Open Doors by Orlando Chacon

The definition of fear is a unpleaseant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. What I felt that night in that house was not fear, it was unimaginable terror.

Me and my family live in a different house now for the same reason why I’m telling you this story: to warn others, to shut the fucking doors at night. Because whatever happened to us that night was proof that there are things in this world that are beyond us and are simply unexplainable and very disturbing.                 I was ten years old when we lived in a suburban home in downtown Tucson, Arizona; it was summer time and the air was humid and the sun had always beat down on us during the day. By night however was a different story; at night it was kinda warm but still had a nice cool breeze passing ny 24/7 to keep us cool. This made night-time seem favorable to me… until that night.

Me and my brother were playing with our action figures in the living room. We were having fun until mom walked in and told us it was time for bed. We sighed and complained for a brief second, but ultimately we got up and took our action figures to bed with us.

There were four doors total in this hallway: one door at the far end of the hall which was the bathroom, the first two to the left was me and my brothers rooms, and to the right a single door which led to the master bedroom: mom’s room. My mom stayed in that room alone because our father died when I was five and my brother was three. He had died in a hit and run accident on the freeway on his way home from work. At the time my brother didn’t understand. But it hit me and mom pretty hard and life was tough for a while. But now we are moving on and this house was a perfect  fresh start for us all.

Anyways, back then I was very paranoid of that house, we got it cheap and it was pretty and all but I knew something was wrong. Later that night we are all in  our beds sleeping, all except me. I was snuggled in my big thick ‘Toy Story’ comforter and I had noticed something odd. It was dark but through the pale blue moonlight flooding through my window to my right I saw that to my left my door was opened.               At this point I am scared, and to this day I still feared opened doors at night. As a child, I had thought that there was always something evil lurking in the opened crack of my door. Deep in that darkness in the hall, I was expecting a sort of boogeyman or some weird nightmare to pop out and eat me. To this day… I regret to say I was right.

I looked up at the door that was across the room from my bed at my right. My bed was placed at the center right part of my room; the head of the bed pressed against the wall. I looked at the door from my bed as I saw the pale blue moonlight spread vertically upon the door frame. My heart beats faster as I stare down the doorway from the safety of my ‘Toy Story’ Comforter.

Suddenly out of the crack of the doorway appeared a hand. A long thin and moist hand had revealed itself as it slowly opened the door some more. My heart sank as the unbearable creaking of the old wooden door had flooded the room slowly. I couldn’t help but stare down at the creatures fearsome-looking hand. As the hand touched my wall by the door, you could almost see darkness spread from its touch and slowly decay the spot and have it slowly turn into darkness.

The spot then ripped through as the hand spread out a set of talons over the wall. Quickly the hand withdraws into the darkness of the slightly open door. I could feel my heart beat out of my chest and practically see my own breath, which is odd. Because it was hotter than Hell throughout the entire house… except for here in my room where it was colder than the arctic. I shivered and squirmed into my blanket when suddenly, out the corner of my eye, a shadow had moved from the doorway and into the darkness beneath my bed.              At this point I am terrified, the monster in the darkness now took residency under my bed. Beneath the mattress I could feel the sharp talons of the creature, impatiently tapping at the wood panels that held my bed up from the ground and onto the frame. In the quietness of it all, I could hear the low and silent snarling of the monster from beneath my bed.

I dared not look to my left nor my right and I sure as hell was not going to look underneath my bed. So In stared at the ceiling for a while, my eyes just panning my room from all angles in terror. However, for the longest time, the tapping and the snarling had stopped. For a minute I gathered myself to prepare for the next horrifying act of cruelty from the beast… but nothing happened.

I shot straight out of bed and being the idiot I was back then I had checked under my bed for the monster. God, I was so stupid. To let you know, I was perfectly healthy; I had a clear mind and healthy immune system. I had no therapists or psychiatrists look at me or anything. I was fine… I say this now so you will not doubt me when I say there was something so despicably foul underneath my bed that I regret ever looking down there!

