You stare at the kitchen doorway, ears intensely focusing on trying to pick out any further sound coming from in the house. The thunder and lightning cause you to twitch, managing to make you jump despite being a constant presence every few minutes.

An ache in the side of your face causes you to realize that you have been clenching your jaw too hard. You try to relax it and slowly sweep the torch over toward the open door and into the hall.

Despite your heart racing, your hand is rather steady with the light. The house is old, after all. Perhaps a breeze got in and pushed a door closed, or it was a different sound that your brain just equated to being a door. With nothing revealed just outside the room, aside from the eight picture frames, your eyes went over to the right.

The windows are streaked with rain, dotted with ever refreshing droplets. Enough to make it difficult to see the street outside, let alone the neighbors on the other side. There is a streetlight on to the right, but other than that it was just gray, constant storm.

You pull a face at the irony of being so secluded in the house that doesn’t feel like a home, but that is mostly to calm yourself down from thinking about the noise.

Still, it has been quiet since. Your parents don’t even have any pets, not since Bucky passed two years ago. Your father had said he just wasn’t ready for another dog so soon, and then they never really brought it up again. Maybe that was something the house was missing. You run your tongue across your teeth, the taste of cheddar still lingering.

Time to get some clothes on, before you really do catch a cold.

You step back through into the hall, more cautiously than before. The beam of light from your handheld flashlight brightens up the corridor leading down past several doorways. The stairs at the end leading up to the second floor are still stripped of carpet, removed but another project that had been put off. Your parents want to restore all the hardwood flooring, but have barely managed the full ground floor before getting bored with the notion.

Money was partly the issue, but it is also the inconvenience of constantly being under renovation that had worn their patience thin. Thankfully, you had been absent for the bulk of it, moving in after the kitchen had been finished.

You step slowly past the bathroom door, which is still open, not even daring to swing the light in there. If you are already on edge, there is no need to feed into the paranoia. You can survive one simple storm.

The next two doors are already closed. Not unusual, but it still makes you tense up. The one on the right is your sibling’s bedroom, and is normally locked up tighter than most bank vaults. The ’keep out’ sign had aged, but still applied. You pause and hesitate. Even knowing better, you try the handle. Breath held, just in case.

It is locked.

Both the flashlight and your eyes turn to the door slightly ahead on the left. The dining room and lounge. Biggest room in the house, something even you will admit is pretty nice. There is some temptation to push through and give it a once-over, but you didn’t want to tempt fate. Plus, without the heating on, it will probably be chilly in there. Maybe if the storm calmed down a little, you can set the wood fire up.

You head for the next floor, your bedroom up there. Feet against the rougher wood of the unfinished stairs, you pause and look down at the small door against the wall shadowed beside the back of the staircase. It leads to the garage out the back, where the washer and dryer are—among many other things you don’t care for. Tools and more unfinished projects. It was so cluttered that it wasn’t even used for your parent’s car to park in.

The door is also slightly ajar.

For the sake of your sanity and peace of mind, you should probably close it. Not something you are happy about deciding, but it’s some forward thinking that might put you at ease next time you have a weird noise to query.

You walk down the three steps backwards, keeping the torch on the garage door. The light flickers slightly before you press down on the button harder. First thing you’re going to do tomorrow is go and get a real nice torch. None of this archaic shit anymore.

As you step up toward the door, you can feel a slight breeze of cooler air coming through the gap. Not quite enough to make you think there’s an open window or anything—the wide garage door is unlikely to be completely weatherproof, so a chill was almost expected.

Your hand extends towards the handle.

Something about the fridge in the garage, your mother had said in the message. Not entirely enough of a concrete request that makes you really want to go in there. Maybe after you put some actual clothes on. Your hand grips the cold metal and pulls the door closed.

It clicks shut.

You sigh and shake your head. Obviously you have doors on the mind today. It must have been something in your book that has made them a focus. You turn and the flashlight illuminates your path, a flash of lightning then pulsing through the hallway. As the near-instant rumble of thunder almost deafens you, you use it as an excuse to power back around and up onto the stairs. Torch and eyes kept low, just at your intended path.

No need to linger on the darkness, or closed doorways, or even the paintings on the wall. You’d seen them all a hundred times before. The house was the same as it was in daytime. It was just your perception of the darkness making it feel more sinister.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Or at least, that’s what you tried to tell yourself.

Up onto the next floor landing, you immediately went for your bedroom door. You open it up, step inside, close the door, and lean against it. Flashlight circles around everything within. Just as you had left it this morning.

The window beside your bed rattles slightly as the wind pelts it with raindrops. It was even darker outside now, almost like night. You pan your light across the shelves of books on the right, just above your drawers full of clothes.

You murmur some displeasure over the book still being held prisoner in your backpack. It isn’t likely the bag was completely waterproof, at least not to the extent that you got soaked. If it is damaged, that will be a shame, but rushing down to save it now will probably be fruitless.

After an attempt to place the torch down and it just flickering and turning off three seconds later, you resign yourself to getting dressed in the dark. Something your mother often said you must do anyway, with the state of some of your outfits. For now, comfort was more important than appearance.

