“Oh my god. Here it is.”

Maddie stepped into the large attic room. Her eyes hardly saw the dusty floor, the antique furniture, or the crumpled boxes. The twin bed in its usual corner spot, stripped of sheets and laden with bags of shapeless things like sleeping blobs. The once-decorative trunk frittering at the footboard, or the strange symbols on its now faded lid. The rack of her long-dead grandfather’s clothes. Rusty bicycles she never knew her grandmother owned resting under the eves. And she hardly noticed that the chair was gone––the one she’d been forced to sit in for hours, while the darkness breathed down her neck.

What Maddie saw was the door.

All other features of the room she noted out of obligation. A way to form the backdrop for what she really came up here to face. The attic was actually two rooms, divided by a wall. In the center of that wall was the door in question. Her eyes fixed on this door, the “it” she’d referred to when she walked in. It was closed. As she had prayed it would stay forever.

But she knew, as fear coldly caressed her spine, that it would soon open again.

Maddie’s husband, Beau, entered the room behind her.

“Whoa.” His eyes jumped around, landing on every dusty, decaying piece, wondering where a child could have possibly fit in. “You stayed in here?”

“It was slightly cleaner back then,” Maddie said faintly. She was just inches from the door now. Her fingers were now brushing the knob gently, testing its realness. Then she took hold of it, awkwardly, like a bad handshake. Too fast and too hard. Showing no intent to actually turn it. Instead, she clinched the knob as if to keep it from turning on its own.

Beau went straight for the window that looked upon the neighborhood. He crouched and peered out at the yard below and the street beyond, both still radiant with healthy, sane afternoon light. A mower droned from somewhere. The yard across the street was deserted, but there were toys littered about, waiting for a child to play with them or a grumbling parent to pick them up. The yard over was free of people and toys but held flower beds bursting with color. Tulips and poppies maybe.

“Wow, I bet this was something,” Beau said absently. When he turned back to Maddie, seeing her at the door, he flinched. “I mean, it could have been.”

He nervously wiped his mouth and went to her, assuming a graver posture. “This is the big, bad door, huh?”

Maddie didn’t look at him, but she nodded, reacting to something the door itself may have whispered to her. She lifted her hand and pressed two fingers into the striations of the wood. There was no yield whatsoever, and she appeared surprised by this. The door might as well have been stone.

Beau sighed and looked at her. “I still can’t believe your grandmother did that. What a terrible thing to do to a child.”

Maddie just nodded again. Beau turned and looked at the center of the room, the area directly across from the door. “There?” he said, pointing.

Maddie didn’t respond for a moment. Then she blinked and sniffed out of her torpor.

“What?”

“Was it there? That you had to sit?”

Maddie turned and regarded where he was pointing. She took a deep breath and nodded again. “Yep,” she said in a lighter tone. Her more casual response dissolved some of the tension in the room, and Beau relaxed his posture.

“If I left my toys out, that’s where I’d sit,” she said, her eyes spacey. “If I looked at her wrong or coughed wrong, that’s where I’d sit.” Suddenly, Maddie shifted and stepped back from the door. Beau noticed this, and watched the door a moment, waiting for it to fly open.

“How the hell did she ever dream of such a shitty thing? To tell a child, no less?” he said, shaking his head.

“Dream of it?” she asked, genuinely confused.

“Yeah. I mean, a room of complete nothing. Blackness. But from it comes what? Monsters, ghosts, demons? That’s so awful to tell a child.”

Maddie’s eyes narrowed as her brow creased.

“It was no dream or lie. It was real, Beau.” She looked at him as if he’d torn up something she’d drawn for him, or had spat in her face. She’d never looked at him that way, and he sucked in a breath, startled.

“Maddie,” was all he could say.

She wiped her eyes and laughed nervously. Realizing she’d lost herself for a moment.      “I’m sorry. It’s just this room. I haven’t been here in so long.”

Beau stepped forward and placed a hand on her back. “It’s okay. I know. When you’re ready, you can tell me what happened. We can talk about it.”

Maddie nodded and took a long, deep breath. Her eyes began to drift around the room again. They fell on the area across from them and she nodded toward it. “I think I’m ready now.’

 There were two objects across from them, by the bikes, objects made amorphous and ghostly by their sheet coverings. Beau had initially overlooked these upon coming in. By the shapes of them, they were either sheet-covered chairs or sheet-covered hands of giant monsters waiting to sink their claws into unwary asses. Maddie walked over to one and pulled off the sheet. Chair indeed. Beau did likewise. The chairs seemed to have been set out just for them. He smiled and then looked at her.

“You sure?”

She gave a tepid smile and blink-nodded a yes.

“But right here?” he asked.

She smiled brighter, the corners of her mouth twinkling with eagerness and sadness, and nodded fervently. “Where else?” She bent down and swept her palm over the seat of the chair, brushing away any dust that might have settled, and then sat down. “If we’re going to at least try to make this house work, I’ve got to face this.”

