The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  Rosemary steadies herself. An uneasy foreboding fastens itself to her spine, but she presses her back against the cold seat, tosses the apple peel over her left shoulder, and blows darkness into the room.

  Fear treads over every inch of her. But she’s never been one to let fear navigate, and that makes her all the more determined to prove Everett wrong.

  “It is real,” she says in a whisper. “This is the only way to prove it.”

  The scent of smoke lingers in place of the snuffed-out light, and slowly she lifts her lids. Her eyes adjust in the inky blackness. Her shadowed image peers back at her from the glass. The whites of her eyes float like small moons, the sides of her cheekbones shaded.

  A chill streaks through the room. Rosemary jolts back, unable to withhold a scream as something flashes over her face. The bones of her face appear all at once. Grim, bleak, and horrifying.

  Disbelief clouds her thoughts. She was supposed to see Everett’s face. But cold washes over her. Instead of life, she saw bones. Her skull appeared all at once like the new radiographic image the doctors used to examine the inside of her mother’s leg.

  The bulbs bordering the mirror begin to squeak. Invisible hands turn each one, creak, creak, until they loosen completely and drop, shattering on her vanity like eggs. Rosemary covers her mouth, kicking backward, nearly knocking her chair over. Something unseen pushes her forward, and the lights, though shattered, begin to flicker with little pops of light like dying firecrackers.

  She emits a tiny shriek with each one, bolting for the direction of the door. Even if she has to tumble her way up to the main level, she must get out of here.

  Her hands strike a wall. In a frenzy, she feels for the switch, ready to trigger the electric lights as she should have done the moment she entered. Every vanity table begins to follow suit. Lightbulbs pop, shattering in their casing, a spectacular fury of angry light spreading across the space like a wave.

  Rosemary reels, pulling at her hair and backing into the wall, heart threatening to erupt from her chest.

  The scent of burning fills the space, and soon silence falls as the last of the lights ceases flickering. A creaking sound rises then, growing over and all around like an imposing enemy. She won’t die, not like this. Not because some mirror tells her so.

  She wheels around to face the sound, when to her surprise, all looks as it once had. Silent seats, lightbulbs in place. Hands shaking, she manages to find the switch. The electric lights flare on, blinding her, and in the corner, where she never noticed one before, is a door.

  Detailed designs swirl as though the wood is hand-carved, reminding her of the artwork on the trelliswork of churches. Circles and swirls intertwine, creating a kind of decorative garden on the door’s surface. It’s beautiful. If this was here before, she surely would have noticed it.

  Though no knob is visible, she hears one turn, a scraping, creaking noise that rivets her spine. She dives behind the costume rack, her pulse pounding through her.

  “It went smoother than I expected,” says a man’s voice. Its owner steps through the door from Rosemary doesn’t know where, but she recognizes him as Harold Meiser, the theater’s proprietor. He wears a casual brown suit, its jacket and legs loose-fitting, and a narrow-brimmed, tweed hat. A white bandage curls around one hand, and in the other hand rests a thick, leather book.

  “I assure you, no one will suspect a thing.” This voice belongs to another man who remains out of sight. His vowels bend with an accent she doesn’t recognize. The voice’s owner places a round, engraved brass knob into Meiser’s bandaged hand. “The knob is ready. Your blood has been etched in. The final step is up to you now.”

  Meiser glances to the knob and then the book, his chest surging in satisfaction. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Then the access will be yours,” the man says. “I’ll see you when it is done.”

  Meiser inclines his head and holds the book to one side of his chest like an astute student.

  Rosemary huddles behind the rack, confused at their strange interaction. The knob is ready? After a few more words, they bid one another farewell.

  Meiser crosses the room to where her apple peel fell, to where the lights from the vanities shattered all on their own. He bends for the peel with a sigh and then switches off the lights, leaving her alone in the darkness.

