Open Door

A bad morning

I opened my eyes. It was before sunrise, but I wasn't sure how early. I rolled to my right side to check the alarm clock on my nightstand, but the display was blank.

The red light that normally displays the time was out. My eyes followed the cord from the base of the clock to the outlet in my right side bedroom wall. The alarm clock was still plugged in. But the power couldn't be out. The could hear the furnace starting in the basement, through the cold air vent on my bedroom floor.

I fumbled for the telephone handset on my nightstand. When I picked it up, I noticed that the 'beep' the phone normally made to alert the user that the battery was no longer charging did not 'beep'. I clicked the 'talk' button, but their was no dial tone. Before I rested the handset in the phone stand, I glanced at the screen. It had not lit up. The phone, too, was dead. Still, the furnace was running. This could not be a power outage.

The circuit had be reset. The furnace was obviously connected to a different circuit breaker than the electrical outlet in the bedroom. I put my bed cover and sat up in the bed. If the furnace was running, why was I so cold?

I could not see into my hallway, because I had closed the bedroom door, last night. I stood up out of bed; walked from the edge of the bed across my room to the bedroom door. It wasn't completely shut and the draft from the hallway, which I could see had crept in in the space between the door and the door frame was much colder that it had
been at my bed, even without the covers.

I gripped the side and pushed the door toward me, shivering as I did so. I looked out into the hallway and saw nothing, nothing different from before I went to bed last night. Looked into the kitchen. The clock displayed the time in green, as usual. I walked out a little further into the hallway. It was still cold, but, now, I could feel a breeze.
I looked straight ahead across the hallway, passed the kitchen, and to the front entrance. The front door was open. I could see outside that the sunrise had begun to rise.

Was whoever opened the door still in the house? I went back in my bedroom and closed the door. Then, I heard footsteps.

They drew closer.

The room was still dark. That was until my bedroom door opened from the other side, then-