Broad daylight met me as soon as the door cracked open. The light was more orange than yellow, but I was still able to see a landscape that was simultaneously beautiful and weird.

  I stood on top of a small hill surrounded by a dark and foreboding forest of giant, tree-like ferns. Most of the plants were the sort of things I would expect to find in a picture of a primeval, tropical jungle. Huge vines hung in great loops from tree to tree, and a dense underbrush overgrew a tangled mass of fallen trunks and branches. At the top of the trees, I could see brilliant flowers reaching up towards the noonday sun in a cloudless sky.

  The air was so humid and full of wild scents that I felt my chest struggle to breathe. I don’t think I was having a panic attack, though that wouldn’t have been surprising with how overwhelmed I felt.

  I glanced up at the orange orb in the center of the sky. It was at least three times the size of the sun that I knew and appeared so close that I believed I could reach up and touch it. I suddenly realized that this was the same orange sun that I had seen in the portal in my grandfather’s basement. And by its color and size, I knew that the sun that shone down on me then was not the sun I knew back home.

  Somehow, the portal in the stone chamber hidden under my grandfather’s basement had pulled through time and space to another place, maybe another planet. I couldn’t imagine any other possibility then.

  I looked at the door and could finally see the outer portion that was hidden from me when I was inside the chamber. The inner portion appeared to be made of the same green stone I saw in the rest of the chamber. But the outer portion was made of some kind of metal. It had the dull sheen of iron instead of the brighter shine of silver or platinum, but there were greenish streaks throughout the metal. It reminded me of how white marble sometimes has streaks of gray or black. There were also carvings on the outer portion.

  Despite being naked, I stepped through the door and onto the grassy hill and let it swing closed behind me. The door was rectangular, like any normal door except it was ten feet tall and so wide that I couldn’t touch both sides even if I stretched my arms. The runes carved into the outer portion looked like the same inhuman runes I saw in the circular symbol inside the basement before the portal appeared. But these runes were arranged in columns and gave me the impression of a language, though I couldn’t guess which one.

  Taking a couple of steps back, I saw that the door was part of a pyramid structure. Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, this was only about thirty feet tall and made of the same green-streaked metal as the door. An intricately cut amber gem about the size of my head was set in the center of a circle of runes just above the door. If it were a precious gem, then I certainly could have paid off my student loans with it.

  As I walked around the perimeter of the pyramid, the short grass felt warm on my bare feet. The pyramid had four sides with a flat top rather than a sharp point, like Egyptian pyramids. No other side except the front with the door, had runes carved into its surface.

  My view from the top of the grassy hill was unimpeded by trees, as the forest did not grow close to the pyramid. In the distance, I could see a low and level shore that stretched down to a sea with sunlight glinting off of shallow waves. In the distance, the surface of the water was dotted with countless tiny islands. Some were towering and made of barren rock, while others were covered in more of the primeval vegetation with vivid flowers.

  “Where am I?” I asked no one.

  My words seemed strange and muted in the heavy air. That’s when I noticed the silence. I couldn’t hear anything. No birds sang or insects chirped. And though the beach seemed rather far away, in that stillness, I felt like I should have been able to hear waves breaking on the shore. The utter lack of sound frightened me more than anything else, and I suddenly wanted to be off that world, even if that meant returning to the stone chamber and re-entering that eternal darkness. I walked around to the front of the pyramid and pushed on the door.

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  It didn’t open.

  I tried again with no result. I tried the other side with no luck. I threw myself at the door, desperate to get it open. I stepped back and kicked at it like some burglar trying to break into a home. But all I managed to do was hurt my bare feet. The door didn’t budge.

  “Oh, come on!” I shouted, though the strange silence muted the sound.

  Now the panic set in.

  I’m not proud to say that I screamed and pounded on the door like a child in a pathetic attempt to plead for it to open. My heart raced, and my breaths came in ragged sobs as I pictured myself dying alone and naked on that world of strange plants growing under an alien sun with only a weird silence to accompany me. Eventually, the world stopped being so silent.

  I heard the unmistakable sound of leaves rustling and branches breaking as something moved through the trees. I turned around and stared into the jungle, trying to imagine what might emerge. And whatever it was, it was big. The dark leaves of a gigantic fern slowly parted as a massive reptilian head slid through the leaves. Its narrow snout turned in my direction until its yellow eyes looked down at me where I leaned against the metal pyramid.

  It was a dinosaur.

  I could only think of three or four dinosaurs I learned as a kid, and this one wasn’t any of those. But the predatory eyes and mouth full of sharp teeth were all I needed to know that it was a meat-eater. And thanks to all the noise I was making, it had found me.

  The dinosaur burst through the trees, and my instincts kicked in. As I ran in the opposite direction, I didn’t need to look behind me to see how close it was getting. Its heavy steps stomped right behind me. My only hope was to get out of open on that grassy hill and into the jungle where I might lose it.

  A little detail you should know is that dinosaurs rarely make noise. Unlike in the movies, dinosaurs do not roar. The only sound they make is from their feet pounding on the ground as they run and the crashing of their bodies through foliage. Otherwise, a dinosaur is a massive, silent monster of death.

  I reached the edge of the jungle and continued to run. There was a sudden explosion of noise as I crossed into the treeline. My ears were assaulted by a cacophony of bird songs of so many species that I couldn’t have guessed what they were. Apparently, the metal pyramid on the hill muffled the sound while I was standing near it.

  I careened down the hill, almost falling a few times as I heard the dinosaur sliding down after me. I felt twigs cut into my feet as I ran, but I didn’t dare stop. Though the dinosaur was certainly bigger, stronger, and faster than me, my smaller size allowed me to nimbly turn and hide behind trees and duck into the underbrush. The dinosaur slammed into the base of a huge tree to slow its descent, causing leaves to fall down like snow as it shook from the force. The monster turned and leaped towards me, but I was behind a different tree by the time it landed.

  I found a small crevice at the base of the wide tree trunk and crawled inside. Huddling in the cramped, dark space, the rough bark scraped against my bare skin. I tried to slow my breathing so it could not hear me. But I suddenly realized that I knew nothing about how the dinosaur hunted its prey. Was it looking for me? Listening for me? Sniffing the air, searching for my scent? Or some combination of all three?

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, eyes closed and praying the dinosaur couldn’t find me, before I heard its monstrous passage away from my hiding spot. I opened my eyes and waited until I couldn’t hear it anymore and felt safe enough to come out of the crevice. In the dense forest, even the sight of something as big as a dinosaur was quickly lost.

  Slowly creeping away from the tree, I kept my gaze in the direction where I thought it went, just in case it came back. When I turned around, preparing to go back up the hill and try to open the pyramid door again, I looked up at another terrifying mystery.

  It was manlike, but more ape than human. Its skin was mostly covered by a fine fur and the coloration was so dark that I could barely see it in the gloom under the forest canopy. The outline of its skull was hidden under a wild tangle of hair, but I could see a protruding jaw and a heavy brow ridge like a gorilla’s. It stared down at me with humanlike eyes filled with hate.

  I opened my mouth to speak, though I had no idea what I would have said. It raised a long arm and crashed its heavy fist against my head. Blackness overtook my vision before my body hit the ground.