*I decided to repost the entire story in one blog and yes I wrote it...shocking I know . I was inspired to add more to the ending*

There is one room in my grandmother's house that she always kept locked up. Every time I asked her about it she would wave her hand dismissively and change the topic to talk about  her garden and her knitting. I thought maybe she was just a crazy old woman having mental issues and I would eventually let it go. I could see the relief in her eyes but there was also something deeper that I could not quite explain.

Many years passed by and I eventually moved away to start a new job and tried not to give any of it another thought. One day I got the call I had been dreading…my grandmother had passed away in her sleep and they needed me to return so her will could be sorted out. I was not close to her so I did not really understand the need but I took time off work and spent 6 hrs on a flight wondering what was going on.

The lawyer’s office was small and smelled of stale coffee and old books. The attorney was a man in his late 50s with silver hair combed back, sitting behind a heavy oak desk in a sharp navy blue suit. He motioned for me to sit down across from him while shuffling his papers, his voice deep and raspy. “Your grandmother felt that it was in her best interest, since she did not own much, to leave it to you—but with specific conditions.” I leaned forward, my curiosity piqued as I raised an eyebrow. Seeing my shifting position, he continued, “She specifically wrote in her will that her house is not to be renovated or sold, and that the room is to never be opened.” He raised his eyes from the paper, his gaze narrowing for a split second, and handed me the key to the house.

After leaving his office, I headed straight for my grandmother's house. With trembling hands, I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Standing in the doorway felt strange; I hadn't been here in years, and it felt as though I had stepped back in time to when I was a child. My gaze slowly drifted up the staircase to the second floor, right where the door was. I hesitated for a moment, wanting to just run up the stairs and rip it open to end the mystery. But I remembered the promise I had made and did nothing—at least, not yet.

Shaking off the feeling of nostalgia, I forced my feet to move. Slowly, I walked along the hallway, my fingertips brushing against the family photos on the wall. Smiling faces stared back at me as if they were strangers. My mind drifted back toward the stairs once more, and slowly I ascended, my fingers gripping the railing with each step until I placed my feet on the landing of the second floor. The key in my shirt pocket felt heavily weighted, even though it was small. All of the doors were left slightly ajar, but my heart seemed to climb into my throat as I forced myself toward the very last door on the left. I could see a thick layer of dust covering the front of it—most likely years and years' worth.

My hands trembled as I reached into my pocket and pulled out the key. I know I made a promise, but I had spent years always wondering what was hiding behind that door, and now I had the opportunity to find out. I placed the key in the lock and began to turn it—slowly, carefully. I heard the click of the lock and reached out to grasp the brass handle. At that moment, the phone rang downstairs, and I stepped back. I waited to see if it would stop, but it persisted, so I twisted the key to lock the door again. I placed the key back in my pocket and headed downstairs. Whatever mystery sat behind that door would have to wait just a little while longer.

Heading back down the stairs I stopped at the bottom and picked up the phone that sat on a small table near the front door. Slowly I pick  up the phone and listen for a moment,I hear nothing, then there is a whisper “why did you lock it?

Feeling paralyzed with the phone to my ear I slowly turned to look back up the dark staircase. At the top of the stairs I can see that the end of the hallway has been bathed in a dark shadow. The voice on the phone whispers in my ear “I’m waiting” My eyes dark around realizing I might be trapped and to escape the house I either have to run past the stairs to head out the front door or face whatever is up there. Before I can make a decision the voice on the phone whispers again “ why did you lock it instead of opening it?” This time it sounds like it's not only coming from the phone but from the top of the stairs, muffled by the distance from where I am standing and the door. Who or whatever it was, they were calling her from inside of the room her grandmother had told her to never open. “ I saw your hand on the knob, I saw you twist the key. Come back up.” I almost drop the phone as I quickly look around the room and up towards the ceiling wondering if there is a hidden camera watching me or was someone else in the house watching my every move. Right after the last whisper the phone line clicked and went completely dead. No dial tone. Just silence. From the top of the stairs I hear the slow heavy creak of a door being pushed open - the very door I could have sworn I had just locked.

The sound of the creaking door shatters the silence. I drop the phone receiver and it clatters on the table before falling to the floor. As I look back up the stairs a figure steps out of the shadows but just stands there looking down at me, its head tilting slightly to the side as it watches to see what I will do. I lunge for the front door fumbling with the lock. I am not sure I can outrun whatever it was but I was going to try. I flung the front door open feeling the night air as I run down the front steps and down the driveway only to realize I had somehow forgotten the keys to my car in the house when I  ran out. When I reached the end of the drive way I stopped for only a second, just long enough to look back of the house, a dark figure now standing in the doorway holding onto the phone receiver while staring out at me. The figure stepped out onto the porch, dangling my car keys in its left hand so that I could hear them jingle. A chilling voice calls out to me “ You forgot these. Come and get them” I turn and begin to run, hearing my feet hit the ground as I move faster and faster. The silence of the night was deafening but now she could hear the sound of something running behind me. 

As I continue to run down the middle of the road I start screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to wake up and help me. I focused on trying to find the nearest house running up onto their porch and pounding on the door till the light came on and an elderly man opened the door. I could barely catch my breath as I screamed that something was following me and begged for him to let me inside. The man grabbed me by the arm and yanked me inside slamming the door shut and activated the locks just as something heavy hit against the door. Something began to scrape against the door which sounded like nails and the neighbor looked at me with wide eyes, his voice shaking as he spoke” what the hell is out there?” He slowly approached the front window to his house as I collapsed on the floor. He peered out through the window only to discover that there was nothing out there that he could see. As he turned around to face her, his phone on the counter began to ring and the ID screen showed my grandmother's name but she was deceased. I screamed for him to not answer it.

