The Unnumbered Door

When I first walked into the Harrington Apartments, my shoes stuck a little to the hallway floor. The carpet changed color halfway down, as if someone ran out of one kind and just kept going with another. The brass banister was loose in its brackets, wobbling a little when I brushed past. Everything looked clean, but not cared for, like someone kept wiping the same layer of age instead of removing it.

The receptionist, Mrs. Greeley, was the first to notice me. She had a voice like someone who had smoked for years and a stare that seemed to measure everything it landed on.

"Unit 4B," she said, handing over a ring of keys. "Second floor, end of the hall. You will hear the pipes at night. They settle after a while."

Her hand lingered on the last key, a long, old-fashioned one with ornate teeth. "This one," she added, "you will not need. It does not fit anything anymore."

I must have looked puzzled because why give me a key that doesn't work? "There is a door at the end of your hallway. No number. Locked. Ignore it."

"Maintenance closet?" I asked.

"No," she said, softer, "Just locked."

The Harrington was nearly silent at night. Even small noises carried, bouncing off the walls and making the hall feel empty in a way that set my nerves on edge. I unpacked to the sound of the city, the occasional popping of old pipes, and the scuff of my own movements. When I stepped out to toss trash down the chute, I saw it, the door she meant.

It stood flush with the wall at the very end of the corridor. No plaque, no handle, just a keyhole and a lock that glinted dully in the low light. The wood was darker than the others, as if it had absorbed every shadow that passed it.

For reasons I couldn't tell you, I hesitated. There was something about that door that pulled at me. It did not belong. No apartment beyond it, no ventilation grille nearby, no draft under the frame.

That night, lying in bed, I could not shake it. The door’s image flickered behind my eyelids every time I tried to sleep.

On the third night, curiosity won.

I told myself it was harmless, just a peek. Mrs. Greeley was old. Maybe she was superstitious. I would humor my curiosity, see an empty closet, and be done with it.

The hallway was dim, the old sconces buzzing faintly. I crouched, feeling half ridiculous, half exhilarated, and pressed my eye to the keyhole.

At first, all I saw was darkness. Then, as my vision adjusted, a shape took form, a room faintly lit by something unseen, and in its center, a woman.

She stood with her back to the door. Her skin was so pale it seemed to shimmer faintly like porcelain catching moonlight. Her hair hung long and dark down her back, ending in points sharp as ink strokes. She was not moving. Not breathing, not swaying, nothing. Just there.

I watched, transfixed, every instinct in me whispering to back away, but I could not move. Something about her stillness was wrong, too perfect. The room itself seemed muted, flattened by her presence.

Then she turned her head, just slightly, as though she heard me.

I flinched away, heart pounding. When I dared look again, the keyhole showed nothing but black.

I went to bed and told myself it was a trick of light. I even laughed about it the next morning while brushing my teeth. But laughter did not stop the sense of being noticed.

The next evening, I found red smeared around the keyhole.

At first, I thought it was paint, old, maybe from the last time the hall was touched up. But the texture was wrong, tacky to my touch, the color too deep. It looked fresh.

I stared through the hole again.

Nothing. it wasn't darkness this time, but a haze of crimson, like a lens filled with blood.

I stumbled back, wiping my hand against my jeans.

Mrs. Greeley was at her desk downstairs, knitting something grey and shapeless. When I told her about the door, her needles paused mid-click.

"You did not look," she said flatly.

I hesitated. "Just once."

Her mouth tightened. "Once is enough."

I tried to laugh it off. "It is just a door."

"No," she said, setting her knitting aside. "It is a scar."

She told me then, reluctantly, like someone reopening an old wound.

Years ago, maybe thirty, maybe forty, depending who you asked, a couple had lived in that room. The husband was quiet, a painter who kept to himself. His wife was the talk of the building, beautiful and fragile-looking, with skin paler than paper, Mrs. Greeley said.

One night, neighbors heard shouting, a crash, then silence. The next morning, the husband was gone, and when they broke the door open, they found the woman lying in a pool of red blood, her eyes open and glassy, red too, like something had bled into them.

The room was sealed after that. No tenants. No workers. Management tried to repurpose it, but the lock refused to stay fixed. The keyhole reappeared no matter what they covered it with.

"Some things do not want to be forgotten," Mrs. Greeley said.

That night, I dreamed of the woman’s pale back.

She stood in my apartment this time, facing the wall, her hair hanging like a curtain. I wanted to speak, to ask who she was, what she wanted, but I could not move. My limbs were paralyzed as though I was submerged.

When she began to turn, I woke up.

The air was cold, unnaturally so. My breath misted faintly. The door to the hallway was open, though I knew I had locked it.

Over the next few days, small things changed.

Footsteps in the hall when no one was there. The faint smell of blood when I passed the unnumbered door. Shadows flickering at the edge of my vision, as though someone was standing just behind me.

Then came the whispering.

Soft, indistinct, but constant at night. Sometimes it came from the pipes, sometimes from the wall. Sometimes, from inside my apartment.

Once, I put my ear against the floorboards and heard a woman’s voice, talking so low it might have been my imagination. It was not words, just a steady, rhythmic sound.

I thought about moving out. I even packed a bag once. But each time I tried, something stopped me. I felt a pull, a quiet insistence that I had not yet finished what I had started.

One evening, I returned home to find the key, the ornate useless one, sitting on my kitchen table. I had not taken it out since Mrs. Greeley handed it to me.

The key was stained faintly red.

I went to the hall, trembling, and stood before the unnumbered door. The key fit perfectly.

The lock turned with a sound like a sigh.

Inside was the same room I had glimpsed before, small, dim, and empty except for a faint outline on the floor where something or someone had laid.

In the corner, a mirror leaned against the wall, draped with a sheet. I should not have touched it, but I did.

When I pulled the cloth away, my reflection blinked a beat too late.

And standing behind me, in the glass, was the woman.

Her skin was bone white, her eyes a flat, shimmering red. She smiled, a tiny broken thing, and when I turned around, the room was empty.

I do not remember leaving. I woke the next morning on my couch, fully dressed, the key still clenched in my fist.

The receptionist would not meet my eyes when I came downstairs. "You should not have opened it," she said. "Now it is looking back."

"What is?"

She shook her head. "Whatever is left of her and whatever she saw before she died. They say he cut her so the last thing she saw was herself bleeding. The mirror kept it."

I left the building that afternoon, determined not to return. But that night, in my new hotel room, the mirror above the sink clouded red for a moment, like breath from the wrong side of the glass.

When I leaned close, I thought I saw her eyes again, watching from deep within the reflection, waiting for me to look just a little longer.

Now, every reflective surface is suspect. I cover them when I can. But reflections find you. Windows, puddles, polished metal. Sometimes, when I catch one unexpectedly, I see a pale shoulder, a dark fall of hair, a flash of crimson.

I do not think it is the woman anymore. I think it is me.

Maybe that is what the keyhole really was, not a door to another room, but a lens, a mirror turned inward. The moment I looked, I became part of whatever story that door was keeping.

And stories, once opened, do not close.