By Kelly Jiang
The door was never meant to be opened.
I could feel it, in the way the handle hummed under my palm. The vibrations weren’t whispers, soft yet far from a soothing lullaby. The cold metal repelled the warmth of my fingers, unwelcoming and a dead weight when touched.
Some would call the silence eerie. The manor had always been quiet; a creeping, unpeaceful quiet that crawled and left goosebumps across your skin. When I pressed my ear against the hollow wood of that door, though, it was not silence that I heard. Nothing distinguishable, nothing that could be deciphered beyond a toiling rumble. Yet when you could hear it well, there were tangible murmurings and whispers; never something that you could make out, but always something you could sense with the snaking anxiety at the pit of your stomach.
The hallway was nothing short of gloomy. Shadows hung over the flickering dim lamps lined across the faded wallpaper, alive and greedy–only to recoil from the yellow glow of the lights when they drew too close. The moth-eaten wooden floorboards groaned in protest everytime I tread upon them. Each step kicked up a new cloud of grime, blurring my vision and forcing me to squint. Dust filled every corner of the place. I would be a fool to wear sandals, in fear that I would step on an unnoticed loose nail leftover the manor’s last repair decades ago.
It wasn’t that I never mopped the floors or fixed the hanging boards that jutted out unaligned from their neighbors. It was that rooms never felt completely clean. Even after I wiped down every window and swept every inch of the manor, the debris and loose screws would appear an evening later—as if they’d always been there. As if the house belonged to them and that they were telling me it would never be mine, no matter how hard I try. The neighbors down the street insist that it’s haunted, but I believe that to be a stretch. Still, I find it a rather frustrating place to call home.
The shadows that lived in the dark corners weren’t my friends. They liked to duck and play, cackle and weep, casting dramatic scenes across the lit walls of the house. I found their company amusing during the day, claws and teeth tipped with sharp sunlight like glinting daggers poised for mischief, but they turned black and vicious after dusk. Although I laugh at the idea of spirits and ghosts, I couldn’t help but pull the sheets over my eyes every night. The blackness that blanketed the manor never made me turn heel and hide, but still, it gnawed on my nerves nonetheless. The quiet was so absolute that my own heart became a betrayer, hammering against my ribcage like an insistent drumbeat, loud enough that I feared it would summon the spirits living among the shadows or wake the slumbering dead.
I don’t remember what was behind that door. I don’t recall when it was last opened. I had grown up here–birthed, raised, and lived here until I had reached the age of eighteen. The manor was given to me through my father’s will, and I had gladly taken it. I knew of no other home and it had given me no reason to search for another. Yet now, I can feel whatever is behind the door growing restless. It pressed against the wood, seeping through the cracks and grasping for freedom.
The damp cold feels more peculiar than before–but I recognized part of it. Its creeping tendrils felt almost familiar, whispering sighs of desperate frustration. I told myself I’ll let it be for the night, but the thought clings to me and far too soon, I find myself drawn back. When I walk by that door again on a mellow Tuesday evening, the floor is littered with the scatterings of shadows. I pause and hesitate. Memories flicker at the edges of my vision: the sharp crisp crack of my father’s boots, my mother’s perfume, and the strong musty smell of new wood—but these moments, once so vivid, fade yet again and crumble to dust like the manor itself.
From then, the whispers grew; or maybe I was just listening more closely now. They didn’t feel quite angry, though. There was a softer note to the murmurings that told of yearning and sorrow I could not understand but felt as if it were my own. It echoed in the hollow crevices of my chest, within the cracks in my heart that were once filled.
The door never hid a presence. It guarded an absence.
The fragments of memories were of me. The shadows weren’t simply playful and cruel in their nature. They were the manifestations of all I had left to rot in the dark. The restless mutterings were mine. The desperation and the frustration—they were all mine.
Not today. I can’t open it today. The spirited silhouettes grow still as I step back from the door, halting their dance as I turn my back.
That door was never meant to be opened.
The Roar 