Behind The Door - A Short Story

Sharing a Short Story I wrote a couple of years back... enjoy :)  


                                                         "Behind The Door"
                                                  By: Tracey Criswell Wilson


The frosty wind bit mercilessly into the old man's paper-thin, pallid skin. Shuddering uncontrollably, Dan trudged back toward the weather-beaten, colorless front door. “I'm gonna kill me some damn kids, if'n I ever catch 'em,” Dan mumbled to himself.

         That was the third time this week that they knocked on the front door and called his name. By the time he got off of his bed -- the couch -- and made it to the front door, there was never anyone in sight. 

         “You damn kids. You think you're fooling an old man, but you ain't foolin' nobody. I taught you'un once, and I'll teach you'un again,” Dan screamed while struggling to get the front door closed against the savage wind.

         Shuffling his feet back toward his only afforded luxury; he stretched out on his over-stuffed, overly large, pillow couch. The couch seemed to be the only place he found any solace, except tonight. Losing himself in the cushions, he closed his eyes, and fell into a fitful, distressful sleep.

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         Bam, Bam, S.. C..R..A..T..C..H, BAM. Dan's eyes flew open. Reluctantly, he looked toward that hellish room; his bedroom. The same bedroom he shared with Sarah, his wife, before she went away. The bedroom Dan would never dare sleep in alone, ever again. 

         “Who's there? Answer me!”

         Laughter echoed like a rubber ball off the time-beaten walls and throughout the sparsely furnished, old home. It wasn't the bubbly laughter of children at play. No, it was a dark, evil laughter. One that made the old man's hair stand on end.

         Not wanting to let his fear show through, Dan flipped the heavy quilt off of his shriveled body. Trying to step over the creaking, aged boards, he made his way toward the bedroom . . . toward the injurious laughter.

         The air grew thick. It reminded him of how the air felt after he and his buddies in World War II took control of an island off of Guadalcanal. The stench of ironclad blood mixed with gunpowder filled his nostrils. The laughter stopped abruptly. It was then that Dan noticed somehow he was on the other side of the bedroom door. Turning quickly to make his exit, the door slammed shut. The temperature dropped traumatically, making it feel as frigid inside as it was outside. The sinful laughter enveloped him. “Stop!” he cried, throwing his arms over his head and crunching his body as far down to the floor as he could.

         “Dan? Dan?” The soft, recognizable voice called. 

         “Sarah, is that you?” His voice cracked. Turning and looking slowly behind him, Sarah stood as beautiful as the last time he saw her.

         With tears streaming down his wrinkled face, he backed into the now closed bedroom door. “But how? How can it be you, Sarah?” 

         Sarah looked at him, her head tilted slightly. “Oh Dan, don't fear me. What do you have to fear from me? Come now, Dan. Come into my arms.”

         There she stood, with her arms held opened wide. She was so alluring and accessible. Like the broken man he was, he flung himself into her arms sobbing like the day he had to go away. The day after Sarah and the kids left. The day he...

         Suddenly, he jumped back, as recognition of that fateful day hit him like fire on a sunburn. 

         “No! You're dead!” When he glanced back up, he was alone in an empty room. There was no laughter, no sound at the door, no Sarah. I'm going crazier than I already am, he thought. It's all a figment of my fevered brain. That's what it is. 

         Hastily he opened the bedroom door and walked into a well-lit living room. Halting where he stood, his mouth fell ajar. How? This isn't possible. What's going on around here? It couldn't have been no later than midnight when I went into the bedroom. Glancing up at the clock, the time read straight up 12:00. Twelve o’clock in the afternoon?Running as fast as his weary legs would carry him, he flung open the front door; as he rubbed his eyes trying to make them see a different scene in front of him, his mouth fell open. There was Sarah in plain sight. Looking the way she did before she died. And that wasn't all; Diane and Billy were in the front yard with her. The same age they were thirty years ago. Wearing the same clothes they were all wearing on the last day he seen them all. That was the last time when they were laughing together, just as they were now. The last time they were all still alive.

         “Hey Honey. Won't you come join us?” Sarah called from the yard. Dan gazed at Diane and Billy, wanting to go to them, but afraid. Suddenly, Diane called out, “What's wrong, Daddy? You look like you've seen a ghost.” Slowly all their heads turned toward the shadow of the old man at the front door, and from somewhere far in the distance, the laughter begun. As if he was stuck in a puddle of molasses, Dan couldn't move. He felt sluggish, like he was being suffocated by an invisible darkness. His heart was pounding for escape. Helplessly he flung his arms trying to hold onto anything that might help him. His family was coming nearer. Their faces were melting like a chocolate bar left on a hot dashboard of a car. Their mouths stretched opened, long and wide, with eyes sunken deep within sooty, dismal sockets. Arms outstretched, they called in a grating voice, “Come now. What do you have to be afraid of? Come to me. Come Dan, come with us.”

         Screaming, at the top of his lungs, Dan's feet finally came free. Jerking himself clear, he slammed the front door and locked it. Then the stark living room went gloomy and foreboding once more. The view outside was obscured. It was midnight once again. The immoral laughter was now deafening. Falling, he slid down the wall until he was limp on the floor. Curled into a fetal position, he wailed, “I'm sorry. Oh Lordy, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to kill ya'll. Don't you'un see? I had to. The devil had you all, just as he has you'un now.”

         The temperature in the room was scorching, like the furnace was on full blast in the middle of summer. Dan felt as if he was being roasted alive. He heard footsteps in the room with him. 

         “Who's there? Leave me alone! Go away and leave me be!” 

         With a loud clamor, all the doors in the house shut at once. All that is, but the one door which was closed to begin with. The bedroom door swung opened so fast and furiously that it now hung only by a single door hinge. Through the distortion of the heat waves, Dan saw before him his family standing in the same bedroom where he took his rifle and blew his wife and kid's away. 

         “Come Dan. Come Daddy.” They called. 

         He found it impossible to look away from their contorted faces, which stared through him with an impenetrable glare. 

         As if having no will of his own, Dan trudged to his unearthly end.