The Thirteenth Door

I work the night audit at the Meriwether Title Company, which squats in what was once the scullery wing of the old St. Dymphna’s Hospital for the Indigent Women. The main building, a hulking brick monolith, throws its shadow over our smaller annex, and the whole complex has the feel of a mausoleum that forgot to die. My office, the ‘records room,’ was a former storage closet for the labor ward, and it’s just big enough for nine cubicles, though only seven are occupied. The other two are stacked with banker’s boxes labeled with years I’m too tired to decipher. At night, the building hums with a low, mechanical drone, and the radiators clank in a rhythm that sometimes syncs with my heartbeat. I’m not a coward. I’ve seen the shadow that slips between the filing cabinets when I’m reshelving the Grantor-Grantee index, and I’ve heard the thrumming, like a distant heart, in the walls. But it’s the crying that gets to me.

It’s a soft, hiccuping sound that drifts from the far corner of the room, behind the empty cubicle of a temp who quit three months ago. It sounds like a newborn, that raw, helpless wail, but it also sounds like it’s coming from inside my own skull. The other night, I was alone, scanning a deed for a property dispute, and I distinctly heard a baby crying. I stood up, my chair scraping. The sound was coming from the ceiling, from the exact spot where a water stain spread like a bruise. I felt a cold draft, and my mouse cursor began to move on its own, tracing a circle on the screen. I watched it, unblinking. It wasn’t fear. It was more like recognition, as if the building and I had an unspoken agreement. I’ve learned to ignore the phone calls that come in at 3 AM, the ones where I hear my own voice on the other end, muffled and desperate. I’ve learned to accept that sometimes, when I look up from my desk, there’s a woman in a white apron standing in the doorway, her face a pale oval, her eyes like shuttered windows. She never speaks. She just watches.

Tuesday morning, I came in at the usual time, 7:58, keyed to the front door. The security code was different, but that had happened before, and I just used my head to key in the old code, and the lock clicked open. The lights flickered on in the corridor, and I noticed a line of tape on the linoleum floor, leading from the main office to our annex. It was the same yellow tape they use to mark crime scenes, but it was faded, as if it had been there for decades. I followed it, my footsteps echoing. The tape led to the records room, where it stopped at a door I’d never seen before, tucked between the restroom and the supply closet. The door was solid oak, with a brass handle, and a small plaque that read: THIRTEENTH DOOR. I counted the doors in the hallway: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and this one made thirteen.

I pushed the handle, expecting it to be locked, but it swung inward with a heavy groan. Beyond was a narrow stairwell, spiraling down into darkness. A damp, cold air rose, carrying the faint scent of formaldehyde and decay. My breath misted in front of me. I should have walked away, called the property manager, but something in my chest, that same indifferent curiosity, pulled me forward. I stepped onto the first stair, and the door slammed shut behind me, plunging me into blackness. My heart didn’t even race. I reached into my pocket for my phone, flipped on the flashlight, and descended.

The stairwell opened into a vast, low-ceilinged basement. The walls were rough-hewn stone, slick with moisture. Pipes lined the ceiling, and the air was thick with the sound of dripping water, but there was another sound beneath: a rhythmic, wet pulsing, like a giant heart. I followed the sound, my flashlight beam cutting through the gloom. I passed rows of what looked like metal cabinets, the kind they use in morgues. On one of them, a drawer was slightly ajar, and I could see a white cloth inside. I didn’t look too closely.

At the far end of the basement, I found the source of the pulsing. A massive iron boiler, its surface covered in rust, but it was not a boiler. It was a machine, with dials and gauges, and a large, glass cylinder. And inside the cylinder, submerged in some kind of clear liquid, was a baby. It was perfectly formed, its eyes closed, its tiny fists clenched. It floated, as if asleep, and the liquid was not liquid at all, but the air itself, shimmering with an otherworldly light. The baby was not alone. There were others, suspended in similar cylinders, all along the walls, all of them babies, all of them at the same stage of development, all connected to the machine by thin, translucent tubes that pulsed with a strange, silvery liquid. The machine itself gave a slow, rhythmic churn, and I realized with a jolt that it was alive. It was feeding them.

I heard a sound behind me, a soft footstep. I turned, and the woman in the white apron was there, her face no longer shadowed. She was gaunt, her cheeks hollow, her eyes black as jet, with a single, noxious green slit for a pupil. She pointed to a chair, a simple wooden chair, in the center of the maze of cylinders. ‘Sit,’ she said. Her voice was a papery rustle, like dead leaves scraping against a window. ‘You’re the one who hears the crying. It’s for you.’ I sat. The machine hummed, and I could feel the vibrations through the floor, up my spine, into my skull. The woman walked to a glass control panel with a cradle of wires, and she began to adjust dials. The liquid in the cylinder containing the baby began to swirl. The baby opened its eyes. They were not human. They were also black with green slits. But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was that the baby looked at me, and its mouth opened, and it said, in a voice that was not a voice but a thought, ‘You have been chosen.’

I sat in that chair for hours, or maybe days, or maybe years. The woman fed me nothing, but I felt no hunger. She spoke to me, not with her lips, but with her mind. She told me the truth. St. Dymphna’s was not a hospital for indigent women. It was a waystation. The babies were not human. They were the seed of a dying race, travelers from a other dimension, trapped in this time and place, awaiting their resurrection. The women who had come to the hospital were not patients. They were vessels. The crying I heard was the sound of their births, and the banging was the sound of their attempts to break free. The women who worked here, the ones who heard the crying, and felt the presence, and were not afraid—they were the chosen ones, the ones who would inherit the legacy. ‘You are the thirteenth,’ she said. ‘The door was always meant for you.’

I wanted to scream, but my body was no longer mine. I felt something growing inside me, a cold, heavy weight in my abdomen. I looked down, and my hands were on my stomach, and I could feel a movement, a tiny, fluttering kick. I was pregnant. I had been pregnant since the moment I first heard that cry. The woman smiled, a horrid, lipless smile. ‘You will give birth to the new age,’ she said. ‘You will join us. You will become a cradle.’ The last thing I remember, as my vision faded into white, was the sound of my own screaming, but it was not my voice. It was the sound of a baby.

I woke up this morning, at 7:58, in my own car, in the parking lot of the Meriwether Title Company. My clothes were damp, and I tasted something metallic in my mouth, like blood. I looked down at my belly. It was flat. I walked to the front door, keyed in the code, and the door swung open. Inside, the lights were on, and the whispers were all around. A colleague asked me if I was feeling alright. I said yes, but I felt a heaviness in my chest, a presence, like a second heartbeat. I walked to the records room, and I counted the doors again: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. The thirteenth door was there, but it was a broom closet. I opened it, and inside was a mop and a bucket. But on the floor, there was a small, wet footprint, and it was not mine. And then, from the far corner of the room, I heard the crying again. It was louder now, insistently, and it was coming from my own stomach.