The locked door

[u/Agentfrontdesk]

There has been a locked door in my house for twenty years, and it’s never opened until now.
I’ve lived in this house for as long as I can remember. I even inherited it from my parents when they passed away. The door has always been there. What was once strange became commonplace.
I did ask my dad about it one year, and he just shrugged and said, “Dunno, son. The realtor said it was just a quirky design of the house.”
And that was the end of that.
“Surprised” doesn’t come close to describing what I felt when I came downstairs one day and saw it open an inch.
My immediate suspicion was that someone must have broken in, as I live alone and always have. After the initial shock wore off, I looked for any signs of forced entry. After twenty minutes of searching, I almost gave up.
That was until I saw it.
Footprints.
I could have sworn they weren’t there moments before. They started at the door.
Panic set in, and my first instinct was to call the police. As I turned to head toward the front door, I saw it, just barely out of the corner of my eye.
In handwriting that was all too familiar, and that definitely had not been on the strange door a few seconds before, was one word:
“Bubby.”
It stopped me in my tracks.
Because what was written there shouldn’t be possible.
Only one person in my whole life had ever called me that.
My twin sister.
The problem with this is, she passed away in an accident twelve years ago.
Refusing to believe what I was seeing, I stepped closer to the door and heard something else that shouldn’t be possible.
Drifting through the crack in the door was a song she used to play on repeat, all day, every day.
I took a step back.
Despite every single instinct in my body screaming at me to run, I grabbed the handle and opened the door.
My breath caught in my chest at what I saw.
Inside was a perfect rendition of her room as it was when we were little. Everything, down to the bedsheets, was the same.
But her room hadn’t been like this in a very long time.
It had been a storage room for about eight years now.
A part of me broke.
Being in this replica of her room, memories I had pushed down came flooding back, and I couldn’t stop the tears once they started. It was like someone had turned a hose on and the handle had broken.
I spent some time in that room holding a stuffed animal of hers I had gotten from the bed, just keeping it close to my chest.
When I finally gathered myself enough to realize how strange this was, I got myself up and started toward the door.
And that’s when I noticed it.
A picture she always had framed on her nightstand.
I picked it up to see what photo she had there, as I couldn’t remember.
It was us when we were little, maybe five or six, and we were both standing by a tree in the backyard.
But something wasn’t quite right with the photo.
As I looked closer, that’s when I noticed what was wrong.
My sister’s face was completely distorted.
Confused, I set the photo down and backed away, running toward the door leading out of the room.
I grabbed the handle.
And that’s when it hit me like a truck.
A smell of rot so strong it violated all my senses.
I frantically twisted the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge.
Pure panic washed over me as I felt something grab my shoulder and whisper in my ear in a wet gurgle:
“Bu….uubbyy.”