The Door

Below is a short story I have been working on for some time. This is my first real stab at something like this and I felt like this was as good a place as any to share it with the world. The ideas for this story came from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a series of drawings designed to be writing prompts Kevin shared with me last year (or maybe two years ago, who knows?). The image below pulled me in almost immediately and the basic idea for the story jumped into my head. After a couple false starts and many helpful suggestions and edits from my friend Bill, the story below is what we are left with. Please enjoy and offer any constructive criticism you feel appropriate. 

            I first noticed the door in my basement ten days ago. That first night it was no more than a one-inch hole, nearly too small to fit a mouse. I might have taken it for any other old hole in the foundation if not for the wooden door nestled perfectly inside. This was an old looking door, like something you might see in a castle on some old medieval movie. Seven tiny planks of dark wood held together by two tiny bands of black medal, one near the top and one near the bottom, and an arch along the top of the door. I dropped to my hands and knees to check it out, completely forgetting the case of beer I promised the guys upstairs.

            The wood was like nothing I’d ever seen before and I couldn’t identify the type from such a small sample. Hell, I could have been staring at the tree these planks were cut from and still not be able to identify them. Arboreal identification was not exactly my forte. Still, even with my lack of knowledge, I could see there was something unique about this wood. These seven tiny slats emitted an energy suggesting they were cut from a tree long since gone. Perhaps this tree was the only one of its kind and wilted and died when this small bit of wood was taken from its trunk.

            On the left side of the tiny door was a tiny brass knob. To the right were a set of tiny brass hinges anchoring the door to nothing. Surrounding the tiny door was just the normal, chipped concrete wall of my old basement. Nothing else out of the ordinary. Look up and I saw the old ice hockey skates that hung on the wall unused for at least five years. Turn around and I saw the creaking wood steps leading up to my kitchen. Everything just as it was when I came down, except this door. Some time between me hitting the bottom of the steps and walking the ten feet to my back up beer fridge, this little thing popped into existence.

            Damn, how many beers did I drink that night? Not so many that I couldn’t get down the stairs, but enough to see a miniature medieval door in the wall. Not sure what the conversion on that is, but I thought it best to leave it alone and chalk it up to an overactive imagination. Maybe I watched Game of Thrones recently and this was the drunken manifestation of an image burned into my brain. Whatever the case may be, I decided it was best to leave this last case in the basement for tonight.

            “Carl, what’s the holdup?” a voice shouted from upstairs. It wasn’t until one of my impatient and thirsty friends yelled down that I realized my right hand was slowly creeping towards the knob. I recoiled like I was touching the burner on a stove and fell back on my ass. Call it intuition or a sixth sense, I just knew I didn’t want to open that door. I was terrified to open that door. Fear that stayed my hand that night, like it would on many nights to come. I didn’t want to know what was on the other side, and I certainly didn’t want anything to know I was on my side.

            “Carl, dude, we’re dying of thirst up here,” my friend called down. For a split second, I thought about calling my friends down to see my discovery, but quickly moved past that idea. No need to invite this group of guys into my drunken hallucination, I would never hear the end of it.

            I pulled myself up to my feet and climbed the stairs back up to the kitchen where five guys were huddled around the table with a deck of cards and a mountain of empties. I decided I’d had enough fun for one day. I made some lame excuse about a headache and work in the morning while kicking them out. They hurled the usual insults my way, comparing me to female genitalia and questioning if I even liked female genitalia, but otherwise went quietly. I stumbled down the hall to my bed. A single image of the door crossed my brain before it was lights out for the night.

            The next morning, I awoke with a railroad spike lodged in my left eye and about a pound of cotton stuffed in my mouth. Sunlight slipped through the musty curtains and danced straight into my right eye, setting my whole world on fire. This was shaping up to be one hell of a hangover, and I didn’t even remember drinking all that much the night before.

