by Regina Doman
“Miriam, get me a flashlight. Quickly, and quietly, and don’t draw attention to yourself,” Rachel said.
Miriam, stirred by her sister’s voice, obeyed instantly.
Rachel felt inside the door. She had expected the chimney wall to form the left side of the closet, but instead there was no wall. Exploring with her hands, she found that what appeared to be, outside the closet, the side of the chimney was actually an extra two columns of bricks, placed to make the chimney appear wider than it was.
“I think,” she said at last, “that this was designed for a person.”
“But how?” Cheryl asked, pushing back her glasses with a finger.
“Look, the door bends all the way back. The hinges must be hidden in the paneling somehow. You slide through this narrow crack into this area here—” Rachel, unafraid, stepped into the darkness. “And then shut the door. Yes, there’s a handle on this side. It’s a hiding place—no!”
“What!” all three girls chorused at once.
Her foot had slipped into air. “No, it’s not a closet. It’s a hole—No! It’s a step, a step down!”
“Is it a stair?” Melanie asked.
“I’m not sure,” Rachel said, a rush of adrenaline pumping through her veins. “Where is Miriam?” She was giddy with that first step into the dark, but didn’t want to go further without some guiding light.
Miriam came inside the bedroom and shut the door softly behind her, holding the flashlight. She flashed a wicked grin. “Should I lock the door downstairs?”
“Yes—no. Wait.” Rachel took the flashlight and clicked it on. It shone into the narrow darkness. All the girls peered around the slit. There was a narrow staircase, leading down and around.
“Oh, this is too weird,” Miriam breathed.
“Let’s go in.” Rachel said suddenly. “All of us.”
“In there?” Cheryl asked, suddenly looking scared.
“Come on,” Rachel insisted. She was nervous too, but figured if they were all in it together, she would be less scared.
“What if the staircase collapses?” Tammy demanded.
“Then the ones behind could pull us out. Come on!”
“I don’t like dark narrow places,” Cheryl objected.
“It’s got to open out soon. Come on, let’s give it a try,” Rachel coaxed.
“I’ll go with you,” Melanie said, and Tammy nodded. Cheryl reluctantly bobbed her head, and they crowded into the slit, Rachel leading the way.
At first it was terrifyingly cramped. Rachel counted down as she edged along the wall, sideways. One step down. Two steps down. Three steps down. Four steps down. Five steps down. “Are we all inside?”
“Barely,” said Miriam, “but I think I can make it.”
“Then shut the door.”
The room light was cut off abruptly, and the girls were alone in the confined space with only the flashlight cutting a narrow beam through the deep brown darkness.
“Right,” Rachel whispered. “Slowly now!”
The stairs were steep and uneven, and the spiral made them tricky to navigate. Rachel felt them make a full circle turn as they descended down, still stepping sideways. After about twenty steps, Rachel found it hard to judge just how far down they had gone. “Are we at the level of the first floor?” she hissed.
“I can’t tell,” Cheryl said, second to last in line. “Listen.”
They all halted. Faintly, they could hear the sound of the dishwasher running.
“We must be near the kitchen. Are there more steps?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “Gosh, we must be going down into the basement.”
They continued treading downwards, the air growing fresher and cooler, until Rachel unexpectedly turned into a wooden wall. “Stop!” she breathed, and the girls came to a stop.
“Is it another door?” Cheryl asked anxiously.
“I think so—wait—no, on this side—” Rachel found a worn iron handle and pulled in. She stepped forward unexpectedly down, into open space, on gravel, and stumbled forwards. “I’m out! Watch your step! That last one is steep!”
They were still in blackness, but they could hear outdoor sounds—trees rustling in the wind, the noise of water, bird calls. “Where are we now?” Melanie asked, puzzled.
Rachel shone her flashlight around. A jumble of metal parts and spokes flickered in the light. “Bicycles!” Suddenly it all fit together. “We’re in the bike cave!”