“But facing it is––“

“Talking about it. I know.” She smiled, but her eyes began to frost with anticipation and fear. She gazed at the door.

“Did she ever put you…in there?” he asked.

“No. It was never about going in. It was always about what might come out.”

Beau reached over and placed his hand on Maddie’s. Both of them gripped the armrests with their free hands.

“She called it ‘the Black Room.’” Maddie said, more to the room than to Beau. “Whenever I was bad. Or whenever she thought I was bad, up here is where I’d go. Here’s where I’d sit. Sometimes for no discernible reason. This wasn’t always my bedroom, you know. Just a regular attic, like this. Maybe not as full, a bit cleaner, but an attic just the same. And it was my punishment place. So she’d take me up here and I’d sit, with my back to the door. The chair wasn’t like these. It was a rickety wooden chair. I’d sit there, facing where we are now, away from the door, the Black Room.”

She paused, taking reassuring breaths and looking ahead. Maybe seeing the dark, innocent eyes of her younger self looking back at her from the hard, wooden chair. Wondering about the open door behind her. The things it held, the things it might release. Where all her innocence would be sucked inward to die.

 “Then what?”

“Then my Nan would crouch down close to me. Her eyes would go hard and sharp. And they’d jump from me to the room and back to me again, like to make sure something wasn’t creeping up behind her. Then she’d whisper in my ear, ‘The Black Room, the blackest of all, as deep and dark and endless as small. Don’t turn around, don’t let it see. The blackness of your eyes––open doors they be…’ I think that’s it. Then she’d open the door to the Black Room. She would hurry out of the attic. Then I’d be alone, with the open door behind me.”

It was silent as Beau processed what she’d just told him. He sat back in his chair, relieved for having finally heard the full story of Maddie’s traumatic experiences, as though he’d expected something more perverse and twisted. Still, his eyes held a curious, inquisitive sparkle. He turned to her with caution.

“So, after she’d leave?”

Maddie pulled her eyes from the door and met Beau’s gaze.

“Well, not much would happen at first. I thought she was just trying to scare me. Trying to add a nasty edge to time-out or something. But after a few minutes, when the afternoon light began dying out, something would change in this room. The air would become thin and chilled. I’d shiver, have trouble breathing. At first I thought I was just imagining things, but I could sense something. And before long, I could actually feel the darkness behind me. Its pull. Its depth. Its endlessness. Something like the end, but an end that led to so many horrible beginnings. I didn’t conceptualize all that then, obviously, but that was my kid interpretation. I just knew at any moment that dark would either suck me in… or let something nasty into this room with me. I would see some horrible monster, and my eyes would be like an open door for it to come in and…”

Maddie’s breathing began to quicken and she clinched her eyes shut.

“Jesus, look at me,” she said.

“It’s okay. We can move on.”

Maddie shook her head.

“No, I want to get through this.”

“Ok, so you’d experience that. What would actually happen?”

“I don’t really remember. I’d panic, and sometimes I’d black out.”

“Shit.”

“Call it relief, but that may have been the worst part, actually. After blacking out a few times, losing memory, I started to wonder if it was the actual darkness getting me somehow. Having its way with me. I don’t know.”

“Good Lord.” Beau squeezed Maddie’s hand. Then he let up, thinking he was squeezing too hard. “That’s pure psychological torture, like the cleanest kind.” Beau grunted and huffed like a beast as he turned his eye to the ground. “Your grandma was a real fucking witch.”

“She was ill, Beau.”

“Whatever.” He turned to her, looked over her face, then swept the walls and ceiling with his eyes. “You sure you want to keep this house?”

“I’ll be fine. I managed to sleep in here for god’s sake. The weight of it all didn’t hit till later. But I can actually think about it now without panicking. I’m not really afraid of the dark anymore. I even sat in our closet that entire time. I almost fell asleep.”

Beau snickered. “Just remind your doctor it was your idea and not mine.”

Maddie laughed. “Hell, she even suggested it. But coming up here was the last step. Really.”

They looked at one another, a long glance. Then Beau turned away and slapped his palms against the wooden armrests of his chair. “Well, in that case. It’s time.”

He pushed himself up out of the chair and glided towards the door to the Black Room. When his hand touched the knob, Maddie screamed. The sound was so strident and forceful, Beau felt as if something sharp had been driven into his ears, meeting his brain. He ripped his hand away from the knob and cupped his ears, cowering.

“What?!”

Maddie halted her scream. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open, though it was now covered by her hand. She looked even more shocked than Beau felt.

“I don’t know what hit me.”

“I was just going to…” Beau gestured toward the knob.

“Don’t!” She shot up from her chair but did not approach Beau.

