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    The Dark Door
    The Dark Door
    The Dark Door
    Ebook74 pages1 hour

    The Dark Door

    By Lisa Unger

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    About this ebook

    A horror writer’s death leaves his daughter haunted by voices in this short story by the New York Times–bestselling author of Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six.

    Pip Duke’s life has descended into chaos following the death of her father, a bestselling horror writer. She now hears voices all the time, saying troubling things like: Your father’s friends and family are after his money, or you shouldinherit everything. The voices also say she killed her dad, and the police are after her.

    To silence these disturbing thoughts, Pip checks herself into an inpatient therapy center. However, the place is far from calming. She can’t trust the staff, and the voices in her head continue to say terrible things. There are those who want you released—only so they can continue to profit off your father’s name. A different voice says some wish to claim her inheritance by getting her declared insane . . .

    If Pip hopes to ever know peace again, she must explore the depths of her psyche, sort through her memories, and unravel the secret that will be her key to freedom.

    Praise for Lisa Unger

    “Our most inventive suspense author.” —J.T. Ellison, New York Times–bestselling author of Her Dark Lies

    “The premiere thriller writer.” —Megan Abbott, bestselling author of The Turnout

    “Lisa Unger writes with compassion and deep psychological insights.” —Luanne Rice, New York Times–bestselling author of The Shadow Box
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateDec 6, 2022
    ISBN9781504079846
    The Dark Door
    Author

    Lisa Unger

    LISA UNGER, guest editor, is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of twenty novels, including her latest, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six. She has been nominated for or won numerous awards, including the Strand Critics, Audie, Macavity, ITW Thriller, and Goodreads Choice Awards as well as the Hammett Prize. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few authors, including Agatha Christie. Lisa is currently copresident of the International Thriller Writers organization.

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      Book preview

      The Dark Door - Lisa Unger

      I.

      Imagine the doorway.

      The room is over-warm and the couch beneath me soft. My head rests on a pillow, my hands on my belly where I feel the rise and fall of my breath.

      Do you see it?

      Yes.

      Describe it to me.

      His voice is a low and soothing Irish brogue. I like it, even though I don’t always like him. He seems bound and determined to take me places I don’t want to go.

      It’s heavy, wooden, I say. Thick, varnished a deep brown. Cool to the touch.

      I could tell him other things: that the air smells slightly of smoke; that there’s a siren of alarm in the back of my brain; that there are voices, whispers inside my head. But he knows too much about me as it is. I hold things back, little private pieces of self, like a hoarder. They crowd the edges of my mind.

      Where are you? he asks when I don’t go on.

      At the end of the long hallway, in my parents’ house. Outside my father’s study.

      Your parents’ house.

      "My house. The house where I grew up."

      Wind pushes at the window frame. Outside the day is blustery, sunny.

      Open the door, he says gently. Can you?

      The handle is a wrought iron scroll. I put my fingers on it, and push down. But it doesn’t budge, as I knew it wouldn’t.

      It’s locked.

      Maybe that will be the end of it today. Because last time when he tried to force me through the door, things did not end well.

      He’s a liar, one of my voices whispers. He’s working with the police.

      No, says the other, he’s trying to help you.

      Dr. Black pauses. I don’t open my eyes but I hear him breathing, considering. He shifts in his chair and it groans just slightly. Outside in the gutter above his window, mourning doves coo, soft and sad. If I opened my eyes, I would look out onto a green field, studded with great oaks, a path leading to a walled garden. I might see my friend Jamie sitting on the bench by the fountain, waiting for me.

      You have the key, Pip. You know you do. Dr. Black sounds tired.

      I don’t, I insist. It was my father’s study, where he worked, where he wrote. He didn’t like anyone to go in there, not even the maid.

      You were never inside there?

      Sometimes he let me in when I was younger, I admit. I was allowed to read in front of the fire while he worked. Sometimes he read to me, shared what he was working on.

      Lately, I was in there a lot with him. In fact, we spent most of our time together there. But I don’t share that with the doctor.

      That sounds special, he says. Did you enjoy that time with him, when you were younger?

      Like everything related to my father, my answer is layered.

      Yes, but the things he wrote. They were frightening when I was little. Sometimes they scared me.

      Did you tell him that?

      No.

      Why not?

      "Because it was special. I loved being there with him, even when I was scared."

      How the fire crackled in winter. How the snow might tap on the window. Or how in summer the breeze from outside would freshen the musty space. The sound of my father’s fingers traveling the keyboard, the glow of his screen in the dim. My father’s library, the rows and rows of books, in floor-to-ceiling shelves, many of them copies of the novels written by my father, foreign editions, hardcovers, paperbacks. Classics—Hawthorne, Thoreau, Shakespeare, Bronte, Austen. Textbooks. Fiction. Non-fiction. Signed first editions by other authors he admired. Antique volumes. A life in books, my father used to say. There isn’t a moment in my life where I don’t remember what I was reading and what I was writing, how I was changed by the words on the page.

      Reach in your pocket, says Dr. Black. Do you have the key?

      My body is so heavy on the couch, my limbs filled with sand, my eyes pasted closed. Partially it’s the medication; I always feel a little dull these days, like life is happening on a screen with the volume low and the reception poor. It might be okay to live like this. It might be better than the alternative.

      I reach into my imaginary pants, standing in the imaginary hallway and—what do you know? In my palm there’s an imaginary metal key with a heart-shaped bow and etching on the shank.

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