The Door Within

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  “I gotta go,” said Robby.

  “You can have lunch with us,” Aidan suggested. There weren’t many hours left that they could be together, and Aidan wanted to make the most of them.

  “I can’t. Momma said I need t’cut the grass ’fore my dentist appointment at one-thirty.”

  Aidan still found it odd that kids in the South, even in their late teens, still sometimes called their parents “Momma” and “Daddy.”

  “You have a dentist appointment?” Aidan frowned. “You’re not getting braces, are you?”

  “Ri-ight.” Robby always said the word in two syllables. It had to be his favorite word, for he used it all the time to mean a great many things. In this case, “Ri-ight” basically meant, “Me, get braces? You can’t be serious.”

  Robby smiled broadly, revealing two gleaming rows of perfectly straight teeth. Aidan’s teeth were straight too, but not movie-star-straight like Robby’s.

  “Besides, I said dentist—not orthodontist. Just a check-up. I’ll call ya’ when I get home, okay?”

  Aidan nodded, and his best friend left. He was alone again in his room, only now it didn’t seem much like his room anymore. The posters had been removed and rolled up. The bookshelves were bare and the dressers were empty. Everything that had been in his room was now stuffed away into little square prisons of cardboard. There was nothing left to say, “Hey, a kid lives here!”

  About the only thing that wasn’t imprisoned in cardboard was the aquarium.

  Aquarium, shoot! Robby! Aidan stumble-stepped down the stairs, arriving with a horrendous thud at the bottom. This earned him a stern, “Hey! Quit thumping!” from his father, who was in the basement.

  “Sorry, Dad!” Aidan hollered as he bolted out of the front door and onto the porch. Already breathing heavily and beginning to sweat, Aidan plodded across the lawn and into the street.

  “Rob—bee! You forgot the fish—” Aidan’s mouth snapped shut. Robby was long gone. Man, Robby can really turn on the jets when he wants to.

  Turning to leave the street, Aidan jerked to a halt. He heard a noise.

  He wasn’t sure what it was, but it registered above the hum of distant traffic and the incessant chirping of cicadas. Aidan cocked his head sideways, listening. Nothing for a few moments, then—there it was again in the distance, a series of rapid swooshes—somewhat like the swoosh heard after a car speeds by. Then silence.

  Then more swooshes, a little louder, followed by silence. Aidan looked up high in the sky and then scanned the street far ahead where the sounds seemed to be originating. No airplanes, no birds, nothing at all.

  Then, the familiar sound of old Mr. Filbert driving his old light blue Dodge Dart made Aidan jump. Aidan hurriedly moved out of the street to let the car pass. It was a relief to see someone else, to not be alone on the road. Aidan waved. Mr. Filbert ignored him. Old Mr. Filbert never had liked kids.

  The moment the car had passed, the swooshing sounds began anew. They were somewhat louder now. And there was something else, too. A shadow had appeared, just a ragged blur stretching across the road far ahead.

  Like trying to get at an itchy spot on his back that he could never quite reach, Aidan struggled to think of something that could cast such a shadow. An airplane, maybe, but there was nothing in the sky—not even a cloud.

  The shadow came slowly closer, and Aidan noticed that it seemed to be changing size or shape from time to time in rhythm to the swooshing sounds. It was wide enough to span the whole street at one moment, but then the next, it became thin.

  Every swoosh, and the shadow narrowed for a moment. But immediately after, it spread wide again. And it stayed wide when there was silence. It was like a giant bird flapping its wings to stay aloft as it closed in on Aidan—only, stare as he might, Aidan saw nothing casting the shadow!

  Tiny prickles of fear tiptoed up and down Aidan’s spine. The sound swooshed louder still. The shadow was closing, a few feet away, and there was still nothing to be seen overhead.

  Aidan covered his head and ducked, but he kept his eyes open. For a brief, paralyzing moment, Aidan felt the presence of something monstrous above him, and all sunlight was eclipsed. Seconds later, the feeling was gone, but a gust of wind followed it, causing Aidan’s hair and clothes to flap in all directions.

