Douglas Smith

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"The Dancer at the Red Door" is on the final ballot of the 2008 Aurora Award (Canada). Give it a read and, if you enjoyed it, please consider voting. To learn how to vote for the Aurora Award, click here.

This story first appeared in 2007 in the DAW anthology UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS (editors Julie Czerneda and Jana Paniccia). The story inspired the artwork for the anthology's gorgeous cover (click on the thumbnail at the left to see the cover). See the story's publishing history here.

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The Dancer at the Red Door

© Douglas Smith

The city has a song.
Its rhythm, a million broken hearts...

Alexander King first met the Dancer on the day the street people began to glow.

He drove to his office in downtown Toronto early that July morning in his newest toy, a vintage Jaguar XKE, dark red with black leather seats--a toy he'd always wanted, and one of which he'd already tired. He pondered this as he parked in his reserved spot beneath the building of blue glass and silvered steel that bore his name. Riding his private elevator to the penthouse executive floor, he felt a strange unease awakening with the day.

He met first with his management team to finalize the acquisition of a competitor. They sat in his office, walls hung with original Tissot drawings he’d once loved. Before signing the takeover papers, he noted both the concessions he’d won and the absence of any pleasure in reaching a goal that had consumed much of his considerable energy for seven months.

He ordered the sale of the one profitable plant in the acquisition, and the closing of the remaining operations. But it didn’t bring him the rush that exercising new power normally did. He felt none of the usual thrill of moving the pieces in the game. His game.

With a growing disquiet, he focused on his senior staff sitting around the huge teak table. He’d picked his team early in their careers, molding them into business weapons for his corporate arsenal. It came more as confirmation than surprise that he no longer felt pride in them.

After the meeting, he had his assistant clear his calendar for the morning. She closed his large oak office door as she left. Unfolding his tall, well-exercised frame from his chair, he moved to the window to stare down absently at the busy intersection of Wellington and University thirty floors below.

His toys, his deals, his people. Not a good sign, he mused, when the surest symbols of success in your chosen life bring you no happiness whatsoever.

And with that thought, in that moment, he accepted what a secret part of him had known for some time--that he was totally, utterly tired of his world, the world he had built and in which he ruled.

The only fear King had ever known had been of finding a game he couldn't win. He had never expected to become bored by the game. But it had happened.

Well, then he needed a new game.

No. He needed the right game.

His reflection, steel gray eyes under steel gray hair, stared back but offered no answers. Brooding on his dark epiphany, he gazed at the street below, not focusing on any detail, just letting the patterns of people and traffic skitter across his eyes like a kaleidoscope of random intents. He was about to turn away when a flash of light caught his attention.

On the sidewalk across the street, a man sat against the building, a hat set out in front of him. A street person--one of the army of the homeless that posted its soldiers at every corner of the downtown core.

A street person who was on fire.

King rubbed his eyes. No, not on fire, but glowing. Glowing so brightly that he obliterated surrounding details of the building and passersby.

And no one hurrying past paid him the slightest notice.

Seized by a sudden impulse, King grabbed his suit jacket and took the elevator to street level.

The day was already hot and humid, the air sticky and stinking with exhaust fumes, something he hadn't noticed going from the cool comfort of his house to car to office. He loosened his silk tie and undid the top button of his tailored shirt as he crossed the street. Scanning the far side for the glowing man, King found him now standing. No sign of the strange light remained.

King reached the opposite sidewalk and stopped. This is ridiculous, he thought. He began to turn away, to return to his air-conditioned office and suddenly unwanted life, when he stopped again.

The man was now staring at him. And smiling.

Taken aback but curious again, King walked over. The man wore tattered clothes of competing colors of dirt and held a short-brimmed cloth hat in surprisingly clean hands. His long hair was pure white, combed and untangled. His face was lined, but as clean as his hands. Black eyes, bright and sharp, stared narrowly from above a hooked nose and under snowy eyebrows. He continued to smile at King.

“Do I know you?” King asked, uncomfortable to be conversing with someone so far beneath his own station.

The man didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his left hand in a fist in front of King’s face. King stepped back, thinking that the man was threatening him. But the beggar simply stood there, fist poised. The back of his raised hand bore a tattoo--a red rectangle within a black one. The red was deep and bright, so shiny that it looked wet, like a patch of blood.

Staring at the tattoo, King felt a tingle of familiarity, mixed with fear. He swallowed. Get a grip, he thought. “I asked you if you know me,” he repeated.

