“It’s not that bad,” Aidan replied hollowly. He was instantly reminded of his father attempting to explain how great moving would be.
“It’s not?!” Robby objected bitterly. “Then, tell me . . . why do awful things like this happen? Why’d my dad take off? Why do you have to move? Why do all those horrible things on the evening news have to happen?”
“I don’t know, maybe—”
“I’ll tell ya’ why. It’s because that’s the way life is. Nothin’ good ever lasts. It’s just a waste. You get born, waste away in school, get a job ya’ hate, get married, have kids, get divorced, and die!”
Aidan wished he could say something really bright, but every argument seemed empty. And scratching at the back of Aidan’s mind like a dull knife’s blade was the feeling that Robby might be right. Life did often seem to be just one disappointment after another.
Shaking his head slowly, Robby sighed and flopped backward onto a couch cushion. His eyes were clamped shut at first, but as anger gave way to exhaustion, the tension released, and Robby fell into a deep sleep. Aidan sat there in a stupor for several moments. This was not the way he had intended to spend his last evening with his best friend. He felt guilty, but he wasn’t sure why. After all, it wasn’t his fault he had to move to Colorado! His stupid grandfather— he was the one to blame. Too old to take care of himself. Too stubborn to move into an old folks’ home. So Mom and Dad to the rescue! Aidan shook his head, trying to shake the madness of it all out of his mind.
Drained and becoming sleepier by the minute, Aidan crawled around the fort and turned off all the flashlights—except one. Then, still pondering Robby’s words, Aidan stretched out on his stomach and closed his eyes.
Some time later, Aidan awoke with a start. He pushed himself up a little, blinked drowsily, and looked around. The flashlight he had left on was nearly out of battery power, but in the dimming light, Aidan saw that Robby was still asleep. And the crickets were into the second movement of their concerto, but there seemed to be nothing loud or dangerous about.
Just as Aidan decided that it was okay to go back to sleep, a sharp hiss cut through the fort’s thin blanket walls. Aidan jumped. His heart and thoughts racing, he commando-crawled forward and warily peeled back the blanket. The moon was high enough in the sky to cast an eerie pale light through the two basement windows behind the fort. It was enough light to see that, a few feet from Aidan, facing away from the fort, was Buddy, Robby’s cat. Buddy’s back was arched severely, and he let out a deep, threatening growl. The provoked feline hissed again and bared its tiny fangs straight ahead at the open work side door.
A wave of gooseflesh surged up Aidan’s arms, and every hair on his body stood at full attention. How in the world did that door get open again?
Buddy let out a wounded howl, and ran off as fast as his little paws could carry him. Aidan wanted to do the same, but something held him there. He could not will his limbs to move, nor turn his head to look away. He stared at the open door and the lightless depths beyond. The crickets were no longer chirping.
A noise suddenly rolled out from the swirling blackness of the work side. It was a deep and heavy growl—like the angry rumbling of thunder that makes windowpanes rattle. And like thunder, Aidan felt it in his bones.
Aidan tried vainly to see. Then, about a foot above doorknob height, something pierced the darkness. As if two dark curtains were being raised, huge eyes were revealed. They were slanted and lit from within by blue fire. The eyes blinked once, and then the work side door slammed shut.
Aidan screamed.
Robby jumped up from his sleep and bashed his head on their fort’s card-table roof. “What? What is it?!” he yelled.
Clutching the flashlight in one hand, Aidan pointed at the work side door.
AUTHOR’S COMMENTARY:
“Robby’s Basement” is another chapter that fell like a domino once the first chapter was cut. Again, this takes place in Maryland, and again there wasn’t a logical place to sew it back in as a flashback. For one thing, the chapter is too long for a flashback. The editors felt too that Aidan and Robby’s building of the fort out of cushions made them seem much younger than they are supposed to be. They asked: Would high-school freshmen still do this kind of thing? And I answered: Probably not.
All that said, I really hated to see this chapter go. One reason is that it completes the promise of the prologue. “Adventures are funny things . . .” Events of the book mirror the prologue. Things do creep out of holes: moonrascals, Falon, etc. Things do appear down a seldom trodden path: a good crayfishing spot, The Ancient Tree of Yewland, and Paragor’s Army. Things do fall out of trees: Aelic and Antoinette, the Seven Sleepers, and such. And in this deleted chapter, by opening an envelope, we learn that Aidan is going to move even sooner than he thought. I know, it was a subtle artistic touch and most likely overlooked in the published version— but I like for my stories to have layers of mystery.
There were many other reasons I was sad to see this chapter go. First, Aidan’s parents escape the clichéd mean-never-understanding-parent image by arranging for Aidan to stay the night at his best friend’s house. It’s a peace offering of sorts and really humanizes Aidan’s parents.
The whole basement journey is foreshadowing of Aidan’s descent of Falon’s Stair. Every person has a fear—especially when they’re growing up. A closet, a tree outside the window, sirens, the wind, the space under the bed—we all remember those places and things that creeped us out back in the day. I wanted the readers to understand Aidan’s fear of dark, underground places so that, later on Falon’s Stair, the reader can enjoy the same terror that Aidan experiences.
