"The Door
" is a short creepypasta by Dispater, posted on October 24th 2012 on creepypasta.com.
A first-year hospital resident works long hours and lives in an old apartment with a particularly described layout. The reason for this is that the bedroom door, and sometimes even the hallway, inexplicably moves every other morning, only to return to their original positions later as if nothing happened. That's hardly all there is to the mystery though...
"The Door" contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Ending: The story leaves most of its questions unanswered. The cause of the shifting architecture is never confirmed beyond the suggestion of Sleep Deprivation-induced hallucinations, and even after the protagonist moves out after two unknown beings try to get through the door, nightmares of them continue to haunt their mind each night, and they insist that every door in the apartment stays open to never see any displaced doorways or gaps in the walls ever again.
- Cassandra Truth: Played with. The protagonist is anxious that the super won't believe them about the gap in the wall when it vanishes once the super gets there, but he sees how distressed they are and asks whether the walls seemed to be moving on their own. He recalls a past tenant who worked at the same hospital as the protagonist and gave similar complaints, only for the super to find nothing when he got there. When it reached the extent of hysteria, he advised to her to take a leave of absence. With the protagonist being similarly overworked and sleep-deprived, the super recommends the same advice.
- Inside a Wall: Implied. With the bedroom door seeming to shift every other night, there was one day that it exposed a gap in the wall, and the protagonist takes note of the musty, dry-basement smell. It disappears when he gets his super to look at it, so he advises him to catch up on sleep. That night, the protagonist hears a Sinister Scraping Sound under his door and finds skeletal fingers and a presumably female voice begging to be let in. They also sense that the musty smell had returned.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: In the less-than-half-hour that it took the protagonist to fetch the super from the entrance to his hallway where the gap in the wall was, it wasn't there anymore, just like how the door somehow returned to its original position in the last few times it happened. Somewhat fortunately for them, however, the super recalls a similar case with a past tenant, and suggests that they take leave from work and catch up on sleep.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's ultimately unconfirmed whether the protagonist and the last tenant that stayed in their room were both suffering from Sleep Deprivation-induced hallucinations or actual supernatural occurrences. Once the protagonist survives fending off two unseen entities from entering the bedroom, they hightail it out of there when the coast is clear and never return, but they never find the last tenant, left with doubts over what they experienced was real or not.
- Motor Mouth: The panicked whispers of a womanly voice sob for help and to be let inside, her pleas getting increasingly frantic and rapid as the sound of soft footsteps get closer."Help me…please, please, please help me…it’s coming…pleasehelpmepleasepleasehelpmepleaseit’scomingit’scomingpleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepl–"
- Nothing Is Scarier: Neither entity that approaches the protagonist's door is ever seen, only how they attempt to get inside. One sounds female and reaches emanciated fingertips under the door, begging in urgent whispers to be let in before a 2nd figure seems to drag her away and unlock the door from the outside. The protagonist holds the door shut to their best ability before dragging the dresser in front of it, and the stranger leaves.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The protagonist tries to keep working and only asks for time off to get some needed rest when advised to, but after they apparently survive a paranormal encounter by blocking them from entering the bedroom, they flee at the slightest sign of their possible return. They crash at a friend's house for a week without even considering to return for their belongings.
- Sinister Scraping Sound: The protagonist can't rest on the night that they try to catch up on sleep due to a nightmare that awakens them with a looming presence of dread. Then comes a scratching sound under the door on the other side. Flashing a light below the door immediately stops it, but three emanciated fingers reach underneath, feebly trying to get the door open.
- Sleep Deprivation: The protagonist is regularly sleep-deprived from working long hours at the hospital, sometimes getting only 4 hours of sleep between 30-hour shifts. The super assumes that to be why the door and walls seem to be moving to the protagonist because another tenant who worked at the hospital also reported similar things.
