By hooking her fingernails on the panel’s edge, Camm managed to swing the panel open on its hidden hinges. The chair rail split cleanly with the paneled edge. Once she got the panel door fully opened, she found a very narrow hallway hidden behind the walls.
Camm’s heart started to thud. She had discovered another secret door and another secret passage. She was sure the Swift Creek people knew nothing of this passage because, if they did, they would not have put her in this room.
“Dude, that is one weird house! How we gonna get inside?”
Cal and Lenny were seated on the ground close to the Camaro, which was parked outside the Searles Mansion. As Cal thought about it, it wasn’t ‘the’ mansion, but it was certainly identical to the mansion he had known in Trona. It was the same size, had the same number of floors, the same windows and doors, the same chimneys. In fact, it appeared to be identical in every way, except it was in another world. It was also locked up tighter than a drum.
To Cal’s mind, it couldn’t be the same mansion because they weren’t in Trona. When he looked around, they were in what appeared to be Searles Valley, where Trona should be, but there was no Trona here. He had found some local landmarks like Turtle Rock, Circus Hill, and Tank Hill, except this Tank Hill had no water tank. Besides the mansion, there was nothing manufactured or man-made anywhere in sight. Only the mansion stood in its normal place, surrounded by a desolate desert landscape.
Cal shook his head. It can’t be the same mansion.
In the evening sky, the sun was sinking behind the Argus Mountains. The slanted light gave a softer hue to the barren landscape. It was still warm, but Cal knew in high desert country the spring temperatures were going to drop rapidly with nightfall.
He sighed. Standing up to stretch, he gave Lenny a hand up. “We got no choice. It will be cold tonight. We’re sleeping in the car.”
The next morning was grim. They still couldn’t find a way into the mansion, and nobody had come looking for them. Probably, no one knew where they were or even how to rescue them. They were on their own. They marshaled their resources: various snacks, juices, soda, and bottled water in the car, plus whatever was packed in all the luggage still loaded in Cal’s trunk.
The biggest problem was water. Cal knew of only two places to get water. They could drive to Great Falls, where there was a trickle of water coming down the granite face of the rocks, or hike several miles up into the nearby hills to Indian Joe’s natural springs. Or at least, that was where the water should be. Nothing was a sure thing in this alternate Searles Valley.
They decided on Great Falls, which was several miles north of the mansion. The driving had to be done through the desert, since all roads had disappeared.
Once they got there, Cal shook his head at his gas gauge. “The Camaro’s getting low on gas. Maybe we should stay out here at Great Falls. That way we won’t have to drive back and forth to get water.”
“I don’t know, dude.” Lenny scratched his chin. “If people come lookin’ for us, it’ll be back at that mansion.”
Cal glanced at the trickling water coming over the falls, then nodded reluctantly. “You’re right, man. The mansion’s our best bet if we’re ever gonna get rescued.”
Cal took a cold shower in the falls, and then they filled every container they could find with water. The drive back was delayed when they got stuck in the soft sand filling the deep wash at the upper end of Great Falls canyon. By the time they got back to the mansion, it was almost dark.
As the moon came out, they built a big fire with all the sagebrush they could gather and the matches in Cal’s backpack. The fire didn’t burn long—it had been more for comfort than anything—but they did hope to do some cooking on the hot coals.
Cal had caught a large chuckwalla lizard, and Lenny was enthusiastic as they skinned and cooked it over the glowing coals from the fire.
“Hey, dude, this is so cool. We’re living off the land for real.” His enthusiasm died when he took his first bite. What little meat they got from the lizard was very nasty, as in Nasty with a capital “N.” Neither of them could manage more than that first bite.
Finally getting his wish to live like a hunter-gatherer, Lenny did not seem very happy about it even though there was no one around complaining about his unwashed body—maybe because there was no one around to complain.
Fortunately, there had been no sign of the giant snake, though they figured it was somewhere in the valley with them. Most of the animals they saw around the mansion looked normal in every way, including size—normal-sized lizards, bugs, birds, and ground squirrels.
Most of the animals, but not all.
On the third day, Cal and Lenny were making another circuit around the mansion, searching for a way inside. Turning a corner, they came eye to eye with an immense, Harvey-sized jackrabbit. Literally, they were eye-level with its huge jackrabbit eyes. The top of its head was over six feet high, and its ears stretched another three feet heavenward. Smelly and mangy, with patches of missing fur, it didn’t look too healthy.
All three were startled. Cal and Lenny froze, not sure what to do. After a long second and a half, the rabbit turned and bounded away like a gargantuan kangaroo.
“Wow, man, that was, like, one big bunny,” Lenny said with a nervous laugh. “Good thing he wasn’t the kind that bites.”
“All bunnies bite,” Cal said. “We better be more careful.”
Cal was mad at himself for not remembering that oversized animals might be wandering about, and also for missing the chance to eat jackrabbit for dinner. That rabbit represented a lot of fresh meat, and Cal did, after all, have a .357 Magnum.
