This story has been around since at least AUGUST 19, 2014 AT 12:00 AM
Let's cook this creepy pasta!
🤥CP: There were too many doors in the upstairs hall. Sarah told her parents, but they couldn’t see it. They told her not to worry. They told her there was nothing there.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So they disagreed over the house's design - okay.
🤥CP: But there was an extra door at the end of the upstairs hall. An extra yellow door, and it didn’t belong.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So there should've been a window there instead? Or just a wall?
🤥CP: It was the color of disease,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Eww… I was thinking more pastel yellow.
🤥CP: jaundiced and infected,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Eww, gross, what a mind! Not to mention somebody has very poor taste in home design. An infected-looking door - who wants a door that looks like mucus or puss? *Grimace* Eww! Bleah!
🤥CP: with spidery black veins across its face.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hold it! This door now has a face? That's just weird. And whoever thought painting veins in was a cool idea? Really?
🤥CP: One perfect silver knob gleamed in its center above a shadowy keyhole, and it didn’t look right.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Actually I'd think the knob is about the only thing that does look right about this door, given your description, but for the placement of it. The knob should be off to one side, the side that opens. as for the keyhole, why is that necessary on an upstairs floor unless it leads out to a balcony with steps going down to the ground? It's not like people are going to try to break into the house from the upper level.
🤥CP: The doorknob shone with a mirror’s finish, and caught the light from any angle, begging for Sarah to look its way.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hmmm, cool doorknob.
🤥CP: Sarah did her best to ignore it, but the door knew her name, and it whispered it when she drew near.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Bursts out laughing* Now this door is sentient? Oh, come on…
🤥CP: “Saraaaahh . . . ”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Dooooooooooorrrrrrrr. *Snicker*
🤥CP: the door would rasp with a voice like dried leaves as tiny claws scraped against the other side.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So, now there's some tiny clawed creature rustling in some dead leaves on the other side of the door, I'd say it was squirrels or birds in a tree just outside, and the wind could make a moaning sound that might pass for Sarah's name to this spooked girl.
🤥CP: Tears would well in Sarah’s eyes as she’d hurry past, her arms laden with everything she’d need to get ready for the day.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: This girl is seriously unhinged.
🤥CP: “Saraaaahh . . . ”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Doooooooooor. . . Yeah, dorky door, I can keep this up as long as you can. *Sneer*
🤥CP: it would call again before she’d shuffled out of range and closed the bathroom door, cutting off its paper-thin wails.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I get it, she's freaked out.
🤥CP: When she’d creep from the bathroom to head downstairs, the door’s voice would follow her with a furious flurry of scraping claws and tormented howls.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So, the wind blowing in the tree at that part of the house got her imagination running away and into overdrive.
🤥CP: They lingered and gnawed in the back of her mind as she’d rush through breakfast so she could leave the house a few minutes sooner.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Look, I thoroughly get it, Sarah is scared out of her wits. Can you get to the point already?
🤥CP: School became a blessing, an excuse to be someone somewhere else.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Be someone - you mean she was nobody until she was at school, where she then became Sarah?
🤥CP: At school she could forget the door. At school she could pretend her house was like everyone else’s, with the right number of doors and no eerie whispers.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I wonder if our house has the right number of doors, or if Sarah would think we had too few or too many as well. As for the eerie whispers, well, chalk that up to Sarah's overactive mind.
🤥CP: But at the end of the day it was still waiting for her at the end of the upstairs hall, with its mirror-ball knob and yellow face.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I'd be surprised if it wasn't there, unless the house was being renovated during the time Sarah was in school and the door was replaced.
🤥CP: She hated coming home and knowing it was there, but even more than that, she hated going to sleep, because in her dreams, she opened the door.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yep, she's definitely falling apart.
🤥CP: Every night, she stood before it, fighting the urge to reach out. Dread knotted her belly in anticipation of pain when her hand rose anyway to grasp the silver knob. Some nights it burned her like the driest ice. Other nights it seared like a red hot coal.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's a burn either way. Those are not fun, not even in nightmares, especially ones that are vivid.
🤥CP: Very occasionally, it did neither, instead turning and turning without ever opening the door, and she couldn’t stop turning it until she woke up.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Weird nightmare.
