THE DOOR BETWEEN

CHAPTER 7

307 days before my life was caught short

The time on my alarm clock blinked red in the dark: 3:12 a.m.

I hadn’t planned to stay awake that long. At least, that’s what I told myself. But the weight of the photo and the word scrawled on its back had pressed on my chest like a slow-building storm all evening. By midnight, I’d stopped pretending sleep was coming. By 2:30, I was sitting up in bed, fully dressed, staring at the window.

I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

A sound?

A sign?

The truth?

But I knew what I had to do.

When the numbers clicked to 3:13, I stood up.

And the house creaked.

Not the usual settling. This was different. It sounded… intentional. Like footsteps pacing just beyond the edge of sound. I held my breath. My skin prickled.

I reached for the photo, still tucked inside my notebook, and slipped it into my hoodie pocket. The word Return pulsed in my memory like it had been etched into my thoughts.

I moved quietly, slipping past my mother’s door and down the stairs, barefoot. Each step made my heart beat louder. My hand grazed the railing—cold, metallic, unfamiliar. When I reached the bottom, I paused. Everything was still.

Too still.

The front door was unlocked.

I didn’t remember leaving it that way.

The key usually clicked twice, that solid little thunk-thunk of safety locking the night out. But now, the bolt was turned back, the wood barely resting in the frame. Like someone had opened it—or was waiting for someone to walk through.

My hand hovered over the handle.

This is ridiculous, I told myself. You’re chasing ghosts. Nothing happens at 3:13. Nothing ever happens at—

The porch light flickered once.

Then again.

And then the entire house seemed to inhale.

I stepped outside.

The air hit me like ice—sharp, thin, too clean. Like the world had been scrubbed raw. The street was silent. No cars. No crickets. Just a soft humming from somewhere I couldn’t place. Not a sound I could describe exactly, but a frequency I could feel.

It pulled me.

To the left. Toward the park.

I walked without thinking, feet moving faster than my thoughts. I didn’t take my phone. I didn’t tell anyone. Something about the hour made me feel like the world wouldn’t remember I was gone.

Halfway down Marigold Avenue, I saw her.

Lana.

Sitting on the swing set. Alone.

Same clothes from earlier that day. Same loose braid down her back. Same face I’d stared at in the photo—but now she looked blank. Not distressed. Not joyful. Just… paused.

Like she was waiting for me.

I stepped onto the bark mulch and felt it crunch underfoot.

She didn’t turn around.

“Lana?” I whispered.

Still nothing.

My voice didn’t echo. It didn’t even feel like it reached her. I circled around, keeping a cautious distance. Her eyes were open, focused on something I couldn’t see. She swayed gently with the swing, barely making a sound.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said finally, still not looking at me.

“I could say the same about you.”

She blinked slowly, then turned to meet my eyes.

It wasn’t her.

The recognition hit me hard, like stepping into ice water. Something inside that body—inside that shell—was watching me, but it wasn’t my friend. Her eyes were too still. Her voice, too empty.

“You saw it,” she said. “The photo.”

I didn’t answer.

“You heard it,” she added, as if ticking off boxes. “The time. The invitation.”

“What are you?”

She tilted her head. “Still her. But not only.”

A chill raced through me.

“I want Lana back.”

“She’s not gone,” it said gently. “Just… somewhere else. You’ll understand soon. You’ll see what we’re trying to show you.”

“We?”

The swing stopped moving.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Jasmine. You’re… awake now. And they don’t like that.”

“Who?”

“The ones behind the door.”

The phrase struck something in me. The door. The shelter. The broken metal latch. The way the light didn’t act right inside. I remembered it all too clearly.

“Why did you show me the photo?”

She smiled faintly. “Because we needed you to return.”

“To what?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, she stood. Her movements were too fluid, like she was being pulled up by invisible threads.

“Come with me,” she said.

“No.”

She blinked, unbothered. “Then you’ll come alone. Either way, the door’s already open.”

She turned and walked toward the woods behind the park. The trees stood like tall black bones in the moonlight. I didn’t follow her. I couldn’t. My legs were locked in place.

The second she vanished into the trees, the park lights died.

I ran home.

⸻

Eli didn’t pick up his phone when I called the next day. I left a message, then another. By noon, I was pacing my room, fists clenched, mind spinning. I felt like I was being watched.

When I finally decided to go to his house, his sister answered the door.

“He’s not home,” she said, brows furrowed. “Didn’t come back last night either. My mom thinks he stayed at a friend’s.”

My stomach dropped. “Do you know who?”

She shook her head. “You okay?”

I nodded too fast.

When I got back home, I found something shoved through the slits of my window screen.

A photo.

Fresh. Still warm from wherever it had been developed.

It was Eli.

Lying on the floor of the shelter.

Eyes closed.

Hands crossed over his chest.

A paper sign on his chest that read: “Still Awake.”

⸻

I didn’t cry.

I couldn’t.

Something about the image left me hollow. I didn’t know if he was dead or sleeping or trapped in whatever space Lana had disappeared into—but it was clear: they had him. And I was next.

That night, I did something reckless.

I went back to the shelter.

I waited until 3:11 a.m., crouched near the opening like I was about to perform surgery on my own sanity. The air was thicker here. I felt it pressing against my skin like a warning. But I climbed down anyway.

The trapdoor was shut.

I opened it.

This time, the air that rushed out was warm—thick with the scent of dirt and iron. Like blood. I climbed inside.

It wasn’t the same.

The layout had changed. The walls curved inward. The table was gone. No more notebooks or drawings. Just a long, endless hallway stretching forward into darkness.

It hadn’t looked like this before.

The bunker was evolving.

Or maybe it had always been this way, and we just hadn’t been meant to see it.

I stepped forward.

The floor groaned beneath me. The hallway lights flickered on in sections, each one revealing more of the space: concrete, walls etched with symbols I didn’t understand, and in the distance—footsteps.

Not mine.

I stopped.

The air around me started to vibrate, and then—

A voice.

Faint. Familiar.

“Jasmine.”

I spun around. It was Eli.

But not him.

He stood at the far end of the hallway, backlit by a glowing red door. His expression was blank, his hands loose at his sides.

“Don’t trust what you see here,” he said. “Even me.”

“What do they want?” I asked.

His voice echoed strangely. “You. Always you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re still lucid. Still aware. And they feed on awareness.”

The red door behind him opened.

Light poured out. Not warm. Not bright.

It was a pull.

He turned and walked through it.

I ran after him.

⸻

The red light swallowed me.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I felt myself being lifted—no, dragged—through some invisible membrane. It was like falling without moving.

Then suddenly, I was standing in my bedroom.

Except… it wasn’t.

Everything was the same but off. My posters were reversed, my desk on the wrong wall, the light in the hallway flickering even though no one was near it.

And I was in bed.

Asleep.

I moved closer.

There I was. Hoodie wrinkled, hair messy, clutching the pillow. But the thing that scared me most wasn’t the sight—it was the fact that my sleeping self looked peaceful.

Too peaceful.

Like she’d never seen the photo. Never met Lana on the swings. Never opened the shelter door.

I reached out to touch her.

Her eyes opened.

Black.

Void of everything.

She smiled.

And then—

I was back in the hallway.

Gasping.

Coughing.

Sobbing.

My knees hit the concrete, and the red light vanished.

⸻

I crawled out of the shelter before the sun rose. My limbs ached like I’d been gone for days. My throat was dry. My pockets were empty—the photo gone.

But something else was there instead.

Etched into the inside of my palm:

“Door #2.”

And below that:

“Soon.”