The Red-Lined Door

The house on Mistik Creek Road wasn’t just old; it was hollowed out by time. My grandparents had bought it from the township decades ago, when the school board built a new building closer to town. It still had the blacktop playground out back, the rusted swings creaking in the wind, and the graveyard of a church next door, its headstones leaning like tired old men. The church itself was boarded up, but the bell tower still stood, a dark finger pointing at the sky. We kids called it the Weeping Chapel, because on foggy nights, the wind made a sound like sobbing from its cracked windows.

My grandparents had converted the old duplex into one rambling house, but the school bones were still there. In the basement, a chalkboard still had a faded lesson about the fur trade, and rows of tiny desks sat in the corner, their wooden tops scarred with initials from kids who were now grandparents themselves. We weren’t supposed to play down there, but we did, especially on rainy afternoons. My cousin Rosa was the bravest, always daring us to touch the cold metal of the old woodstove or write on the board with our fingers. I was the youngest, the most cowardly, and I always stayed near the stairs.

One summer day, we were all down there, drawing monsters on the board, when a door slammed upstairs. The sound was sharp, like a gunshot, and it echoed through the floorboards. Rosa laughed. ‘Just the wind,’ she said. But then we heard footsteps, heavy and slow, crossing the kitchen above us. The floor creaked in a pattern that didn’t match any of our parents’ footsteps. We froze, our chalk in mid-stroke. The footsteps stopped at the basement door, and the knob rattled. Then, silence. My cousin Michael whispered, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and we all sprinted for the stairs, pushing each other in a panic.

I was halfway up, scrambling on all fours, when I saw it. The wall that faced the stairwell, the one that was just plain plaster before, now had a hole in it, about the size of a dinner plate. But the hole wasn’t dark; it was lined with something that looked like wet, red leather, pulsing gently. It was like a mouth, its lips the color of raw meat, and it was breathing, drawing air in with a wet, sucking sound. I screamed, and the mouth widened, as if it were smiling. For a second, I saw a dark inside, and then something moved — a pale, slender hand, reaching out from the hole, fingers curling as if to beckon me. I scrambled up the last few stairs, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest, and I didn’t stop running until I was outside, gasping in the sun. When I finally dared to look back, the hole was gone, and the wall was smooth again.

I tried to tell my parents, but they said I was just scared, that it was a shadow from the trees. But I knew what I saw. I didn’t go back to the basement after that, and neither did my cousins, though none of them admitted it. They all said they just ‘didn’t like the smell’ down there.

Months passed, and the incident faded into the background of my mind, like a half-remembered nightmare. Then one night, a night when my grandparents were at bingo and my parents were at the community hall for a meeting, I was left alone in the house with my aunty who was taking a nap. I was lying in my bed in the upstairs bedroom that used to be a classroom, and the wind outside was howling, rattling the old windows. The house was making all its usual sounds — creaks and groans like an old ship — but then I heard something new. It was a low, rhythmic knocking, coming from the wall behind my headboard. Three knocks, then silence, then three knocks again. I pulled the covers up to my chin, praying it was just the plumbing.

But then the knocking stopped, and I heard a voice. It was soft, like a mother’s whisper, but wrong somehow, like it was coming from a long way off through a tube. ‘Let me in,’ it said. ‘I know you’re there.’ My blood ran cold. I recognized that voice, though I’d never heard it before. It was the voice of the hole. It was the voice of the thing that had reached for me. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the sound of a lock clicking made me open them. The door to my room, which I had locked from the inside, was slowly turning, the handle moving by itself. The door creaked open an inch, and there, in the hallway light, stood a figure. It was tall and thin, and its skin was the color of old paper. Its face was blank, smooth, without eyes or mouth, but it had long, spindly arms that hung almost to its knees. It tilted its head, as if listening, and then it stepped into my room.

I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. The figure glided toward my bed, and it reached out with one of those long arms, its fingers brushing my blanket. It touched my foot, and the touch was icy cold, like a stone from a deep well. Then it spoke again, its voice now coming from its face, though there was no mouth. ‘You opened the door, child. Now you must come.’ I felt a pull, as if something were grabbing my soul and tugging it out of my body. The room swirled, and I closed my eyes, tears streaming down my cheeks. Just then, my aunty screamed from her room down the hall. ‘Aaniin! What’s all that noise?’ The figure flickered, like a bad TV signal, and then it was gone.

When my parents came home, they found me shivering in my bed, the sheets wet with sweat. I told them everything, but they thought I had a fever dream. But I knew the truth. The hole in the basement wall was still there, I was sure of it. I hadn’t been back since, but I could feel it, pulsing beneath the house, like a heartbeat in the earth. And sometimes, at night, when the wind is just right, I hear that knocking, three times, and that voice, whispering, ‘Let me in.’ I never did. I moved away as soon as I could, but on sunny days, when I’m walking in the city, I sometimes catch a glimpse of a thin figure in a crowd, and it tilts its head, as if it’s listening for my heart. I keep moving. I don’t look back. But I know it’s still there, in that house, in that red-lined hole, waiting for the next child to come down the stairs.