by Amy Ephron
The wall that “the person who used to be Max” had walked through. At least the same wall that “the person who used to be Max” had walked through when the room was a library . . .
The cat’s eye marble was blasting out bright orange, almost like neon colored lights, straight lines at angles which were emanating from the center of the blown glass marble directly towards the wall. It was a bit like a laser show, or something that might be given off from a small rocket as it was taking off, or the tail of a comet in space. The marble was hot to the touch and so was the paperweight and actually Tess worried one of them might liquify in her hand.
But the vectors of orange light just kept streaming towards the wall. And then they stopped. Just like that. As if each of the objects had run out of fuel. Or worn themselves out.
She set the paperweight back on the desk. She looked down at the marble. No, it was the same. It hadn’t changed. The cat’s eye marble was still intact in her hand as was the paperweight, inert, innocent as if neither object had done anything, at all.
Except there was an open doorway. Just that. An open doorway. Tess couldn’t even tell if there was a door. Just an open doorway that led to a dark unknown hallway beyond.
Adele was standing there now, tiny, knowing, standing quietly by the open doorway. “You can’t stay here,” she said. “You know that. You have to go find Colin.”
And as she said it, Tess looked around the room and knew that was probably true. She didn’t know where she was. The only way out seemed the open doorway that would lead her to she had no idea where. And something else resonated for her. Adele had said, she had to go find Colin. Was it Colin she was trying to reach, not Max? Or that the only way she could reach Max was by finding Colin and communicating with him? She would have to get over being angry at Colin, if that was going to work, have a civil discourse with him. But maybe she could get him to apologize first. If she could find him. If only, she could find him and find Max . . . or “the person who used to be Max” and try, if she could turn him into Max again. . . .
She looked around the room. She had no idea if she’d taken a step back in time or if time had shifted, or it was just a dream she might not wake up from, but the only way out seemed to be the strange open doorway that had somehow presented itself in the wall and that was probably the only way to find Colin or as she now called him, “the person who used to be Max.”
Tess looked back at the strange doorway, as if to study it—the strange doorway where only a moment ago, Adele had been standing—and realized she was all alone in the room now. Adele had vanished, too. And the room was getting darker by the moment, as if all light and air was being pulled from it as she stood there.
She held the marble in her hand and ran through the open doorway stepping into an absence of light, a kind of darkness that was stranger than any she’d ever encountered before. . . .
~ CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX ~
1926: Three days before christmas
December, 1926
Three Days before Christmas
At least that was the date on the note his mother had left on his desk in her ink pen-perfect-curlicue-handwriting.
Anyone else might have written the 22nd of December. But his mother loved holidays, so to her it was “Three Days before Christmas.” The exquisite floral and pine cone wreath, dotted with red berries, lavender, and thyme had been hanging on the front door since the first day of December. The tree had been decorated weeks ago. The large mercury ornaments in the shape of stars and globes, silvery and reflective, were so heavy they had to be tied to the branches with string that was dyed green to match the tree. The crystal glass ornaments, balls, and prisms were so fragile that only she was allowed to hang them, very carefully with thick silver thread, real silver. The garlands were made from fresh holly.
Colin and Elizabeth, his younger sister, had a few ornaments of their own. He had a wood block with a C on it with a picture of a cat and a clown—both “C” words. She had one with an E with a picture of an elephant and an egg. Colin had three small painted ceramic elves that his mother said were from Scotland. But Colin thought most elves lived in Ireland, so he wasn’t sure she was right. His sister had a tiny metal fire engine that had a bell that occasionally rang when no one was expecting it, which their mother thought was funny, too. There were wooden soldiers, actually miniatures of the guards at Buckingham Palace, in red coats fastened with tiny gold buttons. It was always such a nice day when the boxes with the ornaments appeared in the living room and they knew the Christmas tree would be arriving (as if by magic) shortly.
Anyway, it was three days before Christmas and his mother had left him a note on his desk:
SANBORN HOUSE
December, 1926
Three Days before Christmas
Dear Colin,
Your father and I are going to a party. Hannah has made dinner for you and Lizzie. Swedish meatballs. Your favorite. We might be late. You know how the Bennetts like to celebrate holidays. Tree trimming. Carolers. I hear there may be a five-piece quartet (I guess that would be a quintet) and a choir. And probably sticky toffee pudding. For sure, I’ll bring you both chocolates, I promise.
Please see that Lizzie doesn’t stay up too late. And if you would, would you read her a book?
Extra Kisses,
Mama
Colin had done exactly what his mother had wished. He’d even read a chapter of Doctor Dolittle’s Caravan to Lizzie after she’d put on her pajamas and hopped into bed. Lizzie was eight and they’d had a long day and she fell asleep as he was reading to her. She looked so peaceful. He tucked the covers gently under her chin and stroked the top of her head, the way his mother did to him sometimes, before he went off to school. He put the book back on the shelf, turned the lamp off by her bed, and walked quietly out of the room so as not to wake her.
He went to his room and lay down on his bed meaning to read a bit himself, and without meaning to fell asleep.
