The Room With The Red Door...

We had just moved into a new neighborhood not too far from where we used to live.

You couldn’t see our house that well from the street as the big birch trees in the front disrupted our view.

We had a long drive way and an old cement garage. It could hold up to 4 cars at once. We were told it used to house the ambulances for the hospital long, long, ago.

Our backyard was huge, not like at any of the other places we had lived. Sometimes we couldn’t even play outside because of what the neighbors would do.

It was our first night in the new house. The kids went exploring. They checked out their bedrooms first, excited to soon paint the walls with a new colour.

They ran upstairs to check out where their mom’s new bedroom would be. She had an office space just outside of it, a little loft area, and there were secret areas with little doorways that had knobs. She called them cubbies.

Her bedroom and office were carpeted, she said to keep the warmth in. But our rooms only had bare wood floors.

We ran downstairs next. The basement was carpeted too. I thought to myself it’s probably to keep the warmth in too.

There was a second bathroom down in the basement. It had a cabinet for the towels, a stand up shower, a toilet, and what my mom called a pedestal sink.

My brother and I continued to explore the basement. We ran into the laundry room next then went under the stairs in this tiny little hiding space just big enough for us kids.

There was so much empty space where we could run around and invite our friends over to play.

We next stepped into the room that held the water heater and furnace. There also was some built up shelving.

And then we saw it… there it was… The room with the Red Door we called it the “Red Room”.

It was a bit creepy. It had a lock at the top of the outside of the door that was able to latch it shut.

We looked at each other in a bit of fright, scared to ask our mom why the door had a lock on the outside.

We didn’t dare open the door…. Nervous of what we might find.

The red door stayed closed for many years. It wasn’t until we were teenagers did we remember how scary the red room looked from the outside.

But now that we were older, and braver, we told ourselves whatever was inside we could handle it.

We grabbed our flashlights, armed ourselves with our airsoft guns, unlatched the lock, and slowly began to open the door.

At first it didn’t budge, too heavy to move as if the door was set in stone. Like we need a magic wand or super human strength. Suddenly it began to creak as we wedged it open every so slightly.

I felt something hit my face, I immediately jumped back as I dropped my flashlight on the floor.

My brother began to laugh as he too fell to the floor holding his stomach.

It was just a string hanging from an overhead light, but right there inside just off to the side of the door, who would do such a thing. There was no light switch, just a bulb hanging from the ceiling with this string that looked somewhat like an old shoe lace.

I pulled the string and the light bulb turned on. We took a quick look inside, then looked at each other. We couldn’t believe all these years we never dared to look inside. We couldn’t… it was the “Red Room”!

We learned a huge lesson that day… you will never know what is on the other side until you open the door!