Beyond the Doors

by David Neilsen

  “Why was your first door a disaster?” asked Zack, snapping Sydney’s attention back to the present.

  “I learned the first rule of the MemorySphere.” Marcus paused in front of a rickety, rusting metal staircase. Flecks of black paint flaked off flimsy-looking railings, and the steps groaned under the weight of the empty air. Sydney couldn’t imagine a less inviting set of steps.

  “What is the first rule of the MemorySphere?” prodded Zack.

  “Don’t enter your own memories.” He placed a foot on the first step and started climbing.

  Zack quickly followed Marcus up the stairs. When the stairway failed to collapse under either of them, Sydney braved the climb. The sound of their footsteps echoed in the gloom.

  At least she hoped she was only hearing echoes.

  Stacks of neglected and disintegrating books welcomed Sydney at the top of the stairs. The smell of fresh decay stung her nose, making her eyes water. She buried her face in the crook of her arm and studied the offensive tomes lining the shelves.

  Is it my imagination, or are these books breathing? She took pains not to touch anything.

  “When I returned, I remembered. Everything. From both sides of the conversation,” Marcus continued. “It was…disorienting.” He pulled a single string dangling from above, causing a section of the ceiling to swing down as a small metal ladder expanded to the floor.

  Yet another patch of utter blackness beckoned.

  “This is where I leave you,” he announced. “Up there is that memory. The first bubble of the MemorySphere. I’m in there, somewhere. Find me. Hopefully, I can get you home.”

  “Why would you know in there if you don’t know here and now?” asked Zack.

  Their grandfather sagged and leaned back against the bookshelf. “He knows more than me. The truth is…”

  He paused as one of the books behind him stretched its cover toward him. “Stop that,” he commanded. The book retracted its cover and, Sydney was pretty sure, gave off a disappointed whine.

  “The truth is,” continued Marcus, as if having a book reach out to him was an everyday occurrence, “I was forgetting things. Little things at first. Where I’d put my glasses. A conversation with Gladys or Dimitri.”

  “Old people always forget stuff,” Sydney pointed out.

  “True,” he admitted. “But no. It was more. I forgot how my machine worked. Oh, I knew what it did, just couldn’t remember why. That’s when I realized my memories were being altered.”

  “You were changing your memories?” asked Zack.

  “What? Me? No. Don’t be silly. It wasn’t me.”

  Sydney felt a panic rise in her throat. “But if you weren’t doing it, who was?”

  “Good question. A very good question.” He shifted uncomfortably against the shelving. “Don’t know. Yet. But I will. I entered the MemorySphere to save my mind. Before I lost everything. In here, you keep your memories. Change all you want, you’ll still remember it all. In here, I know who I am. My mind is my own.”

  “But if you left…?” prompted Sydney.

  Marcus closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have changed so many things. Manufactured my own, selfish world. To leave now and face reality…I would go mad.”

  He smiled at them with such sadness, Sydney was nearly moved to tears. “You can’t go home,” she said.

  He shook his head, then turned it into a neck stretch. “Now, go,” he said, gesturing toward the imposing ceiling of black. “If anyone can help you, I can. I’ll be in my lab. Big door at the end of the hallway. My name on the front. Can’t miss it. Oh, and be careful.”

  “Careful?” asked Zack.

  “This is the oldest memory in the MemorySphere. It may have…soured.”

  Walking through a door into a darkened hallway knocked Sydney for a loop because she was pretty sure that a moment before she’d been climbing a ladder. She wasn’t exactly sure how this was possible, but then traveling through a series of other people’s memories shouldn’t have been possible, either, so what was one more crazy detail?

  “I don’t like the look of this place,” said Zack.

  Sydney only avoided rolling her eyes because she agreed. They stood in a narrow hallway lined with a series of classrooms on either side. That would have been bad enough, what with schools in general being evil and all, but this felt more evil than usual. For one thing, the hallway seemed to go on for way too long. For another, the frosted panes of glass in each door leered at them hungrily.

  Which was just totally wrong.

  “It’s just a hallway,” said Sydney, trying to convince herself as much as her brother.

