Behind the Door

by Mary SanGiovanni

  “Now you be careful, sugar,” she’d said with a warm and encouraging smile. “I’ll be praying for you.”

  So she had that going for her: Cicely and the God she put so much faith in were on her side. She kept that thought firmly in place as she approached the Door.

  She could hear, or rather feel, its faint hum, a sense of life or maybe sentience from beneath or beyond the Door. Perhaps it was what Cicely called “them behind the Door.”

  She approached it cautiously, suddenly and irrationally afraid it might open and suck her in, or maybe shoot lightning from the small crack beneath, or—

  It was just a door, not a wild animal. It wasn’t alive, right? Just a few slabs of wood in a stone frame.

  It wasn’t just a door, though. Even the most devoted skeptic would have had difficulty in maintaining his or her resolve of logic and the physical laws of the universe when standing so close to that Door. Kari’s remaining doubts had fallen away. There was something to those slabs of wood and stones—be it magic or electromagnetic pulses or whatever, there was something that could be felt on a primal, gut level that erased all doubt.

  She shut off the flashlight app and then her phone, and tucked the latter into the jeans pocket opposite her keys. Slowly, she lowered herself to her knees. She half-expected some glowing light to seep out from around and especially beneath the Door, or maybe fingers reaching for it, but none did. The moment was, were she to really stop and think about it, somewhat unceremonious. Whether that was a relief or a source of further unease was hard to say.

  She kissed the wax seal as if kissing Jessica’s cheek one last time, and slid the letter under the Door. Then she peered underneath to see if it was simply sitting in the dirt on the other side.

  It wasn’t. The letter was gone.

  For a moment, the humming grew louder, and in that moment, she had the near-hysterical notion to stretch her fingers under the Door after the letter and see what would happen. Then the humming faded and so did the thought.

  She rose, wondering what, if anything, would happen next. The Door was silent, cold, and dark as she backed away from it, but she watched it like it was a kind of wild animal.

  Then small indentations that filled with a glowing blue liquid formed in the frame. She saw that the glow took the forms of runic characters, though none that she could recognize. Both the Door and the nearby foliage and trees took up that glow until a flash of blue light swept the space where her letter (and almost her fingers) had been.

  For several seconds after the Door went dark, she stood frozen to the spot. That uneasiness from her dream had washed over her. It was not quite regret, but a sense of disappointment that she didn’t feel better. In fact, she wasn’t quite okay with what she had done. The feeling ebbed, eventually, but it took a long time, or seemed to. With hands she couldn’t entirely feel, she dug her phone out of her pocket, switched on the flashlight app, and made her way back through the woods to her car.

  The night—and the Door—had swallowed up her secret and her sorrow, and would remain mute.

  Chapter 4

  Toby whistled as he drove to the office the next morning. It was a Wednesday, the sun was shining, and for the first time in his life, he felt genuinely free. He hadn’t thought of little girls in days. He hadn’t driven past the park in a week—hadn’t even wanted to. In fact, driving home from work the other evening, he’d seen a woman—a grown woman—on the street, a leggy brunette in a tank top and shorts, and he’d checked her out. And it wasn’t because he was trying to practice keeping up the ploy of being attracted to adult women. It was because he was genuinely attracted to her. He’d felt a stirring in his pants hitherto reserved for young girls, and he’d gleefully gone home and jerked off to his mental pictures of the woman. When he came, he laughed and cried at the same time, a wellspring of emotion. He’d never felt so…normal.

  He spent the rest of that night deleting porn files from his computer and pictures off his phone. He didn’t keep a single one, not even for nostalgic reasons. He removed browser cookies and shut down his nearly-anonymous memberships to certain forums. He didn’t feel tempted to look at the new posts or respond to conversations in progress. Lastly, he got rid of the shoebox with the Polaroids and pictures printed from film from the old days. He burned those in the sink, and it felt like the shame was being burned out of his soul along with the photos.

  He got rid of everything in the house that he had ever used to pick up children, ply them into complacency, or otherwise memorialize his time with them, and it felt really, really good. It was like he’d developed an allergy, and in removing all trace of and every path to those allergens that he could, he could finally breathe again.

  It occurred to him that he could have taken his letter a step further and asked that all his victims (he hated to use that word, but there it was, and it was true) be healed from what he had done to them, or to have their memories of the time they’d spent with him be erased. He hadn’t really thought of that when he was writing the letter; it had been more of an exercise in removing his own feelings and the impending threat they brought. He didn’t dare write another letter, though. Ed had said one could only use the Door once. Still, he hoped that even if he couldn’t make up for what he’d done, at least he could now keep it from happening to anyone else.

  He could maybe have a normal life, with a wife and—

  Well, with a wife, at least. Maybe not with kids. One couldn’t look a preternatural (or was it supernatural?) event in the face and not be just the slightest bit leery of cosmic karma.

