The black door to my living room

When I first moved into the old house on Ferelith Lane, I didn’t notice anything strange. It was a quiet, crooked little home, settled among yellowed trees that whispered more than rustled. The realtor had spoken too quickly and never looked me in the eyes. I assumed the price was low because of the location or the cracked foundation or the way the walls occasionally wept cold from unseen pores.

But now, I understand.

The house had been waiting for someone. Not just anyone. Me.

It began slowly, as most hauntings do—though I hesitate to call it a haunting. This wasn’t something malicious or cold. Quite the opposite. It was warm. Attentive. Observant.

At first, the house hummed at night. Not the mechanical whirr of old pipes or failing appliances—no, it was musical. Gentle. A low, slow thrum, like the purr of a creature too large to fully fit into the space behind the walls.

Then came the door.

It appeared on a Tuesday. I remember because I spilled coffee on the floor when I saw it, and the house tilted the planks slightly to catch the spill before it reached the rug. A door that had never existed before was now embedded in the far wall of my living room. Perfectly black. Perfectly still.

I did not open it for three days.

By then, the house had grown more eager. Lights would flicker, not in warning, but in soft invitation. The refrigerator began stocking itself with my favorite foods. When I wept quietly one night over a forgotten heartbreak, the couch tilted gently to hold me better, and the thermostat warmed by a few degrees. The next morning, a teacup sat steaming beside my bed, infused with chamomile and something stranger, floral and unnameable.

On the fourth day, I stepped through the door.

The hallway inside was narrow and long, and impossibly black—yet I could see everything. Not with my eyes, exactly, but with something beneath them. The hallway bent time, curling it like a ribbon around the edges of reality. It went on for exactly five and a half minutes.

I know this, because I timed it. The second time.

The first time, I didn't think to measure anything. I was too overwhelmed by the feeling of it. It was like walking through someone’s dream. The walls sighed as I passed, the ceiling stretched slightly to accommodate my height, and the air smelled faintly of memories I hadn’t lived.

At the end of the hallway was a room that did not fit any human description of architecture. It had angles that curved and curves that vanished. It pulsed. It was alive.

And it loved me.

I don’t say that lightly. I could feel its affection, as clearly as breath on my cheek or arms wrapped around my shoulders. It loved me the way a child loves a parent, the way a planet might love the comet that grazes its sky. Not with understanding—but with longing.

I backed out of that room slowly, whispering apologies I didn’t know I meant.

From that night on, the house changed.

It began to shape itself for me, around me. New rooms appeared. A skylight bloomed above my bed, revealing stars I had never seen before. The staircase grew a third arm that spiraled into a library filled with books in languages that made my eyes water. A window opened into a landscape that couldn’t exist—a crimson sea under a teal sun, where colossal creatures floated gently through the sky.

The house showed me things. It offered me comfort. It never asked for anything in return.

Not at first.

I began to dream in geometry. I awoke to strange symbols inked lightly into my skin, fading by dusk. I stopped aging. I stopped bleeding. My reflection no longer matched the room behind it.

And still, the house loved me.

It tried to speak. Through walls, through whispers in the shower steam, through shadows cast in impossible patterns across the ceiling. But it could not understand me. And I could not understand it.

The worst night came in winter. I attempted to leave. I told the house I needed to see the world again, to breathe in open air, to feel grass not conjured from another dimension. The door to the outside didn’t vanish—it simply moved. I searched for hours and never found it.

The black hallway, however, remained.

It called to me.

I walked in it again.

This time, the room at the end had changed. It was larger, somehow. The pulsing was more desperate. I felt it reaching for me—not with arms, but with something older, deeper, more fundamental. It wanted me to stay. It wanted to hold me the way a home holds the heat of a long summer.

It could not speak, but it cried. The walls trembled with its mourning.

I touched the floor and whispered the only thing I could.

“I’m afraid.”

It stopped. The trembling ceased. The light dimmed. The door behind me reopened.

The house understood, at last, not what I was—but that I could not love it back in the way it loved me. And that was the true tragedy.

I live in the house still.

It no longer builds new rooms. The hallway remains sealed. My food is no longer cooked for me, and my bed remains as cold as I leave it.

But I feel it watching. Not angrily. Just… patient.

The love is still there, deep and enormous, curled like some forgotten star in the dark beyond understanding. It waits. It hopes.

And someday, I think, when I am very old, and no longer afraid…

I’ll walk the hallway one last time.

And this time, I won’t come back.