  They inched forward, the overhead lights somehow managing to flicker in perfect time with their footsteps. At one point, Sydney could have sworn she heard a stomach growl, but she convinced herself it had been Zack’s.

  “This place goes on forever,” commented Zack.

  Their speed down the corridor slowed with each intimidating step until they were almost paralyzed with fear. They were one or two steps away from simply freezing in their tracks when a door banged open and Dimitri burst into the hallway.

  “What you doing?” he squawked. “You no be here!”

  “Dimitri!” cried an elated Zack. “You opened a new door!”

  “I call security!”

  “Security?” asked Zack.

  But Sydney understood. She quickly put a hand on Zack’s arm to stop him before he said anything else. “He’s yellow,” she pointed out.

  “Yellow? What do you…oh. Oh, right.”

  Disappointment colored Zack’s voice. Sydney didn’t blame him. The Dimitri in front of them was covered in the same, faded, yellowed filter as everything else in the MemorySphere—he was a memory.

  “Out! Out!” Dimitri stormed forward, waving his hands in front of his face.

  “Hold on! We need to see our—” started Zack before Sydney elbowed him in the ribs. “I mean, Professor Tul—”

  “Too busy!” interrupted Memory Dimitri. “Nobody see your grandfather. Go away! Shoo! Shoo!”

  “We have to see him!” insisted Sydney. “It’ll only take—”

  She was interrupted by a flurry of sudden and unexpected activity. First, something unseen at the far end of the hallway gave a mighty roar. This was instantly followed by the sound of industrial devastation on an unimaginable scale. Next, a large section of wall came flying down the hallway toward them, along with a door recently ripped from its hinges. Finally, the glass panel on the door in question let out a cry of utter terror as it hurtled toward its impending doom.

  Seeing the flying door speed toward them like a flat cannonball, Sydney dove into her brother, knocking them both to the floor. Memory Dimitri also managed to avoid the deadly projectile by quickly flopping down like wet spaghetti. The screaming, rectangular object crashed into the wall behind them, letting loose with a final, high-pitched “Why?” before shattering into a gazillion pieces.

  “Sydney! Are you all right?” asked Zack. Sydney found the question ironic as she was currently lying on top of him, having saved him from being flattened.

  “What was that?” she asked, standing and peering back at the source of the carnage.

  In response, Memory Dimitri screamed like a little girl and ran past them down the hallway a ways before running into a classroom and barricading himself inside.

  “Sydney?” asked Zack, eyes glued to the rather shocking entity clomping down the corridor toward them. “Is that—?”

  “Pop-Pop!” finished Sydney.

  Sure enough, Marcus Tulving—the one man who might have known how to send them home—stomped forward, eyes blazing red, muscles bulging out of his sleeves, steam pouring out of his ears. His body filled the entire hallway, as if he were an overinflated balloon animal. Rivulets of drool fell from a jaw filled with large, sharp—and, for some reason, humming—teeth.

  “Door!” hollered the Hulk-like behemoth. “Need door!” His teeth accentuated his roar wit
h a very musical hum in three-part harmony.

  I’m guessing this memory has soured, thought Sydney, her mind oddly calm in the face of the deranged monster charging toward them.

  “Run, Sydney!” cried Zack, grabbing her hand and yanking her backward down the hall.

  Seeing his prey retreat, Monster Marcus roared with even more fury and bounded into a canter, his feet pulverizing the linoleum floor with each step. Exciting, up-tempo chase music thrummed in his mouth.

  It was enough to spur Sydney into action. Her legs pumped like they’d never pumped before. Behind her, the booming, crushing, humming carnage closed on them in a most unfair manner. Zack and Sydney needed four or five steps to cover the same distance the abomination took in a single bound. Sydney very quickly saw they would reach neither the door back to the creepy library nor the one Memory Dimitri had hid behind in time, so she altered her plan and rammed her shoulder against the nearest classroom door.

  Zack sped by her a step before stopping. “What are you doing?”

