Chapter 10
The eye staring out from the center of the door was bloodshot, watery, and unmistakably ancient, yet it bore the exact same piercing green iris that both Mark and David shared.
David staggered backward, tripping over his own boots and slamming heavily into the opposite wall. "No... no, that's impossible. Grandfather died in a nursing home in ninety-eight. We went to his funeral. We watched the casket go into the ground!"
"Did we?" Mark asked, his voice chillingly calm as he stared directly into the horrifying aperture in the wood. "Or was that just another room we decided to lock and walk away from?"
The eye blinked slowly, a dry, papery sound echoing through the hallway. Then, the skin around the eye split apart, forming a jagged, lipless grin that stretched impossibly wide across the splintering wood of the door.
"You always were the slow one, David," a voice rasped from the opening—a voice that sounded like grinding stones mixed with their grandfather's distinct midwestern drawl. "Took you ten years just to notice a door in the hallway. Your father would have figured it out in five."
David pressed his back flat against the wall, clutching his head in his hands. "Stop it! Just stop it! This isn't real! I'm having a psychotic break. We're both having a shared delusion!"
"Is it a delusion, David?" Mark asked softly, turning to look at his brother. He slowly raised his right arm, holding up his bruised wrist where the purple finger-marks glowed under the light. "Does a delusion leave a mark that stays after you wake up?"
David stared at the bruises, his breath hitching in his throat. He looked back at the door, where the grinning maw was beginning to drip a thick, dark, viscous fluid that pooled onto the polished wooden floorboards, hissing softly as it corroded the polyurethane finish.
"What do you want from us?" David shouted at the door, his voice cracking with desperation. "What did we ever do to you?"
"You didn't do anything, boys," the raspy, grandfatherly voice replied, the tone shifting from mockery to a haunting, maternal warmth. "You just forgot to feed the walls. A house like this needs maintenance. It needs memories. And you two have been starving it for a decade with your quiet little suburban lives."
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The front door of the house, which David had left wide open, suddenly slammed shut with a thunderous crash, the lock turning itself from the outside with a heavy, final click.
The lights in the hallway flickered violently once, twice, and then died completely, plunging the entire corridor into absolute, pitch-black darkness, save for the faint, sickly green glow emanating from the gaping mouth in the white door.
