A Door Has Opened

A Door Has Opened

Dear Reader,

It began with an ordinary table. Dinner set, glasses faintly shining, wine breathing in its jug. A chair slightly pulled back, waiting for someone who never arrived—or perhaps someone who had just slipped away.

Then came the hinge. Not the front door. Not the cupboard. Somewhere else.

The wall above the table rippled, thinned, and folded open. Where plaster had been, there now stood a window, opening onto no garden, no street, no world we know. Through it leaned a figure carved from marble and myth, yet terribly alive. One hand clutched the frame, the other lifted a chalice glowing as if filled with molten gold.

‘You have left the table empty too long,’ he said, voice like stone grinding stone. ‘It is time to come through.’

No one recalls him stepping across. Only that the food cooled, the glasses filmed with dust, and the empty chair was never taken again.

But listen—each year, on the same night, the window reappears. It is not a trick of light. It is not memory. It is an opening. And when it comes, you may feel it in your bones more than in your walls: a door has opened.

Not in your house. In you. A hidden threshold, waiting for your hand.

Should you hear that hinge, don’t mistake it for an echo. Step closer. The feast is already waiting.

Yours at the threshold,
The Keeper of the Empty Chair

 

This is a story that originated from a marker poem in the series Messages from the 4th Dimension, in which blackout poetry was created on the basis of English-language correspondence, magazines, brochures, and other documents from the estate of Philip Coppens, writer and researcher of the paranormal and alternative history (1971–2012).

Read more about this in my book Een magisch-realist in Mysterieus België, het Boek der Synchroniciteiten.

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