The Locked Door

        Maybe because it was locked? Curiosity is a flaw that can either open doors to enlightenment, or get you killed. The door has a hasp and one of those locks you need a code to open. It has been that way for as long as I can... I like to sit here, across from the door. I lean against the wall and pretend the hall carpet is not as dirty as it smells. I don’t know what is in the apartment, or who may have lived there, or why it matters; but somehow it does.

    I can only assume it’s the same as the other apartments, one or two bedrooms, a galley like kitchen, dining room and living room sharing a space.   I live with my mother and sister on the eighth floor of the Mabel’s Marley building. It is a high rise rent subsidized apartment complex whose elevators work occasionally, and it is best to be secured behind its doors before dark. 

     William James has been the custodian here for over twenty years they say. He has been beaten several times by irate occupants, shot twice by irate visitors, and advised by the local authorities, as well as those at the emergency room of the Randall Hays Memorial Hospital, to quit or retire, before fate caught up to him, that one last time. There is always one last time.

    Bill, although some consider stubborn, has told me that he simply dislikes change, and he could think of no more drastic change than to leave the familiarity of a place he’d lived most of his life, only to face the uncertainty of a place he would be considered a stranger. No, he’d take his chances. When God calls he’d told me, “you can either listen, or run, but pretending you are deaf doesn’t work. I tried it. That’s how I got shot the last time.”

    Sometimes Bill will stop by when he sees me contemplating the life that had existed on the other side of the door. He puts his back against the wall and slides down to sit next to me. He stares at the door like it has as much mystery for him as it does for me. He always asks what I’m doin, and why I’m doin it, but never really seems to care if I answer or not. I think it’s his way of sayin, “Hi, how you doin.” 

    In this building we aren’t really encouraged to connect with others, we are all  in the same situation, and they don’t think it will do anything but increase anxiety. Most, if not all the walking dead in this place, have futures confined to tomorrows, their pasts are yesterdays. Bill told me he thinks that is because, “cold cloudy days tend to sometimes rain, sometimes snow, but most often don’t make you think that tomorrow the sun will come out and everything will be better, brighter.”

     I don’t think Bill is his real name. Everyone around here is named Manny, Pedro, Angel; names like Bill are aliases meant only for an assimilation that doesn’t exist inside these walls, we are already there. I guess it doesn’t matter. I doubt there is a single person outside of my household who knows my name, made up or not. That is the way we survive. “No one comes looking for an alias they know doesn’t exist. There are better ways to waste time or get yourself killed,” Bill has been known to whisper.

    I asked Bill one day what he knew of the apartment. Had he ever been inside? Why was it locked? Couldn’t someone else rent it? Bill doesn’t answer questions directly; a survival tactic we all depend upon. “What you can’t see can’t hurt you. What they can see, can,” Bills a bit of philosopher, although he won’t admit it. Most of the time he pretends to ignore me. 

    “I was in there once.” Sometimes he talks like he’s talking to himself. “Not long after it happened. I ain’t supposed to say anything, not that I know anything, but it isn’t that something happened there as much as what didn’t happen. There was this old woman, Hilda I think she said her name was. Met her a few times. Funny woman: seemed to get smaller and thinner each time I saw her. At the end I swear you could see right through her like she was a ghost or something. Lived there with her grandson, or so they said. Never met the boy myself.

    And then one day they was gone. They asked me to investigate building supervisor and all. I knocked on the door over several days and when she didn’t answer I got hold of the building manager. She said to let myself in, something must have gone wrong, perhaps she’s dead.”

     “So what you find when you went in?”

    “That was what worried us; found nothin. Everything was just as it was supposed to be. Everything clean, everything just so. Kind of gave me the creeps, no one I know lived like that. Not a hair out of place, no dust, no dirty dishes, no movement. It was like the place had died, been frozen in time.

    There was an envelope on the table next to the plastic fruit bowl. It had my name on it, which I thought was more than strange as I really didn’t know her. It was addressed to Armando, my middle name. No other Armando in the building, so I assumed it was me she meant it for. The manager said I should open it. Inside there was a note saying she had to leave suddenly and there was a check for, what the manager said was the next ten years rent. Rent control, so the rents stayed pretty much the same. She said I could stay there if I wanted. She said I was nice to her, helped her when the elevator was out. Stuff like that. 

    I was told to put a lock on the door so no one could get in. We didn’t know what was going on but, “money is money,” the manager said. I put that hasp on the door, commercial like, and that dial up lock. Manager has the code, but then so do I. She don’t know that, so don’t be sayin nothin about it, OK? I couldn’t bring myself to live there; be like living with a stranger.”

     I don’t know who he thought I’d be sayin anything to, but I assured him I wouldn’t.

    “Funny thing,” he says, “I know I turned off the gas, the lights, the wall heater, and yet at night you can see light comin from around the door, and sometimes I think I hear music of some kind. Scratchy music like you’d hear from those old victrola things they used to have in her time, records thick like they was made of glass. Tell the truth, I been afraid to go in even though I suppose I could. None of my business really. I keep expectin the old one to come back sometime, and knowin how things go she’d come back as I was leavin and then what?”