That day, Cal came to a critical decision. There was no Swift Creek secret organization here, nor any prison to be thrown into. Cal decided to break the agreement he had signed forbidding him to disclose anything about the green rat. He told Lenny everything.
Lenny stared, listening to every word Cal spoke. Occasionally, he interjected with a, “Wow, dude, that . . .”, or “Dude, what about . . . ”
Cal had a rapt audience. At times, Lenny’s face would grow distant. Cal had a funny feeling Lenny was chalking up what Cal said against an internal checklist of some sort. What checklist that could be, Cal had no idea. But it was nice to finally have someone working with him who knew as much as he did about the Searles Mansion and the hideous green rat.
Wherever that giant green rat came from, there had to be other giant green rats just like it. If the green rat came from this world, the valley could be overrun with giant rats in certain seasons. Anyway, it was a possibility.
As the sun began to set, Cal and Lenny built a fire in front of the mansion, hoping to cheer themselves up. Going into their third night alone in the desert, they found themselves out of food and low on water. If they drove out to Great Falls again, they would have to walk back to the mansion. Their chances of survival looked grim. Hunched around the fire, they quietly contemplated their predicament.
Suddenly, Lenny looked up at Cal, the firelight reflected in his bright eyes. He thoughtfully rubbed the blond stubble on his chin with a nervous hand.
“Dude, I think I know what is going on and maybe how to get back to where we belong.”
XII
“You can’t leave me behind! I want to get out of here, too.”
Martha’s eyes welled with tears. Camm took her hand and squeezed it tightly, while bringing a finger to her lips, reminding her to talk quietly.
“I would take you if I could,” Camm said softly, “but you are just not well enough. You still need to be under a doctor’s care. Concussions are dangerous.”
Camm was seated on the edge of Martha’s bed, one leg dangling over the side.
Martha looked worried. “This place is like a prison. How long will they keep me here?”
Camm studied Martha with a critical eye and decided she looked pretty beat up as she lay there in bed. All the bandages, elastic braces, and other paraphernalia the doctor had insisted up
on only added to the effect. “What do you remember about the accident?”
“I remember everything, the spiders, the snake, being chased. I remember that good-looking agent all puffy and swollen, and then dying. I remember it all.”
Camm glanced toward the closed door. “I’ll tell you how to get out of here. They will be up here soon to interview you now that the doctor says you’re doing better. With the concussion, you can say you don’t remember anything. Tell them the last thing you remember is driving into Valley Wells with Cal and me. Tell them you don’t remember anything after that, until you woke up here. Trust me, they’ll take one look at you and believe everything you say.”
Martha chewed her bottom lip, her eyes fixed on the door.
Camm gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Listen. If you don’t know the secrets they are trying to hide, I’m sure they will let you go home, maybe even to your summer internship. But wherever you go, don’t tell anyone what you know about Trona. Believe me, those federal agents will find out if you do. They won’t like it, and they will come after you.
“So, say you don’t remember anything. And be sure to act all baffled by why the guys left you behind. I’m sure they’ll cook up some story that explains everything. Just go along with whatever they say and keep insisting you don’t remember anything. Okay?”
Martha nodded. “Okay. But where are you going? How are you getting out of the mansion? There are guards everywhere.”
“If you don’t know, you don’t have to worry about telling them.”
Martha sighed in agreement. “I wish I were half as brave as you.”
Camm waved it off, still feeling ashamed for even bringing Martha to Trona. She wouldn’t put her in danger again, and that meant not taking Martha with her into the passageway.
Camm had hoped to find matches to light one of the candles she had discovered so she would have light as she explored the secret passages. No such luck. Cal always had matches in his backpack in the car, but that did her no good now. However, a preliminary search of the passageways had shown that the large mirror in each room was actually a two-way mirror that allowed light into the passageway. As long as there was some light in the rooms she passed, whether natural or artificial, there was light in the secret passage.
The two-way mirrors not only allowed her to see into the rooms without being seen, but let her hear what was being said. Once, while exploring the secret passageways, she came upon the two white-haired men playing pool in a room at the far end of the second floor.
“Things are getting out of hand,” the tall white-haired man said. “Those giant spiders have been seen in Trona by too many residents. The rumors are causing quite a ruckus. People are keeping their kids indoors, and many are carrying loaded firearms in their trucks and cars. The town is starting to look like a private militia.”
“Bah! There are always rumors,” the short man said as he studied his next shot. “It’s good they keep the kids off the streets. Makes it easier for us.”
“But what about those reports that giant spiders are crossing over the Slate Range and building nests high up in the Panamint Mountains? We may have to do something about that before we start losing tourists.”
“Those are little concerns. The snake is our big problem now. With each appearance, it is getting closer to town and becoming more aggressive.” The short man popped the number five ball neatly into the side pocket.
“If only we had some way to control when or where the snake appeared.” The tall man shrugged. “But we don’t. So unless we want to answer to irate parents about more missing children, we have to do something.”
For the next hour, Camm eavesdropped as the two white-haired men discussed their options. In the end, the decision was made to evacuate the whole town, from Pioneer Point on the north to West End on the south. The plant would remain operational, and the workers would be bused in from Ridgecrest every day to work. A federal agency would assume responsibility for helping Trona residents find temporary housing in Ridgecrest.
