Ramsey Aickman -

He found it easily enough. The brickwork was real. The lichen was real. But where the door should have been, there was only a shallow recess, as if something had been carefully removed. And in the recess, pressed into the damp mortar, was a single button. Mother-of-pearl. From a cream-colored dress.

He has stopped going to work now. He spends his days walking the tracks, looking for the tunnel. The button has grown warm. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he sees the young woman standing in his kitchen, her lichen-dress dripping onto the linoleum, her smile already forming the words: ramsey aickman

A young woman. Pale. Wearing a cream-colored dress that seemed to be made of the same damp lichen as the wall. She was not looking at the train. She was looking at him. He found it easily enough

Between Murkwell and Upper Splatt, the train usually passed a long brick wall, blotched with lichen, that enclosed a disused ropeworks. For three years, Mr. Pargeter had looked at that wall. It was the still point of his journey. Tonight, however, a narrow wooden door stood where no door had been before. It was painted a deep, bruised purple, with a brass handle shaped like a sleeping serpent. But where the door should have been, there

But last Tuesday, something did.