The Open Door (4 page)

Scott peered into the balconies where
everyone whistled while enthusiastically clapping. During the midst
of the crowd’s roar, one individual stood out from the rest. Not
because he had been making more noise, or was dressed loudly, but
because he was the only person in the entire theater not on his
feet cheering. It was as if a corpse had been placed to fill an
empty seat.

Cloaked in darkness, unnerved by the noise
and highly active people, the man in black sat in the balcony,
completely still and void of emotion. A feeling of eerie
familiarity came over Scott as he studied the freakish ghoul. He
was weathered and pale with clothing reminiscent of an undertaker,
and he wore a hat—a tall thin top hat— the brim of it covering his
eyes.

That’s it!
Scott thought.
It’s the
same man I saw six years ago in church!
It had been a most
disturbing day at church for all who attended, but Scott was the
only one who noticed the man in black, or gave him credit for the
unusual events that day.

Father Cunningham recuperated after two weeks
of rest, but poor Mr. Vanderbrook ended up living in a home for the
insane. He had lost his mind that day, and could not bring himself
to stop humming the last song he played on the pipe organ the day
of his nervous breakdown. The last Scott heard, Mr. Vanderbrook
still hummed the haunting melody six years later, only stopping to
eat, drink, and sleep, which wasn’t often.

Turning away from the man, Scott attempted to
steal Cameron’s attention so he could show him the creep from the
cathedral, but Cameron wasn’t able to hear him over the noise of
the crowd.

Scott looked back at the balcony, but the man
was gone. In his place was a vacant, blood red, crushed-velvet
seat. Scanning every inch of the theater in an attempt to locate
the man, he became frantic, turning his head from left to right in
search of the six-year mystery.

Scott desperately wanted to find the man—who
resembled a wraith more than a human—and talk with him, find out
who he is, why he was at mass, and why he was now at the
Gothic?

Always appearing in the most unsuspecting of
places, Scott now glimpsed the man lurking on stage. He moved
behind the actor who played the Phantom, Scott could see the
tattered top hat. He half expected to see a maggot-infested rat
crawl out from under his unholy black haven atop his weathered
brow.

The man was close to the curtain, shrouded in
darkness, and just behind the actors, like a predator about to
pounce on its unsuspecting prey. Scott could still make out his
pointy nose and chin, and just like in ’83, the right corner of his
thin lips began to curl up into a smirk. His frail, thin, pale
tissue rippled from the wicked grin.

Scott fought his way through the thick crowd
as he inched his way towards the stage. Finally reaching the
actor’s platform, he managed to stand to the side where he could
see behind the actors. The illusive man had once again
disappeared.

April 15, 1998: Managing to make it nearly a
decade without seeing the Tall Man or being visited by unwanted
ghostly guests, Scott was about to experience incident
number-seven. And like incidents one and two, he was in the company
of his father.

Uncle Jack was ninety-six, and although he
wasn’t too physically active, he was mentally acute. He still lived
alone in the home he and his beloved wife shared together for over
fifty years.

Aunt Lola had passed away six years ago,
which contributed to Uncle Jack’s sad decline.

Scott and his father took care of their
Uncle’s landscaping and home repairs during his last few years.

One day they received a distressing call:
Uncle Jack’s lungs had filled with fluid, and his internal organs
were beginning to shut down—indications the end was 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. Maybe the police are using a spotlight to search
for someone.

Growing in intensity, the light became almost
blinding. Scott began to squint as he watched the light seemingly
take form and move through the glass. An indistinct human-like face
morphed from the light, followed by a torso and arms. Long boney
fingers pushed through the transparent hands, like blunt twigs
forcing their way through a deflated balloon. Staring at Scott with
its evolving features, it waited in air, as if to complete its
transformation.

The apparition seemed to solidify while
hovering eight feet above the ground. The light so intense, it
seemingly cloaked the more detailed features of its face.

Slowly the jaws of the glowing figure
expanded and opened, like a snake unhinging its jaws to devour its
prey, exposing rows of jagged teeth. Like flickering flames dancing
on the wicks of candles against the night sky, the shards glowed in
front of the black gapping backdrop where its throat should be.

