The Doors Claire Burgess

THE DOORS

CLAIRE BURGESS

Te house looked beautiful in the glossy brochure. It was almost a century old; built soundly of hardy, dependable brick and surrounded by hardy, dependable fora. Robert was inclined to select it even before setting foot on the property, and I was more than willing to make my home wherever he desired. We contacted the sales agent and embarked on the three hour long drive to the house the next day. We were awed by the ancient trees surrounding the drive and charmed by the fourishing lilies lining the ivy-covered exterior. We admired the windows, large, and the stables, large, and the groundskeeper, small and sweet. We walked closer to the entrance, the agent apologizing in advance for the neglected interior, hoping that we were not allergic to dust. Te doors to the house had not been breached in nigh ffy years, and even then only so that the previous groundskeeper, the father of the man we had met, could chase out an elusive animal he had sworn he heard scratching at the door, but never found. Went quite mad in his later years, the agent said, and the scandal was enough to drive away buyers for decades. Tis was a very superstitious area, and the groundskeeper had engaged in some nefarious, even violent, business. Robert and I clucked our tongues and moved on to more practical matters.

We chatted amicably as we walked along the drive, discussing window dressings and the hiring of help, when the agent called our attention to the queer front door. My eyes had danced about nearly the whole of the house before that moment, landing on anything but those doors, that dark shadow in the corner of my eye; now, wide open and defenseless, they beheld them. I was unable to look away. Te massive

doors were nearly black; made of some dark wood straight from the forests of my own nightmares,traced with twisting lines of silver. I could not recognize any kind of pattern, but each curve and ridge and pock ft into each other obscenely, sensuously, like the limbs of corpses in a mass grave. Tey were horrible, terrible, but my eyes were captivated, sliding smoothly in their sockets as they followed every bend in this shadowy labyrinth and stared deep into the dark eyes formed in every notch; deep, sinister, and inviting. Te eyes of the doors were hypnotic, and if they were gateways to the soul of the house, dark secrets certainly lay within. Tat groundskeeper was not entirely mad, I thought. Tere was something moving in there. Pacing. Writhing. My husband and the agent bantered distantly, a whole bright world away. I drew closer and ran my fngertips along the folds and sinuations of the doors, feeling along the edges. My hands landed fnally on the silver doorknob, and I hesitated only a moment before pulling with all my might.

Te doors were open and suddenly, for a fraction of a second, I felt a more intense heat than my mind could comprehend. My very blood boiled, but before a scream could gather in my throat, it was over, and a hush descended upon our party. Te next few moments passed as though it were an eternity. Te deep and impenetrable darkness within the house seemed to leak out like a living thing, tip-toeing around my feet and limbs, testing the waters, nuzzling its way in and up and around me like a subterranean animal breaking through to the surface. Robert and the estate manager brushed past me into the house, either unafraid or unfeeling. My hand jerked forward to pull them back and into the light, but I forced it back down to my side. Te heat gone, I was ashamed of myself, and I shook my head as though to fing the shadows of of me. Ten I crossed myself quickly before following them both into the house.

Te months that followed were peaceful, and we were happy in the cottage we had rented in the small riverside town nearby while the house was being made habitable and furnished to my taste. It was a relief to be away from the city, where the demons of our past still stalked the streets. We would make a new start here, away from the reporters who still hounded Robert, despite his acquittal and magnanimous ofers of restitution. We needed some form of peace, of the quietude which had eluded us for so long, and Robert was sure that we had discovered the only place in earth we could attain it.

When I wasn’t shopping and meeting with decorators and designers, I was on the telephone constantly with friends in the city, describing the gardens and the portico and the curtains and the library. When prodded, I

told them I was certain the pitter patter of small footsteps would soon echo against the high ceilings of the gallery, bringing a pleasant distraction to Robert. I would not then admit to myself or others what I knew to be true: this house was no place for innocence.

