The Green Door

I remember the summer we rented that vast, crumbling manor in the Welsh Marches, a place called Penrhyn Hall. It was meant to be a grand reunion—my parents, my sister Imogen, my partner Rhys, our cousins Gwyn and Nia, and two old friends, Llewyn and Bronwen. Eight of us, plus the promise of a week of walking and wine.

From the outside, the hall was all ivy and dark stone, beautiful in a melancholy way. Inside, it was a maze of rooms—far more than we needed. We chose our bedrooms, an odd number, ten in total, and the excess felt almost obscene. Llewyn, an amateur dancer, claimed one of the empty rooms for practice, but two others remained locked, their keys nowhere to be found. We didn’t think much of it.

The first day was uneventful, save for a strange quietness that seemed to press in from the walls. The second day, the unease began. I couldn’t sleep that first night; I lay beside Rhys, listening to the murmur of Gwyn and Llewyn’s voices from the adjoining room. At some point, my wandering eyes caught a sliver of light beneath the door of one of the locked rooms. I crept closer and saw a faint green glow pulsing from the crack. I pressed my ear to the wood. Silence. When I turned back, the light was gone. I dismissed it as a trick of the moon.

But the next morning, everyone seemed off. Imogen mentioned she’d heard footsteps in the corridor at 3 AM, pacing back and forth. Rhys claimed he’d had a nightmare of being buried alive. Gwyn, usually the joker, was quiet, staring at his breakfast as if it might move. Llewyn said his mirror in the dancing room was fogged over, even though the room was cold. Bronwen, ever the skeptic, said she’d seen a face at her window, but we were on the second floor, and the garden below was empty.

We tried to laugh it off, but the atmosphere frayed. That afternoon, we decided to explore the hall more thoroughly. We found a servant’s staircase that led to a basement. The air was thick with mildew. At the bottom, there was a heavy oak door, painted a sickly green, chained and padlocked. The lock was old but solid. Something about that door drew us. We all stood there, silent, feeling an inexplicable dread. Nia whispered that she felt like something was on the other side, listening.

That evening, the strange events escalated. We played a board game in the drawing-room, but the pieces would shift on their own. Rhys swore he saw a shadow detach itself from the corner and drift across the ceiling. I saw it too, a dark bluish smear moving like a living stain. The lights flickered, and the phone line went dead. We decided to go to bed early, each of us locking our doors, though we didn’t say why.

I couldn’t sleep. I lay beside Rhys, listening to the house creak. At exactly 3 AM, I heard it—the sound of footsteps in the corridor, heavy and dragging. Then a noise that stopped my heart: a low, wet scraping, like something being dragged across the floorboards. I got up, against my better judgment, and peered through the keyhole. The corridor was dark, but I could see a faint green light moving, bobbing, coming from the direction of the locked rooms. It paused at our door, and I felt a cold draft. The light lingered, then moved on.

The next morning, we were all exhausted, dark circles under our eyes. Gwyn was missing. We searched the house, calling his name. After an hour, we found him in the basement, sitting on the floor in front of the green door, rocking back and forth, muttering. His face was pale, and his eyes were wide. He said the door had opened, and something had whispered his name. He couldn’t remember anything after that. Llewyn joked that he’d been sleepwalking, but Gwyn’s terror was real.

We tried to leave that day, but the car wouldn’t start. The tires were all flat, and the fuel line had been sliced. Someone—or something—wanted us to stay. The phone lines were still dead, and our mobiles had no signal. We were stranded.

That night, we decided to sleep together in the largest bedroom, the one with a heavy oak bed and a fireplace. We pulled the mattresses into a pile on the floor, barricaded the door with furniture. We took turns keeping watch. At 3 AM, the scratching started again. It was not in the corridor this time, but inside the walls, as if something was tunneling through the plaster. The clock on the mantelpiece began to tick backward. I saw the door handle turn slowly, even though it was wedged.

Bronwen screamed. She pointed at the mirror above the fireplace. In it, we saw ourselves, but our reflections were different. They were in a room of green light, and they were all screaming in silence, their mouths open wide. The mirror warped, and the images distorted into faces we had never seen, gaunt, with black eyes. The scratching became pounding, and then a low growl, like the groan of a dying beast.

We huddled together as the room grew colder. The light from the candles flickered blue. Then, as suddenly as it began, everything stopped. The clock resumed ticking normally. The doorhandle was still. We sat in the silence, breathing hard, not daring to move.

At dawn, we decided we had to break open the green door. We found a crowbar in a utility cupboard. The basement stairs creaked beneath our feet. The door was still chained, but the chain was rusted. With a few heaves, we snapped it. The padlock fell to the floor with a clatter. We exchanged glances. Llewyn volunteered to open it. He pushed, and the door swung inward with a long, low groan.

Beyond was a circular room, its walls covered in a luminescent green fungus that pulsed like a heartbeat. In the center, there was a stone altar, covered in dark stains. And on the altar, we saw ourselves—eight figures, made of clay and twigs, each with our names carved into their chests. And behind the altar, a thin, humanoid shape, its skin the color of ash, its eyes like voids. It opened its mouth, and a voice like grinding stones whispered, ‘You brought the pieces. Now we make the whole.’

We fled. We ran up the stairs, out the back door, and across the fields, not stopping until we reached the nearest village, five miles away. The police found the hall empty, the green door gone, and no sign of Gwyn. He was never seen again. The rest of us have never spoken of it, not even to each other. But I dream of that green light every night, and in the dream, the door is always waiting, and something on the other side is scratching to get out.