🤥CP: When the door did open, it revealed a swirling vortex of shadow and sound, with a thousand voices crying in the darkness. The voices curled around her, crawling through her hair like spiders.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: How can voices crawl anywhere? They get projected in different directions, but that isn't the same thing.
🤥CP: She thrashed and swatted at their skittering whispers, but the words still tingled across her skin.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well is there something there or not? Sounds can and do grate on the nerves, but you're not clear on this being just sound or some sort of creatures.
🤥CP: She never should have listened.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That's the trouble when one's imagination gets the best of them.
🤥CP: “He sees . . . ” they said.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Who sees? I'll bet this is Slender Man's trickery again. *Scowl* And those voices? All projections of Slender Man messing with Sarah's mind.
🤥CP: “He hears . . . ” they moaned. As for the moans, wind can do that, too.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: He's going to hear a lot more, and he won't like it.
🤥CP: “He hungers . . . ”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Of course he would, Slender Man could never get enough of people in terror, suffering and dying. He could never get enough of them to eat. *Scowl*
🤥CP: they wept, and burrowed in her mind like worms.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Not good when worms get into one's brain. Ever listen to Pink Floyd's "The Wall"?
🤥CP: “The Hollow Man, the Hollow Man,” they echoed in her mind and screamed to her from the gaping vortex. “The Hollow Man . . . he hunts!”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hollow Man, Slender Man, be they two different creatures competing with each other, or one and the same, he/they will become Dead Man. It is I who hunts him.
🤥CP: Sarah shot up with a scream that night, gasping and sweating, but alone in her bed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: If these dreams are recurring, she should get counselling.
🤥CP: The clock’s crimson face said midnight had passed, but not by much.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes* The midnight thing again. And what's with this red-faced clock? *Frown* Talk about tacky color choices. Why not go with a nice white face?
🤥CP: Darkness enveloped her room,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well duh, I would hope so, at that time of night. Unless she was living far up north and it was during the summer.
🤥CP: except where a vestigial nightlight illumined the corner by her desk;
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: vestigial? But it still works? what a contradiction.
🤥CP: it wasn’t much, but she felt better when she saw it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: She could always get up and turn on the main light as well.
🤥CP: She pulled the bedsheets over her head and pushed away the echoing voices.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Echoing? *Shudder* There is a difference between that and something just repeating in your mind, and I'm guessing it's just her mind running on repeat for now.
🤥CP: I’m fine, she swore, hugging her knees and rocking. It’s just a dream. They’re always dreams. The dreams will go away like they always do.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: True, but I'm not convinced she is fine. she's scared to death.
🤥CP: She started humming a song her mother used to sing when Sarah was smaller, small enough to need the nightlight, and the panic faded little by little with every note.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Something else she could do is play her Ipod/mp3 player if she has one. Music is a good means of getting rid of nightmare fears.
🤥CP: Just a dream. She repeated. Just a dream. Just a —
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And eventually she dropped off again.
🤥CP: “Sarah?” Someone whispered from the hall.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And although it was probably someone harmless, Sarah hit the roof because she was still understandably spooked.
🤥CP: Sarah froze.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay, jumped, froze, either works, I guess.
🤥CP: “Sarah? Are you Sarah?” It was the voice of a girl not much younger than Sarah, and not at all like the voice she usually heard from the door at the end of the hall.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wait, what's this stranger doing in the house, and why is she looking for Sarah?
🤥CP: “Who . . . who are you?” Sarah whispered back from beneath the sheets.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: My question exactly - without the stammer.
🤥CP: “My name is Lizzie. Are you Sarah?”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay, Lizzie, what's your business there? If you turn out to be a Slender/Hollow proxy, I will cream you.
🤥CP: Sarah didn’t move; she was terrified of leaving the safety of her cocoon. As the moments ticked past, however, an anxious curiosity emboldened her enough to peek out from the covers. What if it was another girl, she thought. She sounded just as scared as Sarah felt.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well, she should be. Getting caught intruding could get her in a lot of trouble.
