The Hallway Door

Eliza Holcomb hadn’t left her house since she watched her family get beaten to death. After that trauma, she moved in with her aunt. That was almost two years ago. Two years without feeling the air on her face or the sun shining down on her fair skin. Now, for the first time since then, she was outside. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going exactly as she imagined it would go. She was running for her life through dark and twisting woods. The wind whipped past her face with such ferocity that she couldn’t tell where its chilling tentacles ended and the sharp snapping branches began. Blood trickled down her face from the shallow cuts, and her breath came in rasping pants, but she kept running. She couldn’t slow down. If she stopped for even a second, he would catch her.

Twigs cracked and leaves crunched behind her. His footfalls thundered in her ears, making her temples beat like a drum. The pale light from the full moon cast his shadow over her, making him seem the size of a tree. His twisting, spiraled blade was a wicked shadow on her body. She could almost feel its cold steel slicing into her flesh just from its shadow alone. The skin under her left breast throbbed from his first slice. Her shirt was in haphazard tatters, the knife’s curving shape having moved through the fabric like a bladed snake rather than an ordinary knife.

The crunching leaves got louder, the heat from his body stronger. He was gaining on her. She ordered her legs to pump harder, but they wouldn’t listen. She was at full speed already. Her lungs burned in her chest, and her thighs were screaming as though his blade was already carving them up.

The shadow of his arm raised menacingly. He reached for her. Panic flooded her veins in fresh waves, threatening to overwhelm the adrenaline that had gotten her this far.

His hand swiped through her hair, clawed at her ponytail, missed. Her heart nearly exploded in her chest. His shadow wound up for a second lunge. As it began its deadly arc, a fallen tree appeared from nowhere in the center of her path.

All the air evaporated from her chest. She summoned all the strength her legs had left and vaulted over the tree. Her pursuer didn’t see the log in time. She heard his gruff voice cry out in surprise, followed quickly by a booming thud as his body hit the forest floor. She didn’t look back. She didn’t stop to see if he was unconscious or injured. She just kept running.

Eliza didn’t know how much farther she ran. She went until she could hear only the sounds of cicadas chirping in the trees and the gently burbling water from the river to the east. She leaned against a tree and rested long enough to catch her breath, then made for the river. It was the same river she had seen running behind the cabin. She needed to get back there before the door closed.

The river was narrow, but beautiful. Clear waters rushed over rocks smoothed by years of slow, methodical erosion. The moon’s reflection was a shimmery imitation of the real deal, but the watery distortion made it somehow sinister. Eliza reached the water’s edge, paused to listen for signs of the Fisherman, heard nothing, then set off towards the north.

The river cut through the land like the Fisherman’s snaking blade. Its silvery surface was like the glint of deadly metal. She could feel the coolness of the river, but it was an inviting contrast to her burning skin. She longed to dip her bleeding body into those cooling waters, but she feared if she lingered for too long, he would find her, so she kept moving forward. She kept circling back to that dreaded cabin.

As she walked, she tried not to think about what this monster had done to her family. He had taken everything from her, but that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough that he had stolen the lives of her parents and two brothers. Now he thirsted for her life too. He had come back for her.

She crested the top of a hill that would be green and luscious if the grass wasn’t dead and gray. There, in the center of a clearing, was the cabin.

The dilapidated building sat in the exact center of a perfectly round circle of hills. The ground inside this strange terraformed perimeter was black, all the grass dead and withered. Charred trees reached nastily outwards, as though attempting to snatch anyone that came too close and throw them into the gaping mouth of the cabin’s front door. Its wooden maw was made up of double doors that stood open and waiting. Creeping vines crawled along the doors and beckoned her inside the run-down two story. Its second-floor windows were set high and wide, eerily reminiscent of eyes as a result of burning candles in both sills. The entire building looked like the face of some malevolent titan, long since dead and buried up to his neck by time and shifting sediment.

Eliza wished she could walk back into the woods and never see this place again. Inside those cabin walls, her worst nightmares laid in wait. She remembered playing at her parent’s house with her brothers on that awful day. Her younger brother Reynold loved playing hide and seek. It was his favorite game. She was fourteen at the time, and had outgrown such childish endeavors, but had begrudgingly agreed to play anyways. It was hard to say no to Reynold’s rosy cheeks and striking blue eyes. The image of those eyes turning gray as the life ebbed from them was almost too much for her to bear.

Eliza took one step down the steep embankment, then another. The dead grass crunched like leaves underfoot. Each time she took another step she cringed, expecting the sound to bring the Fisherman barreling over the hill. The cabin grew larger as she drew closer. Those horrible vines called to her, as though they were singing a siren song that only she could hear. Their snaking bodies were black, but they were not dead. No, they were very much alive. They seemed to vibrate with energy and life. Eliza had the sudden terrifying thought that the vines’ vitality was fueled by the life force of those who had died within the crumbling cabin walls.

