Staring into the mirror at myself, I shook my head slowly. There was no point in telling Monica about it. She was already clearly stressed, and while I was more than a little freaked out by her talk of the mystery door and the strangeness of the room that lay beyond it, me adding to it wasn’t going to help anything. Instead, I needed to see how she was in the morning, talk to her about the door and the room, and see if she remembered things differently than she had that afternoon.
The dark thought that kept circling my brain wasn’t that the room was some magic portal or that there was something sinister lurking at the other end. I’d had those thoughts fleetingly, but that wasn’t realistic. This wasn’t a movie, and there were plenty of terrible things in the real world that could explain her distress at seeing the door and denying it had ever been there.
No, the thing I kept coming back to was that her reaction might be a symptom of some childhood trauma. What if she’d been abused as a kid? What if something bad had happened in that room, and now she was blocking it out? It was certainly a creepy and odd-looking room, completely at odds with the rest of the house or…well, any place I’d ever seen. I knew part of my unease was tied to having gotten sick when I opened the door, but still…what kind of people had that kind of room in the first place?
And what did they do in there?
I flipped off the light as I left the bathroom, pausing a moment to let my eyes readjust to the dark. I’d just keep my theories to myself for the time being. See how she was when we went back and look for any signs that she wanted to talk. I knew she trusted me, but I still didn’t want to…
Where was she?
As I approached the bed, I could barely make out shapes by the weak light that pushed its way in through a crack in the drawn curtains at the window. It wasn’t much to see by, but enough that I could see the bed was empty. Still, I found myself patting the bed to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks. The top sheet and blanket were still there, but she was gone, with no signs of where.
That’s when I heard a small sighing sound coming from under the bed.
My heart had already been picking up speed, and I could hear blood in my ears as I stepped back and grabbed my phone off the bedside table. Unplugging it from the charger as quietly as I could, I turned on its light and crouched down to peer under the bed.
Monica was under there, curled into a ball and shuddering. I said her name once, twice, but she didn’t stir. Laying down, I scooted under the edge of the bed until I could reach far enough to gently pat her arm. This roused her, if only a little, and she looked at me with confused sleepiness before squinting against the flashlight.
“Wha…? What’s going on?”
I gave her arm a light squeeze. “I think you sleptwalked or something. You’re under the bed, baby. Can you get back out?
She glanced around groggily. “Under? Okay, yeah, okay.” With that, she began sliding out the other side. By the time I got out and back up, she was already getting back into the bed and laying down, her breath already slowing as soon as she turned over and grew still. I thought about waking her up again, but decided against it. It could wait until the morning.
Getting back into bed with her, I watched her sleep for awhile before trying to get back to sleep myself. What was going on with her? A bad dream, or something more serious? I wasn’t sure, but I’d changed my mind. I was going to bring it all up at breakfast and just see if she wanted to talk. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t push it, but at least I would have tried.
I slept very fitfully the rest of the night, and by the time we were sitting in a plastic booth eating a greasy breakfast, I started second-guessing myself. She seemed okay so far today, even if she hadn’t mentioned being under the bed or anything else that was going on with her since we’d been inside that house. I was almost ready to let it go again when she sat down her coffee and stared at me with a serious look on her face.
“Did I crawl under the bed last night?”
I swallowed my bite of toast and nodded. “Um, yeah. I came out of the bathroom and you were under there. Do you remember what happened?”
Shaking her head slowly, she gave a slight shrug and embarrassed smile. “I…I don’t know. I don’t remember doing it. I just kinda remember you shining a light on me and saying to get back into bed.” Letting out a sigh, she looked out the window at the parking lot. “Did I say or do anything?”
“No, you were just sleepy. It’s not a big deal, it was just a little weird.”
Monica looked back at me, her lips parted as though she was about to speak, but then she frowned and shook her head again. After a few moments, she said, “I appreciate you being understanding about it, but it was more than a little weird. Especially after us finding that door and room yesterday.”
I felt myself tensing slightly. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing and either make her defensive or push her to just lie and go along with me. I wanted her to feel comfortable talking to me honestly, and the best way I could think to put her at ease was to just wait. Wait and see what she said, if anything. Dropping my eyes, I picked at my eggs for a minute or more before she went on.
“I still don’t remember it. Not exactly. But when I woke up this morning, I did remember something else. A dream I used to have.”
I looked back up. She seemed paler and more tired than she’d been just moments before. I wanted to tell her to not worry about it. That we didn’t have to talk about it. To just let it go. But then she was talking again, and it was too late.
