In the Loop

My head swiveled as I heard the knock echoing down the hall. I froze at my desk, fingers floating anxiously above the keyboard as I listened. The silence that followed was only broken by the pounding of my heart. “It’s just Ellie,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head.

Knock, knock.

It was more insistent this time, more intentional. My cat weaved between my ankles, purring, as if to confirm she was innocent of any trouble I might be suspecting. I turned my chair towards my bedroom door, wide open and welcoming if I had anyone to share my space. But there was no one, and the door was open. The door was open, but the sound had to come from somewhere. And I could tell it wasn’t my front door.

Knock, knock, knock.

I got to my feet and slowly approached the hallway. Ellie lingered behind – was I projecting my nerves onto her, or did she know what waited in the shadows? A hammer rested on the side table, carelessly left there after hanging a few photos on the bare walls, and I grabbed it nervously. The hallway was as dark as the night encroaching from outside.

It was a new house, to me. A little place I’d saved for, longing to escape the scrutinizing gaze of my parents and the constant doubts about what my future held. For as much as they watched me, judged me, they never really saw me, did they? The day I’d carried in the last of my moving boxes and flopped down on my secondhand couch with no fear of reproach was the first time I truly felt like I could breathe.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

My breath caught in my throat, my grip on the hammer so tight my knuckles whitened. My heart knocked harder against my sternum with each step I took.

It was my new home, and we were just getting to know each other. There were certainly still little secrets and quirks within these walls. Familiarity came with time, and like a new lover every inch of this place still charmed me. The cracks I could see held stories, and the flaws I couldn’t had yet to cause me grief. There was much to be discovered.

But there was one thing I knew for sure.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

That door was not supposed to be there.

I stood there in disbelief for what felt like an eternity. It was an interior door, but there was no room on the other side. There couldn’t be, because that’s where the front garden was. It looked ordinary enough, but the frame was a different color and the knob a different shape from any other door in the house. The wood was painted a soft yellow, and it was familiar in an unsettling way that made my head spin and stomach turn.

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.

The unknown awaited, like the monsters I was so sure were under my bed when I was a little girl and my parents turned off the light. I was not a courageous child, but an imaginative one. What I could picture in the shadows could easily overtake me, and I knew it.

And then one day, something changed. I learned at a young age what eager film students and critics sometimes take years to discover: what we don’t see is scarier than anything that we do. It’s what we don’t see, what we imagine, that sparks fear in our minds. When you unmask the slasher, he’s just a man. Turn on the light, and the shadows scatter like insects.

Open the door, and then you won’t have to live in dread of what could be on the other side.

I reached for the knob with a shaky hand, holding my breath as I touched the cool metal. The door slowly opened with a creak. I held the hammer tighter, unprepared but ready for whatever awaited me.

The room was bright compared to the dark hallway where I stood, all white walls and yellow accents. A set of bunk beds rested against the far wall, partially blocking the window where the warm sun seeped in and kissed the dust. The top bunk had a small assortment of dolls looking over the edge, staring down at the pink stuffed bunny that lay haphazardly across the unmade bottom bunk.

“Oh my god,” I breathed as my eyes looked over every last toy and blanket and book that was littered across the room. It wasn’t dirty, just the room of a girl too young to care where her things ended up, as long as she could still find them in the end.

It was mine.

It hadn’t been for long. The room – the whole house – held too many memories, and my parents had moved us far away in the name of starting over. Eventually, they stopped talking about the past, and even the photos disappeared. I’d always imagined them in a box, under lock and key, like my own memories locked away through years of gaslighting by my parents and irresponsible child therapists.

This room, here and now, was proof that somewhere in my memory and time these things existed. That the past lingered like a specter, never truly erased.

“Hello?”

I jumped at the tiny voice, and my eyes shot down to see who it belonged to. But I knew before I saw her – a small girl, forever four years old in my memory, and no older now despite the two decades that had crawled by. Her black hair was pulled into pigtails, and she had the same nose and deep brown eyes as my father. Even then we had barely looked like sisters; I had taken heavily after my mother with my narrow face and light brown hair, and the resemblance had only grown with time.

My own voice was barely a whisper as I stared at her, tears springing to my eyes. “Maya?”

“Hi!” she replied brightly, her smile as carefree as she had always been. After all, what did a four-year-old really have to worry about?

“Maya!”

The hammer dropped from my hand with a clatter on the wood floor as I dropped to my knees and pulled her across the threshold into a tight embrace. She squeaked in surprise, but hugged me back without question. With her touch everything that I had forgotten about my early childhood came flooding back.

My parents had asked me to watch her, to whatever extent a five-year-old could watch her little sister, while they made dinner. She was bolder and more outgoing than I had been, and had developed a bad habit of wandering off to explore and talk to people and pretty much do whatever her little heart desired. I was more cautious, so I became her keeper. It was why they had never really forgiven me, no matter what they said.

They assumed that she had somehow gotten out the front door, and the frantic search that followed turned up exactly nothing. They only could imagine the worst as days and weeks and months went by without any sign of her. I didn’t understand – who could possibly take a child like that? Only a monster, one far darker than anything that lurked under my bed.

“Did you see where she went?” they asked me over and over. “How could you take your eyes off her like that?” I told them what I saw, but they merely scolded me for lying, for making up a story to cover for the fact that I had let my little sister disappear in broad daylight before my very eyes. Eventually they even took me to a hypnotist in a desperate hope that they could get the truth from me and it would break the case wide open. That it would be the key to Maya’s return. But I only ever said the same thing.

She was taken by the shadow lady in the walls.

“Who are you?”

I looked up to see a small girl, light brown hair and a nervous disposition. She was standing in the bedroom doorway, staring frozen by the impossible door that had appeared across the room and opened into darkness. I knew all she could make out was her sister in my arms, and my heart ached as I pictured the lifetime of pain and confusion that lay ahead of her.

It was the moment that defined my life. What could I have been without the guilt hanging over my head, with happy parents and an idyllic childhood and a best friend by my side instead of the aching hole of loss? For someone to have the chance to spare themself that trauma, it was nothing short of a miracle.

I pulled Maya closer and let the door swing shut.