She reached the bottom of the hill. The air grew thicker and mustier instantly, as though an impish demigod had flipped some invisible switch. The stars above twinkled out entirely, and the moon shone brighter than she had ever seen it. It lit the earthen bowl she was standing in with one giant silver spotlight that seemed to illuminate only the cabin and the clearing. The cabin looked even more like a face; the light from the candles grew bright enough to fill the entirety of each window, further perpetuating the ocular mimicry; the broken boards sticking up around the threshold of the front door were like jagged teeth gnashing inside the titan’s rotten oak orifice.

Eliza made it to the front porch. She climbed the short stoop and stood before the monstrous mouth. Looking into its innards, she could see the faded burgundy rug that resembled a decaying tongue. Further in was the living room. A fireplace that sat cold and dormant. Facing it, one loveseat, two recliners and a rocking chair. A twelve-point buck’s head was mounted on the wall, staring out at the invisible ghosts that no doubt inhabited each piece of furniture. She supposed she knew those ghosts. They were her family, after all. This was where they had died.

The rug’s tasseled edge was still splotched with their blood. A wide dark stain the color of cherry bourbon stretched across most of the living room floor. It reached under the rocking chair and snuck into the fireplace, tickled the edge of the kitchen and gestured up the pitch-black staircase. Their blood had exploded everywhere. She had seen it herself from behind the door. And she had done nothing but stand there and watch.

She didn’t want to cross the threshold into that nightmare cabin. She didn’t want to walk over their bloodstains. But she had no choice. If she wanted to get home, she had to find the courage to step through the door. She decided then that if she made it home, the first thing she would do was walk outside and taste the fresh air. Her knees quivered in time with her bottom lip. Her palms were simultaneously sweating and dry. One shaking foot shuffled forward and touched the edge of the rug.

Lightning shot through her shoulder. A choked scream escaped unbidden from her lips. Her hands went immediately to her collarbone. There was a fishhook the size of a scythe lodged in the muscle between her breast and the top of her bicep. A thin fraying rope was attached to a ring at the end of it. The rope went taut, and her shoulder exploded in a bout of searing pain. She was yanked off her feet. Her back slammed into the cracked wooden boards, earning her a few dozen splinters.

The rope went taut again. She was being dragged across the porch. Her legs kicked uselessly, and her arms flailed, searching for anything to grab onto. She tipped her head upside down, her eyes scanning the horizon wildly. He was at the top of the hill. His dark form, shrouded in a heavy black raincoat, was silhouetted in the moon’s sneering face. A torn fisherman’s hat sat atop his head, further obscuring his features. His hands, gray and scaled, were wrapped tightly around the other end of the rope as his powerful arms hauled with ferocious strength. He was reeling in his catch.

The Fisherman heaved, pulling her towards him with all his might. Her shoulder was a curtain of white-hot anguish. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase and found none. Her eyes stayed locked onto him, watching helplessly as he pulled in the catch of the day.

Another great pull and she bounced down the rickety steps. Her back scraped across the rotting wood, and her body rolled onto the ground. The hook had gone clean through her back. When she landed it jostled the searing steel, causing it to tear through her muscles like a gutting knife through the belly of a trout.

The line suddenly went slack. The hook’s pressure in her shoulder subsided, if only for a moment. Eliza got her hands and knees underneath her and turned to face the monster who had slaughtered her family. His inhuman hands froze on the rope, and his head cocked pensively. If he had eyes hiding behind the rolling shadows cast by the trees, she was sure they would be locked onto hers. A chilling gust of wind stole through her clothes and over her hot, sweaty skin. The charred grass seemed to quiver and shake with a malignant energy that saturated the air. That energy brought with it a putrid smell that stank of stagnant saltwater and uncleaned aquariums. The Fisherman was completely still, his hat brim turned down towards Eliza. She got the distinct, unnerving sense of being studied.

She didn’t know exactly what had brought the beast to heel, or why he was studying her so fastidiously. All she knew was that if he started pulling on that rope again, it was over. This was her only chance.

Eliza sat up on her haunches. She grabbed the hook with her left hand, twisted it into position, and wrenched it out of her shoulder.

Fresh agony surged through the entire right side of her body. Pain lit her nerves up like a Christmas tree that caught on fire. She doubled over and retched all over the decayed ground. The Fisherman’s hook thudded softly into the grass beside her.

The Fisherman tipped his head back and roared at the moon. It didn’t sound like the roar of a lion, or even a grizzly, and it wasn’t similar to the howl of a wolf. This sound was wet and squelching, like the sound of diving headfirst into a vat of old anchovies, yet every bit as loud as a thunderbolt tearing the sky in half. It gave Eliza flashbacks of fishing expeditions with her father. He hadn’t been very good at fishing, but they had always released their catch back into the ocean. She knew deep down that this was a luxury she would not be afforded.

In an instant she was up on her feet. She leaped over the stairs and onto the porch with one bound. The Fisherman’s hook rocketed across the clearing with a single powerful yank from its owner, and she could hear his quaking footfalls vibrating the whole hillside behind her, but she couldn’t look back.

