The Town Where No One
Answers the Door
J.A. Shieldsmith
We didn’t start out this way. The town and its people. At least, that’s what I’m told. Ask anyone sporting only gray in their hair and you’ll get some flavor of “oh, this used to be such a nice town” or “people used t’be friendly” or “we’d open our door for anyone, save Satan or salespeople” or more and more lately “this whole place has gone to shit”.
I used to wrinkle my nose at the notion that such a place as this could have been such a place as that. It almost felt like a collective prank. One the old folks would play only on those under the age of twenty. Now, with me nearing fifty and most of those old sages pushing daises, I find comfort in the notion. This concept that, at one point, nary a person in this town of several hundred or so people had use for a lock, lest they be keeping someone out while planning a surprise party. Or, the Devil himself.
If one were to put this town under some grand microscope and angle it just right, they might find evidence of that town. Little acts of kindness or warmth that even our famously frigid winters could never dream of smothering. Then again, if one were to cast this town under a giant lens, there’s always the chance they get the angle wrong, amplify the sun’s rays. Set this whole town ablaze.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me paint you a picture. I can peel back these blinds the way one peels back a protective layer on a new TV, and you’ll find a lovely view of main street. As lovely as it gets anymore.
There’s the old bank on the corner. Its beautiful red bricks that have stood the test of time far better than any of us will. Legend has it, that bank was built during the height of the Civil War. A claim that’s easy to balk at. Many do upon hearing it for the first time. “How’d they ever muster up the materials and manpower to lay so many bricks while the country was busy ripping itself apart?” they ask. Much the same way this country carries on today while doing the same: underpaid labor.
To the left of the bank, on once borderline consecrated ground that Starbucks has now defiled, that used to be Mrs. Simpson’s coffee shop. God rest her soul, she made the best damned hot chocolate I ever had and ran the best café this town ever saw. She was famous for her hospitality, it’s what made her shop all the more inviting. “Like visiting Grandma’s,” a lot of adults used to say. I wouldn’t know, as mine passed away when I was quite young. But if her café was similar to the warmth offered by a grandmother’s home, consider me all the more aware of the chill that permeated my childhood.
Opposite the accursed Starbucks, you can find the little candy shop. My friends used to steal from that place all the time. I never took anything myself. Then again, if I was with them every time they plucked pricey chocolates from those shelves, does it really matter if my sticky fingers were the ones doing the plucking or not? Regardless, the store ultimately weathered the storm that was our ravenous little gang.
And see that building two doors down from the candy shop? At one point, the last owner-occupied residence on all of main street, save this rental bungalow I call home. Miss Eleanor Cartwright’s place. Once famous for having the most beautiful door in town. Some of the older folks, God rest their souls, claimed those weathered pieces of oak, those handwrought pieces of iron loosening their grip with each passing decade, were the most beautiful thing in the county, maybe even the state. They’re not much to look at today. Something one can’t attribute to the distance from which we sit, either. I’m afraid closing the gap, scrutinizing them up close, only makes matters worse. Drives home how unkind time has been to that once operable piece of art.
Legend has it, Miss Cartwright’s family arrived in this, the U. S. of A., all of three-hundred years ago. I know, my jaw did the same thing when I first heard that number thrown about. Any doubts you have about that fact are best kept on this side of my humble abode, as others aren’t too keen on seeing the foundations shook. Shoot, most aren’t keen on discussing anything more historical than yesterday’s crossword.
For a couple hundred years, the Cartwrights lived up to their namesake, helping blaze trails across this land. Whether through fate or circumstance, this town found itself jammed in the proverbial spokes of the Cartwright family. They settled here, and did a great deal of good for the area. Eleanor’s dad, Archibold – yes, most of the Cartwrights had fantastic names – Archibold, a successful entrepreneur, had pioneered much of the main street you see today. Well, not today, since looking at it today is a lot like catching a reflection of Atlantis in a mud puddle.
As for Eleanor’s mother, Hilda; she thread a yarn of her own. On the drive in you likely spied some of those beautiful quilt patterns on the sides of barns, yes? No, no, she didn’t make them herself. Each and every one of them is inspired by her work, however. Just as Edgarton, that pretentious town of snakes and socialites twenty-miles down stream, was inspired by our town’s very existence. For the record, we were the first town to hold a corn eating contest. Not them.
Sorry, I digress. A bad habit. It’s been so long since I had a visitor, longer still since I let one in. About eighty years ago, Eleanor Cartwright came into this world. She had a big wagon to fill. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Kidding aside, the Cartwright family had played their part in forging a legacy that would outlast any handmade door or red brick bank, so she had a lot to live up to. Too much, perhaps. Eleanor left town, going forth into the world to live her own life.
