The Door

by Tony Harmsworth

  ‘Would seem so.’

  ‘Let’s get back and look at it on Google Earth.’

  ‘Yes, brilliant idea,’ I agreed, and we walked quickly back to number fifteen, me slowing expectantly as I passed the location of my mysterious green door. Disappointment rose within me. The door wasn’t there.

  I made us some coffees and we booted up my laptop. Searched our postal code and there was the walled estate. We moved over the top of it and zoomed in until it filled the screen. The convent building was clearly visible at the northerly end of the compound, jutting outside the wall and extending maybe two hundred feet into that thicket where it butted on to the garden of the cottage we had seen from the other side. More than three quarters of the building was within the walled estate.

  The inside of the compound seemed to be an orchard with four rows of neatly grown trees. On the Convent Lane side of the compound, but far enough in to not be visible from the lane itself, was a small chapel. It was fairly obvious what it was. We could not see any paths within the compound so they must have been overgrown, indicating it had not been in everyday use for many years.

  ‘I’ll do a search on it at work,’ said Hazel. ‘I can find out who owns it, when it was built and perhaps some other information. It has really piqued my curiosity.’

  ‘Hey, look on the left. Halfway along the wall on the inside,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, a bare patch. Must be stone or concrete otherwise it would have grown over.’

  ‘That’s where I saw the door.’

  ‘You’re not serious,’ she said and laughed. ‘It couldn’t have been real, Henry. Ghostly doors? Come on!’

  ‘I tell you I saw it. Perhaps it was an echo from the past?’

  ‘Can’t be. There was no sign of there ever having been a door there, last Thursday or two hundred years ago.’

  ‘Then why that bare patch inside?’

  ‘Probably a meeting area. Perhaps they played games there or kept fit or something?’

  ‘Ha!’ I scoffed.

  3 The Machete

  On Monday morning, I set off for the convent with a machete.

  Twenty-five minutes later I was standing looking up at the wall which had blocked us on Saturday morning. I intended to clear a little of the undergrowth which had prevented us from seeing the building properly. I approached the thicket and began cutting. I’d brought a heavy-duty gardening glove and, using that, I was soon able to get past the beginning of the tangle of vegetation, but it quite obviously went on for the full length of the house. This was going to be no easy task. It was a bloody task, too. I snagged myself on vicious brambles several times. There were also stinging nettles. Cutting through this really needed a power strimmer, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

  I fought my way forward, foot by foot, a literally painful progress. I hadn’t made my entrance to the thicket too obvious, but now I was inside I was able to swing the machete through longer arcs and I advanced much more swiftly. I saw a window to my left. It was boarded up. The wood colour had weathered to grey so it must have been there for many years. In front of the chipboard were sturdy iron or steel bars to stop anyone gaining access, but these looked ancient, so I guessed they were from a time when the nuns still lived here.

  I struggled to penetrate what must have been half of the front of the building and could finally see the doorway into the house. It was very imposing with square stone columns on either side and a pitched arch. Just beneath the arch was a stone crucifix. The door itself was hidden behind more timber shuttering, this time held in place by a modern steel grill. Judging by the overgrown approach and the colour of the wood, this property had not been accessed for at least a decade and probably very much longer.

  I battled my way out of the thicket, picking up a number of additional lacerations on the way and pulled the brambles closed over my entrance using the machete. It looked reasonably natural so it would be difficult to tell that anyone had been within.

  At home, I spent another hour looking at the Google Earth image on maximum magnification. As far as I could see, the building and bricked-up gateway were the only way to enter the compound except for climbing over the walls, and my mysterious ghostly door. Had I imagined it? Surely, I must have.

  Hazel was due home just after six thirty so, late in the afternoon, Addy got another walk along the usual route. I so hoped the green door would make another appearance, but it wasn’t to be – just stonework, mortar, and ivy. How could I have imagined something in so much detail? It felt real to me and that was why I was almost expecting it to reappear. Perhaps another day.

  That evening I grilled pork chops with some hash browns, slivers of apple, baby sweetcorn, sliced courgettes, and mangetout. As usual we ate with our plates on lap trays in front of the TV.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Did you find anything out?’

  ‘Oh, about the convent? Yes.’ Hazel finished the last of her dinner and continued, ‘It’s owned by a company called HPS which stands for Heritage Property Services. They bought it from a man called James Quarrel in 1961. It was already derelict. A person named William Quarrel acquired it in 1898, from Stanbrook Abbey, a community of cloistered nuns following the rule of St. Benedict. All the nuns had died from TB and they decided to close this convent and retrench to Stanbrook.’

  ‘They all died from TB?’

  ‘Yes. Think it happens if you live in close proximity to someone who has it and the nuns would have been in dormitories.’

  ‘Dreadful.’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, James Quarrel was intending to restore the house and use it as a home, but he died shortly after taking possession from his father, another James Quarrel in 1959. The family decided to dispose of it. They said it was haunted.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ I whispered.

