With your heart beating loudly in your chest, you run your hand across the wall where your bedroom door should be. Smooth wood. Any hope that you can feel the ridges of the frame beneath the illusion are shot. To pieces. Withdrawing your hand slightly, you then rap your knuckles on the wood.

A dull knock that didn’t feel as though a hollow room beyond exists. You frown and knock again, twice, to be sure.

From somewhere downstairs, two muffled knocks repeated, like an echo.

While you remain frozen in place, you try to make sense of that. When you had blown out the candle, it had actually been the kitchen one, not from up here. If you knocked up here, were you actually physically downstairs knocking on something else?

There will be no better way of testing, really. You knock again twice.

No response. Your brief assumption is now thrown out of the window. You sigh and put your palm flat against the wall. The place where the splinter had pierced ached again. You wonder if you caught tetanus or some other infection. It was an old door. It was a very persistent door.

With nothing else to do up here other than pull a tired face at the houseplant and hope it will answer your unspoken questions, you turn back to the stairs. Time to teleport or find yourself somewhere else in the house. As much as this was soaking your very core with stress, your brain had started running on fumes. If it was a fever, there will only be so much before you passed out.

You didn’t even need to make it halfway down to the ground floor before you can see that there were no doors down here, either. Bathroom, your sibling's bedroom, and—looking over bannister—the door to the garage have all vanished. Replaced with plain wooden walls like the rest of the house.

Flashlight picking up little detail, you swing it ahead to the end of the hall. Picture frames on the wall, but you can’t see how many from this angle. Front door had vanished. Kitchen doorway was open still, your delusion clearly unable to paste over something that didn’t have an actual door before.

So where is the knocking coming from? Or the creaking?

You continue on and look at the picture frames. Usually, they are full of happy faces. Family members and close friends. All eight are now of the red door.

“Someone’s desperate for attention,” you murmur, rolling your eyes at the small squares. On the off chance this is some paranormal event instead of your brain losing wrinkles, then you are glad it was just a boring door of all things to be haunting you.

You sweep the flashlight into the open kitchen, half expecting the red door to be sitting beside the island counter - a steaming mug of coffee beside the handle and earnest intention to have a heart-to-heart discussion with you about why you don’t like living here. Maybe you are going insane. The fact you had imagined that scene first over all other potential options probably says more about you than the door.

But the kitchen was as you left it, except now the box of matches is beside the inert candle. The side door next to the fridge that leads to the living room is even still there. Closed. Maybe that is the intended route you were guiding yourself toward. Or being led to, by something else. You grab the box of matches slowly and stow it in your pocket, partially sure that it can’t take things if you have them on your person.

‘It’ being potentially yourself.

You walk around the island and over to the fridge, briefly considering more cheese. Where did your bottle of water go? You frown and glance back around the kitchen. The bathroom was the most likely place, although that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. You should keep hydrated.

Before continuing, you glance at the notes stuck to the metal surface of the fridge. Most of them haven’t been changed in weeks, so you have been pretty blind to their existence. Three receipts for things long past the date that the items could be returned now. A list of possible vacation destinations, one of which your family was currently on. Shopping to be picked up.

You switch the flashlight into your left hand and grab at the pencil dangling by a string, adding ‘cheese’ to the list. Now the rest is practically all yours to consume guilt-free. Torch back in your dominant hand, you sidestep the large refrigerator and glance at the door to the living room. Seemed normal.

If you can’t get to your bedroom, then the couch might take second place as a good place to…

You pause and look up as heavy footsteps run through the floor above you. That will be your parent’s bedroom. As your eyes follow the path the unknown person is taking, they seem to stop or evaporate just before getting to the doorway out onto the landing. After a few seconds, with only the storm providing background noise, you assume that whatever that was can be ignored.

Mostly because you can’t handle the possibility that you might hear it coming down the stairs. Toward you. A shiver runs down your spine and you return your eyes to the door.

Clearly, you have been going about this all wrong. Rather than keeping all the doors closed, you should have them wide open. You step forward, taking hold of the handle and pushing into the living room.

The fireplace was alight. Flames flickering as the wood crackled from the heat consuming it. Couches, the mini-bar, and table and chairs all illuminated in a soft amber glow that wavered as the wind blew down the chimney. You wonder how it had been lit, considering you have the matches. That seems like the most important question.

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Did you light it? It had been a consideration at one point, you seem to remember. Especially after getting soaked through three times. No, just the once. You shake your head as your mind feels fuzzy. Exhausted. It has been a long day of doors. The storm. Switching places. More doors.

You close the kitchen door behind you and lean back against it, your eyes so drawn to the fire that you can’t look away.

This is safety, right?

The usual door to the hallway on the right is missing, made obvious as there is a gap in the dozen or so paintings littering that wall. You were never a fan of them. Each of them is a very minimalist watercolor painting of rivers and streams. The sort of places you’d go fly-fishing or canoeing. Nobody in your family has done either of those activities, not shown any interest in the slightest. It was maddening.