🤥CP: Sarah crawled from her bed clutching the sweat-damp night shirt she’d worn to sleep, and waited. When nothing happened, she stood up and tip-toed toward her bedroom door; toward the waiting yellow door, with the mirror-ball knob, on the wall at the end of the upstairs hall. When she stood before it, her stomach lurched, and for a moment she couldn’t tell if she was going to vomit, or faint.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Why did she go to that door if it scares her so much, when she could've gone downstairs instead?
There seems to be a thing with Sarahs and being upstairs, I've noticed.
🤥CP: “Please,” the door said in the young girl’s voice when Sarah got close.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So now the door is a voice imitator? Good grief.
🤥CP: “Please, are you Sarah?”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hey, I'm here too…
🤥CP: Sarah opened her mouth to answer, but her voice was a tiny squeak of nothing. She pressed her palms to her cheeks and smeared away the tears before trying again.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Seriously, if she's that bad off, she should've just gone downstairs. And where are the other residents? Are there any? I'm not even sure if Sarah is living on her own or with her family, or if she even has a family.
🤥CP: “Yes,” she finally managed. “. . . I’m Sarah.”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So Lizzie/Door, it's your turn to talk.
🤥CP: “Please, let me in!” The door’s silvery knob shook violently, rattling as if locked and jostled by someone on the other side.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Why should she?
🤥CP: Sarah stumbled back with a gasp, staring at the shuddering, alien knob.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: That knob should be shuddering. I don't know at this point if Lizzie is a victim/prey, trying to get away from Hollow Boy or if she's working for him. I'm not even sure if she's the one behind this doom-door stuff, but that door needs a good old fashioned kicking-in or chopping down.
🤥CP: “Let me in, Sarah, please! I can’t stay in here! Please help me! Let me in!”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: In where, Lizzie? And you better not be trying to entrap Sarah, or it'll be all the worse for you…
🤥CP: Sarah dropped to her knees when her legs gave out, and she screamed when she looked at the door.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Sigh* I'm losing my patience with this freaking door!
🤥CP: Level with the shadowy keyhole, below the rattling knob, she stared directly into a very human eye. Tears shimmered in the other eye, as they shimmered in Sarah’s. It darted around, wide and white with fear, as if searching through the hall. And then, without warning, the keyhole became shadow, and the silver knob stilled, and the girl on the other side of the door began to cry.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Are we anywhere near there yet? Argh.
🤥CP: “Please, Sarah,” she pleaded. “He’s almost here.”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well, I really can't tell Sarah what to do yet. Lizzie could be telling the truth, but she could also be pulling off a Cherie-sized sham.
One thing I'm sure of, Hollow Man is going to find himself pumped full of stuff he ain't gonna like.
🤥CP: “The Hollow Man?” Sarah whispered as a chill slithered up her spine.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Who else?
🤥CP: Lizzie sobbed quietly.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowl* Hollow dude will get kicked in the face.
🤥CP: Sarah scooted closer to the door, her fear growing colder when the girl from the other side didn’t answer. “Lizzie?”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Move it along…
🤥CP: Silence fell, as if it had always been there. She couldn’t hear Lizzie crying anymore, and even the house was too quiet behind her.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I dunno, seems finally normal to me.
🤥CP: Sarah put her ear near the door, and held her breath.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And nothing happened but Sarah still being scared.
🤥CP: She waited. Minutes passed — but it couldn’t have been minutes.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I waited, paragraphs were read, but they said very little.
🤥CP: Nothing moved. Nothing whispered. Nothing cried. Nothing stirred. She couldn’t hear anything but her own racing heart. Was she gone?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Sarah, gone? Not if she could hear her heart. The plot, however, I've pretty much given up hope on it.
🤥CP: “Lizzie?” She tried again, afraid the Hollow Man had taken her.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Unless there never was a Lizzie and this whole thing was a Hollow Man ploy.
🤥CP: “He’s here . . . ” Lizzie whispered at last, almost in her ear, as though Lizzie’s lips pressed tight against the keyhole. “Please, let me in . . . .”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: if Sarah opens the door now, she'll only get locked in to wherever you are, Lizzie.
🤥CP: Sarah’s head ached. The world was a little fuzzy around the edges, and it was harder to focus than before. She had to stand up. She didn’t dare touch the sickly door, but her legs felt too wobbly and weak to support her. She reached for the knob with a trembling hand.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And the plot backed up.