Until one day, she just came home. Nobody knew exactly why. Rumors fluttered about, as rumors are known to do in small towns. Ill health, unwanted pregnancy, financial troubles, legal issues overseas. The list was as long as the bank is tall. Personally? I think this town just pulled her back in. You know those basking sharks? The funny lookin’ fellas with the wide-open mouths that sort of vacuum everything up? That’s this town. In the distance, it’s little more than a blip on the radar. As it gets closer, you can’t help hoping you’re big enough to swim away. Lest you get sucked up and never see the light of day again.
Either way, Eleanor was back, and she was all the town could talk about. On rare days when the sun was just right, she’d grace Mrs. Simpson’s coffee shop with her presence. But the barrage of questions and passing remarks wore her down the way water does a stone. Until one day, she just stopped leaving the house entirely.
That was thirty-nine years ago. Dear Eleanor Cartwright would have been, what, nearly forty? Younger than I am now. Huh, that’s funny. I was only a boy back then. But, based on the photos I’ve seen of her, had I been older, I’d have likely been knocking on her beautiful oak door in hopes she’d give me even a moment of her time. If only.
But you’re not here for an architectural tour of the town or to hear of Miss Cartwright’s beauty, are you? Even if it was a sight to behold. You’re wanting to know why, of all the doors you knocked on, not one person, save myself, bothered even twisting the handle? Darkening the peephole with their eye or talking to you through one of those tacky video doorbells.
The town was so rattled by Eleanor’s reclusion, shaken to their very collective core, that a pact was made. I was no more than a child, like I said, so my memories of the before times are vague. How I do remember that night, though. We all met under that old oak at the edge of town, the mayor included. God rest his soul. After hours of debate, the Darkened Doorstep Concord of 1996 was born. From then on, nobody ever, ever answered their door again.
Oh my God, you should see your face! Okay, sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I know where this story is going, and I had to inject a little levity into the room before we arrive at our grim destination. There was no concord or secret meeting. If there was, I had no part in it. But, Eleanor did stop leaving her house, and in a town where little ever happens, that became the little that happened for a while. Our collective focal point at which we could all squint.
A few months went by, taking the warm breath of summer and whispers of Eleanor with them. Soon, the leaves looked much like they do today. Every hillside a sweeping brush stroke of vibrant oranges and yellows, with the occasional drop of purple anywhere the grand artist felt it fitting. Simply perfect.
Then shortly before Halloween, nine days to be exact, there was a knock at Mr. Glenn’s door. No, don’t bother looking. His house is tucked away in those hills, near the county line. Mr. Glenn was a quiet man who lived a quiet life. Few had reason to visit him, so it was few visitors he received. That being so, it was three days later, six days until Halloween, that the postman, Arty Finkus, finally noticed a peculiar smell coming from Mr. Glenn’s home.
Arty was as quirky as his name. Or maybe, he was quirky as a result of having grown up with such a name. I’ve always felt some people are destined to be who they are because of how they were labeled when they rolled off the line. You know, I had a friend named Bernie Carr, and you’d never guess what he went to prison for.
Sorry, sorry. The way Arty put it, the smell was “the kind of thing that’ll haunt a man’s nose until it rots off in the soil.” Now, Mr. Glenn had a long, long driveway. Incredibly hard to walk up during the best of times, impossibly impossible to traverse in either direction when it was icy. Fortunately for Arty, it was an unseasonably warm day when he climbed that slope to stuff junk mail into Mr. Glenn’s dark green mailbox. Unfortunately for Mr. Glenn, it wasn’t icy three days prior either, when someone climbed that grand hill, knocked on his door, waited for him to answer and proceeded to hack him into bits. I know. I told you, where we’re going, you’ll need a flashlight.
The coroner, my friend Bernie’s dad, said it was the grizzliest thing he’d ever seen. And he’d been unlucky enough to land that job a month before the great sawmill disaster of ’86, so that was saying something. Mr. Carr, who—okay, I have to get it off my chest. Bernie was an arsonist. He set a car on fire in front of the school as a senior prank. A little on the nose, right? The moron had just turned eighteen, so he got tried as an adult and that was the last I saw of him.
Anyway, Mr. Carr concluded that Mr. Glenn had been dead for three days. “Three days, can you imagine?” my dad said at the table. I remember joking, “With injuries like that, he’ll be dead forever.” You don’t have a lot of empathy at ten. Sue me.
