Behind Dark Doors (the complete collection): Eighteen suspenseful short stories

by Susan May

  Dawn’s sister would then break her reverie. She would lean across to stretch Dawn’s seatbelt across her chest and click it in. Her sister would stop, then, and put her arm about Dawn’s shoulders. Again, that action, her touch, would bring her mind back to the moment.

  She would turn to her sister and, in a voice she didn’t recognize, say, “Can we go get Tommy now?”

  There would be a pause. A very long pause.

  Her sister would say, “Darling, no. He’s gone, Dawn.” Then in almost a whisper, “Remember?”

  Every time her sister said it, each time she heard those words, Dawn would reply, “He’s not gone. He’ll come back. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Movement 5

  The first time she lived through losing Tommy it registered in her mind as simply a sequence of terrible events linked together by moments of tears and excruciating pain, alternating with a feeling of numbness. She travelled through them as if she were a passenger on a train impassively watching the scenery travel by, unable to get off or to control the journey.

  The funeral was the next dreadful thing to endure, but, by then, Dawn had become accustomed to the heavy feeling that swallowed up her mind and soaked into her body. She constantly felt as if she were wading through mud the consistency of thick, wet cement.

  The feeling clung to her words, her breath, and her heart. To her surprise, she found if she just gave in to it, somehow it lightened a little, allowing her to at least move and put one step before the other, one thought after the next.

  Seeing the coffin for the first time caused her legs to give way, as if every muscle in them had instantly dissolved. Every particle of air was sucked from her lungs, and she was left desperately gasping for air.

  Hands reached for her, scooping her up, bearing her weight. She wanted them to let her go, allow her to fall into the dark abyss that might swallow her up and smother her, so she could feel nothing.

  Her sister had stayed with her since that day, and she would stay for another week—or, she insisted, for as long as she was needed.

  Craig came by every day—and her, the other woman, his wife. He said he didn’t blame Dawn, and kept repeating phrases beginning with “If only” and ending with, “I guess none of it matters now.”

  Dawn wished he wouldn’t come. If she could have just fought off the sludge, she would have told him so. In the end, it was easier to listen—or half-listen—until eventually she just tuned him out. He wasn’t really talking to her anyway; he was just speaking words into the void Tommy had left.

  The funeral came and went. It was dreadful and unbearable but somehow she made it through. The pills helped, her sister’s arm helped, the outpouring of support helped, and when the day was over, she realized you can live with anything. It’s just a matter of the degree of living you crave. She craved nothing now, just a way out of the dark tunnel and the emptiness that colored everything.

  In the following days, all she desired was the surrealism of sleep. In that alternate world she sometimes found Tommy, and peace, until she opened her eyes in the morning, or the afternoon, or whenever the pills wore off. Always she would awake with the same memory of his face staring at her in the rear-view mirror. That one image would pierce her heart, then the void would close in on her.

  Ten days after that day, she’d found herself half way through the thought haunting her the most: if only she’d gotten out of the car—

  —suddenly, she was no longer in her bed and no longer in a world with rules she understood. She was back again to the day of the accident. Not back again in her mind or her memory, but back again to that morning as if nothing had happened, as if the clock had been reset.

  She was in her kitchen preparing breakfast. Tommy was sitting at the bench slurping down his cereal as he always did, while little splashes of milk accumulated about his bowl.

  What was happening? It felt too real to be a dream. Everything was there, the smells, the feel, and the sounds. When Tommy looked up and said, “Mom, juice please?” as if he’d never died in her arms, she felt only an incalculable rush of relief. It was an infusion of happiness so pure it could have lifted her off her feet. The topsy-turvy world was suddenly righted. Her chance to change everything was here, magically bestowed upon her.

  Whether it was real or not, it was a better place than where she’d lived since he’d died.

  She opened her mouth to answer him, to tell him he could stay home from school today, skip his guitar lesson, and they would keep a wide berth from that street and that moment lying ahead. As she spoke, she immediately realized this second chance was not the gift she had first imagined. She turned to the fridge to pull out the juice, her heart collapsing in despair, one thought ringing in her head.

  I’ve gone to hell.

  Movement 6

  Each time he spoke to her, she would attempt to answer differently than she had before, but she’d discovered the first time she was powerless. The words that came out did not spring from her current thoughts, but were simply a repeat of her previous utterances. She couldn’t alter her physical movements either; every action was merely a replication.

  How cruel to be sent back to this moment with the potential to change everything, only to discover she was bound and gagged, merely a passenger trapped inside her head. Something else now controlled her body, whether fate itself or the Dawn who belonged in this day, but not the Dawn who had come from ten days ahead.

  With every opportunity that arose that day, she tried to warn him or anyone with whom she came into contact. After she dropped him at school, she had returned home to clean the house exactly as she’d done on that day. When the phone rang, and she found, just as before, it was her friend Kelly asking Dawn if she could mind Felix the following Thursday, she tried to splutter out, “Help me. Tommy is will be killed.”

  What left her mouth, though, was the same answer she’d given before. “Of course I can. Tommy will love having him here to play. They’re fun together.”

