Another Dimension

The Door Is Open

Warren Benedetto

T he back door is open , an automated voice said in a pleasantly informative tone.

Carol’s eyelids fluttered. They felt heavy, leaden. She groaned, then lifted her chin from her chest. An angry migraine kicked behind her forehead. The flickering light from the TV stabbed mercilessly at her eyes.

Carol glanced at the empty wine goblet dangling between her fingers. There was a single, lonely drop of Merlot pooled at the bottom. She raised the glass to her lips and drained the sour liquid onto her parched tongue. She grimaced. She hated the taste of red wine. That didn’t stop her from drinking it though. She needed it to help her sleep.

Isn’t that what the Ambien is for? the voice in her head challenged her. Or is that the Xanax?

Shut up, she mumbled.

She placed the wine glass on the nightstand, then pushed a cluster of pill bottles away so she could see the clock. It was after two in the morning. She fell backward on the bed and threw her arm over her throbbing eyes. Shit. She had to pick up Pete at the airport in just a few short hours. Not only would she be demolished from lack of sleep, she’d be lucky if she was even sobered up by then.

Patting blindly around the bed, she found the remote control, then used it to turn off the TV. The bedroom went black except for a ghostly blue glow from the wall by the door. It took a minute for Carol’s wine-soaked brain to register what the glow might be. Then she realized it was the security panel.

The alarm system was relatively new, installed only a few months prior. It was Pete’s idea. Carol didn’t think they needed one, but Pete insisted. He was going to be traveling more for his job, he said, speaking at conferences and doing guest lectures, and he wanted her and the baby to be safe while he was gone. That was his excuse, anyway. Carol knew that wasn’t the whole story though. If it was, he would have canceled the alarm installation after she lost the baby. He didn’t.

Her mind still in a haze, Carol climbed out of bed and stumbled towards the security panel. She figured she might as well arm the damn thing. There was no point in having an alarm if she didn’t turn it on.

Squinting against the glow, Carol punched her PIN into the security panel’s touchscreen, then pressed the button marked Arm. A failure tone buzzed, followed by an automated voice emanating from the speaker.

The back door is open.

Carol furrowed her brow. She punched in her code again and pressed Arm.

The back door is open, the voice said again, with identical inflection.

Goddamnit, Carol slurred. Pete! she called out, massaging her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. Close the door!

Pete’s not here, the voice in her head reminded her. Remember?

Shit, that’s right, she thought. Pete was away again, at yet another academic conference in some forgettable flyover city in the Midwest. Was it Cleveland this time? Or Cincinnati? Chicago? Something with a C...

It didn’t matter. The point was, he wasn’t home. She was alone. Again.

You sure about that?

Carol squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to crush her migraine—and that annoying inner voice—out of existence. She was sure the door wasn’t open; she had locked it before coming up to bed. Still, it didn’t hurt to double-check.

She tied her robe closed, then opened the bedroom door and shuffled down the hall to the stairs. The house was quiet. The only sound was the soft brush of her heels on the hardwood floor. The stairs creaked as she took one step at a time, clutching the railing for balance. She paused about halfway down, listening.

There was another sound now, an unfamiliar one, a long, slow, papery scratch. She peered over the railing, searching for the source.

A dead maple leaf was scraping along the floor of the downstairs hall, propelled by an unseen current of air. It looked like a disembodied hand skating on the tips of its arched, bony fingers.

As Carol stared at the leaf, another handful of leaves tumbled down the hall on a fresh gust of wind. A light dusting of snow glanced along the floor, swirling in the moonlight that angled into the hallway from the kitchen. A cold winter breeze ruffled the bottom of Carol’s robe. She drew in a sharp breath.

The door is open, she thought. It really is.

Carol gathered the hem of her robe and quickly retreated up the steps. She padded as softly as she could on the cold oak floor, deftly avoiding the floorboards that she knew might creak, then slipped into the bedroom, silently closed the door, and locked it with a click.

Her heart raced in her chest. Had she locked the back door before coming to bed? She thought she had, but maybe she hadn’t. She was at least three glasses deep in her bottle of Merlot by the time she had decided to head upstairs. It was possible she had forgotten. Or maybe she had locked the door but hadn’t realized that it wasn’t quite latched all the way. That happened sometimes, especially when it was damp. It was an old house, after all. Things didn’t always line up the way they were supposed to. A strong wind could have blown the door open.

