I’m sorry you don’t like the story. That makes me sad. I assure you, it is the best story I can manage under the circumstances.
II.
The Door
IT’S NOT EVEN as if the boy finds the door frightening. At least, not to begin with.
He hadn’t noticed the door at first. Not until his head is on the pillow and he is snuggled deep down in bed. “You can stay up half an hour longer,” his parents had said, “but don’t think we’re making this a habit!” And that is all right, he isn’t a greedy boy, and the truth is, he isn’t sure he’d know what to do with an extra half hour every night. But a birthday is special. You have to stay up late on your birthday. You have to grasp on to the birthday hard and keep hold of it as long as you can. He had opened all his presents, and had his favourite dinner (chipolata sausages and beans!), and had a slice of cake – there had even been balloons, just as if he were having a birthday party, but of course he wasn’t having a birthday party, because he didn’t have any friends. Not yet. Maybe next year. Now Mummy has tucked him up in bed, and she asked him whether he feels any different now he’s seven years old, and he told her that he did, and he thinks that it might even be true. “Do you want the night light on?” she asked, and he said no – of course he did, but if he’s going to be a whole year older maybe he should start to act older, and Daddy always tells him it’s silly that a boy his age is still scared of the dark.
So he is left in the blackness. Although it isn’t real blackness, because the curtains are open, and the streetlamp shines through his window, and that’s a bit like a night light and the boy thinks that’s a bit like he’s cheating. So he is left in the half-dark, in a new bedroom that still doesn’t feel his yet no matter that his toys are all around. And he’s about to close his eyes tight and shut out the room altogether when he catches sight of that little wooden door tucked neatly beneath the windowsill.
He stares at it. It wasn’t there before.
He thinks at first it must be a birthday surprise. Because his parents said there’d be lots of surprises on his birthday, hadn’t they? And he’d had a few, but he isn’t sure he’s had lots. And they had promised that his bedroom would be finished by his birthday. It’s what they’d said the day of the move, driving hundreds and hundreds of miles in the car, and Mummy passing around the travel sweets, and all of them playing I Spy and singing counting songs, and Daddy saying, it’s like we’re going on holiday! An adventure, Mummy says – he’s going to love the new bedroom they have for him, he is a very lucky boy. And they would paint the walls any colour he wanted, what was his favourite colour, did he have a favourite? And Daddy would even paint a mural, why not! – a whole mural, lots of animals on the wall, circus animals maybe, did he like the sound of that? Because everything was going to be much better now. He did see that, didn’t he? It was important he saw that, because this move was all for him really. And he said he did see, and sucked on his travel sweet. He likes travel sweets, and he sucked this one until it was small and hard and round and then it was gone.
A finished bedroom by his birthday! But they haven’t found time to finish it yet. There are a few splashes of paint on the walls from the first weekend, but that’s it – Mummy and Daddy both have new jobs to get used to, and new bosses, and there’s so much else in the house that needs attention first, my God, Mummy said, if she’d known how much she wouldn’t have wanted the bloody house in the first place. And the boy can see how stressed his parents are – they’d said they’d wanted a fresh start to stop all the arguments, and here they are, and they’re arguing just as much as before! We’ll get to your bedroom soon, buddy, you can be patient, can’t you? Yes, he can be patient. He is always patient. But he does wish they’d do it soon, because the half-hearted daubs of paint have monster tails and sometimes in the night the boy thinks the monsters might peel down from the walls and leap upon him and eat him.
Don’t think of the paint demons. Think of the door.
Could the new door be part of the decorations? That has to be it. And only two things about that confuse him.
The first is that the door really hadn’t been there when he got into bed. Because he’d gone to the window, hadn’t he, and stared down at all the people in the world and wondered if they could guess it was his special day. He’d have seen it, even a little door like that.
And the second – is that the door doesn’t lead anywhere. It can’t. Behind it there’s just a three storey drop to the pavement below.
