I step back into the open doorway as he crawls past, so close he might reach out and brush my bare feet; I curl my toes in revulsion. The floorboards groan beneath him. I turn on the bedroom light so that it floods the hall, but he is already past me, and the light only illuminates his path from behind.

Though he looks young, he is clearly too old to be crawling. This child should be able to stand but instead continues his hypnotic spider-scuttle.

“Elizabeth,” I whisper, knowing she will not hear me, wherever she is, likely asleep in her own room—but I am too afraid to shout, fearing, again, irrationally, that he will hear me across the span of time.

Frantically I decide I must run down the hall and shake her awake, drag her back here to see, with her own eyes. Who is he? Would she recognize him? But he is moving too quickly now, and I fear if I lose sight of him he will vanish altogether.

I follow a few paces so as not to lose him as he slithers up the stairs. Up here, in the quiet of the third floor, the only light is from a window calling forth the moon. He creeps and creeps down the narrowing length of the hall. Maybe when he reaches the end he will turn around and come back. The mere thought sends a wave of nausea into my throat. Please do not come back.

Instead he slithers one hand up to the brass knob of that heavy locked door.

He will not be able to open it. No one ever has.

But impossibly, the knob turns, and the door swings inward to reveal a gaping black pit.

I have to blink. It is like seeing double, although it is so dark I can hardly see at all. He is going through a door from a different time; the door of now is still closed, is still locked, and I can see the door closed at the same time I see it open, like a photograph overlaid with the ghostly imprint of something else. The darkness of his open door reaches out as he climbs inside, into a darkness the feeble moonlight behind me cannot reach out and touch.

Then he is gone, but the doorway remains.

At first I am repelled by that terrible emptiness, as if that complete absence is sucking all light from the world, but I have to know—I have to see.

I hurry down the hall, the seething maw of darkness opening before me like an abyss, but as soon as I reach it, the open doorway vanishes. My hands and eyes meet solid wood, and nothing more.

If only I could arrest my heart. On trembling legs, I descend the staircase all the way down, thinking of cold water, a nip of whiskey, something to calm my nerves.

Instead I discover, again, that I am not alone.

The television is on in the sitting room, and Elizabeth sits bathed in its blue glow in the otherwise dark room, holding a glass of wine.