There was a light snow falling. He wasn’t sure what had awakened him but when he woke up he saw the snow and that was what had caused him to go outside. He’d never seen snow falling before.
It hardly ever snowed in London. He’d seen snow on the ground before.
His dad had taken him once to Dartmoor, in South Devon but inland and very high up from the sea, to a friend’s manor house that looked more like a castle, and there was snow knee-deep on the ground, soft, lovely for playing in. There’d been a random snowball fight started by a couple of kids on the moor and even his dad had joined in. Gentle throwing, so no one would get hurt. But they’d all ended laughing and rolling in the snow.
It was the snowfall that caused him to go outside. He’d put on his clothes and walked quietly past Lizzie’s room and, carrying his boots, tiptoed three flights down the staircase to the front door. It wasn’t until he was outside that he sat on the stoop to put his boots on.
He was mesmerized by the snow. He thought it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen as it reflected on the street lamps, causing a spray of colors in the air.
Rather than just stand by the streetlight or twirl around, his arms outspread in the falling snow, something compelled him to start to walk to the park.
Snowflakes were falling all around him, like soft petals. And he imagined them sparkling on his cheeks when they landed. But it was so far to walk. And he could feel that his cheeks were rosy from the cold and possibly the tip of his nose was turning red.
A carriage stopped for him. The driver from next door, who was on his way home, and offered him a ride.
Colin hopped up into the seat next to the driver, who smiled at him and said, “And where did you think you’d want to go, my boy?”
“Hyde Park, of course,” Colin answered.
There was a Christmas festival in Hyde Park. His mother had told him she’d already seen it set up. The
y’d gone last year. Not that he thought the rides would be running at midnight or the Ferris wheel, especially given the snowstorm, but nonetheless, the park seemed like a large expanse, a brilliant canvas on which to see a blanket of white powdery snow that had already covered the ground. A place where there might be a way to make snowballs and maybe a sculpture of a castle.
When they arrived at Hyde Park, there was snow on the ground, lots of it. The kind gentleman let him off at the corner. The snow was sparkly, at first, lit by the street lamps.
He hadn’t counted on how dark it was going to be when he entered and started to wade through the snow, deeper and deeper into the park . . .
~ CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN ~
the other side of the wall
Tess had a feeling she was in a hallway, even though she couldn’t feel a wall on either side of her. Was the ground beneath her feet solid? Was there ground beneath her feet? Or could she just step forward and there wouldn’t be ground, walk off at any moment if the ground stopped and fall into the giant void of nothingness. There was darkness all around her.
She held the marble up as if it could somehow be a guiding light. But still there was only darkness. A strange kind of darkness as if she was in a cave or tunnel or a hallway except that there weren’t any walls.
She held the marble still, flat now in her palm, and held it up, almost at an angle as if it could show the way, and suddenly the passageway lit up. Well, sort of lit up. There were all kinds of turns and angles. They were lit, the turns and the angles, bright orange, but the passageway itself was still pretty dark. There were strange reflections of light in the darkness, straight geometric lines at all kinds of angles and levels, vectors of orange neon light, very much like the ones she’d seen in her dream.
Was she supposed to duck or walk over them? Were they like a warning system that could go off at any minute, sirens would sound, or the walls would collapse? She was letting her imagination run away with itself. Was she really? There were vectors of light everywhere she turned, and she had gone through a doorway that hadn’t been there before and seemed, when she looked back, to have closed behind her. Not only closed. The wall itself appeared to have closed up, realigned itself, and there wasn’t even a door any more or a doorway to run back through. Tess didn’t want to think about what she would do if she couldn’t get back. Or couldn’t find “the person who used to be Max,” or was it Colin, who’d gone through the library wall.
And now, she had, too. She knew she was on the other side of the wall or maybe even more peculiarly inside of the wall, in a tunnel of some sort or a hallway that led she wasn’t sure where.
At least, she could see there were walls at the moment, even though they veered in strange angles and directions, including up and down.
Her instinct was, if she hit a corner and had to make a choice, it made more sense to go down. At least that would make sense if she believed the message that Colin had scrawled on the bottom of his mother’s note.
Dear Mums & Papa,
I woke up and the most amazing thing happened—I’ve never seen it snow before, not falling snow, anyway. I didn’t want you to worry, if you come home before me.
Don’t be mad. I couldn’t help it. I had to go out for a moment and watch. I took mittens and boots and my overcoat and will tiptoe so as not to wake Lizzie. I put a note under Hannah’s door, so she knows to get Lizzie if she has one of her funny dreams and wakes up before I get back. . . . Don’t be mad. It was so pretty and I think I just have the holiday spirit.
Hugs,
Colin
Tess looked down and tried to figure out what course to take, how she could navigate the orange vectors. She knew it was probably not a good idea to run into any of them. At the moment, she was trying to delicately balance on one of them, as she’d stepped directly on it when she first went through the wall. If she were to slip, would she fall or get stopped, rather unpleasantly, she imagined, by one of them.