I was able to steal parts of the scene where Robby reveals his bleak outlook on life and sew it into chapter 28, “Falon’s Stair.” There just wasn’t room for the whole scene, so I don’t think it impacts the reader as I would have liked. In the deleted chapter, however, you can feel the depth of pain and despair Robby experiences. I wanted for kids to have a “grown-up” conversation. I believe that kids are far more capable of asking the big questions of life than adults might think. Kids want to know why bad things happen, they want to know if someone out there has a purpose for them, they want to know if it’s all random and cruel, or if someone is watching over them. Knowing that you are “never alone” is a recurring theme in the trilogy.
The eyes-in-the-work-side scene was a favorite of mine. To write it, I just conjured up my own worst-case scenario. Being in a creepy basement in the middle of the night, awakened by strange noises, seeing a door opened—a door you had closed—and then, of course, the eyes and the growl. As a young teen, that would have sent me over the deep end. The students who helped me edit this version of the book really liked this scene. I’ve gotten letters from some of them wondering how in the world I could cut it. Alas, like a surgeon’s incisions, edits hurt—and heal. And in the end, the patient— or story—is better off.
4
IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT
Thanks a lot, Aidan,” Robby said, waddling with a heavy suitcase out of Aidan’s house. “After that dream you had last night, I don’t think I’ll ever sleep in that basement again.”
Aidan came puffing along behind him. “It wasn’t a dream.”
“Ri-ight.” This time it meant, “Oh, grow up!”
“I saw eyes in there . . . right before the door slammed,” Aidan argued, feeling a bit silly.
“We looked, Aidan, remember, with Momma? There was nothin’ there.”
“There was something there,” Aidan mumbled. “Your cat saw it, too.”
“Aidan, I’m fixin’ to call the hospital, get ’em to bring you one a’ those jackets with the real long sleeves. . . .”
Aidan couldn’t help but grin. Robby could get laughs in a cemetery.
“Robby, I really appreciate you helping us pack up,” said Aidan’s father as he took the bags from Robby and then Aidan.
“No problem, Mr. Thomas.” Robby nodded cool
ly.
Mr. Thomas hoisted one more suitcase up into the luggage carrier on top of their minivan. It was the last suitcase.
Nearly ten o’clock that evening, Aidan and Robby sat on Aidan’s front porch with the nearby streetlight scattering some yellowish rays through the big crab apple tree that had guarded Aidan’s front yard for so long. It remained hot and humid—not unusual for a July night in Maryland. There was no relieving breeze, and the woods across the street were still. The last few fireflies blinked forlornly in shadowy corners of the yard.
“You have my new address, so I’ll be expecting some mail,” Aidan said. “We could even trade cards through the mail.” They had been talking, there in the dark, for over an hour, speaking awkwardly about things that didn’t really matter. But it was painfully difficult to speak from the heart, so they stuck to safe topics. And while there was much left to say, their time had run short.
“We can email, too.” Robby smiled weakly. “Get one of those free accounts, so we can message each other—that is, if my sister ever gets her fat tub away from the computer!”
Aidan smiled back. Robby had been the brother he never had and the friend he always wanted—always needed, Aidan corrected himself. Somehow, Robby filled in all the holes in Aidan’s life. With Robby, Aidan fit in and always had direction. What would happen without him? Aidan hurriedly put that thought into his very full closet of fears.
A phone rang somewhere in Aidan’s house, and moments later, Aidan’s mom turned on the porch light and opened the front door.
“Robby, that was your mom. She wants you to come home now,” Mrs. Thomas said, smiling sympathetically. Then she quietly shut the front door and turned out the porch light. Aidan was thankful for the darkness. It was easier that way.
Aidan walked Robby down to the sun-bleached wooden fence that corralled the crab apple tree and marked the end of Aidan’s front yard. They exchanged high-fives, and Robby backed away toward the street.
“I’ll send you some comics from Colorado, if they have any different ones out there,” Aidan said, wanting to say something more meaningful, but stupid, less courageous phrases kept getting in the way.
“Catch some crayfish for me—keep ’em in the aquarium to bug your sister,” he said, continuing to babble. “Good luck with football this fall. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even try out for a team. Thanks to you, I can sort of throw a spiral now.”
“Ri-ight,” Robby said with a slightest tremor in his voice. This time it meant, “I’ll miss you too.”
Robby turned away and slowly walked up the street. Aidan noticed that he didn’t cut through any of the neighbors’ yards. He was taking the long way. Aidan watched until the night hid his friend from view.
Aidan’s parents awakened him in the middle of the night, and ushered him down the stairs and into the already running minivan. Doors closed. The van crept out of the driveway. Aidan watched numbly through the rear window as the only home he had ever known grew smaller and smaller until finally, it was obscured by darkness and distance. The neighborhood went away next.
Then, the little strip mall with the arcade where he’d played so many times and the family favorite, Bambino’s Pizza—all dark and deserted. Soon an interstate sign appeared, and unlike many vacations where that sign had been the first marker of good times to come, it seemed now so cold and final.
