When Death Isn't the End

THE DOOR

CHAPTER 15

He wasn’t supposed to exist.

The way he stood there, head tilted, eyes gleaming too bright under the flickering hallway light—it was like the memory of someone I hadn’t met yet. Or had tried to forget.

“Jasmine,” he said again. Gentle. Familiar. Like we were old friends. Like he’d walked me home before.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Remi’s voice echoed from outside—something about keys. The streetlight buzzed. I felt my heart thudding against my ribs like it wanted out.

“Who—” I finally managed. “Who are you?”

He stepped closer. Not fast. Not threatening. But deliberate.

“You should’ve opened Door Three,” he murmured. “You were ready.”

I took a step back, heels dangling from my fingers like dead limbs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He smiled wider. Too wide. Like someone who’d practiced how to look human but hadn’t quite gotten it right.

“Of course you don’t,” he said. “They scrubbed you clean, didn’t they?”

I turned and ran.

Out the door, into the thick night air, past Remi’s shouts and the stench of city garbage and weed smoke and whatever was rotting in the gutter. I didn’t stop until I reached the next block, knees nearly giving out, lungs scraping for air.

When I finally dared to look back, the man was gone.

But something told me he hadn’t left.

⸻

I didn’t tell Beverly.

I didn’t even know how to start. How do you describe the terror of recognizing someone who doesn’t exist?

Instead, I started seeing him in other places. On the train. Across the street from my apartment. At the edge of my peripheral vision when I bent down to tie my shoes.

Never closer than twenty feet.

Never farther than necessary.

He watched. Waited.

And I felt it—the pull of that door again. A pressure in my skull. Not pain exactly. Just the sense that something wanted in.

⸻

One night, I woke up and the hallway light was on.

I lived alone.

The mirror in my bathroom was fogged, even though I hadn’t showered.

I reached for it with shaking hands.

This time, there was a drawing. Scratched with something dull and rusted.

A door. Cracked open.

And beneath it: "ASK HER WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND."

I pressed my palm to the glass. It was cold. Unmoving. Real.

I didn’t sleep after that.

I called Beverly at 4:12 a.m. She answered on the third ring, her voice groggy but alert.

“I saw him again,” I whispered.

Silence.

Then: “Where?”

“By the stairwell. After a party.”

She exhaled like she’d been holding her breath. “Did he say anything?”

I hesitated. “He knew about the door.”

Another silence.

“Then it’s starting again,” she said.

“What is?”

But she didn’t answer.

She just said, “Come over.”

⸻

The sky was still dark when I arrived. Her apartment smelled like candle wax and incense and something faintly metallic underneath. I wondered if that smell was following me now—embedded in my skin.

Beverly didn’t ask questions. She handed me a cup of lukewarm tea and motioned for me to sit.

“I didn’t want to do this yet,” she said, pulling out a thick file from under her coffee table. “But you need to see it.”

Inside were newspaper clippings. Medical charts. Photocopies of letters. Most of it looked fake—too old, too yellowed, too melodramatic.

Until I saw the photos.

All girls.

All versions of the same face.

Mine.

Different hair. Different ages. Different cities.

But always the same eyes.

“I started collecting these after that night,” Beverly said quietly. “They don’t show up on public databases. I had to go deep. Forums. Off-grid stuff. Places people go when no one else believes them.”

I traced my fingers over a photo from 1979—black and white, grainy. A girl with a pixie cut and a missing poster behind her. Missing for eight days. Found in a field. No memory of who she was.

I flipped the page. Another one. 1995. 2006. 2013.

Different names.

Same smile.

Same scar on the wrist.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Are these… versions?”

“I think they’re iterations,” Beverly replied. “Like trials. Test runs.”

“For what?”

She looked me dead in the eyes.

“Perfection.”

The word sat in the air like a threat.

⸻

After that night, nothing felt real anymore.

I started checking the mirror every morning—not to look at myself, but to make sure I was still there. I memorized the details of my face. Counted my freckles. The tilt of my jaw. The faint scar on my collarbone from falling off my bike when I was seven.

I didn’t trust memory anymore. Only proof.

I stopped drinking. I stopped going out.

I slept with the lights on.

And one morning, I woke up to find all my mirrors covered with sheets I didn’t remember hanging.

⸻

Beverly and I began meeting regularly. Not always to talk about them, but we knew the weight hovered over every conversation.

“Do you think we were chosen?” I asked one night as we walked along the riverbank. The water was dark and choked with weeds, the air thick with gnats.

“More like culled,” she said. “Like they filtered out the ones that cracked too soon.”

“And what happens when one of us doesn’t crack?”

She looked at me sideways. “I don’t think that’s ever happened.”

The breeze shifted. Cold. Familiar.

Then I saw her.

The girl in the nightgown.

Standing at the water’s edge.

Barefoot. Pale. Hair clinging to her face like wet silk.

But this time, she wasn’t looking at me.

She was looking at Beverly.

And she was crying.

I blinked—and she was gone.

⸻

That night, I remembered the passage.

The third door.

I remembered standing in front of it, my hand inches from the handle.

I remembered not opening it.

But what if I had?

What would I have found?

What did Beverly see when she went in?

I called her the next day. Asked directly.

“What did you leave behind in the passage?”

She was silent for a long time.

Then she said, “My sister.”

⸻

Her name was Grace. Three years younger. Vanished when Beverly was twelve.

“No one believed me,” she said. “They thought she drowned. But I saw her. She walked into the passage. Smiling. Like she knew where it led.”

“And you followed?”

She nodded. “I thought I could bring her back. But when I crossed through… it wasn’t our world anymore. It looked like it, but everything was… thinner. Off.”

She paused. Her voice trembled.

“She wasn’t there.”

“But you came back,” I said. “How?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “All I remember is a room full of mirrors. And voices telling me to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Which version of myself I wanted to be.”

Her eyes were wet now. Distant.

“I chose the one who forgot.”

⸻

That night, I didn’t sleep.

Not because I was scared.

But because I was starting to remember things too.

Not full memories—just flashes. Whispers. Rooms I didn’t recognize but felt like home. Smiles from strangers who called me by names I’d never heard.

And always—always—that cracked eye symbol.

Watching.

Like it was waiting for me to break.

But I wouldn’t.

I was done breaking.

If they wanted me to open the door… I would.

On my terms.