The White Door

by Christy Sloat

  My dad rolled his eyes and poured a glass of wine. “Now? Can’t this wait, hon?” he asked her. She gave him a look, one that said, yes, now! Don’t correct me!

  He threw his hands in the air, defeated, and sat at the table with her. I bit my lip and closed my laptop. Ephraim kept his open, choosing to listen while he worked.

  “What is it?” I asked nervously. They never really wanted to talk with us unless it was about sex or something equally embarrassing.

  “Brylee, your dad and I are going away on a cruise and I wanted to talk with you guys about being alone here together while we’re gone.” Yep, embarrassing, just like I thought.

  I had totally forgotten that they were going away on a ten day cruise that left in three days. My mind was mush lately.

  “Mrs. Branson, I assure you there will be only a few wild parties and no strippers allowed,” Ephraim joked. She laughed, but my dad didn’t. He was getting tired of Ephraim staying here and he didn’t need to say so. I could tell by his expression and the way he regarded Ephraim, like he was the man to take me away forever.

  “Ephraim, let’s be serious. You’re both going to be alone for nearly two weeks. I was thinking maybe you could stay with your Aunt Leona for a while,” Dad suggested. My mouth fell open in shock. I had to come up with something and quick.

  “No. Dad, the storm is coming. I can’t leave Ephraim here alone and I especially can’t leave the house alone.” I was impressed by my acting skills. “It’s safer if we stay together. Whatever it is you’re afraid of Dad, it’s not going to happen.” I knew damn well what he was worried about. He was scared Ephraim would either get me pregnant, or I would run off and marry him in Canada.

  “Honey, it’s not that we don’t trust you,” my mom assured me. “But you do have a point about the hurricane. Now I’m afraid to go.”

  My dad shook his head. “Oh no you don’t. We paid for this trip and we are going on it.”

  My dad was ready to get away and he wasn’t being shy about it. He was itching to leave New Jersey and come hell or high water, he was getting on that boat. “Ephraim said the hurricane would be no big deal. Right, Ephraim?” Ephraim shut his laptop and turned his attention to my worried mom.

  “Yes, it’s going to be fine. Trust me,” he guaranteed. “I will make sure Brylee is fed and bathed every night, too.” While I laughed at this joke, it struck a chord with my dad as he got up from the table to refill his wine glass.

  “Not funny!” my dad said to him. “But, I know you’re going to make sure she’s safe.”

  Ephraim nodded and my dad sipped his wine while my mom dished out our dinner. We ate in silence and I caught Ephraim looking at me from across the table. He winked at me and I smiled. We could use a little break from my parents, I suppose. I just wished a storm wasn’t coming.

  Chapter 6

  I had a diary to look for, and after school the next day I was set on finding it. Although, Sophie was set on driving me insane. She not only switched all her classes around to make sure she was in every one of mine, except for Art III, she also followed me around like a lost puppy. Even if I went to the bathroom, she was there. My suspicion about her blocking me from Lynley was starting to grow because Lynley couldn’t be anywhere near me while Sophie was there. But, once I left school, there she was, waiting in the car. Music blaring and all.

  “Thank god school is over,” I told her as I got in. “I missed you so bad.”

  “Me, too. I did get some information about Kayla while you were at school.”

  “Lynley, you’re amazing. What’d you find?”

  She pulled out a piece of paper with an address on it. I took it and shrugged. “Okay? What’s this?”

  “Kayla’s address, thanks to the school records office,” she exclaimed. “I can’t be around you but I can walk around the school.” I tried hard not to laugh about the mental image of Lyn snooping around the school records office.

  I took the address, put it in my GPS, and we were off. In only a few minutes we were pulling onto a street that was hazardous at best. Broken down houses lined the road, while the nicer ones had For Sale signs up. I locked the doors and looked for the address.

  “There,” Lyn said, pointing to a tattered two story house that appeared to be abandoned. I pulled the car over on the side of the street instead of into the driveway. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do at first. Looking at the abandoned road, I made up my mind. I was breaking in.

  I got out and walked to the backyard while Lyn scaled the walls of the house like a spy. I could only laugh.

  “No one can see you, you know that right?” She didn’t care, she still acted her part of Lynley 007 and I attempted to look nonchalant while I tried every window in the back of the house. None of them were open. Finally, I found a set of storm doors set in the ground. A chain was wound through the two doors, but it looked really old. I rummaged through a pile of rocks in the yard and found one big enough for the job. Several whacks later, the chain broke away and I pulled it free. As I opened the storm doors, Lyn jumped up and down.

  “You’re so badass!” she whispered.

  “Lyn, you can scream if you want to. You do know this?” I teased. She threw a small pebble my way and I dodged it, laughing. I climbed down into the basement slowly. I wasn’t sure what I was going to encounter in there. Lyn followed behind me. I found a door leading to the house and pulled it open.

  The house smelled musty and faintly like cat pee. I held my nose until we reached the upper level of the house. The walls were bare and all of the furniture was gone. The house was definitely empty. Finding anything in here was going to be a challenge. I went room by room, looking around for anything until finally I came across a bedroom that I assumed could have been Kayla’s. The white walls were painted over at some point, but you can’t paint over black magic marker. The scribblings inside the closet walls were incredible. I didn’t need a diary to know what type of person she was. She loved poetry! It was all over her walls, and not just any poetry mind you, love poems.

  Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

  any experience, your eyes have their silence:

  in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

  or which I cannot touch because they are..........

  Cummings, Poe, and Browning covered the walls. With the paint job it was harder to read the rest, but the one by Cummings was easiest. It suited her the most, at least what I knew of her. Except I didn’t think Kayla had known love. Did she write them because she wanted to be loved? Or was there someone she loved and I didn’t know about?

  To be honest, I never really asked her about her life. She told me all she wanted to divulge and that was it.

  “There’s someone coming,” Lyn told me as I closed the closet door.

  “Who?”

  She pulled the curtain open to look outside. “A woman, and she has a key!”

  I heard the key slide into the lock and scrambled to rush down the stairs and out the basement doors. But I was too late; the woman was in the door and on me faster than white on rice. She barreled into me, knocking me into a wall. I tried to push her off of me, but man, this chick was strong!

  “This is private property, what are you doing in here?” she yelled.

  “I’m looking for something! Get off of me!”

  “In case you didn’t notice, the place is empty, so go steal your shit elsewhere.” She shoved me to the ground and I struggled to pull myself into an upright position.

  “I wasn’t stealing anything. I’m here for a friend. She used to live here.” She let me go and I rose quickly to my feet. I brushed my clothes off and decided to use the door to leave instead of the way I had entered.

  She grabbed my arm before I left. “Who?”

  “You wouldn’t know her, she’s dead,” I told her.

  Her grip remained firm as she looked into my eyes. “Kayla Hart?” she asked.

  I nodded. She did know her. “Yeah, Kay
la. I’m looking for anything she may have left behind. We, uh, we were friends, you know, before,” I replied, lying my butt off.

  She finally let me go and I walked out the door. She followed behind and then turned to lock up. Lyn walked out, eyeing this chick and shaking her head at me. Sure, this was el stupido, but I had to help Kayla. I didn’t know what else to do.

  “You’re not gonna call the cops, are you?” I asked nervously. How would I have explained this to my parents?

  She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry for tackling you, but I am supposed to watch the place and make sure that no one breaks in. My parents and I live next door.” I eyed her house, realizing it was one of the nicer ones with a For Sale sign on the lawn.

  “They’re realtors and they also promised Mrs. Hart to sell her house. It’s been on the market for a while.” She brushed her blonde hair away from her eyes. “Mrs. Hart took off after Kayla disappeared and ever since then I have to make sure freaks don’t trash the place.”

  This girl looked too old to be living at home with mommy and daddy. I wondered what her story was. “I’m Brylee,” I said before I left.

  “Anna, nice to meet you. Brylee, before you go, what were you looking for?”

  I considered not telling her. Then I had a change of heart. “A diary.”

  “We have all of Kayla’s things in our basement. Would you like to come take a look?” she asked, waving a hand toward her house.

  Chapter 7

  Digging through this girl’s basement was not what I had planned for my evening, but I needed to help Kayla. She had already drowned once and I didn’t need for her to continue to do it for the rest of her afterlife. I found all sorts of intriguing things that Kayla had once owned. For instance, she owned a lot of smutty books, most of which appeared to have been read several times. Their bent covers and worn pages were proof. I imagined her sitting in bed, reading them on a quiet afternoon. She was a shut-in, which I knew for sure. She told me she spent a lot of her high school years inside the house.

  Then there were the Wiccan items. I left that box alone and decided I wouldn’t dive into it. All her clothes were in black trash bags. There was something tragically sad about her clothes being treated this way.

  When you die was this what happened to your belongings? They get thrown in trash bags and dumped? Lynley sat on an old chair and watched me search. At first she said nothing, but by the second hour she was anxious to leave.

  “I don’t think we’ll find it in here,” she finally said.

  I rolled my eyes. “You won’t find anything, because you’re not helping me look.” Once I pointed this out she searched with me. Anna had left me to search alone, but she didn’t know that I had a friend here to help.

  I pulled the last box down from the shelf and the air in the basement changed. It went from hot and stuffy to ice cold. Lynley stopped what she was doing and gave me a puzzled look.

  “Can you sense that?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  If she could sense the difference in the temperature, what did that mean? Before I had time to think too hard on it, the box flew from my hands and crashed to the ground. The contents lay before us in a heap. Notebooks, old school supplies, and a black diary lay on the floor. Kayla stood before me now, pointing down to the book. I lifted it up and she nodded. “Why are you here?” I whispered.

  She opened her mouth to say something and water spewed out instead. She closed it immediately, stopping the flow.

  My heart ached for her. “Don’t worry, I have it. I’ll help you, okay?”

  She nodded and left us there.

  I reached the top of the stairs after re-packing Kayla’s things. Anna was in the kitchen cooking something that smelled delicious, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten dinner. The wind whipped outside and I buttoned up my jacket.

  “You find it?” Anna asked. I nodded and held it up for her to see.