Miles and time passed, and Aidan could hear his parents talking in hushed tones in the front seat. The warm, almondy smell of coffee drifted back to Aidan every time his parents opened one of their tall plastic thermoses.
Laying on a foam mat under a light blanket in the back of the van, Aidan drifted in and out of sleep. The intermittent flash of the interstate’s streetlights through the car windows and the steady thrump-ump of the tires on the highway put him into a reflective trance. His mind wandered lazily from thought to thought without reason or order, like a leaf falling on autumn drafts.
Mostly, Aidan wondered a lot of things. He wondered if his new house in Colorado could compare to his home in Maryland. He wondered if he would ever be able to have adventures like the kind he and Robby used to have or if he’d ever even see Robby again. Lastly, he wondered if he would ever get along with his grandfather, whose fault it was that Aidan’s world had been turned upside down.
The answer to all of his questions was “Yes.”
AUTHOR’S COMMENTARY:
Another casualty to the Colorado opening in the published version, “In the Still of the Night” had to go. Here, Aidan and Robby demonstrate the devastation that occurs in the lives of children who have to move far away from a home they’ve lived in for a long time. It really is like grieving for a lost loved one. Aidan numbly watches as his home, his neighborhood, and all he’s ever known fades into the night. Description can be overdone, but in this scene, I wanted to paint emotion into the natural surroundings. The last of the fireflies blinking forlornly was always a favorite image if mine. The chapter’s a real downer—but I didn’t want to leave it that way. So as Aidan ponders all the questions near and dear to him, I let the reader know that Aidan will have adventures, that he will see Robby again, and that he will be able to forgive Grampin. I wanted readers to know that even in the bleakest moments, there is hope.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my bride who has never doubted, not once: I thank you for your faith and your sacrifice. To Kayla, Tommy, Bryce, and Rachel: I am rich because of your presence in my life.
To my incredible students over the years at Arundel, West, Oklahoma Road, Sykesville, Mount View, and Folly Quarter: Wherever you are now, I deeply thank you for your inspiration and encouragement. In gratitude, I leave you two things. First, a commission: You are already asking the big questions of life. Ask and seek until you find the answers. And second, a warning: Be very careful putting the pen to a page. You never know where it may lead. Pip-pip-cheerio!
How do you thank those who have made your life’s dream possible? Nothing I say will ever come close to repaying the debt I owe to each of you.
To Leslie, Jeff, and Brian: Thank you for sharing the adventure that was growing up together—and the adventure has only just begun! To Diedre (Cuz): Thank you for handing me a copy of The Hobbit, for it was then I discovered that reading is cool. To Bill: Still the best man, thank you for dar- ing to dream big things for everyone you touch. To my community group: Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. To my friends on the staff at Folly Quarter and elsewhere: Thank you for understanding why I’ve been reclusive of late, as well as for your kind efforts to generate interest in the book.
To Gregg Wooding, my agent and friend: Thanks for putting yourself on the line for the story I’ve been dying to tell. To Dee Ann Grand, Beverly Phillips, June Ford, and the entire editorial staff at Thomas Nelson: Thank you for taking a chance on me and for shepherding me toward a greater mastery of the craft.
To Patti Evans and the design team at Thomas Nelson: You guys rock! I have never seen such immeasurably, impossibly cool graphics!
And finally, to my parents: Thank you first for your love, unbelievable generosity, and unwavering support. And though it may seem silly to some, thank you for reading to me and before me ALL THE TIME. It mattered.
The Door Within Trilogy continues with . . .
BOOK 2
THE RISE OF THE WYRM LORD
Aidan needs to reach Robby with the message of Alleble, but how? Enter bright, headstrong Antoinette Lynn Reed, a young lady with a passion for full-contact Kendo. Then Antoinette is called to Alleble, and Aidan sees his chance. Hoping it’s not too late, he solicits Antoinette’s help to rescue Robby’s Glimpse.
But where is Robby’s Glimpse? Antoinette finds The Realm in turmoil. Some of King Eliam’s closest allies inexplicably threaten to turn away from Alleble. And dark rumors surface that Paragor is seeking an ancient evil to crush Alleble.
Will Antoinette stay and join Alleble’s finest knights to stop the rise of the Wyrm Lord?
BOOK 3
Still staggering under Paragor’s relentless attacks, Alleble’s remaining allies flee from the four corners of The Realm to safety within the Kingdom’s walls. Once there they find chaos, the forces of Alleble grieving a fallen hero, and the Kingdom’s citizens clinging to an ancient legend about Three Witnesses who can bring victory. But who are they? Where are they?
There is little time for Alleble to mourn before Paragor, the Wyrm Lord, and the deadly Seven Sleepers unite against the followers of King Eliam.
As Alleble begins to lose hope, Paragor unleashes the final storm. Will anyone survive to see the dawn?
Coming the Summer of 2007 . . .
A lad with no memory comes between the
Caribbean’s two most notorious pirates and the
greatest treasure the world has ever known.
The Door Within Page 28