The Crayon Door

The house on Maple Lane had a peeling white porch and a yard that seemed to swallow light. We moved in when I was five and my brother Eli was six, in the autumn of 1997. The place smelled of old wood and dust, and the floorboards creaked even when no one walked. Our room was at the end of a narrow hallway, with a window that faced the backyard and a closet door painted a faint, sickly yellow.

Eli and I shared a set of bunk beds—he took the top, I took the bottom. The first night, I lay awake staring at the closet, feeling a cold seep through the thin blanket. A voice, smooth and syrupy like honey left out too long, whispered from the crack under the closet door. ‘Draw on the closet, go ahead…’ I shook Eli awake, but he only grumbled and turned over. The voice came again, softer, almost coaxing. Without a word, I found a crayon in our toy box and crawled to the closet, scribbling red circles and purple zigzags across the yellow paint. Eli woke with a start, saw me, and grabbed a green crayon, adding his own marks. We worked until the door was covered in childish chaos.

In the morning, our mother found us asleep on the floor, the room reeking of crayon wax. She demanded to know why we’d defaced the door. ‘Because the lady in the closet said so,’ I said. Her face went pale, and she exchanged a glance with our father, who frowned and said, ‘That’s not funny.’ But it wasn’t a joke. That night, the voice returned, now with a hint of laughter. ‘Good children. Now open the door.’

We obeyed, turning the brass knob slowly. Inside, there was only darkness and a faint smell of mothballs. But as we stood there, the darkness seemed to shift, and I saw a pair of white eyes blink open just above our height. Eli grabbed my hand, and we slammed the door shut. We told our parents, but they blamed our imagination, saying, ‘You must have had a bad dream.’

Over the next weeks, the voice grew bolder. It would call us by name when we passed the door, and sometimes we’d find the door ajar, even though we’d closed it. Our parents grew concerned when we refused to sleep in our room, so they brought in a priest, who sprinkled holy water and read from a battered Bible. The voice laughed, a sound like nails scraping slate. ‘You think your little words can keep me out?’

One night, as we huddled in our beds, the closet door burst open, and a figure emerged—a woman in a tattered white dress, her hair hanging in wet strands, her face a mask of sorrow. She didn’t speak, but pointed a long finger at us, then at the floor. We looked down and saw drawings beginning to scratch themselves into the wood: stick figures with X’s for eyes, and words in a language we didn’t know. The woman smiled, revealing teeth blackened and sharp. Then she was gone, and the door was closed again.

We tried to run away, but our legs refused to move. The house seemed to hold us, the walls pressing closer. Our parents, desperate, consulted a local medium who claimed a woman had been murdered in the house decades ago. She had left a drawing of her killer, and now she wanted company in the afterlife. The medium told us to paint over the door, sealing it with white paint and a prayer. We did, but every night, the crayon marks bled through, scarlet and purple, no matter how many coats we applied.

The last time we saw her, she stood in the doorway, her mouth open in a silent scream. Then she faded, but the drawings remained, a permanent scar on our childhood. We moved out a year later, but I still dream of that closet, and sometimes, in the quiet hours, I hear a voice whispering, ‘Draw on the closet…’ And I find a crayon in my hand.