The Tale of the Door Beside the Stairs
(A Lore of the Boer’s Head Tale)
Written by P.H.Boer
There is a door behind the bar. You’ve likely never noticed it, and if you had, you surely paid it no mind. It’s wedged between the ale racks and the staircase that leads to the guest rooms above. A plain thing, unvarnished wood, a rusting knob, a keyhole with no key. You’d swear it wasn’t there the day before, or perhaps you only ever saw it in the corner of your eye.
I entered the Boer’s Head through that door.
I don’t recall turning the handle. I don’t recall deciding to enter at all. Only that the door opened, and I stepped through, and when I looked back… there was nothing. Just fog. And silence. And a yawning, unknowable dark.
It opens to a world I now understand as the shape of my mind, though calling it “mine” feels inaccurate. It is a realm devoid of life as we recognize it, yet not devoid of motion. The fog is endless. The sky holds no stars, no moon, not even a pretense of light. Just a ceiling of ink that presses down with quiet intent.
It can only be crossed by candlelight. And even then, only barely.
Landmarks are familiar in shape but stretched impossibly far apart, like a memory remembered from beneath water. Between them, thin blood-red strings crisscross the expanse, guide lines, left by me, or perhaps by others like me, if such a thing can be imagined. They tether doorways to safe havens, some mine, others belonging to… people I think I once knew. They must never be strayed from. And yet, straying is all too easy. You see, the others lay their threads too, those who dwell in the dark. Trick lines. Trap lines. To follow them is to walk willingly into a mouth that never learned to chew.
There are places of refuge. I have found them. A lonely lighthouse without a sea. A shattered chapel where the icons scream. And my library, my true library. The one that holds what I was before the Boer’s Head made me its Keeper.
But we are not here to speak of what is safe.
We are here to speak of the knock.
I had never heard a knock on that door before. I’ve heard worse, of course, scratching, thumping, screaming in voices that might’ve once been human. But never a knock. This was polite. Rhythmic. It asked to be let in.
And I… I am a fool sometimes. I opened the door.
The void stared back, unchanged. But something entered. Something passed the threshold. I did not see it, not clearly. But I felt it, like a cold hand trailing along the inside of my ribs.
It did not speak. It simply ascended the stairs.
It claimed a room.
Room V13.
The “V” isn’t for “vacancy,” and it isn’t part of our numbering system, not officially. But it’s burned onto the placard now, as though it always was. V, as in the ancient numeral for five, and 13… Well, you already know that one. Together they point to something far older than luck and deeper than dread. A signal, not to guests, but to something else entirely. A marker etched in wood and time, visible only to those it’s meant to lure.
Guests who choose V13 never check out. I no longer enter to clean the room. The door remains locked. And yet the bedsheets are always a mess, even without a guest. There are never any fresh towels.
Some nights I hear movement within. Something breathing just a half-beat behind the rhythm of the living.
There was one night, when I didn’t catch the guest’s name as they arrived. Which to be honest, isn’t all that unusual. People often forget the formality when they first step through the threshold. The weight of the place presses into them, saps the urgency from their tongues. What I remember is the coat with its trim, clean, too modern look for the creaking of our floorboards. The sort of guest who never should’ve ended up here.
They seemed bright, curious, and polite. Kept their shoes clean, their voice low, and nodded a lot, as though the pub were some old friend’s house they’d heard about but never truly believed existed. When asked where they’d like to sleep, they shrugged and said the number that no one ever should: “V13.”
Later that same night the guest, whoever they were, came down to the bar just past midnight. Their shoes were gone. Their hands were damp. Their eyes… no longer quite matched in color. One was still the shade I remembered, a warm brown. The other looked like old ash marbled with wet ink.
They asked, in perfect calm, if I had “any vinegar tears steeped in the hollow-bones of a child.”
Now, I’ve never offered such a thing and never plan to. To the best of my knowledge it doesn’t even exist. But without hesitation I improvised. I went to the back and returned with a steaming cup that stank of burnt parchment and something like grief. They smiled wide and sipped it in silence.
Before heading back up, they leaned in and whispered, “I think I left the door open last night. It was polite. It knocked before coming in.”
The next morning, Room V13 was locked from the inside, and a coat… trim, clean, too modern, hung on the hook by the stairs. No key returned. No sign of the guest. Just that smell, faint but sharp, lingering in the hall like vinegar and blood.
So if you find yourself wandering the upper floor, drunk or curious or simply misguided, pass that door by.
Do not knock.
Do not linger.
And for the love of all that holds a soul together…
Do not book Room V13.
It comes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway:
Be wary of answering knocks on doors.
Sometimes the knock isn’t an invitation.
Sometimes, it’s a warning.
And sometimes…
it’s already too late.
~
The Innkeeper
Warden of Lost Paths, Thread-Layer, Keeper of the Candlelit Void.
Tales from the Boer’s Head 