The human brain processes over 34 gigabytes of information every day. The vast majority of that information stays contained within the subconscious. Most of the stimuli that the brain receives, it processes and ultimately decides is unimportant. I never really thought about it before, but after everything that’s happened, I do wonder how much I experience every day that I don’t know about.
My wife and I travel to Ohio every few months. Usually for major holidays. I know what you’re thinking, “Why the hell would anyone willingly go to Ohio?” My wife, Ally, is from Ohio and while she did manage to escape, we still have plenty of family and friends there. I suppose I can put up with a weekend in Ohio occasionally so we can see loved ones. As usual, we were going there to visit her immediate family as well as her friend Amber.
A couple days ago, we made our long 6-hour trek to Ohio, but after checking in to our hotel, we turned around and left again so we could make the most out of our trip. Before going to her folks’ place, we stopped at Amber’s to pick her up and bring her along. Amber lived, much like most of the people we know in Ohio, in the middle of nowhere. We drove down the long, winding, boring as shit road to pick her up. There is absolutely nothing on this road. It’s hard to describe just how empty and boring it is. If you’ve ever driven through Indiana, you know what I’m talking about.
When we got to Amber’s house, we picked her up and began our trip back down the long, winding, boring as shit road. On our way back to Ally’s parents’ house, I noticed something peculiar. On the side of the road was a lone door. I had to do a double take because there was no logical reason for a door with a set of stairs leading up to it on both sides to be just sitting on the side of the road. The door looked old and rotting. It had vines growing up the railings on the staircase.
“Hey, Amber? What’s the deal with this door?” I asked, pointing out the window and looking to the back seat. She peered out the window. It seemed like she didn’t even see it, despite it being right in front of her. She had a blank look on her face for a few seconds before she visibly snapped back to reality.
“Oh! I’ve never seen it before.”
“Wh- What do you mean? It’s very obviously been here for years. Just look at the rot!”
“Yeah, weird. I don’t know how I’ve never noticed it.”
Ally looked back and forth between her and the door with a puzzled look on her face. “How have you never noticed it before?” She asked, shocked. “You are not observant in the least, are you?” Amber stuck her tongue out and Ally giggled. I looked to the passenger seat, “Um, Ally? We’ve both been down this road countless times as well and I don’t know about you, but I haven’t noticed it either.” Her face slowly crept past puzzled into downright flabbergasted. “You’re right. How?” I, also with the same level of confusion, looked in the rearview mirror as the door faded away. I thought a moment and said, “There’s no way it just popped up there. For some reason or another, all of us collectively just blocked it out.” We spent the rest of the car ride in quiet contemplation.
We had what for us was an average night visiting friends and family in Ohio: TV, video games, board games, and of course Taco Bell. Somewhere in our evening of games and catching up, the subject of the door came up. “You’re messing with us!” Ally’s sister, Torrie, insisted. As unbelievable as it was, I knew what I saw. I looked at her and said, “I swear to God. It was just a random ass door, sitting on the side of the road.” Ally backed me up. “I saw it too. Looks like it’s been there for at least a year.” I pointed to Ally as if to say “I told you so,” and added “A year? By the looks of it, I’d say at least 5.” Torrie still didn’t believe us. “Come on! That’s not funny!”
“Look, if you don’t believe us, let’s go look now. We have to take Amber home anyway. Why don’t you come with us?”
She hesitated. “If you guys scare me, I’m gonna be really mad.”
As I was putting on my shoes and coat, I said, “We aren’t going to scare you. We don’t even have to get out of the car. We’ll just pull over, let you see it for yourself, and then we’ll be on our way. Okay?” She nodded and then everyone else got ready to go.
I’m not quite sure why, but the car ride there was quiet and tense. To be honest, I think we were all silently hoping it was some kind of group hallucination rather than have to cope with the fact that this door, that had clearly been here for years, had gone completely unnoticed by all of us. I slowed as the door came into view. Everyone except Torrie had their eyes fixed on the door. The silence hung like Thanksgiving after your racist uncle makes a “joke.” I also got the same uneasy feeling in my stomach that I knew would grow if let the silence continue to hang.