  “Hoping Pop-Pop never entered this classroom!” she answered, giving the door another shove. Zack instantly understood and lent his shoulder to the task. Together, with the hungry pane of glass ogling them from above and the charging, slobbering monster grandfather bearing down on them, they forced the door open and stared into a welcome expanse of black. Without any hesitation, Sydney grabbed her brother’s hand and charged into the darkness.

  Their urgent momentum carried them forward three steps before they both tripped and fell onto a soft, queen-sized bed.

  Sydney lay facedown a moment, catching her breath. “What is it…,” she wheezed, “about the MemorySphere…and huge, freaky things chasing us?”

  When Zack didn’t answer, she lifted her head and tried again. “Zack?”

  “We’re home,” he said quietly.

  Confused, Sydney sat up and looked around, her jaw slowly dropping. Zack was right. It was impossible, but he was right. They were in their father’s bedroom. The one that had burned down just a few short days ago.

  “We can’t be in our own memories!” she said.

  “It’s not my memory,” answered Zack. “I’ve been in Dad’s closet.”

  She turned to see a gaping maw of blackness just inside the sliding closet door. “Me too,” she said. “That’s where he keeps the Christmas presents.”

  Zack got off the bed and frowned. “We’re not in my memory and we’re not in yours,” he announced, once again stating the obvious. “And it’s not Dad’s,” he added unnecessarily.

  “Janice showed me where the Christmas presents were kept,” offered Sydney, ruling their big sister out. She met Zack’s gaze, eyes wide. “Alexa?”

  Without another word, they opened the bedroom door and entered the hallway. All was quiet, the ever-present yellow filter giving the familiar passageway a pleasant, late-autumn feel. They walked slowly in a daze of nostalgic awe until stopping in front of a plain wooden door decorated with a poorly drawn snowflake and the word Alexa scribbled in the middle.

  “She made this just before Christmas break,” said Sydney. “This memory is recent.”

  Zack nodded, placed his hand on the doorknob, and opened the door.

  A faded, yellowed Alexa sat with her back to them, talking to a small, wounded chipmunk Sydney remembered her rescuing just a few months ago. It sat in its cage while Alexa sat cross-legged in front of it with an open picture book in her lap.

  “…is a tree. That’s where you live, Chippy. You live in a tree. I think.”

  “Alexa?” asked Zack reverently.

  Their little sister turned and gave them a huge smile. “Hi, guys! I was reading to Chippy. You wanna listen? Does he live in a tree? I think he lives in a tree, but I’m not sure.”

  “I…I don’t remember…,” mumbled Zack, overcome with shock at seeing his sister sitting happily in front of him. “Maybe they live in burrows in the ground. Do you remember, Sydney?”

  Remember, thought Sydney, chewing on an idea. Remember.

  “Remember!” she shouted, the idea blossoming in her mind. “Alexa, we need you to remember something for us. Can you do that?”

  Alexa twisted her face, confused, but Zack caught on right away. “Yes!” he said. “Alexa, tell Janice to open another door. We can travel between memories!”

  “Huh?” she responded.

  “We’re trapped, Alexa!” continued Sydney. “Tell Janice to open a door! Any door!”

  “And bring a knob!” added Zack.

  “A door and a knob!” repeated Sydney. “Tell Janice to— OW!”

  Sydney’s startled cry of pain stemmed from a sudden pinching on the tip of her ear. The pinching turned into pulling, and she was hauled backward out of the room. Next to her, Zack was similarly dragged backward by his similarly pinched ear.

  Once out of the room, they were tossed to the floor and the mysterious ear-puller slammed Alexa’s door closed. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” demanded their tormentor.

  Sydney was about to confront their attacker but stopped short upon seeing a middle-aged woman holding her hands on her hips in disapproval.

  She was not yellow. “Mom?” asked Zack in wonder.

  Alexa was torn.

  On one hand, she had just remembered something very important and needed to tell Janice right away. On the other hand, she was angry at her sister for not believing her about Dimitri—that big, dumb liar—telling her Zack and Sydney had got back. She didn’t know why Dimitri—that big, dumb, liar—was lying about telling her, or why he had told her in the first place if it hadn’t happened. Maybe because he was a big, dumb liar.

