Short story: The blue door
A front door painted bright blue shocks the neighbourhood, but it’s what lurks behind that door that intrigues the neighbourhood kids …
She painted the door when she first moved in. Up until then it had been the same dirty grey of all the doors in the street. Up until then we hadn’t even imagined that the doors could be any other colour.
The adults disapproved, muttering about how things were done. But we all loved it. The way the bright blue seemed to shimmer in the dull grey light of our morning walks to school. We wondered what could possibly be going on behind that blue door. We tried to peer through the window, but we couldn’t see past the heavy net curtain without getting up close and none of us was brave enough for that.
We’d sometimes see her, the woman who had moved in, when we were scoping out her house. She’d unlock that blue door, turn to wave to us, a smile splitting open her face, and then disappear behind the door. We’d see just a sliver of darkness as the door opened, never wide enough to see inside the house.
It was one of those days when a bunch of us were sidling past the blue door, trying to look in, that we first saw her. A little girl, looking back out at us. She’d lifted up the corner of the net curtain so she could see out. We could only see her unsmiling face and two blonde pigtails, but we were enthralled. Or maybe that’s why we were so fascinated. We could tell nothing about her from that tiny glimpse; she was a complete mystery to us and so we could project anything we wanted onto her.
We upped our surveillance of the house, even working out a rota detailing who would watch it and when. We thought we were being incredibly subtle but it must have been obvious to anyone who saw us. She wasn’t there all the time. Sometimes her small round face would appear while one of us watched, other times it was already there, as if waiting for us. Sometimes one of us would see her disappearing back into the depths of the house, occasionally glimpsing the back of her blonde head.
We could find out nothing about her. She didn’t go to our school. We’d have known if any new serious blonde girls had recently started. We were so intrigued that a group of us even built up the courage to ask one of the kids from a rival school – one close enough by that the boys from both would sometimes form gangs and fight. But they didn’t know of any new girls either. Once I asked my parents but they just looked uncomfortable and changed the subject. I didn’t understand why they were so reluctant to talk about the house with the blue door. I assumed they didn’t like the woman for some reason, and never broached the subject again.
A few of us hatched a plan. The four of us would watch the house, waiting until the woman went out, and then we would knock on the door. The girl would have to answer it and we would find out who she was. None of us knew what we would say to her, but that didn’t matter. The point was to talk to her. To see her without a pane of glass between us. And so, one warm Wednesday in August, we waited. It was the school holidays and we should have been out playing, but this was more important: we were going to solve the mystery of the unsmiling blonde girl behind the blue door.
We didn’t know if the woman worked. She left the house at different times every day. Maybe she did shift work. It wasn’t something that occupied us; we just understood that she would leave at some point that day. All we had to do was wait. We were right – eventually she came out. She gave us her usual smile and disappeared down the street. We waited some more; we told ourselves it was to make sure that she didn’t come back unexpectedly. But in reality we were scared. Now the time had arrived none of us wanted to be the first to walk down the path to the blue door.
We started messing about, the way kids do. “Knock on the door; go on.” “No, you do it.” “Why? You scared?” We were pushing each other further down the garden path until we were there: in front of that blue door. The taunts and laughter stopped and we stood in silence. We were there, exactly where we wanted to be but our courage had abandoned us. One of us had to do something before fear took over and we just ran away. So I did. I held up one hand, closed in a tight fist, took a breath and knocked as hard as I could.
Nothing happened. The tension broke and we started laughing again. Emboldened, I knocked again. My three friends joined me, until all four of us were banging on the door as hard as we could, making a racket. We were convinced no one was coming to the door. We were wrong. Just as it seemed that we’d forgotten all about the girl whose attention we were trying to get, the blue door creaked open. And there she was.
The door had opened just a crack and we could only see a sliver of her, but still more than we’d seen up till then. She was wearing a blue dress that almost matched the colour of the door. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her face was as serious as ever. She wasn’t wearing any socks, I noticed. “Hello?” She said, quietly as if unsure of what to say to us, which seemed fair enough after the noise we’d been making.
Our laughter died in our throats and we were suddenly very aware that we had no idea what we wanted. I cleared my throat. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Jane. These are my friends.” I was freestyling. I had no idea what I should say, I just knew someone had to say something. The girl’s head turned slightly as she regarded each of us in turn. She nodded once, as if deciding on something.
“Would you like to come in?” She asked. The four of us exchanged surprised glances; we hadn’t been expecting this. But we’d come this far and the thought that we might as well carry on seemed to occur to us all at the same time. I nodded and my friends quickly complied. The door swung open a bit further and the girl stepped back, giving us room to get inside.
I went first again, the others following me, as we all squeezed past the girl and her blue door. She shut it behind us and the first thing I noticed was that the door wasn’t blue on the inside. It was just plain wood. That seemed odd to me. But I soon forgot about it as it dawned on me that we were inside the house with the blue door.
I peered into the house, curious about how it would look, what exciting things it might contain. I was convinced it would be so much more interesting than my own home. I felt my mouth drop open as I took in the interior of the house. It was dark, the only light coming from the net curtained windows, and there was nothing there. No furniture in the room before us, no doors in the frames. There weren’t even carpets, just bare wooden floorboards.