“Well? Satisfied?” I said, not breaking my focus on the door.
“What do you mean?” Torrie asked, looking confused.
“The door! You saw it. Can we go now?”
“What are you talking about? There’s noth-”
She trailed off before she could finish the thought while her eyes finally locked on to what the rest of the car was staring at. The deafening silence returned. None of us knew what to say. We were all just staring at this door in complete disbelief.
Again, I was the one who broke the silence. “Well? Are we just gonna sit here?” Torrie, a little too enthusiastically yelled, “I want a picture with it!”
“What? No! It’s late. I’m tired. Some of us don’t stay up all hours of the night. Let’s go.” This wasn’t a total lie. It was past midnight, and I was used to going to bed early because I work early in the morning, but it was more than that. Looking at- no, just thinking about this door unsettled me. I didn’t want to sound rude, but I was getting uncomfortable and the longer we were near this door, the more irritable I got. I needed to get out of there before I had a panic attack.
“Pleaaaase? It’ll just take a second.” Then Ally chimed in, “Just let her get the picture, then we’ll drop Amber off and I’ll get you into bed before you know it. I promise.” I let out a hefty sigh. “Fine.” I probably sounded way more irritated than I intended because this earned me a rather dirty look from my partner. I turned my car off and the four of us shuffled out and slowly approached the door.
“I know we agreed this door had to have been here for a long time, but how do you guys think it got here in the first place? And why?” Amber asked.
“I don’t know. Torrie, just stand by the door and pose or whatever.” I snapped as I pulled out my phone and opened the camera. “Can you lose the attitude?” Ally snapped right back. I gave her a glare that could’ve killed a newborn puppy. “I’m so sick of never getting any rest. I’m going into the woods to take a piss. One of you guys can take the picture. When I get back, I’m leaving. With or without any of you.” I stormed into the woods absolutely fuming.
When I got far enough into the trees where I felt no one from the road would be able to see me, I began to relieve myself. Feeling much better, I began to reflect on the past few minutes and realized I was being kind of a jerk. It was an odd circumstance and having the picture could provide proof when the inevitable retelling of tonight’s events would happen. In the middle of pissing, I heard a scream followed by a bunch of running. “Fuck.” I thought to myself. “What the hell is going on??” I yelled out. No answer. I quickly finished and took off running back to where the door was.
I got back and didn’t see any of them. I ran to my car and said a silent prayer that those three were inside and I could get in the car and take off as fast as possible. I looked in and saw my prayer went unanswered. No one was inside and I had no idea where any of them could have gone. Sure, I got far enough into the woods where no one could see me, but what I didn’t think about was I also couldn’t see them. I pulled my phone out and quickly opened my contacts to try to call Ally and ask her what the fuck was going on.
It rang and rang, but Ally never answered. My heart sank to the ground, and I started to tear up. I tried Torrie next. She picked up and I was ecstatic that at least one of them was able to answer the phone. The feeling was unfortunately short-lived. I could only get bits and pieces of what she was saying through the static, but what I did hear sent my panic into overdrive. “… lo?.. Help I… punched… took… where… am…. dark and…”
“Torrie? Torrie?! What’s going on? Where are you? Where’s Ally and Amber?”
It was no use. Static completely over took her voice before the call dropped. There was one last number to call. With shaky hands I stumbled my way through getting a call to Amber. She picked up almost immediately. I didn’t have a chance to say anything before she started rambling off.
“Thank God you’re still alive! Where are you? Are you hurt? Please get to my house as fast as you can.”
“Woah woah. Slow down. Is Torrie with you? Can you tell me exactly why the fuck you guys took off without me?”
