The Forbidden Doors Box Set

by Cortney Pearson

  It’s a woman on a stage, her hair coiffed short and curling around her face. A glittering headband ropes around her forehead, feathers pluming from behind. Her gown drips with black lace, and its train swoops behind her as she stands on a stage draped with red curtains and fringe.

  A sad melody emanates from the woman, her stunningly red lips mourning the loss of love paired with the hope for brighter days ahead. An orchestra strums away before the stage, echoing the melancholy swells of melody, while a crowd watches from the awaiting seats beyond, enwrapped in her image and her sorrowful song.

  I find myself trapped too, caught in her image, until it shifts. A trio of singers onstage, now a ballroom dancing duo, followed by comedians with trick jumping dogs, and even children performing short acts to raucous applause from the audience, the age of vaudeville at its peak.

  Again the image shifts, blurring in and out of clarity, being shown to me as if on a screen, the crow flapping by my side. I see the woman again, this time standing in a hallway in a casual day dress with a drop-waist, exchanging harsh words with a tuxedoed man with a short mustache. In another cloudy shift, the images flicker like a finger dragging through shallow water. The same man stands on a wide, white porch before a white-framed screen door, his handsome face guarded against the same woman’s presence.

  Tears stream across her face. She removes a small paper from her coat and hands it to him, wiping her cheeks. A black smudge of smeared makeup streaks from her eyes to the line of hair peeking beneath her bobbed, cloche hat.

  It’s not a paper. It’s a picture. He examines it, pain lancing across his eyes.

  “Her name is Evelyn,” the woman says.

  He hesitates, drinking in the image of the small, blonde girl in a dainty dress.

  Hope builds in the woman’s face. She wants him. She’s pleading, imploring for the sight of the girl to awaken the same feelings in him too. Feelings they once shared.

  Remorse and resolve war in his expression. “I’m sorry I’ll never know her,” he says.

  The woman’s jaw quivers. Another tear slides down her cheek. She fights against a swallow and nods as though she accepts his answer, though the pain is enough to cripple her that instant.

  “Everett,” she pleads.

  “I’m sorry, Rosemary. I can’t subject you to this,” is his only reply before he turns his back to her.

  The action crumples her resolve. “She looks like you,” Rosemary chokes out, backing away and leaving the picture in Everett’s hand.

  My mouth parts, my heart aching for their pain. They were in love, and they had a child together. And he doesn’t want to be with her? A thousand awful, judgmental thoughts cram into my brain. How dare he? What right does he have to leave her, to deny her?

  I know I shouldn’t care this much. I don’t know them, much less the details of their situation. But the whole thing rankles me more than I’d like.

  Things are shifting even worse than they did when Nikolay and I were in here before. Each time, the crow appears by my side, and I wonder if that’s why. If this is what the crow wants me to see.

  The golden light begins to fade, images distorting into the shape of a cast performing once again on a stage before a boisterous crowd. I find myself standing in the center of a slanted aisle between the long center rows of seats filled with eager onlookers, and a shorter set to the left.

  Men and women are in attendance, wearing dresses and suits. I tug at my t-shirt and jeans, but every face is turned toward the stage. No one takes any notice of a girl appearing out of nowhere.

  A pair of doors lies on one side of the stage. The crow squawks, flying in their direction.

  “The basement,” I mutter to myself, cursing myself for ever doing this. The actors on stage titter and the audience laughs in response to their dialogue, no one caring or noticing me. I follow the crow behind the black curtain and wait for my eyes to adjust.

  People gather backstage, a group here and there, standing on the sidelines, waiting for their cues to enter the scene. A creak comes from the rafters above, followed by the heavy tread of footprints. A shiver slithers up my arms, lifting the hairs at my nape.

  “Why did you want me here?” I glance up at the crow perched along the bunched, scenic backdrops, rolled up and stored for the next time they’re needed.

  A group of ladies in frilly dresses with high necklines chitters and disappears down a hall. I ignore the side door and follow, taking their lead. Dim yellow light buzzes with ancient electricity. The base of the stairs leads into a hall, branching off to the closed-off orchestra pit where strings and winds harmonize in conjunction with the laughter above. Several other prop rooms stand open, displaying their various commodities.

  Across from the orchestra pit lies a large dressing room where men and women undergo costume changes. Several ladies flutter before mirrors lined with round, white bulbs. One mirror looks cleaner than the others, though no one occupies it. I’m about to pass the crowded room and continue my search, when I startle.

  There, on the counter, sits the very same perfume bottle I found, the bottle that my mother said I could have, that nearly broke when I knocked its box off the desk.

  “Oh my gosh,” I say, making my way over, when I catch sight of a door in the far corner, away from the mirrors, the costume racks and the actor waiting in some kind of cage to be lifted through what looks like a trap door above.

  The door is black. Multiple circles cover its surface, one above the other, with added designs and symbols scratched in and laced with gold embellishments, just like the door in Piper’s old library.

  No one pays much attention to the door. No one but me.

