The Sixty-Eight Rooms

by Marianne Malone

  Jack pulled up every tidbit of information he could remember about the American Revolution and how the colonists won independence from the English king.

  “Maybe we should have a revolution, like America, no?” Sophie suggested. Ruthie thought at first she said it to flirt with Jack. But then Sophie smiled, leaned toward them both and said quietly, “I am not too fond of our king. But do not tell anyone!”

  Jack wanted to tell her so badly that they would have a revolution, and soon. But he didn’t know how to tell her or even if he should. He didn’t have a chance to think about it, for at that moment they heard the voice of a French man, the tutor, calling Sophie’s name.

  “I must go now. Will you be here tomorrow?”

  Ruthie was about to say no but Jack answered first. “We’ll be here for a few minutes early in the morning, but then we are going on a trip with our father.”

  “I will be right here, then. Watch for me. Au revoir?” She ran off to find her tutor, turning once to wave to them.

  “Wow,” Jack said when she was gone. “I can’t believe we just had a conversation with someone who lived over two hundred years ago!”

  “Me neither,” Ruthie agreed. She thought about what had just happened; she was having difficulty understanding how it could be. What was the power that made this happen and was there a reason for it? Why Ruthie, why Jack, why Sophie? As they walked back to the balcony stairs she said to Jack, “She seemed so nice.”

  “I wonder what will happen to her in the future,” Jack said. “The French Revolution was pretty violent.”

  Inside they sat down, Ruthie at the desk again, looking with new interest at the diary in front of her. She would love to know what it said. Jack sat on a couch with fancy fabric and gold trim. He squirmed.

  “With all this money, why didn’t they make the furniture comfortable?” He got off the couch and opted for the floor, stretching out on his back and staring up at the ceiling. “This whole thing,” Jack declared, “is definitely bizarre!”

  “I know,” Ruthie agreed. “I keep having to remind myself that we’re five inches tall!”

  Then Ruthie remembered the pencil. “Look at this, Jack.” She pulled it out of the drawer and held it up for Jack to see. “A number-two lead pencil shouldn’t be in this room—or any of the Thorne Rooms. How do you think it got in here?”

  “Weird, definitely weird,” Jack replied. “I say we try and find out what’s making all this happen, if we can.” Ruthie could feel the wheels turning in his brain from all the way across the room.

  “Got any suggestions? I haven’t seen any instructions posted for us or a user’s manual anywhere.”

  “Let’s try the first room—E1. Isn’t it a castle room?” Jack said.

  “I think it is—let’s check in the catalogue.” They left room E24 and went back to the ledge. Ruthie knelt and flipped the pages of the catalogue to the beginning. “Yeah, it’s a room from England, around the year 1550.”

  “Okay, that puts it around sixty years after ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue,’ ” Jack said, and then asked Ruthie, “Do you remember anything that happened around that time in history?”

  She looked at him and rolled her eyes. “I’ll pay more attention in history class from now on,” she vowed. “Do you think we’ll find some answers in there?”

  “Who knows? But it’s the logical place to start,” he answered. “Let’s get rid of these clothes—they’re too uncomfortable.”

  ATTACKED!

  THEY WALKED BACK ALONG THE ledge to room E22 and found their own clothes where they had left them. Ruthie stayed in the room to change and Jack went out to the corridor. As she was bending down to tie her shoes, she heard Jack call her name insistently.

  “I’ll be there in a sec—let me get my shoes on,” she called back to him. He can be so impatient, she thought. But what happened next explained the tone in his voice. She came out from the back of the room and there, on the corridor ledge, was a cockroach-type creature, with long, hairy legs batting wildly in the air. It looked like some horrible monster from a science fiction movie. She tried to scream but nothing came out of her throat except a feeble gasp. The thing was huge, with twitching antennae all over its face. Its bugged-out eyes stared right at her. She ran back into the room.