            I used having to work in the morning as an excuse to get rid of the guys last night, but there was no way I was dragging my sorry ass to the plant today. The folks over at DyCom Paints would have to find someone else to clean up their messes today. I had the sick days saved up and this was the perfect time to use one.

            While reaching for my phone to text my boss, I remembered the door. Surely this was just some figment of my imagination, an after image from a drunken dream. I must have had a few more than I thought and dreamt this craziness about a little door appearing in my basement. I’ve had weirder drunken dreams before. None come to mind at the moment, but I’m sure they exist.

            I found my phone and fired off a poorly worded and grammatically questionable text to my boss. Upon standing, everything in my head tried with great effort to burst through my skull. Dark spots filled my eyes and I was sure I was about to pass out and whack my head on the side of the nightstand. I took a couple deep breathes and prayed I wouldn’t die wearing stained boxers in a room that smelled vaguely of last night’s farts.

            Gradually, the world came back to me and I steadied myself. After a second to take stock and make sure all systems were go, I walked out of the room and towards my kitchen. The remnants of last night’s gathering were everywhere. Half eaten slices of pizza were strewn across the table and empty beer cans lined the floor like a defeated army spilled out on the battlefield. I stepped over some of the dead soldiers to get to the basement door on the far side of the room. Rest easy, lads, you served with honor and went down like heroes.

            My heart was pounding out of my chest as I paused at the basement door. I wiped the sweat from my palms onto boxers that used to be white. This is stupid, I thought, there is nothing down there but my smelly old basement. Even if there was a one-inch door, who cares? What, was a little mouse going to come out and shit on my toes? A shudder ran down my spine at the thought of something coming out of the door.

            Slowly, I descended the stairs, taking each creaky step one at a time to keep my balance and steady my nerves. The old wooden stairs moaned like each step was sucking the last bit of life out of them. Not since I was a child had I been so damn nervous about going into a basement. An old, loud furnace with a red-hot mouth that might as well have been the gate to hell stoked my fear back then. Now, as a thirty-five-year-old man, a beer induced half dream set my heart racing.

            Familiar sights came into view as I approached the bottom. The hockey skates hanging by their laces on a peg in the wall, wondering if they will ever be used again. The small window, so crusted over with dirt and mold, even the brightest morning sun couldn’t fight its way through. And there at the base of the wall, the wall I had seen a thousand times in my ten years at this house, was the door.  

            I was almost relieved to see the door there. At least I hadn’t imagined the whole damn thing. That I might still be hallucinating was not an idea I was keen to face. Some supernatural phenomenon was preferable to a complete mental breakdown in my book. No looney here, just a character in a Stephen King story – hopefully one that lives.

            I continued to the bottom of the stairs and walked over to the door. Kneeling down to the floor, I was able to get more or less the same view I had last night. The door was still made of those ancient, wooden planks. It still had brass hinges and a brass knob. The top still rounded off like one of those doors in a medieval castle. Everything was exactly the same except for the size. Overnight, the door had seemed to double in size, from one inch to two. There was no sign of stress on the foundation or chipped concrete from the expansion, just one more inch of door.

            Now this may sound strange to you all, it sure as shit surprised me, but the doubling of the size came as more of a shock than the damn thing appearing in the first place. Maybe I was too drunk last night to get a good sense of size and it just looked bigger through sober eyes. Certainly possible, but I didn’t think so. Something in my gut told me this door was growing, and it wasn’t done yet.

            Without realizing what I was doing, I reached my hand out towards the door. I tried to stop, screamed in my brain to stop, but I kept on reaching. It felt like my hand was being pulled and that scared me the most. Something on the other side of that door was pulling my hand in. Maybe it couldn’t open it from its side and it was trying to get me to turn the knob for it. Maybe whatever was over there was just fucking with me to fuck with me. Hell, if it could make a door appear out of nowhere and grow overnight, it likely could make me do things I didn’t want to do.