Beau backed away from the door. “Okay. Okay. So maybe we still have a ways to go then?”

She shook her head fiercely. Then she looked at the window, through which a drape of dust-speckled afternoon sunlight hung. The light had waned since they arrived, but it still kept the shadows of night in the corners. Through that window was a world full of things, full of light. Dangers and surprises, no doubt, but only those that can be seen and felt and possibly understood and overcome with time. She turned back to Beau and the Black Room.

“It’s not me, Beau. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Me?” Beau asked, his face wrinkled with puzzlement.

Maddie closed her eyes and her body tensed and rose with breath. “I said I never turned around. That I never saw the room. I lied about that.”

“What did you see?”

Maddie began rubbing her forehead, coaxing the memories loose. Then she opened her eyes, which were hollow as she peered into the deep, shadowy stacks of her mind. Then she turned to Beau and looked through him, through the door, into the other room.

“Only blackness. It really was…a black room.”

“You mean it was dark.”

Maddie shook her head. “No.” She walked forward toward Beau, still seeing beyond him. He shuffled out of the way to avoid a collision, but still she didn’t see him. Her gaze was locked. At the door she stopped and leaned in close enough that her ears almost touched the grain. She swallowed hard and cleared her throat of whatever fear had lodged itself there. But she didn’t move.

“I mean it was black. I got close enough to see in. It was a day like today, just as bright. Some of that light should have at least crossed the threshold, but it didn’t. The darkness remained, solid yet full of space. And it had a pull. I couldn’t tell if it was a physical suction or just my mind being drawn to something so beyond.”

She suddenly pulled away from the door.

“What? Did you hear something?”

“I got away that time. And I never looked in again. I knew that if I ever did, I’d be lost forever. And I know you would be too.” She turned back to Beau. “But yes, you can hear something. It’s more of a feeling maybe, but it’s there. Go ahead. Try.” She motioned for him to step forward and listen as she had done.

With reluctance, he stepped forward. Constraining him was both skepticism and fear. Either his wife was telling the truth, which would be bad enough, or she was not––by intentional deception or outright delusion. He put his ear to the door. What he heard was not surprising at first. There was a faint whir, the sound of gentle movements. Various natural forces running through the house’s interior, against the exterior. Gentle air currents moving and dancing through the room, eddying in its corners, sweeping across the door. Emptiness but not true emptiness.

But after a moment, that ordinary hollowness expanded and began to pulsate, becoming more of a feeling than an audible sensation. There was a deep breathing sound, not the breath of life but the breath of violent potential. The door seemed to vibrate, but it was a fine vibration. So fine it tickled the hairs of his face, his nose, and his eyelids. Then he heard the voices. An unintelligible, muffled mess of voices at first, but then they gelled and clarified.

And they spoke to him. Saying his name.

Then the voices shrunk to one voice. A tender, playful voice, full of softness and light and innocence. It was a child, calling for his brother to come and play. To hurry. There wasn’t much time. Because time was stupid and life ended way too soon. Beau’s little brother who drowned in the bathtub was calling for him to help him finally get out and dry off.

Beau gasped and pushed himself from the door. His eyes remained locked on the door’s grain, his mind still echoing traces of that strange, expansive breathing sound, and the lilting syllables of his dead brother’s call.

“Holy shit,” Beau said, out of breath.

“What?” Maddie said, going to him.

“I just thought I heard something. Just psyched out.” Beau turned to Maddie, wanting to see both the shock he felt and some kind of understanding. But all there was in Maddie’s face was stoney understanding, and traces of grief and fear. She nodded, her eyes becoming rheumy.

“And I heard my parents. That’s what got me to turn around, to go to it. But when you get close enough, it pulls you in for good.” Maddie’s voice had taken on the soft, childlike quality of the disembodied voice Beau had just heard. But with none of the cheer and innocence. She twitched her head as if she could sense herself regressing. Her voice emboldened. “I mean, that’s what it does. It draws you in by making you think it’s full of the things you miss, yearn for. Things you need. Things you want to do over again.”

Maddie’s brow wrinkled with thought. Then she turned to the chairs.

“I can’t face it. Not really. And neither can you. But we don’t have to see it to face it.” She said, going to the chairs. Beau watched her absently, incredulity and the echoes of what he’d heard warring in his mind.

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure I—”

“Do it for me?” Maddie said, her eyes pleading and sad, yet puckish.

Beau smiled, melting some of the shocked chill in his face. “Of course.”

They both grabbed their chairs and spun them around to face the eave of the attic opposite the door. Then they slid them back a foot or so, to where Maddie had sat as a child. She eyed the chairs and then the door for reference. After adjusting the chairs a couple inches forward, a few centimeters backward, she nodded in satisfaction.

“Okay,” she said, looking at Beau.

Beau made to sit in his chair, as did Maddie. Maddie halted before settling.

