Work Text:
Gertrude Robinson: "Statement of Michael Shelley, regarding his childhood experience with... doors. Statement taken direct from subject, 17th of July 2009. Statement begins- so, Michael, tell me what you were telling me earlier"
[sound of shuffling]
Michael: "oh- right. Well, as I said before- I grew up in a house with too many doors"
Gertrude: "too many doors?"
Michael: "yes, well, it was an old house. We moved out of London and to the country when my mother... left. I would have been about four and my brother... 6 or 7?"
Gertrude: "I'm sorry to interrupt but, for the record, what was your brother's name?"
Michael: "I- I'll get to that. Anyway, I was too young to really remember it, but that's when we moved. The house was old, really old, and had been added on to several times- and with each new addition would be a door, of course. Add to that the normal doors any house has, leading to bedrooms, bathrooms- you know- and you have a lot of doors. Too many doors.
I think he had planned to fix it up and sell it? He would go to work during the week, and at nights and on the weekend he would work on the house. My brother and I even helped some, but it was the token kind of help you ask from a child, like holding a flashlight or hammering a finishing nail or two.
Because of their age, each addition to the house felt like it's own universe- I had fun this first few years exploring the house, and it was a really great place to play hide and seek with my brother when he would tolerate his 'snot-nosed little brother.' He was like that- he had a tough exterior but I know that he loved me.
I was about 11 when my dad started to talk about things being missing. He'd ask my brother and I where this-or-that was- mostly tools, but also more valuable items like his watch, or important like the title to the house. I think he thought my brother or I were hiding them- like as a joke? It didn't help that my brother, for some reason, insisted that these items had never existed. But after a few weeks of adamant denials even after being grounded he accepted that we were not the culprits. The only explanation, then, was that we were being robbed. Someone was coming into the house and stealing his things, one-by-one.
He got increasingly paranoid from there, but more and more things kept disappearing. I'm... I'm not sure what I thought. At one point I even thought that he'd had a mental break and maybe he was hiding these things himself and forgetting about it... or something.
Well, one day I woke up, went downstairs, and my brother was gone. I went up to his room, thinking he'd overslept, but when I opened the door he wasn't there- and neither was his bed. It was just- gone. There was some construction materials in the room in its place, like it was just another one of the rooms my dad was fixing up.
I was scared- I had to have been scared- but I also just didn't know what to do. My father was gone, too, but it was 8am and he would have been well into his 2 hour commute. I had no way to contact him so I did the only thing I could think to do- I got myself ready and I went to school.
I tried to ask my teachers about my brother- had they seen him? Did he walk to school without me? But all I got from them was the strangest looks. I kept asking, though, and eventually I was called into the principal's office.
I had been crying for a while by that point, and the stern man seated in front of me handed me a box of tissues and pointedly told me to get a hold of myself. I asked him if he has seen my brother, and he matter of factly told me that I did not have a brother, at least not one that attended this school. I started to cry even harder then, and they called my father at work to come pick me up. I can't even imagine what that call must have been like to him.
It took another two hours for him to make it back to my school, which I spent curled up in a ball in the nurses office. I couldn't understand what was happening- why this was happening, but I knew my brother was gone. Even then, the memory of his face was starting to get blurry around the edges and now, well- I don't even remember his name.
My dad picked me up, took me home, and we cried together on the floor of that house with too many doors. He was just… gone. There were no school records of him, every photograph that had held the three of us just showed my father and I instead. My father even pulled out his birth certificate- the paper was still in his filing cabinet, but only the fields for “mother” and “father” were filled in. Everything else was just… blank. He still got child support checks in the mail- no return address as always- in the amount for two dependants- but besides that it was as if he had never even existed.
After my brother disappeared, my father had us keep all of the doors in the house open. If a room didn't have one of us in it, the door was kept open- which means that we rarely opened a door that we hadn't closed ourselves. I... didn't understand at the time why, but I think I do now.
I was about 16 when I woke up to an empty house for the second time. We hadn't meant to stay in that house this long, but my dad told me something about the housing market and the remodeling taking longer than expected- and his tool vanishing couldn't have helped anything in that regard. Or maybe we stayed because it was the only connection he still had to a child who no longer existed.
When I woke up to an empty house that morning, I was determined not to panic. I got dressed, and checked where he was most likely to be- his car was still in the driveway, so he hasn't left for work- I checked the kitchen first, then the office, then the room he had been working on last- all empty. I called for him but was only met with silence. So I took a systematic approach, going from room to room from the front to the back of the house before moving to the second level and doing the same- there wasn't a single closed door in the entire house, the only room left to check was the room that had been my brother's bedroom.
My brother's room was in its own addition, at the end of the hall upstairs. Even though we kept the door open, like all the doors, neither of us went in there often. If we had photographs of him we probably would have made it a shrine, but as it stood it was just an empty room that we avoided.
As I walked up those stairs I could see that the door was open, but from that angle I couldn't see anything inside. The fear I had been so determined to squash grew with each step I took towards that room. I'm not sure what I thought I would find there, but I knew it would be nothing good.
What I found when I finally turned that corner and could see inside finally was so mundane but also filled me with more terror than I've felt in my entire life- even after having worked at the institute for the last few years… It was a door- plain, whitewashed, not unlike so many others in that house- directly across from the door frame I stood in, nestled between two windows looking out to the garden and street beyond. Looking at that door I knew- I knew my father had gone through. How long had it been there- hiding in the one room we never entered? How much had it taken that I can't remember?
I turned around and slammed the door that led into the room. I slumped down against it and cried for… who knows how long. The next few weeks are a bit of a blur. I was now alone in the family photographs, and when the child support check came in the mail the payee line was bank. I just wrote my own name in and cashed it myself. I only had a year left in high school, and even if I could locate my mother I don't think I would have wanted to live with her so… I just stayed in that house. It took the bank two years to find the “glitch” of the mortgage with no owner, and by then I was long gone, away at university. That's about it, really.”
Gertrude: “and your father's name?”
Michael: “no, I don't remember it either. There's no longer a father listed on my birth certificate, either.”
Gertrude: “thank you Michael, that will be all. Statement ends.”
Michael: “ah- okay. I'm- I'm going to go to the break room, for a while.”
Gertrude: “that's fine, just don't be too long.”
Michael: “right”
[tape clicks off, then on again]
Gertrude: “End notes. Michael provided me with a copy of his and his brother’s birth certificates. His is as he stated- no father is listed, but that's not especially abnormal as children born to single mothers are often listed without a father. The paper he claims to be his brother's birth certificate is more interesting, though. It's dated and notarized, but aside from a listed “mother” the paper is entirely blank. A records error, perhaps, but... I believe him.
This experience is slightly difficult to categorize, but I believe the recurring motif of doors puts it in the Spiral’s domain. It's unclear if this will be a benefit to or an extra complication in upcoming events. In any case, I am glad to have found out about this now.”