The Door Within (38 page)

They crawled in through one of the couch cushion tunnels and flipped on a half-dozen flashlights. Then, sprawled out side by side on a mat of blankets and sleeping bags, Aidan and Robby allowed themselves to escape into a pile of comic books. Aidan ventured into King Arthur’s legends and imagined himself as Lancelot, the brave and clever swordsman. Robby, on the other hand, found the supernaturally gifted X-Men more to his liking. He saw himself as the swift and stealthy Nightcrawler, who could scale walls and teleport to safety when surrounded by dangers.

The basement filled with old house sounds—rattling pipes, creaky boards, dripping water—and time passed unnoticed. Comic books gave way to video games which, in turn, surrendered to sketch pads and pencils. Aidan had just drawn the outline of a dragon when he felt that Robby was staring at him.

“I wish you didn’t have to move,” Robby said, glancing up at Aidan and then staring at the ground. Something churned and fell heavily in Aidan’s stomach.

“The thing I hate most,” Robby continued, “is I’m gonna be alone again.”

This was the very last thing Aidan expected Robby to say. “Are you nuts?” Aidan exclaimed. “Everybody thinks you’re cool. I mean, you’ve got all those friends from soccer, football, and baseball. And half the girls in school are waiting in line for your phone number.”

“Well, they’re . . .
sorta
friends,” Robby replied as if English were a second language and he couldn’t find the right words. “It’s like some a’ them, they’re like
outside
friends. They like what they see on the outside. You watch, if I couldn’t play sports like I do, those
friends
would disappear faster than greased lightning. And if I wasn’t what those girls call cute, ya’ think they’d call me? Ri-ight! They’d walk on by with their pretty little noses stuck so high in the air—you could shoot spitballs in ’em from ten feet away!”

Yup,
Aidan thought.
That’s exactly how they all treated me before you showed up.

“But not you, Aidan. You’d still be my friend even if I looked like a catfish on a bad hair day and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball. You’re an
inside
friend. Am I makin’ any sense?”

Aidan nodded. In less than a year their friendship had grown. And they were real friends. Not “sorta” friends. It made the thought of moving hurt even more.

Robby made an irritated clucking sound and continued. “It just seems like every time things are goin’ good, somethin’ happens t’mess it all up.”

“You mean when you moved from Florida?”

“No, well . . . yes, sort of. I left a few friends behind in Panama City—no one as cool as you—but I was thinkin’ of my dad.”

An awkward, speechless moment passed. Aidan found himself staring at a fort wall and listening to the crickets’ bug symphony outside one of the basement windows.

“It was ’bout two years ago, they started fightin’,” Robby explained, staring at the floor and wringing his hands continuously. “Dad’d complain about the house or the money. Then, Momma’d be upset that he was never around. I mean, they’d just holler at each other, callin’ each other names and slammin’ doors. I got so scared sometimes, I hid in my closet until they stopped. After a while . . . it got even worse.”

Aidan cringed inside, wondering what Robby meant by “worse.”

“Then, last year,” Robby made that clucking sound again. “Dad didn’t come home one night—haven’t seen him since. Don’t even know if he’s still alive. It doesn’t make any sense, Aidan. Is this how life’s supposed to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, first I lose my dad. Now I’m losin’ my best friend. It’s like life is some cruel joke. Doesn’t seem like things ever work out for anybody, especially me.”

“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

T
hanks 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 coolly.

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.