  Regardless, he could finally move on. He couldn’t wait to tell Ed all about it that night after work. They were getting together for their usual crushing of the beers at Ed’s place. In a way, he was apprehensive about seeing Ed. What could they really have in common now? And would it negatively impact his new lifestyle to pal around with Ed? Didn’t alcoholics have to cut off their drinking friends and their alcohol-related patterns of behavior if they had any hope of staying sober?

  Then again, Ed was really the only friend he had. Sure, he had acquaintances, maybe some he could let in a little now that he wasn’t so worried about preying on their kids, but Ed knew him in a way no one else did. Didn’t that deserve some loyalty?

  Toby supposed he’d just have to see how he felt when he got there. Late summer nights, with their crickets and fireflies and heavy, quiet air, had a way of swallowing anxiety, especially in Ed’s little dimly-lit den. Maybe everything would be okay there too.

  His eyes followed a big-breasted blonde until his car had passed, and he felt good. He felt unbroken.

  Yeah, everything would work out now. Life was changing for the better.

  * * * *

  “So it went smoothly the other night, then, sugar? You got to the Door and got your letter delivered?”

  Cicely and Kari sat at their usual booth at the Alexia Diner. It was quiet that afternoon; many of the regulars were absent—Bill, Ed, Grant, Edna, Flora, even that shiftless Dietrich kid—and the waitstaff seemed preoccupied.

  Kari considered the questions for a moment as if she couldn’t quite recall the context, finally nodded, then took a sip of her coffee.

  “Good. Good, I’m glad to hear it. I hope it all goes well for you. And I certainly believe Jessica would understand.” Cicely patted Kari’s free hand.

  “Who?” Kari looked confused.

  Cicely frowned. “Your daughter, sugar.”

  “Oh…oh, right, of course. Sorry.” Kari gave her an embarrassed smile and a little dismissive wave. “Sorry. Haven’t been sleeping well. Been having weird dreams and I think it’s making me a little flighty.”

  Cicely palmed her coffee mug with unease, feeling its warmth in her hands. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Kari shook her head. “I don’t really remember much about them. I guess it’s more the feelings they leave b
ehind when I wake up, but even those…I don’t know quite how to explain it.”

  “Well, it’s understandable, I’d say,” Cicely replied. “After all you’ve been through, all the recent changes, maybe your body and soul just need time to adjust.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Kari sipped her coffee again and gazed out the window, though it seemed to Cicely that she was looking at something farther off, out of view, a time or place from before she ever had need of the Door. Then she seemed to remember Cicely and said, “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

  “Well, just that I hope the days will be brighter for you, that things will start looking up now, and that I certainly believe Jessica would understand why you did what you did.”

  “Who?”

  * * * *

  Deets had to read the newspaper article three times before his brain would process the words or accept them as real. It was an article about the boy he’d hit with his car…which, according to the paper, had not actually been hit with a car, but had been crushed under the limb of a tree that had cracked in the rainstorm that night:

  Initial findings, which at first mistook the boy’s death to be a vehicular homicide, were then amended by the coroner’s report to death by accident. A combination of wind and the force of the rain on the night of the accident caused a massive tree branch to break free and strike the boy, Noah Thomas, 18, of Monroe County, killing him almost instantly. Officers report that the rain, which had washed a good portion of the victim’s blood off the limb and the road, obfuscated the scene, creating some confusion….

  Deets felt hot tears well up in his eyes, blurring the text. He mashed them away with a fist and read through the article again.

  The Door…his letter had worked. His wish that the car accident had never happened had been granted. He was free and off the hook. The tears came again and this time he let them spill down his cheeks. It was okay. Everything was going to be okay.

  He tore the article out of the paper and stuffed it in his pocket. He needed to hold on to some proof, to keep some record of the change until his mind accepted the new reality.

  On his way to work that morning, the article still in the pocket of his work overalls, he began to laugh and laugh hard. His stomach muscles knotted from the exertion, and fresh tears rolled down his cheeks. He laughed so hard he had trouble focusing on the road. It was a thin, hysterical laugh, he knew, but it felt good nonetheless. He was no longer a murderer forced to get behind the wheel of his killing machine every morning. He could take the FOR SALE sign out of the rear window now. He was free, free, and it felt so good.

  When he arrived at the garage, his boss’s wife, Flora, was at the front desk. A woman of about sixty with a wild jumble of gray-streaked red curls piled on top of her head, she looked up from her Better Homes and Gardens magazine and smiled at him. She was pretty good-looking for her age—a fit little figure and a pretty face only just showing the first signs of crow’s-feet, and when she smiled, Deets felt warm.

  “How ya doing this morning, sweetie?” she asked. She had a bit of a West Virginian drawl, having given up her ties to the lands south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but not her flavor, to be with her husband.

  “I’m…I’m great,” Deets said in earnest. “Better than I’ve been in a long time.”

  She winked at him. “Glad to hear it, hon. You’re a good guy. It’s nice to see you happy.” Then she went back to her magazine.

  Deets went back to his locker to get his tools, a bit of that warmth from talking to Ms. Flora diminishing. She’d called him a good guy. Was he? His karmic slate was wiped clean, but did that make him a good guy? And if not, what would?

