The Locked Door
Page 3
pocket, then closed the door. She wasn't surprised to hear the lock turn over by itself, once again securing the secret door. The cat had moved further down the stairs, showing no sign of wanting to enter the strange passage.
"Mom, how can that big place fit inside this little house?"
Emma didn't have an answer to her son's question. She had only glimpsed the long, grey bricked corridor lined with what looked like heavy oak doors, but she could not reconcile what looked like the depths of a medieval castle passage with the ordinary wood house she had inherited.
"I don't know, Kes. It shouldn't be possible. But you were there, so somehow it is. You're not to explore anymore in this house without me with you, I mean it this time!"
"But it's our house now, isn't it? Including the secret passages?"
"That it is," his mother answered. "At least it's my house, and you don't have permission to get yourself lost in places we don't know."
She didn't often pull rank on the boy, but this time, she had been scared that she might have lost him.
"Come on," she said more amiably. "Let's drive into town and buy some cat food, and a pizza. We deserve a treat after all that."
Keshawn wasn't going to argue with pizza. He squirmed out of his mother's arms and as much as ran down the main stairs and out the front door to the car. Emma caught up with him eventually, grateful just to have him out of the house for a little while. She turned and looked at the front door just before getting into the car. Somehow the cat had followed them and was at her sentry post on the porch. Emma knew that they had to return, to keep her promise to feed April in return for her part in finding Keshawn.
There was no getting out of it. The house was hers now, and they couldn't afford many motels. Tonight, they would have to sleep there. Emma thought to herself as she turned the key to start the car that there was no way she was going to let Keshawn have the room with the secret closet door.
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If you enjoyed this story, perhaps you might like to try more from Austin Crawley? Currently in print:
Cris Lopez has just lost his wife. His hopes of ending their separation ended with a freak accident that robbed him of even the chance to say goodbye. When a tabloid newspaper prints an article about an uncanny post box in a small English village that supposedly transports letters to dead relatives, Cris' natural scepticism is overshadowed by the thought that a change of scene might help him come to terms with his loss.
However, the residents of the village refuse to discuss supernatural intervention and having long since abandoned his childhood faith, Cris' logical mind won't accept the outlandish tale.
Eerie voices and bizarre hallucinations plague him and he begins to comprehend that whatever is behind the post box's power doesn't intend to divulge its secrets. Can Cris find the closure he seeks without invoking uncontained malevolence into the world of the living where the dead and damned can only enter by special invitation?
Few Christmas stories hold as much fascination as the story, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Inspired by the Dickens tale, A Christmas Carol, three young women decide to hold a séance to raise the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future. They don't expect a result, but what they call out of the aethyr gives them a creepy holiday they will never forget, if they live to tell the tale!
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