I’ve told you a little bit about how hard it was when I first moved here and started living with my grandparents. Part of what made it hard was that...oh, I don’t know, about a month after I moved in, I started having nightmares. Now I’d been having nightmares off and on all my life, just like any other kid, and in the few weeks since my parents died, they’d become much more regular. But these nightmares I’m talking about…the ones that started after I was living here…they were different. More vivid and real-feeling for one thing, though that wasn’t the oddest part.
No, the strangest thing, the thing that scared me the most, was that it was always the same dream.
Not exactly the same, but far too close to be a coincidence. See, back then, that room…the office at the back of the house? That was my room. They’d decorated it for me some before I arrived, and after I got there they’d carried me to get more stuff to fill out the rest. I loved that room at first. It was one of the few places I felt comfortable for more than five minutes.
But then the dream came. In it, I was in my bed and something woke me up. A sound, maybe, or some movement in a dark part of the room. I’d sit up, a little sleepy and a little scared, but not sure what I’d actually heard or seen.
That’s when I’d first notice the door.
There was a door on the far wall of the room that shouldn’t have been there. I’d feel myself waking up more, and the more awake I got, the more scared I got. I was always staring at the door, trying to figure out where it came from and what it meant, when it’d begin to open. It would open into a room that had a little bit of light coming from it. Just enough to see what had opened the door.
It was me. Or something that looked like me. And as I watched, it put a finger to its lips and gave me a smile.
“It…well, it freaked my shit out. I’d wake up screaming. That went on for a couple of weeks, and then my grandparents moved me to a room upstairs without any real complaint. After that, no more nightmares…well, no more of that nightmare, at least. That room still creeped me out for years, but eventually I guess I got over it.” She rubbed her face. “Shit, I didn’t even remember that until this morning.” Pausing, she looked back at me with a worried look on her face. “So do you think I’m even crazier now?”
I reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. “You’re not crazy. Not at all. I just…Well, I wonder if what you went through back then…maybe the room really was there and you just have a mental block about it. Is that possible?”
Monica sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s even possible, and I don’t understand why it’d happen to me. It was just a kid’s nightmare, right? Creepy, sure, but enough that I just blocked out an entire part of the house from my memory? Even my memories from when my grandpa died?”
“It sounds far-fetched, sure. But it makes more sense than a magic door just appearing in your house, right?”
Her eyes suddenly widened as she pulled back from me. “It’s not my house. Why would you say that?”
I gave her what I hoped was a comforting grin. “Sweetie, it is now. You own the house and everything in it. It’s all yours.”
She just stared at me for a moment before returning my smile with a strange one of her own. “I guess you’re right.”
Nodding, I pushed on. “Why don’t we head over and go through the rest of the house. See what all is in there. If you feel up to it, we’ll start organizing everything after that. But it’s entirely up to you. We’ll go at your pace.”
Monica reached out and held my hand again. “You’re a pretty cool boyfriend, you know?”
I gave her a wink. “I try.”
An hour later we were back inside. We headed straight upstairs this time, and while some of the rooms were a bit more cluttered than the tidy rooms below, everything was still clean and fairly well-organized. By lunch-time, I was grouping stuff as she instructed into piles going to charity, auction, or the dumpster I’d called and ordered on the way back out that day. Monica had been resistant to that at first, still insisting that there shouldn’t be that much that needed throwing away, but by early afternoon she was worried the small one we were renting might not be large enough.
Part of that was because she was going through everything so fast. She wanted to be done and out of the house, and I was getting the growing sense that she didn’t want to spend the time it would take to sell most of this stuff. I suggested getting someone in to do it for her—an estate seller or something—but she said no. Said it was her duty to get it done, but she just wanted it all over with as soon as possible. Then we could sell the house and never come back again.
By two we were getting hungry, and when she suggested heading out for the day, I offered to stay and clear through some more of the books that were stacked in one of the upstairs guest rooms. It was simple enough—we were giving them all to the local library unless they looked really interesting or valuable—so I could keep at it without needing to ask her advice on every item. She reluctantly agreed, telling me that she’d bring lunch back and then we could go a little longer after we ate.
I did want to finish the books, but I also had another reason for staying behind. I wanted to look at that room again.
We’d avoided the downstairs as much as possible that day, and neither of us had even mentioned going back to where the mystery door was. Still, it had been burning in my brain all morning, as though seeing that room again would somehow dispel whatever concerns we both had. Maybe if I could let it go, it would be easier to convince Monica that there was nothing that sinister or strange about the room after all.
