Empty Spaces

When I was five, I found a door that led nowhere. Located in the attic, it looked like any other door in the house, green paint slightly peeled, the wood beneath rough to the touch. The only difference between it and other doors was that I didn't know where it led.

When I asked my mother about it, she shrugged.

"Oh, that," she said. "That door doesn't lead anywhere. I think there was a crawlspace or something behind it, once, but it was closed during the renovations. There is just wall on the other side now."

I often played in the attic since then. The place held some magic for me, being a part of my home and yet removed from everyday life, filled with dust and boxes of what appeared as ancient treasures to me. I didn't pay much attention to the door, however. It was simply there, unremarkable, unused.

When I was eight, our old school building got closed, and we moved to a new one. It was supposed to be a grand municipal project, a promise of the bright future. The building was huge compared to the old one, with spacious rooms and vast hallways. Its interior walls were covered in marble dust, and instead of a single gym, it had a whole section in the basement dedicated to various sports and exercises.

The budget ran out before the building was complete. The marble dust was crumbling off the walls in a week, the sport equipment has never materialized, and the basement was flooded the first three days after school's opening. The building also had far too many stairs.

Ironically, one good memory I have about it wouldn't exist without this failure. A section of the basement was left unfinished. There were no tiles on the floor, just concrete, and there was no light. It was another embarrassment for the school, but it was great for me and Emma. The section was closed to us, of course, but that didn't stop us from sneaking in when we noticed the door being unlocked.

We held hands and walked into the darkness kept at bay by a pocket flashlight I used to carry with me everywhere. We imagined ourselves brave explorers of an enormous cave that would surely lead us to the center of the world where dinosaurs still dwelt or to an ancient temple to forgotten gods.

We walked from room to room, examining junk left over from the construction like it was treasure, pretending to escape imaginary traps and generally goofing off. Then we came upon a locked door. It wasn't any different from any other door in school: lifeless white paint that I thought got dirty before it even finished drying, a small glass window in the upper half made opaque by a spiderweb of cracks.

"Where do you think it leads?" I whispered. You have to whisper when exploring dark places.

"To the principal's secret dungeon," she said confidently. "She takes bad students there, like the ones who complain about the flooding, and makes them write lines in the darkness. And she won't let them out unless their penmanship is perfect."

I giggled. It wasn't really that funny, but I was on an adventure with my friend, everything was exciting at that moment.

The locked door wasn't located at the end of the section or anything. There were more rooms we could go to after it, and we did.

Eventually, tired of our game, we made our way back. We were found by a janitor then and got into a lot of trouble, but I thought it was worth it, at the time.

When I was eleven, my favorite shop closed down. I've overheard talk from my parents about drug trade being involved, arrests made, but what I cared about was that I couldn't buy my favorite ice cream on my way from school any longer.

The shop was located in the subbasement of the local post office, and each time I passed it, I would look at the familiar metal door, now slightly rusted. It was always locked. I didn't know if any new businesses took over the basement or if it was left empty and abandoned. It never opened for me.

You've probably seen doors like that around. Doors that nobody ever uses, doors that they locked after losing their purpose. You've probably didn't think much about them.

I didn't, either, before I got my powers.

It took me awhile to realize that there was no wall behind the door in the attic, that the space of the subbasement has changed from what I remember, that the door in school led to a labyrinth of sprawling hallways, spiral staircases and empty windowless rooms.

I didn't realize it in the locker, obviously. Could there have been a door like that in the hospital? Maybe, not like I paid attention back then. I should have realized it once I've got back home as my range expanded to engulf the vastness contained within the thin walls of the house, but I had a lot on my mind as it was: getting used to being acutely aware of every bug in the block, ruminating on what Emma and Sophia have done to me, sharing uneasy silences with my father...

What alerted me to the nature of the space above was the noise.

I couldn't hear through my bugs, trying only gave me headaches, but I could feel vibrations reverberating through their whole bodies, seeping into my thoughts.

Each night I would fall asleep to the sound of a song I couldn't hear.

Each morning I would harry on my way to school until the old closed shop would come into my range, my steps slowing them, almost stopping as I passed it by.

Each day I would escape the school inside my head by sending more and more bug into the labyrinth beneath.

Until one evening I took a crowbar to the door in my attic, dust undisturbed in years swirling around me.

There was no light, and I no longer carried a flashlight with me, but I didn't need light to see anymore.

I walked the hallways, the stairs and the empty rooms, always down. The dust I carried with my footsteps and the bugs I sent before me were the only things disturbing the pristine emptiness of this place. Nothing else was there: no furniture, no carpets, no light bulbs, no mice, no roaches I didn't bring with myself, no doors, no windows, nothing at all but the labyrinth itself.

Despite that, there was no echo. The sound of my footsteps would die the moment it was born. The only sound permitted in this place was the song I could now hear with my ears, telling me where to go.

Not that I needed it. I knew its source by the way my bugs died as they approached it.

Down and down I went in the darkness divided by walls built without purpose, following the waves of the song growing weaker and stronger in turns as I navigated the labyrinth, until I found her.

There was no light, but I could see her clearly, her body equal parts withered flesh and rough wood and gleaming metal, her four arms long and thin and broken.

Inside the open ribcage, dead bugs crawled, slowly but inevitably becoming her.

She was playing my broken flute tied together with her fiberglass intestines that served as strings she pulled with her long nails.

She wore my mother's face, thin and stretched on her head.

I stood before her, as silent as her song was loud. She finished playing the flute, though she still tug on the strings. She approached me and placed a hand on my head, warm and dry. I could see tears reflected in the colored glass of her eyes.

"Give me life," she said in a voice like falling dust.

And the song consumed me.