As it did so, I caught sight of the sharp spikes gleaming in the pumelling rain. A bird, something like a Raven, but a great deal larger, soared overhead, and, emitting a strange, metallic growl into the blackening sky, circled above the ever-approaching gates. The wind screamed around the carriage, the wheels rattled, and though the gate was close ahead, we seemed to be eternally racing towards it, making no progress. I thought of the lock on the cabinet in my music master's study, the one with four lettered plates that had to be rotated a definite amount, and then alligned in a perfect secret order before it would open. As though there were a certain number of rotations that must be completed before access to this unknown world was granted to us. I imagined we were going in circles, driving through the same gates over and over again, endlessly circling. Approaching the third, I began to lose my grasp on reality. With each turn of the wheels that brought me closer to the last gate, I tried harder to drown out the answer to my questions with whatever music I could conjour into my head. Were these gates erected for the protection of this great establishment? For the security of these admirable administers of magical medicines? Were these prison bars meant to keep intruders out, or to keep it's inhabitants in?
Where am I? A short drive onward and we were at the second gate, I turned to look behind me and saw the gates closing, one after the other by power of unseen hands, or simply through years of habit more accustomed were they to being closed than opened. So paralysed was I by the sight before me, I did not notice that we had already driven past the first of the three spiked gates guarding access to the door, until I heard it crashing to a close behind us. Crossed with iron bars, and studded with heavy bolts, the doors were set in a great wall that appeared to be protecting whatever waited inside.
But what unnerved me completely was beyond the gates, a set of doors, heavy and wooden, pointed arched towering higher than any entrance to any building I had ever seen. And when I looked out I saw that we were heading fast upon a series of iron gates set in stone, wickedly arched, and crowned with tall spikes.
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