House of Dark Shadows

by Robert Liparulo

  Xander reached for the door handle. He turned it slowly, listening to the metal inside grinding against itself. The latch disengaged from the receptacle in the frame. He pushed. A musty odor drifted out. He pointed the flashlight at the black breach. It illuminated a thin strip of hardwood floor, a slice of furniture deeper inside. He debated kicking at the door, then decided to simply push it fully open. Extending his arm, he hoped nothing reached through and grabbed him.

  David tapped his shoulder. Xander did not want to turn his attention from the partially open door. “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Look.”

  “Now?”

  Instead of answering, David tapped him again.

  Xander looked, saw him nod to his other side. Xander swiveled his head around that way. On the back wall, where the hall ended, a thick shadow, straight as a ruler, ran from floor to ceiling. He turned the flashlight’s beam to it. Part of the wall was canted out, open like a door that had not closed fully. The wall had been paneled in vertical planks of wood.

  The opening matched where two planks met, which explained why they had not spotted the secret door before.

  Xander pulled the guest room door closed. He no longer thought anyone occupied the room, but he didn’t want to make it easy for someone to sneak up on them if he was wrong. He tiptoed to the movable wall. Before he could get his fingers to the edge, David reached out and pushed it shut. It clicked and remained flush with the rest of the wall.

  “Dae!” he whispered. “What if we can’t get it open again? We don’t know where the—”

  David gave the wall a quick push and it popped open a crack. Xander scowled at him. “Good thing.” He pulled at the edge. It swung toward them easily, silently. He reversed a step, bumping into David and pushing him backward. The flashlight picked up another wall several yards beyond the fake one. He moved into the opening. A closed door was set in the second wall. A sheet of metal had been riveted to it, as if to strengthen it. Xander approached it, feeling David clinging to him like a wet leaf.

  “Check it out,” he said quietly.

  Hanging from a bright metal hasp, attached to the door, was a heavy padlock. Dangling with the lock was the portion of the hasp that had been screwed to the door frame. It had been ripped out, broken when the door was forced open. Splinters of wood lay at the baseboard, a screw not far away.

  “It looks new,” David said.

  Xander turned the handle and pulled the door open. Stairs

  ascended to the floor above. But he and David had already found the attic entrance on the other side of the house. He recalled how small the attic had been, how he had assumed it was because of the shape of the roof. Now he thought of another reason: there were two attics.

  He didn’t like it. This was right out of a Goosebumps story:

  snoopy visitors would find the stairs to the attic, go up, and . . . well, what happened to them wasn’t pretty.

  Xander’s light revealed nothing at the top of the flight.

  The landing was deep enough to mask any door or wall that might be at the top.

  David was peering around Xander, pressing his chest against Xander’s back. Xander could feel the boy’s racing heart, and more: he was shivering as violently as a person who’d fallen through a lake’s frozen surface. Xander stepped back and closed the metal-skinned door.

  He took in his brother’s frightened face, wondered how much of it mirrored his own expression. He had read somewhere that bravery is not the absence of fear but the forging ahead despite being afraid. David was certainly afraid, but he’d seen his brother’s bravery too many times to assume he wanted to end their adventure here and now.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  David nodded and actually bent his lips into a smile of sorts.

  “Your call. We go up now . . . or wait till tomorrow, get Dad’s help if you want.”

  David stared at the door, considering his options. His heartbeat continued to pound furiously against Xander’s back.

  At length, he whispered, “What I said before: let’s do it.”

  Xander felt himself shiver. It was more internal than David’s vibrating goose bumps, but a sign of his fear, all the same. Maybe he had been counting on David to vote them off this island, to send them home, back to bed. Perhaps his brother’s fear was contagious. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear, he reminded himself. He just wished he had something like David’s curtain rod to wield. A bat would be nice. So would an M16. And he didn’t much like the idea that he was almost naked, except for boxers. Going into battle required a uniform, didn’t it? At least clothes. Did he say battle? Not battle. No, not battle. Just . . . just . . . checking out a new place in their home. That’s all.

  Yeah, a new place behind a fake wall and a door with a broken lock, where some huge dude is probably waiting to ambush you.

  Stop it, he scolded himself. Are you going to do this or not?

  David, right behind him, had said, “Let’s do it.” How could Xander back out now? He’d never live it down.

  He pulled open the door again, flashed the light up the stairs. Nothing lurked at the top . . . that he could see. He passed through the threshold, then mounted the first step. The second. The third.

  David stayed one step below him.

  Another step. A wall came into view, just past the upper landing.

  Up to step number . . . he’d forgotten. Didn’t matter.

  David kept a hand on Xander’s hip. He was so close, Xander felt he was giving his brother a piggyback ride.

  He stepped onto the landing. Set at a ninety-degree angle from the stairway was a long, dark corridor.

  David edged up behind him. He said, “Xander, look.”