  The knob is intricate as well, like the one Nikolay retrieved from Piper’s house. I pass through the actors like a shadow, silent and unseen. With a glance behind me, I touch the knob. The metal zings into my fingers like a fork in a socket.

  A scream breaks in the theater, followed by a loud thumping sound and the unmistakable thunder of many feet moving all at once. “What is it?” someone asks.

  “She’s dead!” a voice cries through the open trap door. The golden haze filters through, expanding my vision, so even though I’m below stage, I’m seeing everything at once. I glance up to find a woman swinging, her neck in a noose from the balcony.

  Popcorn flies. People rush for the exits. Actors on stage cling to one another and break for the wings. The woman’s head lolls to one side, her dead eyes bulging, her feet small stubs peeking beneath her skirt as she sways over the frenzied crowd.

  The sight sends me reeling, and all at once I’m back in the basement, actors scattering, running all around me though never touching me. Their terror is contagious, seeping into my veins and spurring my pulse to race like a spooked horse.

  I’m tempted to run and join them. But there is no way out except through the door.

  The knob juts out its nose. An unnatural coldness washes over me, drumming warning from my bones. But I reach out for it.

  “Not so fast,” comes a voice.

  I whirl around. A tall man in a suit and bowtie, mustache curling just over his thin lips, leans on a cane, watching me.

  “You can see me?” I ask stupidly. The chaos spreads, people streaming out the door, but it’s as though only the two of us are present.

  “Of course I can, you fool girl. And I’m afraid I’ve come too far to let you undo my hard work. The deed is done. It cannot be undone.” He tosses his cane upward, catching it midair and gesturing toward the still-open trap door.

  “What are you talking about?”

  A sneer curls on his lip. “If Terekhov thinks he can back out of his deal with me, he will find himself sorely mistaken.”

  A deal? What deal? I think back to the books, the doorknobs stamped into their pages. The ink, the names. The woman swinging from the balcony.

  T
he deed is done.

  Fear knots in my chest.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. One of the actors granted me a personal tour, but I got turned around.” The lie is unconvincing, even to me.

  The man in the suit steps closer. Clearly, the cane is more accessory than necessity. “Then it’s best you release your grip on that knob and make your way to the exit, like everyone else.”

  “The woman—?” My question trails off.

  The crow appears behind him, hovering. But I’m no longer afraid of it. I know in this moment—this is its message. It has been all along, to hear, to see, to know this. But why?

  It flaps beside me, though the man doesn’t appear to notice. As before, in Piper’s house, the doorknob’s screws begin loosening themselves behind me. I recognize the sound, a subtle, tiny twisting.

  “Tragic event, to be sure,” the man says, eyeing the top of his cane. “An actress in my company. But then if you were truly from here, you would know who Rosemary was.”

  Rosemary.

  The deed is done.

  That was no red ink. The stamps in the other books weren’t regular ink, either. They were darker, distinguished, from the rest of the writing. Why would blood be used for the doorknobs? Why did I see her death?

  “But you aren’t from here, are you?”

  He’s closer now. He could whip out his cane and strike me any time. One screw falls. Then another. My hand tightens on the knob.

  Sirens wail outside, sounding like something from World War II, stealing the man’s attention. Taking advantage of the distraction, I turn and wrench the knob from its place.

  “Don’t!” he cries.

  The knob comes loose and slips from my hand. The man’s face is a burst of rage, red with hatred and bulging in his haste. Something begins pulling me from within the door, some unseen force luring me away from a time period I don’t belong in.

  I panic, trying to remember how Nikolay and I made it out of Piper’s house.

  Terekhov and Son Books, I chant in my head. Terekhov and Son Books.

  The man is almost to me. He stabs his foot near the wall, preventing me from moving. He bends for the knob.

  Terekhov and Son Books. 2017. Terekhov and Son Books.

  The bookstore blurs into being. The crow caws, frantically bobbing above the brass handle. I reach it first. And with a feral kick, I smash the man out of the way long enough to open Nikolay’s door and dive through it.

  nineteen

  A hand on my arm snares me, and the surroundings twist and spin. I grip Nikolay to avoid being caught up in it all, until he shoves me through the door, and I land on my knees, bracing my weight with the palms of my hands—one hand still gripping the knob. I’ve never been more relieved to see his store’s shelves in all my life.

  “What were you thinking?” he says, bending to help me up. “Why did you go back in there by yourself? And what is this?”

  I show him the knob. “I took it. It came loose, so I took it with me, so he couldn’t follow me.”

  “What have you done?” he murmurs, but I can’t tell if he’s speaking to me or to himself.

  “Nikolay, I think we were wrong. That was no red ink, in that new book. Those knobs were inked in with blood.”

  “What makes you say that? What happened?”

  “The crow was here—I can’t explain it, it was almost like my guide in there. I think you were right. They’re not a threat to me. They’re trying to get my help. It was with me the whole time in there.”

  “A crow?”

  “It chased me into the door, Nikolay.”

  He rubs his jaw. “What did you see? And how did you manage it without the hitch? You shouldn’t have been able to maneuver the path without it.”