  Rosemary hesitates, paralyzed for the moment. She isn’t sure what to do next. Running out now will mean Meiser will know she was in here. Then again, it might be better that way.

  She bolts up the stairs, down the hall, and through the double doors into the wide foyer. Her chest heaves, and she nearly collides with a startled Meiser standing near the ticket counter. The book he held is now splayed open on the polished wooden surface.

  A convoluted, patterned red circle lies in the center of the right-hand page, while the opposite page is smeared with its reflection.

  “Miss Cauthran, whatever are you still doing here?” He follows her panicked glance to the apple peel beside the book. Suspicion dawns in his expression as he makes the connection.

  “Where did that door come from?” she says, hardly catching her breath. Fear trips over every inch of her, and she knows she’ll never forget what happened down there. Never.

  Harold Meiser’s eyes narrow. He glances toward his bandaged hand. Redness seeps from the center like a blossom, and he closes his fist around the soiled cloth.

  Unease likewise blooms in her chest, a warning so strong it’s near to sickening. She’s never felt uncertain around the proprietor, but they’ve always been surrounded by people. She’s never been alone with him before, and she knows—she shouldn’t be now.

  “What exactly did you see down there?” he asks.

  That door just appeared. And you walked through it. But the words don’t come. She works to steady herself, smoothing a palm against her stomach and aching for an easy reason to excuse herself.

  “What happened to your hand?” she asks instead.

  “Recent wound, I’m afraid. But it was entirely necessary.” He stares at his hand long enough she suspects she could slip away and he’d never notice. But a cloud shifts across his gaze. “Tell me, Rosemary. If there was something you loved—or, let’s say, someone—what wouldn’t you do if it meant having that thing?”

  He can’t possibly know why she was here this evening, can he? She thinks of Everett, of their child, the girl she was forced to give up to keep her place in society. “I would do anything if it meant I could have them with me,” she finds herself murmuring.

  He nods and glances across the empty foyer, at the rich carpets, papered walls, the polished marble columns. The chandelier has been dimmed to a lackluster glass crown above their heads.

  The sad adoration in his face hollows a pit in Rosemary’s stomach. She’s no stranger to the rumors that vaudeville is falling out in favor of the moving pictures that are possible now.

  But the Beringa held its own well enough, did it not?

  “Sir, are you losing your theater?”

  He sets his jaw, and that same dark streak casts across his expression. He clenches his fist in a silent resolution and glances back to the open book on the ticket counter. “Not now,” he says. “I’ll never lose her now.”

  He smiles, but the dark glint still flaming behind his eyes sends chills through her. She takes one step back. Then another.

  “Well then, good night, sir.”

  She makes for the exit, eager to be anywhere but in his company. His good hand clamps over her wrist, stopping her. Rosemary gasps and glares back at him.

  “Let me go,” she demands.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, the very sight of a man fraying at the seams. His eyes are harried, his collar loosened. He releases her, and she takes another step away, toward the door. “Forgive me,” he says again. “I find myself weary this evening, Miss Ca
uthran, and I hope—that is, I don’t wish to be alone. Would you care to join me for a drink? I may even trouble you for an autograph in my new book. You are a rising star, after all.”

  Warning cascades through her, singing in a pitch so clear it’s unmistakable. She shouldn’t. Yet what awaits her back at the boarding house but a reprimand and the stinging loneliness she faces every night, knowing her love has refused her, and their child can never be hers?

  She takes a deep breath, the image of a skull flashing over her own face burning in her mind. She certainly doesn’t want to go home with that playing in her dreams, either. “Very well, sir.”

  This could be a mistake, but she fights the unease and follows him up the carpeted stairs and through to his office. Everything in her tells her to run, to make for her boarding house rather than remain at this godforsaken theater, but the promise of answers forces her to remain.

  She’s sure of it. That door wasn’t there before. Something made it appear. Something that had nothing to do with her pitiful attempt of tempting the supernatural.