  On the left wall was an old-fashioned light switch: a copper faceplate through which two push-buttons, one over the other, protruded. The upper button was depressed, almost flush with the faceplate. The bottom button stuck out a half inch farther. Xander pushed this one, which caused the top button to pop out, teeter-totter style. The corridor lit up, illuminated by lights in the ceiling as well as wall-mounted lamps, spaced at even intervals on both long walls. The hallway wasn’t straight; it bent slightly this way then that way, like a snake. It never curved enough to block the far end from view. And its length puzzled Xander. It seemed longer than the house itself, which was impossible. He wondered if the wall on the far end was mirrored, giving the hallway its extended appearance. The floor was hardwood, as was the rest of the house, but an old-fashioned carpet, red with an intricate black pattern, ran the length of the corridor. The bottom third of the walls was wainscoted in squares of dark wood. Wallpaper covered the upper portion: vertical stripes of old vines and leaves over an ivory background. Doors lined both sides. They were staggered so no one door faced another. Their handles glinted dully in the light.

  “Holy cow,” David whispered. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It looks like a hotel,” David said.

  “A hotel designed by Dr. Seuss, maybe,” Xander added.

  “Do you think the guy we saw is in one of these rooms?”

  The figure. Xander’s nerves were coiled on the razor edge between fight and flight. The figure had become symbolic of anything this house could throw at him. But David had kept the threat focused. It was not a row of doors that could harm them. It was what could come out of those doors.

  “Well . . .” Xander answered, taking a tentative step into the hallway, “there’s only one way to find out.”

  CHAPTER

  twenty - three

  SATURDAY, 12:27 A.M.

  The curvy corridor lay before them. It was creepy and mysterious and oddly inviting.

  Both boys had stepped onto the carpeted runner. It was soft and warm under Xander’s bare feet. He forced himself to start walking. David clung to him like one of those remora fish that attached themselves to sharks. It made Xander feel like the big brother he was. When it came to tackling new adventures, David w
as fearless. As long as he knew others had trod before him and lived, he figured he could do it too.

  What spooked the kid was . . . well, spooky things: ghosts, vampires, dark shadows, mysterious noises. The unknown.

  My turn to be brave, Xander thought.

  They approached the first light fixture. It was a small statue mounted to the wall: an old man, whose long beard flowed into a tunic. A wreath crowned his head. He held open a book and pointed at a page. His eyes were cut out, allowing the light from the bulb within to shine through them. Xander recognized the style of the carving as ancient Greek—one of the things about having a history teacher for a dad was you got a lot of history lessons. He suspected the man was Plato or Socrates or one of the other brainy sage-types. The top of the lamp was open. Light splashed up the wall in the shape of an ice-cream cone. The ice-cream scoop itself was a glowing circle on the ceiling. As they passed, Xander’s eyes kept darting back to the decorative fixture. He half-expected the old man to turn his head, following their progress.

  David jabbed him in the ribs.

  “Ow, what?” Xander said. David was pointing. The wallpaper had been peeled away in four thin, horizontal furrows. The rips were as long as Xander’s arm. One ended in a bunched-up wad of wallpaper; at the end of the other three furrows, rippled strips of paper hung like the tails of rats.

  “Claw marks,” David whispered.

  “Maybe,” Xander said, but that’s exactly what they looked like.

  They were a few feet from the first door. It was six-paneled and stained dark brown, like the others in the house. On the front of the door handle was a face: a scowling man whose tight lips appeared ready to open for a hearty reprimand. A brass plate under the handle was etched in the same intricate pattern as the carpeted runner. The impression of an old hotel was so strong in his mind, Xander was mildly surprised that no room number was affixed to the door.

  “What do we do?” David whispered behind him.

  “I’m thinking.” He had a mind to knock—another remnant of the hotel milieu. Or maybe he thought politeness would spare him the wrath of whoever might be lurking on the other side. Instead, he turned the knob and pushed open the door. A small room lay within. A single domed fixture in the ceiling cast the room in a harsh, bright light. Xander pushed the door farther until it stopped against the left-hand wall. He could see through the crack between door and frame, on the hinged side, that no one was waiting to jump out.

  Xander stepped in.

  David hung back, putting more than a hair’s distance between them for the first time since they saw the figure downstairs. He looked up the hall in both directions, apparently decided that being in the strange room with Xander was better than being outside it without him, and stepped in.

  A wooden bench ran the length of the wall on the right.

  A shelf with a series of heavy brass coat hooks below it was above the bench, slightly higher than Xander’s eye level. Hanging on the hooks were the accoutrements of a day at the beach: a man’s bathing suit, a colorful beach towel, swimming fins, snorkel, and mask. A beach umbrella, extending from bench to ceiling, leaned into a corner. Next to the umbrella, two blue and white flip-flops sat side by side. Opposite the entrance was another door. It felt like they were in a mudroom.

  Xander stepped to the inner door. Slowly, he gripped the handle. “It’s locked,” he informed David.

  “From the other side?”

  Xander looked at the handle. There was no keyhole. No deadbolt or any other hardware on the door. Even the hinges must have been on the other side, for they were invisible to him.

  He tried the handle again. It was as solid as a dock’s mooring cleat. If it could be unlocked only from the other side, then it must also be locked from that side. The implications hit Xander like a plank upside his head. He pressed his palms against the door, holding it shut. He swung his face around to David.

