The Forgotten Door (1 of 2)

When my grandmother passed, I, Tamara, had never expected she would leave me her house. I had always figured it would be left to one of my uncles or my mother. I was surprised when she called me while she was in the hospital to begin the complex processes of signing all of the paperwork that was required. It was not as easy as the movies made it look.

No being called into a big room with a lawyer who dramatically read out a will before a crowd of relatives all biting their nails in wonder and anticipation of if they would be left anything. No, just paper work. She had her lawyer come to the hospital to make sure everything was in order. All taxes paid with arrangements for her estate to take care of taxes for several years.

It had never occurred to me the amount of wealth my grandmother had saved with her frugal ways. She had heard from my mom that my husband, Alex, and I were house hunting and having trouble finding anything in our price range due to the current market. She had made sure all of her children and grandchildren were taken care of in the way that would benefit them the most. That's just the person she was. Less than a week after we crossed all our "T"s and dotted our "I"s, she was a gone.

We took the time to grieve and after taking care of our lease, we began the process of moving into our first home. It was an old house, built in the early 1870s, three stories, painted a brilliant white with a wrap-around porch. With my acquisition, it will have been in our family for five generations. It had been meticulously maintained and had all the modern amenities added over time. Other than the style, you'd never guess the house was as ancient as it was. The outside was exactly as I remembered from my childhood.

As I exited the car and walked up the front steps, I felt a pit rising in my chest. My vision start to get blurry and I felt wetness on my face as I walked through the front door. It was all here.

The same couch I sat on with my cousins when we were kids. The end tables my grandfather had made by hand for their anniversary. The lamps I had bought her for Christmas as an adult. The smart TV my brother had insisted she needed and spent a long afternoon setting up for her while she giggled that she couldn't tell the difference between a modern television and the old ones with tubes other than they weren't as heavy, but she was appreciative anyway. Thirty years of memories.

"Wow! I guess you were right we didn't need that love seat after all! I didn't think we would have gotten to keep all the furniture too." Alex proclaimed as he walked through the front door into the living room. His excitement immediately turned to concern as he saw me crying. "Tam, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine...just memories" I said quietly, wiping the tears from my eyes. Alex put a supportive hand on my shoulder.

"I understand, there isn't a lot of stuff in the car. I'll take care of it. You can take a minute," he said in a comforting tone. I gave him a nod, and he disappeared outside to grab one of the few boxes we brought with us.

I moved through the house, each room bringing with it a flood of memories: fights with siblings, skinned knees, and dinners at grandma's house. Memories Of Grandpa and his old camcorder, "The greatest invention of modern man!" I recalled he would tell me as my four year old self listened with rapt attention emulating his excitement.

I came to the stairs and ascended them slowly appreciating the slight creak that some of them made. As I reached the second floor and peered down the dimly lit hallway, I couldn't help but giggle. I had spent a lot of time too afraid to go to the bathroom when I was a kid because of how dark this hallway was at night.

The door to the master bedroom was just before the end of the hall on the left. The guest bedroom I had always used was immediately to my left. On the right, no more than 10 feet away, was the guest bathroom. It had always seemed so much farther away in the dark when I was younger. There were other guest bedrooms, but they were on the other side of the house.

I walked to the master bedroom, my grandparents old bedroom, and opened the door. An old queen bed, an antique dresser, a wooden desk, a chest of drawers, and an ancient cedar chest at the end of the bed decorated the room. A big window on the right most wall looking out into the backyard filling the room with a great deal of natural light. It actually felt quite odd being in here as I was not allowed when I was a child.

I turned to leave, debating if I wanted to go check the other guest bedrooms before making a decision on which to claim as our own when my eyes fell upon, at the very end of the hall way on the oppisite side of my grandparents room, a door that did not seem familiar to me.

I had always recalled there being only the two bedrooms and the bathroom in this hall. I had no memories of a fourth room past my grandparents' room. The other rooms, their doors were all painted a pristine white and did not show their age. This door was the opposite. It was a dull, faded green that blended in almost seamlessly with the shadows of the hallway. The paint was chipped, and the brass doorknob was tarnished. In a sea of well-cared-for and loved objects, this door stood alone and forgotten.

I reached for the doorknob in an almost trance-like state, as if being compelled to do so.

"Tam! Tammy!" Alex's voice snapped me back to my senses. "The truck is here with our big stuff!"