That said, only having two things confusing him isn’t so bad, and otherwise he likes the door fine. It’s nice and small. Neither Mummy nor Daddy could squeeze through it, this is a door just for children, like him. And he likes that it’s wooden, properly wooden, not like the boring doors in the house that are all planed down smooth; this door looks as if it’s been cut straight from the tree. There are knots in the wood. In the knots the boy thinks he can find the image of a face. The face is smiling.
He wonders if he should get up from bed and take a closer look. He doesn’t like to get up once Mummy has tucked him in, he can never make himself half so comfortable again. But he decides that’s just one of the sacrifices he has to make now he’s getting all grown up, and he flings off the sheets.
He tiptoes over to the window – very gently, he hasn’t worked out where the floorboards creak yet, and he doesn’t want to alert his parents. He gets down upon his knees so he can see the little door properly. And only now does he realise the smiley face of knots aren’t set into the door itself, but stick out as a perfectly round and smooth doorknob.
He reaches for the doorknob. It’s warm to the touch.
He lets go of it in surprise.
He takes it again, more tentatively this time. He wraps his palm around it. The palm tingles, not unpleasantly.
This is stupid. It wasn’t here before, and it can’t lead anywhere, and it’s stupid.
The knob turns easily. He pulls, but it does not open. Pushes, it still won’t open.
He tugs harder, and the door stays shut, quite blithely, as if in all innocence it can’t understand why a little boy would want to tug on its doorknob in the first place.
It must be locked, of course it’s locked – locked safe to keep little boys out. He looks for a keyhole. There isn’t one. The door can’t be locked, then. He pulls on it a bit longer, he’s getting a bit cross now – it’s jammed, or stiff, or stuck, or simply was never meant to open in the first place, yes, that’s it, it’s not a real door, it’s just a joke.
And of course he knew that all along, but yet he’d hoped, and now that hope was dashed. And in that wave of disappointment he suddenly understands everything completely – that moving to this house from the other side of the country isn’t some great new adventure, and it isn’t a fresh start, and it certainly isn’t for his benefit either. His parents are running away from something, and running away is always an act of desperate cowardice. He’s left his friends behind, and he realises with cold adult certainty that he’s lost them for good. He’ll never see them again. He’s received two birthday cards from old classmates, but the handwriting is too good, they’ve been written by their mummies, not by Carl or James at all – and he hasn’t had anything from Darren, and Darren was meant to be his Best Friend, and he will never get anything from Darren, and Darren will soon forget him. And, what is worse, pretty soon he will forget Darren too. That this is what life is, with all these people we profess to love, sooner or later they abandon us, or we abandon them, nobody stays by your side forever. Not unless you trap them and lock them up and hold them to you so tight they can never wriggle free. Like Mummy and Daddy do to each other, and like they do to him. And he knows now what Mummy and Daddy are running away from, as fast as they can – Mummy’s running from Daddy, Daddy’s running from Mummy, but it’ll never work if they run away together, can’t they see that? Because he can see it, it’s so obvious, and he’s just a little boy, it isn’t fair. Mummy and Daddy are stupid, just a
s the door is stupid. The stupid door beneath the windowsill is just another bit of make believe – if only he could get the door open he could run, but where is he going to run to, how is he going to run away?
And he lets go of the doorknob.
And all at once his hand is cold, and the room so dark and still – and he’s gasping for breath, he thinks hot angry tears are streaming down his face, and he is shocked to find out when he puts his hands to his cheeks that they’re cold and dry and he isn’t crying at all.
He sits down upon the floor, hard. Door behind him, staring back into his bedroom. The splotches of paint on the wall look no longer like monsters. The paint demons cannot hurt him. That’s silly. That’s childish. He can hear voices outside the room – his parents. Talking? Or arguing again? He wants to go to them. He wants to run to them, and throw his arms around them, and never let them go.
