Beyond the Doors

by David Neilsen

  “The one that put the Nasty, Slithery Something in the lake. Duh.”

  Everyone just stared. “Huh,” said Zack.

  “Did you see the memory man?” asked Marcus.

  “Sure,” answered Alexa. “He waved to me. Then he put something in the lake. Then it swam over and attacked me. It was nasty.”

  “You mean someone brought that thing to the lake?” asked Janice with rising alarm.

  “Not someone,” corrected Marcus, growing red with concern. “The memory of someone! Walloping wallabies! I was right!”

  “You know who it was?” asked Zack.

  “Yes! Dimitri!” declared Marcus.

  “No, Dimitri’s innocent,” said Janice. “Remember? He was tied to a chair.”

  “The real Dimitri, yes. But not his memory! Pliable penguins! The implications!”

  Marcus at once set off on another back-and-forth pacing binge, mumbling and muttering to himself as his mind worked.

  “I don’t understand,” confessed Janice.

  “I think I understand,” said Sydney. “I’m just not sure I believe it.”

  Zack tried to put it together in his mind. Was it possible? Could a memory of the quirky foreigner have been acting on its own? How?

  “Why would Dimitri want to hurt us?” asked Alexa.

  “Not Dimitri,” reminded Sydney. “A memory of him.”

  “But he’d still be Dimitri, wouldn’t he?” she asked.

  “Not necessarily,” said Marcus, returning from his mini jaunt. “He’d be of this world. The MemorySphere. And dangerous. If I’m right, he’d be very, very dangerous.”

  Zack was not thrilled with his grandfather’s tone. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I think I know where he came from,” answered a very guilty Marcus Tulving. “The same place that creature came from.”

  He swept a hollow gaze across his grandchildren, filling them all with dread.

  “My wife’s memory.”

  “Your grandmother was a wonderful woman,” remarked Marcus. He sat on one side of a table in the school cafeteria, with Zack and his sisters on the other. “Beautiful. Warm. Generous. Loving.”

  “Mom said you abandoned her,” said Sydney, rubbing her eyes dry.

  “Did she? Yes, I suppose she would. She didn’t understand. Refused to understand.”

  “What happened?” asked Zack, trying to keep his grandfather on track.

  “Agatha grew ill. Pneumonia. Nothing could be done. I lost her.”

  The children teared up over the loss of the grandmother they had never known.

  “I was devastated. She was my life. But I had been so focused on my work….” He sighed and wiped a tear from his eye. “It was Charlotte’s idea, to use her mother’s door. She hooked it up without telling me. While I was grieving. She visited…so many times.” He stopped and put on his best “studious professor” face. “You understand what happens? When you enter and exit a memory over and over again?”

  “We do,” answered Zack with a shiver. The others nodded.

  Marcus fidgeted in his seat and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “Dimitri told me what she was doing. I went down there to stop her, but she was already inside. We followed. Dimitri and Gladys and I. It was a nightmare.”

  He stood and turned away, as if not looking at them would make the story easier to tell. “Agatha was…a monster. Those things were everywhere. And worse. She was worse. She was…” He turned back to face them. “I loved your grandmother. Have I said that?”

  “Yes,” answered Zack.

  “It’s true. I loved her. More than anything. But this…this was not Agatha. This was an abomination. Charlotte didn’t see. She was blinded by love. But we saw. And we acted. Dragged Charlotte out of there. Shoved her through the door.”

  He stopped his narration, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Twice.”

  The children perked up at this odd remark.

  “Twice?” asked Alexa. “That’s silly.”

  Marcus nodded. “I can’t explain it. But we shoved her out the door. And then shoved her out the door again. Then I left. And then I left again. As soon as Dimitri was through, I slammed the door shut. We barely escaped with our sanity. Charlotte was furious. Ran off later that night. Never came back.” He shuffled absently away, lost in his own thoughts.

  Something about the story seemed off to Zack, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Sydney, however, figured it out. “Dimitri only came out once,” she said.