  Then it was still. No breeze. No shadow. No sound—except for Aidan’s heart pounding away like bongos at a luau. A warm, sickly sweet, unfamiliar smell drifted over Aidan.

  Aidan sprinted out of the street, up his front porch, into the house, and slammed the front door. This earned Aidan another stern, “Hey, stop thumping around up there!”

  AUTHOR’S COMMENTARY:

  “A Swoosh and a Shadow” was originally chapter 2 in the book. When I wrote it, I had three immediate goals: 1) Foreshadow events later in the story; 2) Increase the reader’s awareness that something otherworldly is going on; 3) Establish Aidan and Robby’s characters through their friendship. The Door Within was the only book of the Trilogy that I did not outline—that’s probably why it took thirteen years to write. Yikes! I won’t ever do it that way again. But even with the lack of an outline, I always had certain end-of-the-book events in mind. The method Aidan and Robby used to catch the crayfish in the flashback scene foreshadows how Aidan tricks the Paragor Knights with his Phantom Army. In both cases an apparent threat from behind flushes the enemy into an even more dangerous situation.

  The swooshing shadow scene may seem familiar to you. I used a variation of it in chapter 2, “The Unexpected,” in the published version. But in the original, I wanted the reader to wonder what this invisible flying thing was and why it was following Aidan. The creature, by the way, is Gabby, Gwenne’s dragon—sent over The Thread by King Eliam to look after Aidan.

  There’s a lot more character development here. You realize that Robby had moved to Maryland from Florida, and you get a little taste of his southern accent. However, it became cumbersome to spell out all the dialect, so we thinned it out a little in the published version. You see what a natural Robby is at almost everything. But you also see that Aidan is a thinker and has some leadership qualities somewhere deep inside.

  There was one other reason I liked this scene. It included one of my favorite pastimes as a kid: crayfishing. My friends and I in Seabrook would grab our mason jars and buckets and head for the creek! Even today, I have a blast taking my own four children to our local creek for a little crayfishing. We’ve caught some monster pinchers together. My son Tommy calls these gigantic crayfish Bajos (pronounced Bah-joes).

  This chapter naturally had to go because the original chapter 1 was cut. The Door Within begins with Aidan in Colorado, not Maryland, so this chapter wouldn’t work. I really wanted to include the crayfishing scene as a flashback, but there just didn’t seem to be any natural place to put it without seriously slowing down the pacing. Pacing is the speed at which events seem to be moving. It’s especially important in the beginning of a book to keep the pace high so that readers will stay alert and interested. Still, I’m glad readers can now get to know Aidan and Robby—and the crayfish—a little bit better.

  3

  ROBBY’S BASEMENT

  I’m serious, Mom, it was this huge shadow,” Aidan mumbled, his mouth half full of Bambinos pepperoni and extra cheese pizza.

  “I’m sure you saw something, Aidan,” she replied. “Maybe it was an airplane?”

  “Mom, airplanes don’t go swoosh, swoosh!” Aidan said, trying to make the sound.

  “I went out there and looked,” offered Aidan’s dad. “I didn’t see—or hear anything.”

  “Maybe it was a helicopter?”

  “Mommm!”

  “Sorry,” she said, holding up her hands. “But helicopters do go swoosh, swoosh!”

  Aidan scowled.

  “It was kind of a slow, steady sort of . . . oh, never mind!”

  Aidan went back to working on his pizza. It seemed to Aidan that his parents always expected him to believe them wi
thout question. But if Aidan had something to share that was the least bit doubtful, they became so skeptical. Just because they were older didn’t have to mean they were automatically right all the time. Whatever it was that had flown over his head, Aidan knew he had never heard—or felt—anything like it ever before.

  “Did you get the mail?” Aidan’s mom asked.

  “Nope,” Mr. Thomas replied. “Didn’t think it had come yet. I’ll go check.”

  A moment later, Mr. Thomas returned with an envelope in his hand.

  “What is it?” asked Aidan’s mom.

  Aidan watched his father tear open the envelope. “A letter,” he replied, unfolding the paper within. “It was stuck way back in the mailbox. It’s postmarked two weeks ago. How’d I miss that?”

