Dawnblade – The Door (Story Four)

---

The Door

No one ever talked about the door. That was the strange thing growing up. The fact that it was clearly there, yet no one ever talked about it.

In some strange way that rubbed off on me, even when I was young I never once asked about it. I never once tried to open it, though two or three times I was sorely tempted.

And that’s how it would have remained, me growing up and transitioning into an adult who also didn’t talk about it, if it wasn’t for Billy. Billy was my brother, three years younger than me and a ball of unconstrained energy. Nothing was off-limits to Billy, no prohibition went unbroken, so it was inevitable he would ask the adults about the door.

I still remember the panicked look on our mother’s face the first time he asked. One that was quickly hidden. She feigned ignorance and confusion, and implied that Billy was imagining things. Billy didn’t leave it at that, of course. He kept pushing. Kept asking. But the adults around us maintained their line.

After a time Billy became convinced the door was magic, that it was only visible to us, or only to children, or only to those who believed, or… well, you get the idea. I might have believed the same if I hadn’t seen that look on our mother’s face the first time Billy asked. After that every adult he asked was completely convincing in their ignorance, but I grew sure that was down to them being prepared for the question rather than them truly not knowing.

Eventually Billy decided he wanted to open the door, of course. He decided there must be something magical beyond it. Treasure, pirates, or something else fantastical. What can I say, we watched a lot of television.

It was also inevitable that he’d drag me into the scheme. I had no desire to open the door by that point, I had strong suspicions there was a reason the adults didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t you mustn’t do this, it wasn’t if you do that you will be punished, this was something which worried the adults. Scared them, even.

So one fateful evening Billy decided it was time. He dragged me through the large house until we approached the door. He was well prepared, I have to give him that. He had a torch, warm clothes and a backpack full of food and water. He felt he was ready for whatever would happen. He even mostly convinced me of the same.

When we approached the door Billy actually paused for a few seconds. Maybe he was scared, or maybe he was just letting the excitement build. I don’t know.

Billy reached out, grabbed the handle, and pulled the heavy door open. There was only darkness beyond, but a darkness that had definite depth. At the sight of it my heart sank. My soul cringed. I was certain that whatever lay behind that door was not something we wanted any part of. I tried to warn Billy, but the darkness had sunk into my soul.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. I could only watch helplessly as Billy turned on his ultra-bright torch, stepped one foot through the door, then froze in place. I don’t know what he saw, but an armoured green tentacle slashed out of the doorway, grabbing Billy and pulling him through. Moments later the door slammed shut, cutting off the blood-curdling screams. And my brother was gone.

I unfroze in that moment. I ran forwards and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Whatever was beyond the door was satisfied with its haul. Somehow I could tell the door wasn’t going to open. There was a different feel to it than it normally had. Only at that point did I realise there had always been a pull, a constant desire to open it that was now absent.

At that point I ran yelling to the nearest adult I could find, told them the story, what had happened to Billy. That kicked off a chain reaction of adults rushing around me, yet strangely none of them wanted to hear my story. Instead they spent time telling me things which had no connection to the door.

After a while, I guess as long as it took them to be sure Billy truly was gone, they started to tell me a new story. The story that they stuck to forever more. According to them I had never had a brother. Billy was simply an imaginary friend, someone I had made up. They even laughed about it at times, and they never once changed their story. Not even my parents.

While some of the adults were talking to me others were busy removing everything from Billy’s room, turning it into just another spare room. If I had been a couple of years younger maybe they would have convinced me. I wasn’t. I was old enough to be sure what I remembered was the truth.

And despite their best efforts there were a few secret signs that Billy had left in his room, things only I knew had been done by him. Small pictures scratched into the skirting boards and the like. Billy had always been a better artist than me. There was no way I could have created those, and they were clearly recently created.

Billy was real, and Billy had died because of the door. I tried insisting on that, tried forcing the adults to even acknowledge the existence of the door, but to no avail. Eventually I gave up, lapsing into a solemn teenage silence and making plans of my own. If the adults wouldn’t deal with the menace of the door then I would.

The solution was obvious. The door was only dangerous if it could be opened. Therefore it needed to be locked away. There was no obvious way to lock it, so I decided to add a bolt and padlock. Once the padlock was in place I’d throw away the key.

