A Door Appeared in the Back of My Sister’s Closet (Part I)

Inside my house, there’s a door which should not be there. The first person to notice was my older sister Melanie, as it was in the back of her closet. It was strange—it seemed as though the door functioned as a mirror, leading to a space identical to her closet, even down to the clothes. She was in middle school at the time, and I’d just turned ten. We were fascinated by the doorway, and after a short, poorly-informed conversation, we agreed it needed to be explored. She went first, eagerly walking until she reached the opening of the “other” closet, peering into her room. 

“My walls are green,” she mused. She motioned for me to come look, but I remained firmly in place. She rolled her eyes and mumbled something under her breath, continuing out of my line of sight. It was quiet, save for the sound of her footsteps as she looped through the room. When she returned to the opening, she crossed her arms and gave me a judging look. 

“How was it?” I shuffled nervously. 

She stared another moment before dropping the attitude. “Pretty normal. It's cleaner, I like how it's organized. The only thing is that all my pictures with Amy are gone.” She frowned. 

“Okay,” I nodded. “Should we get mom and dad now?”

Her mouth fell open. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want them poking around my room.” She wrinkled her nose as she shut the door behind her. “Plus, they would be really lame about it.”

“Well, it’s just–”

Melanie clicked her tongue and surged forward, glaring. She threw her hands onto her hips and leered over me. “If you tell mom and dad, I’m gonna tell everyone at school that you don’t know how to read. I’ll tell them there’s someone in your ear who tells you what to say.”

I recoiled, the fluttering wings of anxiety taking me somewhere far from plaster walls and the realm of reason. She spoke so confidently, she must’ve been in cahoots with some unknown authority. “No!” I tried lamely. 

She continued, an impish smirk appearing. “When your teachers find out, they’re gonna hold you back a year. You’ll probably have to do summer school too.”

“Please don’t!” I cried. “I promise I won’t tell. I can even pinky promise, if you want me to. I’m sorry.”

“Good.” Melanie nodded and backed away, glancing at the door. She inspected it from where we stood, her eyes climbing the long grain lines and the divots of the bleached wood. “Help me hide it.” 

We retrieved two posters from her room and plastered them over the flat edges of the door before rearranging her clothes, fluffing and cramming until our parents would be none the wiser. Once we’d finished, there was an excited look bubbling up from the umber depths of her eyes. She poked me gently with her elbow, then leaned on my shoulder, proportionally affectionate as it was a show of dominance. 

“It’s kind of like a secret base,” she murmured. She looked at me with a childish expression, the whimsy an odd contrast to the dark colors and hard lines of her makeup. I smiled back. 

Over the following days, I could be found sitting in the threshold of the doorway as Melanie explored and narrated her findings to me. We’d discovered after her first visit that the space changed every time we closed the door. Today, her room was twice its normal size, and the ceiling had a popcorn texture. 

“Ellie, don’t you like that series The Elmer Family?” She called from somewhere unseen.

I perked up instantly, dropping the hard, plastic blue horse I’d been petting. “Yeah!” 

Melanie appeared in the other closet with a stack of books balanced in her hands. She dropped the stack next to me with a grunt, watching as I tore through them. I squealed when I reached the end. 

“Every book!” I jumped to my feet and threw my arms around her, my words stumbling over each other as they fought to leave my mouth. “Thank you, thank you, oh my gosh, this is awesome.” 

“I think you mean I’m awesome.” She said it more softly than she’d ever admit, returning my embrace with loose arms. I wiggled my head, shifting fabric and hair out of my vision. 

“Did you see any other books?”

“Duh, of course there’s more.” She took a step back. “Like, a lot more. Come look with me.” 

She raised her eyebrows as she backed through the doorway, eyes just as challenging as her smile was earnest. I stared at her, my stomach sinking to my feet, or maybe somewhere even lower than that. I glanced at the books by my feet—at an illustration of a very happy family surrounding their speckled dog—then at Melanie and her excited smile. She outstretched her hand. 

“You can hold my hand if it freaks you out.” Her black nail polish reflected the lamp in her other room. The shiny, dark eyes of my blue pony watched me quietly, providing no guidance nor comfort, simply basking in the long strands of her rainbow mane. I swallowed and took a hesitant step forward, then one more. I grasped at her hand, allowing her to pull me through the door. There was an uncharacteristic tenderness to her touch as she guided me further into the other room, but I made no comment. 