“Oh! Damn,” she said, snorting a laugh. She walked around the chair and approached the door. She put her hand on the knob and told Beau to turn around.

“I’m going to close my eyes and run to you.”

Sitting down and facing the other way, Beau’s lips rose in a half smile, one of anticipation and amusement flecked with fear. Imagining his wife clinching her eyes shut and scampering away from the scary door like a child playing a game. Or a child terrified of getting too close to the always reaching, always hungry dark.

The knob hissed as it turned. The door sighed and grunted as it opened. Maddie whisked back to her chair and dropped in it with a squelch. She opened her eyes.

“Just look ahead,” she said.

“Okay,” said Beau, suddenly feeling silly.

Maddie took a deep breath as the moment settled upon her.

“You okay?” he asked, turning his head and eyes just slightly.

“Shh! Yes,” she hissed. “Just wait.”

For a moment, Beau felt like a person sitting in an attic with his back to an open door. To a room that probably contained nothing more than shadows, dust, and forgotten junk. Maybe a skeleton or two. Maybe even actual skeletons. But then Maddie’s breathing began to accelerate, growing deeper and more rapid. It was the respiration of fear but also, oddly, of sexual anticipation. Though Beau didn’t feel the least bit aroused. And he noticed his own pulse, his own breath, quickening.

There was no sound, no sensations other than what they’d already experienced in the main attic. But Beau’s mind was suddenly being pulled toward the room. A room that could have held nothing or many things. Many benign and innocuous things or many grim and eldritch things. Terrible secrets. Or, as its namesake suggested, so much nothing a person’s mind might implode seeing it.

Still, he felt his consciousness drifting toward the room. Trying to conjure images of what could be in there but coming short. There were quick reels of an ordinary room, then a room not so ordinary but not at all preternatural, with bones or bloodied clothes and things that wanted to stay hidden. Then a room with nothing but blackness. A blackness that breathed eternal emptiness. That pulsed with the somethings that only nothing could become. Somethings monstrous. Somethings painfully, mournfully endless.

Suddenly, Beau was afraid. Terrified. He couldn’t tell Maddie’s hyperventilation from his own. And it didn’t matter. There could be a truly black room behind him. All kinds of terrible somethings or horrific nothings. Or maybe he was just disturbed to his core by sitting in the attic of a deceased, witchy woman, reliving his wife’s psychological abuse, with his back to an open room that held god-knew-what.

Then he heard his brother’s voice again, calling for him. Faint and breezy. Could have been a draft or his own wheezy breath. And for an instant, Beau wanted to fly from his chair and go to him, find him in all that blackness and tell him that he meant to save him, that he never wanted him to die, and really did like playing with him. To pull him from the engulfing dark to finally take that desperate breath.

Beau’s eyes opened, and his grip on the armrests tightened, readied to propel him upward. That’s when he realized the sound he heard was not his brother but his wife. Maddie was whimpering, uttering what sounded like words that wouldn’t fully materialize. Her eyes were closed and she was in some kind of a trance.

Beau turned completely to look at her, to see her face. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and he felt tears beginning in his own eyes. He could also see the room in his periphery. Though it was out of focus and the attic was shadowy, what he saw in his periphery was nothing short of a deep, rectangular black. A portal to nowhere. A nothing that wanted him. That wanted them both so, so much.

Maddie’s eyes flew open, and more tears rolled down her cheeks. But her eyes were bright with relief and maybe even joy. She was smiling.

“Babe, are you okay? We can stop this.”

“Don’t look,” she said, pushing his gaze away from her, away from the door behind them.

“Enough? Is this enough?”

“I’m just happy that you’re here. It feels just like it did when I was a kid. Just as terrible.” She paused and rested her hand on his arm. “Only this time, I’m not alone and that’s a good feeling.”

Beau took her hand, more deliberately this time. They both squeezed. With so much force their hands should’ve hurt but they didn’t. Then Beau let go and got up from the chair.

“Fuck this,” he said.

“No!”

“I’m going to the door and I’m looking in. And then I’m going in. This all has to end.”

“You mean you don’t believe me?”

“No, I do believe you.”

“Then prove it.”

***

Maddie and Beau stood before the open doorway of the Black Room. Its blackness, its endlessness, unseen beyond the darkness of their eyelids, which were closed tight. They both felt the room’s breath, its pull, and they heard its calls. But they did not back away from it.

“You ready?” Beau asked.

Maddie only nodded, but hard enough to send an affirming shudder through her body down to his hand.

They took deep breaths. And together they walked into the Black Room.

They felt no fear. Because whatever terrible somethings or endless nothings they might face, they would face together.

Editor’s Note

This story is one of the most tense stories I’ve ever read and uses the technique of Not Seeing the scary thing to great effect. What is in that room?

Mason is one of those writers who is on the rise. His novel work is every bit as good as his stories. Check him out.