  Marcus lowered himself onto a cafeteria bench, which for some reason had the consistency of Jell-O, bits of it squirting out from under his bottom. “I never really thought about it. But you’re right. He only came out once.”

  “One Dimitri escaped,” said Zack. “But the other…”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” murmured Janice in horror. “Trapped inside that nightmare.”

  “With nowhere to go,” added Marcus quietly, a subtly comic squishy sound coming from his uncomfortable shifting about on the Jell-O bench. “I dropped my research for years. Opened no new doors. Added no new memories to the MemorySphere.”

  “And all that time…,” breathed Sydney.

  “All that time,” confirmed Marcus, “he would have been trapped among the few initial memories, the entire MemorySphere—his whole world—souring into a nightmarish prison.”

  A stunned silence echoed throughout the dumbfounded cafeteria. The children, who had experienced only fleeting moments of terror within the MemorySphere, went cold at the thought of spending years in a nightmare.

  “He must hate you,” observed Zack.

  “Undoubtedly,” agreed Marcus.

  “But he’s just a memory, isn’t he?” asked Janice, determined to make some sense of it all.

  “He’s much more than that,” assured their grandfather. “A sentient being? Born in here? Who knows what his limitations may be? Or if he even has any?”

  “That’s why he was able to switch out Mom’s and Aunt Gladys’s memories at the same time?” asked Sydney.

  Marcus slowly nodded, putting it all together himself. “He can go anywhere. Once you have a memory of your own hooked into the MemorySphere, you’re at his mercy.”

  “We’ll never get Mom or Aunt Gladys back,” realized Zack. “Anything we do, he can undo.”

  “What? No!” cried Sydney. “We have to get them back. We can’t just abandon them!”

  “We have to save Mommy!” urged Alexa. “And Aunt Gladys! They’re our family!”

  “There has to be a way to fix them,” said Janice. “Maybe we can talk to this Memory Dimitri.”

  “And say what?” asked Zack. “ ‘Sorry you were driven insane by our family years ago, but would you mind making everything all better for us?’ ”

  Janice bit her lip and didn’t answer. Because there is no good answer, thought Zack. This Memory Dimitri obviously has it in for us. Which left one alternative.

  “We need to stop him,” he said.

  “How do we do that?” asked Sydney.

  “We go to the source. Stop him from ever being created.”

  Marcus shot up in panic. “No! Very bad idea! You can’t go into that memory!”

  “We have to,” insisted Zack.

  “It’s too dangerous! Those things! And Agatha! No. Out of the question.”

  “Is there any other way?” pressed Zack.

  Marcus rose to his full height, suddenly seeming far larger and more intimidating than he had before. “That memory is not for you. It is evil. I went back in there when I first locked myself in here. I barely survived. Do you understand? I barely survived! And I’m an adult! What are you? Ten?”

  “Eleven,” mumbled Zack.

  “I’m seven!” said Alexa proudly.

  “Out of the question!” roared their grandfather. “The MemorySphere is…! You shouldn’t even be here! Any of you! Give me your doorknob—you’re going home!”

  He extended hi
s hand expectantly.

  “We can’t go back—” began Sydney.

  “You don’t have a knob?” His eyes and nostrils flared with fury.

  “I got it! I got it!” Alexa quickly pulled the knob out of her pocket and offered it to Marcus, shaking in fear the entire time.

  He snatched it from her hands and marched to the door leading back into the school hallway. “You’re all leaving!” he announced. “This instant!”

  “They’ll send us all away,” complained Janice. “Split us up.”

  “I don’t wanna move to Uruguay,” complained Alexa.

  Marcus reached the door and smacked the knob hard against the wood. The children all heard and felt that odd clicking sensation as the knob settled into place. “I’m…sorry,” he said hesitantly. “But…there’s no other way.”

  “We’ll never see each other again,” pleaded Janice.

  “At least you’ll be alive. And sane,” finished Marcus, who then yanked the door open, showering the cafeteria with bright white light.

  Zack shielded his eyes from the intense glare. “You’re our grandfather,” he said. “Our only hope.”