My jaw dropped when I saw the full size. It was impossible to believe it was only twice as large—Melanie was just bad at math. She raised her spare hand up, tracing the tiny bumps speckling the low ceiling, and when I failed to reach it, she helped me onto a chair so I could experience it for myself. 

“Isn’t it weird?” She grinned. After a brief exploration, I was ushered out of the room, my neck twisting as I watched the closet grow further. Usually, my sister’s room sat at the end of a short hall on the second level of our home. Here, the hallway continued several feet, and there was a new door on the left side. It led to a room that appeared to be in the midst of a move, half-full boxes littering the floor alongside lamps, chairs, and various other living accessories. I squinted at the tall walls, endless shelves filled with foreign and familiar books. 

Melanie dropped to her knees, combing through the contents of the boxes as I roamed the room, reading through mostly bland non-fiction titles, cherry-picking until my arms ached. 

“I’m done.” 

“Okay.” She glanced at me for only a moment before continuing to sift through the boxes. There was a pile of black and red accessories accumulating beside her. I shifted my weight back and forth. 

“You can go back.” Again, she only spared me a moment's glance, but she managed a polite tone this time. “I’m still looking.”

“Oh.” I nodded. 

The walk back was excruciating, my fingers cramping as sweat collected in my palms, yet I never thought to put a few books down and make more than one trip. I immediately made myself at home on the floor of Melanie’s closet, turning pages endlessly. After perhaps another hour, she shuffled by me, her arms full of souvenirs she would attack with scissors and paint in no time. I grinned to myself as she dropped the load on the ground, circling it like it was her prey. 

The other versions of our home became our special place. We would “shop” them, explore, and make ourselves comfortable while our parents remained none the wiser, continuing with their work and routines with utmost normalcy. Once, our mother mentioned how nice it was that Melanie and I were becoming so close, always sharing secrets while tucked away in her room. 

Although it probably wasn’t what mom had imagined, she certainly wasn’t wrong. Our little squabbles had become scarce as we strived to protect our secret. Then, I think we were close because of an evening I’d found her hiding in the bathroom of the other home, crying over something a classmate had said to her. I didn’t know how to comfort her—I was always the one being comforted—so I just hugged her and sat with her until she ran out of tears. Then, we returned home together. Looking back, I realize she hugged me much more after. 

The door didn’t reveal its dangers until several months had passed. It was a warm summer night, our parents trusting us home to stay alone for the first time as they went on a date, and Melanie took full advantage of this by watching an R-rated movie on the couch. I recoiled every time I heard a curse word. 

As I exited the bathroom, forgetting to turn off the light and wiping my wet hands on my skort, I heard glass shatter. I paused, leaning against the wall as I stared at the drop-off of the stairs, waiting for the sound of Melanie cursing and sweeping up her mess. Someone in the movie dropped the f-bomb as I twisted my hands in my shirt. Then, Melanie’s face appeared at the top of the stairs, her eyes wide and jaw clenched as she crept towards me. Her hands were cold and trembling when she grabbed me, steering me towards her room, and I realized I could hear footsteps echoing in the kitchen. 

We moved quietly through her room, and she whispered to me to hide before digging through the mess of blankets on her bed. When she caught me frozen in place, she shoved me. “Hide.” 

Her voice was hardly above a whisper, but she immediately faltered, glancing back at the door. Still, I couldn’t move. When she managed to find her phone, she glared at me, then spun me around, pushing me towards the door of the other home. She rearranged her clothes to hide the threshold, arms whipping around like a madman’s, then gingerly shut it and backed away. 

My hands were covered in saliva, each nail being gnawed at nervously. “Are we being robbed? Do you think they’ll find us?”

She ignored me, fumbling with her phone. She swore under her breath as she planted it against her ear. Immediately, the echoes of a robotic voice responded. She threw her phone towards the bed, her eyes darting across the room. 

“Okay,” her voice shook as she spoke, an unusual breathiness laced within her words. “Okay, get–go to the kitchen and get a knife or something. Get two.”