  Ruthie tried to think quickly. She could feel herself shaking all over. Where was Jack? Had this giant insect with six spiked legs and antennae as long as her arms knocked Jack off the ledge while he was changing his clothes? Had Jack seen it and panicked and then fallen? That kind of fall could kill him … it can’t be! That’s why he’d sounded so hurried when he called for her. She had paid enough attention in science class to know that cockroaches were omnivores, which meant they ate everything. I need a weapon, she thought. She scanned the room; the fireplace poker would have to do. She would at least have a fighting chance with that. She grabbed it and ran back out.

  The hideous roach was waiting for her on the ledge. By the size of it she calculated that this was no ordinary house cockroach. It was the kind her mom called a water bug because they traveled up through sewer pipes. The thing was about three inches long—not including the length of its legs. It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen in her life! She raised the poker and took a swing at it. It actually hissed at her, a horrible, sticky sound, showing its uneven, sharp teeth. Ruthie thought she would faint but she didn’t; she needed to find Jack. He was still nowhere to be seen.

  The thing seemed to be interested in a fight with her. It stood up on its two back legs and used the other four to take swipes at her. Luckily, she had brainpower as an advantage. As it reared, she swung at a back leg, hooked it with the end of the poker and pulled forward with a quick motion. That caused the insect to lose its balance, flipping over onto its back. Now she had just enough time to slip by as it lay upside down on the ledge, wiggling its hairy legs in the air as it attempted to right itself.

  “Jack! Jack!” she yelled. “Where are you?” She ran along the ledge to the catalogue stairway. Then she heard his voice.

  “Back here!” She turned and saw him running toward her, holding a candle stand taller than he was. The cockroach was between them. “I was looking for a sword or something but this was the best I could do!” As he spoke the giant bug finally succeeded in flipping itself over. It saw Jack just a few feet in front of it and started to charge. Jack bravely held his position.

  “Go back in a room, Jack! It could knock you off the ledge!”

  “We have to kill it, though!”

  Ruthie was at the top step of the catalogue stairs, and she realized that if she climbed all the way down to the floor in order to switch back to full size, it would be too late for Jack. She didn’t have that kind of time. She decided to take a risk—or rather, a leap. She reached into her pocket, grabbed the key and dropped it as she threw herself from the book stairs. It happened so fast; the beginning of the jump felt as though she were leaping to her death off a tall building. She expanded in midair both upward and downward, so when it was all over, her head was higher than where she had started. Her feet hit the floor with extra force. But she didn’t have any time to pay attention to that. Four of the cockroach’s six legs were swinging at Jack while he tried to use the candle stand as a bat. Jack saw the full-size Ruthie and retreated a few steps.

  “Kill it! Quick!” Jack yelled.

  Suddenly the situation was altogether different. The monstrous creature threatening her best friend now looked as harmless as the roaches kept in the science rooms at school, gross but not dangerous. Even though she never would have touched the roaches at school, she swiftly picked up this miserable bug, dropped it to the floor and stomped her shoe right down on it. A sound that usually made her cringe now signaled victory.

  “I’ve always hated cockroaches,” she said, smiling at Jack.

  Jack slumped down on the ledge, breathless.

  “I hate ’em now!” he said, then added, “Thanks!”

  They both
rested for a few minutes. Ruthie knew it would be hard to get the picture of the giant hissing cockroach out of her mind even though she knew very well that it was gone for good. But they realized they couldn’t let their guards down—where there was one cockroach there were usually more. Ruthie also had to face the climb back up the fifty-book stairway to continue exploring. Jack just needed a few minutes to catch his breath and calm down. He looked like a dragon slayer who had almost been slain by the dragon!

  “Hey, bring some food up here, will ya? Fighting a giant cockroach made me hungry!” he called from the ledge.

  “I know, Jack—let’s find one of the dining rooms and pretend we’re rich people eating dinner,” Ruthie suggested after having shrunk again and climbed back up the fifty books, her pockets crammed with snacks, which had shrunk with her.

