The Man Who Is Also a Door

What it looks like, and what it does

A man in a buttoned shirt standing against a wall. In his chest an ordinary panelled door ajar, with warm light and a runner of carpet inside. He looks away, one hand on the knob from the inside.

Wears a buttoned shirt in all weathers. Stands at a door of his flat for visitors. Knocks on his own chest, politely, before opening.

What is known

Isidore Quill, a clerk in a shipping office, noticed a seam on his chest in 1992. The door is painted a municipal green. Beyond it is a corridor of eleven doors.

Visitors who go in are generally gone for twenty minutes and return calm, with the manner of people who have sat in a waiting room. Some bring out a small item: a cloakroom ticket, a thimble. A few do not come out until the next day. Quill asks them not to mention it in front of his mother.

What it can do

• Opens his chest onto a corridor and rooms of unknown extent
• Admits visitors who knock politely

Where it stops

• Opens only from the inside, with his consent
• Closes if he is startled

An encounter

Joubert knocked, and the door opened. In the corridor were eleven doors and a smell of lavender polish. She opened none of them. She sat on the carpet with her back to the wall for twenty minutes, in complete quiet, and came out at peace. She has not told anyone where she went. She sends him a card at Christmas, addressed to the flat.

Marguerite Joubert, visitor, Quill's flat, 3 Wharf Street, A Sunday afternoon

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Thirty-eight visitors report an identical corridor, with the same number of doors.
• incomplete: Of the five who opened a door, only two will describe what they saw, and their accounts differ.
• rumor: That the room with his name on it is waiting for someone he has not met.

Still unresolved

One door in the corridor has his name on it and a strip of light underneath. He has never been in.

Where it has been recorded

• Wharf Street (confirmed) — Recorded by Marguerite Joubert, visitor.

Stories about it

• The Man Who Is Also a Door on Kestrel Road (Grotesque encounter, 4 min) — A tenant at a Kestrel Road lodging house opens his bedroom door in the night and finds the lodger in the next room standing in his chest, where a doorway opens onto a corridor of rooms, each one furnished with the belongings of a former tenant.

Connected entities

• The Extra Corner — Both are openings in ordinary architecture that lead somewhere the building does not account for. One is polite about it.
• The Glass Singer — Both open a place that the building does not account for. One uses a voice, the other a hinge.