Still not answering, the man lowered his hand and turned to stare up University Avenue.

Angered at a street person ignoring him, King started to turn away when a sound made him stop. Notes, a tune, a song. Yes, a song. He scanned the passersby, expecting to find a headset dangling from nearby ears, volume cranked to maximum. To his surprise, the song didn't change in intensity, no matter what direction he turned. He became aware then of a deep bass pounding, a dance-like rhythm slowly rising out of the pavement and trembling up his legs.

A swirl of color and movement caught his eye. He turned.

And she appeared.

The Dancer.

He called her the Dancer the moment he saw her, and the moment he saw her, he knew that she was mad. Or he was. She spun into view around the nearest corner, then froze for a second, au pointe as in ballet, arms raised in two graceful arcs. Then she leapt, landing to waltz through the crowd as if the sidewalk were a ballroom and each scurrying commuter her partner. And with each pirouette, madness whirled around her like dead leaves caught in a forgotten winter wind.

She wore only a diaphanous gown of some strange material that changed color and shape as she whirled, sometimes concealing, sometimes revealing, sometimes seeming to disappear completely. The body it revealed was slim and lithe, with firm breasts, long arms and legs, hair as red as rusted metal, and skin so fair and pale it seemed to glow.

He realized then that the Dancer was glowing, just as the old beggar had been. The glow enveloped her in a cocoon of light. In that cocoon, King caught fractured glimpses of a dark moonlit world that was not the bland sun-bright cityscape in which he now stood.

And as with the old man, no one but King seemed to notice the Dancer. People shuffled by like the undead, blinking at the sun finally rising over the towers, newspapers clutched like amulets, briefcases hanging like manacles, coffee sucked from cups as if it were their life blood. At some level, they were aware of her, as they’d move aside for her, always in step somehow, but they paid her no more attention than if she were a puddle to avoid.

Remembering the strange old man, King turned. He was gone. King caught a flash of white hair farther down the street, but then it was lost in the crowd.

And lost in the face of the Dancer as she stopped before King, a face that swept the crowds and traffic and buildings from his eyes and mind, not by its beauty, for he couldn’t call her beautiful, but by its strangeness. Skin too pale, hair too red, mouth too wide. And green eyes that wandered over him as if searching for something.

But when she smiled at him with those eyes and that mouth, a hope and a fear reached inside him and twisted in opposite directions. A hope that she was real, that somehow she held the key to a door to a new life. And a fear that she was mad, that he was trapped in a life he suddenly hated and could never...

“...escape,” he whispered, before realizing it.

She laughed, a thing of cold breezes rustling barren trees on winter nights. “You wish to escape me?” she asked, smiling up at him. “So soon?” Her glow was gone, and she now wore a plain green cotton shift and white low-heeled shoes.

“No...no,” King stammered. “Not you. My life.” Embarrassed, he held out his hand. “My name is Alexander King.”

In reply, the Dancer turned and spun back up the street. King stood dazed for a second, then hurried to catch up. He found that he had to almost trot to stay beside her.

“So you wish to escape life?” she asked, spinning as they went, still ignored by everyone but King. “Do you seek death then?”

“No. I...I wish to escape my life. My world.” Despite the crush of commuters, he felt as if he were alone with this strange woman. They reached the corner of University and King Street.

“Then you seek another world?” she asked, whirling around him as they waited for the traffic light.

He grimaced. “I'm not sure. Yes. Something new. Different.”

The light changed. The Dancer crossed, weaving through the crowd, sometimes even hooking the arm of someone she passed and spinning around with them as if in a square dance.

And still no one paid her any notice.

King followed her to the stairs leading down to the subway. She seemed to float down the steps, while King, feeling quite dazed, almost slipped hurrying to catch her. Waltzing up to the ticket booth, she raised her arms, spun twice, then leapt gracefully over the turnstiles. The staffer in the booth paid her no attention. Swearing, King dug into his pocket for change. By the time he’d paid and reached the subway platform, the Dancer was boarding a northbound train. He jumped on just as the doors closed.

Apparently indifferent to whether he had followed, the Dancer weaved through the crowded car, each swaying step melding with the rattling rhythm of the train. Despite the number of people standing, she found an empty seat at the rear.

