The Grinning Door

We moved into the top half of a converted warehouse in the industrial district of a city that never truly slept. The building was a relic of the 1920s, its brick facade stained with decades of grime. Our unit was reached by a rusted iron staircase that clung to the outside of the building, leading to a landing that split left and right: our door on the right, and the other unit on the left. The only wall between us was the bathroom, which backed onto theirs. The landlord had assured us the neighbors were a quiet elderly couple, and they were. We never heard a peep through the walls, only the occasional shuffle of feet in the stairwell or the soft click of their door.

My name is Clara, my husband is Max, and our daughter, Lily, was four when we moved in. The building’s history was murky, but we didn’t care. The rent was cheap, and the space was enormous. Our side had high ceilings, exposed pipes, and a massive open floor plan that we filled with our modest furniture. The only downside was the bathroom. It was a windowless, tiled box with a single flickering fluorescent light. The shower was a relic with rusted nozzles, and the mirror above the sink was cracked. But it was clean, and we made it work.

Things started about a month after we settled in. I was giving Lily a bath when I noticed a faint, almost imperceptible scratching sound coming from the wall behind the tub. I dismissed it as mice or the building settling. But it recurred every night at precisely 3:17 AM. It was a rhythmic scratch, like nails dragging across concrete, lasting exactly three minutes. It was so consistent that Max and I began to dread it. We tried to pinpoint the source, pressing our ears to the tiles, but it was always just out of reach.

One evening, while Max was away on a business trip, I was brushing my teeth when the bathroom mirror fogged up from the steam of the shower. In the fog, a message appeared, as if drawn by a finger from the other side: ‘WATCH THE DOOR.’ The letters were erratic, childlike. I froze, my heart hammering. I wiped the mirror with my sleeve, and the message disappeared. The bathroom was empty. Lily was asleep. I rationalized it as a prank or a stress-induced hallucination. But that night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from behind the tiles.

The scratching grew louder. It started to be accompanied by a low, guttural humming that vibrated through the floor. I told Max we should call a contractor to check the pipes and the foundation, but he said it was just the building settling and that we couldn’t afford repairs. He started sleeping in the living room, claiming he couldn’t stand the noise. I was left alone with Lily in the main bedroom, which was adjacent to the bathroom.

One night, Lily woke me up, crying. She pointed to the bathroom door, which was slightly ajar. ‘There’s a man behind the door,’ she whimpered. ‘He’s smiling.’ I turned on all the lights and searched the bathroom. Nothing. But the mirror was fogged again, and this time, a crude smiley face was drawn in the center, with the words ‘HELLO’ above it. I called the police, but they found no signs of a break-in. The neighbors, Mrs. Gable and her husband, claimed they heard nothing. Mrs. Gable offered me a cup of tea, and I noticed her hands were shaking. She whispered, ‘The walls are thin here. Thin as paper. But the door is the worst.’ Before I could ask more, she clamped her mouth shut and retreated into her unit.

Desperate, I did some digging online. I found an old newspaper article from the 1940s about a fire that destroyed the original building on this site. A family of five perished, the father, a mortician, went mad and sealed himself and his family in the bathroom. The article mentioned that the father had painted ‘smiling faces’ on the walls before setting the fire. The building was rebuilt, but the basement was never fully cleared. Our unit was roughly where the old bathroom had been.

I decided to confront the neighbors. I knocked on their door, but there was no answer. I tried the handle, and it was unlocked. Inside, the unit was dusty and eerily hollow, with taped outlines on the floor like a crime scene. The bathroom door was ajar, and I stepped in. The mirror there was intact, and it was smeared with red lipstick: ‘YOU ARE NEXT.’ I ran out, my heart pounding. I called Max, but he didn’t answer. I called the landlord, who claimed the Gables had moved out months ago. I had been seeing them, but no one else had.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I locked the bathroom door, but the scratching continued, louder, turning to a frantic scraping. I heard Lily’s cry, and I rushed to her. The bathroom door was wide open, and the light was flickering. In the corner of the ceiling, a figure hung upside down, its face contorted into a wide, unnatural grin. It was the face from the mirror, but solid, and it reached out a long, pale arm towards Lily. I grabbed Lily and ran out into the stairwell, but the doors on both units were gone, replaced by a single black door that grinned with a mouth of crooked teeth. The grin spread, and the door swallowed us whole.

I woke up in a white room. No windows, no doors. The walls were tiled like a bathroom. A mirror hung across from me, and in it, I saw my reflection, but my mouth was stretched into a permanent smile, my eyes wide with a fear I couldn’t express. Lily was beside me, drawing smiley faces on the wet tiles. The scratching began again, but this time, it was coming from my own hands, scraping against the walls. I knew then that we had become part of the house, and the door would only take us when it was hungry.