  “You know, we weren’t friends. I was actually really mean to her,” she said as she stirred her meal on the stove. “After she went missing, everyone looked for her like crazy. I started to realize that I should have been a different person. I should have helped her that night.”

  “Wait,” I said, realizing what she just said. “You were there?”

  She nodded. Her faraway gaze landed on me. “I have changed. But, it was too late. I did the damage to her.”

  I gripped the diary and something told me I would find out just how much damage she did to Kayla as soon as I read it.

  “Thanks for letting me look,” I told her as I left her house. She may have said something back but I was already out the door before I heard anything.

  Lynley read while I drove home. Thankfully, she was strong enough to turn pages and move things. Reading while driving could be very dangerous.

  “Kayla and this Anna girl were bitter rivals,” she confirmed. “Wait!”

  “What! What’s wrong?”

  “Kayla had a boyfriend before she died! His name is Rich Stockard.”

  I was not just in shock, my mind was blown. I knew that Kayla had dated John Mayhew, but she never told me she had a full on boyfriend. “Like a serious boyfriend?” I asked.

  “Yes, very serious. It says they were dating right up until the night she went missing. She lost her virginity to him,” she confirmed. “She was in love with him, Brylee. Listen to this,” she said as she read from the diary out loud.

  He lifted me up and carried me up to my room. He gently laid me on my bed. I grabbed his hand before he walked away and it all happened in a single second. I pulled him down on me and consumed his mouth with mine. He tasted like cinnamon gum and I delved deeper, like I couldn’t taste enough. We didn’t even stop to breathe or to consider what we were doing and it was perfect. He slipped my shirt over my head and ran his fingers over my breasts lightly. I unsnapped my bra and he took it from there. Every other item of clothing came off so easily. It was perfect and painful. I won’t lie that it didn’t hurt. Because it did, but it also felt like bliss. The wonderful feeling was the fact that my body made him so happy. That I myself made him feel pleasure. It was at that moment that I knew what he and I had between us was very close to love.

  “Don’t ever think that you are worthless again! Because you mean the world to me,” he told me before we started again. I couldn’t get enough of him, not now or ever.

  I pulled my car into the driveway as I tried to process what Lyn had just read. Kayla lost her virginity to a guy that she had loved. She was a typical teen girl, not a shut-in like she’d told me. She was hiding things from me.

  I turned to Lyn and asked, “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  She shook her head “That I died a virgin?” she joked.

  “No, silly! We have to find this guy. He may be able to help us.”

  “Help do what?” Lyn asked, clueless.

  “Help her move on.” As I said it I knew it was true. Kayla’s time was up and I needed this guy’s help in order for her to escape her turmoil.

  Chapter 8

  That night I watched as my parents packed for their trip. I still couldn’t believe they were leaving us here alone while a hurricane sat waiting to tear up the entire east coast. My dad still assured me it would be fine, while my mom bit her lip nervously.

  Ephraim and I sat downstairs in the living room and talked in hushed tones about Kayla.

  “You know this is the right thing, right babe?” he asked.

  I nodded numbly. Part of me was happy to help her and the other part ached at the thought of letting her go. She had become a part of me. It also made me think about Lyn’s time. When would that be up?

  I sat in the bathtub soaking away the day’s events, and once I let the water drain, I let all my worries drain with it. As I dried off I opened the door and looked at the white door across the hall that held the curse of the Barclay sisters. Blindly, I walked toward it. I had locked the curse inside and it still sat in there. Floating in mid-air, or hec
k soaking in the wooden floor. I didn’t understand how it was there; all I cared about was that it was still there. While it remained there Evangeline couldn’t get her witchy hands on it. My eyes focused so hard on the door that I didn’t feel Ephraim’s hands wrap around me. Startled, I turned to him and let him hold me. My body was still damp and hot from the bath, but his heat warmed me inside. It made me almost forget the room. Almost.

  His lips found mine and he kissed me hard. I felt his yearning for me and I lost myself in his arms. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around him. He carried me into my room and we fell softly onto my bed. The towel I had on fell off and it was just us, together. He kissed me deeper and deeper. I couldn’t help but think about how much time we have had together. Kayla had been in love with Rich Stockard before she was ripped from this world too soon. It was time to stop worrying and just be with Ephraim.

  As we lay together, the breeze from outside blew into my room. We snuggled up in my bed and wrapped every part of our body together. He drew small circles on my arm, giving me the chills. I didn’t want him to stop.

  “Do you want to get married yet?” he asked out of nowhere.

  I laughed before replying, “You won’t give up, will you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Babe, I can’t wait to be your wife, trust me,” I reassured him. He just laughed and continued blissfully touching my skin until I fell asleep.

  My parents left in a taxi as the rain poured down on the house. The day was so dark it was almost like night outside. Ephraim and I watched them leave, like we were the parents and they were our children. We waved at them, huddled together at the door. Once they were out of sight, Ephraim shut the door.

  He turned on the TV and the news was the same as the night before. The storm was coming. My dad was hell-bent on leaving and I was scared. Ephraim assured me I was in good hands, but the storm was due to hit tomorrow. We had work to do. We were boarding up windows, pulling in outside furniture and stocking water and food.