The town was obviously rattled. The adults, all wondering who could have done such a thing. Were they local? An outsider? One of those bastards from Edgarton? A vengeful spirit? That was my favorite. Actually, it was me who suggested that. It never took off. All the kids were concerned about was whether Halloween would be canceled. With only six days to go, would the town put safety over sugar?
The answer to that question became clearer in the coming days. Our childhood hopes of sporting masks and demanding candy were dashed against the rocks as someone came a-knockin’ at Arty’s door a mere two days before Halloween. Arty, God rest his soul, lived closer to town. You may have driven through that rustic stretch of craft homes on the north end? Don’t let their beautiful exteriors and vibrant gardens fool you, for those plants are rooted in blood.
Mr. and Mrs. Halloway heard the knocking. ’Twas a friendly town still, so they thought little of it. Mr. Halloway glanced out the window, saw Arty’s light turn on and smiled to himself as he saw that it was nearing ten o’ clock. Maybe Arty was having a little more than a friend over at such an hour, eh? The Halloways returned to their regularly scheduled programming, ignoring the ensuing knocks on Arty’s door. So engrossed in their show were they, that soon the knocks became little more than the dripping faucet one learns to ignore.
Arty’s screams, however, would not be denied. The Halloways, being the good neighbors that they were, muted the TV and dialed the authorities as fast as their fingers could fumble over the buttons. But it was too late. It was too late the moment they killed the sound on their show. It was too late when they punched in those three numbers for rescue. And it was too late when the sheriff and his deputies arrived, at which point Arty was no longer recognizable.
Mr. Glenn’s body was still fresh, ish, and now Mr. Carr had another. An equally unexplainable, equally disturbing case. Arty’s face was more akin to a smashed pumpkin than the smiling mailman the town knew him as. There was no calling card. No clear motive. Only death and chaos, seemingly for the sake of both.
The children were in a panic. Would their parents just give them the candy this year? Could they still sport their costumes? The parents were in a greater panic. Would any of their children be safe with a monster roving about? This small town had never experienced such big waves, and it looked as if we might all be swept off the map.
The sheriff acted as swiftly as his overburdened, aging frame would allow. “By gawd, we need law and or-dah!” You know that rooster from the Looney Tunes? Okay, so he didn’t sound like that anymore than I just did, but imagine how much funnier this would be if he did? Not that there’s anything funny about this situation. Of course not.
The sheriff immediately put a curfew into place, ordering all citizens to be inside with locked doors by eight o’ clock. I’d mentioned to my parents that being inside with shut doors is precisely what the two victims had in common, but they weren’t amused.
Halloween came and went. For the record, my parents still let me dress up and ask for candy in the living room. But only once, and then it was off to bed. It was sweet, I guess, and almost made up for the noticeably smaller sack of candy that year. A sweetness that was soon fouled by what came next.
Mrs. Simpson. Sweet, sweet Mrs. Simpson. Well, Mrs. Simpson lived further into town, a mere few blocks from here. Don’t bother looking for her house either. You won’t find it. Not because it’s gone, but because you’d need to stick your head through my back wall and two neighboring houses to find it, and that’d leave quite the mess for me to deal with.
You know, I’ve always felt kindness was finite, with many having a smaller well than others. Perhaps some people are born kinder than others. Maybe others foster a sort of kindness. Like kindling a fire over many years, in hopes it doesn’t go out. In my opinion, part of what made Mrs. Simpson so kind was that she blocked out much of the outside world. Sure, from sunrise until sometime after lunch she’d share her warmth with the town via her café. But, once she was home, she ignored the news and all that wickedness out there. Building up her reserve of kindness, then protecting it, so that she might willingly give all but a smoldering ember away.
Unfortunately, this same discipline is what made folks wonder if she’d even heard the curfew that the sheriff had ordered. What she did hear was the knocking at her door sometime around midnight.
The next day, it would come as little surprise to any of us that of all people, Mrs. Simpson would be the one person kind enough to open her door with a murderer on the loose. Hell, even if she’d heard the news of the curfew, many of us believe she’d have opened it anyway. Curfews be damned, that strange or familiar face on the other side of the door might be in need of a warmth missing from their cold and sad life.
A warmth I hope they got, even if it resulted in sweet Mrs. Simpson going cold on her living room floor. No more than a few feet from her dusty TV and mug of cocoa. Gods she made the best hot chocolate.
