The Forgotten Door

There was an old Victorian home in the sleepy hamlet of Elmridge, surrounded by forgotten woods and fading hills, that no one feared to visit. After decades of eerie silence and shadowy windows, the locals murmured about it, referring to it as The Hollow House. Teenagers took selfies at the rusting gate at night and children issued dares, but nobody entered. Not since the disappearance of the Turner family in 1985. Curiosity drew in a fresh victim thirty years later. One misty afternoon, Jenna Ross, a young freelance writer and urban adventurer, came to Elmridge. She set out to discover the truth about The Hollow House with a flashlight, a GoPro, and an interest in the paranormal. She had told her fans, "Every house has a tale." "It is been a long time since this one was recounted."

Old Mr. Conway, who owned the antique shop close to the town square, in particular, cautioned her. In a raspy whisper, he whispered, "Avoid the red door." "Regardless of what you observe. You run if it opens up. You flee. At dusk, she dismissed the warnings with a courteous grin and made her way to the house. The house groaned with her arrival. Each floorboard squealed as if recalling grief. Like ancient breath, dust clung in the air. The air was abnormally colder inside than outside, and the wallpaper peeled like peeling skin. However, Jenna, foolishly fearless, went farther and narrated into her microphone. She discovered what Mr. Conway had forewarned her of on the second floor. A door. red in color. A spotlessly tidy house in a dilapidated one. Strangely, it was immaculate. No dust. Not a single cobweb. It seemed as though it had just been painted that morning. Jenna's heart was racing as she stood motionless. The door was not supposed to be there. No chamber in that location had ever been depicted in any of the historical documents or floor plans she had researched. She reached for the handle, driven by a combination of terror and resolve.

The house altered the instant her fingertips touched it. The air became heavy. The whispers started out softly and grew louder. They were moans, like something deep inside pleading for release, rather than voices she could understand. Her flashlight died after flickering. When she turned around in the dim glow of her GoPro's night vision, she discovered that the hallway from which she had come was no longer there. Now the only thing behind her was darkness. The red door opened with a squeak. She did not insist. She was invited. There was a mirror chamber within. Every wall, ceiling, and floor was covered with dozens of them. None, however, mirrored her. Rather, they mirrored the Turners. A woman gripping her face in fear, a man shouting, toddlers with their lips stitched shut—each mirror depicted a different scenario. Jenna took a step back, breathing rapidly and shallowly. Abruptly, she was mirrored in one mirror, but her image grinned. After that, it emerged.

She was not the one. Not at all. Like the Turner children, its lips were sewn and its eyes were empty. The GoPro dropped on the ground, still recording, as it gripped her throat. The home outside moaned once more. Then there was silence. Days went by. The police were alerted after Jenna failed to reply calls or emails. Outside the home, they discovered her rental automobile. She had not taken her suitcase out. However, the house? Empty. No, Jenna. No camera. Her GoPro footage inexplicably showed up on her cloud storage a few weeks later. Almost barely audible were her final words: "The mirrors… they remember…" It was rejected by the authorities. The locals didn't. Because people now claim that the crimson door is always slightly open when they pass The Hollow House. And occasionally, just occasionally, a pale girl with a camera can be seen observing from the upper window.

Nobody dares to go in, though.

No more.