The Room That Wasn’t There Yesterday

The Room That Wasn’t There Yesterday

We moved into the old house on Meadowridge Lane in early spring. It was a fixer-upper, sure, but the bones were good—Victorian, tall windows, creaky charm. The listing said four bedrooms. That’s what the tour showed. That’s what the paperwork said. Four.

But on our seventh night there, a fifth door appeared.

Not metaphorically. Not in some metaphorical we-were-blind kind of way. It appeared—like it had always been there, halfway down the second-floor hallway. Between my daughter Lily’s room and the linen closet. A door that wasn’t there yesterday. A door we would have noticed.

“Did you install this?” my wife, Sarah, asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She stood in her robe, staring at the faded white door.

“No. You know I didn’t,” I said, heart beginning to race.

It looked old. Not like a modern remodel. It matched the other doors in shape but not in time. Its paint was cracking, and the handle was tarnished brass. The wood beneath looked water-damaged and splintery. It didn’t belong.

“Should we open it?” I asked.

“No,” Sarah said. “Not yet.”

We argued about calling the realtor. About calling someone—anyone. But curiosity is a cruel force. That night, while Sarah and Lily slept, I crept out of bed with a flashlight.

The door opened with a creak like something sighing from below the floorboards.

Behind it was a narrow room—long, like a corridor—but it shouldn’t have fit. The dimensions of the house didn’t allow for that much space between Lily’s room and the linen closet.

The walls were covered in peeling floral wallpaper, faded yellow. A rocking chair sat at the far end, slowly moving as if someone had just left it. I stepped inside, flashlight trembling.

The door slammed shut behind me.

I fumbled, screamed, clawed at the knob. But the door was gone. Behind me now was just wall. Solid. Cold. No way out.

And then I heard it.

The sound of breathing.

Not mine.

Not human.

It was low, wet, rasping. It came from the shadows behind the rocking chair. I backed away, heart in my throat, until my fingers touched something warm.

A hand.

I ran. Except there was no exit, no direction. The walls stretched and warped like the room itself was breathing. The flashlight blinked out.

Then, silence.

And I woke up.

On the hallway floor. Door gone. Like it had never been there.

⸻

I didn’t tell Sarah. Not at first. I thought it was a dream. A vivid, awful dream. But Lily started talking to “the lady in the hallway.”

“She wears black and sings when I’m falling asleep,” Lily said at breakfast the next morning. “She has really long arms.”

Sarah dropped her fork.

“What does her face look like, honey?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

“She doesn’t have one,” Lily said. “Just a smile.”

⸻

The door returned the next night.

This time, Sarah opened it.

I begged her not to. But she said something strange—something I’ll never forget.

“She’s waiting for me. She said I used to live here.”

I followed her in. The same hallway. The same suffocating feeling. This time, the rocking chair held a figure.

She stood—taller than a person should be—and her head brushed the ceiling. Her arms hung like ropes, joints bending the wrong way. And her smile—God, that smile—was carved into the skin.

“No more leaving,” she whispered, though her mouth didn’t move.

⸻

Sarah never came out.

I woke again in the hallway. Alone. Door gone.

Police couldn’t explain it. They searched the house, found nothing. No secret rooms. No hidden passages. No proof a door was ever there.

Lily stopped speaking.

She stares down the hallway now, night after night, waiting.

And sometimes I hear Sarah’s voice humming lullabies from the wall between Lily’s room and the linen closet.

I’ve boarded up that section of the hallway.

But sometimes, when the house settles, I hear the creak of the rocking chair.

And I know the door is waiting to come back.

For me.