“Okay,” she took a deep breath, “after you walked off, this guy, had to be like 9 feet tall, walked out of the door. Just as Torrie walked up to get her picture taken, he walked out and knocked her unconscious, threw her inside the door and then came at us. We tried to run, but Ally got punched pretty hard. I’m not sure if her nose is broken, but there’s a lot of blood. I helped her up and we ran out of there. We ducked behind some brush to lose him. We’re at my house, but Torrie…”
“Jesus. I- I need to try calling Torrie again. She answered before, but it was so broken up. Maybe she can give us some kind of idea on how to get to her.”
I hung up without listening to her response. I had my thumb about to press “dial” under her name, but then I heard stomping that could of been coming from a record setting race horse. My head snapped up and I saw a nine-foot-tall brick shit house of a man sprinting at me. “Holy fuck!!” I screamed and took off into the woods. I fumbled to get my phone back into my pocket as I ran. “What the hell am I going to do?” I said to myself. “He could have hurt Torrie or worse,” I shook the thought from my head. “She has to be okay. She just has to.”
Even though I was running as fast as I could, he was so big that he was keeping up without much effort at all. Everything he stepped on was demolished. He closed in on me, swinging every time he was in reach. He smacked me more than a few times, but I somehow managed to stay on my feet. Eventually he decided he was done toying with me. He picked up a massive recently fallen over tree. He used it to swing at me like a baseball bat, sending me flying like he was Hank Aaron and I was a fucking little league baseball.
After hitting the ground, I rolled a few times, but was still conscious. Everything hurt. There was so much pain surging through my body. I wanted to do nothing but lay there for the next month. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the choice because just as I started to catch my breath, the giant had already gotten to me. He loomed over me, relishing his second victim of the night. He lifted his foot to finish the job, but at that moment I got a rush of adrenaline. I was able to roll at the last second as his foot slammed down leaving a hole that looked more like a war trench than a footprint. I got to my feet as quickly as I could and started running again.
After that close call, I knew I couldn’t just keep running because he would just keep catching me and next time I might not be so lucky. I had to try something different. I knew I had no chance in a fight, so I looked around and found the biggest tree I could. I got right in front of it and waited for a swing. I timed my duck so his fist would hit the tree. My plan went better than I expected. His fist punched a hole right through the God damn tree. I swung around to the other side of the tree as I stood up and pushed it with every ounce of strength I had left in me.
I couldn’t believe it. It knocked him over. He wasn’t going to be down for long, so I limped out of there to head back to my car. When I stumbled out of the woods and approached my car, I took a quick look around. I breathed a sigh of relief when I couldn’t see him anywhere. I still didn’t want to take any risks, so I took off down the road until I was far enough away to make a phone call without risking my car getting bulldozed.
I dialed Torrie and held my breath as it rang. The call was answered, but all I could hear was complete static. There was no trace of her voice in the call. I wanted to drive back, but at that moment what Amber said to me fully sunk in. Ally was hurt. She was bleeding and possibly in need of medical attention. I sighed, shifted into drive, and took off back to Amber’s house.
When I got inside, I closed and locked the door. I noticed Ally laying on the couch and rushed over to her, but quieted my steps when I noticed she was asleep. Her face was smeared with blood. I leaned over to look at her nose. “I hope it’s not broken,” I whispered to myself.
Amber looked around outside the window and covered it with a blanket. “She passed out as soon as we made it inside. I just got her over to the couch, but noticed your car when I went to get something to clean her face,” she whispered to me. “Alright, go get a wet rag and I’ll check on her.” I wanted to let her sleep, but I had to make sure her head was okay. I gently shook her awake.
“Cammy?” she mumbled groggily.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I whispered. “How are you feeling?”
“Well, my nose really hurts, but other than that, I think I’m okay.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Four.”
“Where are we?”
