The tavern had operated under that name for so long that nobody remembered whether it referred to the red door, the stained-glass windows, or some forgotten owner with theatrical taste. The current proprietor inherited the building along with its ledgers, liquor license, and several generations of unpaid repairs, and for years regarded the name as one more piece of branding nobody had bothered changing.
During the handover, the previous owner mentioned a cellar door at the rear of the building and advised her never to open it after last call. He offered no explanation, and she assumed the warning concerned pipes, wiring, or some structural defect he hoped to avoid paying for.
She ignored him once.
It happened during a quiet winter night after the final customer had gone. Behind the door lay no storage room. A passage descended beyond the foundation, narrow and red, its walls ribbed with pale bands that tightened and released at long intervals. Warm air moved through it in a slow inward pull. When she leaned closer, the passage contracted slightly around the light from her phone.
She closed the door and began noticing details she had previously dismissed. Glasses left overnight sometimes stood empty by morning even when nobody had cleared them. Regulars who spent decades drinking at the same tables seemed to age unevenly, remaining unchanged for years before suddenly appearing much older. The building itself shifted through the seasons, floorboards rising and settling with a rhythm that never matched humidity.
She eventually tracked down the previous owner at a retirement home. He laughed when she asked about the cellar. The tavern, he explained, had always done better when crowded. It liked conversation, music, arguments, confessions, flirtations, and all the other things people released after enough drink. Owners who kept the place lively tended to prosper.
She asked what happened to everything the building took in.
He told her that was the wrong question to ask while still standing inside it.
Since then she has kept longer hours. The tavern does excellent business. Customers often remark that the place feels unusually warm and intimate, especially late at night. Lately, though, the cellar door has started opening by itself just before closing, and the red passage beyond seems slightly shorter each time, as though whatever has been swallowing the noise for all these years has begun moving closer to the room where the noise is made.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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