Locksmithing has been the trade of my family for I don’t even know how many generations. I have been working as one since I was a kid, helping my father and grandfather. I learned all the secrets and methods of the job, studied how to instal, break, assemble and disassemble all kinds of locks. I could easily disassemble the lock of a bank vault if given the right tools, money and a legal permit. I have unlocked hundreds of doors and cars, installed hundreds of new locks, fabricated thousands of keys, and take pride in saying I have never, ever, used my knowledge for criminal ends, as so many locksmiths in my region secretly do. I have successfully and financially sustained myself and my family with locksmithing for almost thirty years. And yet, I’m closing my workshop tomorrow and already signing the documents to work with my wife in her bakery.
The reason that made me quit locksmithing is simple. I can’t do it anymore after my last job. I tried. I really did. But after that fateful assignment six months ago, I realize that it’s not for me anymore. Every time I open a stuck door, I have flashbacks. My heart starts racing and my eyes ache. I can once again see those cursed angles.
Don’t get me wrong. I love locksmithing. It’s the only thing I’m really good at. It’s something that gives me great pride. I had even started teaching my daughter on the basics, and she enjoys it as much as I do. And it’ll be hard telling everyone I’m quitting. Telling my wife, my daughter, my clients, my friends. None of them will understand, and for their own sake, it must remain that way.
I have already told my dad. He was incredulous when I said I’d be quitting the craft. He was not only my most important mentor, but my inspiration and role model. His body is not even a husk of what he once was, but his mind is still sharp. I knew from the start that this would be the hardest conversation of all, so I decided it should also be the first. I approached him, in his bed in our living room, where it’s easier for us to take care of him since he can’t climb stairs or live alone anymore, and told him about everything. Father went from disapproving to fully supporting me. But he also said something that I considered. No one but him must know. Ultimately, I decided not to follow his counsel, for the first time since forever.
We locksmiths know how to deal with stuff we were not supposed to see. Our work is about locking places. Sometimes this is about keeping things in, and sometimes about keeping things out. Locksmithing is almost synonymous with security and privacy. But it’s hard to keep something so… Perspective-changing to yourself. So I decided to write it down. One day, maybe I’ll have enough courage to share it to my family or even the world. I don’t know. I have not even decided what fake story I will using to explain my abandonment of the locksmithing business to all my former clients and acquaintances.
Well, let’s go back to the beginning. Six months ago, I was called by Greg Becker to unlock a locked door in his property. Now, Greg Becker has never been a popular or particularly well-respected man. He is in his late-seventies, and since I was a child, I heard rumors about his weird occultist practices. Unsubstantiated rumors, I thought, until Greg called me urgently at 2AM, saying he needed help getting into his house. I was already sleeping, and the phone woke me up. I tried to dissuade him, saying my prices in the graveyard hours were exorbitantly higher than in daytime hours, but the old man was adamant, claiming it was an emergency. I dressed up, packed my tools, apologized for my wife for leaving in the middle of the night like this, entered my pick-up, and drove to his property.
Well, old Greg Becker had a pretty house, albeit a big rustic. It was located at the edge of town, almost in the rural zone. I parked my vehicle there and exited it. Greg Becker was on his porch, carrying a lamplight. Yet I could clearly see that the door of his house was open. I angrily questioned him why he didn’t call me to tell he had already found a way in, but he evasively replied that he actually needed me for something else. More often than not, that means trouble, so I was already going back to my car, when he offered a thousand bucks. That was what I made in an entire week of hard work, so I couldn’t refuse.
I followed Greg cautiously through the overgrown grass, to a barn located a couple hundred yards behind his house. If the old man’s house was rustic, then the barn was outright decrepit. The wooden structure seemed like it had been there for decades without any repairs or restorations. There was no paint, and the whole thing was falling apart. He pointed the lamplight at the entrance of the barn, and I immediately saw how it stood out from the rest of the building. It looked more like the entrance to a bank vault than a quasi-abandoned barn. Hell, I had seen bank vaults that were easier to break into than that barn.
