The Fourth Door

It started when my daughter, Lily, was four, not long after we moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of the marsh. The house had a long, crooked hallway with four doors: one to the bathroom, one to mine and my husband’s room, one to the linen closet, and one to Lily’s room. But Lily always talked about a ‘fourth door’ at the far end, past the linen closet, where the wall was just plaster. At first, I thought it was a game, but then the night terrors began.

Lily would sit bolt upright in her bed, her eyes wide open but unseeing, pointing at her bedroom door, her little voice a raw, ragged scream: ‘It’s in the wall! It’s walking with the door over its face!’ I’d rush to her, but she’d thrash and scream as if I were the monster. Her small body would tremble, her teeth chattering, and then, just as suddenly, she’d collapse back into sleep, leaving me shaking in the dark.

The next morning, she remembered nothing. But weeks later, at the kitchen table, she’d set down her spoon and say, ‘Mommy, the tall one was walking tonight. It makes the ssss sound like the stove.’ I’d try to laugh it off, but I felt a cold knot in my stomach.

My husband, Tom, worked late shifts, so often it was just Lily and me. I started sleeping with my door ajar, listening for her cries. One night, I heard her padding down the hall. I followed, and found her standing in front of the far wall, pressing her palms against the plaster, her nightgown ghostly in the dim light. ‘Lily?’ I whispered. She turned to me, and her eyes were like black glass. ‘It put the door down, Mommy. Now it’s the wall. But I got it back.’ She smiled then, a smile that was too wide, and I saw something glisten between her fingers. I snatched her hand and saw a shard of something like an old, brittle tooth.

I didn’t know what to do. I called a priest, but the moment he stepped into the hallway, he staggered back, gasping. ‘There’s a weight here,’ he said, sweating. ‘Like something lives inside the walls.’ He recited prayers, but the air grew cold, and the lights flickered. He left in a hurry, and that night, I heard scratching from inside the walls, like a dog trying to get out.

The scratches became a rhythm, a melody. Lily would sing it in her sleep, a droning lullaby: ‘Door, door, open wide, let the tall one step inside.’ I tried to keep her in my room, but she’d fight me, screaming, ‘It’s coming through the floor! The door is in the floor now!’

One evening, Tom came home early and found me huddled in the hallway, clutching a hammer. ‘There’s no door, there’s no door,’ I kept repeating. He tried to calm me, but then Lily’s voice came from her room, clear and cold: ‘Under the rug, Daddy. The door is under the rug.’ Tom and I exchanged a look of dread. We rolled back the worn rug in the hallway, and there, in the floorboards, was a faint, square outline, like a trapdoor. But when I touched it, it was solid wood. My fingers found a hairline crack, and a faint, cold draft seeped through.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat by Lily’s bed, watching her breathe. At 3 a.m., she sat up, her eyes open but clouded, and pointed to the door. ‘It’s standing there,’ she said, her voice flat. I looked at the door, and for a moment, I saw a shadow that didn’t match the furniture, a shape that seemed to be wearing a door on its back, like a carapace. I blinked, and it was gone. But Lily was already falling back, and she whispered, ‘It went back inside. But it’s eating the edges.’

I took a week off work. I moved Lily’s bed into our room, and we boarded up the hallway door. I told Tom we were redecorating. But even with the door sealed, I felt it. There was a wrongness in the house, a humming pressure behind the walls. The scratching never stopped; it just moved, following us from room to room.

One night, I woke to find Lily standing at the window, staring out at the marsh. She was pressing her hand against the glass, and there was a black shape on the other side, tall and thin, with a door where its face should be. I screamed, and the shape dissolved into the mist. Lily turned to me, her face blank. ‘It says the door is open now, Mommy. All the doors. In the house, in the ground, in the sky.’

We were packing to leave the next morning when Tom found something in the basement: an old photograph, yellowed and cracked. It showed a woman standing in front of a wall, and on the wall, faintly, was a door. And behind the woman, in the shadows, was a tall figure, with a door where its face should be. We didn’t speak. We left everything behind.

We moved across town, into an apartment with no hallway, only a single corridor. Lily stopped having night terrors. But sometimes, when she’s drawing, she draws a door on every surface she can find. And last week, she said to me, very calmly, ‘Mommy, the tall one found our new house. But it can’t get in yet. It’s waiting for the door to open. It’s eating the wall from outside.’

Tonight, I woke to a scratching sound. It was coming from the front door. When I went to look through the peephole, all I saw was the door, but it seemed closer than it should be, and there was a faint, moldy smell. And from Lily’s room, I heard her singing the lullaby again: ‘Door, door, open wide, let the tall one step inside…’ She’s asleep, but her hand is pointing at the door. And I feel it, too. I feel something standing on the other side, waiting, with a door for a face, and it has a thousand little doors inside, all of them open.”

I haven’t slept in days. I’ve taped every door and window shut, but the scratching has grown louder. And tonight, when I looked into the mirror in the bathroom, I saw behind me, in the reflection of the hallway, the fourth door, open a crack, and a sliver of darkness that seemed to breathe. I know we can’t run forever. The tall one is patient. It’s been eating the edges of our reality, and soon, there will be no door left to hide behind.