Their house was set on a slight outcropping, and they had long ago discovered that if you went down to the bayside in a certain way, you would find a shallow cave in the side of the cliff, a place just big enough to keep things like bicycles out of the elements. Of course it had been exciting at the time to discover the bike cave, which Dad had said must have been a root cellar at one time, but that discovery seemed terribly tame compared to this one.
“The steps are behind the shelves,” Rachel said, shining her flashlight. “See? There’s the shelves of the old root cellar. We never thought to look behind them…”
There was silence for a moment, and then Rachel picked her way out around the bikes to the outside of the cave. The others followed her. They were now in a woody path leading down to the beach.
“What was that?” Melanie asked after a minute.
There was silence, but then Cheryl spoke up. “Maybe it was for the Underground Railroad. Remember? When we first bought this house, the people who lived in it told Mom that they thought it had once been a station on the Underground Railroad. You know, where they hid escaped slaves.”
“I see. They would hide the escaped slaves in the weaving room, and if they needed to get away fast, they could hide in the hidden staircase, and maybe escape out through the woods. Then out to the bay. That must have been convenient,” Rachel said.
Cheryl began to get excited. “Then we’ve made an important historical discovery! We could tell the museum folks and get pictures taken. I bet there’s some important archeological evidence around here…”
Rachel interrupted her. “No.” She shone the flashlight around the huddled group, looking at each of them in turn. “We don’t tell anyone.”
“Why not?” Tammy spoke up first.
“Because,” Rachel said calmly. “we can use this staircase now. For ourselves. To get out of the house at night, whenever we want to.”
“What for?” Cheryl asked.
Rachel looked up at the trees, and felt a wave of excitement come over her, carried on the night breeze. “After everyone goes to sleep,” she said. “we can come down here and go swimming.”
There was a current of excitement in the air, because Miriam squealed, and the other sisters shushed her quickly.
“Look around,” Rachel dropped the flashlight, and without its white radiance, the world around them changed from black to dark blue and silver. The moonlight glimmered on the beech trees overhead. “It’s a different world, waiting to be explored. So we must keep this a dead secret. Understand?”
She looked around at the darkened faces of her sisters, and saw them bob yes, one by one. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go back up.”
Rachel insisted on going up the secret staircase first, and listened long and hard at the door to ascertain if any of the other sisters were in the room, even lying on the bed and reading. When she finally opened the door a crack and found it empty and the bedroom door shut, she breathed a sigh of relief and slipped in. The others followed her.
“What should we do now?” Tammy asked, but Rachel shook her head.
In a low voice she said, “We never talk about that out here.”
There was a respectful pause, and then Tammy said, “I mean, about the bed. Are we going to move it, or not?”
Rachel thought. If they moved the bed now, it would open up the chimney area, and someone else might discover the board. But they needed to keep the board door open somehow, in order to use it.
“Move it slightly to this side,” she said, after a moment. “Here
. If we move down the next two dressers an inch or two, we can do it.”
“All right,” Cheryl said cheerfully, and they moved the furniture.
They were moving the last bunk bed when Prisca came up the steps and started. “Where were you guys?” she exclaimed.
Rachel, with presence of mind, shut the door, and then made Prisca sit down.
“I am serious,” Prisca said. “I was about to freak. I heard you all in here talking, then I went to the bathroom. Then I came back, and found you all gone. Where did you go?”
Rachel said only, “Did you tell anyone we were gone?”
Prisca, confused, said, “No. I thought I was imagining things, until I found you back in here. What gives?”
Rachel eyed each of her sisters, and poised the question at Cheryl and Miriam. Cheryl nodded, and Rachel, deciding to incline to her wishes, asked, “Can you keep a secret, Pris?”
“You know I can,” Prisca said. “What?”
“First, lower your voice. We’ll show you—but after the others are asleep,” Rachel dropped her voice as Taren and Linette came in. Prisca nodded her head dumbly.
The sisters who knew the secret got ready for bed in unusual silence. Tammy edged over to Rachel during an opportune moment and said in a low voice. “I can’t keep a secret from my twin,” and Rachel understood.