I nodded, making a mad dash downstairs. As I passed the dark windows, I saw my reflection: frizzy, pale, terrified. My stomach churned. I retrieved the two largest knives, holding them carefully with the tips towards the ground. I climbed the stairs slowly, fixated on scenarios where I tripped and accidentally poked myself. In her room, Melanie was pacing as she impatiently jabbed at her phone’s screen. 

“Are the police coming?”

When she looked at me, her eyes were wild and rimmed with tears. “Um, I–I don't have service here–” she wiped her eyes. “I’m sure they’re coming. The neighbors probably called.”

She took one of the knives from me and held it flush to her chest, swaying nervously as she watched the door with hawkish eyes. When I noticed a tear falling, I tugged at her shirt.

“Can we hide more?”

“Uh…” she didn’t bother wiping the next tear. “Yeah. Let's get under the bed.”

We stayed there for what felt like hours. As my adrenaline wore off, my eyelids grew heavy. Occasionally, I would drift off, only to be awakened by the sensation of hardwood pressed against my nose. Melanie blinked her eyes hard, the delicate skin around them streaked with her mascara. She was quiet, looking at nothing in particular as we waited. 

“Mom and Dad should be home by now. Surely.” She glanced at me as though she was seeking out some affirmation that she was right, but I hadn’t the slightest clue. She motioned for me to remain in place as she emerged from under the bed. On her feet, she released a shaky breath, gripped her knife close, then approached the closet. She hesitated with her hand wrapped on the doorknob, gesturing for me to scoot further back. I obeyed without a second thought. 

After pressing her ear to the door for whatever amount of time she thought was appropriate, she slowly twisted the handle. The door was only opened enough for her to slip in an arm and shift the clothes aside. Whatever she grabbed made her body turn slack. 

Melanie opened the door fully, revealing an empty clothes rod. She entered, loud squelches punctuating each movement. 

“Oh my God,” she whispered, turning in a circle. “Oh my God.”

“Melanie…?”

“It’s not here.” She spun around to face me. “The house changed.”

I crawled out from under the bed, struggling to process what she was saying. “We can’t go home?”

“It’s not there,” she said sharply, throwing her knife to the ground. When she looked at me, her brows and lips drawn into tense lines, her eyes passed straight through me.

After overcoming our initial shock, we explored the new space, some strange reimagining of our home. We closed the door over and over, hoping each time that we would open it to the correct one. Some of the homes we found were so close to normal that we let out cries of relief and called out to our parents. Others made no sense—buildings simply couldn’t exist in such a way. They couldn’t have such angles or corridors or heavy air. Some houses were fresh, filled with fruit and bread; some were leathery and appeared to be in the midst of decomposition. One was devoid of all interior—no furniture, no stairs, no inner walls, and no doors save the one we’d entered through. Electricity seemed irrelevant to these homes; only some responded to a flipped light switch, remaining miraculously alight—yet the televisions nonfunctional—no matter the state of the wires.

When we were too exhausted to continue, we spent the “night” in a single-story rendition of our home, shoulder to shoulder in bed. As we tried to sleep (and failed terribly, as it was wavering and anxiety-ridden), the halls creaked, and it sounded as though a tree branch was knocking against the roof. In every house, we tried to look out the windows, but it was always pitch-black. 

Some of the homes left us with a sense of unease. Beds had imprints on them, as though unseen figures were lying in them. Gnawing sounds rose from beneath the floorboards. There was a house of no windows, a house of no lights, and a house identical to home in every way save the walls, which were just long enough to make you wonder whether there was something different about them. As we rounded the corners of this one, our shoulders caught on the edges. 

We made ourselves a somewhat permanent base in a home which seemed normal, but all the curtains were drenched with mildewy puddles beneath, and the wallpaper in our parents’ room was peeling away in thick strips. We collected food and books from the houses as we took turns standing at the door, opening and closing it endlessly. Most houses only received a cursory glance, but the promising ones received a full exploration.

