The Spooky Door

What’s hiding behind the door marked “Do not open until Halloween” (Writer’s Circle Halloween prompt)

The door had been in the attic of Willow Cottage for as long as anyone could remember. It was small. It was crooked. It was painted the green of old moss, and from its handle hung a brass tag with words in spidery silver ink:

DO NOT OPEN UNTIL HALLOWEEN.

Nobody in the family ever spoke about it. Photographs showed it in the background of every generation, always shut, always waiting. Grandmother’s wedding. Great-uncle’s christening. Always the same crooked green door, and always, in the corner of the picture, the faintest suggestion that something behind it was listening. Ivy was seven and three-quarters, and she had been good for nearly a year.

She hadn’t opened it at Easter, when the handle began to hum. She hadn’t opened it at Midsummer, when light slid out from underneath, thick and slow as honey. And she hadn’t opened it last Tuesday, when something on the other side knocked three times. Politely. Patiently. As if it had all the time in the world.

But tonight was the thirty-first of October. The pumpkins grinned along the garden wall, and the candles inside them guttered, though there was no wind. The moon hung low, like a lantern held up by someone very, very tall. And the knocking had begun again — Knock…