  “It’s locked from the other side,” he said, almost hissing out the words. “You can’t unlock it from this side. That means—”

  “There’s somebody in there!” David finished.

  “Can you see anything under the door?”

  David dropped. He pressed his cheek against the wood floor. “Nothing. It’s all black.”

  Xander kept leaning into the door, sure something was about to push through. He tilted his head to put an ear against the surface. Something on the other side scraped the door. He said, “Get out! Go! Now!”

  David scrambled up. He backed through the open door into the hall.

  “Xander?” he said, sounding like he was ready to cry.

  Xander came off the door. He backpedaled out of the room, pulling the first door shut as he did.

  His grip remained tight on the handle. At last, he let go and backed away. He and David stared at the door a long time.

  “What’d you hear?” David said.

  Scraping.

  “Think it was him?”

  “Has to be.”

  David scanned the other doors down the hall. “You want to check the other doors?”

  “Why?” Xander said.

  “If he’s in this one, he’s not in those. Maybe we’ll find something to help us.”

  David was the video game player of the family. He tended to think this way: strategically. When Xander got stuck on Halo 3, David jumped in and methodically checked each possibility until he found the answer.

  Xander doubted snapping a beach towel at the figure would do any good. But tools or weapons, now that was another story. At the very least, they might be able to determine the size of the locked room by examining the other rooms. He wasn’t sure exactly how that information would assist them, but didn’t the hero in every movie, from war spectacles to horror flicks, gather intelligence about his opponent? Often, the solution lay in outwitting the bad guys, not overpowering them.

  “Good idea,” he said. He stepped past David to the next door. It was on the other side of the hall from the first.

  Before he could open it, David stopped him.

  He gestured toward the first room they had looked into.

  “What if he comes out of there, while we’re in here?”

  Xander didn’t have an answer. “You want to go back downstairs?” he said. “Go to bed?”

  David shook his head.

  Xander opened the door into a room precisely like the first: the bench, the shelf, the second door set in the opposing wall. The only difference were the items left behind. There was a white parka with a fur-lined hood, goggles, binoculars, a white canvas bag adorned by a fat red plus sign. Propped into the corner was a pair of beat-up skis. Beside them on the bench were what appeared to Xander’s untrained eye to be two sticks of dynamite. Long fuses. Wrapped in thin red paper, stains showing through. Nitroglycerin, Xander thought.

  “Are those real?” David asked.

  “Don’t touch them.”

  “What’s with all this stuff ?” David said.

  Xander shook his head. “It’s like a closet for storing a few things you’d need for one activity. The beach stuff in the other room, the . . . I guess alpine things here.”

  “Dynamite?

  ”

  Xander shrugged.

  “Why?”

  “David, I’m seeing this for the first time, like you.”

  “Check the door.”

  The second door was locked, as the one in the other room had been. He tried to force the doorknob to turn. Clockwise, counterclockwise—it wouldn’t budge. His body rocked as he attempted to rattle the door. It didn’t move or make a sound. “How . . . it’s impossible,” he said.

  “There’s not somebody in that room, too, is there?”

  “I hope not.” He put his ear against it. He pulled back fast, almost ran, but didn’t. “It’s the same sound,” he whispered.

  “Fingernails?” David was moving toward the corridor.

  Xander listened again. “More like wind. Something blowing around in the wind. Sand, maybe. L
eaves and twigs.”

  “Does it lead outside?”

  “Can’t,” Xander said. “I’ve inspected the outside of the house. There are some dormer windows in the attic. Nothing like this, no doors.”

  “Is it a real door?” David said.

  Xander stared at him, thinking. “Like . . . maybe it’s not a door at all.” As David had done earlier, Xander got onto the floor to look under the door. “It doesn’t look like it just stops there.” Remaining on his knees, he looked around. He rose and stepped to the skis. His hand was inches from them when he stopped. What if it was a trap? What if every item was booby trapped somehow? He pulled his hand away. To David he said, “Give me your pajamas.”

  “They’re my pants,” David protested.

  “I’ll give them right back.”

  David tugged at the drawstring, unraveling a bow. He pulled them off. In only boxers now, as Xander was, he hesitated, then handed over his pajama bottoms. The material was thin and lightweight, as Xander had expected. He dropped to his knees again and began pushing one of the pant legs under the door. “Hey!” David said.

  “I just want to see if there’s space on the other side of the door . . . or if there’s a wall. I told you I’d—” The pajamas ripped out of his hands. They zipped under the door and were gone, so fast their final moments were a blur. Xander jumped back. He crashed into David, who had already spun halfway out of the room. Xander grabbed him and shoved him toward the stairwell.

  “Go, go, go!” he yelled.

  CHAPTER

  twenty - four

  SATURDAY, 12:41 A.M.

  The brothers tripped and banged into each other as they flew past the first door and the Plato wall light. At the landing, David tromped down. Xander turned to look back. Nothing was after them. “Wait!” he said.

  David stopped. “Are they coming?” he asked.