     Bill stopped talkin and just kind of jumped up and headed for the elevator. Once the lights come on, which is rare, you’d better take advantage of it. Eight floors of steps is a lot of steps, and you never know who you is goin to be meetin in the well. Just the same it was strange him jumpin up like that and leavin. I had questions I needed answers to, and he had done little more than add to my list.

    I got up to and went to the door. I put my ear against it to see if I could hear any music, sounds of any kind, nothin. Then just like that I hear this ping sound. I look up, the elevator door opens, and there is Bill talkin to this whoever it was, or what ever it was, I don’t know, cause I couldn’t see it. Bill walks over to the old ones door, begins to spin the dial back and forth and then a click. He takes the lock out of the hasp and turns the knob and pushes the door in. He steps aside, sayin nothin to me, and is if directing traffic, his arm swings letting who or whatever know, it was all theirs. He closed the door, sayin nothin to me, as if I didn’t exist, or was invisible. 

    I thought Bill looked a little different, maybe thinner, smaller, but to treat me as though I didn’t exist, I couldn’t understand. I yelled at him as he walked away, but he pretended he couldn’t hear me, or didn’t want to. 

    I went and sat by the wall again for a bit. Decided I’d see if I could find out what was goin on. After a time, I got an anxious feelin like I was wastin time. I marched over to the door and knocked; what could it hurt?

    I could hear the music now from inside, and see the light around the door. I knocked again and when no one came, I turned the nob. It turned and the door swung slowly inward.  There was that old victrola thing, kind of cone shaped stickin out of it, and an old woman just staring at the turn table. There was no record on it and yet music was comin out of the funnel. Her skin was kind of blue purple lookin, and transparent. I could see right through her to the window.

     There was a tree limb outside with a bird sittin on it and the sun was shinin. It was night so I couldn’t see how that could be, but it was. Then the Old One, she turns to me and looks surprised. Then she says, “Hershel,” you’re back. I turned and looked over my shoulder, wonder who she was talkin to. There was no one there.  My name it ain’t Hershel, it’s Bobby. “Wondered when you’d get back. I know you said you was goin away for awhile but…how long has it been? Five, six years?” Then she smiles like it couldn’t have been that long. Where’d the time go? 

     “They said you wouldn’t be comin back after what happened, but I knowed you would. You ain’t the kind of boy to just go off and leave your Grandma wonderin what happened. I didn’t raise you like that. I knowed you be back when you could.”

     I wanted to go into the apartment, but I couldn’t. It was like some invisible glass was preventing me from goin in. I tried talkin to her, tellin her I wasn’t who she thought I was, but she wasn’t havin any of it. She just kept goin on about how it shouldn’t have happened, but it wasn’t her fault. She’d warmed me about the stairwell. I had no idea what she was sayin to me, and then the door closed all by itself.

    I went back to the wall and sat down tryin to figure out what was goin on, and then Bill he comes back, and slides down the wall next to me. He just keeps staring at the door, sayin nothin, just staring. Then like he just woke up, he starts talkin, tears runnin down his face as if his heart was broke. Then he starts tellin this story to someone, like I ain’t here. It’s about this boy and his grandmother who were murdered on the stairwell for three dollars and twelve cents it turned out. Three dollars and twelve cents was what was in his pocket when they caught him. “I tried to stop him. I was right behind them on the stairs carryin the groceries. He pushed past me, groceries all over the steps. I did what I could, but…”

    This poor kid and his Grandma died for three dollars and twelve cents. Bill he gets up and walks to the door, opens it, goes in, closes the door without so much as a “see yah.”

    I don’t know why but I put my hand in my pocket. I could feel a lump of something. I pull out a wad of crumpled bills and a dime and two pennies. Can’t say I remember where I got the money. I normally don’t have a thing, as far as money goes. Then it dawns on me, three dollars and twelve cents, the same amount Bill was talkin about. It ain’t like it scared me, although I guess it might have. I just couldn’t figure out why. 

    Then I see the door open again. Bill comes out and walks towards me. I hold the money out to him and then I see, like it was some kind of dream. The money is like floatin in the air. Can’t see my hand, can’t see my arm, just the ball of money and the dime and pennies floating like stars and planets in a time before gravity. Then the money is on the floor. Bill picks it up, goes to the stair well door, opens it and drops the money down the shaft to the basement. Then everything goes dark.

     The next day, or at least I think it was the next day. Could have been a week or ten years later. I’m sittin on the floor, back against the wall lookin at the door. The lock is there, I can see the light around the door and the music, although I could have imagined the music. Then I hear footsteps comin down the hall. It’s Bill. He puts his back against the wall and slides down next to me. “Whatcha doin, why you doin it?”

    Then he begins to tell me this story of this boy and the Old One who lived in the apartment with the lock on the door. He asks if I can hear it. I tell him I can. He just laughs, picks up the money from the floor and heads for the stairwell. I got to wonderin how long this has been goin on. 

    You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?