My friends’ faces all reflected my own shock back at me. I turned to face the girl. She was still standing by the door. Her usually serious face was split into a grin. But she didn’t look happy. She looked terrifying. “I was hoping you’d come over,” she said. “I get so lonely here with just Mother to talk to.”
My stomach knotted with fear and I could feel little prickles of sweat appear all over my skin. “We have to go now,” I said, sounding a lot braver than I was feeling. “Oh, no,” she answered. “You can’t go.”
She moved away from the door, back towards the window, and I rushed to the door, desperate to leave. But there was no latch, no way to open it. I scrabbled against the wood, my fingers trying to get purchase in the tiny crack between the door and its frame. It had to open somehow – the girl had opened it, after all. I pushed it as hard as I could. I felt all over it as far as my arms could reach, hoping to find something. But there was nothing.
The girl was watching me, her head cocked to one side. She looked curious, as if wondering what I was doing. “Your mum will be angry,” I insisted. But she just turned away. “No, she won’t. Besides, it doesn’t matter what she thinks.” Her voice was oddly devoid of inflection, like a robot’s. “Well then our parents will worry.”
“They don’t matter either,” she answered.
“You have to let us out,” I countered but she didn’t respond. I wanted to grab hold of her and shake her until she opened the door, but I suspected that wouldn’t help. I had to think. My friends were all looking at me, their faces white with fear. I felt the weight of their expectations. And then it occurred to me: the back door. All the houses on this block were the same, which meant the back door, opening onto the garden, led off the kitchen, which would be through the door in the right-hand corner of the room in which we stood.
“Right,” I said to my friends, sounding a lot more decisive than I felt. “We’re getting out of here. Follow me.”
I led the way into the kitchen and stopped so abruptly that the kid right behind me walked straight into me. I stumbled, almost falling over, but managed to catch myself. The kitchen – or what should have been a kitchen – was just as empty as the first room. There were no cupboards, no oven, no fridge, nothing that made a kitchen, well, a kitchen. How could the girl and her mother live here? There was no food, no way to cook, nowhere to eat. Worse, though, at least from my point of view, there was no back door.
I pushed my way back through my friends and confronted the girl again. “What’s going on here?” I demanded to know. But she just shrugged. “You’ll live here with us now,” was all she said. “Oh, look. Mother’s home.”
She was right. The door had started to swing open and through the crack I could see the woman who had smiled and waved so invitingly to us. I ran, desperate to get to the door, our only escape route. But the woman was inside the room and the door had shut behind her before I could get there.
She stared at the four of us standing in the empty expanse of what should have been her dining room. Her face went white. She looked as scared as the four of us felt. “What have you done?” she whispered. The girl at the window smiled. “We’ve got new friends, Mother,” she said. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
The woman closed her eyes and shook her head. “Why?” she asked but I couldn’t be sure if she was addressing us or the girl. I decided to ignore the question and instead stated: “ You have to let us out” with as much authority as I could muster. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t help you. You’re stuck here now, forever.”
“Forever?” I repeated. “What are you talking about?” Fear was starting to turn to anger. “Just let us out!” I shouted. “Now!” I went back to the front door, shoving the woman with my shoulder. She was bigger than me, of course, but she still moved out of the way. I started pounding on the plain wood as hard as I could, trying to get the attention of anyone outside, but the sound just died.
I remembered the vigorous banging of what felt like just moments ago, when the four of us had been knocking on the door, when we had wanted to get in, the loud banging noise and our peals of laughter. But there was no laughter this time. I gave up. But then I realised: the window. I could bang on that. If the four of us worked together we could maybe even smash the glass. We might cut ourselves but we would be free.
I looked at my three friends. They looked lost, scared. They needed someone to take charge and that was going to have to be me. “The window,” I said, repeating out loud the words that had sounded in my head. “We’ll pound on it till it breaks.”
Three heads nodded in unison and we walked to the window where the girl was standing. I wondered if she or the woman would try to stop us. But neither of them did anything. I should have known then it wouldn’t work, but I was too filled with hope. My friends and I started smashing the window with our fists as hard as we could. Nothing happened. There was no sound. Not even any movement in the glass. It was like the glass just absorbed all our effort.
“It’s no good,” the woman said. “The only way out is that door and only she can open it, and she’s not going to. Not now she’s got you.”
“Our parents will come looking for us.” I insisted. “They’ll call the police. They’ll find us and you’ll be in a lot of trouble.” But she just shook her head. She pushed her way past me and disappeared into what should be the living room. I wasn’t going to take that. I followed her, ready to confront her. But the room was empty. I had expected not to find any furniture but the woman should have been there. My legs gave way and I fell to the floor. I started crying. My friends came into the room. “What are we going to do?” they asked, as if I had the answers. There was nothing I could say. I curled in over myself and wept.
I cried until I had no tears left. I had no idea how much time had passed. I went back to the other room, the one that would have been the dining room in my own house. The girl was still standing at the window, looking out. It was dark outside but inside the house was still bright, despite there being no lights in the room.
I walked over to stand in the window next to her. My house was directly opposite. I could see the bright square of the dining room window. My parents would be in there, wondering where I was. They would be worried by now. “Please let us go,” I pleaded. But the girl didn’t even answer.
I knew then that I would never leave the house with the blue door.