The Hollow Doorway

The memory is a frayed ribbon, tethered to a time when the world was soft-edged and fear was a new language I was just learning to speak. I was six, maybe seven, in the town of Maelgwyn, a place that clung to the banks of the River Vey like a child to its mother’s skirt. The town had been built over an old bog, a fen that had been drained a century ago, leaving behind a secret hollow beneath the streets, a place where water still wept in the dark. Our house was on Ferngrove Lane, a narrow street of huddled cottages with slate roofs and chimneys that breathed smoke into the grey sky. My father, a regional salesman for agricultural equipment, was away for a week, his absence like a chill in the house. It was just me, my older brother Owen, and my mother, who, in his absence, allowed me to share her bed—a relic of a waterbed that had seen better days, its surface rippling like a captive ocean. I loved it, even though I sometimes got wedged in the gap between the mattress and the frame, my legs dangling into a cool, rubbery abyss.

On the third night of his absence, I woke to a silence that was too deliberate. The house had a rhythm of creaks and whispers, but that night it held its breath. My mother’s breathing was slow and deep beside me, her body a warm, still mound under the quilt. I don’t know what stirred me—perhaps the pressure of a gaze, the way the dark seems to thicken when you’re being watched. I turned my head towards the doorway, a black rectangle against the deep navy of the room. And there, in that threshold, stood a figure. It was not just a shadow; it was a density of dark, a shape that seemed to absorb the little light that filtered through the curtains. I couldn’t see a face, but I knew it was smiling. I didn’t see a mouth, but I felt the curve of it in the air, a warm, wet intention. I froze, my heart a frantic bird against my ribs. I tried to call out to my mother, but my throat was a dry well. The figure didn’t move. It just stood there, regarding me with an attention that felt almost affectionate, and the smile—I could feel it widen, like a crack in the dark. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone, leaving me staring at an empty doorway, my breath a ragged heave in the silence.

I didn’t sleep again that night. I pressed myself against my mother’s back, my small hands gripping the hem of her nightgown, waiting for dawn to break the spell. When it did, I told her a version of the truth: I’d seen a shadow, a scarecrow in the door. She dismissed it as a nightmare, the product of a child’s imagination, and I let her believe it. But I knew what I had seen, and the feeling of that unseen smile stayed with me, a cold pebble in my chest.

Years passed. I grew, but the memory didn’t fade. It became a part of the house, a story I told myself in the safe light of day. My father’s work trips were frequent, and each time he left, I dreaded the third night. But the figure never returned while I was awake. I began to think I had imagined it, until one winter, when I was twelve and Owen was fifteen, our father was away again, and the house felt larger, older.

That night, I was in my own room, the one at the end of the hall. I had a habit of leaving my door ajar, a crack of hallway light to keep the dark at bay. I was drifting off when I heard a sound from the hallway—a low, wet sound, like something heavy being dragged across the floor. I sat up, my skin prickling. The crack in my door widened, not by a hand, but by something else, and there it was again: a figure, but this time not just a silhouette. It was hunched, almost quadrupedal, with limbs that were too long and bent at unnatural angles. Its skin—if you could call it that—was slick and dark, like a reflection on oily water. It moved into my room, and I saw its face. It had no features, just a smooth, grey expanse, but from it emanated that same smile, a psychic pressure of glee. It crawled towards the foot of my bed, its joints creaking like old timber. I wanted to scream, but my voice was a rusty hinge. It reached out a hand—five fingers, too many joints—and touched my ankle. Its fingers were cold, wet, and they left a trail of something that felt like mud. And then it spoke, its voice a chorus of wet, sucking sounds, but the words were clear: ‘I remember when you saw me first.’

I fled. I don’t remember the leap, only the landing in my mother’s room, the shock on her face as I collapsed, sobbing. She held me, and I told her everything, the full, unvarnished truth. She listened, her face a mask of disbelief and fear. When I finished, she whispered, ‘It’s happened before. In this town. When I was a girl.’ She told me of the hollow beneath the streets, the old fen that had been drained, but not eradicated. She said that sometimes, the bog would call back what it had taken, and that the smile was a promise. She said my grandfather had seen it, and he was never the same. She made me promise not to go near the river, not to ever walk on the low-lying land behind the mill, where the ground was soft and the reeds grew tall.

I kept my promise for a while. But the curiosity was a gnawing thing. And one summer afternoon, when I was fourteen, I walked to the edge of the drained fen, where the earth was cracked and dry, but where black, peat-stained puddles shimmered. I saw a small mound, a hump of earth that seemed out of place. I kicked it, and it gave way, revealing a hole, a dark opening that seemed to breathe cold air. I leaned in, and from the darkness, I heard a sound—not a voice, but something like a low hum, a vibration that I felt in my teeth. And I saw, not far below, a glint of white, like a smile of bone.

I backed away, and I ran. I never went back there. But now, as an adult, I still feel that smile. I see it in the dark of my bedroom, when I wake from a dreamless sleep, and the doorway is not empty. It’s there, standing, just out of the light, waiting. And I know that one day, it will step forward, and I will have to greet it as an old friend, because it has known me all my life.