The Eighth Gate

12 | Twenty Questions

The moment Mary and her friends burst through the door to the master bedroom, the same frosty atmosphere experienced back in the hallway engulfed them. But it wasn’t the cold that caused the three of them to screech to a halt. It was the sight of the same boy Mary had witnessed earlier, now standing just at the far end of the large room. His neck was ringed with blood, as if his head had gotten chopped off and then mounted back on again.

Tamara let out a startled squeak. Mary gasped sharply.

“Oh my God,” Noah whispered as he took a surprised step back, away from the scene before them. The boy wasn’t the only spirit now visible to Mary and her friends; a pair of ghosts stood solemnly against the walls to the left and right of them, as if they had been expecting their arrival. On one side were two more children: twin boys, a bit younger than the one Mary had first laid eyes on. Across from them stood a woman and a teenage girl. All of them gazed upon Mary, Noah, and Tamara with sad eyes. They were covered in blood, dressed in nightwear.

“The victims,” Mary managed out hoarsely. Her heart clenched for their lost lives, for the abrupt, violent manner in which it all had ended. She could imagine the terror they must have felt that night, the sense of betrayal from realizing it was a father, a husband who was out to hurt them. The pain they must have felt when the axe he used sliced through their skin…

Under different circumstances, Mary and her friends would have tried to help the slain family find peace. But their own lives were at stake, and they couldn’t afford to stay in this house any longer.

“We need to get out of here,” Tamara said, echoing Mary’s thoughts. Her voice was also reduced to a low whisper, as if she were afraid the apparitions in the room would hear.

“Kind of hard to do that when a whole bunch of murdered ghosts are staring you down like you’re the reason they’re dead,” Noah replied lowly.

But then, in a blink, everyone was gone.

Yet Mary could feel their presence all around her, feel the weight of their gazes as if her every move was being observed by an unseen audience. She rubbed her covered arms and let out a shaky breath, which escaped her mouth in the form of a brief puff of condensation. Now that the ghosts weren’t distracting her, Mary was able to assess the glaring details that had escaped her earlier— like the fact that it was lighter in here, a welcome respite from the opacity smothering the rest of the house. A brief survey of the room revealed that it was modestly large, and shaped like a rectangle with a tiered ceiling. A bedframe still occupied one end of the area, bare of anything except a spring; her eyes skimmed over the silhouette of a half-open wardrobe set against the wall opposite her. She quickly found the source of the pale light: it spilled in from the wide window to the right, a mix of moonlight and streetlight.

“There it is,” Mary whispered, pointing in its direction. Relief flooded through her at the sight of the pane of glass, revealing the glittering snow and empty street beyond it. Freedom.

Mary had just taken a step towards the window when a violent gust of wind barreled into her, blowing her hair away from her face and slamming the bedroom door shut behind her. She exchanged frightened looks with her friends. He was here.

“Run!”

 Mary didn’t have to be told twice. The window was her beacon; the image it held of the outdoors urged her feet forwards as she ran towards it. Yet as she passed that half-open wardrobe, her pace slowed down dramatically. Mary’s attention was suddenly swept up in the allure of the piece of furniture, the sense of urgency it radiated that piqued Mary’s burning curiosity. The urge she had been feeling since she set foot in this house was back with a vengeance, gripping her so tightly she could hardly breathe. The wardrobe and what it held inside its doors became the main focus—the only focus—of Mary’s attention; everything else around her ceased to exist. Through the slit of space between the half-open doors, she could see a familiar slow pulsation of red light. It called to her.