The Garden Door

The hours that followed passed in a hush, thick with that strange stillness that comes after something irreversible. The letter lay folded on her desk, the wax seal now split, its authority broken. Sloane hadn’t touched it since she set it down. She hadn’t needed to.

The words burned quietly in her head, their edges catching again and again.

Finish what I couldn’t.

Before it takes you too.

Outside, twilight stretched long shadows across the floorboards. She could hear the wind rattle the panes now and then, soft creaks in the walls like the house shifting in its sleep. But no more laughter. No knock. Just the memory of the shoe, still sitting on the hallway table where she’d left it, as if she might find the child to return it to.

She sat in the chair by the desk for a long while, elbows on her knees, hands knotted loosely. The fire had burned down to its last glow, barely enough to cast light. The silence pressed in around her.

Eventually, the weight of stillness grew too much. The room had become claustrophobic.

Instead, she moved slowly through the house, letting her body guide her while her mind floated elsewhere. The walls felt closer than before…

By morning, she hadn’t slept more than an hour. Her neck ached from the stiff shape of her pillow, her thoughts from wear. Rain tapped against the window in a slow rhythm, half-hearted.

She dressed slowly, moving through the ritual like someone returning to themselves. A soft charcoal turtleneck, one of her oldest, threadbare at the cuffs, stretched slightly at the neck. Over it, she pulled a thick olive wool cardigan that had belonged to her mother, sleeves too long, hem hitting mid-thigh. She fastened one of the wooden buttons near her collarbone and left the rest open.

Her jeans were dark, tucked into weathered brown leather boots caked with yesterday’s mud. She tied her hair back into a loose knot, strands falling free around her face in stubborn waves.

She bypassed the kitchen, appetite gone, and instead took her coffee to the old study room just past the kitchen. Walking towards the window, watching the garden blur behind misted glass.

At first, it looked just as it always had.

But then, something shifted.

A door. Low, arched, tucked into the far hedge wall.

She squinted, breath fogging the glass.

She had walked that path dozens of times. She knew the garden like the back of her hand. Theo’s obsession with symmetry, the carefully plotted flowerbeds, the iron gates he insisted stay sealed.

That door hadn’t been there.

It was rusted through the center, flaked with age, half-hidden by ivy that looked older than the house itself. She stood slowly, coffee forgotten on the desk, and made her way outside.

The rain had stopped, but the ground was wet. The kind of damp that pressed into your bones. She tugged the cardigan tighter around herself as she walked the gravel path, boots crunching, and tried to explain it away. Maybe she’d overlooked it. Maybe Theo had added it, though she couldn’t imagine why.

Up close, it was even stranger. The iron was etched with a faint, unfamiliar pattern, like something drawn in haste and weathered over decades. The hinges looked rusted away, but when she reached out, the door opened without resistance.

Beyond it was another garden.

Not wilder, exactly. Just older.

The path continued, but the stone was uneven. Moss spread in a thick green lush. The hedges were too tall, the roses almost over-bloomed, petals like bruised silk. Here and there, statues stood in cleared crevices.

She stepped through and the door eased shut behind her with a soft thud.

This place didn’t smell like the rest of the estate. It smelled of turned soil, wet leaves, and something subtler, like parchment left too long in a sealed trunk.

She carefully wandered the path , fingers grazing thorns and ivy, with senses alert.

Time passed differently here. She could feel it.

Minutes stretched. Or had it been longer?

She came to a fountain ringed by cracked stone, its bowl half-filled with dark water. Not reflective. Not still.

And then she heard it.

A laugh.

Soft. Brief.

Childlike.

It came from the path behind her.

Startled, she turned.

No one.

But something had changed. The air thicker.

She waited, listening hard.

A faint rustle in the ivy. A whisper, too soft to carry meaning.

Then a footstep.

She caught only a glimpse. A pale figure vanishing behind the curve of the hedge. A child’s shape. The white hem of a dress. A braid.

Sloane followed.

Not running, not calling out. Just moving forward, as though through a dream she couldn’t wake from.

The path twisted strangely. She couldn’t orient herself, each turn unfamiliar, each section of hedge too tall. But she kept going, drawn deeper until the air cooled around her and the trees overhead thickened.

She came to another clearing.

There, in the center, stood a second fountain, although this one was intact. Its water shimmered faintly.

She stepped closer, heart thrumming.

Her reflection came into view, blurred by ripples.

But it wasn’t just hers.

A second figure stood beside her in the water’s surface. Tall. Male. Eyes pale as frost.

Rhys.

Not beside her in the clearing but within the reflection, watching her as if from a place just beyond reach.

She blinked and the image vanished.

She stepped back, dizzy. The silence pressed in.

And then a voice behind her.

“I told you not to come here.”

She slowly turned toward the familiar voice.

Theo stood just outside the clearing, shoulders damp with rain. His face was drawn, paler than she remembered, as if he’d walked through a fever to find her.

“You never told me about the door,” she said.

“I didn’t have to.” His voice was hoarse. “You weren’t supposed to see it.”

“What is this place?”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he looked past her, toward the fountain.

“Come back to the house, Sloane.”

She hesitated.

“Why did you write the letter now?”

His jaw tightened. “Because I knew the moment you read it, the house would change.”

“It already has.”

Theo looked at her.

“No,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”