The Door

This is based on my story of the same name, published in 2007 in Read By Dawn Volume Two - I've adapted it to be read aloud.

Behind him, her door slams shut, cutting off all chances of return. He is in the street, on the street in fact. All his belongings are in her cupboards, on her shelves. His wallet and keys are in the jacket slung over her chair. He can’t go back, at least not tonight.

In the distance, he sees the vaguely familiar face of a neighbour. He raises his hand and sets off down the street, as if being the wrong side of a slammed door is the most natural thing in the world.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
The argument was devastating in its finality, and has left him alone in a place he came to only for her. The stupid, pointless fight had started over something and nothing, but as fights increasingly did over the dying days of their relationship, it descended into a battle about his distance and his guilt over something he still cannot remember.

He becomes more frantic, tasting her taunts in his mouth and spitting out the bitterness of the phrases. The few people treading the narrow pavements hear his mutterings and see his pale face and cross the road. He keeps walking.

He decides to hitch to where he has some friends. But it’s getting dark and he has become entangled in the back streets of her unfamiliar northern city. The Victorian redbrick terraces menace him with their hard eyes of glass and doors set in gaping toothless mouths. His heart and his footsteps beat harder and faster.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
His anger turns to fear and he lunges blindly round a corner, finding himself in an alley enclosed by dark, windowless buildings and ending in a brick wall, broken only by a door.

The door is painted a fading, blistered green. The surface around the handle is splintered, as if someone – something – tried to break it down, escape from the alley. The broken wood is discoloured and darkened by the passing of winters. Nothing has moved in this alley for many years.

He turns—this, obviously, is not a way out of the hated city. But... the entrance has disappeared. He is trapped in a box of red brick walls. He looks to the sky, now completely dark and howls in child-like fear. When he stops, he hears a choking wet sound. And a name, his name, one he no longer uses. He begins to remember.

And so does it. In the depths of the alleyway, in the dark, oily shadows of a storm drain, it stirs. It is awake. And can now see a way to escape.

Behind him, from the drain, he hears footsteps. A hard, clipping tap, the sound of a child's party shoe on stone flags.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
He spins around. There is no one there. In front of him, the door. Behind him, the footsteps. The footsteps get closer, bring with them the sound of water and mud. He sees something in the shadows. He half-remembers a reaching hand.

Panic-stricken, he runs toward the door and snatches at the handle – he will try anything to get away from the approaching footsteps.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
The door opens easily, on oiled hinges. As he steps quickly inside, it slams behind him. The second door to slam behind him this day. But this time he breathes a sigh of relief. The sound of the footsteps is blocked out.
He stands inside a beautiful living room, his shadow etched black on the carpet. The furniture glows the deep, rich brown of long cared-for wood. He knows this place, and it brings a sense of comfort, of reassurance, as if he has come home. The door, behind him, now has a glass pane in it, and through it he sees a path leading down through a garden to a lake. He walks to the door and places his hands flat on the glass, feeling the warmth of the sun against his chilled hands. Down by the lake, a pretty blonde girl in a white frock and shiny black party shoes laughs and sings. She is balancing on the old stone flags at the edge of the water.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Seeing him, she turns to beckon him out.

He feels a chill watery wash of fear. As he goes to the door, words of warning on his lips, the sun winks out. The lake disappears, its surface rippled as if by a thrown pebble.

And he feels guilt from the forgotten aftermath of a child's mistake; guilt for what he didn’t do and guilt for the forgetting.
​
He turns and the room is now filled with piles of mouldering furniture where before has been warmth and beauty. The old door is there again in a blank wall, and the footsteps echo once more in his ears. This time they are almost at the door.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
As he runs through the house, he catches glimpses of rooms he remembers. A warm kitchen smelling of baking bread, a stinking bathroom, a beautiful dining room, a dark bedroom with a rotting child-size bed. And always, the wet tapping of the footsteps.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Just as he sees the polished wood front door, he trips and falls, hitting his chin hard on the chilly black and white floor. As he scrabbles to find his feet a tendril of wet cold, a child-sized hand, wraps around his ankle and he smells the damp stench of stagnant water.

She drags him back and the chipped and cracked marble tiles scrape his belly. His bruised and bloody fingertips scratch at the floor. He catches hold of the edge of a broken tile. Stopping with a jolt that almost tears his spine apart, he wrenches his leg free, leaving skin and sock and shoe in her clutches. Leaving a bloody bare footprint on the stained marble, he falls out of the door into an unfamiliar, well-lit street. When he turns, he sees only an ordinary red brick terrace, not the house that was far away and a long time ago.

He waits a moment, and the footsteps begin with a a quiet tapping ringed with water that becomes louder.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
As he runs, the steps quieten. With a silvery scar winding around his leg up to the knee and a shuddering limp, he leaves the city, hitching lifts with the few drivers brave enough to take a one-shoed, wild-eyed and silent young man with dried blood on his chin. In the new city he listens for footsteps, and eventually he hears them, very distant and quiet.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
When they get too close, he moves again. And again. To another city, another town, another village, and the footsteps go away. For a while. For a very little while. But then they start again, quiet at first.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
Each time they find him a little more quickly, they are a little louder, bring a little more dampness with them and come a little closer.
 
[tap tap tap tap]
 
One day, because he stays somewhere a little too long, perhaps the footsteps will get a little too close...
 
[tap tap tap tap]