It was during one of these phone calls that I conjured up a plan: we would host a party at the house the very frst night we planned to move in, and invite our guests to stay the night in our many guest rooms in the west wing. Robert agreed that it was a splendid idea, but suggested we make it another night so we could spend our frst night together alone in our new home. I resisted this postponement with very calculated levity, thinking then what Robert would surely tell me if I admitted my fears: that there is no quality intrinsic to the bricks or mortar of our house that could possibly harm me.

It was the middle of October when Robert and I fnally moved into the house. Brown leaves lay heavy on the ground, and the air was just as heavy and just as dead. It was astonishing, the lack of wind that greeted the slowly creeping strides of the encroaching winter. It made for an eerie and stifing silence that surrounded the grounds like a breathless embrace. Robert remarked jovially that we should sleep soundly for the lack of tree branches tickling the windows, but there was something about the silence that made my heart race and my clammy hands ball up into fsts. It rang in my ears, and I found myself emitting a tuneless hum to myself to keep the spaces between my ears from resonating.

Te guests trickled in between fve and six o’clock, their Maybachs and Mercedes entrusted to valets. Te women played bridge and sipped their sherry while the men and their hardier spirits occupied the library until the last of the stragglers, cursing the thick fog, arrived at half past six, at which point tumblers were discarded and dinner served. Wine fowed liberally and mingled with the conversation, and the guests, I believe, found both most stimulating. I did my best to engage and play hostess as I had done many times in the past, but my gaze kept landing in the corners of the room and catching in the cobwebs that had been missed by the staf. Someone’s eyes followed mine once, and kindly told me not to worry so much about the mustier crevices of the house. Te staf was new, afer all, and the house was large. I shot a quick, excessively bright smile at him in thanks and determined to keep my eyes on the table from then on.

Troughout the meal, I heard the webs rustling like ash in a breeze; newly confdent, they reached out farther and farther into the room, multiplying and expanding. I kept my teeth bared in a grimace of a smile, but my hands betrayed the state of my inner turmoil: the napkin in my lap

was a twisted mess, and my knuckles were ghostly white. I wondered if my friends could see the shadows I felt creeping up around me.

Midway through dinner, the lights fared up, and my hand clamped down on my mouth to stife the scream that shot up from my lungs, and to brush away the cobwebs that were forming between my lips. Robert remained calm— So damnably calm! How did he not feel the same sinister fngers clutching his heart that had forced their way around mine?— and he chuckled at the interruption, making a remark about antiquated electrical systems. My eyes bulged as I forced myself to look at him sitting there at the end of the table ever so calmly, as the shadows crept up the sides of his chair.

Te entire room was suddenly a feverish, Caravaggesque nightmare. Te room was stifing; the shadows in the corners and the mist from the windows seemed to be drawing all of the chill out of the room and condensing it, excreting glistening, hauntingly beautiful swirls and knots of moisture. While the shadows and the webs and the terror inside me gathered strength, we sweltered. Te men sweat through their suits and the women lifed their hair from their necks, enticing the darkness, inviting it closer. Te eyes of my former friends had become the deeply shadowed hollows found in skulls. Teir teeth fashed brightly as they cackled and snorted. I squirmed in my seat and licked my lips, tasting salt. I felt faint, and sensed my eyelids fickering.

Te lights fickered once more, and then fnally extinguished themselves. Tis time, I could not resist the force of my scream. I didn’t even try. I sat there, rigid, while I heard furtive shufing about the room, and matches lit. I screamed again when Robert shook me roughly by the shoulders to alert me that the room was once again illuminated, for I had shut them tight against the dark. I blinked against the unnatural light and shrunk back into my chair. I knew what I looked like: a feral animal whose sanctuary had been deeply disturbed. I hissed to Robert, “We aren’t safe!”

I hardly knew what I was saying. I had broken, and I felt like howling.

“Robert, please! Don’t you see it? Don’t you feel how…?”

