The Cardboard Gate

The first time I understood that our family was a beacon for the unseen was the summer we moved to Salt Lake City. I was nine, and my sister Elena was sixteen. She had a habit of finding things—lost earrings, stray cats, even a forgotten diary in a library book. But it was the Man in the Window that truly marked us.

Our rented house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, its backyard facing a narrow alley. The house across the alley had a single attic window, always dark, always empty. Yet every night, I saw a silhouette there—tall, thin, motionless. My parents dismissed it as a trick of the light, but Elena would stare at that window for hours, her eyes unfocused.

One night, she came to my room, holding a piece of cardboard torn from a cereal box. ‘We’re going to talk to him,’ she said. On the back, she had scrawled letters and numbers with a black marker. She placed it on the floor, and we sat cross-legged, our fingers on a juice glass that served as a planchette. ‘Is anyone there?’ she asked.

The glass shot to YES with such force that it nearly slid off the board. Elena smiled. ‘What’s your name?’ The glass spelled out D-A-N-I-E-L. Then it began to move in a circle, faster and faster, until it lifted off the board and shattered against the wall. Elena laughed. I felt a cold draft even though the window was shut.

The next day, Daniel appeared in our kitchen. He looked like a young man in his twenties, dressed in an old-fashioned suit, slightly transparent. He stood by the fridge, watching us. My mom dropped her coffee when she saw him, but Elena simply said, ‘He’s family now.’

Daniel followed us everywhere. He sat on the couch during TV shows, hovered near the dinner table, and once, I saw him in the mirror above my shoulder. My parents called a priest, who blessed the house, but Daniel remained. The priest said, ‘He’s attached to the girl, not the house.’ He meant Elena.

After a year, we moved to Boise, hoping to leave Daniel behind. But on the first night in our new home, I saw him standing in the hallway, and Elena was talking to him as if he were an old friend. The unexplained didn’t just follow us; it thrived on Elena. It was like she was a doorway, and they couldn’t resist stepping through.

By the time I was twenty-one and we had settled in Portland, I had grown used to the parade of specters. There was the Lady in Grey who hummed lullabies in the attic, the child who left wet footprints on the hardwood, and the shadows that danced in the periphery of vision. Elena, now thirty-three, embraced them. She called them ‘visitors’ and treated them with a respect that bordered on affection.

But the last one pushed me over the edge. It came to us in the form of a young girl, no older than twelve, dressed in a yellow raincoat. She appeared in the park across the street, standing under a tree even in the rain, her face expressionless. Elena approached her without hesitation, kneeling to speak to her. I watched from the window, my heart pounding.

That night, Elena came into my room, her eyes wide with excitement. ‘She needs our help,’ she said. ‘Her name is Lucy, and she’s trapped. She wants me to open a door for her.’

‘What door?’ I asked, my voice trembling.

‘In the basement. There’s a door that wasn’t there before.’

I hadn’t been in the basement, but I knew she was telling the truth. Elena pulled out a piece of cardboard, identical to the one from my childhood, and began to draw a circle and letters. ‘We’re going to use this,’ she said, ‘to open the door.’

I tried to stop her, but she was adamant. We descended the creaky stairs, the air growing colder. At the far end of the basement, a door now stood where there had been only a concrete wall. It was made of old wood, warped, with a rusted handle. Lucy stood beside it, her raincoat dripping onto the floor.

Elena placed the cardboard on the floor and knelt before the door. ‘Lucy, are you ready?’ she asked. The girl nodded.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted, but Elena ignored me. She placed her palm on the door, and I heard a click. The door creaked open an inch, and a gust of wind extinguished the single lightbulb overhead. Then, from the darkness beyond, I heard a whisper—not Lucy’s voice, but a chorus of many, and they were calling Elena’s name.

‘You’re not Lucy,’ I said, backing away.

Elena turned, and for a moment, her eyes were not her own. They were black, like pools of oil. ‘It’s okay,’ she said in a voice that was not hers. ‘I’ve always been the door. Now, I’m opening it wide.’

I ran up the stairs, every instinct screaming to flee. But I paused at the top, looking back. Elena was stepping through the doorway, and Lucy was following her. The door slammed shut, and the cardboard on the floor burst into flames, leaving only a charred outline—the shape of a gate.

I never saw Elena again. The police searched, but there was no trace. The house was sold, and I moved to a small apartment across town. I thought I had escaped, but last night, I found a piece of cardboard in my closet, with a message scrawled on it in black marker: ‘WE ARE READY. WAITING.’

I am not sure if I am the moth or the flame. But I know that the door is not closed. And sooner or later, it will open again, and I will be the one standing before it.