The Shift of the Unfinished Gate

I was twenty-three the summer I finally admitted to myself that the things I saw were not just tricks of the light. But back in 1997, when I was only seven, I didn’t have words for it. All I knew was that our new house, perched on the edge of a dormant volcanic crater in the highlands of Java, felt wrong from the first night.

The lot had been a tangle of banyan roots and black stone, and my father, a man who laughed at superstition, had cleared it with a machete and a bottle of palm wine. He’d built the house himself, a ramshackle structure of teak and corrugated iron, with a gate that was never finished—just two rusted posts and a gap where the door should have been. My mother, who had the gift but feared it, had refused to let us sleep in the main bedroom. Instead, we slept on a thin mattress in the middle room, my mother in the center, my sister and I on either side.

That night, the air was thick with the smell of wet earth and frangipani. My father was out drinking with his friends in the village, a half-hour’s walk down the crater’s slope. I woke to a sound like the slow creak of a door hinge, but there was no wind. The moonlight, pale and milky, spilled through the high window, casting the shadows of banana leaves across the floor. My sister’s breathing was steady, but my mother’s was shallow, as if she were pretending to be asleep.

I saw it then, in the corner of the room where the wall met the ceiling. It was a shape, not quite solid, like smoke trying to hold a form. It was a woman, I think, but her limbs were too long, her head tilted at an angle that made my neck ache. She was transparent, and through her, I could see the grain of the wooden wall. She was looking at me, not with eyes, but with the pull of an unseen tide.

I wanted to scream, but my throat closed. I dug my fingers into my mother’s arm, but she didn’t move. The figure began to shift, her form dissolving and reforming, like sand slipping through fingers. She moved closer, and I felt a cold that was not temperature but a vacuum, a suction of warmth. She stopped at the foot of the mattress, and I saw her mouth move, but no sound came out. Instead, a whisper entered my mind, not words, but a feeling: ‘The gate is open.’

Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone. The room felt lighter, and my mother let out a long breath. In the morning, she said nothing, but her hands were trembling. She made us tea with ginger and honey, and she told us to stay inside.

I tried to forget, but the image lingered. Over the following weeks, the visits grew more frequent. The figure never spoke, but she always did the same thing—she opened her mouth, and I felt the words in my head. ‘The gate is open.’ I began to understand that she was not threatening me, but warning me. But what gate?

One afternoon, while my father was away, I snuck out to the unfinished gate. The posts were set in concrete, and between them, there was nothing but the cracked earth. I stood there, feeling an odd pressure in my ears, as if I were at a high altitude. Then I noticed something strange: the shadows of the posts were not pointing away from the sun, but toward each other, forming a narrow corridor of darkness that led into the forest.

I stepped between the posts, and the air changed. It became thin, and the sounds of the world—the birds, the rustle of leaves—faded into a hum. I looked down, and the ground was not dirt but a black glass, reflecting a sky that was not the same sky. The stars were wrong, arranged in constellations I had never seen. I felt a tug, as if something was pulling me forward, and I saw, in the distance, a figure made of light, but not warm light, more like the glow of fireflies on a summer night. It was the same figure, but she was whole now, and she was beckoning.

I was about to take a step when I heard my sister’s voice behind me, sharp and terrified. ‘Don’t!’ I turned, and the world snapped back to normal. My sister was pale, her eyes wide. ‘I saw her too,’ she whispered. ‘She wants you to follow. Don’t.’

I took her hand and ran back to the house. That night, I learned from my mother, who finally spoke in a low voice, that the gate was a threshold to the other side, a place where the veil was thin. She had known since we arrived, but she had hoped to keep us away. She told me that the figure was a keeper, a guardian, but one who had been here long before we came, and that she was bound to the gate. She warned me that if I walked through, I would not come back the same.

I didn’t go back to the gate, but the figure kept visiting, her mouth moving in silence. I grew used to her presence, but I never grew unafraid. Then, on the night of the full moon, my father came home early, stumbling and drunk. He cursed the house, cursed the land, and decided to finish the gate, to ‘close that damn hole,’ as he put it. He took his tools and went outside, and we heard the sound of sawing and hammering.

My mother and I watched from the window as he worked, his silhouette black against the moon. He was building a door of scrap wood, but as he attached it to the posts, something went wrong. He froze, his arm raised, and then he dropped the hammer. He turned slowly, and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was looking directly at us. But there was something off in the way he moved—stiff, like a puppet. He walked toward the house, not with his usual swagger, but with a measured, deliberate step.

When he entered, he didn’t speak. He walked past us, into the back room, and closed the door. My mother shook her head, ‘It’s not him,’ she said. And I knew she was right.

The next morning, my father was himself, but he had no memory of building the door. He found it installed and cursed, but he didn’t remove it. From that day on, the visits stopped. The figure was gone, and the gate was closed. But my father changed. He was always cold, always looking over his shoulder. He began to sleep in that back room, and sometimes, at night, I would hear him whispering, but not in his voice. It was a different voice, higher, softer, a woman’s voice.

We left that house a year later, moving to the city. My father never spoke of it, but he never smiled again. And I, who had seen the gate, began to see more. The lines between worlds became blurred for me, and I saw the shadow people on crowded streets, the auras of the dying, the shapes that linger in the corners. I’ve tried to ignore them, but they don’t ignore me.

I’m twenty-three now, and I still believe. But I’ve come to realize that the gate was not just in that house. It is everywhere, and it is open. The keeper, that woman, she was not warning me of danger. She was begging me to help her close it, but I was too afraid. And now, every night, I hear her voice in my head, not as a whisper, but as a clear, desperate call: ‘The gate is open. The gate is open.’ And somewhere, in a house that no longer exists, a door of scrap wood stands ajar, and something waits on the other side, wearing my father’s face.

I don’t know how to close it. I don’t know if I ever can. But I know that the shift of the unfinished gate is still there, and it’s calling me back.