I tried questioning him what that was, but Greg refused answering me. I said it would be easier to break the wall, which was already falling apart, but he reminded me about the thousand dollars. Well, beggars can’t be choosers. I asked if he could at least bring me something I could sit on, as this would take a while. This time he complied, and a few minutes later, I had already set up my stuff on the ground and was working. It wasn’t easy, it was dark and I was sleepy. I asked for a coffee, and Greg simply left me there and disappeared into his house. At first I thought he was making one for me, but after forty minutes, I realized the jerkass had probably gone to sleep.
That door had one hundred different locks. One fucking hundred different locks. That meant that crazy old man had to carry one hundred different keys. The more I thought about it, the less sense it all made. The door was clearly new, impeccably clean, even if everything around was old and falling apart.
After a handful of hours, the sun was rising, yet I had only unlocked five locks. Whoever built that door was either a perfectionist or a psychopath. Or both. Greg Becker appeared, wearing pajamas and carrying two cups of steamy coffee. I asked him where the fuck he was and he just casually said he went for a nap. I was furious by that point, so I stood up and told him that, if he wanted someone to open that door, he needed to ar least show some fucking respect. The old man sneered at me, and just said “Five thousand dollars.” I was starting to doubt him, so I demanded that he paid me half first. Greg went inside the house and came back with an envelope full of money. I started working back on the door right away.
The worst part was not the unending locks, the disrespectful client, the mysteries surrounding that entrance, or the scolding hot sun on the sky. It was the maddening boredom of it all. Becker refused to talk to me because he said the job demanded discretion, there was no sound whatsoever, and my phone had no signal. I didn’t even know how managed to call me there, I hadn’t picked a signal ever since my car drove into that street. I didn’t even have a watch, so the sole indicator of the time was the position of the sun.
Around two on the afternoon, I had unlocked seventeen locks. Greg Becker appeared to check on my progress, and I told him I was starving, and that I needed to go home to rest a little bit. Greg wasn’t happy, but he said that he needed me, so he just asked that I was back before midnight. I went home. My wife was pissed, but after I’d shown her the money, she reluctantly agreed to let me keep working on Becker’s door.
I didn’t sleep well that afternoon. I kept having these weird dreams about Becker, years younger, carrying lots of bloody plastic bags into the barn. In the end of the dream, I saw myself opening the door, only for him to appear behind me and beat me to death with a baseball bat. The nightmares were unnerving, but I attributed them to stress.
At six PM, I was back on Greg Becker’s property, but that time I brought twenty hours of downloaded Podcasts. Greg handed me a cup of coffee, his lamplight, and said he’d check up on me on the morning. I started working again. On the first night, the experience was stressful, but that night, it was somehow dreadful. I kept having this irrational instinct that made me check behind my back all the time. And considering his property was his house, his barn, and a big, dark, endless open field of overgrown gras and nothingness… There wasn’t even a moon that night. I kept working on the door, promising myself I wouldn’t work here after the sun set. I unlocked another lock, that was number twenty-one.
I heard the house door opening, Becker was coming towards me, carrying two cups of coffee. Something was wrong. The sun was already shining. I had unlocked thirty-two of the locks. Had my “automatic mode” fully taken over? I looked at my phone. I had only listen to three hours. Something was very wrong. I felt like this barn was wrong. This door. It was evil, somehow. Becker handed me a cup of coffee, and I refused. I had this feeling that he wasn’t trustworthy. He simply smiled and went back into his house. I continued my work, but even more than during the night, I was feeling watched.
When I unlocked the forty-sixth lock, around two on the afternoon, I heard a loud scream coming from inside the barn, and I almost broke one of my tools due to the fright. Enough was enough. I went to Becker’s house and knocked on the door. He came out, that smug smile on his face. I told him about the scream, and asked what the hell was going on. He told me that I should go home, eat something and rest a little bit until tomorrow, as I had been working for more than ten hours.
