SATURDAY, 12:20 A.M.
Xander and David followed the flashlight beam around the corner. It found the closed guestroom door, and Xander held it there.
“Was it closed before?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Being closed was worse. It meant opening it to who knew what. Stepping nearer, he expected the door to spring open and the man with the big feet to charge out. The backsplash of light filled the hallway. Their own shadows danced around them. David was near enough for Xander to feel his breath on his back. He glanced back at his brother. Big eyes. Tight lips. He held the shower curtain rod straight up, ready to bring it down hard on any head he didn’t recognize.
Xander reached for the door handle. He turned it slowly, listening to the metal inside grinding against itself. The latch disengaged from the receptacle in the frame. He pushed. A musty odor drifted out. He pointed the flashlight at the black breach. It illuminated a thin strip of hardwood floor, a slice of furniture deeper inside. He debated kicking at the door, then decided to simply push it fully open. Extending his arm, he hoped nothing reached through and grabbed him.
David tapped his shoulder. Xander did not want to turn his attention from the partially open door. “What is it?” he whispered.
“Look.”
“Now?”
Instead of answering, David tapped him again.
Xander looked, saw him nod to his other side. Xander swiveled his head around that way. On the back wall, where the hall ended, a thick shadow, straight as a ruler, ran from floor to ceiling. He turned the flashlight’s beam to it. Part of the wall was canted out, open like a door that had not closed fully. The wall had been paneled in vertical planks of wood.
The opening matched where two planks met, which explained why they had not spotted the secret door before.
Xander pulled the guest room door closed. He no longer thought anyone occupied the room, but he didn’t want to make it easy for someone to sneak up on them if he was wrong. He tiptoed to the movable wall. Before he could get his fingers to the edge, David reached out and pushed it shut. It clicked and remained flush with the rest of the wall.
“Dae!” he whispered. “What if we can’t get it open again? We don’t know where the—”
David gave the wall a quick push and it popped open a crack. Xander scowled at him. “Good thing.” He pulled at the edge. It swung toward them easily, silently. He reversed a step, bumping into David and pushing him backward. The flashlight picked up another wall several yards beyond the fake one. He moved into the opening. A closed door was set in the second wall. A sheet of metal had been riveted to it, as if to strengthen it. Xander approached it, feeling David clinging to him like a wet leaf.
“Check it out,” he said quietly.
Hanging from a bright metal hasp, attached to the door, was a heavy padlock. Dangling with the lock was the portion of the hasp that had been screwed to the door frame. It had been ripped out, broken when the door was forced open. Splinters of wood lay at the baseboard, a screw not far away.
“It looks new,” David said.
Xander turned the handle and pulled the door open. Stairs
ascended to the floor above. But he and David had already found the attic entrance on the other side of the house. He recalled how small the attic had been, how he had assumed it was because of the shape of the roof. Now he thought of another reason: there were two attics.
He didn’t like it. This was right out of a Goosebumps story:
snoopy visitors would find the stairs to the attic, go up, and . . . well, what happened to them wasn’t pretty.
Xander’s light revealed nothing at the top of the flight.
The landing was deep enough to mask any door or wall that might be at the top.
David was peering around Xander, pressing his chest against Xander’s back. Xander could feel the boy’s racing heart, and more: he was shivering as violently as a person who’d fallen through a lake’s frozen surface. Xander stepped back and closed the metal-skinned door.
He took in his brother’s frightened face, wondered how much of it mirrored his own expression. He had read somewhere that bravery is not the absence of fear but the forging ahead despite being afraid. David was certainly afraid, but he’d seen his brother’s bravery too many times to assume he wanted to end their adventure here and now.
“You okay?” he asked.
David nodded and actually bent his lips into a smile of sorts.
“Your call. We go up now . . . or wait till tomorrow, get Dad’s help if you want.”
David stared at the door, considering his options. His heartbeat continued to pound furiously against Xander’s back.
At length, he whispered, “What I said before: let’s do it.”
Xander felt himself shiver. It was more internal than David’s vibrating goose bumps, but a sign of his fear, all the same. Maybe he had been counting on David to vote them off this island, to send them home, back to bed. Perhaps his brother’s fear was contagious. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear, he reminded himself. He just wished he had something like David’s curtain rod to wield. A bat would be nice. So would an M16. And he didn’t much like the idea that he was almost naked, except for boxers. Going into battle required a uniform, didn’t it? At least clothes. Did he say battle? Not battle. No, not battle. Just . . . just . . . checking out a new place in their home. That’s all.
Yeah, a new place behind a fake wall and a door with a broken lock, where some huge dude is probably waiting to ambush you.
Stop it, he scolded himself. Are you going to do this or not?
David, right behind him, had said, “Let’s do it.” How could Xander back out now? He’d never live it down.
He pulled open the door again, flashed the light up the stairs. Nothing lurked at the top . . . that he could see. He passed through the threshold, then mounted the first step. The second. The third.
David stayed one step below him.
Another step. A wall came into view, just past the upper landing.
Up to step number . . . he’d forgotten. Didn’t matter.
David kept a hand on Xander’s hip. He was so close, Xander felt he was giving his brother a piggyback ride.
He stepped onto the landing. Set at a ninety-degree angle from the stairway was a long, dark corridor.
David edged up behind him. He said, “Xander, look.”
On the left wall was an old-fashioned light switch: a copper faceplate through which two push-buttons, one over the other, protruded. The upper button was depressed, almost flush with the faceplate. The bottom button stuck out a half inch farther. Xander pushed this one, which caused the top button to pop out, teeter-totter style. The corridor lit up, illuminated by lights in the ceiling as well as wall-mounted lamps, spaced at even intervals on both long walls. The hallway wasn’t straight; it bent slightly this way then that way, like a snake. It never curved enough to block the far end from view. And its length puzzled Xander. It seemed longer than the house itself, which was impossible. He wondered if the wall on the far end was mirrored, giving the hallway its extended appearance. The floor was hardwood, as was the rest of the house, but an old-fashioned carpet, red with an intricate black pattern, ran the length of the corridor. The bottom third of the walls was wainscoted in squares of dark wood. Wallpaper covered the upper portion: vertical stripes of old vines and leaves over an ivory background. Doors lined both sides. They were staggered so no one door faced another. Their handles glinted dully in the light.
“Holy cow,” David whispered. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It looks like a hotel,” David said.
“A hotel designed by Dr. Seuss, maybe,” Xander added.
“Do you think the guy we saw is in one of these rooms?”
The figure. Xander’s nerves were coiled on the razor edge between fight and flight. The figure had become symbolic of anything this house could throw at him. But David had kept the threat focused. It was not a row of doors that could harm them. It was what could come out of those doors.
“Well . . .” Xander answered, taking a tentative step into the hallway, “there’s only one way to find out.”