Chapter 1: Gateways and Tinfoil

Chapter 1: Gateways and Tinfoil

The rent was a steal. That was the phrase Leo Miller repeated to himself like a mantra, a shield against the creeping weirdness of his new life. For three hundred dollars a month, he got a bedroom with a window that actually opened and a landlord who doubled as his roommate. The catch? The landlord was Calvin ‘Cal’ Rhodes.

Leo’s days were a greasy smear of gasoline fumes and the monotonous chime of the gas station bell. He’d dropped out of college two semesters shy of a useless degree, and the subsequent "family discussion" had ended with his dad’s parting words echoing in his ears: "Don't come back until you've figured out how to stand on your own two feet." So here he was, standing for eight-hour shifts, his feet aching and his future looking as bleak as the sludge in the oil-change pit. The cheap room wasn't a choice; it was a necessity, a flimsy lifeboat in an ocean of debt.

In the first week, Cal had seemed like the perfect eccentric. A grizzled Vietnam vet with eyes that held the frantic energy of a cornered animal, he mostly kept to himself. His conversations were abrupt, disjointed monologues about "signal bleed from the upper atmosphere" and "frequency parasites that feed on stray thoughts." Leo, a connoisseur of cheap weed and a veteran of tuning out parental lectures, simply nodded along, the smoke from his one-hitter dulling the sharp edges of Cal’s paranoia. It was a comfortable, if strange, routine. Leo would come home, microwave a questionable burrito, and retreat to his room while Cal muttered to his old shortwave radio in the living room, the air thick with the crackle of static and the scent of ozone.

The peace, fragile as it was, shattered on a Tuesday.

Leo walked in, the smell of burnt coffee from the gas station clinging to his clothes, and stopped dead in the hallway. The living room window, which yesterday had offered a scenic view of their overgrown lawn, was now a sheet of shimmering, crinkled silver.

Tinfoil. Cal had covered the entire window with tinfoil, taping the edges down with meticulous precision. It cast the room in a bizarre, sterile twilight, the afternoon sun reflecting off it in fractured, disorienting patterns.

“Cal?” Leo called out, his voice tight.

From the kitchen, a rustling sound, then Cal emerged, a roll of foil in one hand and a strip of duct tape in the other. His wild grey hair was standing on end, and his eyes had a new, feverish intensity.

“Can’t be too careful, Leo,” Cal rasped, his voice gravelly. “The glass… it amplifies it. They use it as a lens.”

Leo’s first instinct was to placate. This was an obstacle, a new level of weird he hadn’t budgeted for. “They? Who’s ‘they,’ Cal?”

“The ones who broadcast,” Cal said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He moved to the small kitchen window and began unrolling another sheet of foil, the crinkling sound grating on Leo’s nerves. “They’re always listening. Looking for a receptive mind. A clear signal.”

Leo pinched the bridge of his nose, a familiar wave of anxiety washing over him. This was more than the usual ramblings. This was… structural. He had to act, to say something, before he came home to find the whole house looking like a baked potato. “Look, Cal, man, you can’t just… do this. It’s a rental. What if the real landlord drives by?”

Cal paused, his back to Leo. He slowly turned, his expression not angry, but filled with a chilling, profound pity. “The landlord doesn’t have to live with the hum, does he? He doesn’t hear it in the wiring at night. He doesn’t feel it vibrate in his teeth.”

The conviction in Cal’s voice was unnerving. Leo’s practiced cynicism, his ‘cheat code’ for dealing with the world, was starting to fail him. There was no logical explanation for this, other than the simple, terrifying fact that his roommate was genuinely losing his mind. And Leo was trapped here with him. Moving out would mean frantic calls, begging for money, admitting defeat. It was unthinkable.

“Okay,” Leo said, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay, fine. The windows. But that’s it, right? We’re not… we’re not foiling the toaster or something?”

Cal didn’t laugh. He just gave a slow, deliberate nod and went back to his work.

The result was a home that felt more like a bunker, a paranoid cocoon sealed against the outside world. Leo spent the next few days in a state of high alert, his relaxation time now spent listening for the crinkle of foil from another room. He smoked more, the sweet, hazy clouds a desperate attempt to build a wall inside his own head, a barrier against the escalating strangeness of his roommate.

The turning point came on Friday night. Leo got home late, exhausted and reeking of cheap hot dogs. He flicked on the hall light and found Cal standing on a rickety step-stool, his back to the door. He was holding a hammer and a fistful of nails.

He was boarding up the bathroom mirror.

Not with foil. With planks of scrap wood, crudely hammered over the reflective surface.

“Cal, what the hell are you doing?” Leo’s voice was sharper than he intended, fear finally slicing through his exhaustion.

Cal didn’t turn around. He just hammered another nail, the percussive thwack-thwack-thwack echoing in the cramped hallway. “Blocking the gateway,” he muttered, his voice strained with effort.

“Gateway? It’s a mirror, man! I have to shave!”

Cal finally stopped. He set the hammer down on the top of the step-stool with a clatter and slowly, stiffly, turned to face Leo. The frantic energy in his eyes was gone, replaced by a deep, dark terror that seemed to swallow the light in the hallway. The wrinkles on his face looked like cracks in a crumbling dam, barely holding back a flood of pure insanity.

“It’s the worst of them all,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “The foil stops the signals, the broadcasts. But the mirrors… they’re different.”

He took a step down from the stool, his movements jerky, and grabbed the front of Leo’s shirt. His grip was surprisingly strong, his knuckles bony and cold against Leo’s chest.

“They aren’t just for looking at, kid,” Cal hissed, his face inches from Leo’s. His breath was sour, laced with fear. “They’re for looking out of.”

Leo stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs. This wasn’t a rant. This wasn't a rambling conspiracy theory. This was a warning, delivered with the absolute certainty of a man staring into an abyss.

Cal let go, his burst of energy fading. He looked at the boarded-up mirror, then back at Leo, his expression pleading. “I took care of this one. And the one in my room. But you have one in your room, don’t you? On your closet door?”

Leo could only nod, his throat too dry to speak.

“Get rid of it,” Cal said, his voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper, a final, desperate plea. “Cover it. Paint it. Smash it. I don’t care. But don’t ever trust them. They’re gateways.”

With that, he shuffled past Leo and disappeared into his own bedroom, closing the door with a soft, final click.

Leo was left alone in the dimly lit hallway, the smell of sawdust and old fear thick in the air. His gaze was drawn irresistibly toward his own closed bedroom door. Behind it, he knew, was his closet. And on that closet door was a long, cheap, full-length mirror. A mirror that, until this moment, he had never given a second thought.

Now, it felt like a silent, waiting eye in the darkness.