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A knock on the door won't do, oh no, nothing so simple as that... finding the door is a challenge in itself... one must first survive the perils of the surrounding jungle, and once that hurdle is conquered, only emerging from the jungle at precisely the right angle will lead to the welcome of a bower...
Barely discernible beneath the overhanging boughs, this arch is wrapped in vines and thorns, and hung so thick with flowering roses that beyond... well, beyond, only shadows can be seen...
The soul brave enough to dare those shadows will find himself emerging into a tunnel of sorts, a long cobbled path enclosed in glass walls... it could be a greenhouse, with its mullioned plates, but for the fact that all the hothouse greenery seems to be on the outside... looming... bearing down... held at bay by nothing more than a few sheets of boiled sand...
 A few potted topiaries line the path... Rosa gallica, the antique purple-crimson bloom from which this walkway takes its name... trimmed for at least a foot from their bases, and carved into globes at the top, these beauties, so deceptively benign, create the proverbial trail of crumbs that stretches for what could be yards, or what could be miles...
 Ornate Victorian gas lamps hang all in a row along the ceiling of this glass gallery, but they are never fueled, never lit... Only the keenest nocturnal eyes could venture this far, and eyes that cannot make out the way through the bath of utter darkness probably do not belong...
The path finally ends at a circular porch, topped with a cupola dotted with glass bricks, through which the evening stars wink, washing the portico in an eerie otherworldly light, and illuminating a piece of statuary that stands just before the door... it is a figure, carved of cultured marble, of the archangel Gabriel, God's assassin, dour-faced and with a trumpet hanging limp at his side... at the pedestal base, chiseled into a banner at his feet, are the words "Der Toten wird stehen auf." ~ The Dead Shall Rise...
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