  ‘What? Your vanishing green door?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She gave me a withering look. ‘Well, anyway, HPS were planning something along the lines of a tourist centre but ran into problems with the planning authorities who felt there couldn’t be enough parking without using part of the walled area itself and HPS wanted to keep the gardens unchanged. They boarded up the windows, doors, and gateway, and put it up for sale. Without planning permission, there were no buyers and the company went into receivership in 1969.’

  ‘Who owns it now then?’

  ‘HPS were acquired by a property company called Caruthers and Basing who have held it in HPS’s name ever since and done nothing with it.’

  ‘I wonder if they’ve even been inside. I cut my way through to the entrance and it looks as if it’s been like that for decades. There is a steel grill over the front door which is held in place by enormous corroded padlocks.’

  ‘Yes. It’s a bit of a mystery. It’s called Alfern Abbey, by the way, and I did a Google search and there’s nothing about it at all. Most odd. The only mention I found was on the English Benedictine Congregation’s website which said that the nuns of Stanbrook had founded it. There wasn’t even a date for that. Then the last mention is them all dying from TB. That was in the conveyance document.’

  ‘Fascinating. No mention of a green door, then?’ I laughed.

  “Ha-ha. Think you must have been drinking!” she retorted.

  - o O o -

  So, Addy and I continued to take the same route morning and night with no sign of the door. She didn’t mind the repetition as there were plenty of grass verges, trees, and country smells as well as the wall itself along the route.

  I know I was joking about it with Hazel, but it really was starting to bug me. It’d been so vivid. I could still remember all of the details. The heavy barrel hinges on the right of the door with rusty marks trailing from them. The top left edge of the door had some damage, had begun to rot, and no longer fitted properly – the arched section leaning away from the vertical. Every time we passed the spot, I felt compelled to stand and look at the wall, almost willing the door a
nd arch into existence.

  On Saturday morning Hazel came with us and I took the machete and a mini-rake so that I could push the brambles to one side to let her see the entrance to the building.

  We spent ten minutes or more looking at the front of the house.

  ‘This would make a great country house for someone with money, wouldn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. In fact, we’ve a client who is looking for a suitable place to run a boutique hotel and I mentioned it to him. He’s not a spur-of-the-moment type of guy, but he might ask to see it eventually and I can get some more information.’

  ‘Would you be able to view it with him?’

  ‘Perhaps. He’s really a ‘they’ so the lawyer tagging along is certainly a possibility.’

  ‘And a lawyer’s assistant?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘No, but I promise to take pickies inside if I get the chance.’

  ‘The upstairs windows are bricked up, not boarded up.’

  ‘Yes. They didn’t want the nuns looking out of them. These nuns would have lived a truly cloistered existence. They’d have had no contact with the outside world. Food, drink, and everything would have been delivered,’ she said.

  ‘I thought the bricking-up of windows was a tax avoidance scheme.’

  ‘Well, yes, it usually was, but not in this case.’

  ‘I’d love to get inside.’

  ‘Looks too well secured,’ said Hazel, shaking the grill over the door.

  I used the machete to fight my way further along to the window on the right of the door and, again, heavy steel bars protected the wooden sheet which had been fixed over the window frame.

  ‘I think I’ll get to the far end of the wall just in case there is another way in around the corner at that end.’

  Hazel sighed, knowing I wouldn’t be put off, and kept Addy entertained with her ball. She didn’t seem to mind the brambles.

  It only took me fifteen minutes to hack my way through the last of the thicket to reach the corner. I peered around and there was no ground-floor window at all. The same as the other end. The first-floor window was bricked up just like the others at the front although there was a further boarded-up window overlooking the compound.

  Through the remaining thicket I could see the back wall of the cottage adjacent to the compound so there was definitely no other compound entrance in that direction. I wondered if it might be worth knocking on their door and asking about the convent. Perhaps they would have some knowledge about it.

  I returned to Hazel and said, ‘Nothing that way. Mirror image of the other end and I could see the back of the neighbouring property so no more gates.’

  ‘That bricked up gateway off the footpath must be the only way to get things in and out of the compound,’ she said.

  ‘They can’t now because the path is only a yard wide.’

  ‘Yes. New owners would need to make another entrance.’

  We exited the jungle of brambles and saplings. I tidied the entrance so that it didn’t look too disturbed and we walked along Convent Drive to the junction and left into Convent Lane. We continued the circuit until we were heading down Station Road. Ahead of us was an elderly man making his way towards town.

  At the same instant, we both stopped dead in our tracks, Addy being pulled to a halt as she reached the furthest extent of the lead. The old man had arrived at a point halfway along the compound wall. He stopped and looked at the wall and reached out to touch the stonework.

  ‘I wonder if he’s looking for the door too?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Hazel. ‘There is no door.’ She laughed, but I didn’t.

  ‘I’m going to ask him,’ I said, and we started walking again as he continued to touch or fiddle with the stonework. We picked up the pace and were only twenty or thirty yards from him when we both clearly saw him walk through the wall.

  Hazel was off at a sprint, She reached the ivy-covered section of the wall and waited for Addy and me to catch up.

  There was no door, just the ivy tendrils climbing over an old section of wall with its mortar harling gradually decaying.

  Hazel looked at me. I looked at her.