Now, barring the very obvious reasons for a town to be further distraught over yet another murder, Mrs. Simpson’s death nearly broke the very bones of this community for two reasons. The first, which most were quite vocal about, was that she was simply the kindest woman. Why would anyone do such an awful thing to such a sweet soul? Maybe that’s what made her drinks all the more tantalizing on the tongue. That sweetness. The second reason, which none vocalized but even a childhood me could discern, was that she lived closer into town.
If I poke you in the arm, you’ll flinch. If I poke you in the shoulder, you might flinch a little harder, but you’ll be fine. Were I to extend this bony finger and thrust it near your heart as hard as I could? Why, you’d almost certainly recoil. Clutch at your chest. I’d go as far as saying you might even be rattled. The heart is a precious thing, and every single person in this town couldn’t help noticing this blow was closer than those that had come before.
But God, it wouldn’t be the last.
The sheriff made it known far and wide that no one, under any, any circumstances, was to answer the door. “If God himself knocks, then you make him wait until morning before answering.” He was quite the showman, our sheriff. God rest his soul. The man could really work a crowd.
Keep in mind, this had all taken place over a mere week and some change. But time moves agonizingly slow for the lonely, and all the while this was happening, dear sweet Eleanor Cartwright was cooped up in her iron bound cage of a cottage. See, that’s the thing about having a reputation for being, or becoming, a loner. People assume you don’t want guests, so you don’t get any guests, thus making you alone. A self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
It’d been weeks since anyone darkened her doorstep. Why did she have to answer the door that night and welcome darkness into the light of that once beautiful, once beloved little estate? Even Eleanor, as shut out from the world as she’d become, knew of the curfew. The sheriff had stuck a decree on all several hundred doors in the cursed town the day after Mrs. Simpson left us without her cocoa. There was no missing it. Perhaps, Eleanor was just that lonely. Perhaps, she knew it would kill her, even as she pushed down that metal handle and let those hinges sing their sweet swan song to her as they permitted that old oak to swing. And swing it did.
There was the night the music died. We all know the song. This was the night our town died. The night its heartbeat fell silent. The only kindness I can deliver unto you, is that the killing blow was swift. Clean. Not like the others, no. This one, based on the coroner’s description, was handled with all the precision that one would expect to find in a home like hers, after walking through such a beautiful doorway. As Mr. Carr told Bernie who told me, “I’ve spilled more blood slicing carrots in our kitchen.”
They say she was smiling when they found her. Not in a toothy, silly fashion. The kind of soft smile that gently works its way across another lover’s face upon having a joke whispered in their ear. Maybe it was a joke that’d been coming for years, and she was just thrilled to finally hear the punchline. Or maybe, as humans, we try to find sense where there’s none to be found. Find meaning in the misery. And that’s the joke.
I’m sorry. I told you, where this train was bound there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Only a darkness so profound it’s made our town its home for the last few decades. A darkness so great, nary a soul will answer their door, for fear it might get in.
Oh, we’re still here. The town. The streets still brim with life during the summer. Fall, as you well know, sees these hills rich with color and tourists suckling at our various shops. You can still go a few blocks over and get one of the best breakfasts you’ll ever eat, courtesy of the Old Brick Inn. Or have fresh ice cream served over espresso at Amy’s Corner Shoppe. Plenty of visitors do. But, knowing what you know now, maybe you’ll feel more like the people who live here. Those of us left behind. Each bite of pancake or sip of sweetened coffee carrying with it a hint of loss. For some, that loss makes those moments all the sweeter, worth savoring. For others, they find only a bitterness so grand they never bother seeking out those small comforts again.
Where do I fall? That’s a question much better answered by another story. One you won’t hear from anyone else in this, our little town. God rest its soul. Care for a cup of coffee? You’ll want it, for this next story’s a doozy. You’ve heard why no one answers their door. Now, let me take you back all those years again. Let me tell you why I knocked.
J.A. Shieldsmith has spent nearly fifteen years ghostwriting and helping others tell their stories. More recently, he’s started slapping his name on his own work. He was previously published with Piker Press and will be featured in a folklore anthology releasing in 2027. When not submerged in the very real horrors of the business world, he’s pulling at his latest horrific thread or battling his backyard. He lives in the southwestern United States with his ever-wonderful wife and son, and millions of other people melting to the pavement. You can follow him on Threads at @jashieldsmith or check jashieldsmith.com to see if he’s finally updated his website.
© 2026 J.A. Shieldsmith. All rights reserved.
Without in any way limiting the authors’ and publisher’s exclusive rights, any unauthorised use of any part of this story to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.
This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, locations or general circumstances is entirely coincidental and/or used in a fictitious manner.
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