In this house, I found out that Elvis had died. I remember the headline on the Friern Enterprise: THE KING IS DEAD! The letters had to be an inch or larger. I had my first, and last, pet rabbit there. It escaped from the laundry room one day when the door was carelessly left ajar. I haven’t eaten rabbit since.
We were happy there: football games, bows and arrows, birthday parties, and Christmas.
But something was wrong.
I felt it before I knew. Left alone in a room there, it was always too quiet. There was a feeling of coldness, a shiver, a shudder, and every hair on your body trying to stand on end. Doors opened and closed on their own. Poltergeist, some might say. A settling foundation...imagination? You can say what you like, I saw it happen. There was no one there; yet, the door would swing shut.
I saw it. There was one night that convinces me that some things just can’t be explained. I know I have no rational explanation for what happened. It simply couldn’t have happened the way I say, but it did.
I shared a bedroom with my brother. Our bunk beds were laid side by side with two paper-shaded windows on the wall to their right. The closet was opposite to the beds, and the door to the hallway was to the left.
It’s this door I mean to tell you about. Not an unusual door, I guess. There might have been shapes in the grain of the wood, speculated about by curious children, but I think that must apply to most wooden doors. I even remember the poster we’d put on the inside of the door: it was a man in mid-air on a muddy dirt bike, his face obscured by a black-visored helmet.
This particular night, my brother and I awoke suddenly. This in itself was unusual since we normally had to be poked and prodded to get us up and ready for school. It was dark, too dark, lightless. We stumbled to the light switch and turned it on. There was nothing but a futile click, click, click.
Only mildly concerned, the power was out of course, though it hadn’t stormed. My brother jerked the shades and sent them scuttling upwards. Where were the streetlights, the porch lights of our neighbours, I asked? “The power’s out, Dumbo,” my brother answers. “We’ll just go to mum and dads room. They’ll light a candle for us.” But there is no door.
Out night vision is improving, and our blindness creeps away. This is the room we’ve lived in for months. We know where the door is, where it’s supposed to be.
There is no door. Maybe there’s a gas leak, and we’re delirious, maybe mum put a little too much rum in the rum cake, maybe the door isn’t on the wall where it’s been for months now. Perhaps it moved.
Okay, we know where the door is supposed to be: it’s just not there. So, we’ll just check on the other walls. Everything else is where it should be: the beds, the closet, the nightstands, and the windows. All is still but the sound of our breath. There’s no traffic on the road, no birds, no crickets, and no wind, nothing.
We take a moment, huddled together at the foot of my bed. We know where the door is, we laugh. All we have to do is go over to the corner and open it. Hand in hand, we scuttle to the corner. Slowly, we search, scratch, and feel.
There is only a wall.
There is no door.
Eventually, we drift into fitful sleep, together on my brother’s bed. When we open our eyes, my mother is poking and prodding to get us up and ready for school. If she wonders why we’re in one bed, she doesn’t ask.
There is now electricity, cars on the road, birds and crickets chirping away outside.
There is now a door.
I told my mother about our experience over lukewarm oatmeal. She is expectantly doubtful. My brother nods in agreement with me but offers no other support. I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about it.
As I have said, I have no explanation for these events but can only say what my eyes saw and my fingers felt.
We moved to Savannah shortly thereafter. One of our friends wrote to tell us about the house burning down a week later. A young girl was trapped in the house, I hear. I never heard if she lived or not.
I returned to that neighbourhood twenty-five years later, just to take a look. Had they rebuilt on the lot, or had nature reclaimed her own?
The house was still there. If it had burnt down, I couldn’t tell. The brick and shutters, the red stained deck, the mounds/graves in the back yard. Maybe they rebuilt with the same floor plan. Maybe I imagined the letter from our neighbour.
My wife wanted to go in and talk to the current residents. Have they seen any doors opening or closing on their own? Have they ever felt the hairs on their arms trying to stand on end? Have they ever been trapped in a room and smelled smoke?
Stopped in the road across from the house, my wife wanted to know these things. I, on the other hand, had no desire to set foot in that place again. I felt chilled; you know that feeling when you know someone is staring at you?
There are some things that can’t be explained. Believe me if you will, I don’t know what I believe in, but know only what I felt and saw.
There are some things that should be left alone.
