Adam stood in the middle of his deserted street, the Kimber .45 trembling in his hand, as he flipped the safety off. The faint metallic click almost echoed along the concrete and through the maple tree branches swaying in the warm spring breeze. With so much silence everywhere else, each sound had an amplified, warped quality to it, like echoes from a sealed narrow corridor.

The warm gust of air did nothing to ease the Arctic chill coursing through his blood. He should've known. He was among the handful of people who saw this coming.

They used to gather at his house every weekend. Almost as a casual hobby at first, a mutual curiosity. Then the meetings increased in frequency, when realizing what they had really uncovered.

The Book in hand, cigarettes smoked while Scotch flowed, they would pour through every line countless times over the years. They eventually designed a code key, refined to pinpoint precision.

A codex that was able to comb through every word and identify patterns in the Book, calculating them into numbers and complex mathematical symbols that resembled a mixture of hieroglyphs from lost civilizations and the alphabets of dead languages.

They would take these equations, which were as beautiful and familiar to them in the same way musical notes are to composers, and see the solutions. They ran out of notebooks and journals. They began to scrawl the glyphs along every inch of every wall and ceiling in his house. When space ran low again, they had the most important glyphs tattooed on their skin.

They were the ones that held the most complex and sacred truths, clearly defined, yet too immense in their absolution for any human to fully grasp. The ones inked into their skin came along with effects they all should've foreseen in some way, some inscrutable horror looming ahead for marking themselves with symbols older than Man. It was different for each of them.

A few of them had simply vanished before today. Evan, an undergrad from the university Adam taught at. John, an accountant who loved dabbling in number theory. Paul, one of Adam's closest colleagues, had packed up his house two blocks away one night and left with his wife and little girl. Audrey, Adam's assistant, was next. Her apartment was abandoned with the television still on and an untouched club sandwich sitting on the coffee table.

The effect on the others were more consequential.

Charles, the oldest one of the group, sat in a convalescent home, blind and immobile most days. Adam wondered if the man was really rendered incoherent or (even worse) had full awareness of the surrounding world, but just couldn't respond. Encased in the prison of his own flesh, the permanent cost for their findings.

Scott, a theologist, reported nightmares that he claimed registered as more authentic to him than the waking world. He, as countless others soon did, disappeared one day. His apartment was left unlocked. Adam found Scott's pets, two German Shepherds, sprawled across the living room couch, necks snapped clean. The only other trace left, a handwritten note. The message was brief : "I found the last Door. I'm finally going home."

Sam, a very astute undergrad recommended by Charles, was the most recent. He called Adam last week, voice monotone. He spoke of Doors, too, how his dreams were filled with thousands of them every night. How each one was covered in blood and the smeared viscera of unidentifiable animals. The patterns were unique on each one, like a fingerprint. Like their tattoos. He also spoke of holes in the sky. Massive, gaping lightless vacuums that were like the space behind each Door.

"It's true blackness, Adam. " he had said. "It's the blackness that was here before all of us, the one that will be here after us. It's always.... Been. We just read and calculated when Its mouth will open up and swallow the universe...."

Adam waited, hearing nothing but a muffled, rapid shift in Sam's breathing. He was drowned out a little by static, either crying or laughing.

In the last half minute, nothing but the low electronic whisper of static on the other end. There was only a pause next, seconds of silence between the twelve gauge shotgun being racked and fired. He would be found naked, sitting in the bathtub. Still clutching the pump-action Remington, the fragmented remnants of his skull splattered against porcelain and a closed vinyl curtain.

Before these incidents, Adam could tell they had felt a change inside just as he could. Sleeping only a few hours a night when sleep actually claimed him. Memory blanking out for hours, too, just a sudden jump through time's abstract streams. Whenever in the dark or a dimly lit area, he could hear whispers floating through suddenly chilled air. Always behind him or from around dark corners and behind objects.

When he focused, Adam would almost identify certain words and inflections, almost identifying the language. Then the word would slip away and he'd lose his concentration, thinking his ears caught a chorus of complex and dead tongues instead of just one. He'd never be able to isolate and make sense of what he heard.

Words are powerful. He and the others knew that very well. They could build and destroy empires. Fuse and split souls. They could also open every Door and punch irreparable holes in the sky. Words can tremble once inked upon skin. He's felt it.

The glyphs seemed to gently hum through his skin at times, whispering to one another in their beautiful tongue. Thrumming with ancient power, the knowledge of countless eras. The sensation had already grown from the moment people all over the world disappeared in one sudden instance, plucked away from this world's fabric and taken to a new one.

Adam and the others knew it would happen. Their code key had even given the exact date, pinpointed the eerie calm to come afterwards. The signal of what atrocities would hunt the remaining. The sides that would be chosen. Wars that people like Adam would soon have to fight.

They never reported the findings, though. They were certain of two outcomes from doing so. Either no one would believe them or they would be killed for what they knew.

He stood out here because it was like the glyphs had led him, guiding his travels as naturally as the moon shifts tides. He waited for what was coming next.

An unseen trumpet began to blare all around him, deafening after such a long period of almost absolute silence. It shook every window as the ground rumbled, its every deep crevice groaning. His grip on the gun tightened.

It was time now.