  She felt like screaming, for Tommy would never again play with Felix. Instead, Kelly would be standing by Tommy’s grave on that coming Thursday, sobbing into her handkerchief and glancing toward Dawn with profound sympathy.

  Later, as she wrote an email to Tommy’s teacher about an upcoming school camp, she’d found another opportunity to intervene in the future. Words the original Dawn had conceived appeared on the screen before her. She only had a vague memory of the email, so she studied the screen as if every letter was part of a secret code she must decipher.

  Good morning Mrs. Green,

  Just wanted to let you know Tommy is going to…

  As each word appeared, her heart pounded harder. Could she change them, will them from her fingers? Could she type: Tommy is going to… die. You need to keep him at school.

  She felt an energy flow from her mind into her hands, and for a brief instant she also felt hope move through her. If she could only type the new words and warn the teacher, he might be saved.

  Then the words appeared to dash that hope.

  … need someone to check his food at camp. He has a nut allergy.

  By the time for the school pickup rolled around, she was beside herself with fear and dread. Opening the car door, she’d tried to pull her hand back, to force herself to not enter, but there’d been no connection between her thoughts and her body. Her legs still swung in beneath the steering mount, her hands still found their place on the wheel, and the key slipped into the ignition and was turned. All of the actions were against her will.

  As the car pulled out of the driveway, she understood how someone being led to the electric chair must feel: the inexorable feeling of mounting horror as each passing moment brought the inevitable closer, while your mind screamed this terrible thing couldn’t happen.

  When she arrived at school, a smiling Tommy climbed inside the car, and her heart melted. It was such a relief to see him there again, whole, alive, and breathing. Suddenly, the grimness washed away, and she wa
s just so darn happy.

  Then followed the crumbling of her joy, as she realized she couldn’t even lean across to kiss him or tell him she loved him. She tried though, flexing every muscle in her body. When that failed, she tried to manipulate just one side of one lip. Not a muscle could be moved, not a hair swayed, not one moment could be changed.

  In the first living-through of the days that followed the accident, she had revisited those ten minutes from when she picked Tommy up until his guitar lesson. She realized something terrible. Not once had she said she loved him that day.

  The morning had been the usual pandemonium to get out the door on time. Then, in the afternoon, it had been a rush to get him to his lesson—the traffic around the school was diabolical. When she’d picked him up, her thoughts had been of dinner and whether she would have time to make a casserole or just do pasta.

  Tommy had kept trying to tell her something about his day, but the news had come on the radio. This time of day was her only chance to catch the report. So she’d shushed him. Obediently, he’d hushed. A song she liked had followed the news, and she’d drifted off into mouthing the words, and so had forgotten to ask him what it was he wanted to share.

  They’d barely made it on time to the music studio housed in an old white building, snuggled between small strip shops on a corner. She’d managed to find a parking spot just outside, which was a relief. Usually she was forced to park across the road in the supermarket parking lot and walk him across the road. That day she was tired and glad she could stay in the car and relax.

  Tommy had bounded out the door as she unlocked the trunk. She watched him in the rear-vision mirror as he struggled to drag the guitar case out. Once he had it clear, he’d turned and waved to her.

  Each time she lived this moment, she would think about those fourteen seconds that lay in the future and how that was all they had left on this day. Fourteen seconds was long enough for her to say “I love you,” long enough for her to get out of the car and stop him, long enough to change everything.

  Her phone then drew her attention. She checked in on Facebook, looked up the weather for the week, and answered two texts. Mundane and pointless activities made even more so knowing what lay ahead. She had come to despise these moments of frittering away precious minutes, yet she was forced to endure the shame of them each time.

  The first time back, she was surprised to find she suddenly put down her phone, reached for her bag at her feet, and pulled out her purse. Then she headed across the road. Dawn had forgotten the entire fifteen minutes before the accident—the trauma no doubt. As she crossed the road toward the supermarket, bit by bit the knowledge of her future actions crept back to her. The recollection was vague, though, and it took on the feeling of something happening for the first time.

  She realized she was going to buy pasta for dinner. Hope rose within her. The supermarket was filled with people; maybe she could say a word, change an action or create a scene that might delay her leaving the store. Then she wouldn’t be there to open the trunk and Tommy wouldn’t be standing behind the car.

  Walking down the aisles gathering sauce, pasta, and cheese, a memory erupted. The next thing that would happen would be a conversation with Marcus. He lived on their street and worked here at the store’s delicatessen counter.

  That’s right! He was going to ask her about Tommy, how he was doing at school. When he asked this time, she would attempt to tell him, “Dead—he’s dead. Help me.”

  Standing there at the counter with Marcus smiling at her, she willed the words into her mouth until it felt as if her head would explode. They wouldn’t come out, though. Then she tried to drop the cheese as he handed it to her, attract attention to herself. Her hands wouldn’t respond.

  “Yes, Tommy is good,” she answered, when Marcus asked after him. “At a guitar lesson right now.”

  He was at the lesson the time when I was here before, too, she thought. Even if she’d managed to voice the thought, Marcus wouldn’t have understood.

