The Last Door

 

     Her house had seven doors—doors to three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a storage room, and a mini-library. And he watched her through all those seven doors. In her bedroom, he watched her sleep. In her younger sister’s bedroom, he watched her talk to her sister and sometimes sleep beside her. In her parents’ bedroom, he watched her converse with them. In the mini-library, he watched her read her books and admired her shelves filled with wonderful books that opened portals to amazing worlds, and in the storage room, he watched her keep and organize things.

     It was love at first sight—ever since he saw her at her old relative’s interment.

     His agony started a few months ago when he heard her talking to her parents. “I feel like someone or something is haunting me,” she told them. “It’s standing by the door of my bedroom, watching me, I can’t see it, but I can feel it.”

     They consulted a spirit medium.

     “Yes, there are traces of an otherworldly entity roaming and haunting this house, and mostly it stays by the door,” said the medium. “And not only your bedroom door but in every door of this house.”

     “How do we banish it?” her father asked the seventy-two-year-old spiritualist.

     “I can lock every door,” the medium answered. “You can open them but it will remain locked for this entity.”

    And the medium started performing rituals—uttering a little prayer and a chant— at the doorway of her parents’ bedroom, her sister’s bedroom, her own bedroom, the storage room, and lastly, at the doorway of the mini library—the last door where he could watch her. And then the old woman nailed a medallion to every door, something that emitted an energy that forced him away, ultimately blocking him out of her life.

    And he went out of her house and walked towards an endless darkness—where there was no door to watch her from and no light to shine on his existence.

     And his tears burned the ground as he walked away.