Through the Seven Doors (Happy Endings Resort Series Book 16)

by Sage Short

  Through the Seven Doors

  by Sage Short

  Dedicated to

  To all of those who believed I could do this.

  Without my amazing family and supportive friends,

  this wouldn’t have been possible.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter One

  DAKOTA YOUNG GOT OFF the bus at exactly 3:15pm on the afternoon of May 30th, 2016. She typically wore her natural waves loose at her shoulders and flat ironed; but since she had come directly from her last day at Bennett College, an all-girls school in Greensboro, her hair was pulled up in a recently trimmed, tight ponytail that reached the base of her neck. She pushed her black-rim glasses farther up her nose as she looked at the wooden sign that stood a few paced in front of her.

  Across the top of the sign, in cream colored lettering highlighted with light blue paint, read “Happy Endings Resort.” Underneath the sign was a tattered, loose hanging banner that read

  “Our 40th Anniversary of Service 2016.”

  Dakota took in a deep breath of fresh air before walking past the sign. Her grip tightened on the strap of her bag to keep it still, and with every step she took the low hanging satchel bounced against her thigh. The gravel below her once white sneakers crunched as she walked around the otherwise quiet campground. Everyone who came to the camp hung out at the lake or in their cabins, some of which lined the road she was walking on. After every few cabins there were trailers of all shapes and sizes parked on the grass.

  Dakota walked to the registration office that was located about a mile and a half up the road. The bell rang when she opened a wooden door with a glass window; multicolored flyers were tapes to the glass, preventing a view through to the other side. On her walk toward the empty desk, she grabbed a soda from the mini refrigerator that sat below the counter, then looked around once before dropping the bottle into her bag.

  Dakota rested her elbows on the counter as she rang the bell. She rang it twice before a short, stocky woman shuffled toward her from the back of the registration office.

  “Hello,” the woman said in a meek voice. “How may I help you?”

  “Dakota Young,” she introduced herself, holding up her Press Pass. “I’m a journalist from the Sun Journal and I’m writing a story on your camp.”

  She flashed the woman a phony smile, matching the one on her pass, while the woman offered a more sincere smile in response.

  “Welcome Mrs. Young.” the woman greeted.

  “Miss Young,” Dakota corrected automatically. She looked older than she was and was used to having to correct people. Dakota was in her mid-twenties, twenty-three to be exact, but she was always mistaken for a woman who was in her mid-thirties, and most people seemed quick to jump to the assumption that women of that age were married.

  “My apologies,” the woman said. She ran her finger across a map pinned to the wall beside her desk.

  “I put you in Cabin 32A,” she woman said, handing Dakota a key off the rack.

  “Can I have Cabin 20C?” Dakota questioned, clutching her bag strap once again.

  A puzzled look crossed the woman’s face momentarily before her features returned to normal. She turned back to the map and ran her finger along it once again.

  “It’s your lucky day,” the woman said. “It opened up this morning.” She placed the other key back on the hook and searched for the key labeled 20C. “It’s south of the lake. It’s the very last one,” she said as she handed Dakota the key. “Welcome. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

  Dakota thanked her for her help before she walked out. Once she was outside and out of view, she reached into her satchel and took the soda. Then she searched for the map she had folded and thrown at the bottom of her bag before she had gotten off the bus. Her bag consisted of the map, her composition notebook, a brochure from the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Creative Writing, her major, a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes with a red lighter inside the box, and a book wrapped in plain brown paper.

  She found the map underneath her notebook. After unfolding it, she flattened it against her jeans before holding it out in front of her. Cabin 20C was circled. It was a long walk, but she proceeded briskly as she followed the trail to her cabin.

  Chapter Two

  DAKOTA OPENED THE DOOR to Cabin 20C. She reached into her satchel and pulled out the paper-wrapped book.

  The cabin was entirely made of wood, including the floor. From the front, there were no windows. After she closed the door, she dropped her bag to her feet and stepped over it on her way further inside the cabin. Other than the light filtering in through the only window inside the room, the cabin was cloaked in darkness. She pulled a chain hanging from the ceiling and the light bulb flickered on, illuminating the large, bare room. Beneath the window was a wooden desk, and across from it sat a twin-sized bed.

  Placing the book on the desk, she glared down at it before beginning to pull the tape off the paper. Once she was finished, she ripped the paper down the middle, revealing the book that had been encased inside.

  Dakota paused, staring down at the black cover with gold lettering across the top and bottom. The bottom read, “Anonymous,” while the top read, “Beyond the Seven Doors,” in bold type. Her eyes didn’t leave the cover as she slid into the desk chair, and there was a moment of hesitation before she opened the hardcover book. The pages were clean and white and crinkled when they were separated. Dakota opened to the first page and read:

  Beyond the Seven Doors: Page One

  Cabin 20C is the farthest cabin South. It is also the furthest away from all the other cabins. This cabin is different from the others. There is a door in the room beneath the carpet, underneath the window, that leads down into the earth. It can be mistaken for a well, but it’s not a well. It’s a gateway to the center of the earth, and the center of the Earth is real, and within it lies what the bible claims to be Hell.

