The Wrong Door

BY DR. AGONSON

There are places where one might feel the restlessness of the dead if he were to close his eyes, maybe, hold his breath, and listen. These sad nooks, these little corners of impotence which abut another world have an effect on the well-mannered majority of humanity to be politely ignored and locked away in disused rooms; it is a majority of which, regrettably, I am no longer a part. It is felt, perhaps, best to let sleeping ghosts lie—if they would only have the good graces to sleep! Most of the dead do sleep; even the murder and the suicide are known to rest.

There is a place, I will not say where, where just such an unquietness is felt by even the most inconsiderate cad whose ear is never empty of a podcast or audiobook, a place that will be noticed. The cold shoulder is turned in vain, for no matter how cold it is, there is a warmth to all living flesh that can yet feel a chill when that which no longer has any warmth to give gives what it does have.

And on that evil day in which I discovered these things, these trifles as far as the cosmos is concerned, though if the cosmos is concerned over anything, I wouldn’t know. Concern, I have found, is not in the domain of such colossi. I might say, not their concern, but the joke doesn’t fit right. Unconcerned, Cthulhu sleeps. It is only the madness of men to try and wake the dead.

I did not, let it be set down clearly, wake the dead, and was given no warning, at least none that I noticed. I suppose, as I look back on it now, I was plugged in, insensible to the world around me. I forget what I was listening to. It doesn’t really matter. I had no desire to interact with mankind, at least not face to face, not actively. No, better to be a watcher, a consumer, a listener in. It feels momentous to listen to great speakers speak, and it isn’t all that dangerous really; there’s no danger if you are the type that won’t take anything they say very seriously.

But there are things that one cannot escape by inattention. It does no good to ignore the bullet passing through your skull.

There is a haunted house. Most of the house is unhaunted, by the way. It is really just one room. There is a house which is haunted by a room, a room haunted by a memory, a shadow of things past, a past that is remembered though all the world forget. It is what some call a ghost, a room where a child is said to have died, a room in a house, a house in our world, a world I once tried to escape. The story, if you’re interested—I’ll try to keep it brief—is that the child got sick and died; its mother—I do not know even the sex of the child—spent the rest of her life in mourning. She would visit the room daily, and it is said that she also died there. That was some fifty years ago since she died, and there are few to keep the memory. Her surviving daughter, who keeps the house, does not like to tell the story. As far as I know, I am the only one she has ever told. She never goes into that room.

I would not have gone into the room myself, only, I was not paying attention. I had freed up an ear enough to learn where the bathroom was, got lost, eventually found a bathroom, got lost, and was fairly sure the door I had come through to get where I was had somehow been locked behind me.

It was the room I have mentioned behind that door. I had knocked, called out, asked, even, to be let in. Again, I had deigned to free one ear of its earbud so that I might have some communion with the living. There was no answer, no verbal answer, only, I finally saw that the lock was on this side. A thought nearly formed in my mind that—but the speaker was making one of those perfect, cutting remarks that so lambasted the other side, and I just wanted to enjoy his rhetoric.

I turned the lock, grasped the knob—I remember a certain shock at its coldness—and pushed open the door. It was, of course, not a door leading back downstairs, though one door looks very much like another whether or not they lead to the same place.

It was a room, an empty room, with dusty, sun-weathered toys lying about unplayed with. An empty bed with a chair, a simple wooden chair, beside it. In my confusion, I walked in, trying not to let the real world barge in on my attention—whatever the lecturer was saying at the time seemed of primary importance, and yet something warned me, some inner voice tried to be heard over the earbuds.

There are places haunted by something, a something that will make itself known, will be heard. Behind me, the door fell closed. I was alone, and yet not alone. I had, of course, with me the voices of clever men discussing important issues, and I had the displaced earbud ready to go back into place, but my hand stayed. I felt something, something more than I could or can explain. With a shiver, I turned back.

Then I saw that the door was closed, and I knew, with some sense that I cannot explain—it was like a nagging, that slight remembrance that you have forgotten something—that I was not alone. And in that room of prodigies, a miracle, though it might not seem so to you, I unplugged. Not just half-way. I freed the other ear and spun around.

The room was empty and not empty. The room was silent and not silent. Suddenly, I was crying, my face wet with tears, ugly, snot-filled tears. A tragedy I did not know nor understand enveloped me, and, overcome by such a bitter sorrow, I fell to the floor.

My hostess eventually found me. I think she knew, and I think she searched every room in that house before she found me. She took me by the hand and led me sobbing to the kitchen. There, the old lady cleaned me up, fed me a little snack, and told me some of her story so that I would understand something of what happened.

She has, since then, I believe, locked that door again, and I have never been invited back. I suppose it’s best. Such sorrow is inconsolable by man. But I know that house is haunted because that room is in it. I know that room is haunted by whatever is inside. A ghost inside a room inside a house, and that house inside a world…where does it end? The world, then, is all I know, and I think this world is haunted. I think that’s why I, why so many, tried to shut it out for so long, but now my door’s open.