The Church's Portal

‘Once in a blue moon…’. Sila had awoken around midnight to a room flooded with light. The full moon was perfectly centred in the circular stained glass window above her bed. The fragments of glass were all in shades of blue; azure and sapphire, some as light as a summer sky, and Persian blue as deep as the sea, which filtered the white lunar rays, giving the impression of a blue moon. She reached for a small, battered book on her bedside table and read the words of the poem: 

‘Once in a blue moon on a clear cloudless night,

Place an object of value in the path of the light, 

Don’t shift your gaze from it as it waits on the ground,

And you’ll be transported to the place where this object was found, 

And if by fate the opportunity does arise,

Fasten yourself to safety with unbreakable ties,

For leaving is easy, tug three times to come home,

But if the connection is broken, a different world you’ll forever roam.’

The book had been the only thing left in the house, when Sila and her family moved in. Although to say this were a house would be technically untrue, since it had originally been a church, which had been forced to close when its congregation shrank to such a size it could no longer justify its use. And so it remained empty until Sila’s mother, bewitched by its history and architecture, decided to convert it into a home. Boredom more than anything had led Sila to read the book and found it to be a collection of old poems and verse. Strangely they did not seem to be religious in any way, rather they were childish and superstitious and Sila did not seek to apply them to her own life. 

But the night was so still and her room glowed bright in the light of a seemingly blue moon. Something was just a little different and for once in her life Sila had the urge to be spontaneous. As she reached towards her desk she did not feel strange, it felt as though she was in alignment with the world, following its instructions. Perhaps, she thought, I am following the poem like a method, even a recipe like the ones she followed to bake muffins with her mother.

‘Or like a spell.’ The idea came to her so quickly, but she already had her object in her hand, so she pushed it to the back of her mind and read the next line of the poem: ‘Place an object of value in the path of the light’.

She set her chosen object on the floor. It was a conch shell, impressively intact and very large; a gift from her mother from a childhood holiday. She gazed at it as it sat on the floor, illuminated in blue. Certainly she had fulfilled each demand so far; a blue moon, an object she valued placed on the wooden floorboards. The next line was a more complex issue; what should she fasten herself to and what should she use? For some people the most important question at this point would be why. However, Sila was already too caught up in this sequence for it to seem the strangest thing to do. Finally she settled on tying one end of her earphones to the bedpost and holding the other end in her hand. This was hardly an unbreakable tie, but doubt about whether anything would happen and curiosity as to what could happen was more powerful than uncertainty. Therefore she sat on the floor looking intently at the object, waiting, with no idea why she would even expect anything at all to occur.

Time went on so slowly, in that tedious way it does when you are left with nothing to do but wait. Even as she wondered if she should go back to bed, the light on the ground seemed to just ripple gently just as the ocean does when the wind catches on it. She felt a breeze on her face, lifting her hair slightly and as she strained her ears she thought that she could hear the distant lash of a wave on the sand. The conch shell glistened and pulsed with blue light, calling her ever closer, until she felt its cold, smooth surface against her nose. 

Flawlessly she slipped into the shell, hardly aware of what had occurred. It was only when she lifted her eyes, that she realised she was on a beach, still bathed in that same blue light. She gazed up at the clear sky, which revealed the twinkling stars in all their glory. Excitement and horror bubbled as she realised what had happened. She had been transported to where the conch shell was found. The sound of the waves was louder now; closer, and the wind stronger. Naturally, her limbs tried to move but she had no control over them and was incapable of any movement besides that of her eyes. Sila became afraid as the sea swept nearer and she tasted the salt on her lips.

In the distance there was a person, silhouetted against the night sky. They seemed to be moving towards her. Sila wanted to flee back to her bedroom, but desire to find out what would unfold kept her stuck on the sand. Confidence that the poem had been right up to this point reinforced her idea she should stay. After-all, if she felt in any danger she only had to tug three times on the earphones in her hand. One tug on it told her she had control of those muscles as well. The figure came into focus. An old woman, with wizened skin and a long black cloak over a fragile body; bones jutting out beneath the folds of the material. Sila knew the woman would come to her, their paths seemed aligned, just as the events of the poem followed the same order. The women drew closer, her hand outstretched before her, reaching towards Sila. Automatically, with no thought for her action, Sila reached out her arms to meet her. The earphone lead fell from her hand. She reached for it but felt only empty space. The woman’s eyes met hers. They were blue like the moon through her window. A wave engulfed her. The force rammed her into the sand. Salt water gushed into her mouth, nose and eyes. She barely had time to even register the cold shock and the salt sting before the darkness swallowed the blue.