I watched her pull away from an upstairs window before making my way downstairs and to the back of the house. No wonder we were creeped out—the house was empty and eerily quiet, and while there was electricity, we weren’t leaving lights on in areas we weren’t using. Moving deeper into the dark, I found myself rushing toward the next light switch as soon as I spotted it, my pulse quickening as I reluctantly abandoned my newest oasis of light.
When I reached the office, I felt my heart sink at seeing the door again. A part of me had actually hoped it would be gone—that yesterday had all been a strange dream or misunderstanding, as foolish and impossible as that seemed. But there it was, quiet and waiting.
Swallowing hard, I flipped on the nearby light and then moved to the door quickly. I needed to get this done before I lost my nerve. As before, the knob turned easily in my hand before swinging open with the slightest provocation. I steeled myself for the gut-punch of nausea to return as the room came into view, but it didn’t. For some reason, that didn’t comfort me as much as it should.
The lights were still burning overhead—I didn’t even see a way to turn them on or off. The thought occurred to me that, even dim as they were, their light should have shone under the bottom edge of the door. Maybe yesterday we hadn’t been paying attention, but today I’d been looking for the door before the lights were even on. But there’d been no sign of that sickly yellow light crawling out from underneath.
Still, it didn’t matter. There was a reasonable explanation, just like there was a reasonable explanation for everything. The door, the room, even what I’d seen at the far end. Shining my phone’s light toward the far end of the room, I forced myself to walk forward. There was something there in the shadows—tall and thin and perfectly still. Was that…a person? No, that was impossible. And it didn’t look right, not exactly. I got close enough for the light to show more detail, and let out a big breath I hadn’t realized I was even holding in.
It was a mannequin. Just a stupid mannequin stuck in the far end of this weird room.
The doll itself was strange—it didn’t look like something you would see in a store. For one thing, it looked as though it was anatomically correct, down to its faded nipples and the shadowed cleft between its yellowed thighs. For another, I could see a thin seam running along its torso—it looked like it had a large rectangular panel that could be removed. And its eyes…something was wrong with…
I let out a small yelp as my phone buzzed. Stepping back several steps, I dug it out of my pocket. It was Monica. She was about to pull up and wanted me to come out.
I felt a flush of panic. I didn’t want her finding me in there. Not yet, at least. I glanced back up at the mannequin. How long had I been standing there? And what was…that’s when I faintly heard what sounded like the front door opening and realized that the fucking text had been delayed.
Cursing under my breath, I ran from the room, back toward the front, shutting off lights as I went. I knew of no way to make it back upstairs without her seeing me, but by the time I reached her in the front foyer, I’d come up with a story about wanting to see if I saw more books down here—so we could keep everything grouped together.
Monica gave me an odd look, but said nothing about it. She was focused on persuading me we should knock off early and come back the next day. I didn’t argue. I could tell she was stressed, and after my little exploration of the room, I was more than happy to get away from that place for awhile.
That night we went to bed early and fell into an exhausted and deep sleep. I’m not sure what woke me, but suddenly I was sitting up in bed, inexplicably terrified and looking around. When I turned to check on Monica, I saw she was gone again.
My stomach cramped as I reached for my phone. I wanted the explanation to be mundane—she’d just gotten up to pee or get some ice from down the hall—but I didn’t hold out much hope. Leaning over the side of the bed to look underneath, I saw her right away, curled up and naked as she slept. Why was she naked?
Her eyes snapped open when the light hit her face, and I could tell right away she was more alert than she’d been the night before. I started asking her if she was okay, but she just smiled and put a finger to her lips to hush me before crawling back out from under the bed. I raised up and saw that she was already slipping back between the sheets, her cool, naked body pressing up against mine as I laid back down beside her. I…I wasn’t sure what was going on, but this wasn’t right. She needed to get away from here and…She started kissing my ear, making it hard to think. I reached over and put my hand on her leg.
“That’s really nice, but we need to stop and talk, okay?”
Suddenly, a band of light spread across the far wall before going out, and I was still turning to look for its source when I heard Monica’s voice coming from the direction of the bathroom. “Matt, who’re you talking to?”
An icy hand ran across my chest as the lips returned to my ear with a rough whisper. It sounded like Monica, but different—as though she was hoarse or could barely talk at all. The image of Monica, hanging from a tree, flashed through my mind as it poured its words inside.
---
Credits
Comments