Eliza vaulted into the wood titan’s gaping maw. The blood red rug blurred beneath her feet. Her feet carried her through the dried puddle where the Fisherman had beaten first her father, then her mother, and finally her two brothers. Across the room, facing the front porch, was the hallway door.

It was standing wide open. To the right of the stairs was a door that might open up to a small linen closet, or perhaps a room for a coat rack. Instead, through the open doorway was her bedroom at her aunt’s house. The dull pink wallpaper, long since covered with posters of her favorite bands, stood in stark contrast to the gray, peeling paint of the cabin’s walls. She could see her queen bed with her favorite pink sheets, warm, comfortable and inviting. And sitting on her pillow was her stuffed bear, Cuddles, his arms outstretched, ready to welcome her home should she make it through that door before the Fisherman caught his white whale.

Something impossibly heavy landed hard on the porch. The whole house shook. Years of dust puffed off of shelves and out of floorboards, creating a smokescreen of dead skin cells that thickened the already heavy air. She heard the whistle of an object whipping through the air, and ducked just in time. The Fisherman’s hook flew past her head, missing her by inches but claiming a lock of her hair in recompense. It clattered to the ground inside her bedroom and caught on the carpet.

Eliza crossed the room in three long strides. She was a hair’s breadth from the door when the hook pulled free of its beige netting. It shot towards her ankles with shocking speed, and for one crazy moment she was certain it would take her foot off, and the Fisherman would make sure she would never see the light of day again. She pulled her feet off the floor like she was jumping rope with her friends instead of dodging a monster's weapon of choice. The hook skittered underneath her, its sharpened edge winking suggestively at her. Eliza landed hard on her wrecked shoulder, bit her lip against the pain, and rolled.

She tumbled over once, twice, then stopped on her side. Her face was pressed against cool, soft carpet instead of hard wood. The door on this side of the portal was dark and unmarred by age and neglect. The edge of her dresser stabbed painfully into the small of her back. She was home.

Through the mop of her sweat-soaked hair, she could see the Fisherman charging towards her, his hook forgotten by the fireplace. That horrible spiral knife was in his left hand, but his right was reaching for her.

Eliza was paralyzed, just as she had been two years ago. She had watched their pantry door open. She’d seen that horrible hook fly out of another world and sink into her brother’s chest while he was hiding behind the kitchen island. He had been yanked out of their home and into a nightmare realm. Her father and mother had chased after their little boy. Ernest, the eldest, had been right behind them, intent on saving his young sibling. But Eliza had stood there, frozen by fear, and witnessed the Fisherman’s senseless rage as he beat them to death. They cried out for help, but she had done nothing. Until he looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time. When he reached for that monstrous hook, still wet with her brother’s blood, she had calmly and quietly closed the door, and walked away. That was the last time she had seen the Fisherman until he had pulled her through her closet in her aunt’s house only hours ago.

Now here she was again, about to be murdered like her family was. The monster who had taken them from her was almost in her bedroom. His slimy fingers crossed the threshold, and she could see for the first time that they were webbed. She had time to think how odd it was that she would notice such an obscure detail at that moment, but it’s often the weirdest elements that haunt us in our nightmares.

Eliza’s hand moved of its own volition. It shot out from under her, caught the corner of the open door, and heaved with all she had left. The door swung violently, snapping the Fisherman’s fingers back like twigs, and slammed shut against the doorjamb.

Her bedroom was silent. Nothing rattled against the closet door. No monsters lunged out at her from dark corners. Everything was still.

Eliza’s body shook. Tears poured down her cheeks, and her shivering arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Her shoulder still screamed at her, but the pain was welcome. Pain meant she was alive.

She sat there, rocking back and forth, for some time. Eventually the shaking slowed, then stopped. Her breath returned, and her blood resumed pumping at a normal pace. She stood slowly, her legs unsteady, as if she spent so much time running that she had forgotten how to walk.

The trek downstairs was excruciating. Each stair sent impact waves tearing through her shoulder. Black bordered the edges of her vision. Eliza focused on staying conscious long enough to make it to the front door.

The house was empty. Her aunt was at work, and no one else lived with them. It was as quiet here as it was in the cabin, but the air was not thick and suffocating. The silence didn’t feel like death’s pregnant pause, but rather like a sort of contented quiet. It was peaceful and safe.

Eliza stopped at the front door. She turned the handle and let the heavy oak swing itself open. A warm, comforting breeze embraced her. The sun smiled down from its place in the heavens, and she breathed the pleasant smell of honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass into her lungs. The world outside was not as awful as she had decided so long ago. No, it was what hid behind closed doors that was truly terrifying.

She stepped outside for the first time in two years, and smiled. A yellowed leaf fell from a tree above and alighted on her shoulder. It was the first leaf of the autumn season to fall from that tree. She sat down, gently scooped it off of her limp arm, and carefully cradled it in her cupped hands. Then Eliza Holcomb quietly bled to death on her front porch