I finished a variety of books I’d never heard of and normally would’ve never bothered reading. Melanie had gotten back into reading entirely, finishing her first book in over a year. She hovered over me, forcing me to eat despite my nausea and giving me unenthused orders, like when it was time to sleep or try again. The water in our house of choice worked, thankfully, and we managed to shower and even brush our teeth when we got too bored. An abnormally humid house had left her phone waterlogged, and it was abandoned in one of the various versions of her room, leaving us with no way to tell the day or time. 

She cried a lot. I did, too. At the time, I didn’t realize we were crying for different reasons. Personally, I missed our parents, my teachers, and my classmates, and homesickness ate away at me any time I rested. I think Melanie was more keenly aware of the possibility that we may never return. The way back to our home could’ve been forever lost, shuffled in with thousands of dreamlike recreations of it. How many homes would we have to comb through before we could return to our own? More than we could within our lifetime? 

I saw darkness overtaking her. It clouded the air around her, swirling in her eyes when she looked my way. She grew quiet and disinterested, falling out of reading once more and spending most of her time staring at whatever happened to be in front of her. Despite her lack of spirit, she always kissed the crown of my head before I fell asleep. 

One day, as I was opening and closing the door, I came across a rather normal-looking home. After the initial inspection piqued my interest, I turned back to her. “Do you wanna come?”

It took several moments for her to acknowledge that I’d spoken. She seemed to break from a trance, sniffling and nodding. Her makeup had been washed away and unreplaced, leaving her looking much younger, our similar features suddenly evident, and she tucked her hair behind her ears—simple, unstyled, and very much unlike her. 

This house was familiar and warm, like a handful before. As we inspected each space, we sought out whatever would inevitably out the home as phony and send us back to searching. Here, the windows were all square, the shelves all present, and no odd smells were lingering. When we looked outside, it was dark.

It was hard to see in this house, as the lights were either off or broken. When Melanie flipped one of the switches, the living room was illuminated by a blinding light. We inspected the couch, then walked back and forth in search of unusually squeaky floorboards. The fridge here was fully stocked, even including a container of my favorite cream cheese. Eager for a break, I pulled it out, cringing when I opened it and found mold. Melanie was running her hands over the front door, then holding them out to estimate the length of each wall, door, and window. She glared at the floor. 

I abandoned my moldy cheese on the counter to continue my examination. On the far side of the kitchen, one of the windows had been shoddily taped over with cardboard, a breeze slipping through the gaps. I decided to leave the space to her keen eyes, heading towards my parents’ room. A wavering noise on the other side made my ears perk up. 

When I opened the door, my parents were sitting on the bed in their pajamas, leaning over a spiral notebook and speaking in hushed tones. I stood frozen in the doorway, unsure if I was seeing things correctly. Before I had the chance to gather myself, I was swarmed by warm arms, kisses, and questions. I was slack-jawed, overwhelmed by the attention, and only released when Melanie approached from behind. A tight grip was kept on my hand as our parents descended upon her, and she was pale, watching them uneasily. 

After the initial shock wore away, our parents sat us on the bed and began overwhelming us with information. We’d been missing for a week, apparently. Because of the break-in, they thought we’d been kidnapped, and a massive search had begun days ago. Our father stood in the corner of the room, watching us closely as he made a series of phone calls, canceling the search and arranging an appearance at the police station the following morning. Afterward, as we all sat together, emotions leaving us mentally ragged, they asked us where we’d been. I nearly answered, but Melanie gave me a look that made my voice catch in my throat. 

“We don’t remember,” she said firmly, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. The response left our parents flabbergasted. They continued to probe us, but I remained silent as she answered with different variations of we don’t know. 

Our parents wouldn't let us out of their sight, insisting we sleep with them. In the dead of night, when their snores drifted up from the floor, Melanie scooted towards me, the bed dipping beneath as though it were going to swallow us whole. 

“Helena, I need you to promise you won’t tell anybody about what happened. Ever.” Her breath was hot on my face. 

“Why?”

The silence which followed stretched on so long that I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. 

“Just promise me, please.” Her voice was weak and desperate, very unlike the sister I’d been accustomed to. 

“Okay.” I could sense the tension melting from her body.

“When they question you, tell them you can’t remember, or that you don’t know. You can also just not say anything.”

I nodded. She exhaled slowly, and after a pregnant pause, wrapped her arms around me. “Love you.”

I returned the embrace. “I love you too.”