The Locked Door

In the fall of 2019, I moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest, nestled among pine forests and rolling hills. My grandmother had left me a cottage on the edge of an apple orchard, a place I remembered from childhood summers, but now it felt different. The orchard was overgrown, and the old storage shed at the back had a door that I always found slightly ajar, even after I locked it.

I started spending my afternoons reading on the porch, overlooking the orchard and the distant mountains. The setting was serene, except for one thing: every time I walked past that shed to get to the compost bin, I felt a presence inside, a sense of being watched. One day, I finally pulled the door open, ready to confront whatever was in there, but it was empty—just rusty tools, old crates, and a faint, sweet smell of rotting apples. I chalked it up to my imagination, but the unease lingered.

A week later, my boyfriend, Lucas, came to visit. He had never been to the cottage before, and I wanted to show him the view from the hill by the orchard edge. That evening, as we were heading back, we passed the shed. I heard a heavy thud from inside, like something large had fallen. Lucas, always brave, threw the door open with a bang, but again, there was nothing. The tools were exactly as I had left them, and the dust on the floor showed no footprints except our own. I laughed it off, but Lucas looked pale.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about that shed, and the way the door seemed to open by itself. I decided to check it one last time before bed. I tiptoed out with a flashlight, my bare feet cold on the dew-wet grass. The door was half-open, swaying slightly in the wind. I shone the light inside, and that’s when I noticed it: a small, leather-bound journal on the workbench, hidden under a pile of burlap sacks. I hadn’t seen it before.

I picked it up, my hands trembling. The cover was worn, and the pages were yellowed. The handwriting was my grandmother’s—I recognized the looping cursive. The journal was a diary of sorts, but as I flipped through, the entries became increasingly disjointed. She wrote about hearing footsteps in the orchard, about a shadow that followed her, and then, in the final pages, the handwriting became frantic: ‘It’s not the shed. It’s the door. Never leave it open.’

I slammed the journal shut, my heart racing. I looked at the door, still ajar. I slammed it shut and locked it, but as I turned to walk back to the cottage, I heard a click. The lock had undone itself. I spun around, and the door was open again, revealing the dark interior. And then, I heard it: a whispered voice from inside, using my full name, a name only my grandmother had called me.

I ran inside and locked the cottage doors, but I could hear the shed door creaking open and shut, over and over, like a heartbeat. I called Lucas, but the line was dead. I sat on the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, and stared at the back door. The creaking stopped. Then, a heavy knock, three times, from the door leading to the backyard. I didn’t answer. Another knock, louder, and then the door handle jiggled.

I grabbed a kitchen knife and approached the door, my legs shaking. I peered through the glass pane, expecting to see a figure, but all I saw was the shed door wide open, and inside, a faint light, like a lantern. I realized then that my grandmother’s journal had never been in the shed—I had seen her write in it at the kitchen table years ago. The journal had moved on its own, and so had the lock. And as I watched, the shed door slowly closed, and I heard the heavy footfalls from earlier, this time walking away from the cottage, into the orchard, fading into the night.

I never slept that night, and the next morning, I found the journal on the kitchen counter, closed. The shed door was latched from the outside with a padlock I had never used, and the key was missing. I called the town’s sheriff, but when he came, he said the shed had been locked for years, and he was surprised I could open it at all. He warned me not to go near it again, especially after what happened to my grandmother.

I moved out a week later, but sometimes, I still hear that door creaking in my apartment in the city, and I know it’s waiting for me to come back, to leave it open just once more.