"I'll be down in a minute, honey!" I called back. My eyes lingered on the unfamiliar door for a moment and a shiver went down my spine. I didn't know for sure what it was, but something about it was....wrong. I headed downstairs to assist my husband with bringing in the rest of our things, leaving the door to its place in the shadows.

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As the afternoon wore on, Alex and I worked together to settle into our new home. We decided to keep some of our things from our apartment, integrating them seamlessly with my grandmother's antiques. Our new coffee table found a spot in the living room, in front of the couch where I had spent countless hours as a child. Alex carefully arranged our collection of videogames on the sturdy wooden shelves that lined one wall. They looked a little silly next to the dusty tomes my grandmother had kept on that shelf, but comforting in a way.

In the kitchen, we placed our modern stainless steel toaster oven next to my grandmother's old actual toaster. A picture of the two of us together ended up next to a picture of my grandmother and grandfather on one of the end tables. As we unpacked and arranged, laughter filled the rooms. Alex joked about our mismatched dinnerware while I reminisced about family meals in this very space that had frequently ended with my brother and I throwing food at each other while our mother rolled her eyes with embarrassment. Grandma and grandpa just laughed and would sometimes, much to my mother's chagrin, join us in tossing food.

"What room are we going to crash in?" Alex asked with a yawn as night fell.

"There is a bed in the master bedroom but I'm not 100% sure how I feel about sleeping in my grandma's bed" I replied.

"Don't think I'm too keen on that idea either, honestly." Alex nodded. "We'll have to swap it out for our mattress tomorrow, I'm a bit too tired to do that now."

"There are like four guest bedrooms. None of them have beds big enough for two people though, so we'll each have to grab our own."

"Yeah sounds good I guess"

"Not afraid to sleep alone are you?" I said with a playful tone.

"Nah, I'm sure the ghosts of your ancestors are great company." Alex jested.

We each grabbed a pillow and a blanket from the moving boxes and headed to our respective guest rooms. Alex trudged to the other side of the second floor, stifling a yawn, and disappeared down the hallway on that side. I chose the familiar guest bedroom I had always used as a child. As I walked down the hall, there in the shadows still sat the faded green door at the very end past my grandparents room. It had not just been a weird hallucination.

"Probably just a spare closet. That's why I don't remember it." I told myself uneasily. I settled into the simple twin bed in the guest bedroom. The room still smelled faintly of lavender, a scent my grandmother loved. I settled under the covers, feeling a mix of nostalgia and comfort in the room that had once been my haven, helping me to forget the uneasiness the green door made me feel. Listening to the house settle around me, I fell into a deep sleep.

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I walked down the dim hallway a translucent aura around my vision. I reached the green door at the end and looked around to make sure nobody was around. My small hand had just grasped the door when I felt a touch on my shoulder. I looked to see my grandfather standing above me. His gentle face was twisted into a scowl and I knew that I was busted.

"Tamara. You know you're not allowed in there." He said to me.

"Yes grandpa. I'm sorry. I was just curious." I defended myself. His face softened.

"I understand. It's good to be curious, but there is a very good reason we don't let you kids into that room. Now get downstairs. Grandma is making lunch."

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"I'm sorry grandpa!" I said out loud as I snapped awake. Moonlight shined in from the window, illuminating the guest room, and it took me a moment to remember where I was. I touched my hand to my head, trying to recall the dream. Was that just a dream? or was it a memory? I wasn't sure.

Whichever it was, it left me feeling uneasy, and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall back to sleep easily. I decided to grab something to eat. As I stepped out of the room, my eyes shifted to the end of the hallway. The faded green door stood at the end of the hallway, in the corner of my eye, right where I never wanted to look.

As I made my way downstairs, a gentle wind kicked up outside in the still night. The creaks and groans of the old wood ,which had been so comforting and familiar during the day, were unnerving in the quiet darkness of the night.

I poked my head in the fridge, trying to find something quick and frowned when I didn't find anything that wouldn't require me to cook. We really needed to go grocery shopping.

"Couldn't sleep either, huh?" Startled I looked behind me wild-eyed to see Alex standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Do you have to sneak around like a ninja? You scared the pants off me," I exhaled.

"Figured you would hear me with all of the creaky floorboards, sorry," he said with an amused expression.

"I was a bit distracted," I said rolling my eyes. "But I was sleeping fine until I had a dream that woke me up. What about you?"

