The Doors Best Left Unopened (10 minute challenge 2)

I woke up drenched in cold sweat. A nightmare was still fresh in my mind and I got up and sat at the side of the bed, unable to bear the thought of going back to sleep.

Instead, I stood up and went to the bathroom to empty my bladder.

As I walked barefoot to the washroom, I couldn’t help but recall the details of my dream, like a story I was telling myself that I had forgotten.

We had just moved into a new house and there was a door that we couldn’t open. It was an old wooden door down a set of stairs that could only be accessed from outside.

I imagined myself opening a door at the top of the stairs, looking down, and seeing my dad standing there. He was kneeling down and listening at the keyhole, looking inside, into the darkness behind the unopenable door.

He saw me standing there and looked up the stairs.

“Can you hear the voice?” he asked. “There’s someone on the other side.”

The scary part was, the door was real. And my dad had been obsessed with it lately. He had been trying with every tool he had to get it open.

The dream disturbed me more than I liked to admit.

I flushed the toilet and walked over to my parents’ room, poking my head inside. It was 3AM and that meant normally they would both be asleep. But my dad wasn’t there. He hadn’t been around much lately.

He had been working on trying to get the door in the cellar open all hours of the day and night. But lately he had just taken to staring at it for long periods of time. As if hypnotized by it.

Something drew me slowly down the stairs of the old farmhouse. I began to walk zombie-like towards the front door. I unlocked it and pulled it open, proceeding out onto the dew-moist front lawn. I walked across the grass, cold and wet beneath the soles of my feet, and continued towards the back of the house.

It was dark outside, the sky full of stars which weren’t visible in the city. Only out here, so far away from everything. No neighbours nearby. Nobody to hear you scream.

I hesitated and turned the door knob, looking down into the darkness. My trembling hand reached up and flipped the switch.

My dad was down at the bottom of the long set of stairs, standing in water up to his calves. It had rained at some point in the night, it seemed, flooding the cellar. He seemed not to notice.

He didn’t notice me, either. Or the fact that I had turned on the light.

His ear was up against the door, and he was listening to something on the other side.

“Dad? Are you okay?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“Better than okay,” he said, slowly turning the knob. “They finally told me how to open it.”