The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox

by Brian C. Jacobs

  Chapter 10

  Behind the Door

  As the door inched open, the most unexpected thing happened: I was blinded by light. After closing my eyes and letting them adjust, I realized it wasn’t really that much light. With the combination of my eyes being adjusted to the darker ladder room and my expectation of pitch black on the other side of the door, me and my eyes were quite shocked.

  The light was coming from a set of two long fluorescent bulbs locked in a cage-like fixture on the ceiling. The lights lit up one huge room. And when I say huge, I only mean to say it was a lot bigger than I expected. I imagined a small six-foot by six-foot cell with a sleeping bag on the floor. What I found was a lot larger—a room about fifteen feet wide and almost twenty feet deep. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of smooth cement, similar to the room with the ladder.

  Directly in front of us was one of those futon thingies—you know, where the wood frame folds into a couch or a bed and you just toss the bendable mattress on top. The bright red mattress was currently bent in an L-shape to form what looked like a comfy couch. I assumed the futon was folded into the couch position not because the owner was expecting company but out of necessity, to save space. A bright blue chair sat just beyond the couch and appeared to be the other part of a furniture set with the couch.

  A small, round table about two feet wide sat next to the chair. On top sat a shoebox and another open box, which, judging by the needles and thread struggling to free themselves, I guessed was some sort of sewing kit. Under the couch were some folded bedsheets, which made sense because the couch would also have to serve as the bed.

  Across from the couch on the far right wall was a small kitchen area. A counter with a sink held a small toaster oven, two glass plates, and two plastic cups—the kind they give little kids at fancy restaurants and sometimes fill with broken crayons. Up against the far wall was a toilet with half a roll of toilet paper sitting on the lid. (Well, that answered one question.)

  Scooter and me stood in the doorway in utter amazement at everything we were looking at, but none of this was as shocking as what stood in the corner between the kitchen counter and the toilet—a full-size refrigerator!

  “That must have been put in when whoever it was built this shelter,” Scooter thought out loud. He must have been asking the same thing I was.

  Everything else we had seen, I could envision how they could get it through the manhole, down the ladder, and into the room. The futon and chair looked like you could construct the wood frame at home using an assembly kit, and the mattress could be rolled up and stuffed down the hole. The toaster oven and dishes could easily be brought down the ladder tucked under an arm. But the fridge? There was no other way to explain it except that it had been down here as long as the shelter had.

  As I stepped past the doorway and into the room, I turned to my right to find a small bookcase. On top of the bookcase sat a corded phone, which plugged into a phone jack located near the floor. A small picture frame stood next to the phone. On the middle shelf were cans of vegetables and fruit and a serving bowl containing a bag of dinner rolls. On the bottom shelf were a pair of scissors and lots of coupons cut out of the newspaper. Next to the bookshelf sat a large stack of newspapers—probably leftovers from coupon-cutting.

  Although the room looked like a cozy little home, there was nothing really personal about it except for the picture on the bookshelf. I stepped closer to get a better look. It was a picture of two guys and a girl standing on the steps of an old, traditional-looking church. Based on the style of clothing, it was pretty clear the picture was at least twenty years old. The woman in the white dress and the man wearing a tuxedo to her right were obviously the bride and groom. This picture had probably been taken after the ceremonies, since they were holding up their hands to show their wedding rings. The man to the woman’s left must have been a close family member by the way they were comfortable standing so close together, but he could not be part of the wedding party since he was not dressed nearly as formally as the bride and groom.

  I turned to Scooter and pointed at the picture. “You know, I have only seen the one picture of Mr. Mathisen, but I’m guessing this is him, maybe twenty years ago.”

  “I agree,” he said. “I watched the video again during second period, and I am pretty sure this guy here is Mr. Mathisen in his forties. I bet this was his sister’s wedding. But what I am more interested in is this phone!”

  He picked up the phone, and in the silence of the room, even I could hear the dial tone. Our eyes got really big. A working phone? How was that possible? Scooter started dialing.

  “What are you doing?” I asked hysterically.

  Scooter hushed me with his finger and said “trust me” with his eyes. Someone on the other end picked up.

  “Oh hey, Mom!… Yeah, I’m fine. Just working on a science experiment out in the woods. It’s a walkie-talkie that with a couple of modifications I’ve turned into a short-range cell phone! Pretty cool, huh?… What do you mean? Most of my experiments do work!… Well, the robotic blender was the exception, Mom! Anyway, I’ll be there in a minute… Yeah, sorry about that. We were in a hurry to try this thing out… Yes, next time we will come inside and say hi and not just leave our bags on the back porch… Yeah… Sorry, Mom.” He hung up.

  “Well, this phone really does work. Now to see if we can find the phone number that belongs to it.”

