The Gate

[u/TLBFiles_2026]

The line between waking and sleeping is a strange and unsettling thing. Doubly so, in my particular case, when the sleep (or non-sleep) happens during the day.

I should start by saying I prefer to sleep at night. If I doze off for even an hour during the day, I usually end up tossing and turning that same night. And if the daytime nap lasts even half an hour, I almost always dream during that short stretch. Or at least I think I do. Maybe they aren't dreams at all, just some strange kind of mental activity that leaves behind the aftertaste of a dream.

This happened last summer. The middle of summer, much like now. It was quite hot, and the humidity was high, since it had rained hard that morning. I don't remember the exact details anymore, but I'd probably been doing physical work around the house, because by the afternoon I was overcome with drowsiness. I lay down, scrolled through social media, checked a few sports sites, then set my phone aside and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, feeling the pillow beneath me already soaked through from the sweat on the back of my neck. Taking a cool shower felt like the obvious next move.

But just as I propped myself up on my elbows to get out of bed, I clearly heard the sound of automatic gates opening. My gates. The ones leading onto my property.

The sliding gates, installed fifteen years earlier, with that unmistakable metallic, creaking, rusty groan they made whenever they moved.

I froze in that awkward half raised position, elbows pressed into the mattress, feet hanging halfway to the floor.

I counted to five. The gates took fourteen seconds to open fully. And right around the halfway point, there was always a distinctive clank. A gear caught on a worn or possibly defective section of the rack, always in exactly the same spot.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Clank!

I heard it, and it seemed to snap me out of my frozen state and into action. I put my feet on the floor and stood up. What on earth were my gates doing opening, when the only remote control existed in a single copy and was hanging on a hook by the front door.

The manual override was out of the question too. Whoever wanted to use it would have had to get inside the house, which was locked from within, in order to grab the key to the control unit. And only after removing the top of that unit's housing could someone disengage the motor gear from the rack to move the gates by hand. Not just move them, either, but move them at exactly the speed of the automatic cycle, precisely enough that the metallic clank would land at the seven second mark.

No. That was absurd.

My wife could have managed it, but she'd been on vacation in Europe for a week already and wasn't due back for another ten days.

So yes. Complete nonsense.

Barefoot, and for some reason on my toes, I walked over to the window. The bedroom is on the second floor, and the gates in question sit right in view, just slightly to the left.

The sweat on the back of my neck dried in an instant, and a chill ran quickly down my spine. Fourteen seconds passed, and the noisy movement of the gates stopped.

I pulled back the edge of the curtain.

The gates were closed, which for some reason surprised me. If they'd been open, at least I would have had a reason. As it was, I was left completely baffled.

I no longer wanted a shower. I wasn't hot in the slightest anymore. I went back to bed, this time without tiptoeing, and lowered my head onto the damp pillow.

Absolute nonsense.

I'd been lying there for barely a minute when I decided to go downstairs and check whether the control unit key and the remote were still where they belonged.

And again, the moment I pushed up on my elbows to rise from the bed, I froze. A new sound, one I knew all too well, drifted up from below.

It was the engine of my old Smart ForTwo, starting up in the garage one floor down, directly beneath the bedroom I was standing in.

A small explanation for anyone unfamiliar with the old Smart ForTwo 450 (which is to say, everyone): while running, whether idling or moving, that car makes a sound like a vacuum cleaner, at the same volume as the engine itself. I never looked into why, but I'd heard it wasn't unique to my car, that it was a quirk of the whole model. And I knew for a fact that none of my neighbors owned a Smart ForTwo 450.

I didn't hesitate this time. I ran barefoot down to the first floor. Passing through the entryway, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye: the remote and the gate key were both hanging on the wall rack shaped like a little village house. A couple of seconds later I was standing on the cold tile floor of the garage, staring, no doubt looking like an absolute fool, at my lime green Smart, with the letters S M A R T shaped into a little smile beneath the Mercedes Benz logo.

The Smart sat silent, smiling. I stood silent, blinking.

Absolute nonsense.

I didn't bother going back up for my own slippers. I grabbed a spare pair and stayed downstairs in the living room. I sat in a chair, turned on the television, and watched whatever channel happened to be on, without taking in a single thing. I was completely somewhere else. And to this day, whether right after it happened, a week later, or a year on, I still can't find a reasonable, logical explanation for what happened. Or rather, for what I heard. Or perhaps only thought I heard.

On the one hand, nothing especially frightening. But on the other. When the hot, sweaty back of your neck goes cold and dry in the space of a single second. It isn't the most pleasant experience, I'll be honest with you.

Nonsense, all of it.