  With the shine a little off his mood, he got his tools and got ready for the day.

  * * * *

  When Kari woke up that morning, she knew she’d been dreaming, but some of the details were hazy and growing fainter as more of the morning pressed itself into her bedroom and her awareness. She could remember a beautiful little girl, at least, with long, chocolate-colored hair and blue eyes and a soft, shy smile. The girl was someone she had loved very much in the dream, as a mother loves a child. She also knew that in the dream, the girl was in danger, but she couldn’t remember what from or why. As she slid out of bed, a cloud of anxiety followed after her like a scent. It wasn’t the dream that perturbed her so much as the fact that it was fading, and as it did so, it was taking with it something from her that she desperately wanted to keep. But what was it that she wanted to hold onto? What was she forgetting?

  She made coffee in the kitchen and when she realized she was humming to herself, she giggled. When was the last time she’d hummed or giggled? It had been years. Three years, as a matter of fact…which struck her as accurate, but oddly specific. Something had happened three years ago; it was on the tip of her tongue, just beneath the surface in her mind, but…but what?

  The anxiety came wafting back, nebulous and nagging. The thing that happened was related to the dream and thing she was forgetting. The girl in the dream—

  Jessica.

  That was it. Jessica, her daughter.

  Kari felt a tight fist of anger and shame in her gut. How was it even possible that she’d forgotten her own daughter’s death? How could she not have recognized the dream images of Jessica herself? She tried to conjure up in her mind a specific milestone—a birthday, a special occasion, even her daughter’s birth—and felt oblivion tugging at it like a tide, pushing and pulling at the details and trying to carry them away. How could—

  Then she remembered the requests she made by letter—and the Door.

  Oh no. No no no, not like this….

  She realized with horror where the anxiety was coming from. She wasn’t just losing the sad memories about her daughter’s death. She was losing all of them.

  “This can’t be happening,” she muttered to herself.

  Her mug of coffee forgotten, she returned to her bedroom, went to her closet, and pulled a large shoebox off the shelf. It contained an album of Jessica’s baby pictures, a pacifier, and her favorite stuffed animal, a brightly colored, fuzzy fish her dad had won her on the boardwalk during a family vacation at the beach. It also contained the admittance hospital bracelet Kari had worn when she’d given birth, Jessica’s birth certificate, some drawings and school papers, and Mother’s Day cards (which her father had helped her pick out, of course). Steven had kept some things, as well—Jessica’s first onesie, the birth announcement, a cigar with a pink ribbon around it, that sort of thing. But Kari had insisted on keeping the shoebox when they’d gotten divorced. It wasn’t just that she wanted it; she needed it, and although she could rarely bear to look at it nowadays, it had been a mainline to the past, when life had been full of promise and giggles, birthday parties and school lunches. There had been a girl named Jessica in her life once, a child who lit her up from the inside and had made Kari a mother. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed by the laws of the universe to maintain that title, but it meant everything to her to know it had once been the most important she had ever had.

  Now it might be the only tie to that past, the only tether to a reality that was being eaten away by her own request to the things behind the Door.

  She took a deep breath as her trembling hand grazed the lid. What if…what if the parameters put forth by the letter extended to physical objects and not just mental ones? She pulled off the lid.

  The contents were still there—the pictures, the little mementos, all of it. She exhaled in relief. So far, nothing on the outside seemed different. Still….

  She thought she understood now that vague disquiet that something was missing, that she was misplacing things in her mind. Over the last three days, her mind had been letting go of her memories of Jessica—her daughter, her little girl—like so many balloons released into the sky. She’d felt lighter, more at peace, sure, but this…this wasn’t what she wanted.
She didn’t want to forget her baby entirely; she only wanted to lessen the burden of pain that Jessica’s death had put on her.

  It was the letter. The Door had worked, just like Cicely said it would. Actually, it had backfired, like Cicely had implied it could. She had gotten what she asked for, and the realization that forgetting was even worse than remembering blindsided her.

  She’d made a terrible mistake. And she’d have to try to undo it before it got any worse.

  Worse? a new voice in her head asked somewhat coyly. Is it really so much worse not to have to be saddled with memories of a child’s suicide? With the accusing looks behind veils of superficial sympathy? With all the destruction losing a child has wrought on your life? Wouldn’t forgetting entirely be better?

  She told herself no, and could almost imagine invisible shoulders shrugging in her mind.

  You wouldn’t even know the difference. It would be like it never happened.

  She didn’t like this new way of thinking, this antithetical approach to Jessica’s memory, and wondered if it was a side effect of having used the Door. It certainly didn’t feel like her own way of thinking, though she refused to entertain the thoughts having an outside source.

  She also refused to listen to those thoughts. She would not forget her daughter. She wouldn’t let it happen, even if it meant….

  “Rule number one is that you absolutely, under no circumstances ever, open that Door. Once you deliver your letter, it is out of your hands.” That was what Cicely had said, but what if someone wanted to take back a wish? Such finality seemed overly dramatic. People made mistakes. Maybe there was still time to get the letter back and undo her request.