King jostled his way to the back and sat down beside her. The train’s air conditioning was losing the battle against the heat and humidity, and the air was heavy with the stink of commuter sweat and boredom. But here in the closeness, he could smell her scent--delicate, bitter-sweet, reminiscent of a night-blooming flower he couldn't recall. He started to ask her name, but then stopped, suddenly not wanting to know, not wanting something as elemental as this creature to be labeled with the mundane. To him, she would remain The Dancer.

“This city has a song,” she said suddenly.

He stared at her. She was mad, totally disconnected from reality. He should get off at the next stop and go back.

But back to what? King himself wanted to disconnect from his own reality, to find a new one. He wanted the Dancer to be real, so he didn’t have to return to his old life.

The train pulled into the next station, Osgoode. He sighed. He stayed.

As the train left Osgoode, he turned back to her. Her smile froze him for a second. God, she was beautiful. How could he have thought otherwise before? He felt a tightening in his crotch. Well, another reason to stay.

“Fine, you've dragged me this far,” he said. “I'll play a bit longer. What song?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Can’t you hear it? It’s deafening to me.”

Mad. He shook his head in reply.

She stared at the passengers. “A million broken hearts beat its rhythm. Whispered lies, unheeded cries scribble its lyrics on walls, their meaning lost in the babble, in the magnitude of the choir. Melody... No.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “No. There is no melody.”

She watched the dark tunnel walls flashing by the car’s window. “And in a minor key.” She smiled. “Yes. Definitely a minor key.”

The train pulled into the next station, St. Patrick. People shuffled off, jostling with those getting on. The train pulled out again. The Dancer stared at the passengers. So did King. A different crowd now, but with the same air of futility.

“Do you hear it now?” she asked again. “The song?”

Still King didn't reply. He had no answers for this odd creature. He had hoped that she would provide him with answers--that, in all her strangeness, she was the answer.

Finally, he replied with a question, the only question that seemed to matter.

“Can you help me?” he asked, embarrassed by the desperation in his voice.

In reply, she raised a hand, palm towards her face. King stared at the mark on the back of her hand, the same mark the old man had carried--a blood-red rectangle within a larger black one.

“Find the Red Door,” she whispered.

As King stared at the symbol, the words “the Red Door” resonated in some secret chamber in his memory, and a cold dread grew in his gut, dread of the place the words were taking him.

The train slowed. The Dancer rose in one flowing movement, no superfluous motion, her body seemingly freed from gravity and inertia, oblivious to the lurching of the subway. King remained seated, gripped by the sudden terror spawned by the symbol on her hand. Unable even to speak, he watched her walk to the door.

The train stopped.

Finally, King forced a word out. “How?” he rasped.

She turned back, surprise on her face, as if she’d already forgotten him.

“Listen for the song,” she said. “At the end of day, follow the song.” The doors opened, and with one last look back, she was gone.

Finally shaking free of his fear, King jumped up, but the doors had closed, and the train was moving again. His face pressed to the window, he caught a glimpse of the Dancer alone on a dark empty platform, gazing after him sadly. Then his car entered the tunnel, and he was left with nothing but the memory of her face, her smell, and their strange conversation.

And of the terror of the red symbol that was slowly fading like a nightmare retreating before the dawn, replaced by a fear that he’d never see the Dancer again.

He jumped off at the next stop, Queen’s Park, ran across the platform and onto a southbound train that was just leaving. The train seemed to crawl along as he prayed that he’d catch the Dancer before she disappeared.

The train pulled into the next station. King jumped off. And froze, staring at the station name on the pale green tiled walls.

St. Patrick.

The Dancer had left him at the stop after St. Patrick. King had got off at the next stop, Queen’s Park, and taken a train south one stop to this station.

Two stops northbound, one stop southbound.

He shook his head. Impossible. He must have missed a stop coming south, lost in his thoughts.

King didn't travel the subway much, avoiding mixing with the masses, so perhaps his memory of the stations was wrong. A nearby pillar displayed the subway map. Finding St. Andrew where they had entered, he ran a finger up the University line. St. Andrew, then Osgoode, St. Patrick--and Queen's Park.

King swallowed. The Dancer had left him at a station that didn't exist.

He stood staring at the sign. Trains came and left. People pushed by him. He ignored them. For the second time that day, King felt afraid.

An urge to flee overwhelmed him. A southbound train pulled in. Near panic, he shoved his way inside. He sat down heavily, legs shaking, heart pounding, as the train pulled out.

His pride saved him. What if one of his people saw him? Or a competitor? With the same iron will that had built his empire, King forced calm on himself.

