The Blue Door in the Beech House

We’d just moved from the dusty Nebraska flatlands to this clapboard town in Maine, and I was a scrawny seven-year-old with a summer stretching out like an endless road. My mom, desperate to keep me from underfoot while boxes colonized our new house, signed me up for the Y’s day camp. Every morning, a yellow bus rumbled us to a different state park or a pond that smelled of pine and rotting leaves. I made two friends: Jasper, a wiry ten-year-old with a loud laugh and a claim to know every shortcut in the woods, and little Nadia, six, who followed Jasper like a shadow–not a creepy shadow, just a devoted one. I was the tagalong, the one who said ‘yeah’ when Jasper challenged another kid to a race or a dare.

At the camp’s base, an old Victorian house they called the Beech House, there was a rule whispered between counselors and repeated like a chant: ‘Never use the bathroom by the front door alone. Never the one by the computer room alone. The locker room ones are fine, but those two–always take a buddy.’ We kids treated it like a game, a test of courage, but mostly we followed it because Jasper said so, and Nadia copied her.

One humid afternoon, the counselors were frazzled, herding us inside after a thunderstorm broke. I had to pee, bad. The locker room bathroom had a line out the door. But the one by the front door was right there, its white door slightly ajar, and for a second I thought, ‘Why not? What’s the harm?’ The hallway was dim, the old wood floor groaning. I pushed the door open.

The bathroom was small, with a single stall and a pedestal sink. The wallpaper was a faded sage green with tiny pink roses, peeling near the ceiling. It felt oddly cold, and the air was thick with the smell of bleach mixed with something musty, like wet wool. I locked the stall door and did my business. As I flushed, I heard a soft knock. Three raps, gentle, from the other side of the door.

‘Just a minute,’ I said, pulling up my shorts. The knock came again, more insistent. ‘Hey, who’s there?’ Silence. I unlocked the stall and pushed the door open.

The bathroom was empty. But the mirror above the sink was slightly fogged, as if someone had just breathed on it. And written in the condensation, in a childlike scrawl, were the words: ‘I’m under the sink.’ A chill ran up my back. I looked at the cabinet below the sink–a low wooden door with a brass knob. Before I could stop myself, I knelt and pulled it open.

Inside was a girl’s face, pale and smudged with dirt, staring out at me. She had huge dark eyes and a mouth that opened in a silent scream. I slammed the door shut and ran out, my heart pounding. I didn’t tell anyone. I figured I’d imagined it.

But the next day, Jasper dared me to go in alone. I froze. ‘No way,’ I said. He laughed, ‘Chicken.’ Nadia tugged his sleeve. ‘Don’t, Jasper.’ But he was already walking toward the door. He went in, and after a moment, we heard a low giggle from inside. Then Jasper came out, his face white. ‘There’s a kid in there,’ he whispered. ‘She said she lives here.’ He wouldn’t go back.

The counselors started finding odd things: a small, muddy handprint on the computer room wall, the faint sound of humming coming from the front bathroom even when it was locked. Nadia began waking up at night, saying, ‘She’s under my bed, but she’s not scary.’ That freaked me out more than anything.

One week before summer ended, I was in the computer room with Jasper, waiting for the ancient Mac to load a game. I heard a soft knocking from the bathroom. Jasper heard it too. We looked at each other. Without a word, we crept over. The door was slightly open. A little girl in a blue dress sat on the floor, playing with a toy boat. She looked up at us and smiled. ‘Wanna play?’ she asked. Her voice was soft, like a wind through a crack.

I shook my head, but Jasper stepped forward. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘My name is Elsie,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here for a long time. I got lost in the woods and they never found me.’ Her eyes welled up. ‘Will you help me find my way home?’

Jasper looked at me, then back at her. ‘Sure,’ he said, his voice a little shaky. He held out his hand. She took it, and her fingers were cold. As she stood, the room dimmed. The wallpaper seemed to shift, and I saw behind her a dark hallway that wasn’t there before, lined with doors. She led Jasper toward it. I screamed his name. He turned, his face confused, as if he were waking from a dream. Elsie’s grip tightened. ‘Don’t go,’ she said, but her voice was now deep, not a child’s. I grabbed Jasper’s other arm and pulled as hard as I could. He stumbled back, and the hallway vanished, leaving us in the computer room, panting.

Elsie was gone. But on the bathroom mirror, in that same condensation, was a new message: ‘I’m still here.’

We never spoke of it again, not even to each other. The camp ended. We moved on, grew up, scattered. But sometimes, when I’m alone in an old building, I hear three soft knocks. And once, in a fleeting glimpse, I see a girl in a blue dress at the edge of my vision, and I know that I’ve only delayed her, not escaped her.