When he held a candle across the threshold, the black swallowed the fire...

When he held a candle across the threshold, the black swallowed the fire completely. When he tried to step across it, he felt nothing beneath his foot. Sometimes he heard rain, a bird-cry, wind soughing through tall trees; mostly he was aware only of an intimation of vastness, silence, as though he stood at the edge of a world.
He saw nothing. So he let the charcoal imagine what might lie on the other side of the door.