He leaned back, his fear slowly dying with each rattle of the rushing train. By the time he got off at St. Andrew, his terror had faded to a pale ghost that finally vanished completely in the sunlight and commonplace bustle on the street, leaving him with only anger at his display of fear.

And anger at the Dancer. At being toyed with, then abandoned.

Rejected.

And King wasn’t a man who handled rejection well. He headed back to his office, thinking darkly of the Dancer. As he did, every detail of their short time together, every movement she’d made, every word she’d spoken, every look she’d cast his way, rushed back as if he had just lived them again. In that moment, he desired the Dancer more than he’d ever desired anything in his life. And what King desired, he acquired.

He’d found his new game.

---

The city has a song.
Its lyrics, whispered lies and unheeded cries,
Their meaning lost, in the babble,
In the magnitude of the choir.

Back in his office, King closed his door. It wasn’t simply lust for the Dancer that drove him. She had shown him a secret world, one hiding behind the everyday, a dance step left of reality, a half beat off the rhythm of his now unwanted life. That strange creature was the key to the door to that world.

Sitting at his desk, he removed a cherry wood box from a drawer. Inside were business cards acquired over the years. He began flipping through them. He rarely consulted these anymore, relying on electronic lists. But the red symbol had awakened a memory.

U, V, W. He was nearing the back of the box. X, Y, Z.

King sat back, disappointed. It wasn’t there.

Yet he remembered holding the card in his hand. In that memory, torch light reflected off black walls, black ceiling, black floor.

Black.

His eyes returned to the box. At the very back, a small black triangle peeked above the divider behind the ‘Z’s. With shaking hands, King grasped the corner of the hidden card and removed it.

The card was expensive stock, completely black in a matte finish that gave back no reflection at any angle. He turned it over.

On the same black background, a blood-red rectangle stared at him. No lettering. No name or address. No phone or e-mail. Just the same red symbol that the old man and Dancer bore on the back of their hands. But unlike the black, the red was shiny, so shiny it looked wet, so shiny that if he...

He touched it. Gasping, he dropped the card on the desk.

The red had felt...sticky.

He looked at his finger. Nothing. King swallowed. Angry with himself, he picked up the card and ran his finger over the red.

And remembered.

Fragments from an evening, not so long ago. King’s table at his private club. Dinner with a woman lawyer representing a company King wished to acquire. Negotiations. Success. Sipping a sweet dessert wine. Pleased at closing the deal. And so quickly, so easily.

The lawyer mentioning that her client belonged to an even more exclusive dinner club. King, stung by the discovery of a club he’d never been invited to join, pressing her for details. The lawyer finally offering to take King there.

Then his memories of that evening got...fuzzy...

A cavernous room…torch light...black shiny surfaces everywhere...incense mixing with smells of roasting meat. A man talking to him...a powerful man...speaking of mysteries...of things King had never imagined existed in this city...a strange society...a world of power hiding beneath the mundane, alongside the everyday, behind...

Behind the Red Door.

His hand shaking, King dropped the card on his desk. He swallowed.

The Red Door was a private club. Very private. And he’d been there.

Why couldn’t he remember more of that evening? And why were the fragments he could recall tinged with the same fear he’d felt in the subway?

Of course. He nodded to himself.

Power. There was power here. King understood power. He moved with the powerful. He was one of them. He could sense power and knew to fear it, especially one hidden, one he didn’t hold.

Well, one he didn’t hold yet. He slipped the card into a pocket. He would find the Red Door. He would be admitted to this club.

But how?

The Dancer. She was his key. What had she said, just before she’d left the train?

Follow the song. At the end of day.

The song.

It was then that King realized that he couldn’t recall a single note from the strange song that had accompanied the Dancer’s appearance. He summoned his memories of her, hoping they would recall the song to him. Her face, her mouth, her smell, the curve of her breasts and hips.

As those pieces came together, the first hint of the song returned--the beat he had felt rising up from the sidewalk. He remembered her body swaying to that rhythm. As he did, a few notes returned to him, then more, until finally the entire song pounded in his skull with all its original clarity and force.

Afraid to lose the song again, King played it in his head the rest of the day, even tapping its rhythm during meetings he led with detached interest. Late that evening, he rode the elevator to street level, still humming the song.

Follow the song, at the end of day, she had said.

Standing on the sidewalk and following a hunch, he faced north up University. His eyes settled on the subway entrance. The music flared louder in his head.