The neighbor checked the locks on the door once more to ensure they were engaged before he allowed himself time to take a breath then he looked at me. He studied my features for a moment before realization dawned on him from anger to fear.” You are Margaret's granddaughter” he whispered as he slowly began to back away from me.

She talked about you before she died. She knew that if you ever came back to the house that you would eventually try to open that room. She made me promise that no matter what I would not let you into my home.Suddenly there was the muffled sound of an old style phone yet the neighbor did not own a landline.The sound of the phone came from his back room which he kept locked but it was meant for storage only or so he thought. Now he was beginning to wonder if he had let something into his home by opening the door to her. He returned to the window and peered out once more, stepping back quickly as he left the blinds snap shut. He looked like all the blood had drained from his face as he whispered “someone is out there and they are not trying to get it, they are just standing there pointing up towards the window in his attic. Both of us slowly looked up towards the ceiling as we heard the slow heavy creak of a door opening. He realized too late that his home was no longer safe and that whatever nightmare was out in his yard and now in his house, I had brought it to him.

He realizes that the only way we can survive whatever is out there, we would have to work together. He tells me that he has his truck in the garage and that the door in the kitchen led to it. They would just have to figure a way to get to it without alerting whatever was surrounding them. He decides the best way is to set the alarm on a watch he had kept that was a gift from his deceased wife and set it inside a vase which was heavy. He would toss it through the window in the dining room window causing enough of a distraction to allow them to run through the kitchen and into the garage without being heard. He whispered at the count of 3 then grabbed my arm after tossing the vase through the window, pulling me through the kitchen and into the garage both of us jumping into the truck and shutting the doors quickly and setting the locks.

He slipped the key into the ignition and turned it, the engine roaring to life. He slammed the gear shift into reverse and floored it, ramming the truck through the flimsy door the tires screeching as he turned the wheel then threw the truck into drive, flooring the gas pedal as we roared down the street not daring to look behind us as we left his house in the distance. He drove for what seemed like forever no particular destination in mind; the only sound breaking the silence was country music drifting from the radio as the heater in the truck struggled to keep them warm. They finally stopped at a well lit diner hours away from where they had barely escaped…the nightmare was over at least for now. The old man sighs deeply as he searches his glove box, his hand trembling as he pulls out an old dust sealed envelope and hands it to me. “Your grandmother came to my house 5 yrs ago  and told me to give this to you if anything happened to her and you started to question the secrets of that room”

Inside the envelope they find a handwritten letter which explains the terrifying truth of what has been happening to them. Decades ago she had encountered the dark terrifying entity and she used an ancient ritual to bind it to the room upstairs in her home. The locked door had become a spiritual barrier but it was fragile. The house was left to her because she was the only one left who could keep the seal from being broken but by unlocking the door she had broken the chains that kept the entity contained. It had been trapped for so long that it was tied to the house and to the bloodline of the one who bound it there. It could leave the room once the seal was broken but it could not wander far from the property or it would become weaker. The grandmother had promised it that it would never be disturbed in exchange for the wealth it had bestowed upon her. Now it wanted its freedom and the only person to be able to give it to them was the one holding onto the letter, which was me. The letter ended with a warning “ Do not touch the door. If you do, the seal will be shattered and it will come looking for you to grant it its eternal freedom. It will do anything to trick you into giving it what it wants”

The neighbor began to cry as he realized that he should have given the letter to her the moment she returned to the home but he had been afraid for himself and for her. I finished reading the letter, my hands trembling barely able to speak. “ I heard the lock click before I ran down the stairs to answer the phone. I had already turned the key.”

They both realize they can not run forever and the entity must be dealt with. They needed to wait till morning when it was at its weakest before they returned to the home. She stepped up the staircase and stood in the hallway holding up her own phone as she dials her grandmother's house number and waits for the entity to respond which she knew it would. Suddenly the entity manifests a large mass of shadow, demanding that it be set free and trying to drag me into the room with  it in hopes that it would finally be set free. The neighbor jumps out of the closet close to the room and tosses a journal into the room behind the shadow, distracting it just long enough to allow me to pull away and slam the door shut behind it with a thud, the neighbor turning the key in the lock as i pulled out a sharp blade i had stashed in my pocket quickly cutting across the palm of my right hand and drawing the symbol i had seen in the journal across the front of the door. 

The house went completely silent. The phone stopped ringing and the heavy weight that seemed to hang in the air was lifted. Together with the help of the elderly man I took boards that we had gathered from around the house and placed them across the door, securing them in place with nails. Eventually I rennovated the hallway so the door was no longer visible.  As long as that door remained sealed and hidden  we all would remain safe. Or so they thought.

5 years later in a town 6 hours away a baby girl was born. One day she would inherit the house and the burden of the terrifying secret that hid within its walls.  A secret that was attached to a tarnished brass key that one day would hang from a necklace around her neck. Some things once awoken would no longer slumber. It was watching, listening and waiting for the sound of the key in the lock setting it free.

Last entry in a journal hidden in the old wooden desk written in my grandmother's penmanship not yet discovered.

“I don’t know where it came from. My grandmother warned me of its presence as did my mother. I did not believe them and I used the key. I bargained for the life of my own child  but was granted wealth in exchange for its freedom. I tricked the entity and I created a seal binding it to the room to protect my child. I believed that once she was an adult all would be forgotten. The day she gave birth to my granddaughter the fear I felt from before returned with a vengeance. I brushed off her persistent questions about the room but I never thought the day would come when she would be in danger.I know my life is coming to an end and I will no longer be able to stop the maternal bond that passes down through the bloodline tying us to the entity that lives behind the door.All I can do is hope and pray that with my granddaughter, she will be the last one and the blood bond will be broken upon her death.

                 May God have mercy on us all"