The Fifth Door (Part-1)

Chapter 1: Space for Another

Yesterday, the fifth house was absent.

The late afternoon coolness caused Noah Harper's breath to cloud as he stood at the edge of the uneven walkway. He had traveled Linden Street a hundred times and knew it should have four houses. However, there was a fifth today.

It sat apart from the others, partially obscured by a rusted fence and thick ivy. One screw held up a mailbox that swung softly as if it had just been touched. He was not supposed to be there, but the letter stated:

The fifth house contains the answers. Go by yourself. Avoid knocking.

It was his uncle's handwriting. It had been about six months since Ezra's death.

Noah pushed the gate open, and it creaked. As he entered the overgrown path, he heard a lone crow cawing in the distance. Above him loomed the mansion, Victorian, dilapidated, forgotten. The door was open, though. Waiting.

The air inside smelled stale, as if it had been walled up for decades. There were shafts of gray light dancing with dust motes. Then he noticed that there were five doors, evenly spaced out along the corridor.

Four were ordinary, closed, fading wood.

Black was the fifth. Smooth. Gleaming. A silver 5 is used as the number.

Noah made contact.

It had a warm knob.

Chapter Two: The Wall's Name

Without any opposition, the fifth door opened.

There was a room inside that appeared to be a study: a solitary chair facing the window, a fireplace full of ash, and shelves stacked with old volumes. However, the wall opposite the door was what drew Noah forward.

Names.

They were scrawled in irregular lines into the plaster, perhaps a hundred of them, like a list that had been added to over time. Some were ruthlessly crossed out, as though someone was trying to forget.

There, close to the bottom:

HARPER NOAH

Not marked out.

His ribs were crushed by his heart. He took a step toward her. The penmanship matched the letter exactly.

"Who wrote this?" he said in a whisper.

There was silence in the house.

Then footsteps above him, quietly.

Noah whirled, but there was nobody in the hall.

He turned to face the wall again.

Below his, a new name had been written in front of his eyes.

WELCOME.

Chapter 3: The Secret of Uncle Ezra

Noah recalled Uncle Ezra's habit of babbling about names that came to him in dreams and doors that did not belong while he stared out the window. Everyone believed the elderly man had lost his mind.

Noah had gone through Ezra's belongings after the funeral, finding mostly broken clocks and dusty books. But there was a journal hidden in a locked drawer. Pages regarding the fifth house, "other doors," and what emerges when they open were also included in that journal.

"The doors are false. After forgetting, the home remembers. There, I ran into my wife. However, she has been absent for years. Still, I talked to her.

When he passed away, Ezra was by himself; his body was discovered in a chamber with five doors. Not one of them opens.

The warning had gone unheeded by Noah. Until the letter arrived.

He was now in the house that Ezra had described in his writing. His name is displayed on the wall.

Four doors have yet to be unlocked.

Chapter Four: The Initial Door

Pale green, the hue of hospital hallways, was painted on the first door. After a moment of hesitation, Noah turned the knob.

It led to a bedroom from childhood.

His bedroom as a child.

The glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, the broken radio he had previously attempted to mend, and the spacecraft mobile above the bed were all precisely as they had been when he was nine years old. It was not only items, though.

It had the scent of his youth.

He heard his own chuckling faintly. footsteps in the corridor. His mother is yelling his name.

“Noah! It is dinnertime!

He took a step back, suddenly icy. He was twelve when she passed away.

However, was not the house playing a memory?

The closet door then squeaked open.

A younger Noah emerged, his eyes wide and terrified.

He was pointed to by the boy.

He muttered, "You are not supposed to be here yet."

Then there was darkness in the room.

Chapter 5: The Room with the Mirror

Noah did not get any rest. He was unable to. He did not want to see what was behind Door One.

The second door felt cold to the touch and was made of darker, thicker wood. Slowly, as if unwilling to show what was inside, it moaned open.

The room was a mirror.

Glass from ceiling to floor, wall to wall. He could see his own image staring back at him from all sides. Then, however, the reflections started to change.

Faces emerged in the mirrors behind him.

His dad.

Tyler, his former best friend.

His mom.

Everybody is dead.

They remained silent. They merely gazed at him. Like they are waiting.

Then, like something wanting to escape, the mirrors started to break, one by one, spreading like spiderwebs across the glass.

And Noah heard a voice, low, far away, and sorrowful, above the sound of glass breaking:

"You let us to perish."

He staggered back and slammed the door.

It was only then that he realized his image in the hallway mirror was still there.

It merely grinned.

(To Be Continue)