Smiling, he headed for the station and boarded a northbound train. At St. Patrick, he stood. The next station would be the phantom stop where the Dancer had left. Confident that the song was leading him to a secret path, he moved towards the doors.

Then he felt it--the fear that had seized him just before the Dancer had disappeared.

Shaking and weak, King grabbed at a pole. He sank into a seat, unable to move.

The train emerged from the tunnel into a dimly lit cavern. As his fear grew in his gut, the song began to fade. The cavern flickered in and out of existence, replaced intermittently by grey tunnel walls.

Anger saved him. He was losing his chance to enter a secret circle of power. Perhaps his only chance. What if he could never recall the song again? All because of some foolish fear.

King focused on the song, pulling it back into his head. As its music grew louder, his fear faded, and the cavern outside the train returned.

The train stopped. King gripped the pole beside his seat and pulled himself up on still trembling legs. The doors slid open with a venomous hiss.

No other passenger made any move to leave. King seemed to be the only person aware that the train had stopped at a station that wasn’t supposed to exist.

The alarm signaling that the doors were about to close sounded, not the normal ding-dong chiming, but rather a deep ominous gong. As the doors began to slide together, King took a deep breath and stepped onto the platform. The doors closed behind him, and before he had time to regret his decision, the train was gone.

He looked around.

This “station” was a huge domed cavern, carved from a stone as black and shiny as obsidian, flickering redly under sputtering torches set in high sconces. It smelled of dampness and smoke. The platform was now a pier of blackened timbers that creaked under his feet. A gurgling sound made him turn.

Where the subway tracks should have lain, a dark river now flowed, thick and murky. Something large passed by just under its surface. King jumped back from the edge.

Seeing no other path, he set out along the pier. Still inside the huge cavern, the pier followed the river for what seemed miles. As he walked, King felt as if downtown Toronto was falling behind him by more than just the length of his strides. Finally, the dank smells of the cavern gave way to fresh sea air, and King stepped out onto a mist-shrouded beach of blue sand bordering an inky lake.

Beneath a full moon glaring crimson in a strange starless sky, a huge pyramid of rough-hewn black stone loomed over the entire scene. It looked to be a mix of Mayan and Incan, and something King couldn’t place. Beyond the pyramid lay a dark jungle, lush with huge exotic plants shining black in the moonlight and rustling in a wind unfelt by King.

As King’s eyes fell on the pyramid, the song flared louder in his head. Somewhat reassured, he set out for the structure, weaving his way between large blue crystal spheres that lay scattered on the sand, something black and spiny throbbing inside of each.

Broad steps led up to the pyramid’s summit. King began to climb. Three hundred steps later, he stood at the top, sweat-soaked. Before him squatted a box-like building, barren of any markings save a single door, set in the center of the wall facing King.

The Red Door.

Trembling from the climb and expectation, King approached it. The Door shone ruddy and glistening in the moonlight. King hesitated, then raised his hand and knocked.

The sound boomed back at him, startling him with its volume. The echoes continued for several breaths, reverberating from the dark pyramid, until finally fading like the last heartbeats of some great dying beast.

A peephole opened in the Door. Eyes peered out at King, midnight black floating in bloodshot whites.

His hand shaking, King reached into his pocket and held up the black and red card.

The eyes narrowed. The peephole closed.

Then...nothing happened.

King stood there, near to panic. Should he run? Should he knock again?

As he was about to flee down the steps, metal screamed against metal and a heavy bolt slid back.

The Red Door opened slowly inwards, revealing only darkness.

King stepped forward into a low-ceilinged corridor slanting downwards and lit by torches. He was alone, yet he saw no place where the doorman could have gone. He set out down the passageway.

A strange script covered the walls. Whenever his gaze fell on it, the song in his head suddenly incorporated tortured cries within its music. After that, he kept his eyes ahead, away from the walls. As he descended deeper into the pyramid, the dripping of water added a dismal back beat to his echoing footsteps.

Finally, he heard voices and laughter ahead of him. And music, not the song that still played in his head, but a strange discordant melody. The corridor ended, and he stepped out.

He gasped, remembering. He’d been here before.

---

The city has a song.
Its melody-- No. There is no melody.
And in a minor key. Definitely, a minor key.

