The Cursed Door

Beginnings

"I know how it ends. Of course I know." Adalyn sighed, looking at the mass destruction that surrounded her, the smell of smoke and death thick in the air. "I just forgot how it began."

She tried to think back to the time before she and her brother had discovered this war-torn world. Of course it wasn't a dangerous place filled to the brim with creatures that were detrimental to one's health when they'd first found it. She remembered the day that they'd found this world with bitterness and joyless happiness.

Adalyn and Owen had been cleaning out their grandmother's house in preparation to sell it. She had been cleaning the living room while Owen cleaned the attic, she remembered how Owen had complained about the considerable amount of dust that plagued the attic in a thick allergy inducing layer, when she had heard a thump, a lot of swearing, than a strangled 'Ada,' coming from above her. And when she went to see what had happened she'd found Owen sprawled over what had been a tower of boxes and had ended up trapped between an old trunk and a desk, stirring up a thick cloud of dust in the process, sneezing up a storm from the dust cloud that had began to settle over him like a blanket.

Adalyn had sighed a little at the sight of her brother flailing under a pile of boxes as he tried and failed to get up from under the pile of old and dusty junk. Adalyn remembers that she had spent what felt like hours digging Owen out. She didn't leave him to clean the attic alone after that, lest he fall and break something. After Adalyn had helped Owen up, they had just started putting the junk in piles off in a corner close to the attic door for them to go through later, when Owen had thought he'd heard a rustling sound behind the dusty old trunk he'd fallen into earlier. Adalyn had told him it was probably birds or mice but he dismissed her insisting that it wasn't and started trying to unbury it as the rustling sound had gotten louder the closer he got to the trunk, the noise got so loud that Adalyn began to doubt that birds or mice were the cause of the noise and she started to help her brother in unburying the trunk, hoping it wasn't rats.

Now Adalyn Cromwell, knowing what she knew now, really wished it'd been rats that'd made the noise, that outcome would have been far more pleasant.

No, what they'd found once they'd moved the old trunk was a door just a little taller and almost as wide as the large trunk that had hidden it from view. The door was old, its ugly green paint faded and peeling and its handle rusted. The rustling noise had gotten louder as they'd gotten closer to inspect the door, almost as if the door knew they were close to it. (Adalyn snorted at the memory, knowing that the accursed door probably did know or sensed them.) They had gotten closer to it, Adalyn had wondered what the door could possibly go to since the attic didn't have any rooms attached to it, it was just one large room. 'Than again' she had thought 'our grandfather could have painted it for our grandmother.' But Adalyn dismissed that idea, knowing that if their grandfather had painted it for their grandmother, it'd have been red or pink or any other color than green, their grandmother had hated that color with a passion, and he wouldn't have put a real metal handle on it either.

She had just started to wonder if they should mess with the door (Adalyn wanted to scream at her past self, that no they shouldn't mess with the weird door!) when her brother had started trying to pull on the door to open it, she moved to help him because she was just as curious as he was as to what was behind that door.

At that very moment, their fate was sealed because they'd managed to open it.