I own an ice cream shop in Montreal where we make everything homemade and with a ton of passion. After three years of renting at an exorbitant price, I finally had enough money to make a down payment and move my business into my very own building. The mortgage turned out to be cheaper than the rent and the corner is amazing and on my favorite avenue of the city: Avenue du Mont-Royal. We are located in the Plateau neighbourhood which turns very French bohemian in the summers after our very frigid winters. The energy of this place is truly magical.
I first noticed the door when we had already moved in because we had removed a mirror that had been installed in front of it. Previously the building had held a clothing store with tons of mirrors. I asked the realtor about the door that seemed to connect to nowhere since behind that wall was the building next to ours. He explained to me that there was concrete on the other side and we could just have it removed one day. It had been placed when the building had first been built and led to a yard which obviously no longer exists. I thought, 'okay, one day when I have a bit more money, I'll go ahead and remove this random door.'
We have been in the building for 7 months now and I've been using the door as a place to hang a board for a ton of reminders I need throughout the week. I oftentimes leave notes for employees there and they leave me notes as well.
One night, a couple of weeks ago, I left a note on the door about replacing a flavour and normally the employee who worked the following morning would see it. I had left my raspberry crème brûlée ice cream in the refrigerator, ready to be frozen in the morning.
When I came in the next afternoon I greeted everyone and immediately went to check my crème brûlée ice cream on my soft serve machine to make sure it tasted good. I get very excited when we switch flavours as do our customers. However, to my surprise, the second I placed a spoonful in my mouth, I spit it back out. It had the most awful rotten taste I had ever tasted in my life. One time my godparents had made peanut butter soup with meatballs and I burped that out of my system for an entire week... this was worse than that time.
I immediately ran over to one of my employees and asked if they had checked the flavour before pouring it into the machine. They informed me that they had not poured it into the machine because there had not been a note on the door. So I asked them what in the world was in that machine that tasted so badly. They didn't know. The machine had been cleaned and been left ready for the new flavour and no one claimed to have placed anything inside it.
It seemed odd and not possible to me that one of my employees would do this to me as we have a good work relationship with each other (we are only 5 workers in total). But who else could have done it?
Well, I ended up cleaning the machine again and setting up my raspberry crème brûlée as normal.
The next day I decided to come in early to make sure everything was okay. I parked my car and was shocked to see the shop was completely empty and the lights off. I opened the shop and came inside confused as to where everyone was. I decided to open the shop myself and as soon as I was done, I telephoned one of the employees that was supposed to be there. According to them, there had been a note on the door that read: Emergency! Do not open the shop. I will contact you later. He said someone then texted him that he could come in at midday to open.
My heart sank. I immediately went to check all of my ice creams in my soft serve machines. Chocolate: disgusting. Vanilla: even worse. Key lime pie: just the smell was killing me.
I had to close the shop and clean everything myself.
I united all my employees that night and asked for all of their keys and told them that I would be opening and closing for some days because someone had obviously not been responsible and had possibly lost the keys allowing people to play this prank on me. I had the locks changed and, in my mind, fixed the problem.
A week passed and everything seemed back to normal.
But then one night last week, I was alone in the back making ice cream when all of a sudden I heard a very loud "THUMP" from the other side of the door. I jumped from the scare. I walked over to the door and for no reason, as an instinct, grabbed the doorknob and turned it. But it's locked or closed up completely. I stood there staring at the door and I got this very weird sensation inside me.
The door.
I just stood there staring at it and feeling like it was staring straight back at me. Or perhaps someone behind it staring back at me. I moved away and felt as if I could no longer hold its stare. I turned around, straightened my shirt, and marched back to my ice cream.
I continued on with my recipe when once again, THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. I ran out of the kitchen spooked. This door was really messing with my head at this point. I eventually decided to go next door to get some answers about this door. But first I took some measurements because I wanted to know exactly where the door was on her side of the building.
I've only met her once before. My neighbor. Her name is Albertina and she is an elder Portuguese woman who doesn't speak any French and some English. She lives alone and according to her has been living there for 32 years. I explained to her about the noises and she just laughed it off. I was a bit annoyed. I asked her if I could come see inside so that I can see exactly where door stands. She allowed me to come in.
I measured away and eventually it led me to a bedroom she had. On the wall, where my door is, there was a portrait of a young boy. I asked her who it was and she immediately changed her mood and asked me to leave. I found it extremely odd and it spooked me. I'm not someone who believes in ghosts and much less in ghost stories but at this point, the door had me going a bit nuts and now this weird portrait was freaking me out.
I left and told myself, with the locks changed, this has to be over. And the noise? Who cares.
The next day I received a phone call very early in the morning. I was in complete shock. It was the police informing me that my building was partly set on fire. I immediately jumped out of bed and drove there. My neighbor's building was so burned it was barely recognizable. The fire had partly spread to my building and I had severe damage as well.
What a nightmare that was. I spent it on the phone with my insurance all day long. That night I called the detective in charge of the case to ask about my neighbor.
"Yes, unfortunately we were able to locate two bodies. One of the bodies seemed to have been missing their limbs, perhaps a handicapped person. Did you notice if there was a handicapped person living there?" He asked me.
Two bodies? I explained to him that she lived alone. And that I definitely had never seen a handicapped person there nor had she mentioned it.
"Well, maybe she had a visitor," he replied.
In the middle of the night? I told him that was hardly possible.
Two bodies. No limbs? It stayed in my mind all weekend long.
Yesterday I was finally allowed to go inside my building. I cleaned some things and recuperated important papers.
I went to look at the door. My biggest fear was that it would be intact for some irrational reason. But it wasn't. I could see straight into Albertina's building. I could almost walk right into it.
I did.
I walked into the room with the portrait. It was all burned down. Nothing left to see. I turned around inspecting all the walls and corners, afraid everything would collapse on me when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a metal box. It had a lock but OF COURSE, the lock had been unlocked.
'Ugh. Great. Now I must open it,' I thought.
So I did. Inside there was a journal. And little clear bottles of what looked like sand. I skimmed through the journal and even though it's all in Portuguese, I was surprised how easily I could understand it all since I am Salvadoreña and speak Spanish. I went back to the first page and read the introduction.
"In this journal I will document the reincarnation of Afonso. I have a new plan now that I have a new neighbor. I will use the door, as usual, and place Afonso inside their ice creams. There will be a little bit of Afonso in everyone. Over time, Afonso will come back to me. In this journal I will document it all."
I am Afonso.
Submitted January 07, 2017 at 10:13PM by svarela128 http://ift.tt/2jnox47 nosleep
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