The letter wasn’t the first thing my mother set on fire, but it was the first that burned a door inside me—a door I’d spend years trying to open again.
Most nights it was just us: me, her, the TV. She’d hold my face too close, her breath sour-sweet with wine, and say, “I don’t need nobody else, and neither do you.” I’d hide under the covers with my horror paperbacks, wishing for any world but this one.
The letter came on a Wednesday, sliding under the door at midnight, a knife in the dark. My name was scrawled in a spidery hand I recognized but knew was impossible.
The return address: Apartment 6C, 9th Floor, The Linwood Residences, Detroit, MI 48208.
That was our apartment complex.
There was no ninth floor.
Our building barely made it to five; half the windows boarded, half the apartments home only to rats and things that used to be people.
The sender? My father.
Slight problem.
My father had been dead for two years.
Some nights, I missed him so badly it hurt to breathe. Other nights, I wanted to follow. Whatever waited past that threshold had to be better than this.
Nobody ever sent me anything. I slipped the envelope into my backpack, praying she wouldn’t notice. Of course she did.
“What the hell is this, Malek?” Her voice cracked on my name. She dumped the bag; books spilled, the letter a pale scab on the carpet.
“You hiding mail from me now?”
“It’s just a letter—”
“From who?” She ripped it open. For a moment, she just stared, her face gone slack, color draining. “No,” she whispered. “Somebody’s playing a sick joke.” She crushed the letter. “He’s dead. This isn’t funny.” She shoved it into the stove and turned the flame high.
I stood there, fists balled, throat burning. She glared, daring me to speak. I kept quiet. With her, quiet was survival.
That night, while she snored in front of the TV, I crept to the ashes in the trash bin. Something cold pressed against my fingers: a broken glass key. It appeared from nowhere, like it had been waiting for me.
It was colder than bone. I felt ice run up my arm, a draft from a door left open by my father.
The apartment spasmed. Walls breathed in and out. Shadows skittered like roaches. A smell of mold and bleach permeated the air. I almost put the key down, almost crawled back to bed. But something whispered my name.
Every step toward the door was a dare, to stay small or open to whatever waited on the ninth floor. The hallway reeked of winter salt and radiator heat.
The elevator doors stood open, panel blinking: 9. I stepped inside. When the doors slid apart, the hallway felt wrong, stretched too long, humming like a wasp nest.
I found 6C at the far end. Its door, black as void. In the center, a child’s handprint: small, greasy, luminous.
I pressed the key to the lock. The metal melted, running down like tears. The door shivered, then opened.
Inside was a forest of petrified trees, branches tangled with broken toys, Christmas lights flickering above. Pennies and burnt sugar wreathed the air. Shadows drifted through the trees, taunting me.
In a clearing, my father sat on a throne of milk crates and smashed TVs. His crown was bottle caps and wire, his eyes hollow but impossibly kind.
“You found your way,” he said, voice full of static. I trembled. My eyes stung.
“Why did you go?”
He sighed. “I was terrified. The needle was the only key I could find. It opened the wrong door. I waited for you until you were ready to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Whether to forgive me. Your mother. Yourself. For wishing her gone. For wanting to follow me.”
I thought of my mother, and for the first time, saw not a monster but someone wrecked by loss. I understood now why she burned the letter. She was afraid I’d vanish into the same hole.
“The regret doesn’t end, does it?” I whispered. “Even when you’re dead.”
“Only if you let it become your prison.”
“Can I stay with you?”
He smiled joylessly. “You can stay, but you’ll be another shadow, another lost name. Another black boy swallowed by this abyss.”
I flinched. He caught it. “Or you can go back. Try again.”
He held out a photograph: me as a baby, my mother smiling, my father’s arm around us. The photo bled water, faces warping.
“Give this to your mother,” he said. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her she did better than she thinks.”
I took it. I blinked, and the water was gone. The faces looked back at me, clear, unbroken.
“I love you, Dad. I miss you so much.”
“I love you, too. Miss you more than you could know. Now go. Before you forget there’s still time to choose.”
He faded with the forest. The key crumbled to ash, but the photograph remained solid and real.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped out into the stale hallway.
Inside my apartment, my mother still slept. She looked smaller now. Fragile as a promise.
I tucked the photo into her hand and whispered, “He’s sorry. I know you tried your best.” Her chipped scarlet nails curled around the picture.
She shifted in her sleep and moaned, “Damien…”
My father’s name.
I went to my room and pulled out fresh paper. I wrote: “Things I Want to Tell You When You’re Ready to Listen.” It was a letter I might never give, but it was a door. One that opened both ways.
Outside my window, Detroit sang its night song. It hit me then. Death isn’t a black door in the ghetto. It’s the regret we crawl through, if we can only reach the other side.
Sometimes, we do.
* * *
Ⓒ Caspian Darke
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