Behind the Door

Eli never liked the basement door.

It didn’t lead to a basement—just a shallow crawl space under the house. His dad always kept it locked with a thick padlock and told him never to go near it.

“Why?” Eli had asked, countless times growing up.

“Because some doors aren’t meant to be opened,” his dad would say, never looking him in the eye.

Now, Eli was twenty-nine, and his father was gone. A heart attack had taken him in his sleep, and Eli was left alone in the family house to sort through the remnants of a life spent in silence and mystery.

And the basement door?

Still locked.

Still watching.

By the second night, the lock was gone.

Not broken. Not cut.

Just… gone.

Eli stared at the now-unlatched door from the kitchen, a beer clutched in his hand. “Nope,” he muttered. “Not my problem.”

The door creaked open, slowly.

He froze.

The darkness behind it was impossibly deep, swallowing even the dim light from the hallway.

A low, whispering voice echoed from within. “…Eli…”

He dropped the beer. Glass shattered across the floor.

“Who’s there?”

No answer.

He inched closer. Just a peek, he told himself. Just enough to see that it was nothing. Mice, maybe. Wind. A weird draft. That’s all.

He knelt by the doorway and looked inside.

The crawl space wasn’t shallow anymore.

It was a tunnel.

Stone walls. Flickering lights. Too deep to be under any house.

“What the hell…”

Something moved, just around the bend. A shadow.

“Dad?” he called.

The voice came again, clearer this time. “Come down, Eli.”

He should’ve run.

But some part of him—a child’s curiosity long buried—stepped forward.

The moment he entered, the door slammed shut behind him.

He whipped around. “Hey! HEY!”

No handle. No hinges. Just stone.

The voice echoed again, now from all around him.

“We were waiting.”

Eli ran. Down the tunnel, past torch-like flames on the walls that flickered blue instead of orange. The further he went, the colder it got. He could see his breath in front of him.

Then he saw it.

A door. Identical to the one back home. Standing upright in the middle of the tunnel.

He approached, hand trembling as he reached for the knob.

He opened it.

And found himself back in the kitchen.

Same lights. Same broken beer bottle.

He blinked.

Was it a dream?

The door behind him creaked.

He turned.

It was open again—but this time, the crawl space was just a crawl space. Dirt. Pipes. Nothing strange.

Until something crawled out.

It wore his face.

“Finally,” the other Eli whispered, smiling. “My turn.”

Before Eli could scream, it dragged him back through the door.

The door clicked shut.

Locked.

From the inside.