The House with 100 Doors (Part 2): The Crooked Hall

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Sorry that it’s been awhile since my last update. The internet here is unreliable at best, completely dead in most rooms and barely a blip even when it does work. I’ve got a signal here but it’s weak. I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to post this after writing it. That doesn’t matter too much, I need the distraction either way. We’re all still shaken up after the hallway. So I’ll keep my eyes open, fixed on the screen of my phone, and I’ll focus on that, on talking to you. That and nothing else.

Let me pick up where I left off. We were all in a daze after Doc was injured. It was surreal, seeing the door slam on it’s own, shearing off the tips of his fingers where he gripped the frame. Then the door was just...gone the moment we all looked away. I tried to convince myself that this could all still be a trick or some insane prank. The sight of Doc’s ruined hands made it difficult to believe this was anything but horrible, unavoidable reality.

Holly was the first to shake herself into action. She slid off her pack and tore through the contents, emerging with a first aid kit. Moving quickly, Holly began disinfecting each of Doc’s injured fingers before wrapping them in gauze and medical tape. The rest of us stood around awkwardly. Josh was staring down at Doc’s hands, Dodger glaring forward at the blank wall where the door used to be. I wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, just ahead in a haze, wondering if drinking the bourbon in my bag would improve or deteriorate the situation. I decided that I didn’t care and brought the bottle out.

Holly’s small hands were swift and efficient.

“Can we help?” Dodger asked.

Holly shook her head. “I’ve got it."

I sat down to watch her work. Dodger and Josh joined me. I passed the bottle around. Holly even spared a moment to take a swig. We all sat on the bare, hardwood floor, watching Holly. It felt a little awkward, Dodger, Josh and me all huddled together while Holly wrapped Doc’s fingers all by herself.

Dodger cleared his throat. “You’re, uh, very good at that,” he told Holly. She nodded tersely but didn’t look up from her work. “Where did you learn...” Dodger trailed off, probably realizing his small talk was only a distraction.

“The army,” Holly replied, eyes never leaving Doc’s hand. “I was a medic. I-”

“Oh God!” Doc suddenly shouted, snapping out of his daze. “Oh God. Shit.”

He ripped one partially bandaged hand away from Holly and held it in front of his face. There was a distressing amount of empty space where his fingertips should be. Doc began to struggle.

“Help me,” Holly said, trying to hold Doc down as he thrashed.

Before Dodger or I could move, Josh was up, kneeling next to Doc. Josh caught Doc’s flailing arm by the wrist and firmly, gently, lowered it to his side.

“It’s okay,” Josh said, his other hand on Doc’s shoulder, “relax. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

Josh had one of the most calming voices I’ve ever heard. Doc’s thrashing lessened, stopped. He went limp, sagging into Josh, who put an arm under Doc’s gray-haired head.

“You’re okay,” Josh repeated. “We’re okay.”

Holly gave Josh a nod of thanks and went back to bandaging Doc. Dodger and I exchanged a sheepish look and I passed him back the bottle. We were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Holly finished wrapping and snipped the medical tape off with a pair of angular scissors. She went back to her rucksack and rummaged around, returning with a small vial and syringe.

“I’m going to give you something for the pain,” Holly told Doc, rolling up his blood-soaked sleeve past his elbow. He didn’t reply as she injected him, only stared mutely at the wall where the little blue door used to be.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Doc mumbled. After a few minutes, his breathing became shallow and his eyes closed. Doc was sleeping. Josh gently extracted himself, fetched his backpack and propped it under Doc’s head as a makeshift pillow. Holly exhaled deeply then put her kit back in her bag.

“Well, fuck,” Dodger muttered, glancing around the tight room. Four blank, white walls surrounded us with only a single red door to break the pattern. The floor was cold, the ceiling low, and I desperately needed to take a leak.

“Yeah. Fuck,” Holly agreed, sitting down.

Dodger moved in the opposite direction, standing and stretching long-limbs towards the ceiling.

I cleared my throat. “Hey, I feel awkward about this but I forgot to use the restroom before we got started. All the excitement, you know? And, um…”

“One or two?” Holly asked.

“Just...one,” I replied.

She nodded, reaching into her bag then tossing me an empty Gatorade bottle.