  ‘I don’t believe we saw that,’ she said

  ‘Well, it was both of us this time, so it must be real.’

  ‘But it’s not real. There’s nothing there.”

  ‘Ghostly man and spooky door. We have got to get to the bottom of this. You take Addy home. I’m going to speak to the people who own the cottage next to the wall.’

  She took my hand, ‘That’s spooked me, Henry. Don’t be long. Okay?’

  She looked genuinely uneasy. I’d never seen her so rattled.

  ‘Five minutes. I promise. Addy will look after you,’ I said, tongue-in-cheek.

  ‘Ha, she’d run a mile if there was danger!’

  Hazel and Addy headed homewards while I walked back up the length of the compound to the adjoining cottage. It was painted white with a glossy blue door. There was a brass knocker and an illuminated bell push. I pressed it. An anonymous jingle played somewhere inside the building.

  I was about to press a second time when I heard someone inside fiddling with a door chain. It opened a crack and I could just make out an elderly woman in the dim gap between door and jamb.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  ‘Hello. I’m sorry to bother you. I live in The Sisters and we walk our dog around the convent ground most days. We wondered if you know anything about it?’

  The door closed, she fiddled with the security chain, and then reopened it fully. Inside was a woman of about eighty with her grey hair in a bun and wearing a rather old-fashioned floral pinafore over a blue dress which fell to mid-calf. Her legs, in Nora Batty stockings, disappeared into a pair of fluffy pale blue slippers. Her face was as wrinkled as the stockings, and a pair of large spectacles with blue frames sat on her tiny nose.

  ‘It was a convent,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but I was wondering about the green door in the wall.’

  At mention of the ‘green door’, she straightened up and looked at me very severely.

  ‘There’s no green door,’ she said with certainty.

  ‘But I just watched an old man go in through it,’ I said.

  ‘Fiddlesticks. No, you didn’t. It isn’t there,’ she exclaimed and slammed the door.

  She knew all right. The definite way she’d said, “No you didn’t” and “It isn’t there.” She’d understood exactly what I was talking about. The enigma deepened. I wished I hadn’t mentioned the old man and the door so early in the conversation. I’d have been much more sensible simply getting to know her and gaining her confidence. Now I’d blown it. I’d need to tackle the mystery from another direction.

  As I walked past the non-existent door on the way home, I began to think about a ladder to get over the wall, but even that had its complications as how would I climb back over afterwards?

  When I arrived home, Hazel rushed up to me and gave me a huge hug. What we’d seen had really disturbed her. This had all the signs of something out of the ordinary. I didn’t believe in the paranormal, but what else could it be?

  4 Technology

  I read all of the instructions twice. The English translation from Chinese wasn’t particularly well formulated, but I managed to charge and fit the batteries satisfactorily.

  Next, I had to use an app on my phone to connect to the camera using Bluetooth. It only had a short range, but I just wanted a look, not a full survey. The camera would continue to record, even if I couldn’t see what it was filming when it was out of range.

  Our lounge was small by modern standards, about ten feet square with a very comfortable floral design sofa, a couple of upholstered wooden chairs in the same material and a large glass-topped coffee table. The machine sat on our Persian carpet beside the coffee table.

  I switched on. The phone, when turned sideways, showed our inglenook fireplace and logs. I slotted it into the clip on the top of the control
box and pressed ‘on’.

  The four rotors began to whir, but the drone sat motionless on the carpet. I pressed lightly backwards on the right joystick and the machine began to rise from the floor. At a height of about three feet I released the control and it hovered.

  I eased the rotation control and the drone began to rotate anti-clockwise, the camera view changing to take in our electronics corner, the television, the curtains, the casement window, the door and then me, sitting on the sofa with the control box. I rotated it back towards the door and pushed the direction joystick forward. I was surprised how quickly it reacted and before I could do anything to prevent it, the craft struck the door and stayed there. The tiniest flick moved it back a few inches, I pushed forwards on the altitude control and it slowly settled back onto the rug. I’d better not play with it indoors any longer or I’d break something.

  I jumped up and carried the device through to the back garden. Ours had a deck with patio furniture, a gas barbecue, and steps down to a long stretch of grass which filled the space between the walls. A small shed containing tools and junk stood in the corner at the far end, partially shielded by an ancient privet hedge which was suffering from neglect. Neither of us had the time nor inclination to spend time pruning, planting, or maintaining flowerbeds. It got a quick mowing once a week and that was it.

  The garden was perfect for experimenting. I could control the drone quite easily as long as I didn’t rush my movements or try to combine more than one movement at a time. The range of the Bluetooth was only about thirty feet or so and the picture started to break up at the far end.

  Back inside I checked the memory SDXC card and it had recorded fine even if the image hadn’t reached the phone. The card could hold more video than the drone had flying time so was perfect.

  However, I’d have to be careful to keep it in sight if I was flying over the convent garden or I could easily lose my sense of direction and crash it into a tree or the wall or some other obstacle. Heaven knows how I’d ever get it back if that happened.

  Later in the evening, when Hazel had returned home, I told her what I was planning.