A Soul for a Soul

The green splintered door has called out to me day after day as I pass it on my way downstairs. Today, the call is stronger. It echoes through my bones and grips my soul with its cold, clammy fingers.

My feet carry me unsurely across the carpeted floor, the green of the door growing closer and closer until I’m standing right in front of it. My hand lifts instinctively to rest on the doorknob, my fingers curling around the metal sphere. My wrist starts to twist, turning the knob when my mother’s voice calls out to me.

“JAMES THOMAS JOHNSON YOU ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR SCHOOL!”

My hand slips from around the doorknob as my sigh resonates through the hallway. The wood planked stairs creak and groan under each of my steps as I descend them.

“Heavens boy, what were you doing?” my mother asks as she starts patting down my school uniform jacket and fixing the tie that I secured loosely around my neck earlier this morning.

“Nothing mother,” I respond. “I simply lost track of time.”

She tsks as her dark brown eyes scan me head to toe. “The spitting image of your father,” she mutters under her breath. “Just like him too, the way you get lost in your head.”

Her shoulders slump as she lets out a resigned sigh. “I’ve done all I can with you.” Her hand lifts into the air before she waves me away towards the front door. “Don’t be late now, the trolley won’t wait for you.”

I’m almost out the door when I realize I haven’t got any money. My hands pat my pockets instinctively, finding not a single loose coin. “Um, mother,” I begin with a shy smile stretched across my lips, “the trolley costs one penny, correct?”

Her eyes narrow as she reads me like a book. “Here you are,” she mutters as her hand reaches out, fisted around something in her palm.

I open up my hand which she drops a penny into. My lips twitch upwards in an appreciative smile while my fingers wrap around the bronze coin with King George VI engraved on the back. “Thank you mother,” I say as I, once again, walk out the door.

“Don’t forget your cap, boy,” my mother says as she chases after me, reaching up to grab my school cap from the wooden coat rack by the door.

“Thank you,” I repeat. “What would I be without you, mother?”

“I’ll tell you what you’d be, you’d be late for the trolley,” she says. “Which is what will happen if you don’t go off now, boy.”

Now that my school’s emblem is worn proudly on my head, a wry smile slips across my face and I hurry off on my way. My mother is right after all, the trolley won’t wait for me. And I’d prefer not to have to walk to school. With the smog that’s settled around London, you can’t see a foot in front of you. That’s just another contrast to the clear-skied countryside where all of us kids were shipped off to during the war.

Boarding onto the trolley just before the doors close, I slip my hand into my pocket and wrap my fingers around the penny. “Here you are sir,” I say as I hand the coin over.

Using his handheld ticket machine, the trolley conductor hands me my cardstock ticket. My feet carry me shakily to a seat by a window as the trolleybus begins to rattle and shake with the movement of driving down the road.

I allow my head to drop against the glass window and let my thoughts wander to the green door, as they so often do. I’ve never seen what’s beyond that door. Of course I haven’t, it’s forbidden. If mother even knew I had dared touch its cold metal doorknob, she would send me away to a boarding school in Buckinghamshire as she wished to before father had his hand in it.

My imagination wanders as the trolley continues down the road. What if there’s a monster behind the door? What if my mother’s hiding something big, something life-changing?

I had never thought too long about the door before, but now? Something in me needs to know.

“‘Ello mate,” someone from beside me calls as he takes the seat next to mine. “Are you ready for maths today?”

My eyes drift away from the window and to the person beside me. William Robinson stares back at me with his pale blue eyes.

“I have never been more ready for maths,” I respond. “You already know this about me, William.”

“Ah, well the brain-box would be,” he retorts.

“Says the wazzock,” I reply.

“Touche,” he mumbles as he holds his hands up in mock surrender. “But contrary to popular belief, I do have some brains left in the upstairs department.”

A laugh bubbles up inside of me, escaping before I can stop it. “I think our grades speak for themselves, right ol’ chap?”