“Okay then,” she said.
When they were all in bed, Rachel kept the light on, reading. She heard her father and Sallie come up the steps and go into their bedroom. Fairly soon the sounds from their room faded into silence. It was late at night, nearly midnight. Outside the window, the silver moonlight and black shadows beckoned.
She carefully kept an eye on the other sisters, and when she was sure all those not in on the secret had dropped off to sleep, she got out of bed, walked quietly to the bedroom door, and locked it. Miriam and Cheryl were alerted, and got noiselessly out of bed. Melanie had been dropping off, but she climbed down from her bunk as well. Rachel touched Prisca, who rolled over and looked at her, then got out of bed. Rachel pressed a finger to her lips, warning quiet. Prisca nodded, and looked around at the others.
Then Tammy touched Taren, who had actually fallen asleep. Taren gave a huge yawn and raised her head. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Shhh!” came from all corners. Linette and Debbie instantly sat up in their beds. Miriam gave an audible groan.
“Are you guys having a secret meeting?” Debbie asked hopefully.
“No. Go back to sleep,” hissed Miriam, but Rachel shook her head wearily.
“Let them come,” she said. “We might as well bring everyone along. Wake up Liddy and Becca and Brittany too. But keep everyone quiet!”
What the heck, she figured. They might as well start out with having everyone involved. It would be easier in the long run.
When she saw that everyone was awake and hushed, she got out the flashlight from her pillow, and strode to the center of the room a finger on her lips. She looked around, confident that she had everyone’s attention, and then approached the hidden door. It now looked so solid that her senses told her she was mistaken. But when she put a hand on the wood and pushed gently, the paneling yielded beneath her fingers. There were muffled gasps from some of the girls. The black crack widened, and Rachel clicked on the flashlight. Inside she went, into that second reality, and the darkness wrapped around her like a cloak.
She followed the beam of the light cautiously down the steps around and around, hearing her sisters behind her, breathing and making hushed exclamations. When she reached the bottom and had fiddled with the little clasp on the door, she pulled the shelving door open and stepped down, her bare foot touching cool gravel, a shimmer of excitement went through her. She bounded through the cave to the woods beyond, laughing to herself for the sheer delight of secret freedom.
Once outside, she clicked off the light and let herself be bathed in the glow of the full moon, the ground around her blotched with the shadows of the trees. It was an entirely different sensation from being bathed in sunlight.
She tossed her hair—she had coal and cobalt hair in the moonlight—back over her shoulders and looked at her sisters. A few of them were looking around uncertainly. Cheryl was explaining the possible origins of the secret stair to the younger ones.
“What are we going to do?” Liddy asked, her voice uncertain.
Rachel raised one eyebrow. “Whatever we like.”
“But what if Dad and Sallie find out?” Liddy pressed, her blue eyes shadowed with concern.
“They won’t find out,” Rachel said, putting the flashlight into a hollow by the door where she could easily find it on the way home. Over her shoulder, she cast a look around the circle. “So long as no one tells them.”
She meant that Dad would never find out, that none of the sisters would dream of breathing a word to him or Sallie. But she couldn’t impress that on them now. She had to show them how to explore the possibilities first.
“Come on,” she invited. “Let’s go swimming!”
She plunged along the path through the woods to the bay, and with muffled squeals and protests, her sisters followed. After about a quarter mile they came out of the woods to a short slope leading to the beach.
“But we don’t have our swimsuits!” Debbie pointed out, scrambling down beside Rachel breathlessly.
Rachel shrugged at her youngest sister. “Next time, we’ll wear our swimsuits to bed. So long as we can get them quietly without Dad and Sallie finding out.” She sat down on the pebble beach overhung with a willow tree, and said, “Tomorrow I’ll put our swimsuits in the dryer during dinner and bring them upstairs with the laundry. Now, remember, try not to make too much noise.”