“You really are prepared,” I mumbled, slinking off to the corner.

We all found ways to kill time while Doc slept. I knew we’d eventually need to walk through that red door. None of us were eager to take the plunge without our guide, though. Holly rested near Doc, her eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or just decompressing. Dodger was pacing back and forth, walking along each wall over and over. He was scowling and his caged-animal vibes were making me a little anxious.

Josh, on the other hand, remained a calming influence. The two of us sat quietly on the floor near Doc, the bourbon between us.

“Do you think this is real?” Josh asked.

The image of the door closing on Doc’s fingers popped into my mind like a boil.

“Feels real,” I replied. I couldn’t help but picture Doc’s severed fingertips lying in a jumble like fallen Jenga pieces on the other side of the wall. Eventually, Dodger joined us sitting on the floor, not saying much. Doc began stirring not long after. He tried to pull himself up, winced when his hand touched the floor.

“We need to start moving,” Doc said groggily.

Holly gently pressed him back down. “You need to rest.”

“He needs to tell us what the fuck is going on,” Dodger said.

Doc shook his head, seeming punch-drunk. “I don’t know. This hasn’t happened before. The blue door never goes away this early. Something is wrong. I’m sorry, I don’t know what, but something is different this time.”

Dodger shook his head. “Bullshit.”

Doc held up his two disfigured hands. “If this was a prank or joke, Dodger, I would have picked a better punchline.”

We all sat squirming for a bit.

“Help me up,” Doc asked. Josh and I looked at Holly. When she nodded, we moved to Doc. He was shaky on his feet, clearly still feeling the effects of blood loss and whatever Holly had given him. But he looked determined. “Okay, I’m going to go first. Follow single file and stick together.”

“Maybe I should go first,” Holly suggested. Doc glanced down at his bandaged hands.

“Yeah,” he admitted, “doorknobs might be an issue. But I’ll be right behind you. Then Dodger, then Aaron. Josh, you bring up the rear.”

Holly took a deep breath and approached the red door. She tried the knob. It seemed to turn cleanly. The door swung open. From where I was standing in the back, it looked like another bare room, similar to an unfinished apartment with no furniture. Instead of white walls with a red door, there were blue walls with a brown door across from us.

“Here goes nothing,” Holly said.

We made it through the first room without incident, then the second, then the third. Not all of the rooms were bare. The fifth room was passed through was a tasteful, if small, bedroom. All blue pillows and modern furniture. It looked like an ad from IKEA. The eighth room had shag carpets and no furniture, only a ping-pong table in the center and a few folding metal chairs pressed against the wall. The fourteenth room was a home office dominated by a huge wooden desk in the corner, with cream colored walls and a ceiling fan rotating lazily above us.

No one said it but it quickly became obvious that, even if we were somehow turning in circles, there was no way the house was large enough to contain so many rooms. Nothing about any of the rooms stood out as alarming however, the farther we pressed on, the more small oddities I noticed. Some of the floors felt a few inches off of even. Walls were occasionally asymmetrical, with one side just barely shorter than the other three. The art of the walls stood out the most. Moving through a bedroom, we passed by a picture of a family at a park. The painting itself was quite lovely, all pastel greens and sun-swept meadows. However, the faces of the family all looked manic, wide-eyed, completely at odds with the serenity of the scene.

In the nineteenth room, we came to a tall grey door. This room was colder than any of the others so far. When Holly turned the knob we found ourselves facing a dim, narrow hallway. Holly hesitated.

“This one feels weird,” she said.

“They all feel fucking weird,” Dodger replied.

“We don’t seem to have many options,” I said. “We can’t really go back.”

Holly began walking down the hallway and we followed. The farther we progress, the darker and cooler the hall became. My arm brushed against one of the walls and I was surprised how rough it felt and damp.

“It’s like a tunnel,” I heard Josh whisper behind me.

Or a cave, I thought.

“It’s getting darker,” Holly said. “Flashlights out.”

We stopped for a few moments to dig lights out of our packs. Five beams of blue-bright light snapped to life, one after another. The flashlights were a comfort but they weren’t providing as much illumination as they should. Something about the shadows in the hallway resisted, clinging stubbornly to the floor, walls and ceiling.