  Only children can go all the way down to the last door, the eighth door. No one knows what lies behind the eighth door, or even if the eight door truly exists/ Only those who venture down know of the seven doors before the eighth and final door.

  Only children can venture down past the seventh door, as they are full of innocence and naïvete. Children are also prone to do as they are told, only what they are told, and always what they are told.

  Dakota furrowed her brow in confusion. That short passage was all that was written on the first page. She turned to the next page, which showed nothing. The fourth page was where the text finally continued. On page three, in the center, read “CHAPTER ONE,” in all capital letters. Dakota turned to the next page and began reading.

  Chapter One: Beyond the Seven Doors

  Why That Woman?

  Kate and Connor Robinson sat with their noses to the glass in the family room on one of the coldest nights’ in May. They sat on their knees in the chair beneath the window as they watched the headlights of their parents’ car slip down the pavement until the driveway turned back to darkness. The children watched as the rain continued to fall when the sound of a throat clearing emerged from behind them.

  Kate’s long, brown ponytail hit her cheek and her twin brother’s chin as she whipped her head around. Their baby sitter, an old woman with si
lver curls that stood stiff on top of her head, stood with her hands across her chest in the middle of the family room. She was dressed casually in a floral shirt with lilac pants and clean white sneakers.

  The old woman flashed a smile that appeared almost sinister to the children. “Let’s take a field trip,” she said, clapping her hands together impatiently. “Who wants to take a field trip?” Just for fun, she raised her own hand. Her movements made the children uneasy, but they went with her, nonetheless.

  After loading the children into her car and driving for some time, the woman, Georgina Collins, pulled up to a dimly lit parking lot and opened the door to the backseat to let the children out of her navy green station wagon. It was May 30th, 2013, and the clock on the dashboard read 6:13pm. She took the children, one in each hand, to the end of the pavement before walking them onto a dirt road that lead toward the woods.

  Kate counted the cabins in her head as they walked. She wanted to know how far they were going from the car, and how many cabins it would take to get back. But what do children have to be afraid of? Why would they have any reason to fear anything, especially to fear not getting back? Georgina walked them past a sign that read, “Happy Endings Resort”.

  Dakota paused. She thought the author seemed very angry and even a bit cynical, almost frustrated about writing this, or as if this was the journal of a crazy person. Her gaze swept over the cover once again, searching for the author’s name, or at least an alias, but she found nothing. Sighing, she turned back to the page and continued reading.

  Kate and Connor’s pajama cuffs dragged in the dirt as they walked down the road, barefoot. The rocks were rough against their feet, and Kate would jump every few steps, for there was always that one rock that hurt more than the others.

  The woman took them to a cabin near the lake and pulled a key out of her pocket. She put the key in the lock and pushed the door open. They all stepped into the darkness; the only light was coming from the window on the far side of the cabin.

  Georgina got down onto her knees and dragged the children down with her. Kate grew nervous when the woman’s fingernails touched her hand.

  “Let’s play a game,” Georgina said, removing the jacket she was wearing. This time, Connor was the one who became uncomfortable. “Can someone count the windows in here?” the woman continued.

  Kate sat cross-legged on the floor while Connor sat up, still on his knees.

  “One.” he answered immediately. The twins were only seven years old, but there were old enough to know how to count.

  “Very good.” Georgina was a fourth grade math teacher, and in some ways she acted it. “Gold star for you, Connor.” She patted him on his head with her hand, like a dog.

  “How many doors are in the room?” she asked.

  “Two,” Kate said, referring to the bathroom door and the front door.

  The woman rose from the carpet and walked to stand beside the window.

  “How many of them are locked?” she asked.

  Connor shrugged. “All of them?” answering her question with one of his own.

  “Good.” she praised, stepping to her right. “Now, here’s a hard one.” She paused. “How many doors are under the house?”

  Ten seconds passed, and neither child had said a word. They looked at each other anxiously.

  “You don’t know?” she said with a sarcastic gasp. “Well, then, I’ll have to show you.” She put her weight over the carpet and a loud creaking sound filled the room. Both children look at each other, wide-eyed.

  “There’s a magical door underneath here.” She whispered, pulling up a loose patch of carpet.

  In the floor underneath the carpet was a door with a metal pull handle; it looked like a trapdoor from a scary fairy tale. The children rose to their feet and walked over to where the woman was standing. She crouched down before the door and looked up at the children.

  “There are keys somewhere in this room,” she whispered. “Who can find them first?”

  Kate was the one who came back with the ring of keys after a few minutes of searching. Connor tried to take credit for helping, but, due to his sister’s large ego, was unable to.

