It’s only a door.
Just a plank of cheap wood attached to its frame by a few screws and two hinges. She could even see the faint light painted around its edges, reassuring her that the rest of her home was still there. She had not been abandoned.
And yet…
When her mother stopped, as she always did, in the doorframe of Sarah’s bedroom, turned with a tender smile on a face only halflit by the dim overhead bulb in the hallway and wished her “sweet dreams,” Sarah’s breath always caught in her throat. Because deep down she knew: It was not only a door.
Every night, her mother’s frame cast a shadow across her bedsheets that slowly slipped away, dragged out into that distant hallway as the door slowly closed behind her. And then it would shut with a little click. And then there was darkness.
And Sarah was alone in it … for a little while, anyway.
For, at first, the door was just a door. She could even make out its face and the stickers she had placed on it if she squinted hard enough. But, slowly and inevitably, the darkness would swallow it and leave in its place an absence. A void, she had learned. The word is “void.”
The void alone terrified her, sucking all around it into deep, inky blackness. She could feel its pull on her toes, licking at her sheets, longing to devour her. Sarah had tried to call out for her mother, when she first felt the void’s celestial tug, but the darkness had swallowed her screams. Of course it did. It swallows everything.
But it only went one way. The voices could escape. She hated the voices more than the darkness.
The beckoned her. They were not harsh or demanding, but they were persistent. Every night, they called for her by name.
“Come to us, Sarah,” they whispered with clear, piercing voices. “Come and see. Come and stay.”
Sarah buried her face beneath her covers. They were louder tonight. They had been getting louder every night.
The void tugged at her feet, her ankles. Desperately, she scrambled farther up her mattress. The voices grew louder.
“Come to us, Sarah,” they soughed. “Come and stay.”
She gasped as her blanket was yanked away from her clutching hands. It disappeared into the void. She shuddered in the newfound coldness of her room.
“Mom!” she called out, but the void ate that, too.
“Come to us, Sarah. Come and stay.”
“Mom!” she tried again, hoarse with desperation. The void didn’t care. It swallowed her cries. As it always did.
“Sarah,” said the voices. “Come to us. You’ll like it here. It’s warmer and lighter. Come and stay.”
She felt her bed begin to shift beneath her and quickly glanced over the side. With wide-eyed panic she saw the heavy iron legs of her bedframe scraping against the wooden floor.
“Mom! Mom, help me!” Sarah screeched. She knew it was fruitless, but she screamed all the same.
Her bed screeched as the void pulled it forward.
“You’re so close, Sarah. Come to us.”
Shrieking, she hurled her pillow at the void. It ate it greedily.
She could feel its tug, now, more powerfully than ever before. It swirled her hair about her face, yanked on her shirt, her sheets, the bed.
A mighty, metallic chunk suddenly rang out, causing Sarah to cover her ears. She realized a moment later, as her bed began to tilt forward, that the sound had come from the bedframe’s front legs passing over the barrier of the void.
Her mattress lifted beneath her. Sarah began to slide. Breathlessly, she turned and grasped at the iron bars of her headboard. The bed tilted further, the void sucking at it insatiably. She was now dangling, the void’s pull harsh and gluttonous behind her.
“COME TO US,” the voices called, booming now and thunderously powerful. “COME AND STAY.”
She clutched at the iron bars desperately, cracking her knuckles and grinding her teeth so hard it made her jaw hurt. Despite the terror that gripped her heart with icy fingers, she felt warm.
The bed slipped farther backward. The void nearly had her.
“COME TO US!”
“Mom!” she tried once more, but now she was having trouble even hearing herself. She braced herself as she felt the bed tilt past a terminal balance. Sarah’s stomach flipped as she felt gravity release its hold on her.
“Mom! Help m—”
Silence took over the room once again. A moment passed. With a little click, light swelled back across the now empty floorboards. There was a desperate gasp.
In the end, it was just a door, after all.