“And right you are,” he says. “But you’ll be eating your words when I score higher than you on this upcoming exam.”

I snort. “In your dreams, William.”

Before he can reply with a witty comeback, the trolley comes to a stop—the engine letting out a sigh of relief—at our school. I look out the window to see its pristine building standing tall under the bright morning sun.

“Just you wait James, you’ll see,” William says as he pushes up to his feet and walks down the aisle to exit the trolley with me close in tow. “I’ve been studying.”

Smog fills my lungs as I step off of the trolley and follow William to the steps of our school, causing a cough to escape past my lips. “Studying, have you?” I ask, feigning confusion. “Well rightio, you’ve got me beat.”

“I have,” he agrees, ignoring my sarcasm. “And then I’ll be the top of the school.”

A small chuckle rings out behind us. I don’t even have to turn around to know who it is. Christine Taylor.

“William Robinson, the top of the school?” she asks, flipping her long brown hair over one shoulder. “Never gonna happen.”

“I don’t need your opinion, Chrisi,” William says.

Christine’s face contorts to a frown. William knows she doesn’t like the nickname, but he uses it anyway to make her mad. He told me once that he thinks she’s cute when she’s mad.

“And yet my opinion you have,” she responds while twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

I groan internally. They should just drop the enemy's act and get together.

It’s never gonna happen though. Their families hate each other. It’s a classic Romeo and Juliet story, hopefully minus the death at the end…

“Let’s just go,” William mutters to me. “Chrisi isn’t worth wasting brain cells on.”

“As if you had any to begin with, you twit,” she says over her shoulder while pushing past us.

“I think I’m in love,” William whispers as he watches her go.

I shake my head fondly at my best friend. “Could’ve fooled me,” I mutter.

His eyes widen in fear. “You think I was too mean and not charming enough?”

“No, she was definitely into it,” I assure him.

His shoulders slump with a relieved sigh. “Let’s get going, mate. I can’t be late to class again. I’ll be expelled if I get one more absence.”

School is the same as always, going through the motions: class after class. In every class, my mind drifts to the green door again. Theories about what lies beyond the door consume me, making it impossible to focus on anything else.

It’s this reason—those theories—that makes me not wait the ten or so minutes that it takes for the trolley to pull up. I decide to walk the half hour home instead. I need closure. And I need it now. Or at least as soon as humanly possible.

The smog sits as heavily as always in the streets, keeping me from being able to see one foot in front of me. The air feels suffocating as my lungs itch for filtered oxygen. My hand lifts and stretches over to a nearby wall, my fingers tracing over the brick as I walk, helping me find my way down the sidewalk.

Streetlights dimmed by the smog are my only sense of direction as my feet carry me cautiously down the sidewalk. My mind once again drifts to the green door. It seems that’s been happening more often today, usually it doesn’t consume all of my thoughts.

The walk home seems to pass by quickly as I push open the door to my flat. My feet move me on instinct to a table sitting to the side of the stairs. My hand routinely reaches up to brush my fingers against the wood frame of a black and white picture of my father wearing his army uniform. It sits on the table next to the picture of me and my mother at his funeral.

The sharp noise of mothers wailing for their fleeting children, drowned out by the ringing of sirens, fills my head as images of the war—that happened not even ten years ago—flash through my head.

With a shake of my head, I clear the images from my mind. I take a deep breath to recenter myself before making my way up the creaking stairs.

I walk across the hallway until I come to a stop in front of the green door. My ears strain to make sure my mother isn’t home, although I already know she isn’t because she’s always at one of her cleaning jobs until late at night.

Reaching my hand up, my fingers wrap around the cold metal of the doorknob, twisting it before pushing the door slowly open.

The door drags against the carpet as the squeak of unused hinges fills the air. My eyes adjust slowly to the darkness in the large room and take in the cobwebs strung from every surface of the discarded tables and corners.