She stripped down to her underwear and splashed into the water. A few yards out she dove into the plum black water and swam. The colors of the water were so different now, beneath the moon—she plunged upward and out of the water, into the night. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the rest leaping into the bay, and heard their laughter echoing across the waves.
The water was warm, still heated by the long summer day, and she swam slowly, meditatively, feeling herself wrapped in its black beauty. Her hair hung down her back like a heavy seal-fur curtain, sleek as otter skin. She was beautiful in the night, and she knew it.
After a while, she swam to the rock near the shore and climbed lightly atop it to watch the rest. While they frolicked, she planned. Dad must never know about the door. They needed a strategy, a system, and most of all, a combined group secret. It was fortunate that Cheryl had been present for the discovery of the door, and that Tammy had discovered it. That made this a Fendelman effort as surely as a Durham effort. Both sets of girls had equal stake in the discovery. If she could present it to them in the right way, she could bring all of them to an understanding that this secret was too valuable to lose. And they would be unified.
And from there … Rachel stretched. The horizons were limitless. They could do almost anything they pleased, here in the night. She looked up and down the Bay Shore, from one side to the other, and her eyes fell on the island.
It stood in the middle of their corner of the bay, dark spiky firs and green velvet lawns. In the embrace of the firs stood a fine house, nestled in its evergreens like a movie star wrapped in a mink coat. It was the summerhouse of a rich family, rarely used. Caretakers came and went occasionally by boat during the day, but it seemed to be deserted most of the time.
Deserted or no, there was enough wood and valley on the island’s ample shore to hide a dozen girls. If only they had a boat. But their father didn’t see a need for a boat, aside from an old canoe the girls used occasionally. And there was no way all twelve of them could fit into the canoe.
The rumble of a motor made her turn her head, and she saw, across the bay, a speedboat slicking through the wavelets like a silver knife cutting through butter, scattering glittering wakes as it passed, generously heaping up the waves. Rachel smiled. That was how it wo
uld have to be done. Other people—men—had boats. She would have to be brave, and cunning, and careful, but it could be done.
“I will get to that island before the summer is over,” she promised herself. She slid off the rock and threw herself back into the purple waves and stroked back to the shore.
“Ready?” she said, all business once more. “Time to go back. Get your things together—be careful not to leave anything. If we’re going to keep this secret, we have to be careful. Prisca, get your other sock. Taren, is that yours? Right. All together? Then back up to the cave.”
Once they were at the door of the cave, Rachel surveyed the near-dozen wet and breathless faces.
“Okay,” Rachel said. “This is our secret. We tell nobody. Not our best friends, not Mom, not Dad, nobody. This is just for us sisters. But we never talk about it during the day. We never use it during the day, not for nipping out of chores, or anything. It doesn’t exist during the day. The only time we use it is when we all go down together, at night. After everyone else is asleep. We keep it a dead secret. We don’t volunteer that it exists, and if anyone asks us, we don’t admit to knowing anything. All agreed?”
Rachel looked at each of the Fendelman girls in turn. “Cheryl? Tammy? Taren? Brittany? Melanie? Linette?” They were with her. Then she looked at her biological sisters. “Miriam? Prisca? Becca? Liddy? Debbie? Anyone object? Anyone too scared?”
“I won’t be scared,” Liddy said, “not if we stick together.”
Rachel nodded. “That’s the whole point,” she said. “We sisters have got to stick together on this. It’s what we can do together, without anyone else supervising us or giving us rules. Right?”
All the girls—Fendelman and Durham—nodded.
“Good,” Rachel breathed. She had succeeded. They were all in on this as one. “Now back upstairs. I’ll keep this flashlight under my bed. Remember, keep quiet. When we get upstairs, no whispering, no talking. Just straight to sleep. Miriam, go last and latch the bottom door behind us.”
She led the way back up the stairs, and opened the top door quietly. She tiptoed inside and held the door open for each sister. Miriam came up last, nodding that everything was okay. Rachel shut the door quietly, pushed the flashlight under the bed, and lay down.