🤥CP: “Please, Sarah . . . .” Lizzie’s voice was getting smaller. “Please . . . .”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Smaller as in, actually shrinking, or just quieter?
🤥CP: Grasping the mirror-ball knob, she pulled herself up from the floor. It moved noiselessly beneath her hand, gliding without resistance, and opened the yellow door.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Now we get to find out at last if Sarah was a dunce for being afraid of it or if she was a fool for opening it via the knob. A kicking-in would smash the portal and save Lizzie, if she was actually there at all.
🤥CP: A lonely expanse of normal wall inched into view, and she felt sick.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Why sick? When things finally seem to be getting back to normal, showing her to have imagined this whole thing? Well, I guess doubting one's mental state could make one feel a little sick.
🤥CP: She worried at her thumb in confusion, and extended a trembling hand to touch the wall behind the door. It was solid. As solid and as normal as the wall at the end of the upstairs hall should be, but her stomach churned.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Coulda told her this was all rot, it's good to have an active imagination, but not to let it run away with you so that you lose your grip on reality.
🤥CP: She gently closed the door, which issued a soft click as the latch sprang into place, and waited. She hardly dared to move or breathe as she listened to the night, waiting for the door to speak again.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which, it didn't. Am I right?
🤥CP: Hours passed in oppressive silence — even though it couldn’t have been hours–, and the door had nothing to say.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: First the minutes couldn't have been minutes, then the hours couldn't have been hours, well, let's just say she's apparently got issues with the passage of time as well.
🤥CP: Sarah grew sleepy — too sleepy to keep standing. Too sleepy to remember why she was standing so still at the end of the upstairs hall. It was time to go to bed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay then this time you are right, it couldn't have been hours. You should've said some period of time like 15 minutes or half an hour that felt like ages went by until she got sleepy again. Because it makes no sense that Sarah would just stand at some door for hours during the night.
🤥CP: It’s just a dream, she remembered, turning away and rubbing at her eyes. They’re always dreams.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Coulda told ya that, Sarah. Now go back to bed.
🤥CP: Shuffling to her bed was like swimming through Jell-O, and most of the way there she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Luckily, she knew the way.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Keep this up and I'm not gonna be able to keep my eyes open either.
🤥CP: The dreams will go away like they always do.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But will the plot go anywhere?
🤥CP: The crimson clock was broken when she rolled herself back in bed, its face declaring 12:16 AM to a room that only vaguely felt familiar, but she couldn’t bring herself to care when her eyes and body felt so heavy.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So now the clock broke? Are you sure it didn't just stop? anyway, I still say that's an obnoxious color for a clock.
🤥CP: Sarah . . . , Lizzie whispered. But it couldn’t be a whisper.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, crap, here we go again. And first the hours couldn't be hours, now a whisper couldn't be a whisper, at this point I'm thinking maybe Lizzie can't really be Lizzie, and Sarah couldn't really be Sarah.
🤥CP: Sarah, Lizzie whispered. Sarah, don’t wake up.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yes, Sarah, wake up. This is another nightmare.
🤥CP: Sarah groaned a little.
🤥CP: Don’t wake up, Lizzie said, her voice echoing in Sarah’s mind.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Argh, just wake up already.
🤥CP: Sarah frowned, and rolled on her back. She didn’t want to wake up. She wanted to stay asleep. Lizzie didn’t need to tell her not to wake, because not being awake was the whole point of being asleep.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Big duh! Lizzie needs to bug out already.
🤥CP: For a long time, all was silence. Sarah’s mind drifted, and she felt herself grow lighter, as if getting ready to float up through the blackness that surrounded her. She could feel the cool sheets beneath her then, and for a moment she thought she heard the papery-thin rustle of leaves in her room.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And then it was morning and she awoke from a horrible night.
🤥CP: He’s here . . . , Lizzie whispered at last. Please, don’t wake up . . . .
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes*
🤥CP: Who’s here? Sarah wondered as she steadily rose.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The same idiot haunting your dreams, Sarah.