  Unfortunately for Rosemary, she doesn’t live long enough to find out what that is.

  one

  2017

  When I don’t sleep with my back to the mattress, the crow comes. No matter how fast I run, the crow is faster. It trails above me, wings beating the air, lower and lower, until it attacks. I never see it, but I feel it—a stab wound, a warning strike—directly in my spine. Panic flurries. I try to hide, but even in dreams hiding does no good.

  I gasp awake, my hands sweeping across my face and to the pulse pounding at my throat. I blunder for the lamp switch on the bedside table. Vague yellow light awakens the room as I wrench free of the blankets and stumble to the mirror on the back of my door.

  Sweat cloaks my shoulders and back. I nudge aside the half-empty box I was sorting through the night before, wrench up my shirt, and turn.

  I strain for any sign of a mark—blood, a scratch, anything. It happened. I’m sure of it. The center of my back stings right where the beak struck, but there’s nothing between my shoulder blades. Not so much as a welt.

  “It was just a dream,” I tell myself, though it seems like so much more.

  Heart racing, I glance around the room, eager for an anchor back to reality. The stained carpet is covered with boxes piled along the walls, spouting open, waiting to be unpacked. All mine, and all filled with the antiques I used to decorate my room back home. Hand-painted figurines, an old traveling trunk, floral teacups, colored glass bottles—things I’ve picked up at thrift shops and estate sales since I was twelve.

  I trip over a stack of boxes on my way to the adjoined bathroom, barely catching myself on the wall. The top box tumbles to the floor, and a pile of my old sketchbooks spills out.

  A round object wrapped in tissue paper rolls out along with them, and I gasp, diving for it. I unwrap the tissue paper hastily and exhale in relief—the miniature glass bottle is still in one piece.

  I thumb over its beautifully crafted lid, depicting a carved, metal picnic in miniature, and its delicate, silver and glass sides, beautiful enough to be a coveted piece to any collector. This was no lucky find at an estate sale. This exquisite, palm-sized bottle is a genuine family heirloom. A piece like this is one of a kind and probably worth thousands. It’s only been recently that my mother even agreed to give it to me. Right before I left home, come to think of it.

  I tuck it safely away in my sock drawer, shutting my mind against the image of shattering glass. Mom had wrapped it carefully in tissue paper. If it had broken…

  I reach behind to rub the spot on my back again and sigh. My parents were supposed to want me back. They were supposed to come crawling to Cedarvale and apologize for the horrible things Mom said about me, and about Jerry. But one week passed. Then two, and Layla and I were beginning to wonder what was going on when UPS showed up with an assembly of boxes full of my stuff.

  But I’m not going back. I’m not the one in the wrong, and I’m not giving in until Mom has the decency to suck it up and admit she was.

  Groggily, I shrug out of the rest of my clothes and step into the shower. First, the crow nightmares, then I almost break my favorite antique. There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep after that.

  I emerge forty minutes later to find Layla sitting at the desk in the small living room of our apartment. She’s hunched over her laptop, her blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders. My dark, curly hair—tameable only by gel and a diffuser every morning—is so different from hers, you’d never know we were cousins. She got our mothers’ tan skin and blue eyes, while I inherited brown eyes and a light dusting of freckles from my father’s side.

  The sleeves of her baggy gray sweater cover her hands. She holds a steaming mug of peppermint cocoa—her morning staple.

  “Morning,” she says, turning to me. She frowns in concern. “What’s with you?”

  Absentmindedly, I reach behind and touch my back. The throbbing has almost completely faded. “That crow thing happened again last night.”

  Her brows crinkle. “Again?”

  I jerk open the fridge and reach for the milk. I try to make light of it, smiling at her as I shut the door once more. “It’s your fault. It’s all those movies you’ve been making me watch since I got here.”

  “I live only to serve,” she says, turning back to her computer. Her fingers clack on the keys a few times before she glances up. “You room with me, you watch my movies.”