I saw the carnage and blood of a million corpses under my bed. Under my bed was full of blood, organs and severed body parts of people I didn’t even know. I remembered the dreadful smell and the terror that gripped my heart as I witnessed it. Good God, how I wanted to puke! Tears streamed down my cheeks as I silently sob. The smell of rotting flesh hit my nostrils as I saw the most strangest thing imaginable. In the center of the Hellish world that took place from under my bed, was a tall dark shadowy figure.

The figure took form as it started moving towards me as I stayed crouching to look at the massacre beneath my bed. It started walking past piles of carnage and mangled bodies. Until it stopped, I couldn’t move and I was so scared to see this and I couldn’t move. It stared at me and had pointed its elongated arm at my direction. It looked like it was trying to tell me something.

It wasn’t until a few seconds later that I realized the figure was pointing behind me not at me. Almost immediately, I got up from the bed and slowly walked backwards from my bed to the wall that was directly behind me. I didn’t lean against he wall sadly. I had bumped into something. Quickly I turned around and saw it…

Oh my God, why did I ever turn to look at it?

It had blood-red eyes, two nostrils in placement of the human nose, and a wide gaping mouth filled with singularly spaced teeth. It’s skin was moist and it’s body was horribly disfigured around the chest area. Its ribs were spread wide open to revealing the insides of the torso… there was nothing, no internal organs just nothing but darkness.  Its arms were long and hung down to the ground lazily. And it was staring directly at me.

Those blood-red eyes simply were the definition of evil. I originally thought this was the boogeyman that I had heard of when I was five, but no, this was something way more sinister.

Suddenly the creature let out a loud ear-shattering growl. I screamed as the monster swung it’s left arm at my chest and sends me flying toward my door. The impact had slammed the door and my small body slammed the wood-paneled flooring.  Just then I noticed that the roaring had ceased and the monster was out of sight. My eyes were wide open and the creature just vanished out of thin air; the pale gray disfigured creature had vanished into the darkness of the night.  I quickly recovered and got up to turn on the light switch by my door to my right.

I slowly and hesitantly walked toward my bed and looked under it… no carnage, no blood, no separated version of Hell, no nothing. Nothing was there but the wooden floor and the box spring holding my bed up. I got up and looked around my room… no creature.

That night was the night I’ll never forget. Shortly after I checked the room my mom had burst in with my brother by her side to investigate. I told them everything, down to every detail and every odd occurrence. Mom however, didn’t believe me and shrugged it off as me sleepwalking or something. But my brother stared at me strangely, almost as if he knew what I was talking about.

That night I had went to bed with the door shut this time, and for some odd reason, I heard my brother shut his door as well. Luckily mom had shut her door too when she was too tired to even leave it open. She had always kept the doors open so that we could be heard by her if ever we were in danger.

The next morning I confronted my brother about his odd reaction to my story. Turns out that this same thing had happened to him a few nights ago when he had that night terror. Only the creature had come out of his closet door which was open by a crack.  He escaped with a small gash in his back that looked like the beast had cut him.

We spent the night at the hospital that night trying to get it stitched up and healed; he knew telling mom what really happened would have been pointless so he said he had cut his back on the bookshelf in his room by accident.

“There’s something else.” he tells me. “At first the thing said in a normal voice that it was daddy.” My heart started to beat faster in terror at this strange ability. How could this thing sound just like dad? I told him not to believe the creature if he ever came again and to close the doors at night. For that seemed to be the only way to keep it away.

That night me and my brother had shut our doors when mom finally fell asleep. As a safety precaution, I snuck a big knife from the kitchen and hid it under my pillow incase the monster was in the room already.

That night was unusually quiet and I couldn’t sleep; I had the most unsettling feeling within the pit of my soul that I forgot something. Something, was seriously wrong. I had gripped the knife handle tightly as my palm started to sweat. I was definitely ready for whatever happened.                            From mom’s room I heard my mother scream in terror. Without missing a single second I dart out of my room wielding the knife, open my door and run into mom ‘s already open door into her room which was across from mine.

