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The Door to Nowhere
Many years ago, my roommate situation went sour and I needed to find a new place fast. I was pretty much broke, but I lucked out and found a dirt-cheap one-bedroom in a decent neighborhood. I called up the landlord in hopes I could score the place before anybody else got it. I went over that afternoon and found a shabby excuse for a building. It was a two-story duplex with cinderblock walls, with a gravel patch in front for parking and a small concrete patio surrounded by dead grass out back. I was in no position to be choosey, though, so I gritted my teeth and prepared for the tour. When the landlord showed up, she was very apologetic in telling me that the advertised unit had been rented out that morning. The upstairs unit had become unexpectedly available, though, and she asked if I'd like to take a look at that. We walked up the wobbly wooden stairs and I entered the space that I'd be inhabiting for the next few years. The walls were covered in cheap faux-wood panelling, the floors were covered in nubbly beige industrial carpet, the counters were chipped and stained. But it was cheap, and I was broke and desperate. I wrote a check right there and was told I could move in immediately. While moving in, I realized the previous tenant had moved in a hurry. There were no clothes or furniture or food left behind, but the cabinets were full of cleaning supplies, the junk drawers were packed with random stuff, and they'd left behind their ironing board, broom, and mop. Worst of all, the bathtub drain was packed with stringy clumps of gray hair; I buckled down to clean it out, but it seemed like every time I looked it was full of hair again. I also found the most bizarre feature of the apartment, something I didn't even notice until I'd been sleeping there for a few nights. In the bedroom, next to the window, was a door. How could I fail to notice a door? I have no idea. I opened up the door and saw that it led to nowhere, just a straight drop down from the second story. I guessed that there'd been a balcony once but that it had rotted away. I got serious vertigo whenever I opened it up and stood in the doorway, so I mostly kept it closed and locked. It was crazy, but I even latched the chain on the door, just to feel safer. After I'd been living there a few months, the scuffling at my front door started. Once or twice a week I would wake up in the middle of the night and hear someone rattling the doorknob. Sometimes there would be knocking, and once there was a pounding on the door hard enough that I felt my bed shake. At first I'd grab my trusty lead pipe, creep into the living room, and look through the peephole. There was never anyone there, and eventually I stopped checking. I figured it was just the house settling, or overactive imagination, or something. Then the footsteps started. I would wake up to the rattling at my door, and then I would hear someone walking around in my living room, occasionally shuffling through papers. My lead pipe and I never caught anyone there, though. I never noticed anything out of place in the morning, but I was a lousy housekeeper. This continued for months, but one night the script changed. The rattling at my front door woke me up. I heard footsteps in my living room, through the door to the left of the foot of my bed. The window behind my bed cast a square of light onto the far wall, and the mostly forgotten door to nowhere was to the right of my bed. On this night, the footsteps and paper shuffling stopped, as they always eventually did, but soon started up again. Instead of the sound of someone creeping around in my living room, the footsteps became hard and deliberate and were moving toward my bedroom. I saw a shadow pass through the light on the far wall, and then for the first time I heard the sound of someone working the doorknob on the door to nowhere. I wish I could say I did something brave, or even something sensible, but I shut my eyes tight and grabbed the clothes beside my bed. I ran outside the apartment in my underwear, got dressed on the porch, and ran barefoot to my car. Fortunately my keys and wallet were in my pants, and I always kept a pair of sandals in my back seat. I stayed at Denny's until it was light outside and came home. The door to nowhere was unchained and unlocked. I felt like a dork, but I burned a sage candle and ordered the spirits to leave. I didn't sleep easily for weeks, but I couldn't afford to move or rent a motel room. The front door rattling and soft footsteps in the living room continued, but they never approached my bedroom again and the door to nowhere remained silent. more