  The woman snatched the keys from Kate’s hand and examined them. Each key on the ring was labeled with a circular sticker that listed the numbers one through eight. After a moment, she handed the keys back to Kate.

  “You found them!” She and Kate knelt down beside the door, and she placed Kate’s hand against it. “Open it,” she ordered, her eyes glistened in the moonlight.

  Once the door was unlocked, the children were able to pull it open. It was a heavy wooden door that weighed as much as the storm-cellar door at home. All three of them peered down into what appeared to the children to be bottomless hole that was approximately four feet wide.

  “It’s a well,” Kate said.

  “A dry well,” Connor added smugly.

  “Actually, it’s a tunnel. A very deep tunnel.” Georgina took Kate’s arm. “Grab that rope, there,” she said, almost lifting Kate over the hole. Kate screamed as she was slightly lowered down.

  Connor took Georgina’s arm in attempt to stop her. “Send me down,” he urged. “I can grab it!”

  With nothing to support him but the old woman’s hand, Connor was the one who was sent down into the tunnel. He knew he was brave, and besides, he would rather have something happen to him than to his sister; his father always told him that he had to look out for her, even though he was technically the younger twin.

  Connor was pulled back up with the rope in his hand; at the end of the rope was what looked like a large wooden bucket. As Connor got back above ground, the old woman forced them both inside of the bucket.

  “Get in,” she demanded.

  Kate and Connor did as they were told. The hand-strewn rope was tied to a double-handled bucket that was about three feet across. The bucket was shallow, but wide enough for both children to fit inside, but uncomfortably. Georgina climbed in after them, standing over them.

  Neither child knew where they were going as she began to lower them down into the hole, but they both had the same feeling that they weren’t ever going to leave.

  Chapter Three

  DAKOTA CLOSED THE BOOK and pushed it away from her with a shiver: it reminded her, uncomfortably, of what had happened to her little sister. She could just picture little Diana, traveling down a hole in the ground, led by a woman she had never met before.

  The image made her sick to her stomach and her heart began to race as she rose to her feet. The few things that were on the desk fell to the floor as she tried to catch her balance. Her head began to pound as she stumbled outside. She lost her balance and let herself fall onto the steps of the wooden front porch.

  She sat there and put her hands against her scalp, closing her eyes in an attempt to stop the images of her sweet little sister, just nine years old at the time of her death. She had disappeared while under the care of a babysitter, only to be found two months later in the middle of a field in their home state of South Carolina, naked and badly burned.

  Dakota’s mother, Detective Fiona Young, was one of the detectives who was covering the cases of nine other missing children at the time. Their mother had been working late the night that Diana had disappeared. Fiona had come home to find that a teen-aged Dakota had left Diana at home with a babysitter she had found randomly on Craigslist earlier that night.

  When Fiona had returned home, the house was empty. When she called Dakota’s cell phone for an explanation, Dakota couldn’t explain why Diana wasn’t at the house. Two months later, Diana was found by Fiona and her partner, Detective Roy McDonald.

  The night after Diana’s closed casket funeral - she was too badly mutilated for an open casket - Fiona had drowned herself in the upstairs bathroom.

  Dakota was almost 20-years-old at the time of her mother’s death, and at her mother’s funeral, Dakota’s grandmother, Marie, found her standing alone.

  Marie sighed and p
ut her arm around Dakota’s shoulder. “No mother should ever have to bury her child,” she said. “A mother should never have to be the one to send their child into the ground.”

  Marie was Dakota’s father’s mother. Her father, Antonio had died three years prior in a fatal car accident off the interstate. In that one year, 2013, Dakota had lost her mother, her sister, and her maternal grandmother.

  As she rose from the wooden porch step, Dakota’s head began to spin once again. Tears welled in her eyes as she pictured so many horrific images all at once. She walked out into the dirt road and dropped to her knees, allowing the rocks to poke through her jeans, ignorant of the pain.

  When she heard footsteps approaching, she wiped her eyes and looked up to see a man standing above her. He stood about six feet tall, and his black hair came down to his shoulders. His brown eyes were hidden from view by a low sitting baseball cap, but what she could see of his face was handsome. He had a short black beard that was neatly trimmed and covered his sharp jaw line, and he wore a tank top that flashed his toned biceps. The only thing peculiar about his attire were the pair of heavy black leather gloves he was sporting, given that it was the middle of spring.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  Dakota accepted his outstretched hand, which was intended to help her stand up, but when his glove slipped off his fingers, he quickly retrieved his glove and jammed his exposed hand into pocket. Dakota rose to her feet in her own, and while she brushed herself off, she got a better look at the man’s face.

  “Do I know you?” she asked. She couldn’t place it, but she felt she recognized his face. At her words he hid his face in his jacket collar. “What’s your name?” Dakota asked.

  He gave a nervous chuckle. “What are you? A cop or something?” He took his hand from his pocket, the glove still missing, and pulled his collar up higher over his face. His action allowed her a look at his hand.