The Vermilion Gate

The first time I saw it, I was sixteen, standing in the sawdust-choked air of our workshop, screaming at my father over the ruined plans for the harvester. My cousin, Eli, was wedged between us, his hands up like a referee at a prize fight, but we were both too stubborn to back down. The fight was about money, about the failed harvest, about everything and nothing, and the words were getting hotter, meaner. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker by the old root cellar door—a dark, gaping hole in the ground where we kept the salted meat and pickled beets. It was a rectangle, about the size of a coffin, floating four feet off the ground, its color a translucent, angry red, like a heated iron left too long in the forge. And it was pointed at us. I felt it—a pressure, a heat, a weight of judgment. It wasn’t just seeing it; it was feeling its displeasure, its fury at our noise. The words died in my throat. I muttered something about needing air, and I walked out, leaving my father and Eli staring after me, their mouths open. I didn’t look back. I never wanted to see it again.

Years later, I had buried my father, and I had inherited the workshop, the land, and the silence. I had moved back after my mother’s passing, and I was trying to make the place work again, but the ghosts of the past hung heavy. One evening, as the autumn sun bled into the horizon, I was out by the boundary wall, repairing a section that had crumbled. The wall was old, built from stones that my great-grandfather had hauled from the river, and it had a wooden gate that had warped and rotted. I was hammering in a new plank when I saw it again—the same rectangular shape, but this time it was standing at the gate, its color a deeper, more somber red, like dried blood. It didn’t feel angry this time; it felt hungry, patient, and it was waiting for me. I dropped my hammer, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. The rectangle pulsed, and I felt a pull, a whisper in my mind that said, ‘Come.’ I shook my head, and when I looked again, it was gone. But I knew, with a certainty that chilled my bones, that it had been there for a reason.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I asked around town, but no one had seen anything like it. Old Mrs. Harlow, who had a reputation for knowing things, told me a story. She said that the gate in the wall was older than anyone remembered, and that it was a threshold between our world and something else. Long ago, her grandmother had told her that a gate of red would appear when the boundary between the living and the dead was thin, and when it did, it meant that someone was being summoned. ‘It’s a doorway,’ she said, her eyes milky with age. ‘And it only opens when it wants to take something back.’ I laughed nervously, but her words planted a seed of dread in me.

The second time I saw it was the night my daughter, Ruth, was born. I was in the hospital room, holding her tiny hand, when I glanced at the window and saw the rectangle floating outside, its red glow staining the glass. It was smaller this time, but just as vivid, and it was pulsating in rhythm with Ruth’s heartbeat. A cold dread swept over me, and I knew that it had come for her. I wanted to scream, to run, but I was frozen. The rectangle seemed to look at me—if a shape can look—and I felt a message: ‘She is marked.’ Then it vanished, and Ruth let out a small cry, as if she had sensed it too.

Over the years, I watched Ruth grow, and I saw signs that the gate had left its mark. She would have night terrors, screaming about a ‘red window’ in her room. She would draw the same shape over and over—a rectangle, always red, always slightly transparent. She spoke to someone I couldn’t see, someone she called ‘the Red Man.’ I tried to reassure her, but I was terrified. I remembered the stories, and I knew that the gate was not a harmless apparition; it was a portal to something malevolent, something that had waited years to claim its due.

One night, when Ruth was nine, she woke me up, her face pale in the moonlight. ‘He’s here,’ she whispered. ‘He’s at the gate, and he wants me to let him in.’ I ran to her window, and there it was—the rectangle, larger and more solid than ever, its red surface shimmering like a curtain of blood. It was at the edge of our property, where the old gate stood, and it was pulsing with an eager hunger. I knew then that I had to confront it, to cut off whatever bargain had been made generations ago.

I went to the old gate, carrying a lantern and a scythe that had belonged to my grandfather. The air was cold, and the grass was wet with dew. As I approached, the rectangle grew brighter, and I could hear a faint hum, like a swarm of bees. I stopped a few feet away, and the rectangle seemed to turn toward me, its color deepening to a furious crimson. I raised the scythe, but my hands trembled. A voice spoke from nowhere and everywhere, cold and hollow: ‘You cannot sever what has been sealed.’ I swung the scythe at the shape, but it passed through nothing, and the rectangle simply pulsed, amused.

In desperation, I remembered something Old Mrs. Harlow had said: ‘The gate is fed by the blood of the firstborn. Each generation, it must be offered, or it will take what it wants.’ I had thought it was just a superstition, but now I understood. My father had never spoken of it, but he must have known. The rectangle had been angry at us that day in the workshop because I was a firstborn, and I had not been offered. It had waited, and now it wanted Ruth.

I made a choice. I walked back to the house, took the old family bible from the shelf, and ripped out a page. I wrote my name in blood from a cut on my palm, and I went back to the gate. The rectangle was still there, waiting. ‘Take me instead,’ I said, my voice steady. ‘She is a child. I am the one who was supposed to be offered.’ The rectangle paused, and its color flickered, as if considering. Then, without warning, it lunged at me.

The world dissolved into a vortex of red and black. I felt myself being pulled, torn, and I screamed, but there was no sound. I saw flashes of my life—my father, the workshop, Ruth as a baby—and then I was standing in a vast, empty plain under a sky the color of a bruise. The rectangle stood before me, but now it was a towering door, its frame made of bone, its surface a shimmering red film. The voice returned, but softer now: ‘You have chosen the burden. You will guard the gate until you are nothing.’

I have been here for what feels like years, though time has no meaning. I am a shadow at the threshold, a silent sentinel. I watch the world through the red film, and I see Ruth, grown now, with children of her own. I see her look out at the old gate sometimes, and I know she senses my presence. The gate is red, and I am its keeper, bound by a love that transcends flesh. I whisper to her on the wind, ‘Stay safe, my daughter. The gate is closed, and I will keep it that way.’ But sometimes, when the moon is full, the film thins, and I see her glance toward it, and I fear she remembers. I can only hope she never sees it fully, that the red rectangle remains only a childhood memory—a flicker in the corner of her eye, a dream half-forgotten. For I have paid the price, and I will not let it take another.