            Less than half an inch from the knob, I regained control of my arm and pulled my hand away. Jerking back too violently, I toppled off my hunches and slammed my ass on the cold, concrete floor. I got to my feet about as quick as ever and shot up the stairs two at a time. I didn’t give a thought to the creaking sounds under my feet. Hell, it might be better if the stairs collapsed behind me and cut me off from that damn door. Then nothing could follow me up.

            At the top of the stairs, I slammed the door to the basement and collapsed into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. My old heart was pounding so hard, I thought it might burst right out of my chest like one of those aliens from the movies. Every single beat echoed in my brain with the power of Keith Moon stomping on his bass drum. Maybe I’d just have a heart attack or stroke right there in the kitchen and the door in my basement wouldn’t be my problem anymore.

            After a few deep breathes, the racing in my heart settled and the world came back into focus. I’ve lost control before, usually fueled by alcohol or some type of drug, but never have I felt like something else was moving me against my will. For a brief moment, I felt some other being inside of me, pushing my hand closer and closer towards that door. It didn’t matter that touching the door was the last thing in the world my brain wanted.

            After a few more deep breathes, I figured out what I had to do next. I walked back to my bedroom – still smelling of last night’s farts – and grabbed my phone off the charger. I scrolled through my contacts until I found Lydia’s number then paused just before pushing the call button. I needed someone else to come look in my basement, someone who could prove I wasn’t insane. Pretty strange thing to ask of a person, but Lydia was the one I came closest to trusting in this world. She’d tell it to me straight and maybe offer a little help one way or another, as long as she wasn’t still pissed at me.

            I hit the little green icon to call and lifted the phone to my ear. As it rang, I thought about the best way to explain all this without sounding like a total nut job and came up empty. Hopefully, Lydia would just trust that I needed her, no matter how crazy I sounded, and come over. She was a waitress at my favorite bar and we had an on again/off again thing going for the last couple years. We were off again at the moment, but I thought she would still come if she really believed I was in trouble. She picked up after the fourth ring.

            “What do you want, Carl?” she asked. The crackle of deep sleep was in her throat. Only then did I remember she usually closed the bar and had probably only been asleep for a couple hours.

            “Sorry, Lyds,” I said. “I know it’s early and all, but I really need your help.”

            “Jesus, you sound like shit. Rough night last night?”   

            “Rough night, rougher morning. Any way you can swing by sometime today?”

            “I don’t know, Carl. What time will you be home from work?”

            “I’m home now. I took a sick day.”

            “What, do you want me to come over now?”

            “If you don’t mind.”

            “Babe, I am not dragging my ass out of bed because you went on a bender last night and decided you miss me all of a sudden.”

            “It’s not like that this time. I just need someone else here and you’re the first person I thought of. I got some really strange shit going on over here.”

            “What? What is such a massive emergency that I need to come all the way across town to solve it for you?”

            “Jesus, Lyds, can you just get over here and I’ll explain everything. I’m fucking crackin’ up here and I need you.” I didn’t like the fear and desperation in my voice, but it seemed to do the trick.

            “Damn, babe, you really do sound bad. I’ll come, but it might take me a second. I’m not exactly up and ready right now.”

            “Thanks, Lyds. Just get here as soon as you can.”

            Lydia hung up. I tossed my phone on the bed and walked towards the door. The plan was to make some coffee and maybe a little bit of toast. Instead, I shut the door and clicked the lock. I sat down in the middle of my bed and watched the bedroom door until Lydia showed up.

            The next hour and a half was the most anxious time of my life. Fear kept me glued to my bed with the blanket pulled up over my shoulder like a kid who just saw a monster in the closet. Even at thirty-five, I firmly believed in the protective powers of being under the covers. Some instincts don’t fade with age.

            I was damn near crying when Lydia finally pulled into the driveway. Had she decided I was full of shit and just went back to bed, I might have stayed locked in that room until the life ran out of me. When I heard the car door slam, I jumped up out of bed and threw on some shorts and a shirt that could almost pass as clean. No matter how bad I felt, I couldn’t let this lady I kind of, sort of like or love see me shivering in my stained skivvies. I ran out of the room and was at the front door as she walked in.

