The Door

[inaramid]

There was a girl in the backyard and she stood in front of a door. Darren had never seen her before; he wished he could say the same about the door.

He spied the door first from the kitchen window just as he was striding out to pump water from the well. Morning chores at the children’s home where he lived were always a pain, but that was the entire point of it. Orphans were supposed to work hard to earn their keep.

None of the other kids were awake yet, and that was how Darren liked it. It was the only time he could move about without elbowing somebody out of the way. With at least thirty other children in the house including the matron who runs it, every nook and cranny of the old wooden building could quickly become cramped during the day. But on that particular morning, as Darren walked out into the supposedly-empty but now-occupied yard, he found himself wishing for the usual throng of children dashing all over the place. The stillness of the house and the mountains surrounding it – formerly the best feature of the dawn – now seemed more sinister than peaceful to him. It made his skin prickle with unease.

Pretend you don’t see it.

The words came to him as suddenly and clearly as though somebody had spoken aloud. It was one of the things his mother used to say when she was still alive. She was full of no-nonsense advice like that, which often came in handy when you were seeing things that others couldn’t. Look the other way. Think of something else. Ignore it.

Ignore it – that was the golden rule. Darren had had a lot of practice growing up, but simple though it may seem, experience had taught him that it wasn’t always the case. Like now, for instance. Even as he grabbed the buckets from beneath the windowsill and jogged toward the well, the door lingered within his peripheral vision. Ignore it, he urged himself, turning his back on this apparition and busying himself with his buckets. Now, this might have finally done the trick, and Darren wouldn’t have been tempted to break all the rules he’d lived by, if it weren’t for that noise.

The door creaked, a shrill protest of rotting wood against rusted hinges. Darren shuddered, and almost as if somebody had called his name, he looked up, his gaze automatically drawn toward the sound.

The door seemed to tower over him even if it was a good distance away. It looked as massive and rickety as he remembered – all fractured wood and heavily-scratched panels, the entire surface smeared with what seemed to be a haphazard pattern of shapes, but on close inspection were actually hundreds of muddy handprints laid over one another. It was like it was forced open on multiple occasions, but why anyone would do that, Darren didn’t know. As far as he could tell, there was nothing but darkness beyond the door.

It didn’t belong in this world, his mother had once told him. If others could see it, it would have attracted a lot of interest, propped as it was in a place it shouldn’t be, unsupported by any visible structure, and seemingly leading nowhere. The matron would have torn it down in a heartbeat if she knew it was there. Anyone would.

Not everyone can see it.

Again, the words were spoken in his mother’s voice. It was the only explanation Darren ever got when he’d asked if he was seeing things. He’d been able to as far as he could remember, and even now, at fourteen, his sight – the other sight, his mother called it – was as clear as ever.

“What's wrong with their eyes?” Darren had once asked. “Why can’t they tell that it’s there?”

“They will,” his mother had answered, “when it’s their time to go through. They’re lucky. We’re not as blessed.”

Darren didn’t quite understand what she’d meant. The door didn’t bother him. It would appear in random places, admit those whose earthly tenure had lapsed, and then as quietly and abruptly as it had arrived, it would be gone.

There was no reason to be afraid -- or at least, Darren used to think so, until he realized something that should have been obvious: The door didn’t just let the dead in. It could also let them out.

[DATo]

Nice story! I liked that last sentence a lot.

Thanks for sharing.