  But Marcus simply shook his head. “There’s no hope for you in here.”

  Zack turned to survey his sisters. Janice was a wilted mess, Alexa was on the verge of tears, and Sydney was working herself up into a serious RAGE. A RAGE that would serve no purpose but to permanently scar their family. He knew what he had to do.

  “Come on, guys.”

  He took Alexa’s hand and gently led her to the beckoning whiteness.

  “Zack, we can’t just quit!” said Sydney, her face growing even redder than it already was.

  “It’s over, Sydney,” he said. “Grampa’s right. We’re just kids. This isn’t a playground.”

  He turned his back on everyone and, with Alexa’s fingers curled tightly around his, walked out of the MemorySphere.

  Seeing Zack and Alexa swallowed by the light sent Janice’s heart into anxious palpitations. Was he really giving up? Was he just going to let Miss Guacaladilla cart them off to the four corners of the earth?

  The sound of teeth grinding against one another reminded Janice that Sydney was standing next to her. Her sister looked ready to explode, glaring daggers at—and, Janice was sure, through—the white doorway.

  “I am sorry,” repeated their grandfather.

  “Sorry?” Sydney was revving up. “You’re sorry?”

  Janice stepped in, placing her hand on Sydney’s arm. “Let’s go, Sydney.”

  “No! We have to fight! We go into that memory and we stop him!”

  Marcus refused to raise his head, becoming far more interested in the tops of his shoes than he had any right to be. Janice finally understood that the battle was lost.

  “Come on,” she said, tugging her little sister toward the door.

  Sydney flared up, ready to resist, but Janice managed to stifle her with a glare of her own. Grudgingly, the furious girl allowed Janice to escort her out of the memory.

  Walking into the portal room, Janice felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She put up a good show, but the truth was she still absolutely hated going into the MemorySphere. Aside from her brother and sisters, the only other person in the room was Dimitri, who was still tied to the chair. Aunt Gladys and Mom were nowhere to be found.

  Sydney immediately shook herself free and ran to Zack. “You’re just going to tuck your tail between your legs and give up?” she accused.

  “Of course not, Sydney,” he said, wearing what Janice felt was a self-satisfied smirk. “We’re going into that memory.”

  For once, Sydney was speechless.

  “How?” asked Janice. “Gramps won’t show us where it is.”

  “No,” agreed Zack. “So we need another way in.” He turned to Alexa. “And I’m betting you can help us.”

  The littlest Rothbaum looked up, surprised. “Me?” she asked.

  “Mom said she stole our doors so we could help her find Grammy’s door,” he explained. “She’s been in your memories, hasn’t she?”

  Alexa’s face turned red and she squeezed her lips closed, shaking her head.

  “It’s okay, Alexa,” said Zack soothingly. “She told us she’d been visiting you.”

  “It’s our secret,” said Alexa.

  “It’s all right.” Janice wasn’t sure where Zack was going with this, but decided to follow his lead. “Mom would want you to tell us,” she suggested.

  Alexa squinched her face up, considering, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Mommy asked me to find Grammy’s door.”

  “And did you?” asked Sydney.

  Alexa told them about her search and the locked door she’d found on the fifth floor.

  “That’s gotta be it,” said Janice.

  Zack nodded in agreement. “The problem is, if it’s locked, we’ll never find the key. Aunt Gladys won’t remember where she put it.”

  “I open door,” said the forgotten man from his chair.

  Janice peered at him, a jumble of emotions. Here was the source of their problems. She knew, of course, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Not this version of him, anyway. But she was having difficulty separating the man from the memory. Her siblings were equally conflicted, and an uncomfortable silence descended upon them all.

  As oblivious as he was, even Dimitri noticed eventually. “Children look at Dimitri funny,” he said. “I have booger?”

  The four children shifted uncomfortably in their shoes. “We should tell him,” said Janice. Zack nodded.

  Dimitri took the news as well as could have been expected. Janice couldn’t tell if he was more upset to learn he’d been trapped in that nightmare all those years or that he was behind all the trouble plaguing everyone. Victim or villain?