I went back home, unlocked my own door. And then I was back on the barn. Greg was running towards me, carrying a baseball bat. I woke up screaming, covered in sweat. My wife asked me what was going on, what happened, and I told her about my nightmare. But what really freaked me out then was not remembering when exactly I laid down to sleep. She said that ever since I started this job for Greg Becker, I had been acting strangely. Like something was bothering me. I replied that something was indeed bothering me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was yet. She said that I should stop, that I should give the man his money back, and forget about all of this. And I agreed with her. But somehow, I couldn’t stop now.
Even before the sun rose, I had already packed my stuff and was driving to Greg’s property. This time, I promised myself things would be different. I would end the job, get my money, and never pick up a call from Becker again. I went towards the barn door and started working on it immediately, putting on my earphones and listening to the context I downloaded. It was only after Becker appeared carrying two cups of coffee that I realized I had left my phone on the car, and that meant that the voices I was listening to were….
I quickly removed my earphones and looked around, horrified. The door. The voices were coming from behind the door. Becker approached me and asked if I was okay. I tried to fake a smile and answer that I was, but my head was slowly shaking and my forehead was sweating so much that no matter what I said, he’d know the answer was a blatant no. He then chuckled and went back inside his home. I decided that I didn’t care at all for him or his weird antics, but I needed to open that door. I had already done sixty of the locks.
Around three on the afternoon, he asked if I wanted something to eat. I didn’t hear him coming, but I didn’t care. I just shouted for him to leave me alone, and went back to my work. Seventy-one, I muttered.
At 9PM, the sun had already set, and I was starving and thirsty, and needing to go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t stop. Not when I was this close. They agreed with me. Everyone was rooting for me to unlock the door. Becker once again appeared. He wasn’t smiling this time and didn’t have his usual smugness. He looked concerned, and asked what was that on my hands. It was then that I noticed that my hands were covered in a thick, black liquid. A liquid that was coming from all of the locks. I screamed, and asked with all my lungs, why the hell was he doing that to me?! Becker ran away towards the house, screaming he would call 911, and I started working again. Seventy-nine.
And then I smashed his head with a baseball bat. Eighty-two.
And then I started working again on the door. I needed to open that door. I needed to open that door. Eighty-five.
The sun rose. I had eaten something. Not sure what. Maybe there was something on the old man’s kitchen. I didn’t know. Still don’t. Ninety-five.
Midday. There was blood everywhere, leaking from the door, I think. Greg Becker brought me a cup of coffee. I think it was him at least. Ninety-eight.
Ninety-nine.
One-hundred. The door opened, slowly. My eyes started bleeding, and I saw… Something. It wasn’t the barn. I saw a strange, non-sensical version of my house. My father, my wife, my kids. All of them, made of weird, strange angles. None of them living, mere objects, animated, four-dimensional objects. In fact, none of the angles in anything made sense. They all were straight and curved at the same time… And then I saw something on the sky. A being of incomprehensible, utmost darkness. They, whatever it was, started taking. My ears started bleeding. They told me about a world, a world of false geometry. Of darkness, death and suffering. A world where extreme violence was the solution to all mathematical questions. They asked me for my eyes. I was about to gouge them out, when I saw Greg Becker, years younger, carrying a plastic bag. A plastic bag full of human organs.
I looked around me. I was dehydrated, hungry. Covered in sweat, clearly having a heathstroke. My head was aching like hell. I fell to the floor, and when I picked myself up, I saw what really was behind the door. There were several bodies, all of them mutilated, with limbs broken or outright missing, and arranged in strange, bizarre geometric shapes. One of them was that of Greg Becker.
I closed the door, and immediately, all the locks locked themselves again. I went back to my car, and then I went home. Luckily, my wife wasn’t home and no one saw that I was covered in blood, so I burnt my clothes and took a very long shower.
My family questioned me where the hell I had been. I was officially missing for days. The police had even gone to Becker’s property to look for me, as I told my wife I had gone there before my disappearance. Greg Becker was found dead, due to natural causes. He didn’t have a barn in his property.
And yet, if the barn wasn’t real, why did Greg Becker give me two thousand dollars? When the police arrived to his house the door was unlocked.