On the left side, there are supposed to be glass sliding doors. Plain wooden wall occupies that space at present. At least you won’t have to stare out at the storm. Not that you can really hear it at the moment. There is an audible hum in the background, the wind and rain still active, but muted. The living room was usually awash with natural lighting, but with all windows now gone, there is a dark aura that clung to the edges of things. The corners untouched by the firelight just a deep red hue.

You take a couple of deep breaths, your lungs feeling heavy. The air struggles to fill you. Maybe it is the heat causing the air to feel thick. You briefly worry that the chimney is blocked, and the room is filling with smoke, but it doesn’t look likely. Still, you have had your fill with this place. Your bedroom would be better than here, and it may have returned by now.

Turning around to face the door you came in from, there is now just a plain wall there. Trapped. A brief spike of anger rises through your core. It is unfair. You have been drawn in here and now wasn’t allowed to escape. The crackling noise of the fireplace is no longer comforting, but gets on your nerves and makes you feel uncomfortable. You detest it, and the red door that constantly haunts your waking life.

“Let me out,” you request quietly, before repeating the phrase in a more confident tone. “Let me out.”

Your voice fills the relatively empty room and falls on deaf ears. Or not ears at all, is the more likely result. Despite knowing you can’t really negotiate with the apparition of a doorway you met in the woods, you have the hope that speaking the words out loud will shunt your brain toward normality once more.

Hopefully that will happen soon, as you are starting to lose sight of what ‘normal’ really was.

Was it normal for a family to leave a member behind when going on vacation? Sure, you weren’t a baby anymore. You have been without them when you lived in the city. You don’t need to follow them around everywhere.

Was it normal to be so detached from your family home on return? Probably not. Growing older, you have come to accept that your family aren’t exactly your sort of people. They aren’t bad, you have just found a different path through life. Parted ways with the rut they all seem to follow.

Was it normal to be haunted by a door that has the ability to change reality, or your perception of it? Doubtful. This wasn’t an allegory about adulthood or life moving on from the past. You are starting to think this wasn’t even your ill mind hallucinating things. Delusion probably had a limit, and you are certain you had passed it by now.

Partially because even with things getting gradually more off the walls—sometimes literally—you are still capable of some rational thought. Exhausted and on edge from the waves of alternating panic and adrenaline running through you—sure—but there is a lucidity to your thoughts that should have been reduced to mush if you truly were sick or going mad.

You turn your focus back to the living room, unsure as to why you have been brought here. There is no red door in sight. No danger or explanation for the weird sounds you have been hearing. Just a fireplace that shouldn’t be on. A warm flame that beckoned you closer. It had been a long day, and you deserved a rest. Not just deserved, you needed it.

What else are you supposed to do here? You already feel your eyelids getting heavy. If you are being offered a safe reprieve from the storm, the living room was the second best place for you to hunker down. You idly pat around at your pockets as you take a single step away from the wall.

Phone. Keys. Superglue. Matches.

Four things. Four things, you repeat to yourself. Keeping inventory becomes the method used to ground yourself. If there were ever more or less than four, but you don’t know why, you knew something would be up.

That doesn’t really help in the current situation, however. Another step took you forward, before you stopped. You would feel a lot more comfortable taking a nap if you knew who or how the fireplace came to be lit. Perhaps it was your imagination. Despite being quite some distance away from it, you hold up your left hand to feel for any heat.

Surprisingly, it does seem to be warmer in that direction. A couple more steps closer to the couch confirms that. If the windows and doors are as they should be, then you might even accept the fire for what it was and just enjoy yourself.

Instead, you take a few more steps, now up against the back of the couch. The flame certainly seems real. Flickering from the torment outdoors, the ambers and golden yellows are comforting. There is something about fire that hits the primitive part of your brain. Enrapturing. A place of safety.

Running your tongue over your dry lips, you circle around the couch slowly. Perhaps a little rest will do you some good. Five or so minutes and then you will get back to finding a way out of here. Hopefully back to your own room so you can sleep this all off properly.

It will be best not to get too comfortable.

Rather than sit on the couch, you place yourself down on the floor, your back resting against it. Your right hand aches from having such a tight grip on the flashlight for so long, so you place the light on the floor. In fact, a lot of you ached. Pacing through the muddied woods had been a slog, and the light jog before the tension of the house had done a number on your muscles.

Exercise under duress was a terrible thing.

You close your eyes—just for a minute, you tell yourself—so that you aren’t staring at the warm, comforting flames for too long. Basking in the heat, your mind drifts away from your current problems.

Then your eyes flicker open. In your heart, you know it has been much longer than a minute, but the darkness that greets you is unexpected. Your hand feels at the floor for the torch, but doesn’t find it. Rather than hardwood floors, there is the rough texture of worn carpet.

Your disorientated mind tries to make sense of the shadows coming into view as your eyes slowly adjust. Have you been transported again? Even without the warmth and light of the fire, you can tell this new space was way too large to be any of the rooms in the house.

Before you can push yourself to your feet, a flash of lightning briefly reveals the truth, illuminating familiar blocky shapes.

You were now in the library.