  “I think it was the crow, helping me! I saw Rosemary, I saw her life. I saw her lover. She loved someone, even had a child with him, but she lost both him and their child. And then she died.”

  Nikolay runs a hand across his face. “And the blood?”

  “Why else would her name be in that book? Why else would I see her over and over in that door before seeing her die? I’m betting Ada’s name is in Augustus Garrett’s book as well.”

  “I asked my father. He is preparing a new door,” Nikolay says solemnly.

  “That means whoever it’s for has to kill someone, doesn’t it?”

  He swallows.

  I place a hand on his shoulder. “He told you that, didn’t he? Was there another name yet, in that next book he was starting?”

  “I don’t think so. There was nothing written beneath the insignia we saw.”

  No name yet, that means we still have time. Nikolay and I both say nothing for a long time, both lost in our own thoughts.

  “We can’t fix the doors,” I finally tell him. “Not if this is the cost.”

  To my surprise, he doesn’t argue. There’s no color draining from his face, no hesitation, it’s almost as though he was thinking the same thing. “What do you suggest?” he says.

  “We could undo it. Why don’t we go back before any of this was invented, before your father even had the idea? We could save your mom, Nikolay. We could stop it all, right then and there!”

  His face pinches in distress. “If that was an option, I would have already done it. Everything is connected. We can never know what may come if the timeline has been tampered with.”

  “And yet you sell access to that very timeline to a bunch of psychopaths!” I say, thinking of the grim delight in the man’s face.

  He whips his hand angrily toward the door. “I didn’t know this was the price, Everly.”

  I huff, some of the flames dousing inside me. “You can’t let your father finish that door. You have to know how wrong it is.”

  “Of course I know how wrong it is!” he says, losing his cool. The same anger he flared at Jerry the night he nearly smashed through the store windows channels in Nikolay’s eyes now. But it’s not directed at me. A hint of betrayal winds in that glance. “Why would he do this?”

  “You really didn’t know,” I say, relief flushing through me. And I’m not sure which part I’m referring to. The fact that he didn’t know about the correlating murders, or that his father is up to something in that basement of his.

  Andrei seemed so kind the night he helped me, the night he heard my problems and explained what he was doing with the book. He helps people. How can he be involved in this as well?

  Nikolay cricks his neck, still not looking at me. I can’t imagine how hard this much be for him, to find out his father has been committing—or aiding in, at least—murder for all these years.

  I stand beside him and rub a hand on his back. “Are you okay? You said earlier—you spoke about obeying your father. Are you—are you afraid of him?”

  Nikolay’s shoulders tense, the muscles coiling in his neck. “It’s no secret that my father is a dangerous man. Danger attracts danger. Only because it’s required in his area of expertise.”

  That’s no excuse. “I did what my parents wanted on the surface, but behind their backs I tried my hardest to make my own way,” I tell him. Either he really respects his father as I’m sure kids were raised to do a hundred years ago, or there’s something more to it.

  “Worked out well for you, did it?” he says emotionlessly. “Doing things behind their backs?”

  I stare at my fingers on his back. “It brought me here. To Cedarvale. I should have been straightforward with them. But I can’t change that now, and actually, I wouldn’t want to.” The words ring with sincerity even as I speak them. I repeat myself, just to be sure. “I wouldn’t change anything I’ve done. Would you?”

  Nikolay’s eyes press closed. “Did you have all the facts?” His voice is a ghost in the stillness between us.

  “What?”

  “For the
ir behavior? Did you know why your parents did what they did?”

  “I thought it was because they were trying to control my life,” I say, thinking aloud.

  “And now?”

  I force myself to think retrospectively, and for the first time, to see things from my parents’ point of view.

  Their daughter sneaking out, racking up texts and data on their phone plan, grades failing progressively, getting into more and more yelling matches. My parents, worried sick and wondering where I kept disappearing to night after night, then resorting to picking me up directly after school to keep me from running off to who knows where. Being driven to desperation, enough to search my room until my mom found my very detailed diary entries about kissing an older guy in the dark corners of a club they previously forbade me from going to.

  I don’t want to sympathize with my parents, to see them as anything but antagonistic control freaks. But I see them now. I see their worry, I feel their heartsickness, understand their anger the night Mom caught me tiptoeing in through my window.

  “They were worried about me,” I finally answer.

  Nikolay turns. His hand smooths its way over mine. “I obey my father not because of fear. But out of respect for him. I help him with this cause because of my mother. Because of the original cause he served in creating these doors, and in hoping that another might be using them for just as worthy a cause.”

  Some of the bitterness sheds itself, leaving a small, tender vacancy in its place. I didn’t respect my parents then. But I do now, and this shift in my heart surprises me.

  “I fear what will happen should we destroy the books and their doors, Everly. That pathway sustains the afterlife my father created for her. I fear where she will go.”

  “Your mother will be at peace,” I say. “Just like others who die without regrets.”

  Intensity builds in his gaze. And gratitude. “How do you know she had no regrets?”

  “Because if your father truly loved her, he would not have preserved her in a book to keep living in them all these years.” I wonder which of the volumes is hers. No wonder they’re kept under locked glass.