Written for Thursday Doors Writing Challenge 2026.
This week I am writing a story inspired by a photo
by Katy Trail of an abandoned building that
looks like it holds a lot of dark secrets.
Here’s where the image took me.
Nobody in Callaway County could remember who put the plank there.
It leaned against the center door of the old Hessler building at a slight angle …. just a gray, weathered board, unremarkable enough that most people stopped noticing it after a while …. the way you stop noticing a scar on someone’s face once you’ve known them long enough.
But newcomers noticed.
“Why doesn’t somebody just move it?” asked Dana Reeves, the journalist from St. Louis who’d come to write a piece on abandoned Missouri river towns. She was pointing at it with her pen.
Her guide, an old man named Stoat who’d lived on this road his entire life, didn’t answer right away.
“Move it if you want, Ms. Reeves,” he finally said. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
She looked at him. He was already walking back toward the truck.
“Has anyone ever….”
“Three times,” Stoat said, without turning around. “Once in 1954. Once in ‘71. And once about eight years back, a couple of teenagers on a dare.”
Dana waited.
“The plank was back the next morning. All three times.” He opened the truck door. “The people who moved it were never seen again.”
Dana looked back at the building. At the three doors …. two hanging loose and unfettered, one held shut by that single, leaning board.
From somewhere deep inside the bricks, so faint she was certain she’d imagined it, came a sound.
Patient.
Rhythmic.
Knocking.
She got in the truck.
The plank leaned on undisturbed, keeping its quiet, faithful watch.
NAR©2026
This is “Lose Your Soul” by Dead Man’s Bones
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thank you for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
The Elephant's Trunk 