King stood at the top of a broad carpeted staircase above a huge ballroom. The room was cavernous, fifty yards wide by a hundred long with a vaulted ceiling, carved from the shiny black rock. Torches set in high sconces washed the scene in a bloody glow. A large oval dance floor, capable of holding a hundred people at least, dominated the room.

The dance floor was empty, but at scores of tables surrounding it, men in tuxedos or tails and woman in formal evening gowns talked and laughed, ate and drank. All wore masks--some simple eye coverings, others ornate and grotesque. Smoke from the torches mixed with the fumes from incense burners lining the dance floor.

Heavy red curtains covered the wall at the far end. Two attendants dressed as footmen stood at each end of the curtains beside draw ropes.

Although many people glanced up at King, no one paid him any particular attention. Deciding it best to act as if he belonged, he straightened his tie, buttoned his jacket, and descended the steps.

A man separated himself from the crowd and approached. He wore the formal attire of a Victorian gentleman and a boar’s head mask. He removed the mask. Long white hair. Black eyes, bright and sharp. A hooked nose under snowy eyebrows.

The street person who had appeared to be on fire.

King swallowed, again shaken by the strangeness of it all.

But the man smiled and extended a hand. “Mr. King! Delighted that you have found us once again. Might I inquire how you managed it?” The man had a cultured English accent.

“The Dancer,” King mumbled, looking around in near panic. “The song...”

The man’s smile broadened. “Ah yes,” he said, apparently pleased with this answer. “I recall your affinity with the Song from your first visit. Come. Join me.”

Taking King’s arm, the man guided him the length of the room to where the tables and the polished hardwood of the dance floor ended twenty yards from the red curtains. The remaining space consisted of a raised dais of rough black stone. A pattern of concentric circles was carved into the dais, with spokes radiating outwards from the innermost circle. Below the dais where each spoke ended, a golden goblet stood.

King’s host motioned him to a table in front of the dais. They sat. A woman dressed only in a loincloth and a leopard-head mask brought red wine and a steaming roast with a large carving knife. King’s host offered him a cigar, lit one himself, and leaned back.

“My name is Beroald,” he said, with the same air that King used when giving his own name. This was a powerful man. But a street person?

“You know me?” King asked.

Beroald puffed on his cigar. “We met on your first visit.”

King nodded. He had been here before. “What is this place? A private club?”

Beroald laughed, a dry throaty sound. King tried to guess his age but failed. “We consider ourselves more of a society. The Society of the Red Door. But like a private club, a society with its privileges.”

King’s fear of this strange place disappeared. This was what he had come for. He leaned forward. “Such as?”

Beroald smiled. “Watch.” He clapped his hands.

Four musicians dressed as medieval minstrels wound their way through the tables. With another jolt of surprise, King recognized them as squeegee kids who accosted him for money whenever he stopped at a light near his office. Two carried mandolins, one a saxophone, and the last a set of bongos. Taking chairs just below the dais, they set up to play.

Beroald clapped again.

The curtains drew back, revealing a dark opening in the black stone wall, like the mouth of a cave. In that mouth, King could feel, more than see, something moving, watching.

“And finally...” Beroald said, nodding back towards front of the room.

King turned to look. At the top of the carpeted staircase stood a figure.

The Dancer.

She wore the ever-changing diaphanous gown from that morning, a morning from a lifetime ago. As the Dancer descended the stairs, the torches on the walls died, and the flames in the burners surrounding the dance floor leapt higher, casting the tables into shadow. The Dancer spun the length of the floor, past King and Beroald, to stand silently before the dark opening, eyes unfocused.

She raised her hands above her head, and the squeegee band began to play the now familiar song. At the first note, the opening quivered like a black membrane, then vomited a thick fog. Inside the dark mist, a misshapen form skittered into the room.

The Dancer began to dance. And glow. Her glow grew with each spin she made, each leap she took, until it lit the room and, finally, penetrated the dark mist.

And King could see the thing that had emerged from the opening.

The creature moved on six multi-jointed legs set below a body resembling the carapace of a huge beetle, black and shiny. Dark scales protected a short neck and a bulbous head. Long pincers extended from each side of a slit-like mouth writhing in a horrible parody of a human face. The thing measured at least ten feet from its head to the end of a barbed tail.

Red multifaceted eyes took in the diners. Suddenly, it scrambled forward.

King jumped up, ready to flee, but Beroald put a hand on his arm. “Watch,” he said.

The Dancer spun closer. The creature turned towards her. It stopped. The music played, and the Dancer danced. As she moved, the thing stood transfixed, swaying, red eyes locked on her, hypnotized by the spell she wove with her body.