  “I’d rather just eat,” Jack said.

  “Okay, here,” she answered, handing him a bag of Goldfish. “I’m going to eat in style, though.” She marched on, poking her head into room E20 as she followed the room numbers backward on the way to E1. E20 was a wood-paneled library that her father would have adored. The next room was a dining room but not the one she wanted.

  “Wait up,” Jack called from a few steps behind after having shoved some Goldfish in his mouth. “We have to stay together, Ruthie; there might be more cockroaches running around.”

  “C’mon, then.” She motioned him to room E18. They stood in the doorway, where their eyes were nearly blinded by the amount of gold trim on every surface in the room.

  “Who would want to live like this?” Jack asked.

  Ruthie pointed to a big portrait over the fireplace. “Him,” she answered, knowing that the portrait was of King Louis XIV. “The king of France.”

  “You really know everything about these rooms, don’t you?” Jack said.

  Ruthie was happy to have impressed him for once. “The only thing I’ve been able to concentrate on all week is the catalogue. Let’s keep going.”

  The next room was the bedroom that she had seen last week. She might come back and sleep in that room tonight. She still thought it was one of the prettiest rooms of all.

  Room E16 was next; it was the room where Jack had found the candle stand that he’d used to fight the cockroach. It was a dining hall from a French castle.

  Jack, still carrying the candle stand, bounded into the room. He set it back where it belonged and plopped down in a chair, putting his feet up on the table, thoroughly at home.

  “Let’s eat!” he commanded like a king.

  “Okay, okay,” Ruthie agreed, pulling a bag of chips out of her pocket. She sat down at the table, which was long and sturdy and made of intricately carved wood. In fact, nearly everything in the room was made of wood carved in great detail. The walls were stone, and the ceiling was at least twenty feet high. A grand chandelier with tons of candles hung high over their heads. How did they light all those candles? she wondered.

  “How cool is this? Don’t you wish this was your house?” Jack asked, looking around the room.

  Ruthie wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know…. I think it might be scary at night,” she answered.

  “If I lived here, I’d have a bunch of big dogs to keep me company all the time. They’d be really good for guarding and hunting. You know, like kings used to have.”

  “That would help, I guess,” Ruthie responded, not quite convinced.

  There were two enormous windows with many small panes that looked out into a court with a brick castle wall on one side. The court area opened onto a road that led out to a green landscape. It looked as though most of the lower window panes could open individually. Some of them were open, and, like in room E24, Ruthie realized they were hearing birds chirping and could feel the breeze coming into the room.

  They were startled by what happened next: off in the distance they heard voices shouting in French. Ruthie and Jack couldn’t understand any of the words but they definitely didn’t sound friendly. The voices combined with other noises—a kind of whirring and dull thuds and metallic clanks.

  “What’s that?” Jack exclaimed, jumping to his feet and running to the open window. When he looked out his jaw dropped; some sort of battle was occurring right outside. The whirring sound came from hundreds of arrows flying through the air, shot from bows held by knights in armor. Some arrows hit the ground, while others hit shields. Many of the knights were on horseback, fighting each other with lances and swords, just like in movies. The swords and arrows hitting shields produced violent clanking sounds. Ruthie stood behind Jack at the window. Being in a castle that was under siege felt a little too dangerous as far as she was concerned. As the battle raged, the attacking army pushed the weaker one closer and closer to the castle.

  “Duck!” Jack shouted at Ruthie, who was already down on the stone floor. An arrow flew in through the open window and right over their heads, landing across the room on the floor.

  “Wow!” Jack said, scrambling on all fours across the slippery floor to pick it up. But as he reached for it, it simply vanished. Once again Jack was speechless.

  Although she was pretty scared by this near miss, Ruthie tried to think through what she’d just seen. “That’s so interesting!” she said, still flat on the floor, behind a chair for safety.