  I begin to tick them off my fingers one by one. “Candyman, It, Pet Sematary, Tales from the Crypt…”

  “Oh come on, I’m just trying to prove how predictable the old ones are, how not scary!”

  “It’s obviously not working.” The caw replays in my head, a distant, hollow rasp. I shiver and press my back against the fridge. Its cool surface bleeds through my shirt. I can still feel the echo of the sharp beak stabbing into my spine. It can’t be real, I tell myself. It’s all in my head.

  “It’s really bothering you, isn’t it? This dream.”

  “It’s been happening since I moved here. And I can’t help wondering…” I don’t finish. I don’t want it to sound like I’m not grateful to be here, or that I’m blaming her at all for the crows showing up in my dreams. Layla has been my closest cousin since we were kids having tea parties at family get-togethers and crushing over boys. This spunky, spook-loving, purse-matching, vivacious girl is the closest thing I’ve got to a sister.

  Layla crosses the room and puts her arm around my shoulder.

  “Maybe you should forego the job hunt. Watch House at the End of the Street with me. You can even cuddle in close and pretend I’m Jerry.”

  “Ha ha. That’s my cue to head out.” I don’t want to talk about Jerry any more than I want to think about the crows. I shove them both to the back of my mind and head for the door.

  “Wearing that?” Layla gestures to my baggy brown sweater and skinny jeans. “You look like a fortune teller.”

  “That’s good, because I’m seeing a job in my future!” I wave my hand with a flourish, slip into my coat, and open the door. I pull my coat tighter against the cold and head down the steps.

  Layla’s Prius is parked beneath the long, open awning that lines the sidewalk skirting our complex, but my car gets no such privileges. My blue oldie is parked in the back section of the lot. I tug the strap of my messenger bag and prepare to cross the poorly plowed ice ruts left over from the last time the temperature dropped at the end of a warm, snowy day.

  “Everly!”

  Layla dashes down the stairs, now wearing jeans, tan knee boots, and a warm pink sweater beneath a white, puffy vest. A matching pink bag is nestled over one shoulder. The girl can change out her wallet from purse to purse faster than a bullet.

  “I’m coming!” she says, running down and giving me a whiff of her sweet pea perfume.

 
; “Oh. You really don’t have to,” I say, although this kind of thing definitely goes better with some company.

  “Get in. I’ll take you around to get some applications.” She unlocks the Prius with an encouraging smile. There’s no way I can possibly say no to that smile.

  Layla heads toward the center of town. As we drive, I concentrate on the landscape, letting the image of the crow’s wings and the feel of its beak in my back slowly fade. Cedarvale is depressing compared to my home in Shady Heights—battered stoplights, shabby storefronts with peeling paint, nothing decorative or welcoming to speak of. I know I shouldn’t be so down about it, but I can’t help letting out a sigh as she turns onto Normal Avenue.

  I snicker. Normal. What nothing in my life is at this moment.

  “Hey, cheer up. This town has some serious history,” Layla says. “Antiques. History. Isn’t that what you’re all into?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Neglected buildings from the eighties? Not exactly what I call history.”

  “No, I’m serious. See that restaurant on the corner?” She points to a two-story, red brick edifice with green awnings hanging over each window.

  “The Brunswick?”

  “Rumor is it used to be a brothel.”

  “You stun me.”

  “Doesn’t impress you? Then I won’t tell you it was an insane asylum before that. They administered shock therapy and everything.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m really not,” she says, turning the corner.

  “Now we’re talking,” I say as we coast down Cedarvale’s Main Street. The buildings here seem abandoned at best. A wide window on the corner lot’s nameless building contains cars without headlights, stripped of paint, and not in any style that’s seen a clock lately.

  Layla turns another corner and slows in front of a window with hand-drawn signs stating:

  “CrossYo! Crossfit, Yoga, Pilates, and Zumba Offered Daily!”