Mom stood standing against the wall holding her arms out in front of her for protection; in front of her was the pale-gray and disfigured creature posed to attack.                       What happened next was responsible for brutally murdering my childhood, for after this… my innocence was gone.

The creature raised its right arm, claws fully extended and swung its arm downward slicing mom’s  right arm right off her torso. Mom screams in agony as the blood from where her right arm used to be, sprays some blood at all directions and then starts leaking blood like a normal wound. My stomach dropped as tears rolled down my cheeks; my jaw drops and lets out a sort of loud gag.

Oh, my God, even recalling it made me feel sick.

The creature cocked its ugly head toward my direction at the doorway, with blood sprayed all over his face he developed this huge evil grin. At the sight of this I gathered up my courage and anger flashes through my eyes. “Get away from her!” I shout as I charge to the monster with my knife.  The monster had a similar idea and charged at me at inhuman speed, however aimless my actions were I had managed to slice open its inner thigh.

I savored my small victory at the wrong time, for when I smiled in the realization that this thing could bleed and maybe even die, I might have a chance. But just then it grabs me by my waits and with inhuman strength it lifts me up in the air above its head with its ridiculously elongated arms. I drop the knife by accident as I stared into the  blood-red eyes of evil.

“No not my baby!” Mom had shrieked as she was bent over on her bed, still bleeding and holding out her remaining arm to my direction. I remembered how tightly its grip was around my waist.

I was so scared that my heart was just ready to stop and give up.

I remember thinking to myself… that I was going to die; we were all going to die… some sooner than others.

The creature took it’s time slowly trying to kill me;  it had tried to spread darkness upon my body, I was going to fall apart like the wall from my bedroom. And I had accepted my fate and closed my eyes ready to die.  Of coarse I wasn’t ready I just knew I couldn’t escape this. After five long seconds of my body decaying rapidly, I had dropped onto the floor with a  loud thud and returned to normal. I felt the darkness leave almost immediately and I am brought back to life.

I opened my eyes to see the lights turned on and the creature was gone. Mom had crawled toward me and hugged me tightly with her remaining arm while the stub of her lost arm had been still bleeding. Blood covered her entire right side as she held me tight and sobbed loudly.  My brother came up from behind us and  hugged moms good side and cried silently.

It was it, it was done. It was finally over.

Come to find out that the my brother had been awakened by mom’s scream too and had come in here just in time and shut the door behind him figuring that was its weakness. The monster had vanished and now we were safe.  We called 911 from mom’s cell phone but dared not open that door.

Soon enough we had realized that the door was the creatures portal to us and if the door was open he could come and get us, but only during the nighttime.                        After the police arrived with an ambulance we got up and darted out of the room and out the hallway whole slamming the door shut. Just as the creature almost appeared again we heard a loud screech emerge from inside the room.

Since then, mom’s  arm had been fixed up and remains to this day covered in bandages. We had moved to a different house and had learned to help mom with day-to-day tasks with her missing an arm and all.

Ever since the incident, we had locked and shut every window and every door every single night from there on out. Since then we never saw the creature again.

unfortunately the police found out that it wasn’t  mom or me or my brother that had caused this. Why is that unfortunate you ask? Well because one of the nights when we were in the hospital, four policemen had walked into mom’s room and had left the door open.

It was an absolute blood bath; let’s just say pictures were taken from outside the bedroom during the massacre and evidence was documented. The police heard my explanation of things and had taken to calling this thing ‘The Doorman’. I thought the name was ridiculous but I didn’t care, whatever it was, it could go to Hell.

The government came in, and threatened every one of us and ordered specifically for us to not say a word of this to everyone; the policemen deaths were covered up and so was mom’s arm severing.

But everyone must know the truth; similar deaths have been occurring across the U.S. People were being slaughtered in their own beds with either the closets creaked open or their window wasn’t shut.

If you’re reading this, heed my warning: Keep your doors shut at night, lock every window, barricade every door; because he is still out there and he’s always there… lurking in the shadows, in the dead of night, ready to kill.

Remember, beware of The Doorman.