"I've slept, but...I dunno, it wasn't restful sleep. Think it's the unfamiliar surroundings. Since we're both up, do you want some breakfast?"

"I was looking for something to snack on, but I didn't want to cook. But if you're offering, pancakes?"

"Pancakes sound nice. I don't think we have any mix, so I'll just make up some batter really quick." Alex grabbed flour, baking power, milk, and all of the other essentials for making a good pancake mix and went to work. I took a seat at the kitchen table.

"What time even is it anyway? I never checked," I asked.

"About 3:30 in the morning. Plenty of time to get back to sleep even after pancakes." Alex cracked an egg int0 the batter and got a frying pan ready before he started to stir the mix. "What was your dream about?"

"...Uh...well, there is this green door upstairs at the end of the hall where my room is. I had a dream when I was a kid my grandfather told me not to go in there." It sounded silly now that I'd said it out loud.

"Doesn't sound that bad." Alex dropped some of the batter from the bowl into the pan and it made a sizzle.

"Well, the weird thing is, I don't remember that door at all. Every room in the house, every creak in the floorboard, every window, every draft, I remember everything...but not that door," I said softly, trying to articulate what about the dream was scary. Alex flipped the pancake before turning to give me a puzzled expression.

"And the door is like..actually there? It's not just something that your brain made up for your dream?" he asked.

"Yes!" I say slightly indignant.

"Well..if its freaking you out that much...have you considered just opening it? I mean what's the worst thing that could be in there?" Alex asked, laying two pancakes down in front of me with some silverware and grabbing a bottle of maple syrup from the fridge.

"Well...no...it's.." I stammer out while eating some of the pancakes

"You're too scared to go yourself?" Alex asks with an amused knowing smile.

"Am not!" I blush a little in embarrassment.

"Well how bout before we go back to bed, we'll go take a look at what's behind that door together? You've got me curious now."

"Okay. That sounds good." I nodded, feeling relieved. His reaction to situations like this are exactly were among the many reasons I'd married him. It didn't take long before we finished our very early breakfast and made our way to the faded green door.

"This is it." I indicated the door to him just beyond the door to the master bedroom. He ran his finger over the chipped cracking paint.

"Needs a paint job, that's for sure. I could barely see it here in the shadows." He grasped the doorknob, and my breath caught in my throat as he turned it and pushed the door open.

Inside, the room was... nothing special; an old TV sat on a stand, and an absolutely disgusting couch with a large double window adorning the wall behind it on the right side. Pale moonlight entered through the window, just barely illuminating the room.

"Well, that was anti-climactic," Alex said, stepping inside. I followed behind him exhaling in relief but I was still nervous. It seemed very unassuming, but something about the room still made me uncomfortable. I couldn't quite place my finger on what it was. "Honestly, I'm a little disappointed. I was expecting a priceless antique or maybe an old torture device. I don't know, but not an old dirty TV."

"Yeah, I thought there would be something more too," I admitted, taking a seat on the couch. "It just looks like an old sunroom or something. I wonder why we wouldn't have been allowed in here as kids?"

"Maybe it's where your grandpa hid his dirty movies?" Alex suggested, running his finger across the film of dust on the TV.

"Yeah... maybe," I said, blankly watching him. My attention fell on the window behind him. That's when I realized what was wrong, what had been creating my feelings of unease, and my heart caught in my throat. "A-A-Alex," I stuttered. "The w-w-window."

"What about it?" Alex asked, peering outside. "Looks like it leads to the backyard."

"It's... it's on the wrong side."

"What do you mean, "the wrong side"?"

"The wall it's on. It's not facing outside. It's facing the bathroom next to this room. That window is almost directly parallel with the shower." I could visibly see the hairs on the back of Alex's neck stand up as realization dawned on his face.

"We need to leave. Now." He moved across the room and grabbed my hand, practically dragging me up off the couch. He started pulling me to the door we had entered from.

"Alex..." I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I stood still, my eyes wide.

"What? We have to get out of here."

"Look..." I pointed at the door, which had been out of our view since we'd entered the room. Alex turned to look where I was pointing.

"That's... not possible," he whispered, his eyes going as wide as mine. It was gone. The door was completely gone. The only thing that stood in its place was a blank wall. We were trapped.

To be continued. Click here for part 2 or subscribe!