In the very center of the room sits a large chest with a rusted metal lock set securely in place to keep intruders from seeing what’s inside.

The air leaves my lungs as step after step, I get closer to the splintered wood of the chest. Wonder fills my eyes while they scan over the intricately crafted trunk. My hands rest on the wood, feeling a low buzz resonate through its surface.

My index finger drifts over to tap the rusted lock. The metal, worn from years of sitting in this room, breaks and falls to the floor with a loud clang and a large poof of dust. As it does, a soft gasp escapes past my lips.

My fingers trace along the crack between the lid and the bottom of the chest. Before I can register what is happening, an impulse stretches up my arm, sending a shiver through my body. I barely even register that my fingers have slipped between the crack until I’m lifting the lid.

Sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty chest, a ratty, worn teddy bear stares up at me. Its glass eyes bare into me as if it was alive and has been trapped in this chest—this room— for many years. A light glow surrounds the bear, blurring its long brown limbs with the dark brown of the inside of the chest.

Panic spikes in me as my arms reach down without my consent, my fingers wrapping around the scratchy fur of the old bear. As my arms pull back towards me, bringing the bear up from its resting place, the voice of a young girl rings out through the room. “Have you come to free me?”

My head swivels to the side, trying to see who the voice belongs to. The room is still empty.

My gaze flickers back to the teddy bear, my heartbeat spiking me as a foreboding feeling floods me. “Did you just talk?” I ask in disbelief. No response.

What did I even expect? It’s not like the straw-stuffed bear’s gonna respond.

All of a sudden the girl’s voice rings out through the room again in an amused tone. A set of childish giggles follow the words. “The captive’s home.”

Confusion washes over me while my eyes flicker beyond the teddy bear to the cobwebs in the corner. Perhaps there’s a bug trapped in a web over there?

“James, you’re not supposed to be in here,” my mother’s sharp voice barks out behind me.

I whirl around so fast that I almost drop the teddy bear from my grasp. My mother stands in the doorway in her black dress and white apron. She must have taken her cap off already.

“You’re home early,” I note, trying to change the subject because I am, in fact, not supposed to be in here.

My eyes flicker to the door behind my mother. For a minute, I consider making a run for it. But as I force my focus to my mother again, her expression tells me that would not be wise.

What would I do anyway? Even if I do get out of this room, that doesn’t change the fact that I live in the same flat as her and there’s no escaping whatever punishment she has in store now that she’s seen me in here.

Her eyes flutter down to the bear in my hands, a scowl spreading across her face. “How’d you get that?”

I shift the bear protectively in my hands, my index finger brushing over its straw fur. “The lock broke off,” I respond. “It was sitting there for too long.”

Disappointment floods her face. “I knew I should’ve gone with the other lock,” she mutters to herself.

“What is this place?” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.

“A place I never thought would be opened again,” my mother says as she wipes her hands on her crumpled white apron. “I locked that bear in there many, many years ago.”

“Why?”

Her eyes harden as she holds my gaze. Her long, nimble fingers trace the grains of wood on the green door before wrapping around the edges of it. It slowly creaks closed as she walks into the room. With no more light flooding in from the hallway, the room falls to pitch black.

I instinctively take a step back as worry spikes through me. The backs of my legs bump into the side of the wooden chest as my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness.

“That old bear there contains the soul of a young girl who trusted someone she shouldn’t have. She trapped it in the bear when she decided that she didn’t want to be hurt anymore. She locked it away in here so that nobody could access it, so no one could hurt it again.

“And now that you’ve found it, I have to make sure that nobody else finds it,” she says in a voice so chilling it sends a shiver down my spine.

“How do you intend to do that?” I ask, my voice shaking.

She takes a step closer. “I believe I need to eliminate the loose thread.”

“Mother?” I ask in alarm as I stumble to take a step back. My knees buckle from beneath me as the back of them hits the chest. I fall back into the open trunk before my vision is engulfed in black.