Unexplained occurrences

My father died because his lungs had almost disintegrated. The hospital can’t explain it: they said it was like an acid destroyed them. Like he’d breathed in acid – but without it leaving a trace. Only a fifth of his lungs was left.

When I found him, his hair had turned grey at the sides, his breathing was asthmatic and he couldn’t stand up. It was painful for him to say your name. He wasn’t rambling or talking to himself – he was fighting to say your name.

By the time he died his hair had fallen out in clumps and his muscles were all stretched out thin. But his eyes were still as bright and clear as a baby’s.

He was in perfect health on Tuesday, as he always was, as far back as I can remember. I don’t think I’ve ever known him even to catch a cold. And the doctor can’t tell me, or even guess at why he died. They’re keeping him so they can cut him open and prove how puzzling it all is to each other.

He said you would know.

My Uncle Gordon is coming up tomorrow. I need him to help with the funeral, which he said he could do. He understands insurance policies and forms much better than I do.

Another puzzle, although hardly as important, is the sudden appearance of a door in our hallway.

I saw it first yesterday morning, but because of when it was I thought it must just be a lapse of memory: I hadn’t slept and I was hungry and distracted. Not hungry, but tired from hunger. And why would I care?

I thought the door must always have been there – like the coat stand or the wallpaper – but since I never go in the room beyond, I’d simply stopped noticing. But we’ve lived in this house all of my life, and now my head is clear I know I have never seen that door before now.

Outside, the opposite is true: I’ve always known there to be a window to the room that had no door – although I’ve never wondered what was inside the room – I never looked through that window. From the back garden it gave the house symmetry, but now it’s bricked up – and it always has been: the mortar is dirty and old, with the same ivy growing thick over this patch-up as the rest of the wall.

So it’s true what they say: when one door appears out of nowhere, another window vanishes.

Of course it makes sense that there is a room there, physically: directly above it upstairs is dad’s bedroom, so something must have held it up all these years – I’ve just never wondered what before. I never even wondered why a quarter of the ground floor was inaccessible.

The new door matches the other doors off the hallway perfectly and there is no lock.

Inside is what appears to be my father’s study.