It was a simple idea, but it didn’t work. To attach the bolt I needed to put screws into the door. That proved to be impossible. The door seemed to be made of ordinary wood, it certainly felt that way to the touch, yet the screws didn’t make even the slightest scratch. Nor did any of the tools I used to try and start a hole.

The failure didn’t dishearten me, if anything it strengthened my resolve. I couldn’t attach anything to the door directly, but I could put things across it. I got some long planks of wood and hammered them into place across the door, sticking the nails into the wall each side of the door. It worked. The door was covered.

For about thirty seconds. That was the moment when, with a massive splintering crash, the boards exploded outwards and across the room. One very nearly took my head off. All of them smashed into the far wall with a tremendous noise.

I cursed. Not only had my idea failed, the noise would surely bring the adults. Adults who’d be sure to be angry at what I was doing.

But it didn’t. No one came to investigate. It seemed their reluctance to even acknowledge the door’s existence extended to ignoring any sounds from near it.

My first two ideas hadn’t worked. I was a teenager and stubborn. I wasn’t going to give up. My next idea was to use metal bars to seal the door, using the same trick I had with the wooden planks.

This time the doors remained covered for about a minute. Then the metal bars went the same way the wooden planks had, except this time one of the shards clipped the side of my temple, almost knocking me out. Still, it could have been far, far worse if it had been just a couple of centimetres to the side.

That failure left me without ideas for several weeks. I spent lots of that time in the room, feeling the door pulling on me, but I was never tempted to open it. My memories of Billy were too strong.

The room was quite a mess at this point, some of the shards of metal had embedded so deeply in the far wall I couldn’t get them out. It was while dwelling on that, thinking about the fact that in any other room of the house adults would tear me to shreds for causing such damage, that another idea popped in my mind.

The adults didn’t come into the room, not ever, nor did anyone else. Why was I trying to seal off the door? Why not just seal the room. I almost kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner, especially as I had the tools I needed already. I had bolt and a padlock. Easy.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous when I attached the bolt and clicked the padlock into place. Even though I hadn’t attached anything to the Demon Door I still half expected the padlock and bolt to become flying shrapnel.

Nothing happened. And kept happening. I went to bed that night feeling better than I had in weeks. Not happy, the loss of Billy was much too raw for that, but feeling I’d done something to avenge him at least.

That feeling shattered the next morning. The first thing I did when I got up was check the bolt and padlock were still in place. They weren’t. Their twisted, melted remains sat by the foot of the door. For a moment I suspected one of the adults had done it, then I looked carefully and realised just how much energy must have been required.

Still, I wanted to be sure. I bought another padlock and bolt that day, fitted them to the door that evening, then spent the night in that outer room.

I woke around three in the morning to find a strange glow surrounding the padlock and the bolt. The light was a greeny orange, a very strange combination, and one which was certainly not natural in any way.

As I watched the bolt and padlock started to warp, though strangely the door wasn’t charred at all. Less than a minute later the remains fell to the floor with a dull thump.

Then I did something that may have been incredibly brave but was definitely extremely stupid. I opened the door and stepped into the room beyond. The demon door, the door that had taken Billy, was closed thankfully. But it was glowing with the same greeny orange light.

As I watched the glow quickly faded, leaving nothing behind. The message was clear. The demon door, or more likely whatever was behind it, would accept no interference. Any attempt to block people from reaching it would fail.

I took that as a challenge. First I tried building a wall in front of the Demon door itself. Thankfully I had the sense to build another in the middle of the room, a barricade to hide behind. Even so I nearly lost my left ear to a brick which ricocheted off the back wall. That was the last time I tried to block the Demon door itself with anything physical.

I tried building a brick wall in front of the door that led into that room. While the adults never entered the room with the Demon door, they did very occasionally need to enter the room before it. One of them happened to come in when I was halfway through building the wall. I braced myself for questions, arguments, or just demands I stop and stay out of the room, but none came. They simply turned and bolted out of the room.

I didn’t understand that. I still don’t, if I’m honest. Sometimes I wonder if the Demon door affects their minds in some way, prevents them from even being aware of it or anything related to it. Other times I catch a slight glimpse, a sign of strain on their face when it’s clear I’ve been near the door, and I’m sure it’s a conscious effort and not something imposed on them.

Anyway, I completed the brick wall sealing off the room with the Demon Door. Thankfully the brick wall didn’t explode, but it was reduced to a dried up puddle by the next day. Well, a little of it was. The puddle was much too small to contain the matter from all the bricks. I was glad about that. Just removing that small puddle was backbreaking work.

