Following the death of his abusive father, a young man finds a photo album among his dad’s belongings. The photo album has a mark that is like the birthmark the young man has on his leg. Upon opening the album, he finds that every page has its own polaroid picture. The pages alternate between a page with a photo of a weathered black door and a page with an image of the young man. It appears that the photos are annual and that each pair of pages is documenting the lifespan of the young man.   The first page shows a red brick wall and the young man smiling. The second page shows an image of the same wall, only slightly more worn down, and a black door. The next pair of images reveal the boy on a mechanical animal ride. Both of his parents are in the shot so it is unknown who took the picture. The next image is of the young man staring into a window where a tall, white, thin figure glares back at him. The next image is the door. The next two pages are blank. The next photograph is of a young man on his birthday. He remembers his dad beating him with the slippers that he is wearing in the photograph. The next photograph is of the door again.

The next photograph is especially troubling to the young man is it reveals him sitting on the lap of a man he does not know. His mother is in the image looking deflated. The next image is of the burnt door. The next image is of the young boy on a bike. The next image is of the door, but it is ajar. The young man contemplates where this door is located and where it leads to. The next image is of him kissing Shelley Cork. However, Shelley looks disturbed in this image and that does not align with his memory. He also remembers that they were completely alone when they did this—so he does not know where this photo came from. Shelley went missing shortly after this event.

The next photograph is of the door. It is half open and the cream white figure is visible. The next photograph shows the young man sitting by the river. The tall, white figure looks back at him from across the water. In the next photo, the doorframe is rotted, and the door is wide open. The young man can see wallpaper beyond the door, peeling in strips. He also sees the white figure in the image. The next image is a close-up of the young man screaming. The fingers of the figure are present just below his neck. There is another blank page. The young man comes to the final photograph which is taken from the point of view just in front of the doorframe. The young man sees the figure holding hands with a young, naked boy. Based on the boy’s birthmarks, he concludes that it is him in the image. In front of them both, at the end of the hallway, is the boy's father, naked and grinning.

The young man closes the album and looks in the mirror. He sees his room reflected, but also a black door with its letterbox full of dead leaves. The door opens and three fingers reach out. He knows that this figure is always there—and that he just does not remember his time in this room. He believes his father brought the figure into the home and traded his son in some ambiguous transaction. This would explain the corresponding marks on the book and the birthmark. Every time the boy went into the room, a part of him was lost, often in the form of memory. He believes that his father lead Shelley into the room and that is where she disappeared to. He concludes that the door will never shut until he goes back inside to retrieve the missing photographs.