Locked In

I would like to start by saying, I am not crazy, nor embellishing this story even a little. Every word is the truth. I have told very few people in my personal life about it because I am mostly a logical, practical thinker. But something triggered this memory only yesterday. It was something as simple as a stuck bathroom door.

When I was 5, my parents divorced and my mother went out into the world with 3 children, a garbage bag of clothes, and a couple bucks. I was the youngest. In that same year, my great-grandfater passed away from heart complications in his home, where my great-grandmother had also passed peacefully the year of my birth. The home, a modest sized house on 5 acres of hill, was left uninhabited and dirty. To my mother, however, it was more than wonderful. She just wanted a place to call home; we all did.

A little history on the house from what I was able to gather: it was once a two room cabin, with my bedroom and the living room being the original part. There was a back porch joining this, which had been enclosed many years later (and many years before I was even born!) and became my brothers bedroom. The kitchen and dining room were added sometime during the life of the house, and the house didn't even have indoor plumbing until my grandpa was a grown man!

So the first years there were relatively uneventful, for me anyway. The one thing that comes to mind is that I developed an almost immediate, unreasonable fear of the dark when we moved in. So much that I would get out of my bed and sleep on the floor under my night light. I was very scared to stay in my room alone. However, at only 5, I can chalk that up to being little and living in a new house.

The part I want to tell you about was when I was 9 or 10 years old. I am a fourth generation fiddle player. I was starting to pick the instrument up on and off during this time, trying to learn to play. Naturally, my squeaking and sqawking drove my family nuts, so I was banished to the back bedroom to do my practicing. It was my older brother's room at one time, but he had recently moved out with his fiance. My mom just converted it into a sewing room.

The door to this room was a solid wooden door with the original brass handle, which had no locking mechanism. There was another door leading outside from this room, which my step father had installed just days before. I remember how we all marveled at how easily it opened and shut, how easily that shiny knob turned. This one DID have a lock of course.

That night, I finished up my practicing, put my fiddle back in the case, and tried to open the door. I was going to join my parents in the living room and watch tv. But the door knob, which had turned so easily thousands of times before, was stuck so hard, it wouldn't turn an inch. The door seemed cemented shut. I jiggled the handle, tried to just push the door, but it wouldn't budge. I tried everything. So I turned to just go out the back door and circle round the house, but to my surprise, this handle wouldn't turn either. I locked and unlocked, tried everything, turned with all my strength and nothing. So I called out to my mom, and she and my step dad came and tried the door. Still nothing.

My step dad tried his hardest to turn the handle. Now believe me when I tell you this is a strong man. I have seen this man twist the entire top off a Mason jar. Not just the lid, but the entire glass top. He just breaks things without even meaning to. He could not force the door open, and I was starting to get very scared and a little panicky. They said, "We're coming around to the back". And this is when the light went out.

My heart did a flop so hard, and I was starting panic more and more. It was the worst feeling. I could see the light from the other room at the bottom of the door, but otherwise it was pitch black. I am not exaggerating when I say I could FEEL I was not in the room by myself at that point. I was so scared of whatever was in there with me, if I had had any more strength, I would've busted the door down myself. When I get very scared, I cannot scream or make any noise at all... I have had that problem my whole life. I am not very fun to go to spook houses with because of that.

It took my parents mere moments to get to the other door, but it felt like a lifetime to me. The other handle would not budge either. Dad (though he is my stepdad I do call him "dad") was going to try to take the handle apart. He had a screwdriver in hand. But I heard whatever was there with me come closer. It was BREATHING. I yelled out to my dad "Just get me out of here!"

I don't know what made him do it, because of every one I have ever known, he is the most LOGICAL. He thinks everything through. I think he heard the panic and fear in my voice, though, and he kicked the new door clean in that he had just installed days earlier. The frame busted clean off. The door flew open and the light came back on instantly. My dad was my hero that night.

He puzzled over that for days. How could two perfectly functioning doors get so stubbornly stuck at once and so tight? He checked the wiring. No problems there. He is a professional electrician, he would have found something. And I think it scared Mom as much as it did me, though she copes very well with fear. She is the best of the best of mommies. As mommies do, she kept my fears at bay with far fetched, but seemingly logical explanations until I was old enough to realize how ridiculous they were.

I avoided that room for a long time. I practiced in the kitchen. It was so strange to me that after all these years of never thinking about this incident, it came to me yesterday as I was trying to open a stubborn bathroom door. I even called mom last night and said "Hey mom, do you remember when..." and she did exactly as I did. She doesn't deny the supernatural quality of it anymore. I'm a grown up now. -S.