The Bricked-Up Door

The Sunday sun was a rare luxury in Fenwick, and the back garden of The Rusty Lantern, our pub, was a patch of overgrown paradise that begged for a lazy afternoon. I had three dogs—a boisterous mastiff named Brutus, a wiry terrier mix called Pip, and a nervous whippet, Juno—and they knew the drill: the garden was their kingdom, and the ancient oak at its center was their castle. We typically entered through the garden gate to avoid the gleaming barroom floors, and that Sunday was no different. But as I unlatched the gate, they didn’t bound in with their usual frenzy. Instead, they stopped dead on the crushed-stone path, ears pricked, muscles taut. They all faced the back door of the pub, a solid slab of oak that had seen a century of smokers and stray dogs. Pip let out a low, guttural growl that was so unlike him it made my coffee cup pause halfway to my lips.

Brutus, normally a pushover, nudged the door with his nose, then stepped back, hackles raised. Juno, who was afraid of her own reflection, now pressed her trembling body against my leg, tail tucked so far under she looked tailless. I knelt, stroking their heads, muttering nonsense about squirrels and leftover Sunday roasts, but they wouldn’t be soothed. Every few seconds, one of them would sniff the gap under the door and then recoil as if they’d been burned. The air around the back step was still, but the faintest smell wafted—something like old grease and wet ashes, but with a sickly sweet undertone, like overripe fruit left to rot in a cellar. It wasn’t a smell I’d ever noticed from the pub before.

I tried the door handle—locked, as we’d left it. The windows were dark. Everything inside was as we’d cleaned it: the taps polished, the floors waxed, the glasses racked. There was no reason for the dogs to be so unnerved. But they were. Then, as I stood there trying to decide whether to force the lock, I heard it: a faint, rhythmic thumping from inside, like a heartbeat, or a fist pounding from the other side of a wall. It was soft, almost absorbed by the wood, but unmistakable. I froze, and the thumping continued, evenly, insistently. My mind raced through the possibilities—a trapped bird? A faulty pipe? But the sound was too deliberate, too regular.

I left the dogs in the garden and went around to the front. The main entrance was unlocked—I hadn’t locked it after Friday’s clean, a mistake. The pub was dim, lit only by the slats of sunlight through the front blinds. The air inside was cold, colder than the spring day warranted. I walked towards the back of the room, towards the storeroom door that sat just beside the back exit. The thumping was louder now, a dull boom that rattled the bottles on the shelf. My body told me to run, but something else—maybe a fatal curiosity—pushed me forward. I pressed my ear to the storeroom door. The thumping was right there, just inches away. And then it stopped.

In the silence, I heard a new sound: a slow, dragging scrape, like something heavy being pulled across the floor inside. Then a whisper, so faint I almost missed it: ‘Let me out.’ It was a woman’s voice, dry and cracked, as if she hadn’t spoken in years. I stumbled back, my heart pounding. The storeroom had no windows, no other door, and we’d never had a woman working here. The previous owner, old Mr. Ashworth, had been a recluse, and there were rumors about him, but nothing like this. I didn’t know what to do. I called out, ‘Who’s there?’ but there was no answer. Just the sound of my own breath.

I mustered the courage to unlock the storeroom. The key was on the ring I always kept in my pocket. It turned with a groan. I pushed the door open a crack. The room was stacked with crates and cleaning supplies, but in the far corner, where the old brick wall should have been, there was a gap—a dark opening that hadn’t been there before. As my eyes adjusted, I could see a narrow passage leading down, into the earth. And from that hole, I heard the thumping again, now accompanied by a low, keening moan. The dogs in the garden began to howl in unison.

I slammed the door shut and locked it, my hands shaking. I didn’t go back. I took the dogs and went home, and I haven’t returned to The Rusty Lantern since. That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the old brick wall that had been there for decades. The next morning, I called a contractor to brick up the storeroom’s new passage, but he said no opening existed. And I believed him, until I heard the thumping again—now coming from inside my own house, from the wall behind my bedroom closet. It’s been three weeks now, and the thumping has grown more frantic, more desperate. Last night, the voice spoke again, but it was right in my ear: ‘You should have let me out when you had the chance.’