I am writing this because I have no choice. I'd like to say it is a warning to others, but I have far more selfish reasons. Even if I did warn you, I doubt you would heed it, as I did not heed the warning left for me. I must not waste time, as time is wasting me, in a way that defies the medical science I once believed I knew. My joints ache as I write, and soon I know I will be unable to continue. Yet this must be told and so I write on.
I am a doctor here at Rosewood Lodge, and I am twenty-seven years old though I look older. And by the time you read this it will be scarcely possible for you to imagine me as I was yesterday.
Before me, Rosewood had no resident doctor. This was my first big break, away from the hospital where I'd trained and qualified. At the interview I pretty much said I'd work for anything, so they snapped me up.
Rosewood is a residential care home for elderly patients, some of whose care needs had started to become more advanced than those which a nursing home can ordinarily provide. The board had decided that, rather than paying out for consultants and continually dealing with emergencies, it made better economic sense to have someone like me on the payroll.
It was, in short, an excellent job. Relaxed, but responsible. Challenging, but manageable. And the money was good enough for me to get my own flat, finally.
The home is essentially three storeys of self-contained flats, divided into three wings, A, B and C on each floor. Some residences are less "flats" and more rooms, without locks and without any real facilities of their own. The nurses and social workers tended to stay away from me, as I was still an outsider to them, and they had the run of the place, working with the residents each day whereas I would only see them if they were ill.
One thing that I did pick up from my colleagues however was the strange warning about the man in the room 17 on the end of wing B on the second floor. The ridiculous thing about that particular warning was that the numbers on each wing only go up to 16. The nurses tended to act strangely about it, saying that if ever there was a room 17 I'd be better off not going in. I saw no harm in laughing along with it at the time, and I quickly forgot all about it.
Until the day I happened to be in B wing on the second floor and noticed a room I hadn't seen before. I had been at Rosewood for three days, and it was late. I'd been tending to a particularly unwell man in a room along the corridor, who'd needed a lot of attention. I was considering referring him to a hospice in the morning, if after I studied his charts I decided they would be better placed to care for him. So I wasn't really in a good frame of mind as I left his room and turned to make my way to the stairs.
I don't know if it was my mood, or the lateness of the hour, but something made me stop. I felt a tingle at the back of my neck, a creeping sense of something not right. I turned. How I wish I had not. I wish I had kept on, along the brightly lit corridor, down the stairs and back to my office. Instead I looked back along the hall to where a flickering overhead light cast dark shadows over the far wall, highlighting the steel edges of the window looking out into the blackness beyond.
Glimpsed for moments at a time in that uncertain light was a door that should not have been there. I knew it should not have been there, and I did recall the warning, but truthfully I was too intrigued and too steadfast in my belief in science and rationality to ignore it. I approached it, curiosity overcoming my incredulity. I did not feel even the faintest stirrings of fear until my fingers touched the handle beneath the elegantly carved number 17. It was deathly cold, and I pulled my hand back with trepidation.
Cursing myself for a foolish child, and beginning to believe it was all some kind of prank by the nursing staff, I glanced up at the ceiling half expecting to see a camera propped up somewhere. The thought that perhaps I was being made a fool steeled my resolve, and wrapping my hand in my sleeve I opened the door. For a moment I was stunned. It was one thing to make a prank door, quite another to make it open. And beyond lay a room that I knew had not existed an hour before.