The cameras, Carol thought. The security system had cameras monitoring every room, along with motion detectors that would show anything moving anywhere in the house. She could log into the mobile app and check the cameras. If there was someone in the house, she would see them. Then she could call the police and just wait in her room with the door locked until the cavalry arrived.

Carol hurried over to her desk to retrieve her smartphone. Her fingers danced across the surface of the desk in the dark, searching for the device in its usual spot. It wasn’t there. Carol felt for the lamp. Her fingers found the base, then worked their way up to the switch. A small pool of light flooded the desk. Her heart sank.

The phone charger was empty.

Carol closed her eyes and cursed silently. She had left the phone downstairs, on the end table next to the couch. She could picture it clearly, facedown on top of Pete’s academic journals, a stack of publications with imposing titles like International Journal of Theoretical Physics and Quantum Quarterly. She had gotten off the couch to pour herself another glass of wine in the kitchen, then had absentmindedly carried the glass upstairs without returning to the den to retrieve her phone.

BANG! A loud report echoed through the house like a gunshot. Carol jumped, startled by the sound. A pleasant voice issued from the security panel.

The back door is closed.

Carol relaxed. The back door had slammed shut. That’s all the sound was. The wind again? It had to be.

Carol walked over to the bedroom door. She placed her ear against it and listened. There was no talking. No footsteps. No sounds of any kind. Outside, a gust of wind rattled the French doors that led from the bedroom onto the balcony. Inside, the house was as silent as a tomb.

Carol exhaled. The tension she had been holding in her shoulders began to melt away. It seemed the wind really had blown the door open, and now, closed. Chiding herself a bit for her paranoia, she unlocked the bedroom door. She paused.

Maybe it’s best to leave it locked, she thought. Better safe than sorry.

She locked the door again, then stepped over to the security panel, punched in her PIN code, and pressed Arm.

A failure tone buzzed. A familiar voice intoned.

There’s motion in the kitchen.

Carol frowned. She tapped the tab on the touchscreen panel labeled Motion. The display changed to show a schematic outline of her kitchen. A red triangle was pulsing by the back door. It began to move through the kitchen, towards the hallway. Towards the stairs. Towards her.

Panic flooded through Carol’s body. She stepped backward away from the security panel as if to put more distance between herself and whoever was moving through her house.

Oh, shit, she whispered. Shit, shit, shit.

It wasn’t just the wind. Someone was in the house.

A torrent of possibilities flooded Carol’s mind. The first and most obvious was also the most simple: maybe it was Pete. He wasn’t due to return from his trip for another couple of hours, but maybe his flight had been changed. Maybe he was home early. Maybe he had taken a cab home from the airport, so he didn’t have to disturb her in the middle of the night.

Or—oh no—maybe he had been calling, trying to reach her. Her phone was downstairs, most likely with the ringer off. He could have been calling her, texting her, trying to let her know he was coming home, trying to arrange for her to pick him up from an earlier flight. When she didn’t answer, he was forced to arrange his own ride home. That had to be it.

Pete? she called out. Her tone was uncertain. That you?

Before the words had even left her lips, the voice in her head chimed in with a competing consideration. Why would Pete come in through the back?

Carol clamped her hand over her mouth. The voice was right. Pete never came in through the back door. If he had taken a cab, he would have come in through the front. Or, at worst, if he had forgotten his keys, he might have come in through the garage. But not through the back. Never through the back.

The display on the security panel changed, drawing Carol’s attention. The red triangle was moving out of the kitchen. The new readout showed a schematic of the downstairs hall, including the stairs upon which Carol had been standing just a few moments before. The triangle moved slowly down the hall to the bottom of the stairs. It stopped there as if listening.

Carol froze, holding her breath to avoid making even the slightest sound.

After a moment, the triangle turned back down the hall and moved to the door under the stairs, the one that lead into the basement. A mumbled curse echoed up through the floor. The utterance was followed by a series of thuds, as if someone was hitting or kicking the basement door.

Carol mouthed a curse of her own. That definitely wasn’t Pete down there. Pete wouldn’t try to break into the basement. He wouldn’t even think of it. The door was six inches of triple-locked steel, more suited for a bank vault than a basement. The only way to open it was to enter the combination on its electronic lock. Pete was the only person on Earth who knew the code. Even she didn’t have it.

It’s not that I don’t trust you, she remembered him telling her. It’s just safer if you don’t know.

She had never really thought much about the ramifications of that statement before. It was safer if she didn’t know? That implied she would be in danger if she did know. But danger from who?

