Nightmare Fuel, Day the Sixth - Doors

Come write horrible things with us. Another day, another story.

The usual suspects joined again for this one, with one extra bonus - following my story is a lovely little scene-sketch written by my equally lovely daughter. Like me, she looked at the image before bed, thought of it overnight, and wrote in the early morning hours.

So far as the image is concerned, it's a prettier image than the last, though the stories are somewhat darker. We get a straight-up horror scene from Jenny Persson while  Samantha Dunaway Bryant gives us a horror/action sequence right out of the golden age of pulp fiction. Kary Gaul and I each had a take, I think, on growing up. Hers is sad and lovely and ethereal.

Mine follows, and Chloe's follows mine.

Doors
LC Suskin

Jake was six when we first invited the faeries into the world, in that little mossy spot between the oak tree and the faded grey wood of the shed. He loved nature and loved stories and loved the yard, so it seemed the right thing to do, to buy a little painted door from the craft store and glue it to the tree.

"Thank you Daddy", he beamed up at me as he planted the last of the seashells we'd gathered from the beach in an arcane pattern around the faux portal, "When do you think the fairies will come?"

"I don't know, son. Faeries are shy. I bet it'll be when we're not here. Maybe by moonlight."

The next morning I planned on awaking early to move the shells around and perhaps etching some footprints in the mossy soil, but young people are better at early mornings than old people. He was up at dawn, I was not.

I caught him outside, by our new fairy gate, his face lit up like the rising sun. "The fairies! They were here!"

Sure enough there they were. Little footprints in the soft earth, leading from the door. Yes, I know it was squirrels or birds or something. But.. fairies.


Jake was nine when I found the second door, inside our house.  Hidden in the dampcold shadow behind the oil tank, etched against the concrete foundation was a door. Strange markings surrounded it, things that looked like letters in another language.

"Have you been back behind the oil tank, Jake?"

His unruly blond hair danced around his head as he nodded, "It's quiet there. A good place to read, and to sketch."

"You shouldn't sketch back there. It's dirty, and too dark. You'll strain your eyes." My god. I sounded like my father. Occupational hazard, but one I should avoid. "Can I see it?"

He hands over his sketchbook, open to an image of bright, angular shapes emerging from a dark crevice. You marvel that you had a hand in making the person who could - at so young an age - make such a thing.




Jake was fifteen. Old enough to be gone for an hour or more at a time, bike and sketchbook in hand. Young enough not to be thinking about a job, a career, a family of his own. Still flush with the wildness of youth. Still wearing his blond locks long and, in a new idiosyncrasy, refusing to wear a belt with a buckle. Youth is for quirks, right? Besides, today is a good day. Today is a hiking day, alone your son at the nature preserve. Maybe a chance to get into his head.

Or, at least, to walk in companionable silence, your aging knees complaining as you trek through the soft hearth, but your heart light. Jake stays along side you, but you can tell he's holding back, muscles coiled tight as if to spring ahead with the joy and power of his youth. "You've gotta see this" he calls as he sprints ahead to a place where the trees open a bit to a clearing.

Before you stands a tall hill, adorned with doors or windows or some other kind of portal, cut into the living rock.

"Hey Dad, remember when we used to build little fairy gardens in the backyard?"

You nod. "How could I forget? That was fun."

He takes a seat on a fallen log as he speaks. "Do you ever wonder if when they grow up they move on to a place like this?"

You sit and look at him, this strange, wild creature you've watched grow to the cusp of manhood.

"Yes. I wonder."

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The Tower

CS Suskin

The tower stood true and tall even though it had been through many storms and had barely survived this one. A little girl stares out the window and thinks to herself that this, her home, might not survive the next storm. A little waterfall cascading toward the side of the house makes a river into the spongy green moss below.