The Unfound Gate

This story is told on the account of my sister, Cara. She lived in a cramped duplex on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, with her boyfriend, Julian, while she attended Portland State University. Julian had a habit of telling unsettling stories about his place, claiming it was ‘off’ in ways he couldn’t explain. I’d always chalked it up to his love of dark humor, but then Cara started calling me at odd hours, her voice tight with a fear I’d never heard before.

To understand what happened, you need to know a little about Julian and his family. Julian’s younger brother, Ethan, was the curious sort. One night, when the family was visiting their grandmother’s old farmhouse in the countryside, Ethan found an old, hand-painted Ouija board in the attic. Against every rule he’d been taught, he and his cousin decided to try it in the living room after everyone had gone to bed. They claim they only asked a few questions, but something felt wrong. The planchette moved with a force that wasn’t their own, spelling out a name that Ethan refused to repeat. When Julian’s parents found them, they were terrified, and the board was immediately confiscated. But when they went to burn it in the backyard fire pit, they couldn’t find it. They searched the entire farmhouse, every nook and cranny, but it was gone. To this day, it remains missing. They believe that by using the board, Ethan opened a door that they couldn’t close, and that a little girl has been ‘following’ them ever since, a girl with wet hair and a black dress.

Cara dismissed Julian’s stories as tall tales, but after she moved in, she started noticing things. At first, it was just small oddities: the smell of damp earth in the hallway, the sound of dripping water when all the faucets were turned off, the bathroom mirror fogging up even in the dry heat of summer. Then, more disturbing: Cara would find her toothbrush moved to the other side of the sink, her hairbrush clattered to the floor in the middle of the night, and once, she swore she saw a small, pale hand disappear around the corner of the kitchen. Julian, however, was strangely calm. He said, ‘She’s just curious.’

Things escalated when Cara started hearing the tapping. It was a rhythmic pattern on the windowpane of the bedroom at night, like tiny knuckles rapping against the glass. When she looked, there was nothing there, but the tapping would persist, sometimes for hours. One night, she jolted awake to find a child’s voice whispering from the closet, a soft, wet whisper that sounded like bubbles. She tried to wake Julian, but he just mumbled and rolled over. In the morning, she confronted him about it, but he only shrugged and said, ‘Maybe she wants to play.’ That’s when Cara began to suspect Julian knew more than he was letting on.

Determined to get some answers, Cara decided to search the house. She remembered Ethan’s story and wondered if the Ouija board had somehow ended up here. She looked in every drawer, every cupboard, under the beds, and in the attic crawl space. Nothing. She was about to give up when she noticed a loose floorboard in the hallway. She pried it up, and there, nestled in the darkness, was a small, leather-bound journal. It was Ethan’s, and it was filled with his frantic scribbles. He wrote about the board, the little girl, and his attempts to find her. The last entry, dated a year ago, ended with a chilling line: ‘I think I found her. She’s in the walls. In the space between. She wants to come out.’

That night, the tapping was louder, more insistent. Cara found herself being drawn to the closet door, which was slightly ajar. She could hear a faint crying, like a damp whimpering. With trembling hands, she pushed the door open. Inside, in the corner, was a small, dark shape. As her eyes adjusted, she saw it was a little girl, her hair plastered to her face, her black dress dripping with water. The girl looked up at Cara, and her mouth opened in a silent plea. Cara felt a surge of pity and reached out, but then she saw the girl’s eyes – they weren’t eyes, but empty sockets, and from them, black water poured. A cold hand clamped around Cara’s wrist, and the girl’s voice, now a guttural rasp, whispered, ‘You opened the door, now I can leave.’

Cara screamed and wrenched her hand free, stumbling backward. The closet door slammed shut, and the room fell silent. When she turned, Julian was standing in the hallway, his face pale. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t warn you. She’s been waiting for someone to open that door.’ Cara packed her bags that night and drove to my place, but she didn’t escape. Every night since, she hears the tapping at her window, and in the mirror, she sees the little girl standing behind her, her wet hair dripping, her empty eyes fixed on Cara’s reflection. The Ouija board is missing, but the door it opened is now a permanent part of Cara’s life, and no matter how far she runs, she knows the little girl is waiting for her to come back and finish what Ethan started.