He wants to run through the door, far away, and leave them forever.
He feels the little wooden door swing open against his back.
And he knows right then – he knows that if he turns around he will have no choice. He will see what lies beyond the door. He will have to see. And things will never be the same again.
There’s a warmth behind him, it’s comforting. The air is fresh. There’s a familiar happy scent – what is it? Chipolata sausages! Baked beans!
He wants to cry out. Mummy? Daddy! But he’s breathing too hard, and his throat is dry.
He gets to his feet. So carefully, he doesn’t want to stumble. If he stumbles, he might fall backwards through the door. (But wouldn’t that be better? Isn’t that what the door is for?)
Feet moving now. Into the room. Away from the door. Into the room. He forces another step forward. Come on. Come on.
The warmth fades, but the scent of the baked beans is still strong, and it’s so much better than the acrid paint.
Another step. A third, a fourth – he has reached the foot of the bed.
He shouldn’t have to make decisions like this. He’s only a little boy. It isn’t fair! And the thought is a flare of rage, and it feels so terribly adult.
On to the bed he climbs, he crawls his way up towards the pillow. He mustn’t look back. Don’t look back. He wants to look back so much. He screws up his eyes tight so there’s no way they can see, he turns and flops face down upon the pillow. And now, at last, he thinks he really is crying.
Hang on to all that keeps you here. Think. All the presents he’s just opened, he hasn’t had a chance to play with them yet! The kids at the new school who are sure to become his friends if he just gives them time. He thinks of his Mummy and Daddy. How he loves them, and needs them – but they won’t be around forever, and now there’s a bad taste in his mouth, and he realises it’s contempt. He swallows it down, he has to gulp to do it, over and over again.
He sleeps.
In the morning Mummy comes to wake him, to help him get dressed for school. “Another big day!” she tells him, “up and at ’em!” He opens his eyes and stares at her, and she seems so soft and safe and he knows she will always protect him.
“I’ll never leave you, Mummy,” he says. And it feels good to say it, and he means it with all his heart – and yet, for some reason, it makes him feel guilty.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he says. And he is.
There is no little wooden door beneath the windowsill, and there never has been, because that would have been quite impossible.
HE FORGETS ABOUT the door. He forgets about those old friends too, just like he realised he would – Carl and James (although Jeremy looks a little like James, and every once in a while prompts an odd flicker of recognition), and Darren too. But he’s found other friends, and even another Darren, who sits behind him in class and can blow milk out of his nose, Darren is mental. And they were all at his birthday party, everybody’s there – even some boys he doesn’t like very much, even girls. They all bring presents, and even though most presents aren’t any good he enjoys taking off all the wrapping. He enjoys the attention, that’s the truth of it. Daddy can’t be there, because Daddy has to work weekends again – but Mummy makes up for it, she gets them playing games like pass the parcel and musical chairs, she lays on sweets and cake.
And it’s in that moment she brings out the cake, and everyone’s singing happy birthday, that the boy remembers.
The memory just pops into his head, as if it too has been playing birthday games, as if to say, I’ve been hiding all this time! Won’t you ever come to find me! The door. Something about an impossible door. “Blow out the candles,” Mummy says again, and she’s sounding a little impatient now – and the boy looks around the room, and everyone is watching him, and the attention isn’t quite so much fun any more. “Come on, we’re all waiting, blow out your candles, make your wish!” He blows out the candles. He makes a wish.
It may be Darren that says, “Let’s play in your bedroom!”, and Mummy agrees, take your friends to your room, that’s a good idea – “No,” says the boy, quite fiercely. “No, I have to... it isn’t ready.” And so saying he pushes himself away from the kitchen table, and races up the stairs.
Into his bedroom, door closed behind him. And he knows he’s not breathing right, what is that? His heart beating so fast. The memory seems to crash in on him – for a moment it squeezes out everything else in his head. A little wooden door set beneath his windowsill. There’s no reason to believe it might reappear, just because it’s his birthday again.