It was hard to see more than a dozen or so yards in front of us, so it caught everyone off-guard when we came to the first bend in the hallway. It was a shallow curve and uneven. This didn’t seem like anything that was built or measured; the hall was more like some imperfect path you’d find in nature.

“It’s getting tighter,” Dodger said, reaching up one hand and managing to touch his fingertips to the ceiling.

After passing the first bend, the walls began to feel narrower, their sides rougher. The floor also had a slight, steady decline now. We passed a second bend, then a third, then we came upon a sudden, steep rise in the floor that we had to climb over. The space we had to maneuver in continued to shrink. It was a good thing we were moving in a single file because soon enough my shoulders were nearly rubbing the sides of the hall with each step. I’ve always been mildly claustrophobic; MRIs made me sweaty and I avoided the crawl space under my house like it was an ex at a party. But this was something different, worse. I forced myself to swallow down the ember of panic trying to ignite in my throat.

Up ahead, I heard Holly curse and we all stopped. It was so dark now that everyone around me was a shadowy outline with blurred features, even with our flashlights.

“We need to turn back,” Holly said from the front. “It gets tight up ahead, and there’s a sharp blind bend. I think...I think it’s only big enough to wiggle through. We should go back.”

Only big enough to wiggle through, I thought. That ember of panic was a steady burn now and I could feel cold sweat all over my body.

“If we go back, we’re just spinning our wheels,” Doc said.

“Better to spin our wheels than risk-” I began.

“Doc’s right,” Dodger cut me off. “I still think there’s something deeply fucked about this whole situation but there’s no point in going backwards. We’ve been through those rooms already, we know there’s no door back, no way out. So unless everyone wants to play ping-pong for the next twenty years, I think we need to press on.”

“Can’t we just go back and call the cops?” I asked. “At least one of the rooms back there has Internet.”

“Even if you could connect a call, which I’m not sure the house would allow,” Doc said, “and even if the police burst through that little blue door at the start with a full SWAT team, there’s very little chance they’d ever find us. The rooms wouldn’t be in the same order if anyone came in behind us.”

“How can you know?” Josh asked.

Doc shrugged. “Because I’ve tried before, with others, more than once. Each path is different. The house is never set. I’m sorry, there’s only one direction we can go.”

We all stood silently for a moment.

“Balls,” said Holly. “We’ll have to leave the packs.”

This was meant with murmurs and curses but we could all plainly see there was no room for the large bags. The five of us stuffed as many essentials as we could into our pockets. I saw Holly’s flashlight dip as she turned sideways. “Okay, one at a time and stay close. If anyone gets stuck, the person in front of them pulls, the person behind pushes.”

Holly’s light disappeared as she slipped into the fissure. I didn’t exhale until I heard her give the all clear from the other side. One-by-one we followed. When it was my turn, it took every ounce of self-control I had to shimmy my way through the narrow bend. The rough walls pressed close, forcing me to work one shoulder through then drag the rest of my body along. I held my breath and pushed. For one, horrible second I felt wedged in. Then Dodger’s hand reached back and closed around my wrist, pulling me forward. At the same time, I felt Josh behind me nudging me forward with his shoulder.

I exited the crevice like a popped cork. Doc and Dodger both reached in to help Josh squeeze through. Josh tore his shirt badly. There was a little more room on this side of the bend but the way forward was even darker. As we pushed ahead, the walls became tighter and tighter until it was worse than before. The ceiling was dropping and the floor was rising. Soon Dodger had to hunch over to walk, then we were all hunched.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whispered to myself, trying to push down the claustrophobia.

“There’s another crevice ahead,” Holly called back. “Just...just the same as before, okay? We got this. One at a time.”

It took much longer for Holly to give us the all clear after she went in.

“Be careful,” she called back, sounding winded. “It’s a real mess. I had to crawl. There’s going to be a gradual climb, then a hard left, then a sharp drop out of fucking nowhere and finally a short hook, like a “J” shape at the end. It’s a squeeze. Just keep moving.”

I was having a hard time swallowing. Holly was petite, short and maybe 115-pounds. If she thought it was a “squeeze” the rest of us were in trouble.

“Hey! I see the door, it’s right here,” Holly called back, excited. “We’re almost through.”

