I shouldn’t have been there that night. My friend David called off his plans for the weekend, and I was all alone in a town where I was not familiar with many faces.

I shouldn’t have been there that night. My friend David called off his plans for the weekend, and I was all alone in a town where I was not familiar with many faces. I might have been in my motel room, but I was agitated and stepped out. That is how I found myself strolling down empty streets and in front of a library that appeared much older than the others in the area.

It was a structure that didn’t fit in a modern town—ornate carvings above the doorway, stone gargoyles sitting on the corners of the roof, watching. A notice above the door said St. Dunstan’s Library: Founded 1876. The doors, big and wooden, were open wide enough to arouse curiosity.

A shiver ran up my spine. The library was dark, but I could make out a faint light bobbing far inside. Maybe a night guard? Maybe some late-working staff? I shouldn’t go in, but something about that slightly open door seemed. intentional. Like it had been left open especially for me.

The quiet surrounded me completely as I entered. The air was heavy with dust and something more—something ancient, something decaying. It was colder than it should have been, the kind of cold that did not result from poor insulation.

I whispered. There was no response.

Bookshelves went in rows into the darkness, and at the other end, there was a light flickering—like a candle, moving slightly as if someone was holding it. I took a step, then another step. The floor creaked under my feet.

The deeper I went, the more I felt that the place was wrong. The shelves were full of books that seemed like they hadn’t been touched for hundreds of years, their spines broken and falling apart. Some titles weren’t even in English. Some weren’t in any language I knew.

Then I saw it.

There was a door wedged between two tall bookcases. It differed from the other doors I had seen. This door was smaller and older. The wood was twisted, and the brass knob was tarnished with age. There was something about it that unsettled me. It didn’t belong there.

The candle’s flame flickered from inside. There, someone was.

I pressed my ear to the door. It was quiet. My breath misted the wood of the ancient door as I extended my hand to the handle and paused. A strong feeling of dread entered my breast, but my hand grasped metal before I could stop.

It turned too easily.

The door creaked open, revealing a stairway that curved downward, shrouded in darkness.

The candle stood on the first step, its flame wavering just barely. Somebody must have left it there. I ought to have turned back. I ought to have turned around. But I was already too involved in the moment, my heart pounding in my ears as I made my way down.

The stairs took longer than they should have. Too long. By the time I hit the bottom, I had the sensation I wasn’t under the library anymore. The walls were not the same— rough, moist stone instead of wood and plaster. The air was hard to breathe, thick with a scent I couldn’t identify.

A corridor lay before me, and there were numerous doors. Some were slightly ajar, and some were shut tight. There were soft whispers emanating through the openings, but the voices were too low to decipher. I moved cautiously and slowly, my breath coming quicker with each noise.

One door was different. Larger than the others, made of iron instead of wood. This door didn’t have a handle like the others. Just a tiny peep slot, the sort you find in an asylum.

And then—knock, knock, knock.

Three sharp knocks from the other side.

I stopped breathing.

A scraping noise, slow and deliberate, reminiscent of nails against metal. A whisper then, so softly spoken I barely heard it.

“Let me out.” I backed away. My mind was screaming to flee, to get out of there, to never recall I’d seen it. But my body wasn’t listening. My hands trembled as I lifted them, fingers brushing against the rim of the viewing slit.

I looked in.

There was nothing initially. Only darkness. Then—motion. Something moved.

A face materialized from the shadows. Not a human face. Something different.

Its eyes weren’t right. Black voids that absorbed light. A mouth that was too big, smiling up in a way no human face should smile.

And it spoke once more.

“You found the door.”

My scream never made it out. The thing was moving too quickly—too impossibly quickly. The iron door buckled outward when it crashed from the opposite side, shaking the ground. Dust rained down from the ceiling. The whispers behind the other doors grew panicked, mingling into a maddening hurricane of sound.

I ran. I did not think. I just ran.

The stairs seemed so lengthy on the way back up. My legs hurt, my chest hurt, yet I would not stop until I dashed through the library door, panting. The cold night air hit me viciously.

The door shut solidly behind me.

The library was quiet once more. Dark. As if nothing had ever occurred.

I moved backward, my heart pounding in my chest. I felt my stomach flip when I noticed something.

The sign next to the entrance.

St. Dunstan’s Library: Founded 1876. Permanently closed in 1942. I looked frantically. My hands were still trembling. The building stood unoccupied for more than eighty years. But I had just come inside. And somewhere, beneath that place, something had knocked back.