The Latch of the Fourth Door

The first time I noticed the wrongness was in the bathroom of our basement apartment. I was scrubbing paint off my hands, the smell of turpentine stinging my nose, when I saw a paw slide under the door. It was a familiar sight—Sebastian, my tabby, liked to wait for me there. But as I dried my hands, I caught a glimpse of the toes. They were white, not the striped orange of Sebastian’s. And the paw was too long, the claws too curved. I opened the door, but nothing was there.

I found Sebastian in his usual spot on the radiator cover, blinking at me with half-lidded eyes. I knelt down, ran my hand over his back, and he purred. I tried to shake off the unease, but the image of that white-toed paw lingered. That night, I mentioned it to my roommate, Dana. She laughed, said I was just tired from moving. But I noticed she avoided looking at the cat.

The second occurrence was more direct. I was in the kitchen, boiling pasta, when I saw Sebastian dart from the living room into the hallway. I called out to Dana, ‘Can you grab Sebastian? He’s getting into the laundry again.’ She looked up from her book, pointed to the armchair by the window, where Sebastian sat, grooming himself. ‘He’s right here,’ she said. We stared at each other. The cat in the armchair was not the same cat that had run past me. The one running had been thinner, its tail shorter. I felt a chill crawl up my spine.

Things escalated from there. The cat that wasn’t Sebastian began to appear more often. It would sit outside my bedroom door at night, and when I opened it, there would be two cats—one on the bed, one in the hallway. They looked identical, but the hallway one had those pale, wrong toes. I started to feel like I was being watched, not just by the cat, but by something using its shape.

One evening, I decided to confront it. I set a bowl of milk in the hallway, away from the door, and waited in the dark. I heard the soft pad of steps, then the sound of lapping. I flicked on the light, and there it was—the wrong cat. It didn’t startle; it just looked up, its eyes catching the light like wet marbles. Its mouth was smeared with milk, but the milk was red. I stumbled back, and it spoke. Not in a cat’s voice, but in a low, rasping human whisper that seemed to come from everywhere.

‘You have three doors,’ it said. ‘I am the latch of the fourth.’ Then it ran off into the shadows.

I told Dana, but she dismissed it, saying I was under stress. But the next day, she found a dead crow on her pillow, its neck twisted. And in the bathroom, the paw print under the door was now clearly not a cat’s—it was a human hand, with elongated fingers, each tipped with a blackened claw.

We tried to leave, but every time we packed, the wrong cat would appear, sitting on our luggage, its eyes fixed on us with a knowing patience. The walls seemed to breathe, and at night, I’d hear a soft dragging sound, like something being pulled across the floor.

A week later, I woke up to find Dana sitting at the edge of my bed, staring at the wall. Her eyes were wide, and she whispered, ‘It’s in the walls. It’s in the walls.’ She wouldn’t talk after that, just rock back and forth. I knew then that we had to escape, but the fourth door was always there—a door that shouldn’t exist, between our bathroom and the storage closet. I never dared to open it.

One night, I woke to the sound of scratching. I followed it to the fourth door. It was slightly ajar, and from within came a sound like a cat purring, but deeper, resonant. Against my will, I pushed it open. Inside was a room that shouldn’t have existed—a long corridor lined with mirrors, reflecting thousands of cats, all with white-tinged toes, all turning to look at me. At the end, a shape moved, something that wore my cat’s face but was not my cat.

I slammed the door shut and ran. I left that apartment without even packing, leaving Dana behind in her trance. But even now, in the new place, I see it sometimes—out of the corner of my eye, a flick of a tail, a pair of eyes in the dark. And I know it’s found me. It always does. It’s not a cat. It’s the latch of the fourth door, and it’s waiting for me to open it again.