The Red Door at Rue des Lilas

In the summer of my eleventh year, my family took a trip to the French countryside. We rented a sprawling manor near the village of Saint-Aubin, a place called Les Glycines, with its overgrown garden and a peculiar red door in the cellar that was always locked. My older sister, Claire, and I were given a room at the end of a long, drafty hallway, while our parents and little brother took the master suite downstairs. We were thrilled, of course, spending our nights with flashlights under the covers, telling stories and listening to music on Claire’s mp3 player.

One night, deep in the quiet hours, a soft knock came at our door. We froze, assuming it was our mother telling us to sleep. But the knock came again, more insistent, then turned into a rhythmic thumping that rattled the door in its frame. Claire shouted, ‘Go away!’ but the banging only grew louder. Finally, I crept to the door and threw it open, expecting to see my father’s annoyed face. The hallway was empty. The only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs. I turned back to Claire and whispered, ‘There’s no one here.’ She rolled her eyes, thinking it was a prank, but when she saw my pale face and the empty corridor, her expression changed.

We slammed the door and locked it, but then the banging started behind us—from the huge ornate mirror that hung on the wall. We saw our own reflections, but behind them, a vague shape shifted in the glass, a silhouette that was not ours. It raised a hand and pressed it against the mirror’s surface, leaving a trail of dust. We ran out of the room, our hearts pounding, and dashed down the stairs to our parents’ suite. We knocked, then pounded, but no one answered. Their door was locked, and we could hear our brother crying inside, but our parents weren’t responding. We screamed their names, but only silence answered.

Terrified, we fled to the cellar, the only place we thought was safe, and locked the thick iron door behind us. We pressed ourselves against the cold stone wall, listening to the distant thumping that seemed to echo through the house. Then the red door, the one that was always locked, began to rattle on its hinges. A low voice seeped through the keyhole, speaking in a language we didn’t know, but somehow understood: ‘Open.’ We didn’t. We held each other and prayed as the rattling grew into a furious shake, and the door’s wood began to splinter. Then, just as the night’s first light crept through the high cellar window, the rattling ceased. The house fell silent.

When we finally dared to leave, we found our parents in the kitchen, calmly making coffee, oblivious to the terror we had endured. They asked why we looked so frightened, and we told them about the knocking and the mirror. They checked the cellar door and declared it locked, as always. But later, when I went to the cellar to fetch a jar of preserves, I saw that the red door’s lock was broken, and the door stood ajar, revealing a pitch-black passage that seemed to breathe with a stale, cold air. I never spoke of it again, but to this day, every time I see a red door, I hear that rattling, and I know something in that house is still waiting for me to open.