  There was a brief pause while Aidan’s dad read the contents of the envelope. “This is from the moving company. Our truck, the big one, will be here sometime tomorrow, late afternoon,” Aidan’s father announced.

  Aidan stopped chewing.

  “They could’ve called.” Mrs. Thomas crossed her arms. “It’s a good thing we’re almost ready. I thought they were coming later in the week!”

  “Just as well,” said Aidan’s dad. “After the movers, all we need to do is load up the minivan and we’ll be ready to roll.”

  Great, Aidan thought. Just what I wanted to hear.

  “Still want to leave early, like one or two a.m. tomorrow night?” Aidan’s mother asked. “Avoid a lot of traffic that way.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I love driving at night anyway. It’s cooler, no glare off the road . . .”

  If they didn’t stop soon, Aidan was going to be sick.

  “Then, tonight,” his mom added with a big grin. “Tonight, since it’s our last full night in Maryland, we arranged for you to spend the night over at Robby’s.”

  “Spend the night!?” Aidan nearly spray-painted his parents with shredded pizza. “Cool! That is so cool! Yes!”

  “Y’all help yourself to any a’ the snacks,” said Mrs. Pierson, holding open a tall cabinet door. “You get messy, you clean up, hear?!”

  “Okay, Momma,” replied Robby.

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Pierson,” agreed Aidan.

  “I’m goin’ on up—my shows are on, so I’ll see y’all in the morning.”

  Robby’s mom turned and disappeared up the stairs. His sister was at a friend’s slumber party. Aidan and Robby were alone and free for the evening. The prospects were good.

  “Know what we should do?” said Aidan, eyes gleaming. “We should build a cushion castle!”

  “I was just fixin’ to say that.” Robby grinned.

  With a conspiratorial nod Aidan and Robby left the kitchen to seek different areas of Robby’s house. Aidan zoomed into the living room and came waddling back with two square sofa cushions stuffed under each arm. Robby went up his stairs two at a time and came down three at a time carrying enough blankets to smother a dinosaur. They met at the door at the top of the basement steps.

  Robby put down his pile of blankets and flipped the switch to the basement lights, but when the lights came on, Aidan and Robby immediately noticed that something was very wrong. The door at the bottom of the stairs was open.

  “O-kaaay . . . whose turn is it?” Aidan asked.

  “Yers, I think,” Robby replied.

  “Great.”

  Aidan shuddered. The door at the bottom of the stairs led to the unfinished side of Robby’s basement, the work side, a dark and foreboding place that, quite frankly, scared the crud out of both of them—especially Aidan. He’d had the nerve to go in there just once, and that was during the confidence-boosting light of day. One side of the basement, the side they stayed on, was carpeted, comfortably furnished, and well lit. The work side, on the other hand, had a cold cement floor and cinderblock walls that were originally painted a dreary gray but had been stained through the years with unguessable dark liquids. There were cobwebs aplenty, as well, and more than a few skittering spiders happily making new webs each day.

  In every shadowy corner of the room were piles of cruel-looking old tools and half-rotten scrap wood left by the previous owners of the house. The only light in the work side was one naked bulb that dangled from the ceiling like a hangman’s noose.

  Aidan remembered the work side all too well. It was a cold, lonely, and forbidding place. And no matter how many times Robby and Aidan had closed the door to the work side; it always seemed to end up open.

  Aidan dreaded the notion of reaching into the mysterious work side to grab the doorknob. His powerful imagination conjured visions of dark, tentacled beasts and cold, skeletal apparitions just waiting to grab the arm of anyone who dared reach into their domain. And it was his turn to shut the door.

  “Great,” Aidan muttered again.

  Then, suddenly, before Aidan could stop him, Robby charged down the stairs. Five steps from the bottom, he sprang into the air. And in one coordinated motion, he landed on the basement floor, reached into the work side, and pulled the door shut.

  “Ta daaa!” Robby took a bow and beamed.

  Aidan immediately held up an imaginary scorecard like the gymnastics judges in the Olympics. “Nine-point-five,” he announced. “And, thanks.”

  Aidan was immensely relieved—though in some dusty corner of his mind he wished he had been the heroic one to shut the door to the work side. But, at least the door was shut.