Top drawer has your socks and underwear, the second has your tops, and the third your bottoms. Aside from your bookshelf, it was one of the few places you kept some order. It made dressing yourself in this dim light reasonably easy. After completely stripping, you put on new underwear, thick socks, compression shorts underneath tracksuit pants, a t-shirt, jumper, and hooded top—and then even managed to find a beanie by touch alone.

With a sigh, you felt reasonably content now. Warmer and dry. Safer, in fact—as though you have protection from whatever weirdness has affected you alongside the storm. Reading a book with the finicky torch sounded like a headache waiting to happen. But by candlelight? You smile. That can work.

Something to get your mind off the splinter. You are doing your best to come to terms with it. There is no proof that it ever happened other than the very vivid memories inside your head—and you’d rather believe that it didn’t happen.

You look around your room again, torch picking out the details and casting shadows around the walls. So determined to not allow this to be your space, you haven’t really decorated it much. A couple of photo frames of your best friend you moved away from, one of Bucky, and some shots from the book fair you traveled hours to get to—just to meet one of your favorite authors. Aside from those and the overburdened bookshelves, it doesn’t look as though anyone really lives here.

While you glumly stare at the rows of books, your heart catches in your throat.

Muffled, but clear even over the rain. A creak, and a door clicking closed again.

It doesn’t sound too close, so it must be one of the ones downstairs again. You put all your eggs in the basket of it being that door to the garage again. The wind was probably causing pressure and moving it back and forth. That sounded reasonable to you.

So why are you frozen in place?

You shake your head. This is ridiculous. What would your parents say if you spent the whole day just jumping at every random sound and circling the house on edge? Probably nothing good. Not that your parents are ever mean as such, they just didn’t get you. They waved away your issues about being here. Being dismissed felt…

Well, perhaps not as bad as getting spooked by the wind moving doors.

You adjust your grip on the torch again, the constant pressure against your thumb feeling uncomfortable. In fact, you are pretty close to finding the super glue and getting the switch permanently set in place. The adhesives are stored in the garage, so perhaps you can line all the birds up for a good stone’s throw. Then, on the way back, grab the candles from the kitchen. Settle in under the covers and wait for the storm to blow over.

It sounds foolproof. You work out your shoulders to prepare to tell that door what’s good for it. Maybe find some manner of stop for it. Simple problems, easily solved.

With another sigh, you set off.

Out of your bedroom and onto the landing. Your parent’s bedroom was opposite, their door closed. While they have an en-suite to the right, on your side there is just a storage room. Also closed. The small window at the end of this short hallway let in some dull gray light, silhouetting a short round table in front of it, the houseplant sitting there looking rather miserable.

You turn and make your way slowly down the stairs, being careful your socks don’t slip on the edges. Perhaps not the best choice for moving around the wooden floors in the house. As you descend, you turn your eyes down over the bannister to peek at the door to the garage.

The line of gray signals that it is open by a crack again. Most likely, the closing sound was just the mechanism unlatching as the change in pressure drew it open. You almost felt like patting yourself on the back for getting that right.

Around the bottom of the stairs, the torch illuminates the offending doorway. You step forward and grip at the cold handle again, this time pushing it open. You feel the cold air immediately on your face, and point the torch forward.

Clutter. Shadows amongst shadows, as dozens upon dozens of unrecognizable objects fall into the glare of the light. The large garage door to the left wavers slightly, and a small amount of chilly air reaches you with a renewed gust. Just as you suspected. The fridge sits next to a large freezer on the back wall, but from this distance neither looked particularly useful nor in need of your attention. Whatever your mother had said can wait.

Instead, your attention turns to the right. The metal workbench covered in small cardboard boxes will have the superglue on it somewhere. A corkboard is affixed to the wall above it, carrying a variety of different tools. Your eyes move across them and pick out a file that looks like it can wedge under the door to keep it closed.

After several boxes of different sized screws, and one pot of what was hopefully just grease, you find the bottle of superglue and pocket it.

You give the garage another sweep with your light, the lightning outside barely hitting the space that didn’t really have windows. It was difficult to say if anything will be useful for your current situation, when it was mostly junk that isn’t useful full stop.

With a shrug, you turn and leave the room. You kneel down by the bottom of the door and pull it closed, wedging the file in at an angle. Not enough to break or get it fully stuck, but there is enough friction and pressure that it should stop popping open on its own in the future.

You give it a nod, for a job well done. Now you will need the candles and to retreat to your bedroom, and this storm was as good as finished.

The torch flickers before you press down on it again, stabilizing the necessary illumination. You walk away, back down the hallway, toward the kitchen.

Clunk.

You wince and tense up at the sound of the door unlatching once again. Perhaps the file has failed you.

As you turn back around, your heart stops and you almost drop the torch in shock.

The gray garage door is now red, but the paintwork on it is flaking and aged. Wet vines grasp at the edges of it, rain dripping onto loose mud around the hardwood floor.

This is the door from the woods.