The Voices

I was in the middle of class when I felt like going to the bathroom. I remember that while I was already inside, someone started knocking on the door. I told him I was busy, but he kept insisting, as if that was the only bathroom in the whole school. I asked him to wait or to find another one, but all he kept saying was to open the door. Every time I answered no or to go away, he would bang even louder and almost scream, asking me to please let him in. I remember it well because those screams were not from someone in a hurry to go to the bathroom, they were from someone who was very scared. His screams managed to scare me too. I stayed locked up as long as I could until they came looking for me. They thought I was trying to hide from classes and I was punished every week, not being able to go out to play. If they saw me with anyone while I was grounded, they would drag it out even longer.

The next big encounter happened a few months later, during a family barbecue. This one I remember as a nightmare. My father asked me to go get the lighters from the shed, which was barely bigger than a closet. As soon as I entered, the doors closed and the frantic banging began on the other side, begging me to let him in. It was different from the first, he looked like a much older person and, from the force of the banging and shouting, angrier. In seconds, he went from begging for a favor to swearing he would rip my teeth out if I didn't. I froze in silence, waiting for someone in the garden to hear the banging or screaming. How much more banging could the door take? While I thought I would end up opening it, it was my father who finally opened it, asking me what was taking so long. I simply said that I had locked myself in, all so I wouldn't have to explain that I was supposedly hearing voices that no one else could hear.

Every few months something similar happened: voices, sometimes more adult, sometimes more threatening. I could get used to it, since, despite the fear I felt, they could not enter if I did not open the door, no matter how many knocks they gave. Each of those voices seemed to have a different strategy to try to get me to open the door. The most disturbing one was the one that didn't knock or shout, it simply passed blank sheets of paper under the door. Sometimes he would change the color of the sheet, but he never wrote anything.

More than 20 years later, I would say I have maintained as much normalcy as possible. But as time goes on, the voices change a bit. Recently, the voice from the shed has returned, but it no longer seems the same. Now he wants me to help them by talking about the rest as well, while begging. Also, this is the first time I see it getting darker inside the room. So pained does that voice sound that I even considered opening the door, but I waited for it to go away.

The voices have stopped talking to me and focus on the banging, one of which has knocked a chunk of plaster off the wall. So far, they hadn't managed to break anything. Another big bang comes from the door, and this time they've created a crack. At this rate, they're going to get in. I pushed some furniture against the front door, creating the weakest barricade you can imagine. How come they're so aggressive now? What's changed? Luckily, as always, came that silence I was so grateful for.

I removed the furniture I had placed at the entrance. At that moment, I just wanted to get out, without any door in between. But I couldn't open it. Looking through the peephole, I could not see the street, but a room, a library, I think. In it, there was a single boy sitting. I knocked on the door, for him to come in. "Hey, can you do me a favor and open the door, please? I really, really need you to open it.