OFF-CUTS!

Door

What happened in that cursed house?

The acrid aroma of burnt cheese filled the air, towers of newspapers oppressed our sensibilities as we walked from room to room.

Pieces of broken furniture boarded up all the windows.

Vaguely discernible shapeless masses of rotten animal carcasses brushed past our ankles as we carefully explored.

Our most surprising find was a set of child's footprints on the ceiling, clearly visible through the char; how did they get there?

By the looks of them, they must have gotten there after the fire raged; did somebody hold a child upside down and have them pretend to walk around?

The police didn't write anything about it in their reports, then again they were abnormally brief.

Supposedly, someone squatted in this filth for half a year, but I don't see how.

If anything, this is where somebody would dispose of a body.

Many skeletons hide in those closets.

The further we ventured into that house, the stronger the strange smell became.

When we got to what vaguely resembled a kitchen, the stench overwhelmed us, and we both ran out the back door, gagging.

Dougie saw it before I did; a red door floating a few inches off the ground amid a white spraypainted circle in the dust, emitting a horrid white noise.

Fear froze me in place, but not him.

I still don't understand why he smiled so knowingly, so earnestly.

He walked with a confidence I'd never seen him possess previously.

We were the losers, the hunchbacked undesirables, the shit-kicking bottom-feeders in a school of sharks.

As his hand touched the knob, he glared at me with a face that wasn't his own.

My best friend became a stranger.

I didn't have time to question him as the door violently swung open, and as it did I realized that an unsettling cacophony of childlike voices loudly singing a mishmashed harmony had replaced the thrumming white noise.

Dougie jumped into the blindingly white light which shone from the doorway and howled.

The door closed behind him, and I ran over and frenetically pounded on it.

A short moment later, I jumped back as the door swung open again, and out jumped my howling friend.

Once out, he scurried home as fast as his legs would carry him, and I followed closely behind him.

In his front yard, he manically spoke of a flock of giant faces attacking him like pigeons would a slice of bread.

We didn't speak for a few days, and then he was gone.

They found my best friend, Dougie, hanging by his neck from the overpass behind that derelict house.

A few months after his passing, I went back to the house by myself and peered over the fence into the backyard, but saw that the nightmarish door wasn't there.

Wherever it's gone, I hope it's far from here.