The Vermilion Gate

For years, I’d learned to live with the nightly visitor. It wasn’t a ghost or a demon, at least not in the traditional sense. It was a pressure, a weight that pinned me to my mattress, a suffocating stillness that clung to my limbs. I’d learned to fight it, to will my fingers to twitch, to force my eyelids to flutter. And after a while, it would always relent, leaving me breathless and drenched in sweat, but free. It was a nuisance, a quirk of my neurology, as my doctor assured me. I believed him, mostly.

Last autumn, I moved into a small, isolated cottage on the edge of the Marshwood Fen. The previous tenant had left abruptly, and the realtor was vague about the reasons. The house itself was charming, with wide windows that overlooked the reeds and a vast, gray sky. I painted the walls a warm amber, hung wind chimes, and tried to make it my own. But there was a room at the end of the upstairs hall that I never entered. Its door was painted a strange, glossy vermilion, a color that seemed to pulse faintly in the dim light. I told myself it was just the reflections from the marshy water, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the door was watching me.

The first night in the cottage, the paralysis returned with a vengeance. But this time, it was different. Instead of the usual formless dread, I saw a flicker of movement in the corner of my vision. As I lay frozen, a figure slowly materialized from the shadows: an old woman, her face hidden in the folds of a dark shawl. She didn’t speak, but she pointed a gnarled finger towards the ceiling, towards that vermilion door. Then, as always, the spell broke, and I gasped awake, my heart pounding. The next morning, I noticed fine, red dust had seeped out from under the door, leaving a thin line on the hallway floor.

Over the following weeks, the dreams worsened. I began to see the old woman in my sleep, always motioning to that door. I also started to notice strange things around the cottage: dead moths arranged in neat rows on the windowsills, my own reflection in the bathroom mirror lingering a half-second too long, and the faint, sweet smell of decay coming from behind the vermilion door. I tried to ignore it, to attribute it to my overactive imagination. But the paralysis attacks became more frequent, and I began to dread sleep itself. In my dreams, I would stand before the door, my hand hovering over the knob, the old woman’s silent urging a cold pressure at my back.

One afternoon, after a particularly brutal night, I mustered the courage to touch the vermilion door. The paint was cool and strangely smooth, like polished bone. As my fingertips made contact, I felt a jolt, not electric, but hollow, as if I had knocked on a void. The door didn’t budge, but I could feel a faint hum vibrating through my palm. I pressed my ear to the wood and heard, from within, the slow, rhythmic thump of a heartbeat. That night, I dreamed of the old woman again, but this time she was seated beside me on my bed. Her shawl slipped, revealing a face that was horribly familiar, the face of a woman I had never met but somehow knew, the face of the previous tenant’s mother. She leaned in and whispered, her breath like damp earth, ‘You must open it. She is waiting.’

I woke up to find my pillow soaked with tears. The paralysis was worse than ever; I couldn’t even move my eyes. I lay there, staring at my bedroom ceiling, until the dawn light crept in. As the first rays hit the window, I heard a sound from down the hall: the unmistakable creak of the vermilion door opening on its own. I held my breath, listening. For a long moment, there was silence, and then a soft patter of bare feet on the wooden floor, approaching my room. The footsteps stopped at my threshold. I could feel a presence there, hovering just outside my range of vision. And then a voice, not whispered, but clear and brittle, said: ‘You should have opened it yourself. Now I must come to you.’

The footsteps resumed, slowly walking away, down the stairs, into the kitchen. I heard the back door open and then close. As the paralysis finally released me, I ran to the window and saw a figure in a dark shawl walking into the marsh, dissolving into the morning mist. I never saw the old woman again, but the vermilion door is now always ajar, and I can hear the heartbeat from within, a constant, patient thrum. At night, I sometimes feel a cold hand on my ankle, and I know it is not my imagination. She is still waiting, and one day, she will pull me under the door with her. Until then, I keep the lights on, and I never, ever look at the cracked sliver of darkness beyond the vermilion gate.