“The costs and logistics of this evacuation are going to be tremendous. Thank goodness we have all those empty barracks on the Navy Base. That will take up some of the slack and make the whole process go faster.” The short man picked up his cue stick to resume the pool game. “For now, it seems to be the only way to prevent further loss of life.”
“What about the complaints that pets and small livestock are being stolen? Some blame the spiders, but we’ve had lots of reports of residents seeing two small, half-naked men running off with pet cats and dogs. Later, the remains are found, not far outside of town. Apparently, the animals are cooked over a campfire and eaten. That doesn’t sound like spiders. The gnawed bones are just tossed into the campfire with no effort made to hide the crime.”
The two men looked at each other, nodding.
“Certainly seems to corroborate Bob’s story,” the short man said, taking another shot.
What story that was, they didn’t say. From their conversation, Camm recognized they were talking about Bob and his friends, Sean and Jim. The men seemed happy the rumor around town was that Sean and Jim had been flown out of Trona to parts unknown. They never said anything about Dave, but Cal had already told her he was missing, too.
Camm never heard what had happened to Bob, but in her travels through the passageways, she did discover Sean and Jim locked up together in a second-floor suite on the other side of the great hall. They appeared to be bored out of their minds. Nobody seemed to know what to do with them. Camm decided she could be of no help to Sean and Jim. She had enough problems of her own. She couldn’t even help Martha.
The feeling Camm had had when inspecting the carved rat’s head, the feeling that something was reaching out to her, became stronger when she was in the secret passageways. It was like feeling a breeze, except there was no breeze; like dampness, except there was no moisture; like coldness, except the temperature had not dropped. It felt like frigid, invisible fingers reaching out to touch her, feel her, and reach right through her.
Every time the feeling came, she smelled the strong, sulfur smell that emanated from the monster rat. Camm believed, desperately hoped, the rat was dead, so she did not know what to think of these new sensations.
Feeling anxious, like she was somehow running out of time, Camm decided to leave at dusk. There would be a little light in the passageways from the lighted rooms, and then very quickly, it would turn dark outside, so she could sneak away unseen by the exterior guards.
Though Camm had explored all of the passages on the higher levels, she had been reluctant to go down too deep and had not yet found a way out of the mansion. She felt confident, though, that the passages led to at least one outside exit. She knew the green rat had used a secret way to get in and out of the mansion unseen during all those years when everyone thought the mansion was locked up tight.
Camm did not say good-bye to Martha. For Martha’s safety, she needed to be ignorant of when or how Camm left the mansion. Taking a deep breath, Camm gently pushed the rat’s tongue to enter the passageway and search for the secret way out of the mansion. If she found it, she wasn’t coming back.
As she made her way down dark, narrow stairs toward the quickly fading light in a passage below, the strange feeling came again, stronger than ever. Icy fingers wrapped around her heart, momentarily taking her breath away. Fighting panic, she recognized the feeling.
But that can’t be, it’s dead. I killed it. We watched it die.
Suddenly, the truth sank in, and horror paralyzed her with fear. The green rat is alive!
Lenny held up a spiral notebook that he had pulled out of the Camaro’s trunk. “Do you see all these sheets of paper in the notebook? How they are all aligned with each other and parallel to each other?”
“Sure,” Cal responded cautiously. He didn’t know where Lenny was going with this. He knew Lenny was smart, but sometimes Lenny’s explanations and reasonings left the realms of reality and entered into a wil
d, unsettled corner of the Twilight Zone.
“Well, assume that each piece of paper is a two-dimensional plane. Since each one has no depth, only length and width, they are not touching each other. Each dimension is its own separate space, an independent plane of existence, unconnected with any of the other dimensions in the notebook. Can you imagine that?”
“I think so.” Cal nodded.
“Good. I’m simplifying, but in our three-dimensional universe, you can have literally an infinite number of parallel two-dimensional planes, stacked up on top of each other. None of them will actually be touching or intersecting with any of the others. Someone in one of these planes of existence would have no way of meeting or knowing about someone in any of the other parallel planes. You still with me?”
“Uh, yeah. Of course. Standing in one two-dimensional plane, there is no way to ever know anything about any of the other parallel planes.”
“So far, so good. Now, no one can actually visualize what four-dimensional space would look like, but we can extrapolate from the example of two-dimensional planes lined up within a three-dimensional space. In a similar way, it should be possible for unconnected three-dimensional planes to line up within a four-dimensional space.
“In other words, a four-dimensional universe could hold an infinite number of independent parallel three-dimensional planes that do not touch.”
Cal scowled. “I thought Einstein said the fourth dimension was movement through time.”
“Well, he did, kind of. But most of the string theories in theoretical physics hold out the possibility of more than three dimensions of space, actual additional dimensions in space, not just movement through time. In fact, there may be many more than just four dimensions, but four dimensions will work for what I’m trying to explain here.” Lenny raised his eyebrows. “Okay?”
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