The two curtain attendants, each holding long knives, approached the beast. The nearest drew his arm back, poised to strike.

The Dancer slipped.

It was a small thing, a muscle twitch out of rhythm with the song, but King felt it, as if the dance were a living thing and had skipped a heartbeat.

It was enough to free the creature from the Dancer’s spell. Wheeling on the nearest knife wielder, the thing severed the man’s head with a snap of its pincers, then turned toward the diners. People screamed and jumped up, King and Beroald included.

The Dancer leapt between them, in control of her every movement again. The beast froze, captured by her dancing once more. The second attendant closed on the creature, and with a smooth precise motion, slipped his blade between the scales around the beast’s throat. The creature spasmed once, then slumped to the floor.

Thick blood spewed from the wound, a red so dark it seemed black. It flowed along the channels carved in the stone into the goblets set around the dais. When it stopped, the table attendants collected the goblets and began circulating amongst the tables.

As they did, the Dancer ran the length of the room, up the staircase and disappeared through a side archway. Beroald glared after her, then motioned for King to sit again.

King sat, trembling, trying again to control an urge to flee. The leopard-headed woman poured some of the blood into Beroald’s and King’s glasses. Beroald raised his and took a deep drink.

King stared at him in disgust. Beroald smiled, blood glistening on his lips. He leaned forward. “Do you recall anything of your first visit?”

King shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

“How you felt afterwards? The state of your health?”

The sweet smell of the blood reached King then. And he remembered. A host of minor ailments disappearing, a burst of energy for the next week. He looked at his glass, then at Beroald.

Beroald smiled. “The secret of the Red Door, Mr. King. The privilege that I spoke of.”

King swallowed. “Immortality?” he asked, not believing what he was asking.

Beroald shrugged. “Who knows? A cure for all known ills and a very long life, to that I can attest.”

“What I just saw...”

“A ritual, but a practical one. The creatures beyond that black portal may be killed solely by a thrust through a solitary and minute gap in their armor, a strike so precise that it can be executed only if the creature is immobile. The Dancer performs that function for us.” Beroald paused. “Preferably more reliably than tonight.”

A red-faced man with long white sideburns leaned over from an adjacent table. “Three times this month, Beroald. Three times!”

“I’m dealing with it, Shelby,” Beroald replied, his voice icy. The other man paled and turned back to his own table.

Smiling again, Beroald raised his glass in a toast. “To our health, Mr. King. Quite literally.”

King looked at the glass of blood before him, struggling to assimilate all he’d just witnessed and learned.

“The efficacy of the blood,” Beroald continued, “lasts but a short while.”

Immortality, King thought. He raised his glass. He drank.

Sweetness. Heat. Then…

A dam bursting inside him...a hidden lake released...his being flooded with rivers of vitality...freed from every bodily pain.

King gasped. He felt wonderful. He felt strong. He felt...

Powerful.

He laughed, and Beroald joined him. They roared with laughter, slapping each other on the back. At last, King sat back, wiping away tears of laughter, sipping the rest of the blood, reveling in his new-found vigor. Finally, he asked the question that he feared to raise, but for which he now had to have an answer.

“Beroald, will you accept me as a member here?”

Beroald smiled. “As I said, the Society of the Red Door is not a club. None of us may give or deny admittance. We are each here simply because we found a path to the Door, and can find it again whenever we desire.”

King’s hopes leapt. “Then I can return?”

Beroald’s smile disappeared. “I fear not.”

King felt a surge of fear and anger. “Why not? I found a path.”

Beroald waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Ah, but could you find it again? The Song led you tonight. But the Song plays for one soul and one soul only--the Dancer.”

“Yet it played for me,” King argued.

Beroald frowned. “No doubt your unprecedented exposure to our lady today fooled the Song into accepting you tonight. Indeed, you still reek of her.” Beroald wrinkled his nose, and King wondered at this remark. “But, I assure you, it will not play for you again.”

King turned to where the Dancer had disappeared. “Why does it play only for her?”

Beroald shrugged again. “Who knows? The Song will pass to another only upon her death, which is happily unlikely, given her access to the elixir.” Beroald rose. “Now I must pay my respects to some friends. It has been a pleasure.” Shaking King’s hand, he moved to another table.

Oblivious to conversations around him, King sat there stunned, imagining his freshly won vitality draining out of him with every heartbeat. To discover immortality and then to lose it...

