The Door

They forgot about the door, somehow.

Originally posted in a Tweet thread.

They forgot about the door, somehow.

When they moved into the house, it had been fascinating: a full-sized door between Dad’s room and Kelly’s, a door that would not open. For weeks, the girls rifled in the backs of drawers, peered under loose floorboards, dug in the yard.

They searched high and low for wherever one might find a key in an old house, and they even found one, but it was for the old iron padlock in the shed, that wasn’t even keeping anything closed.

Mostly, they found screws, pennies, and bits of lint.

They tried to peek into the room, of course — it had an old-fashioned keyhole, but peering through it, one could only see a dark room (from the outside you could see the curtains were closed), and the crack underneath the door wasn’t enough to push anything under.

Even when they pulled and dragged and pushed at the door’s handle, it didn’t even rattle in the frame.

The door remained closed. in due time, the girls forgot about it, and so did Dad.

It was part of the wall, almost, or might as well have been.

One day, someone asked Corah in class if there was anything interesting about her house, and she’d thought for a second before saying that they had a stained glass window in the attic bedroom, and that when you were up in the attic, it left colours staining the floor.

She didn’t even remember the door until she came home, and then she looked at it, surprised.

Strange, how completely you can forget something you see every day.

Strange, how she forgot it again afterwards.

Dad died in September, and they stayed with Aunt Bea for a few days before she brought them back to the house, and Kelly didn’t realise why Corah was stopped stockstill on the landing, staring, until she got up the stairs herself.

“I forgot about that door,” she whispered.

“So did I,” said Corah, and reached for her sister’s hand, squeezed it so tightly it hurt, but Kelly just squeezed right back. They were meant to be packing, but she couldn’t move, rooted to the spot.

She felt very frightened. She didn’t know why.

The door that they had forgotten — and how could they have forgotten it? It was right there! — was ajar. Inside the room, it was pitch dark, although the curtains looked the same as the ones in Kelly’s room from the outside, and they didn’t keep out light at all.

No, in the room they had forgotten, it was very dark indeed. They were still dressed in the clothes they’d worn at the funeral this morning. Corah still had tears stained on her cheeks.

The door creaked further open, as though someone were slowly pushing it.

It was still very dark inside, as dark as the cellar got when the light was off and you had the door closed, and it didn’t feel like that should be possible.

They had seen the gaps in the curtains, after all. They’d talked about looking in with a ladder.

They never had. They’d forgotten, hadn’t they? How had they forgotten?

Aunt Bea was calling them from downstairs, but neither of them really heard.

In the dark, Dad said, “I’ve missed you, girls. Why don’t you come give your daddy a hug?”

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