            “Hey, Lyds, thanks for coming,” I said.

            “Yeah, well, this better be worth my time,” Lydia said. “I’m going on about three hours sleep here and I’m not in the mood for any silly bullshit.”   

            Seeing her standing in the doorway raised my spirts. Her frizzy hair and sleepy eyes reminded me of mornings waking up next to her. Some mornings those sleepy looks would lead to some of our best love making sessions. For a moment, fear and anxiety about the door was replaced by thoughts questioning why I ever let her get out of my bed.

            “Hello, Earth to Carl,” Lydia said, waving her hand in front of my face. “Please don’t tell me you called me all the way over here just to stare at my chest and give me the ‘fuck me’ eyes.”

            “Right, sorry,” I said. “I’m just glad to see you. You’re the only person I could call with this.”

            “Jesus, babe, you don’t look good at all. Are you feeling sick? I thought you might be checking me out, then you went white as a ghost.”

            “I’m not sure I know how to tell you what is going on here today. I think I’ll just have to show you. Will you come to the basement with me?”

            “The basement? What the hell is down there?”

            “I just need you to tell me if it looks any different to you, like if you notice something out of place.”

            “Different? Different how? Carl, I’m not sure I’ve ever even been in your basement. If I have, I sure as hell don’t remember enough about it to tell if anything is out of place.”

            “Please just come down there with me. I think you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it. You came all this way, what harm would a few more steps be?”

            “If I go look at your basement, will you let me go home and go back to sleep?”

            “Of course. This really should only take a minute. I really appreciate you, Lyds.”

            She nodded and followed me reluctantly. I saw irritation and a touch of fear in her eyes. I also saw a bit of mistrust, like she thought I might be leading her into my basement to lock her up and do a bunch of weird shit to her. I must look really rough to make her look that way and it sank my heart a little to think she might be even a little scared of me.

            In the kitchen, we maneuvered around the remnants of last night’s party. Her eyes looked over the mess and, in my brain, I thought up every excuse I could for the state of it, but she didn’t say anything. Further conversation would just prolong this weird morning and I’d bet all the money I had she kept quiet just to get out of my house and on her way home as fast as possible.

            At the top of the stairs, I opened the basement door and flipped on the light. We walked down the steps, Lydia staying a couple steps behind, but still following all the way down. About half way down, the door came into view. No sound came from behind me; no gasp, no questions, just silence. Either she didn’t see anything or the sight of a tiny door in the basement wall was not noteworthy to her.

            At the bottom of the stairs, I turned to her and said, “Well?”

            “Well what?” she said.

            “That bit of wall under the ice skates there,” I said, pointing directly at the door. “That bit of wall doesn’t look odd to you?”

            “Do you mean that completely normal part of the wall right there? That part with the peeling paint and mold at the bottom? No, that doesn’t look odd to me. In fact, it looks like every other fucking bit of wall in this shithole basement.”

            So there it was. She couldn’t see it and I was clearly losing my mind. To her, my door was just another dirty part of this old house. I fully expected her to not only see the door, but to have the same strange compulsion to reach out and open it. Hell, I even hoped she might have some sort of explanation as to why the damn thing was there in the first place. Now I was stuck with the reality that I was just losing my mind.

            “Carl, please don’t tell me I came all this way just to look at your gross basement,” Lydia said.

            “I can’t believe it,” I said.

            “Believe what?”

            “Nothing. You should just go. I’m sorry I called.”

            “Nothing my ass. You look like you’re about to crack up on me. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong here?”

            “Seriously, it’s nothing. I just don’t feel well. I need to go back to bed.”

            “Dammit, Carl, I don’t believe you. You drag my ass out of bed to look at a damn wall then you won’t even tell me what’s really going on. Clearly something is bothering you and now I hope it ruins the rest of your fucking day. You’re an asshole.”