  Once Zack finished, Dimitri remained quiet a moment more, then he simply looked up at them, saying, “I open door.”

  A wave of relief washed over the children, followed by four weary smiles. “Thank you, Dimitri,” said Janice, speaking for all of them.

  “Is nothing,” he replied. “First, I untied. Yes? Chair no longer comfy.”

  They had to be careful not to run into Gonzo or Pixie as they made their way to the fifth floor. Dimitri explained that the two very large, very burly, very grim-faced, and very milk-covered men had forced their mother and aunt to lead them through the halls of the house in search of the children. However, since neither Charlotte nor Aunt Gladys were presently all that familiar with the house, it wasn’t exactly the most methodical search.

  There was a close call up on the third floor when the children had heard their aunt’s voice approaching and had to hurry and duck behind a pile of doors to avoid being seen, but they otherwise made it to the oddly locked fifth-floor door unnoticed.

  “It’s kind of weird to see a doorway with an actual door in it,” offered Sydney.

  This being his moment, Dimitri stepped up and tried the handle. “Is locked,” he reported.

  “That’s what I said,” reminded Alexa.

  “Can you get it open?” asked Zack.

  “One moment.” Dimitri walked away from the children and closed his eyes.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Janice.

  Zack shrugged. “Trying to remember where he saw the key?” he guessed.

  That didn’t sound right to Janice, but before she could say anything, Dimitri opened his eyes, let loose with a wild cry of “Oooooo­ooooo­okay!” and ran at the door like a madman. At the last second, he lowered his shoulder, and the force of the crash sent shock waves through the floor, causing the children to extend their arms to maintain their balance.

  The door remained standing.

  “That’s your big plan?” asked Janice.

  Dimitri backed away dizzily from the door and blinked his eyes a few times. “Is good plan. I go again.”

  “No, wait!” warned Janice.

  Dimitri ignored her and charged the door again, this
time knocking the door off its hinges and allowing access to the mysteriously locked fifth-floor room. It was small, dingy, and dark, and at first glance seemed entirely empty. A second glance, however, informed them that no, it was not empty. There was one thing in the room.

  A door.

  “We have to hurry,” said Zack. “Those goons had to have heard that. They’re probably on their way up here right now.”

  Everyone scrambled into the room and surrounded the door. It lay on the floor, as if unceremoniously dumped and left to rot, and seemed to gather the darkness of the small room to itself in an attempt to avoid being seen. Janice found herself shivering uncontrollably for no identifiable reason.

  “That’s it,” confirmed Alexa. “Mommy told me to look for those scratches on the bottom. They’re from Grammy’s cats.”

  “It looks so normal,” remarked Sydney.

  “It is,” said Zack. “Or was, at least. Come on, we need to hurry. Can you give me a hand with this Dimitri? Dimitri?”

  The human battering ram remained outside the room, mouth open in horror, eyes locked on the simple wooden door revealed within.

  “Dimitri?” repeated Zack.

  “Is bad door,” whispered Dimitri. “Is very bad door.”

  I guess that means it’s the right one, thought Janice.

  The hike down to the portal room was even more nerve-racking than the trek up. Gonzo and Pixie had, indeed, heard Dimitri’s door-banging and hurried over to investigate. Luckily, it was a big, confusing house and they were being led by two women who had no idea where they were going, so it took them a while to get there. The children heard their mother approach just as they reached the fourth floor and were able to duck behind a pile of doors (after first tossing their grandmother’s door on top of the pile) to avoid being seen.

  “Where do those stairs go?” asked the burly goon.

  “Up, I think,” answered Charlotte.

  Either Pixie or Gonzo (it was hard for Janice to tell them apart) groaned and bounded up the steps, giving Janice and the others a chance to slip away. A great sense of unease beat down upon everyone as they made their way back to the central room. It was easy to tell where this uncomfortable feeling came from—their grandmother’s door. Seeing Dimitri’s discomfort regarding the door, Zack had volunteered to carry it down himself. Janice knew she should offer to help her brother, but the thought of touching that…that door…