The Long Hall by Dani Carr

A door, a hall, and determination.

Aina had walked the long hall so many times in her life. She had attended this school as a girl and worked as a tutor here in high school, before returning as a young adult to teach social studies to the middle schoolers. Aina was well into her forties now. She knew this school like she knew the curves of her own body.

Which was why she was sure the door at the end of the long hall was new. 

It wasn’t an interesting door by any means. Just a plain door, brass door knob with wood painted gray. It looked like all the other doors in the school, if a little shabbier, maybe. 

But Aina was sure she’d never seen it before. Sure as she knew her own syllabus. But the oddest part was that none of her fellow teachers knew what she was talking about. She’d asked everyone in the teacher’s lounge, even the secretary who’d been working here when Aina was young. No one knew about the door.

Except for one person. 

One night, after finishing her grading, Aina had resolved to open the door. To see if it was a classroom, or a closet, or… something. 

But just as she was locking her classroom and turning to step down the long hall, a voice rang out.

“Don’t mess with that door, Aina.”

Aina turned on her heel, spinning so fast she nearly knocked her curls out of their pins. There was Samuel, the janitor. He’d been working here longer than anyone. A kind and soft-spoken man, he rarely raised his voice - but those words had nearly boomed down the hall.

“Why not?” Aina asked. “What is it, Samuel? Why is it new?”

Samuel shook his head, his salt and pepper hair glinting in the fluorescent lights of the long hall. “Don’t ask those questions and don’t mess with that door. Can’t be curious about these sorts of things.” 

Aina tried to ask for more information, to pry more words from Samuel about the door. But he simply shook his head and pushed his mop bucket down the long hall. Refusing to explain, but reminding her, over and over. 

“Don’t mess with that door.”

Well, Aina had never once listened to what a man had to say and she wasn’t going to start now. Her curiosity would be sated. There was something unknown in her school and she was going to find out what it was. 

It took another week, but when her courage was her own again, Aina once more locked up her classroom at the end of the day and walked down the long hall. 

She walked past classroom after classroom, door after door. All of them familiar. All of them well-worn and memorable for her. The room where she’d learned her numbers. The room where she’d cheated on a test for the first and only time. The room where she won the class spelling bee, only to lose it later in front of the whole school.

Doors and rooms that she knew. All the way up to the door she didn’t. 

Aina put her hand on the unfamiliar brass and turned the unfamiliar knob. She pushed against the unfamiliar wood and opened the unfamiliar door.

Into darkness.

The kind of darkness Aina saw behind her own eyes.

And even as that darkness swallowed her whole, she smiled. 

Because darkness, oh Aina knew darkness. And that was so much better than something unknown.

for more brilliant works from Dani Carr, check out: @thisdanicarr on Instagram, @itsdanicarr on bluesky