            Lydia turned and march up the stairs. I made a half-hearted attempt to stop her and she responded by inviting me to have relations with myself before slamming the door. No doubt I deserved that; I just wish I knew what was yet to come. I would have told her I loved her and ran out of the house with her. I didn’t know that morning would be the last time I’d see her, the last time I’d see anyone for that matter. All I knew as she stormed out was I was losing my marbles and no one was going to help me. I sat right down on the cold basement floor and cried like I’ve never cried before. My eyes were fixed on the door the whole time.

            The events of the next few days are not all together clear to me. After Lydia left and the crying was done, I went back upstairs to do some research. Surprise, surprise, Google found no legitimate history of doors just appearing out of thin air. The less than legitimate cases all just made me feel worse. All the top responses dealt in one form or another with mental health issues and referrals to specialists in my area who dealt in hallucinations and delusional behavior. I jotted down a couple of their names just in case.

            The internet provided no answers and the second set of eyes was a complete bust. Logic said I should leave the house and get away from this insane situation, but I stayed planted in my living room staring out the window. I’m not sure what I was afraid of, but I knew in my heart that leaving my house was only going to cause more trouble. Then I did what I always do in times of trouble. I got fall down, blackout, piss-yourself-and-don’t-even-notice drunk.

            When I woke up on my living room floor the next morning, my first move was to the basement to check on my door. If I could drink the thing into existence, maybe I could drink it into oblivion as well. No dice, the door was still there and I was sure this time that it was bigger than before. I laughed out loud and ran upstairs to get lit again. I passed that day drinking heavily and running downstairs every hour or so to make sure my door was still there. It always was.

            The next week followed roughly the same pattern. Every morning the door was still there and bigger than the day before. There was no longer a need to rush downstairs every hour or so because at some point on day two I just stayed down there. What little sleep I got was spent on an old cot in the middle of the floor. All my waking hours were spent staring at the door and fighting the urge to rip the damn thing open.

            I didn’t bath. I didn’t eat or drink anything that couldn’t be found in the basement, which was all beer and expired canned goods. At one point I think I heard someone pounding on my front door, but that eventually went away. I never bothered calling into work after the first day and was actually grateful when my boss called to tell me I was no longer an employee of DyCom Paints.

            The pull to open the door was stronger every second. The feeling of being controlled by some other being went from terrifying to uncomfortable to addicting. By the end, it felt like a drug I couldn’t live without. Brief moments of lucidity were hell for me, leaving me craving the sweet relief of my insanity. If I was truly losing my mind, I did not want to be aware of it.

            After eight days of living this way the door did something new. While sitting in my own filth, staring at the now five-foot-tall door, a calmness swept over me and I swear I saw the brass knob turn. I stood bolt upright and held my breath. Not a single noise could be heard in my basement outside of the beating of my heart. Never have I focused on anything harder than I focused on that knob. Dammit, it moved, I know it did.

            It turned again and kept turning until there was a click as loud as a shotgun in my silent basement. I stood perfectly still, not disturbing a single molecule of air around me. I was moments away from finding out what was behind door number one. Whatever had been pulling me to turn the knob all this time was finally sick of waiting.

            Should I have opened the door earlier? Should I have opened before it had a chance to get this big? Suddenly, I was sure whatever was coming had been waiting for the opening to be just large enough. I could have stopped it if only I had known. I could have opened the door sooner and left an opening too small for this thing to come through. It was never this thing urging me to open the door, it was something else altogether. Something knew what was on the other side of my door and knew I was the only hope of stopping it. It tried to tell me, it tried to guide me, but I was too chicken shit to listen. I knew then that I could have prevented whatever was about to happen. I also knew then that it was too late.

            The door burst open and a blinding light stung my eyes. A figure stepped into the light and slowly came into focus. Oh God. Oh, my holy God. Why did I wait? Why didn’t I listen? Why didn’t I open the door when it was smaller? I could have stopped this. Oh, God, please no.

The beast stepped out of the light and into our world.