By this point I was realising that physical barriers would not work, so I decided to use psychological means. I put up signs, beside the Demon door, on the door leading to that room, and even on the floor. Signs warning of the danger, urging people to stay away.

Nothing happened. That is, the Demon door didn’t take any action against the signs that day or for the next couple of weeks. I thought I’d won.

That all ended the day Tony came visiting. Tony was the same age as me, the son of a friend of one of the adults in the house. I forget which one.

As bad luck would have it, Tony came across one of the signs. Not even one I’d put up. It was a spare sitting in my room. His reaction was the absolute opposite of what I’d hoped. He thought it was cool, asked where the door was, and said he couldn’t wait to have a look inside it.

I was horrified, terrified of what might happen, but somehow I managed to talk my way out of the situation. I convinced him it was a project we were doing at school. I think he bought it, and his visit was short enough he didn’t have the chance to poke around all the rooms in the house. The moment he was gone I went and ripped down every single poster.

For the first time I understood part of the way the adults dealt with the door. I realised that warning people not to go near made them more likely to go visit, not less. That left me with a problem. How could I prevent people falling foul of the door if I couldn’t warn them and couldn’t block it off?

The answer came to me slowly over several months. There was only one way to win. The Demon Door needed a Guardian, one who’d seen what it could do and was determined to ensure it was never repeated. Only one person could fill that role. Me.

That is why so, so many years later I still sit by the door. I’ve lived my life in the outer room, had it converted to contain everything I needed. My family was never short of money so it was easy to pay for that.

It’s been a lonely life, but it has been fulfilling. I’ve turned dozens of people away from going near the door, though there were a few who ignored all my warnings and met their doom by opening it. And in all that time no one has acknowledged what I do and what I guard against.

Almost no one. My father died some twenty-seven years ago now. I went to visit him at the hospital near the end. It was one of the few times I left the door unguarded, but it was something I had to do. I saw him right at the end. He was barely conscious much of the time, but for a minute or so his eyes cleared and he recognised me. He glanced around, making sure nobody was there I think. Then he spoke.

“Billy… your brother… would be proud of what you do. I am proud of what you do. Your sacrifice has saved many.”

I was speechless. For the first time in my life someone, other than Billy, had acknowledged the existence of the door. And for the first time since Billy died someone had acknowledged he was a real person.

Once the initial shock wore off I had so many questions. I wanted to know how long the door had been there. Why no one spoke about it. Who else had been lost to the door. And so much more.

It was too late. My father’s eyes had lost their focus again. The light never returned to them, and he slipped away peacefully a few hours later.

Despite the frustration of not getting any answers, that moment was incredibly important to me. From then onwards I knew everything I did was with my father’s approval. I knew that my sacrifice had been seen and appreciated, even if no one would normally acknowledge it. I knew what I was doing was the right thing.

***

I continued my vigil through the years, right up until tonight. I prevented many more people from opening the door, and watched with lead in my heart as others ignored my warnings. I never watched them open the Demon Door. I’d seen that happen once. I had no desire to see it again.

Tonight will be the last night I watch the door. I am old now, old and dying. The doctors have done their best, but now they’ve given me an ultimatum. Either I go into hospital or I will surely die within a few days.

I may have spent most of my life in these rooms but I’m not stupid. I can see the look in their eyes. I can read between the lines of what they say. I know going into the hospital isn’t going to improve my chances greatly. I’m going to die soon, no matter what.

That is why I’m writing all this down. That is why I’m sealing this and having it sent to several people I believe will take the story seriously. Maybe one will investigate, will find the Demon Door and take over my role. If not… well, I know I did all I could over many, many years. I’m content, and I think Billy would still be proud of me.

As to the manner of my death, it will be what I always knew it would. Tonight, in a few minutes, I will open the Demon Door and follow Billy to my own death. I doubt very much there’s any trace of him left beyond the door, but just maybe some part of his soul lives on. If that’s the case then it has lived in solitude for far too long. I’ll gladly sacrifice my life for the chance to be with my brother again, especially now I have so little life left to sacrifice.

All that’s left for me to say is farewell. Whoever follows me, if anyone follows me, always remember that Billy would be proud of you. And I will too.

The End

---

Enjoying the stories? Why not buy me a coffee?

---

More Fantasy & Supernatural Stories…