And it hasn’t. The room has long been decorated – first painted, then wallpapered. The demons on the wall have been buried and forgotten. Daddy never quite managed that mural, but the paper has lots of bears and tigers and lions and elephants on it, and that is nearly as good. All over the room, this unending parade of bears and tigers and lions and elephants going up and down and from side to side, and no room at all for an impossible door.
The boy breathes out with relief, and perhaps also disappointment, and his head is swimming with the effect of a false memory already fading, and he feels sick. There’s a fuzziness to everything, why is he in his room at all, why isn’t he at his party? He sinks down upon the bed. Lays flat out, arms and legs like a starfish.
The door is on the ceiling. The door is on the ceiling. And he’s been wrong about it – why had he thought it was so small? Because this door is vast, it covers the entire ceiling, it stretches from one corner to the other. It is wooden, yes, but he remembers that as being warm and comforting – this hasn’t been cut from a tree, this is the whole bloody tree itself, the widest tree the boy could ever imagine has somehow toppled over and is now lying across the top of the house. He’s staring up at the trunk. The bark is studded with nasty little branches and short rude stumps – and someone, somehow, has set a doorknob into its side.
The sky is made of wood and it’s pressing down towards him – and yet still, still the boy feels the urge to reach up for that doorknob. To take it tightly in his hand (and what would the tree have to say about that?), to twist it, to pull the door open.
He strains his arm, but it’s too far above his head – even if he stood on the bed, even on tiptoes, he could not reach it. And that’s a good thing. That’s a mercy. Because once again he feels it, that certainty he’s supposed to open the door – feels it, smells it even – go through the door, even though what’s on the other side will never let him return.
The knots upon the doorknob still seem to take the shape of a smiling face. But the face is smiling too widely, there’s something of a jeer about it.
The boy lowers his arm. And that’s when he hears the door creak.
He holds his breath.
He shifts to his side. Again, the creak – and now he sees it too, the door is loose within its frame, and as he moves so the door buckles towards him.
Very gently, so gently, the boy lets out his breath. At this a thin film of dust rains down, some moss perhaps, a few twigs. The door is starting to open, and m
aybe it hasn’t opened for hundreds of years. It bulges. The sheer weight of it is just too much. Hanging downwards like that, at some point the door has to release itself from its catch and swing open.
The boy can see clearly what will happen when it does. As it arcs down it will strike the bed, and he will be crushed.
He has to get out of the room, or else he’s going to die.
He has to get out, but the slightest motion may cause the door to come crashing down on him.
He steals a look towards the bedroom door, and he does so without turning his head. He fears that even the movement of his eyeballs might be too much.
Only a few feet away. He can make it. If he jumps off the bed cleanly, one sudden jolt to take the door by surprise, and then hits the ground running, and pulls open the bedroom door and leaps through. He can make it. He can make it. No, he can’t.
He stares up at the door. The door, in turn, stares down at him.
He tries to be very still. Not a breath. Not a single heartbeat.
And he sees his only chance.
The door hasn’t been carved out of a trunk, and planed smooth. The surface isn’t even. Some of it is lumps and bumps that look like ugly swollen spots. Some of it is pits and troughs, as if the spot has been squeezed and the dead skin scraped out.
If the door falls open and he’s hit by one of the lumps, he’ll be killed instantly. But if he can get into position beneath a trough – the exact position, mind – the door will swing over him and he’ll be safe.
Maybe.
It means he has to move his body, and he doesn’t like the thought of that. But if he does it very slowly, perhaps the door won’t even notice.
And gently, so gently, he starts to wriggle his way down the mattress. The door creaks, there’s more dust. The largest trough is at the very foot of the bed, but the boy doesn’t think he can get that far. The best he can hope for is to get his head roughly to the position where his feet are now, curl up into as tight a ball as possible, and hope.
Five Stories High Page 28