  Robby bowed low. “Now, let’s get our castle built.”

  For the next ten minutes, few words were spoken, but Aidan and Robby were busier than ants in a gingerbread house. They scooted furniture, set up card tables, spread and draped blankets, tossed pillows and cushions—they even used a piano to support one of the walls. And that was just the outside.

  Inside, they stored everything good castle residents could need: comics and flashlights, folding chairs and walkie-talkies, drawing paper and colored pencils, ranch-flavored tortilla chips, and ice-cold sodas.

  Aidan and Robby smiled with creative satisfaction as they surveyed their finished work. To the unenlightened observer, their fort looked like a rectangular, quilt-covered igloo. But to Aidan and Robby, it was the impenetrable Castle Courage, the home of truth, justice, bravery . . . and the largest assortment of hand-held video games known to mankind!

  They crawled in through one of the couch cushion tunnels and flipped on a half-dozen flashlights. Then, sprawled out side by side on a mat of blankets and sleeping bags, Aidan and Robby allowed themselves to escape into a pile of comic books. Aidan ventured into King Arthur’s legends and imagined himself as Lancelot, the brave and clever swordsman. Robby, on the other hand, found the supernaturally gifted X-Men more to his liking. He saw himself as the swift and stealthy Nightcrawler, who could scale walls and teleport to safety when surrounded by dangers.

  The basement filled with old house sounds—rattling pipes, creaky boards, dripping water—and time passed unnoticed. Comic books gave way to video games which, in turn, surrendered to sketch pads and pencils. Aidan had just drawn the outline of a dragon when he felt that Robby was staring at him.

  “I wish you didn’t have to move,” Robby said, glancing up at Aidan and then staring at the ground. Something churned and fell heavily in Aidan’s stomach.

  “The thing I hate most,” Robby continued, “is I’m gonna be alone again.”

  This was the very last thing Aidan expected Robby to say. “Are you nuts?” Aidan exclaimed. “Everybody thinks you’re cool. I mean, you’ve got all those friends from soccer, football, and baseball. And half the girls in school are waiting in line for your phone number.”

  “Well, they’re . . . sorta friends,” Robby replied as if English were a second language and he couldn’t find the right words. “It’s like some a’ them, they’re like outside friends. They like what they see on the outside. You watch, if I couldn’t play sports like I do, those friends would disappear faster than greased lightning. And if I wasn’t what those girls call cu
te, ya’ think they’d call me? Ri-ight! They’d walk on by with their pretty little noses stuck so high in the air—you could shoot spitballs in ’em from ten feet away!”

  Yup, Aidan thought. That’s exactly how they all treated me before you showed up.

  “But not you, Aidan. You’d still be my friend even if I looked like a catfish on a bad hair day and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball. You’re an inside friend. Am I makin’ any sense?”

  Aidan nodded. In less than a year their friendship had grown. And they were real friends. Not “sorta” friends. It made the thought of moving hurt even more.

  Robby made an irritated clucking sound and continued. “It just seems like every time things are goin’ good, somethin’ happens t’mess it all up.”

  “You mean when you moved from Florida?”

  “No, well . . . yes, sort of. I left a few friends behind in Panama City—no one as cool as you—but I was thinkin’ of my dad.”

  An awkward, speechless moment passed. Aidan found himself staring at a fort wall and listening to the crickets’ bug symphony outside one of the basement windows.

  “It was ’bout two years ago, they started fightin’,” Robby explained, staring at the floor and wringing his hands continuously. “Dad’d complain about the house or the money. Then, Momma’d be upset that he was never around. I mean, they’d just holler at each other, callin’ each other names and slammin’ doors. I got so scared sometimes, I hid in my closet until they stopped. After a while . . . it got even worse.”

  Aidan cringed inside, wondering what Robby meant by “worse.”

  “Then, last year,” Robby made that clucking sound again. “Dad didn’t come home one night—haven’t seen him since. Don’t even know if he’s still alive. It doesn’t make any sense, Aidan. Is this how life’s supposed to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, first I lose my dad. Now I’m losin’ my best friend. It’s like life is some cruel joke. Doesn’t seem like things ever work out for anybody, especially me.”