The Red Door: Alternative history

CHAPTER 1 A whisper in the House of Shadows

The Red Door

Author: [Crown-Clown]

There is something unsettling about a door. A door is more than wood, more than iron, more than the silent hinges that support its weight. It is a threshold, a boundary between here and there, between what you know and what you fear. Behind every door, something waits - sometimes in silence, sometimes in shadow.

To open a door is to invite opportunity, but not always the one you expect. You can't know what lurks on the other side, watching, waiting, listening for the rattle of a key, the turn of a knob, the quiet creak that gives you away with a bang. Because doors hold secrets, some of them too dark to whisper about, and once you open them, those secrets are no longer yours alone.

Some doors breathe. They pulse with the memories of those who have passed through them before you. The house remembers, and the door is its mouth, patient, eager, ready to speak. But what if the door is not an exit? What if it is an entrance? What if it leads not to the familiar but to the forgotten? Not to the light, but to the shadows?

To knock on a door is to call out, to ask permission from what is behind it. To open it is to respond, not to a call, but to an order. There are doors in the world that must remain forever closed because behind them the past does not want to remain buried. And what was once closed is always waiting for someone who is foolish enough to open it.

Some doors open both ways. But once you cross the threshold, not all paths lead back.

There's something about old houses: they hold memories long after people have passed away, as if the wood and stone themselves remember every whispered secret, every laugh, every cry. Some houses are not just dwellings, they are prisons, havens for things left behind. And some doors, once opened, can never be closed.

***

David didn't want to go back to his parents' house. He had avoided it for years, leaving heavy memories and unspoken grief locked behind fading walls. Stifling memories of a home once filled with warmth, now haunted by their absence. His parents had disappeared without a trace five years ago, and since then the house had stood empty as a monument to secrecy and despair. It was his inheritance now, but it felt more like a burden.

His parents' disappearance had been sudden, without explanation. One day they were here, and the next they were gone. No bodies, no signs of struggle - just gone. He hoped that perhaps they had left some clue that would explain the mystery of their disappearance. The house he'd inherited was the last lead, and David knew he had to find it, even if it meant facing what he'd been running from for years.

Sighing, he ran a hand through his disheveled hair and looked up at his house. The house stood at the edge of a quiet, forgotten street, its silhouette silhouetted against the evening sky. It was a two-story Victorian-style house whose once-white paint had peeled and turned gray. The large porch was slightly askew, the wood groaning under the weight of years, and the railing cracked and warped from neglect. Dark, narrow windows sat at the front of the house, their panes fogged with dirt, and it was hard to tell if anyone was watching from inside.

The roof was steep and gabled, casting a deep shadow over the front yard, and the shingles were missing in places. Vines twisted along the sides of the house, poking through cracks in the foundation as if nature was slowly reclaiming the structure. The chimney tilted slightly, as if ready about to collapse, adding a crooked, unsettling element to the otherwise straight lines of the house.

There had once been a garden in the yard, but now it was overgrown and feral, weeds and tangled bushes squeezing the life out of the flowerbeds. The grass, long and unkept, swayed gently in the wind, trailing the remains of a rusty swing outside the house whose chains creaked softly with every gust of wind. A dilapidated fence, its posts leaning at different angles, enclosed the lot, as if struggling to keep the outside world at bay.