to me when I touched this tube? Did that happen?

Simmy was broken from his trance when he heard footsteps running outside the dwell, he quickly put the tube into his pocket and waited. Sitting.

Elrik came crashing through the door followed shortly by the doctor who was carrying a big black case which contained loads of tools and drugs. It did not take long for him to notice that the man had died and told Elrik there was nothing he could do. Elrik just looked at his son Simmy, sitting in the chair. He seemed different but he could not put his finger on it.