My eyes darted up at the newly sinister face of my husband, cast in high relief by his single fickering taper. His lips curled at the edges in a devilish sneer; his eyes reduced to empty black ovals.

I let out a cry of utter despair as I dodged Robert’s soulless embrace and ran out of the room. Te bricks lining the hallway glowed like charcoal, blinding me, surrounding me in a haze of heat that only enhanced the demonic efect of the cackling that followed behind me. Te silver knob of the front door singed my hand, but I did not stop. I

wrenched the door open wide and rushed headlong into the most invasive cold that I had ever experienced. Te chill penetrated my body layer by feshy layer until my very soul was drowning in it. I shuddered and forced my legs forward in fretful fts and starts, as if with every step I had to break my foot away from a thick miasma of tar, only to set it down once more in the hardening blackness. Te moment I tore my foot away from the last step of the portico, my legs were able to move more freely.

But the fog! I shut my eyes tightly, too afraid to face my still, grey blindness. Tere was no noise from the house any longer; it was a dead calm night, and for a moment I wished I were dead, as well. My legs were stilled once again, this time with fear. I quaked and made my way forward like a blind man, with arms outstretched. My feet inched forward agonizingly slowly, though my mind was screaming at me to bolt.

I don’t know how long I moved like this, losing myself in the mist and in my mind, trying to keep my body and my soul my own. All I felt was the cold. All I heard was my heartbeat, quick as a rabbit’s, driving me mad with its insistent, incessant noise, so alien to my surroundings. It shouldn’t be so loud, I thought. It shouldn’t beat at all.

For an eternity, it seemed, I walked unsteadily through my nightmare. Eventually I began to crawl, deaf to the raw, bloody cries of my palms and knees. I soon found it impossible to move, as though my weakened limbs were held back roughly and cruelly by some ungodly force. Tis twist of fate did not alarm me; I was relieved to know that struggling was futile. Te gravel of the drive scraped comfortingly against my face. I slowly reached up my trembling hand to lovingly fnger the cuts on my cheek, relishing the feel of the blood under my fngernails, the sound of my collar tearing against the stones, the smell of the dust, and the taste of my tears. I giggled, delighted by the sensations. My writhing body gradually calmed and my eyes opened wide once more to the slate grey, and I let the dew gather on my blind eyes as I lay there in the cold.

An eternity afer I had laid my head down, I sensed them. Tey crept in at the corners of my vision and my mind reeled at the thought of sharing my solitude. Gradually, they flled my eyes and mouth and ears and I choked on the specters like smoke. I coughed and sputtered and halfvomited their wicked grins and burning ember eyes from my violated orifces, thrashing my arms and legs until I found myself running, shrieking blindly forward. It didn’t matter what direction I travelled so long as it was away; so long as I could breathe again. My legs burned with the strain and my throat felt singed and coated with ash, until suddenly I felt a breeze. I stopped in my tracks, as did my heart. I was all at once very

aware of my eyelids and how tightly clenched together they had become, as though opening them would let my soul escape.

I breathed in and out in sharp bursts and shudders. My lungs rejoiced in the new air. It smelled of death and of something familiar; something that had once smelled of home and now smelled of hellfre. My eyes shot open, as if drawn open by the red-hot strings of a damned puppeteer, and there, just ahead of me, my suspicions were confrmed. Trough the rapidly vanishing mist, suddenly there, alarmingly close to my naked eyes, I saw a shocking splash of color against the grey and black of the landscape. In one wing of the house, a fash of red and orange burst through the windows. I watched silently as the fames spread with supernatural speed across the facade, as though the house itself was egging the fames on as they tore through stone, mortar, and fesh within its walls.

I was close enough now to feel the heat from the house caress my face. Slowly, as though preparing to pray, I lowered myself down to my knees and raised my arms to the smoke-flled sky, and the scream that I let forth from my lips joined those coming from the open, uncharred doorway into the depths of hell.