Creepypastas

Why Sarah Never Sleeps

There were too many doors in the upstairs hall. Sarah told her parents, but they couldn't see it. They told her not to worry. They told her there was nothing there. But there was an extra door, at the end of the upstairs hall. An extra yellow door, and it didn't belong.

It was the color of disease, jaundiced and infected, with spidery black veins across its face. One perfect silver knob gleamed in its center above a shadowy keyhole, and it didn't look right. The doorknob shone with a mirror's finish, and caught the light from any angle, begging for Sarah to look its way. Sarah did her best to ignore it, but the door knew her name, and it whispered it when she drew near.

"Saraaaahh . . . " the door would rasp with a voice like dried leaves as tiny claws scraped against the other side. Tears would well in Sarah's eyes as she'd hurry past, her arms laden with everything she'd need to get ready for the day.

"Saraaaahh . . ." it would call again before she'd shuffled out of range and closed the bathroom door, cutting off its paper-thin wails. When she'd creep from the bathroom to head downstairs, the door's voice would follow her with a furious flurry of scraping claws and tormented howls. They lingered and gnawed in the back of her mind as she'd rush through breakfast so she could leave the house a few minutes sooner.

School became a blessing, an excuse to be someone somewhere else. At school she could forget the door. At school she could pretend her house was like everyone else's, with the right number of doors and no eerie whispers. But at the end of the day it was still waiting for her at the end of the upstairs hall, with it's mirror-ball knob and yellow face. She hated coming home and knowing it was there, but even more than that, she hated going to sleep, because in her dreams, she opened the door.

Every night, she stood before it, fighting the urge to reach out. Dread knotted her belly in anticipation of pain when her hand rose anyway, to grasp the silver knob. Some nights it burned her like the driest ice. Other nights it seared like a red hot iron. Very occasionally, it did neither, instead turning and turning without ever opening the door, and she couldn't stop turning it until she woke up.

When the door did open, it revealed a swirling vortex of shadow and sound, with a thousand voices crying in the darkness. The voices curled around her, crawling through her hair like spiders. She thrashed and swatted at their skittering whispers, but the words still tingled across her skin.

She never should have listened.

"He sees . . . " they said. "He hears . . ." they moaned. "He hungers . . ." they wept, and burrowed in her mind like worms. "The Hollow Man, the Hollow Man," they echoed in her mind and screamed to her from the gaping vortex. "The Hollow Man . . . he hunts!"

Sarah shot up with a scream, gasping and sweating, but alone in her bed. The clock's crimson face said midnight had passed, but not by much. Darkness enveloped her room, except where a vestigial nightlight illumined the corner by her desk; it wasn't a lot, but it made her feel better.

She covered her face with shaking hands, and pushed away the chitinous echoes. I'm fine, she swore. It's just a dream.

"Sarah?" Someone whispered.

Sarah froze. Tears welled in her eyes.

"Sarah? Are you Sarah?" It was the voice of a girl, not at all like the voice she usually heard from the door at the end of the hall.

"Who . . . who are you?" Sarah whispered back.

"My name is Lizzie. Are you Sarah?"

Sarah rose from her bed slowly, clutching the sweat-damp shirt she'd worn to sleep, and moved toward her bedroom door, moved to where the yellow door waited. When she stood before it, her stomach lurched, and for a moment she couldn't tell if she was going to vomit, or faint.