Without warning, the ghastly white being
lunged towards Scott. He watched, petrified, as the lifeless black
eyes drew closer. Time seemed to slow down. He was able to study
the face as it bolted directly for him, even though it only took
less than a second for the figure to close the distance.

Black eyes and glowing shards were within a
foot of his face. Scott launched horizontally off the makeshift
bed, which would normally seem impossible, but thankfully not.

If he had attempted to sit up, he would have
run face first into it, giving it the opportunity to wrap its jaws
around his head and sever it at the neck.

Scott slammed into the glass table located
beside the couch. The crashing sound of the table hitting the
floor, accompanied by coasters and a decorative vase filled with
marbles, crashed through the silence.

After hitting the floor, he sat up and
scanned the room, searching for the ghost, or whatever it was that
tried to attack him.

Scott’s father ran from his bedroom, and into
the living room.

“What happened?” His father asked, as he
glared at the table and its contents, strewed all over the
floor.

“I saw something! It came right for my face,
so I leaped off the couch and knocked the table over.”

Scott’s father gave a look as if he believed
him, but didn’t know what to say. He asked if Scott was okay, and
then reminded him that he too had seen and heard strange things.
Yeah, but nothing like this
, Scott thought.

Scott didn’t divulge any of the details. It
was late, and he was satisfied that his father believed him. Any
more talk about what he had seen, and it may have caused his father
to question whether or not he was dreaming or actually saw
something.

Scott’s father went back to bed after helping
him clean up the mess.

Again, he labored to find comfort on the
sofa. Once settled in, Scott lay with his eyes open, scanning the
room, constantly looking back at the kitchen entrance. Activity
ensued in the kitchen.
Please! Just go away!
He ordered the
entity in his mind.
But then again, if I can hear it, I’ll know
where it is. It was when it got quiet that it came after me.
He
continued in his mind.

So as odd as it might seem, the sounds from
the kitchen gave him a sense of assurance, and eventually lulled
Scott to sleep just before dawn.

“Hey son! How about some breakfast!” His
father cheerfully bellowed.

Scott was surprisingly alert for having only
slept for a few hours.

“Sure, that sounds great.” He replied to his
father’s offer.

Dragging his feet towards the kitchen, with
his hair asunder and eyes barely opened; the smell of the coffee
his father had made helped guide Scott.

The day before Scott had purchased a bag of
cookies. In the bag were eight soft batch chewy-chocolate-chunk
cookies, which were divided in half by parchment paper.

He grabbed the still sealed unblemished bag,
and opened it. Peering inside, to his dismay, were the remains of a
cookie in the form of crumbs that lay atop the other cookies. Seven
cookies remained—an entire cookie was missing.

Upon close inspection of the counter top, he
found more crumbs by where the bag had been sitting all night.

Fully awake by the sudden and puzzling
surprise, Scott performed a 360-degree sweep of the kitchen to see
if anything else was amiss. The silverware drawer was pulled opened
four inches, and the cupboard where the glasses were kept was
ajar.

The noises he heard were real. Something or
someone had been in the kitchen all night.

March 15, 1999: Snow slammed the door to
Scott’s town-home like a battering ram, as he peered through the
mostly frosted front window, watching the rapid collecting flakes
produced by the blizzard.

Closing the blinds to shut out as much of the
cold as possible, he lit a fire, and started a batch of heavily
buttered popcorn. A movie and snack by the fire was the best remedy
he could think of for a cold winter night.

Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was
the chosen film to entertain Scott on the night he found himself
stranded at home. There was virtually no chance of anyone risking
the roads to come over and hang out, even the police were scarce
due to the limited number of four-wheel drive vehicles they
possessed, and the news cautioned people to stay off the roads
unless absolutely necessary.

The warmth of the fire was enough for Scott
to appreciate the freezing gale that had already managed to cloak
his vehicle in a blanket of white and sparkle.

Wonka, played by the great Gene Wylder, had
entered the scene in all his insane glory.