She wondered if she could walk with certainty or if there was a possibility she might fall through one of them. How stable were they? Would she be able to keep her balance? What would happen if she did fall? She could imagine Max suggesting, as the vectors sometimes crisscrossed at funny angles, that she try not to run into one of them; if she was on one and another one popped up in front of her, that it probably wasn’t a good idea to interfere with their space. Or that they might be like a spider web, interwoven somehow, and if one of them were to break, it might be the same as a large glass window shattering. Max would think that way. As if they might have an attitude or a design of their own. They probably were there for a reason, whatever the reason was. And they were bright orange, almost like a warning sign and definitely had a maze-like quality, that she thought she should try to figure out before she attempted a run on them. Max had taught her to be a little more careful. Max would say, for sure, that she should study them before she attempted a run on them. At least that was what she thought Max would say if he was with her. She wished he was with her to tell her what he really thought.
But he wasn’t.
Max was somewhere out there with Colin on the other side of the wall. Or was he?
She saw something crouching below her on one of the orange vectors, hunched up against the wall, as if he was hiding in the corner (or waiting for her). It was “the person who used to be Max.” He put his index finger up to his mouth as if to say “Shhhh!” Then covered his mouth with his hand, as if imploring her to stay quiet. His finger up again, “Shhh!” as his eyes begged her not to say a word. Tess understood the meaning, that somehow she wasn’t supposed to speak, as if the sound of her voice, any sound could set off an alarm, disturb the vectors—she wasn’t sure what—but the eyes that were looking at her, imploring her to silence, looked like Max’s. “The person who used to be Max” looked like Max again.
Tess put her index finger up to her own mouth, in a gesture of “Shh,” and nodded that she understood.
And then the boy’s eyes went vacant again, as if there was nobody there.
But that wasn’t entirely true either as a moment later, he stood up. All she could see was the back of him. He was balancing himself, one foot in front of the other on one of the orange vectors. He put his arms out, sort of the way you put your arms out if you’re gliding or trying to keep your balance on a skateboard or a snowboard, bent his knees down in sort of the same way you might try to glide down a snowy mountainside or the mouth or bowl at a skateboard park. Every time he put one foot in front of another, he seemed to almost slide. He looked back at her for a moment, his eyes still vacant, that slight “Colin” smile on his face, as if he was enticing her and at the same time, trying to demonstrate how she might do it, navigate her way down behind him. He was quite a bit ahead going down a straight vector that was angled toward the—she didn’t know if it was ground or what might be at the bottom of the other side of the wall. . . .
Tess ducked beneath one of the orange vertical lines, then she popped up just past it, and kept on sliding, one foot in front of the other, the way he’d shown her. That worked. She jumped over one. That worked, too, landing efficiently at a dead stop on another orange vector. But then it got complicated and Tess could see that some of the vectors of light crossed each other. Which direction was she supposed to go?
It reminded her of the tightrope at the carnival last summer and her friends, the twins, the amazing aerial ballet stars. She’d been able to handle that. Although supposedly there’d been a net below her then.
This time, there was just vast, dark emptiness below, as if she could fall into a void and never be heard of again or fall flat onto a surface, so far down it wasn’t even visible, and no one would ever know.
But “the person who used to be Max” was efficiently gliding below her and she knew that she had to follow him, figure out a course that she could take.
She swerved to the right,
bravely placing her right foot on another orange vector of light, just below her, that ran like a straight line down, her toe balanced at first, and then all her weight on her right foot, and then her left foot after it. Her arms out in the air for balance as he’d shown her. Then launched into a slide.
Don’t think about it. Just navigate as if you’re on a solid substance through the air. Don’t think about how thin it is or if you could fall. Just walk, glide, pretend you’re on a skateboard, if you had to put one foot in front of the other, keep balancing with your hands if you must, and holding yourself high, perfect posture, like a ballerina running across a stage. Or if you need to, crouch down for a moment to get up to speed.
The orange vector became like a runway for her, as if she was a model stepping downstairs, except it was flat and slanted and kind of like a skatepark or a perfectly powdered mountain slope.
She looked down at herself, not below, trying not to look below, and was surprised she was wearing what appeared to be a flowy skirt, cut like ribbons, so she could actually dance, and white satin ballet shoes that were tied in perfect crosses up her leg, almost like toe shoes, except they were soft, malleable, so she could actually slide, point one foot up and down in front of her and glide, her arms now out almost floating in the air for balance in a perfect ballerina pose. She had to be imagining it. And then there was light above her, like a spotlight or was it a skylight? She could see the moon above brilliantly outlined against a stream of perfectly white falling snow.
The vector ended and, hesitatingly, she stepped, as there wasn’t any other choice, onto what felt like a wood floor. She looked down at her feet and there were her favorite sneakers, the ones that were a bit like ballet shoes themselves. And her black jeans. In front of her was a doorway that looked oddly familiar, strangely like the doorway to the hotel. She could see through the windows on either side that there was snow falling and collecting on the ground. She pulled the door open and ran outside, down the steps, and on to the sidewalk. And she looked to the right, down the street, nothing. But when she looked to the left, she saw a boy from the back whose image looked a lot like Max, walking down the street with his arms outstretched, and watched as a carriage stopped for him and after a moment, he stepped up to the front of the carriage next to the driver.