The Painted Door

I never believed in ghosts. Not until the door in our new apartment started to bleed. My brother, Andrei, had moved to the city for work, leaving me and my sister, Maria, to share the large room at the end of the hall. It was the biggest in the house, with a tall window that let in the gray light of the Polish autumn. We painted the walls a pale blue and hung our posters, trying to make it ours.

At first, it was just a feeling. A prickling at the back of my neck when I sat at my desk, as if someone were watching from the corner. Maria dismissed it, saying it was the old house settling. But then I noticed the door. It was a heavy, oak thing, painted dark green, with a brass knob that never quite fit. One morning, I saw a thin, dark line running down the center of the door, like a crack in the paint. I touched it, and my finger came away with a red, oily smear. I thought it was rust from the hinges, but it was too dark, too sticky.

I told Maria, and she laughed, saying I had spilled something. But the line grew. It spread like a vein, branching out until it covered the lower half of the door in a network of crimson threads. The smell was sweet and cloying, like rotting fruit. I tried to scrub it off, but it would always seep back, darker each time. And at night, I could hear a faint scratching from the other side, as if something were trying to claw its way in.

We stopped using the door. We entered and exited through the window, climbing down the fire escape, even in the cold. But the scratches grew louder, more insistent. One night, I woke to find Maria standing in front of the door, her hand pressed flat against the wood. Her eyes were open but vacant, and her lips moved as if she were speaking to someone. I shook her, and she blinked, looking at me as if she had been elsewhere.

I called a priest, a friend of our father’s from the village. He came, carrying a silver cross and a bottle of holy water. As soon as he entered the room, he recoiled. ‘Something is bound to this door,’ he said, ‘something that feeds on fear.’ He sprinkled the water and began to pray, but the door began to shake violently, and the red lines pulsed like a heartbeat. The priest stumbled back, his face pale. ‘You must leave this place,’ he said, ‘or it will consume you.’

We tried to leave. We packed our bags and went to stay with our aunt in the countryside. But that night, as I lay in an unfamiliar bed, I dreamed of the door. It was open, and beyond it was a darkness that breathed. I saw a figure standing in the doorway, a faceless thing with long, thin limbs. It stepped toward me, and I felt its cold fingers on my cheek.

I woke with a scream, and Maria was beside me, her face wet with tears. ‘It followed us,’ she whispered. ‘It’s in the house.’ We returned to our apartment, because there was nowhere else to go. The door was waiting for us, its red veins now covering the entire surface, pulsing with a life of its own.

That night, I decided to open it. I had to know what was on the other side. I gripped the brass knob, which felt warm and slick, and turned it. The door swung open without a sound, revealing not the hallway, but a room identical to ours, but reversed, as if seen in a mirror. In that room, there was another door, and through it, another. And at the far end, a figure stood with its back to me, wearing a long coat, its head tilted as if listening.

I called out, and the figure turned. It had no face, only a smooth, gray expanse like a polished stone. But somehow, I felt its gaze on me, and I heard a voice in my head, not words, but an understanding. It was the loneliness, the fear of being forgotten, that had taken shape, feeding on all the years of neglect in that room. It wanted a new vessel, a new soul to dwell in.

I slammed the door shut, but I knew it was too late. The red lines had seeped into the walls, into the floor, into us. Maria and I stood in the center of the room, and we could feel it moving beneath our skin. We haven’t left since. We can’t. The door is always open now, and we see what lies beyond it each time we close our eyes. We are its new paint, its new membrane, forever bound to the room that was never really ours.