The Forgotten Door

The forest had always been quiet, but that day, it was still. Not a single bird called. No branches creaked. The usual rustle of squirrels and wind was replaced with something else—a silence that felt alive. Heavy. Watching. It was the kind of stillness that spoke not of peace, but of anticipation. The trees seemed to lean inward, listening.

Elias had been walking for hours. His boots were caked in moss and mud, his backpack hanging low from one shoulder. He hadn’t meant to wander so far off the path, but something had pulled him deeper—an urge he couldn’t explain. Something old, something buried in the back of his mind. A feeling like unfinished business, or the ghost of a forgotten promise.

Then he saw it.

It stood in a small clearing, framed by towering pines like a stage surrounded by dark curtains. An ornate doorway, freestanding, with no building around it. Gothic arch. Dark wood, carved with twisted shapes. And through it—light. A gold so bright and warm it should’ve felt comforting, but instead made his stomach twist.

It had no hinges. No knob. Just the glow. A pulse of it, like it was breathing.

Elias took a cautious step forward, heart racing. It looked familiar, but he couldn't place it. He'd never been here before—had he?

As he approached, he noticed something carved into the frame. Words, nearly lost to rot:

“Memory is the toll.”

He reached out and placed a hand on the wood. It was warm. Too warm.

And then he remembered.

Not fully. Just flashes. A dream—no, a memory. Being here before. A summer long ago, or maybe a lifetime. A dare with friends. A lost child. A scream in the trees. And that light…

He stumbled back, breath catching in his throat.

Why was it here again? Why now?

The door had been gone for years. Vanished without a trace. Even the forest seemed to have forgotten it.

But now it had returned.

And it was waiting for him.

Elias set up camp a few dozen meters away, not daring to sleep. He sat by a fire, watching the door. It never flickered, never dimmed. Like a wound in the world. He thought about calling someone. But what would he say?

He didn’t remember everything, but he knew this: the last time he stepped through that door, something was taken from him.

And something followed.

He could almost feel it, pacing behind the trees just out of sight. He heard twigs snap when there was no wind. He caught movement in the corners of his eyes, always gone when he turned.

He stayed awake till dawn, eyes red and dry.

By midday, he couldn't take it anymore. The weight of not knowing, the pull of that light—it wore him down.

He walked to the door again, determined to figure it out, to reclaim whatever had been lost—or to end whatever he had started.

As he crossed into the light, there was no pain. Just warmth. Like sunlight on skin.

Then—darkness.

He opened his eyes to a house.

His house.

Or... what looked like it. Everything was the same. The dusty bookshelves. The coffee mug on the counter. The coat still hanging by the door. But the air was thick, like breathing through cotton. And the silence—deafening.

“Hello?” he called.

No answer.

He stepped into the hallway, and froze.

There was a photo on the wall. One he didn’t remember taking. A picture of him as a child. Standing at the edge of the forest. Behind him, barely visible, the same glowing doorway. And beside him—a shadow. Humanoid, but wrong.

No face. No detail. Just the shape.

He turned around, expecting something to be there.

Nothing.

He ran to the front door and opened it.

The forest stared back.

But it wasn’t the forest from before. The trees here were too tall. The sky too dark. It wasn’t a place—it was a memory. Twisted, echoing, half-forgotten.

He wasn’t in the present anymore. He was inside whatever the door had taken from him all those years ago. It was like walking through a museum of his own subconscious, curated by something that didn’t quite understand him.

The next hours—or days—were a blur.

Time moved strange in that place. Some moments stretched endlessly, others vanished in an instant.

He saw things he had forgotten. His father’s face, young and alive. His childhood dog. The broken bike he crashed on that summer night. His sister, laughing in the sun. A birthday cake with seven candles. A Christmas morning where everything felt right.

And always, in the corner of every scene: it. The shadow. Watching.

It whispered things, but the words made no sense. Or maybe they did, but his mind refused to hold them. Foreign syllables that curled like smoke in his ears.

He tried to run. He tried to hide. But there were no exits.

Only doors that led to more memories. More pieces of a past that didn’t add up. Some weren’t even his. Strangers’ lives. Faces he didn’t recognize. Screams he almost remembered. A war he never fought in. A child he never knew calling him "dad."

It was as if the door had broken the boundary between his identity and something else. Something vast and collective. Memory was no longer personal—it was a landscape. And he was lost in it.

He tried to write notes, scratch clues on the wall, but they faded. Everything changed when he blinked. Familiar things warped subtly, like dreams unraveling at sunrise.

Finally, he found the door again.

Only now, it was crumbling. The light dimmed. It pulsed like a dying star.

He knew this was his last chance.

As he stepped through, something clung to him.

Not physically—but in his thoughts. A cold fingerprint pressed into his memory.

He landed back in the forest. Gasping. Sweating.

The door was gone.

So was the warmth.

And something else—he couldn't remember his mother's name. Her face. Gone. Just like before. And this time, more was missing. His childhood friend's name. The street he grew up on. The last thing his father ever said to him.

Elias left the woods that day.

He never returned.

But he never stopped looking—for the name, the face, the part of him that was taken. And in dreams, he still saw the door. Flickering. Waiting. Always just out of reach.

He kept a notebook by his bed, filled with sketches of the forest, the door, and the shadow. Half-written sentences. Names he could almost remember. And every morning, some of it would be gone, erased in sleep.

Because some doors aren’t meant to be opened.

And some memories are hidden for a reason.