  And Janice had believed him over her, and that wasn’t fair, and so she was mad at her big sister as only a little sister can be. The last thing she wanted to do was go and find her and talk to her, but she was pretty sure that was what she should do because she remembered Zack and Sydney being very specific when they told her a few months ago. She knew it was a few months ago because it was after she’d found Chippy but before she’d found Ratty the rat.

  She did not stop to wonder how they could have given her a message a few months ago that she needed to deliver today. To think about that would be confusing, and she was not in the mood to be confused.

  But neither was she in the mood to talk to Janice. So she was torn.

  After thinking it over, she got up and walked purposefully around the first floor of the house. She had made a decision. It was a good decision, or at least she thought it was, and she wanted to follow through before something happened to change her mind. If she couldn’t talk to Janice, but needed Janice to know, then she would tell someone else and let them tell Janice. Since she wouldn’t talk to Dimitri, the only person left was Aunt Gladys.

  She found her aunt where the poor, confused woman had spent most of her time since waking up totally not remembering anything—in the kitchen in front of a bowl of Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings.

  “Aunt Gladys?” she asked.

  “Am I?” asked Aunt Gladys. “I don’t remember brothers or sisters. Or parents. Or, really, much of anything.” She sagged and dropped her head into her hands.

  Alexa gave her a second to be sad before asking, “What do you remember?”

  Aunt Gladys lifted her head and looked out at something only she could see. “Ice cream,” she said. “There was a circus. A man offered me ice cream. He had a large mustache.”

  She drifted off, squinting her eyes as if trying to peer at something just out of sight. Alexa figured that was all her aunt was going to say, so she got right to the point of her visit. “Zack and Sydney are trapped, and they need Janice to open a new door so they can get out. But I’m not talking to Janice, so I thought you could talk to her. So will you? You need to tell Janice that Zack and Sydney need Janice to open another door so that they can get out.”

  With great difficulty, Aunt Gladys turned her gaze away from the cloudy past and looked at the littlest Rothbaum. “I have no i
dea what you just said,” she confessed.

  “Adults!” huffed Alexa, who gave up on her aunt (she really missed the old Aunt Gladys) and stormed out of the kitchen.

  Once she’d stomped through a few rooms in frustration, Alexa slowed and considered her options. She could ignore what she had just remembered about Zack and Sydney needing a new door. No, that didn’t seem right. She could tell someone else. Yes, that felt better. But who? Aunt Gladys had been a flop. Dimitri—the big, dumb liar—was out of the question. And she wasn’t any less angry with Janice. There wasn’t anyone else to tell.

  Fine, she decided. I’ll do it myself.

  She circled back to the central room, slipped through the vault door and under the heavy curtain, and walked up to the platform. The broken door still hung in the frame, a huge crack running down the center.

  Step one, get rid of the old door, she thought. Easy-peasy.

  She’d seen Aunt Gladys switch out the doors last time. It hadn’t looked that hard. There were big gold latches on the frame at each of the four corners. She hopped up onto the platform and toyed with the bottom two latches until she figured them out, twisted everything the right way, and got them to snap open with a satisfying sprong!

  The upper latches were out of her reach, so she dragged the swivelly chair over, shoved it onto the platform next to the doorframe, and climbed on. By stretching out on her tippy-toes, she was just able to reach. She carefully twisted the first latch-knobby thingy while the chair beneath her threatened to roll away from the door and send her crashing to the floor. It was a delicate balancing act, and Alexa was quite proud of herself when she heard the sprong! of success. Next, she moved the chair over a bit and climbed back up to unlatch the final doohickey and release the door. It was again slow going, and at one point, the chair jerked over just a bit, enough to get Alexa windmilling her arms to keep from toppling over. But she steadied herself, reached up, twisted the thingamajig, and was rewarded with one more sprong!

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  Janice’s sudden outburst caught Alexa by surprise. She instinctively leaped back off the chair, and her momentum shoved the chair forward, where it crashed into the newly released door. The door toppled over with a deafening crash at the same time Alexa herself landed on her rump with a resounding thump.