  “Where did it go? I did see an arrow land in here just now, didn’t I?” Jack asked incredulously.

  “I saw it too,” she reassured him. Then another arrow came through the window, narrowly missing Jack. After a few seconds it also evaporated into thin air. “I think you’d better get out of the path of these arrows—they look lethal before they disappear.”

  “You’re right,” he said, scooting to a spot behind the big table, out of the line of fire.

  They waited on the floor as more arrows flew past the window. “I’ve been wondering, Jack, why no one from the past is ever in these rooms.” Another arrow skidded across the floor and they watched it disappear. “Maybe these people—like Sophie and those soldiers out there—can’t exist in here. That’s why the arrows disappeared. Maybe those soldiers don’t even see this room—or can’t see it.”

  “We can find out tomorrow; we can ask Sophie,” Jack suggested. “We’ll figure out if she can see the balconies of room E24 from the park.”

  “That’s a good idea, but we’ll have to ask her the right way,” Ruthie said. She went back over the events of the last hour and suddenly realized that she had taken a big chance without knowing it. “One more thing, Jack: when I had the eighteenth-century clothes on, I left the key in my sweatshirt jacket! I was walking around all that time without the key!”

  “But I thought you had to keep the key with you at all times.”

  “I thought so too, but I guess not,” she answered. “At least not when I’m here in the rooms. Or out there,” she added, pointing out the castle window.

  “That must mean the growing and shrinking can’t happen in the rooms,” Jack said.

  “That’s gotta be right,” she agreed.

  “I wonder,” Jack mused, thinking through the implications of this theory, “if we’re safe from cockroaches in here. Wouldn’t stuff from our time disappear in here unless it was affected by the magic from the key?”

  “It’s possible but I’m not sure. We don’t have any proof.” She thought a bit longer. “But what I don’t understand is that pencil. I can’t figure out how it came to be in that room unless someone else has done what we’re doing.” She paused and said, “I think the magic works more like a one-way street; we can enter the past from our time, but people from the past can’t come to the future. And I don’t think we can relax about the cockroaches yet. We’d need to get something from out there”—she pointed in the direction of the corridor—“something that’s full size, and see what happens when we bring it in here. Something small that we can lift. Like a button or something.” She raised her voice to be heard over the shouts of the battle as it raged on outside the window.

  “That
would prove your theory,” Jack concurred.

  “It would prove my theory,” she said, “but it wouldn’t explain it!”

  A VOICE FROM THE PAST

  JACK WANTED TO STAY AND watch the battle outside, but Ruthie persuaded him that it was too dangerous. They had no idea what would happen if they were hit by an arrow, and it wasn’t a risk Ruthie wanted to take. So they headed back out to the corridor and continued on their way to the first room, hoping that they would find some answers there. Ruthie couldn’t resist popping her head into the next room, E15, which was another of her very favorites. It was the most elegant room she’d ever seen, all black and white and silver. Out two balconied windows she could see a nighttime view of the city of London in the 1930s. She imagined herself in this room, a few years older, wearing a beautiful, shimmering dress. But Jack was impatient.

  “C’mon!” he urged.

  Down the numbers went: E14, E13, E12. That was the room she had visited the first time, the room with the harpsichord and violin. E11, E10, E9, E8—they passed all the other rooms quickly. If Ruthie hadn’t been so curious to find out if room E1 held any secrets she would have lingered in each one.

  When they got to room E6 they faced a dilemma that was so obvious they couldn’t understand why they hadn’t noticed it before. Room E6—an English library—was the last room in the corridor. Rooms E1 through E5 were in a continuation of the corridor, across the alcove but with a separate access door. There was an emergency exit in between.

  “How are we going to get to room E1?” Ruthie wondered.

  “I bet Mr. Bell’s key opens that door too,” Jack stated.

  “Probably, but if we go out there full size we’ll set off the motion detectors or be seen by the security cameras,” Ruthie worried.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Jack answered.