“Amber’s house”
I embraced her tightly. “I was so scared,” I said and wiped a tear from my eye. Just then Amber walked in. I looked up to her, “She’ll be alright.” I smiled and she smiled back. Ally’s eyes grew wide as everything that just happened rushed back. “Torrie?” she asked shakily. I shook my head. She began to cry as she said, “We have to go back. We can’t just leave her there.” I got choked up and was fighting back more tears as I said, “I know. I want to go back too, but we’re in no shape to do anything and 3 more deaths aren’t going to help anybody. Let’s just get some rest and we’ll head out in the morning.”
None of us liked it, but Ally and Amber knew I was right. Ally called her parents and let them know we were staying the night. She didn’t mention anything about Torrie hoping we would rescue her without having to worry their parents. With Ally cleaned up, the three of us headed off to bed. It was a restless night with the earlier events running through my mind over and over. The only way we were going to have any chance of rescuing Torrie is through stealth. We would have no chance taking that thing head on.
I’m not even sure if any of us actually slept that night, but at least we gave our bodies a chance to recover. After everyone was up, we met up in the living room. As we were getting ready to go, I said, “So last night I was thinking. That thing could easily kill all of us. We need to be careful and avoid confrontation at all costs. We get in there, grab Torrie, and get out. Stay behind me at all times. If things get dicey, I want you to save yourselves and get the hell out of there. Got it?” They both reluctantly nodded their heads. We got into my car and headed down the road.
I pulled over to where they were attacked only hours before, but there was just one problem.
“Why’d you stop?” Ally asked.
“We’re here.”
“But it’s not here.”
It’s true, we couldn’t see it, but it took us years to see it before, so I didn’t really think about it until she pointed it out. “I’m sure we’ll be able to see it eventually. Let’s get a closer look.” We walked right up to where it was, but still couldn’t see it. “Oh, come on. Show up!” I squinted, but still nothing. “Maybe looking from the other side?” suggested Amber. We walked all around where it was. Then I noticed something. “It was right here,” I said as I got down on my knees and inspected the indents in the grass where it used to be.
“It’s gone,” Ally muttered.
My knees gave out and I sat there in silence as all the emotions came rushing through. I felt rage pouring out of me in the form of tears. I covered my face as we just sat there feeling empty.
“Now what?” Amber questioned.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” I answered as I got up and dusted myself off. “We’re gonna have to report her as missing.”
“There’s no way they’ll believe us or be able to help,” Ally said.
“I know, but there’s nothing else we can do,” I replied.
We ended up just saying that Torrie was kidnapped during a random attack. I suppose that was technically true. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t found. Our trip home was almost entirely silent. The rage washed away leaving me feeling just numb.
When we arrived home, I paused to look out my window into the front yard. I froze. The uneasiness I felt the night before returned. It continued to grow as I stared.
“You know, you did the right thing. You were right. There was nothing else we could do. I don’t blame you,” Ally said, trying to comfort me.
“No, it’s not that. Look,” I got out of the car and pointed to that damn door right in my front lawn. Ally looked confused. “I know the grass needs cut, but I think you’re overreacting because of all the stress you’ve been under this weekend. Let’s get some rest.”
“Don’t you see? It’s here! It followed us!” I exclaimed as I ran up to it. I put my hand on the rails. “Come on can’t you see it?” I said as I put my foot on a step and stomped.
She gave me a look that said she was concerned for my mental wellbeing. “I think you need to lay down Cammy. I want to be able to do something about it as badly as you do, but there’s nothing there.” I told her I would rest, and I went inside.
I know it’s in my front yard. I can feel it mocking me every night when I go to bed. I need to go back for Torrie. Maybe it’s best that Ally can’t see it. At least I know she won’t be tempted to go herself. At least I know she’ll stay safe no matter what happens to me. I wanted to get this all out before I go back in case something happens to me. Your brain ignores things for a reason. Next time it happens to me, I know I’ll take its advice. If you ever see something that your brain has tried to ignore, listen to your gut and just continue to ignore it. It’s probably for the best.