🤥CP: His hollow face, an eerie mask. With hollow voice at doors will ask. To be invited in to bask. Above his favored midnight task.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: As I thought. Well, Hollow man, how would you like an invite to your own private demise party?
🤥CP: A strange tingling worked its way up Sarah’s body as Lizzie recited the haunting rhyme in a disconcerting monotone.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I thought that Lizzie might be bad news.
🤥CP: Clarity inched its way toward her slowly, melting away the fog of sleep. Hadn’t she been dreaming? Was she still dreaming?
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I thought you said the fog cleared.
🤥CP: Something was wrong.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well wrong seems to be the norm in Sarah's world.
🤥CP: He’s waiting inches from your face. To be the first thing your eyes grace. But keep them shut, or else embrace. A hollow shell to take your place.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: and when he crosses someone strong, he gets a kick in the face.
🤥CP: Cold dread seized Sarah’s heart with each new stanza, and she trembled with the weight of her mistake. For a moment, she swore she could feel the air stir above her, stale and strangely warm against her cheeks. Leaves rustled above her bed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So it's morning and the window is open.
🤥CP: The yellow door, you always keep. He follows you to where you sleep. Into your room he then will creep. Your life and dreams for him to reap.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: He will forever sleep, his own death is all he will reap…
🤥CP: Lizzie’s voice became little more than a breath within Sarah’s mind, and the air cooled around her when a pressure lifted from her chest.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Because she's still not doing fine, at all.
🤥CP: The leaves were in the hall.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So who keeps house in this dive? The least one could do is get rid of the leaves. Even at its messiest, my own house doesn't have leaves strewn about the hallways.
🤥CP: The Hollow Man, above your bed. With hollow eyes, deep slumber fed. His hollow dreams may fill your head. But never peek, or you’ll be dead.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hollow Man, Hollow Man, come rest in my bed, where you will have nasty dreams, and then you will be dead.
🤥CP: Everything was wrong.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I knew that from about the first or second paragraph of this story.
🤥CP: Distantly, Sarah registered the sound of her parents screaming in their room, and felt tears sliding down her cheeks. No longer dream tears, she could feel the wet warmth as each one fell.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, so there is someone else home. I wish you had explained that earlier. So, why are her parents screaming in their room?
🤥CP: “. . . Mommy,” Sarah whispered, the sound paper-thin. “Daddy,” she rasped with a voice like dried leaves.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, my mistake, I had thought for some reason that Sarah was a teenager. But human voices do not sound like dried leaves.
🤥CP: Lizzie? She thought, but Lizzie did not respond.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Of course not. Sarah only thought it, she didn't say it out loud.
🤥CP: Silence fell over the house and Sarah knew nothing would ever be right again.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So basically this story is one big fail.
🤥CP: From the hall outside her bedroom door, Sarah heard the soft click as a latch sprang into place, and waited.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: As did I, for the plot to move along and maybe come to an end one day.
🤥CP: Silence filled the house again. The leaves were gone.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And again…
🤥CP: Sunlight peeked through the curtains, and the crimson clock said it was 7:45 AM before she felt it was safe enough to open her eyes and leave her room.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I will never get used to that crimson clock.
🤥CP: The yellow door, with its mirror-ball knob, stared at her from the wall at the end of the upstairs hall, and the house was still too quiet. It was a different quiet than before, though, a different quiet than from her dream.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Quiet is quiet. Either way, for Sarah, it only translates to one thing, something to be afraid of. Same for noises too. Sarah is just perpetually scared, I'm not sure anything can be done to get her out of it beyond meds.
🤥CP: It was the quiet of a tomb.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Rolling eyes*
🤥CP: Except, of course, for the occasional tapping, as if from tiny claws, from the other side of the yellow door.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You never explained what those were. Obviously not the Hollow Man, he doesn't exactly strike me as Tiny. And Lizzie? She didn't scratch when she was talking to Sarah.
So, that's it? Sarah just goes back and forth, back and forth in the upstairs hall, from her room to that door and back, room, door, room, door, room, door, over and over forever and ever? And you never did explain the screaming of her parents.
Hollow Man never actually showed up. Lizzie sort of did, but only as a voice.
this story has no ending, and no point.
So, I'll end it and put a certain pasta figure who must be behind this in a world of trouble.
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