Time ticked by with little hammer blows as I paced the room, hearing the murmurs at the boarded windows and doors, seeing the flitting of shadowy hands as they tried to thrust past and seize me. I’d eaten my next to last ration can yesterday; once today’s was gone what would I do but stare at the walls until they forced their way in and swarmed over me to tear me with their sharp nails and rend me open with their fangs?

So little was left to chance now, all the furniture had been used to block the entrances and every scrap of available wood or paper was jammed into the cracks. All except the door frame at the center of the room, it had been too sturdy for me to tear down in my weakened state.

As I circled I eyed it. It was just a white door in a black frame and it was uselessly locked, as I could stand on either side of it and verify that it went nowhere. I had rattled the handle, knocked, yelled, gotten nothing resembling a reply. It just stood as I walked around it, making it the center of my conundrum, one odd thing in the last few days of my life before I died of thirst or they found a way inside.

I made my hundredth circuit of the room, patching holes in my defenses, plugging one gap with the dead and useless radio, and wondering if I dared spare the time to sit and eat the bitter contents of the last can. I shook my head and turned aside, and that of course is when it all began to fall to pieces as the voices groaned and surged.

The first shadow hand found its way through the walls,felt about and pulled more planks away, and as the wood fell to the floor I rushed to repair the barrier but more hands were thrusting through to slash at me and and rip down the boards. I backed away, taking up one useless plank to swing at their multitudinous claws.

And then behind me was a creaking sound as the central door, the door to nowhere, swung open. I could see the rest of the room straight through it, it still seemed to lead into thin air, but now I heard a soft whispering voice. Hurry, it said, flee through here.

I had surely lost my mind with a desire to evade my fate, but after knocking aside some more clutching claws and feeling their shadow-thin cuts on my arms, I cursed at them and backed up into the open door, looking at the black frame around me as I stepped through.

And once I did, the world went black and the gibbering of the shadows fell silent. I could not see my bleeding hands or hear any noise save the surging of my heartbeat. I smelled nothing aside of stale air, yet in the dark I sensed something and seemed to feel a space that was less black than the rest of it. My eyes fought to adjust to the blackness.

“Hello? What is this door?” I groaned to whatever it was. “Why didn't you open it before?”

I held it until they came for you, came a whisper that sounded like a knife skittering over ice. Else you would not have come to me of your own will, which is most necessary to me.

Thin tendrils swirled around me and hovered before plunging into my flesh and deeper into my soul. I began a scream that would never entirely end, keening across all the cursed eons.

Now I have you all to myself.