The Hall Closet Door
The Hall Closet Door
by David Michael
As he walked past the unused hall closet, the door swung open.
Surprised, he stopped. He had lived in the apartment for two weeks now. He had not needed to store anything in the hall closet yet.
He pulled the closet door the rest of the way open, and looked inside. Still empty. He tested the door hinges and latches, opening and closing it several times. Everything seemed in working order. When he pushed the door fully closed, it stayed closed.
He shrugged and finished getting ready to go out.
Two weeks later, to the day, the door swung open again as he walked past it.
Distracted, thinking about work, he just pushed the closet door closed and went on.
Five days later, in the middle of the night, as he made his way to the kitchen in the dark to get a glass of water, the door swung open, totally silent. His head bounced off the door hard enough to see flashes at the back of his eyes.
“Damn it,” he said.
“What is it?” came the groggy question from the bedroom. “What happened?”
Rubbing his head, he tried to figure that out. “Sorry,” he said after a minute. “I guess I ran into the door.”
“Clumsy.”
“I guess so,” he said. He could see the closet door now. He opened it and closed it, opened it again. The latch seemed fine. He closed the door and went on to the kitchen.
The next weekend, having some spare time, he gave the hall closet door a thorough examination. He couldn’t find anything wrong with it. The hinges didn’t even squeak, much less bind or resist–either closing or opening. The door knob had been well-used, and might have been the same age as the apartment building, but it was still in good working order.
His apartment building was an older one, and showed signs of settling in other rooms. But not in this closet. The door and the door frame were still square. And the planing on the door frame was perfectly smooth, as were the sides of the door.
Puzzled, he closed the door.
As he turned to walk away, the door swung open on its own.
Surprised, since he had heard the latch click into place–and had not heard it unclick–he pushed the door closed again, heard the latch click into place again.
He pulled on the door, deliberately not turning the knob. The door held closed.
He had no explanation and no more time.
Over the next two years, he took to calling it his “haunted closet door.” Though the door would never swing open when anyone else was looking, he developed an affinity for it. He could almost predict it.
Almost predict.
Once, when he showed the door to a visiting friend, he laughed and predicted the door would swing open that afternoon. The door didn’t swung open for over a month. Long enough that he wondered if whatever had been wrong or amiss had finally corrected itself.
Nope.
Discovering that cost him both a lump on his head and a stubbed toe. He swore continuously for ten minutes, and limped around the apartment in pain all the next morning.
When he moved out, following his career across country, he sold the apartment. He thought about telling the new owners about the hall closet door, but the real estate market was down and he didn’t want to risk it.
When he closed the front door for the last time, he realized that he had never stored anything in that closet. He wasn’t sure what that meant. He shrugged one last time, and walked away.
Copyright © 2006 by David Michael. All rights reserved.
Coolfire said,
May 20, 2006 @ 4:18 am
You should try to post some of these short stories on the web somewhere. A couple of good sites would be “eastoftheweb.com” or “pitwit.com” or “storymania.com”…..
Interesting concept and some of the stories are pretty good. I have read 4 or 5 and a couple were decent, so at the end of an year u might have 50 or so good stories….
DavidRM said,
May 27, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
Coolfire: Thanks for stopping by and reading. I’m hoping that I should have about that many good stories by the end of the project. I expect I’ll have to clean up all of ‘em eventually. Spending 2-3 hours per story and moving on doesn’t allow much time for polishing.
-David
mary said,
July 3, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
what was the point, feels like something is missing!!