I watched Doc disappear into the shadows of the bend. Dodger waited before following. Even in the dark, I could see his hands shaking. I took a deep breath, sucked in my chest and gut, and began to push through.

If the first bend was a nightmare, this second passage was a tight knot of Hell. I could feel the walls pressing against me, forcing me to take shallow breaths. There was no room to turn around, no leeway. I was quickly forced to my hands and knees as the space constricted. When I came to the rise Holly mentioned, I had to drop to my stomach to pinch through. The corridor felt like it had its own unique gravity, crushing and heartless. I began to hyperventilate, face mashed against unyielding stone. All I could do was force myself forward inch by inch, stomach on the ground with the top of the tunnel brushing against my back.

I had to contort my body as much as possible to keep moving when the passage curved left. My heartbeat sounded like a panicked crowd running in my ears. I wiggled my shoulders past the turn, both arms scraping painfully until I managed to twist partially on my side in a corkscrew. This allowed me to sneak beyond the bend but pinned my left arm, the one holding my flashlight. The dark ahead was complete.

I felt for the drop Holly mentioned with my free arm and gasped when I found how steep it was. Without my light, I couldn’t see how far the decline dropped or how tight it would get. I began to tremble, frozen. My body ached from crawling, my arm was cramping, and the pressure from the walls made it hard to breath. All I wanted to do was back up to more open spaces. Fuck it, I would play ping-pong for the rest of eternity if it was somewhere I could take a full fucking breath.

I tried to inch forward and felt my shoulder wedge tightly against the wall. I was trapped

Oh Christ, oh God, I thought.

“Hey, are you okay?” Holly’s voice came bobbing out of the darkness.

“No,” I replied. I was crying. “I’m stuck. Oh God, I think I’m stuck. Help. Help. Fucking help, please.” My breathing was so rapid I was worried I was having a heart attack.

“Calm down, Aaron, relax, relax,” Holly told me. “Listen to my voice. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” I whimpered.

“Okay. It’s not going to feel comfortable, but I need you to push all of your air out,” Holly continued. “Make yourself small. Where are you? Are you at the drop yet?”

“Y-yes.”

“That’s good, that’s good,” Holly said. “You’re almost there. You’re doing great. The passage opens up after the drop, Aaron. Just keep moving.”

No flashlight, no room, all I had to latch onto was her voice. Just keep moving. I grabbed onto my panic, wrestled it and shoved as much of it as I could into a little mental lock-box. It wouldn’t hold it for long but it might hold long enough. Exhale, inhale, exhale as hard as I could. I let me air out and tried to drag myself forward.

It wasn’t enough. I was stuck.

In the second before I could inhale to scream, I felt pressure on my foot.

Josh, I thought.

“Hold on,” he said. “Three...two...one...push.”

I threw myself forward as hard as I could. At the same time, Josh shoved me from behind. I was shocked at how strong he was. For an endless moment, I stayed in place, caught in the grip of the tunnel. Then there was a yanking pain in both arms and I was moving. The drop was deep and sudden but wider, as well. I managed to wrench my left arm free from my side and I was crawling. There was a terrifying moment at the end of the slide when I came to the hook, a small stone lip that I had to climb up bent in an awkward position. The panic got out of its box and I started screaming, thrashing. I was able to twist so that my upper body was in the lip. Luckily, I was close enough that I could see the glimmer of a flashlight. Strong hands reached down and I grabbed for them. Doc and Dodger pulled me out. My chest and back were scraped to pieces but I was out.

All I could do was collapse on the ground and pant. It was several minutes before I collected myself enough to look over and see Holly, Doc and Dodger huddled together, shining their flashlights into the passage’s opening.

Josh wasn’t out yet.

Shakily, I stood up and joined them. The tunnel carried sound strangely. I could hear the echo of sobbing.

“Josh, you’re almost through,” Holly called out. “We’re here. Come close and we’ll pull you the rest of the way.”

Josh’s voice came back strained. “I can’t. It’s too tight. I’m stuck. Oh God, please someone help.”

I shuddered. The taste of that particular horror was still fresh for me. Josh had it worse, though. He was larger than I was, heavier.

And there was no one behind him to push.

The sobbing suddenly turned to screaming.

