Jordan Gravette Part 5 of 6

They have returned to the booth in the Haven. The golden key, still chained to Jordan’s waist, is resting uncomfortably in his lap, its weight restricting the blood flow so his legs are beginning to feel numb and tingly. For the first time he notices three doors in the wall behind his father. He is sure they were not there before. Each door is battleship grey and fitted with a spyhole protected by a swivelling cover.

‘This time,’ his father says, ‘your challenge is as simple as it looks. All you are required to do is choose which of these doors to leave this place by. Of course, I say the challenge is simple. The choice, however, is anything but.’ 

Jordan sits for a while, carefully considering what he is being asked to do. The previous challenges both had a dishonest element about them. He tried to imagine what levels of deception and trickery this last challenge would be put in his way. Nothing was simple in this place. It does not escape his notice that each door is like the door to a prison cell. It would be wise to be cautious.

He approaches the first door and sets the key down at his feet. He pushes aside the cover on the spyhole and peers in. He is looking at the interior of his own home. It is evening and his wife and daughter are decorating a Christmas tree that nestles in the corner of the room. They move slowly and do not speak. There is a glumness about them, and their straight mouths are giving nothing away. A telephone rings. His wife answers. She listens and nods, her countenance unchanging. The call is brief. When she sets down the receiver she turns to her daughter, puts her arm around her and draws her close. ‘I’m so sorry. Your fathers meeting was important and went on longer than expected. He has missed his flight.’

Her daughter says nothing, extricates herself from her mother’s arms and leaves the room in silence. When she has gone, her mother picks up the box holding the decorations and dashes it on the floor. Its contents spray out in all directions and brightly coloured shards from the shattered ornaments rain down on the carpet.

Jordan lets the cover fall back over the spyhole. He does not understand. He works hard and has showered them with everything they could possibly want. Why should they be so unhappy? What more could they want? What else could he give them? 

He moves to the second door. This time the room behind it is different. It is a bedroom. A woman is sitting astride a naked figure lying on the bed. It is the same woman he saw with his father in his parents’ room, only the figure on the bed is not his father, it is himself. On the dresser beside the bed, the golden key is sitting, its chain snaking across the bed and curling round his waist like a serpent. The image is like an electric shock, throwing him back from the door. I am not like my father he thinks, but deep inside the doubt is there. Perhaps, like his father said, there was little difference between them. He moves on to the third and final door, hoping that this would provide some kind of acceptable salvation.

It is the rear garden of a terraced house he does not recognise. His wife is lying on a sun lounger. His daughter appears from the back of the house, running and laughing. She is followed by two dogs scampering and cavorting excitedly in her wake. ‘Daddy’s home,’ she shouts gleefully. His wife rises to meet her husband. A man Jordan has never seen before emerges from the doorway. His jacket and trousers are crumpled. His trainers have worn soles and their laces are grey with the grime of life. His wife embraces him. This man, he realises, has replaced him. There is no sign of the golden key.

Jordan steps back from the door, his hands shielding his face from the choices he has witnessed.

‘I can choose none of these,’ he says.

‘Then you choose to remain here,’ his father replied. ‘As I knew you would. It is time for your final vision.’

* * *

He is in the hospital ward where he had first awoken. He sees himself lying on the bed. The wires and tubes have been removed from his body and a team of nurses in hospital scrubs are rolling back the machines that had surrounded him. The machines are no longer talking to each other. His wife is sitting by his bed, her hand resting on his pale forearm. His daughter is standing behind her. Their eyes are glazed.

One by one the nurses leave the room, until only one male nurse is left, filling in a clip board and fussing over the dormant machines, checking that everything has been left in order. Eventually, his wife leans forward and kisses his forehead before ushering her daughter out of the door and he is left alone, apart from the final nurse, in an empty room. When the last nurse leaves, Jordan recognises his face. It is the man his wife embraces in the garden of the terraced house he had not seen before.

* * *

‘This cannot be,’ Jordan cries, but the vision has gone, and he is standing with his father once more.

‘You can blame no one but yourself for any of this,’ his father says. ‘And yes, maybe myself also. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be this way. I can offer you one final choice. But beware, it is a choice that once offered cannot be withdrawn. You would have to take it.’

‘Then make your offer,’ Jordan said.