A few months earlier, Pete had outfitted the house with the same research equipment as he had in his lab at the university, so he could continue his work from home while Carol cared for the baby. He insisted he was on the verge of a breakthrough—he couldn’t afford to lose a second of progress. It was world-changing stuff, he said, the kind of discovery that would make him a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize. It would make them millionaires. Billionaires, even.

Pete never said it, but Carol knew that’s what the security system was really for. Sure, he cared about her safety, and the baby’s. But mostly, he was protecting his work. If whatever he did in his lab was valuable enough to make them billionaires and was worth locking down behind Fort Knox level security, then it wouldn’t be surprising if someone wanted to steal it. Someone who might break in while Pete was out of town, expecting the house to be empty.

But the house wasn’t empty, was it? Nope. No, it wasn’t. Not at all.

You need to get out, her inner voice said. Run.

Carol played out the option in her mind. It wasn’t a crazy idea. From the stairs, it was a straight shot out the front door. If the intruder was down by the basement, she could probably make it outside without being caught. Once in the front yard, she could scream for help. Sure, she might look crazy, running barefoot through the snow in her bathrobe, smelling like a winery and slurring through an Ambien-induced haze. But it was better than... whatever might happen if she stayed.

Carol looked at the security panel again, hoping to see that the red triangle was still outside the basement door.

It wasn’t.

The motion detector schematic had shifted to show Pete’s library, an open room just off the foyer, between the stairs and the front door. The red triangle was moving around inside as if searching for something. There was no way Carol could get past the library undetected. It would be too close, too risky. She’d have to pass virtually within arm’s reach of the intruder. No, fleeing was no longer an option. She would have to try something else.

She needed to call for help. Her eyes searched around the room for a solution. They fell on her desk. On her laptop. Her eyes lit up. It was a MacBook. That meant it had the same messenger program as her iPhone. She could text Pete from there, just like she could from her phone. Then she could have him call the police.

She rushed to her desk and quickly flipped open the laptop screen. After selecting the Messages icon, she opened a chat window and banged out a message to Pete in all caps.

SOMEONE IN HOUSE. NEED HELP.

She hit Send. A pleasant whoop sound indicated that the message had been sent successfully. The tiny text below the message bubble showed that the message had been delivered. She stared at the screen, practically willing Pete to answer, trying to turn that Delivered indicator to Read, desperate to see the little three dot animation that meant he was typing back.

Come on, answer... Goddamnit, Pete, where are you?

Not here, the voice in her head responded. Where he should be.

A wave of anger coursed through Carol’s system. Why wasn’t he here? Why wasn’t he home? Why was he flying around the country as if everything was normal, as if she didn’t need him? It must be nice for him to be able to just move on, to lose himself in his work while she suffered in silence, alone, trapped in an empty house with a half-finished nursery filled with unopened toys. Ever since she lost the baby, he had become even more consumed with his work, even more obsessed with finding an answer to some esoteric physics problem that only he understood. What did it matter? Why was it so important? Was it more important than her happiness? Her safety?

Obviously, it is. Otherwise, he’d be here. With you.

The creak of a floorboard in the hall caused Carol to sit up straight. She looked over her shoulder at the security panel. The schematic now showed the upstairs hall. The red triangle was directly outside her door.

The bedroom doorknob rattled. Someone was trying to get in.

Carol turned back to the laptop. Her message to Pete was still unread. Trying to minimize the clicking of the keyboard, she quickly typed another message.

CALL 911.

A voice called from the hall. It sounded desperate. Hello? Is someone in there?

Carol froze. She recognized that voice. It was more gravelly than usual, more strained. But there was no mistaking who it was.

Oh my God. Pete? She flew to the door and fumbled with the lock. You scared the hell out of— Her words cut off as she opened the door. She took a step backward, her mouth agape. Pete? she said again.

A figure rushed into the room.

It was Pete. It definitely was. But he looked... different. The clothes he wore were totally out of character. Pete typically dressed conservatively, usually in khakis and a collared shirt, with a sweater pulled over it in the winter. Now he was wearing dirty jeans and work boots, with an oversized Carhartt jacket that smelled like motor oil. He looked more like a truck driver than a Harvard professor.

Even more bizarrely, he had a full-grown beard. That was impossible. Pete had only been away at his conference for two days, and he had been clean-shaven as always when he left. There was no way he could have grown a full beard in such a short amount of time. Similarly, his hair was at least six inches longer than it had been when he left. It was as if months had passed,