  He headed toward the door. “I’m going to go inside now and check the caller ID on our house phone. Then, I will call you. You just pick up, but don’t say anything until I do; you know, just in case someone besides me calls in the next five minutes.” With that, he was out the door and up the ladder.

  As I looked around the room and waited, I began to wonder just what it would be like to live in this small room for who knows how long. Always worrying about being seen, always wondering what might be waiting for you when you lift the lid each morning, always wishing the toilet was more than four feet from the refrigerator…

  I was startled out of my daydream by a quiet chirping sound. My back was to the bookshelf, and for a moment, I thought perhaps a small bird had wandered into the shelter. Oh no! How would we catch this thing without leaving any trace of our visit—or the bird! But as I turned around, I realized it was the ringing of the telephone. It was a strange ring and a lot quieter than what I was expecting. But in hindsight, it made sense, because you don’t want any noise being heard outside the shelter and you don’t want to give yourself a heart attack while cutting coupons.

  I picked up the phone and Scooter started talking, “Hey, Ty.”

  “Hey, it sounds like you got the right number, Scoot!” I said.

  “It looks like our little walkie-talkie can receive calls as well! Sweet! What do ya think, huh?”

  “I say, ‘Ten-four, good buddy!’”

  He laughed and then hung up. After what seemed like only seconds, Scooter was back in the hole, standing next to me.

  “Well, Mathisen’s phone number comes up on our caller ID, so we have that now. And luckily it says ‘Unavailable.’ Otherwise, I would have had a lot of explaining to do if Mom or Dad saw that someone named Mathisen had called us. All right, let’s get out of here,” he said, scanning the room to see if we had moved anything.

  I exited, and after being satisfied we hadn’t disturbed anything, Scooter followed and shut the door behind us. He went to lock the door but realized that the door automatically locked itself. We both started climbing the ladder, and Scooter spoke up, “He has to have a spare key somewhere, Tyler; otherwise, if he leaves the shelter and forgets his key, that would be a really, really bad day.”

  After Scooter scrambled out, I gently shut the lid, and we hurried back toward a very impatient AJ.

  “Well, what did you find?” AJ asked.

  “You are not going to believe it!” Scooter exclaimed as he hung the key back on the nail in the big tree. He turned and headed straight toward the house with AJ and me
right behind him.

  Once we were up in Scooter’s bedroom with the door safely shut behind us, AJ began rattling off questions faster than Scooter or I could “not really” answer them. It was really too easy to get him riled up.

  “So, Scoot, do you think Mathisen uses that rifle to hunt with or to protect himself?” I asked.

  AJ, startled, asked, “He had a gun down there? What else was down there?”

  “Well, with that stench down there, it’s no wonder Mathisen is always outside, despite the risk of being seen,” Scooter said. “I would be, too, if I had to be around all those rotting animals.”

  “No doubt!” I added.

  “What animals? Did he kill them? Did it look like they were for eating? C’mon, guys, tell me!” AJ pleaded.

  After about five minutes of this, Scooter finally decided to stop yanking his chain and told AJ all that we had found on the other side of the locked door.

  “So I guess it was a bomb shelter that Mr. Mathisen must have stumbled upon some time ago, and he turned it into a cozy, secret place to live,” Scooter finished.

  “This housing development went up almost twenty years ago,” I added. “I bet whoever built your house also built the bomb shelter ’cause they were still scared the Russians would be dropping bombs on us some day.”

  Our History teacher had explained that once upon a time the U.S. and Russia were on the brink of going to war, and many people believed that if Russia were going to drop a big bomb someplace in America, it would be the Seattle area. After all, being so close to Russia, a missile wouldn’t have to travel very far, and with so many military bases in the area, they could deal a huge blow to our armed forces.

  “You’re probably right, Tyler. That seems to be the most logical explanation,” Scooter mused, looking up at the ceiling.

  AJ, always the “man of action” among us, had to chime in. “So what do we do now? You have his phone number, right? Should we wait till after dark and then call him?”

  “I don’t know, Aidge,” Scooter said. “We haven’t given him much time to respond to our note. Let’s give him another day and see if he leaves us a note.”

  I chuckled as I realized Scooter’s point. In all our excitement of catching Mr. Mathisen on film and finding the key, we had lost track of time. It was only this morning that he had read our note as he came out of the hole. At the earliest, he would be leaving us a note tomorrow. At the earliest.

  The rest of the evening was uneventful (in comparison at least). We half-heartedly played some “World Dominator” on Scoot’s computer and then headed to our respective houses for dinner.

  Well, actually, when I got home, there was a little excitement for me, but not the fun kind. My mother was pretty upset that I had failed to check in with her after school. Personally, I didn’t see what the big deal was, but maybe I shouldn’t have actually told her that.

  Then, she was mad at me for not checking in and being a smart mouth. By the time dinner was over, though, she was much calmer. And after doing all the dishes and cleaning the kitchen floor as punishment, everything was forgiven.