Creative

Nonfiction

The pieces included here are from my writing nonfiction genres, writing nonfiction for publication, and creative writing classes.

The Room at The End of The Hall

This piece is the third rendition of a story I've been working on since spring 2014. This was completed in fall 2014, and is an experiment in mixing the humor and length of a blog post with the suspense and mystery of a ghost story.

I have a wild imagination when it comes to my house. Like, I can’t sleep on the downstairs couch anymore. I can’t see what could be hiding in the dining room. So, my mind sees a black shape crouched in the shadows, just out of sight.

Or how I unwittingly imagine a deformed, mangled, and vaguely human creature crawling from a dark corner towards me when the final light goes out.

One slip, and it’s over. The light at the top of the landing, my only protection.

But, despite the fact that I still can’t explain the occasional flicking noise from under my pillow at night, I can ignore these events as imagination. The creature(s) that live downstairs at night I’m sure (I hope) don’t exist.

But there are some things that I can’t write-off as easily. Things that are harder to explain. All revolving around the room at the end of the hall.

I always felt that I should avoid that room.

When I was young, the room at the end of the hall – my parents’ bedroom. It should have been a source of comfort and safety. And it was, when they were in it. But even then, I always felt uneasy.

Even in the daytime, I hated it. The windows on the far wall were blocked with wooden shutters that let light stream inside in narrow slits. The streams exposed dust motes swirling in the air and gave the room an abandoned look.

The carpeted floors muffled any footfalls and kept it quiet. Tense. Like waiting for the moment in a horror film, when you just know shit’s about to hit the fan. There was no color on the walls to dissipate this feeling –no yellows, oranges, greens, reds to give any sort of warmth.

It felt cold.

Cold was everything about that room. From the harsh light glaring from the overhead fixture, to the pocket closet our heater has never reached.

Even the bathroom, tucked away behind the wall, invisible behind the doorway. The room was normal enough, with a swirled and stippled ceiling and warped glass shower doors and oak cabinets.

And yet, it was always chilly. The door was always cracked, the light always off, and that single sliver of blackness was so impenetrable that my young mind could imagine that the bathroom wasn’t there. It was something else.

The mirrors were everywhere. In the bathroom, on the door… Mirrors have dark myths around them, you know. They’re where you catch glimpses of things that shouldn’t be there. Things you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Things you, perhaps, weren’t meant to see.

As I grew up, I heard stories. When I first heard about my brother’s experience, it was long after it happened. I can visualize him easily, eight years old and brushing his teeth in the hall bathroom. I can see him glancing into the bedroom - only to see something that most definitely shouldn’t have been there.

A black, humanoid shape, stretched across the bedspread.

He never saw it again.

A few years later, it became plainly obvious that the little crawlspace entrance to our attic needed replacing. A new opening was created, just inside my parents’ bedroom. Large and rectangular with a pull-down ladder.

Not even two weeks had passed before my mom woke up in a panic late one night…. Which she later attributed to being “just a dream.”

“The stairs unfolded and a man came down from the attic,” is what she told us. But that wasn’t possible. It was just a dream.

My dad added a latch to the door, anyway.

It hangs there now, unused, a reminder of just why it was put there in the first place.

When I was in high school, my dad had his own experience. It was far into the AM stage of dark, and everyone was sound asleep. It was deadly quiet. The downstairs submerged in an inky blackness. This is how my dad found the house when he woke with a start.

“Someone knocked on the bedroom door,” he told me, “I opened it and no one was there. All of you were asleep.” The windows were shut, nothing was out of order.

As always, it was “just a dream.”

Maybe those were just dreams. Maybe my brother just imagined the figure, the dim lighting playing a strange trick on him. Maybe my parents were both sleep-addled.

But then came my experience. And I was certainly, 100% wide-awake.

It was October, a few years ago, late at night – maybe around 11pm. My sister and I were watching television, her boyfriend asleep on the couch, the rest of our family out.

We were watching a Halloween special, enjoying a quiet night. Our sense of contentment was shattered, however, when we heard the sudden, distinctive noise of a door slamming shut upstairs.

Complete silence followed, as my sister and I looked at each other, stunned. My adrenaline had shot through me and my heart climbed into my throat as we paused the show. We heard nothing. Nobody else was in the house. Nobody should have been upstairs.

We did what any self-respecting, independent, 21st century women would do, and woke her boyfriend up to go look.

When you live in a house your whole life, you know the noises it makes. You know the sound of each door, and how easily they shut. This was, we were both very sure, the sound of our parent’s bedroom door slamming shut. It was not a car door. And it did not come from the direction of the television.

And yet, when her boyfriend came back downstairs, he shrugged our worries off. “There’s nobody up there. The doors are all open, too.”

That is the part that chills me.

The wind, or a pet, can’t open a door.

We did not hear the door opening again.

The only door that was closed was to my sister’s room, and that always dragged heavily along her carpeted floor. It wouldn’t be budged by a stray wind or a cat.

These are situations that weigh on my mind. Maybe they are products of overactive imagination. But the common factor – my parents’ room – is a huge coincidence that I can’t make myself overlook.

Yet, these “experiences” are few and far between. Not only that, but none of them are threatening, just chilling.

Regardless, I don’t make a habit of going into that bedroom by myself… And I never glance in when I can help it.

I’m too scared of what I might see.