The Open Door Read Online Free PDF Page A

near.
    Scott’s father was especially close to Uncle
Jack, so the news of their Uncle’s rapid decline was difficult for
him to accept. Uncle Jack on the other hand, seemed at ease, and
almost welcomed the onset so he could once again be with his
Lola.
    Lola had passed away at home in the
bedroom—the very bedroom where Scott’s father slept now that Uncle
Jack’s house served as a temporary dwelling for them.
    His house was just down the road from the
hospital where he was admitted, so they stayed at Uncle Jack’s
1940’s abode to maintain it, and to be close by for visits.
    It was 10:00 P.M., and Scott and his father
were both tired from working in Uncle Jack’s yard all day. As
usual, Scott’s father took the spare bedroom, while Scott took the
couch located in the living room, just outside the kitchen
entrance.
    Prior to transforming the couch to a bed,
Scott’s father told him stories of noises he had heard while
sleeping alone in the house. Never the superstitious or paranoid
type, his father still found it necessary to share his haunting
tales just before turning off the lights and going to sleep.
    “While lying in bed, I could hear the dresser
drawers open and close, and creaking noises from the wooden floors,
as if someone was walking by my bed.” His father said in a serene
voice. “Don’t worry though. Nothing bad has or will happen.”
    Scott found the stories to be alarming,
probably because he knew they were true. In Scott’s twenty-eight
years, his father never spoke of such things, and he was too old
for ghost stories.
    His father was off to bed.
    Scott grabbed the sheets, blankets, and
pillow, and began to nest on the cold leather sofa. He turned off
the lamp located on the end table, and rested his head on the
prickly down pillow. Tips of feathers found their way through the
thin, transparent, white cover of the pillow, and poked the back of
his neck. It took some time, but Scott adjusted the pillow enough
to where he couldn’t feel the feathers on his skin.
    The discomfort that came from a lumpy pillow,
undersized couch, and drafty window, were eclipsed by noises
typical of an older home; noises that were magnified, and fed his
paranoia due to his father’s stories.
    Scott could not fall asleep. The relic clock
on the wall displayed 12:00 A.M. Both of its gothic hands pointed
up while the sound of the bell echoed off of the vaulted ceiling.
While watching the second hand slowly tick its way through another
minute, a noise came from the kitchen.
    The kitchen was behind a wall, so Scott was
only able to see the actual entrance to the small kitchen. Through
the entrance, to the right, and against the wall, was the
refrigerator.
    Again, he heard the noise: the sound of the
decaying rubber refrigerator seal breaking apart slowly. Years of
steam filled air, filled with bacon-grease and other airborne
mucilaginous debris had clung to the door’s seal, giving it a most
distasteful sound each time it opened.
    White noise from the refrigerator door being
open pierced the silence. A yellowish light appeared on the white
tile floor just inside the entrance to the kitchen. Then all of a
sudden, the light disappeared, followed by the sucking sound of the
door seal. The refrigerator noise was no more.
    A skylight rested atop the eight-foot wall
that separated the kitchen from the living room. It was flat and
made of glass, not a plastic bubble like most modern skylights.
This one resembled a window more than anything. If you were to look
through the skylight, you would see the weathered roof of the
kitchen, begging to be repaired. The skylight was approximately two
feet tall, four feet wide, and joined the roof of the kitchen to
the main roof of the house.
    A light slowly and gradually appeared through
the skylight. A headlight. Scott thought to himself. The
light became more intense. Unable to blink, he studied the light,
and thought, It couldn’t be a vehicle passing by. It would have
been gone by now.