Nanna's Warning

There was only one rule: don’t open the door. That was easy. The red inverted triangles drawn on its peeling black paint frightened Layla, though Nanna called it a protection spell.

Scary, yet it'd never been more than a simple door in the hallway - until the day it whispered:

"Help me."

Had Layla been older, perhaps she'd have dismissed the voice as a trick, but she was ten and innocent.

"Who said that?"

A stronger, impossibly familiar voice replied. "It's me, baby."

Frowning, Layla cautiously approached. "Mommy?"

"Yes! Oh, I've missed you!"

She stepped closer. "I thought you went to heaven, Mommy?"

"No, silly, I'm right here! Open the door and see!"

Hesitantly, Layla reached out, then remembered the rule. "I'll get Nanna. She's in the garden."

"Let's go together, baby. Please? Mommy's lonely."

Pity overwhelmed her caution. The door clicked softly as it swung outward, revealing an impenetrable, nearly tangible darkness.

"M-Mommy?"

The air turned hot and foul, like rotting meat. Layla stumbled backward, but a skeletal arm shot out of the dark and snatched her wrist. Its skin had fallen away, but bits of grey tissue and muscle clung loosely to its bones.

A deep, gravelly voice, not at all like her Mommy's, chuckled in the darkness and began to pull. "Naughty little girls should heed their grandmothers."

Layla dug in her heels, screaming, but was pulled inexorably forward, toward whatever waited inside.

An icy wind crashed into her side, throwing her painfully to the floor but breaking the creature's iron grip. The door slammed shut against an agonized howl of frustration, and the hallway was silent again.

Then Nanna was there, bending over her granddaughter with an outstretched hand covered in frost. "Reckless child. Didn't I tell you? Never, ever open that door."