  A cough. Perhaps if she could cough or sneeze, one single change might cause him to ask her what was wrong. That action would then change all the other actions. Surely she could cough or clear her throat.

  Then the moment was gone. Nothing. No change.

  “Catch you next time,” he said.

  “Yes, for sure,” she replied, knowing she would never come back here. In the ten days that had followed, she couldn’t bear to drive past where it happened and be reminded.

  Dawn stopped at the checkout, juggling the groceries. She’d picked up milk, as well, and grabbed a magazine from the stand next to the checkout. Angelina Jolie was championing another cause, and she always enjoyed reading about her. She balanced the magazine on the edge of the counter and was flipping through it with one hand until she could place her things on the belt.

  When she heard the voice, she recognized it instantly; it was embedded in her memory, wedged in like a splinter. A chill ran through her, as if a hand had wrapped around her neck and choked off her air.

  Even before she looked up, she knew who it was she would see.

  “How’s your day been?” said the girl with pink and purple strands entwined in her long shaggy hair. Threaded through both nostrils was a silver ring just as if she were a cow. Pierced through each of her eyebrows were five rings, each ring standing to attention. A tattoo of a vine ran up her forearm. Her lipstick, a dark plum, was made even darker by her pale white skin; it made her mouth appear bruised. Dawn remembered how the lipstick looked smeared across her face, the black mascara smudged and wet around her eyes.

  When she opened her mouth to talk, Dawn heard only the echo of the words this girl had spoken to her ten days ago or, in this new reality, would speak in less than fifteen minutes in the future.

  Is he all right? the girl had asked, squatting behind Dawn on the street.

  Dawn’s heart began to beat savagely. Inside, her stomach felt as if it were twisting and turning, attempting to escape her body.

  This couldn’t be.

  Yet, of course it was. For it had already happened.

  She’d paid so little attention at the checkout, that Dawn hadn’t realized she’d come face to face with this girl who would change her life. All she’d been thinking about was dinner, the magazine, and getting back to the car. With the shock of the accident, this entire seemingly irrelevant visit to the supermarket had been wiped from her memory.

  Dawn threw the magazine onto the belt—last time it’d seemed so important she finish the article on Angelina, an article that in the end she never did read.

  “Good,” Dawn said, looking down. She hadn’t wanted to talk to the girl at the time. She never really wanted to talk to these checkout people; the conversation always so forced. Now though, she desperately wanted to talk to her.

  Dawn wanted to scream at her, “Don’t get in your car. Don’t drive into the street in ten minutes. If you do, your life will change, my life will change, and my son’s life will end.” Of course, Dawn couldn’t speak any of the words. They were just empty echoes in her head.

  The pulse in her temple was now so loud it felt as it were vibrating her whole head.

  The girl, Kylie—she’d learn her name from the news—dropped her groceries into a plastic bag. This reminded her, too, how surly she’d thought the girl was at the time, how little care she’d taken with the groceries. Dawn remembered thinking at the time, what a dead end job it must be, but if not for these jobs where would girls like this work? Then she was reminded of her sister’s Goth stage as a teenager and how this was probably just a stage for this girl.

  “Have a good day,” Kylie said as she handed Dawn her change.

  “Thank you,” Dawn muttered, thinking, you wish me a good day and then you kill my son.

  Picking up the grocery bags, the plastic grips bit into her hand with their weight, just like the guilt that now bit into her soul. She had come that close to Tommy’s killer; she’d actually spoken to her, stared in
to her eyes. If only she’d known, she could have done something. What, though?

  Now maybe she could. Dawn threw everything she had at turning around and speaking to Kylie, telling her she was about to become a killer; that in the next ten minutes her phone, combined with her attitude and her old car, would add up to death. She pushed at the muscles in her shoulders and down her back. If she could just twist slightly, even half rotate herself, the rest of her body might follow.

  Already, though, she was walking away, pausing at the sliding doors to allow an elderly woman pushing a cart to exit before her. The woman looked up and thanked her. Dawn nodded and smiled.

  Again, Dawn attempted to open her mouth, to do more than just nod. If she could just tell the woman to go across the road and meet her son, or go back into the shop, talk to Kylie and tell her to wait. Just another few seconds was all that was needed to save Tommy. Her muscles ached from the exertion her mind had placed on them. Was the ache real or imagined?

  Again, she failed. The moment lost.

  In less than a minute, she was back at her car placing the groceries in the trunk. Walking to the driver’s door, she clicked the remote unlock. As she reached for the door, she mentally attempted to pull back her hand. This time she worked at her elbow. It was like attempting mental telepathy. Every ounce of will she possessed was now focused on her hand.

  Tommy’s appearance at the door of the studio was so close she felt it bear down on her like an oncoming train. She couldn’t let him die again.

  It was such a simple action, the flexing of her hand and applying the small pressure to spring the door’s catch. An action, to which she’d never given a second thought, now required everything she had in her to halt. As her fingertips curled under the metal handle, she suddenly felt an unusual sensation. She’d done something. It was like discovering you could reach something that had been impossibly high.