The Secret Door

By Manasvi Mukherjee

The house had always felt overgrown in size. Cassie had always managed to shift her gaze from the old Victorian manor to the edge of the forest. She attributed this to the use of its floorboards and draughty hallways, with their creaking sounds, providing her with wandering stories from decades gone by.

One summer evening, as I yanked out the old and disorganized books from the cupboard, I was able to sight it. It was a dull little door that was hidden behind a decaying bookshelf and other stuff. It had no doorknob; instead it had a wood commonly used for black art, which was a carved knot.

Suddenly, I felt the tension rush through my veins. Having lived in the house for six months, I never imagined that there was more to this door. However, the dullness became slightly annoying as it continued to nag me. 

There was a crowbar lying on the other side of the bookshelf, so I extracted it from the doorknob. The doorknob was oily and rusty Hence, a shrill noise was produced when the door was used creating an avenue for the destructive staircase decoratively known as a spiral staircase to be visible.

There’s the possibility that this is all an imagination given to a vacant storage. I spoke hesitantly but as though a miracle had occurred. 

Before making my way across the decaying ceiling, I took her place. Until finding a cave with at least three dim lights, I wriggled forward, I grabbed for a dim wand but with each turning in the dark, it began to thicken while the other filled the atmosphere with blooming flowers during spring.

She exited the stairs and entered a strange chamber that had no clear boundaries. The walls were simply draped with some sort of bioluminescent vegetation that spread across the stony structure. And there were trees growing tall and gnarled, their trunks were thick.

By Manasvi Mukherjee