No! He would not let this happen. He belonged here, among the elite, the powerful. There must be a way.

In front of him, the carving knife still lay beside the roast. King stared at the knife. He picked it up. The blade was sharp, slicing through the bloody meat easily. When no one was watching, he wiped the knife clean with his napkin then carefully slid it up his sleeve. He sat there trembling for a moment, then he rose.

Walking the length of the room, he climbed the stairs and went through the alcove where the Dancer had disappeared. He found himself on an outdoor terrace, halfway up the pyramid.

Beside a low stone wall at the terrace’s edge, staring up at the red moon and the strange starless sky, stood the Dancer. He touched her elbow. She cried out and drew away, staring at him with wild, clouded eyes. Then a look of recognition danced over her face.

“You came,” she whispered.

She flew into his arms, kissing him hard, twining her fingers in his hair, forcing his mouth onto hers. She pulled back. “Free me,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Take me away from here. Never to return,” she pleaded.

King shook his head. “Are you mad? The Red Door offers freedom from death.”

She laughed bitterly. “This place offers many things, but freedom is not among them.”

King pushed her away. “I wish to return here, not leave.”

The Dancer looked at him, her shoulders slumping. “You will not free me?”

He ignored her. “Can you teach me to find the path to this place?”

“I don’t know the way,” she said, her voice a dead thing. “I know only the Song.”

“Then teach me the Song.”

She stared silently at the dark jungle below. Then she straightened, as if reaching a decision. She turned back to him. “I cannot teach it, but I can give it to you.”

“How?”

She stroked the outline of the knife under his sleeve. He stiffened. Drawing out the knife, she pushed its grip into his now shaking hand, its tip resting beneath her sternum.

“Free me, as you planned,” she said, looking up into his eyes.

The Song will pass to another only upon her death.

“Freedom for me. Immortality for you,” she said softly, pressing closer to him until the tip of the knife cut through her thin gown and into her pale flesh.

“Free me,” she said again. A patch of blood blossomed around the wound.

Immortality. Only upon her death.

“Free me!” she cried.

Immortality.

With a sob, King stepped forward, thrusting the blade up and into the Dancer. She spasmed, and her head jerked backwards. Blood gushed from her chest, soaking her once beautiful gown and King’s hands and shirt. Crying out, he pushed her from him, and she slumped to the cold stone, no longer something elemental, just a dead thing.

What had he done? King stumbled backwards from her in horror.

And the Song exploded in him.

Before, it had often been so faint he could barely hear it. Now it pounded in his skull, filled his entire being. His very heartbeat seemed to match its rhythm. Beneath the music, he heard a chanting, whispers born in hidden places, words strange and sinister, rasped in cruel guttural tones from throats not human. A paralyzing cold crept into King’s limbs. They felt numb, no longer under his control. His legs began to twitch. His arms jerked.

He began to dance.

He twirled around the terrace, leaping over the corpse of the Dancer, his toes drawing patterns in her blood. He kept dancing, unable to stop, even when Beroald entered.

Beroald looked down at the body of the Dancer. He smiled. He spoke.

“These are fools that wish to die!

Is ‘t not fine to dance and sing

When the bells of death do ring?”

He turned to King and laughed. “She had become...unreliable, as you saw tonight. She would have killed herself, but the Song would not allow it. Any of us would have killed her, but again, there was the Song. On the death of a Dancer, it inhabits the nearest person. And none of us wish to know the Song that intimately.” He looked at King who was still spinning around the terrace. “That is, none of us who know its true nature.”

Inside, the band began to play again, the same music that now pounded incessantly in his head, the Song that King, to his horror, knew would never stop playing for him.

“Mr. King,” Beroald said with a smile, “I believe they’re playing your song.”

King felt himself pulled by invisible hands as strange strings strummed the night air. He began a tarantella, his steps matching the rhythm of tambourines and castanets from the band. Glowing as if on fire, he spun down the great staircase, across the dance floor, and onto the stone dais.

Alexander King danced that night, danced for the patrons of that strange society, danced for the things behind the black portal, danced and danced.

As he would every night until his death, puppet to the Song, Dancer at the Red Door.

For the city has a song, and it plays in a minor key.

##

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"The Dancer at the Red Door" is on the final ballot of the 2008 Aurora Award (Canada). If you enjoyed it, please consider voting. To learn how to vote for the Aurora Award, click here.