“Josh,” Dodger yelled. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t back up. I can’t back up. No. No nonono,” he barely sounded human with the distortion of the cave and the hysteria in his voice. “Please help. Please someone come get me. Please!”

Doc leaned as far into the opening as he could. “Josh, calm down. You need to focus.”

“FUCK YOU,” Josh screamed back. I couldn’t really blame him.

“You can hate me if you want,” Doc replied gently, “but hate me once you’re out. The house it...reacts to extreme emotions. It reacts in unpredictable ways.”

“You could have fucking mentioned that before, Doc,” Dodger whispered.

“I didn’t want to alarm anyone.”

“Consider us alarmed,” Dodger spat back.

“Please.” Josh’s scream was something primal, the desperation of an animal in a trap. “Please come get me. It’s getting tighter. Why is it getting tighter?”

If the house reacts to extreme emotions, Josh’s panic must have been blood in the water.

“I’m going to try,” Holly said. “Someone hold my legs.”

Dodger nodded and stood ready. It didn’t matter. Holly couldn’t squeeze back in.

“What the Hell,” she said. “I made it out fine.”

“It’s getting tighter,” Doc said. “The house is reacting.”

Josh stopped screaming. “Is someone coming?” he begged. “Please. I’m sorry I’m stuck. I’m sorry.”

“We...can’t,” Dodger said. “Not yet. We will, though. Just calm down, the house will ease up.”

A long silence.

“I don’t want to die.” I could barely hear Josh. “It’s so hard to breathe,” he said. “I don’t want to die here.”

“You won’t,” Dodger yelled. “We’ll be there soon. Hold steady.”

“It’s getting harder to breathe,” Josh was gasping. “Please.”

Dodger turned away from the passage. “Goddamnit.”

“Aaron,” Josh called. “Aaron, is this real?”

“No,” I lied. “No, we're not really here. We’re, Josh, we’re in a pub in Baltimore, okay?”

“Okay,” he replied weakly.

“Listen, this is the best pub in the city. I know this place well. We’re at the bar. Josh, do you hear me?”

“Yeah. Aaron. I hear you.” He was so quiet. Then his voice came back loud, raw. “I don’t want to die here.”

“We’re at the bar,” I insisted. “We’re having a drink, telling ghost stories and dirty jokes. This isn’t real.” It was hard to keep my voice from cracking. “We’re not really here.”

The silent moments stretched longer and longer. Josh was alternating between mumbling and crying. I heard him call the name ‘Jennifer.’

“I’m sorry, Jen,” Josh said. “I’m sorry. We’ll. Sort it. Fix it. We’ll be okay...Jennifer. This isn’t. Real. I don’t want to die here.”

Being stuck in the dark, oxygen deprived, I knew that could make people hallucinate. I hoped whatever phantoms Josh was seeing gave him some comfort. They were the only company he had up there.

I kept checking my watch, time crawling by in glowing blue numerals. After twenty minutes, Josh wasn’t screaming anymore, or talking, but we could still hear him breathing, starving for air. Nearly forty minutes after I’d started counting, we didn’t hear any sounds at all from the passage. We waited another hour, Holly and Dodger trying every few minutes to find a way back into the tunnel. It was no use. The house never relaxed or relented. The opening stayed swollen nearly shut.

Doc was the first of us to turn away from the hallway and towards the door. This door was yellow, with a copper border and matching knob.

“Not yet,” Dodger said.

Doc sighed and shook his head. He used both of his damaged hands to turn the knob and opened the door. The three of us hesitated, and then Holly and I silently followed. Dodger was the last to leave but he didn’t linger once the rest of us left.

The yellow door led us into a large, cozy kitchen. We’re still here. I’m tapping this out on my phone with shaking hands. Holly gave Doc some more, I think, morphine, and changed his bandages. Crawling through the passage did a real number on his fingers. He’s sleeping now. Holly keeps pacing around the room, checking and re-checking every cabinet. There was no food in the kitchen except for a bowl of wax fruit on the marble counter.

Dodger sat at the kitchen table staring at the wall. There was a painting there of the inside of a slaughterhouse. The workers were dressed in red-stained white overalls and looked absolutely ecstatic, surrounded by ripped open pigs on hooks.

Every time I close my eyes, I hear Josh’s last words.

“I don’t want to die here.”