Beyond the Doors Read online

  “You’re keeping secrets from me!”

  “I saw you!”

  “Get back, Sydney!”

  “I no go!”

  “How dare you!”

  It was all too much for little Alexa, who couldn’t even tell who was screaming at whom anymore. So she went ahead and did the one thing she could think of to calm everybody down.

  She screamed herself.

  It was louder, higher-pitched, and far more piercing than anyone else’s scream, and caused them all to duck down and throw their hands over their ears.

  When she was done, Alexa surveyed the scene with satisfaction.

  “Better,” she said.

  “I think you burst my eardrum,” muttered Sydney.

  “You guys were yelling,” she responded.

  “Dimitri’s been wiping memories!” said Zack.

  “Charlotte cannot be in this house!” said Aunt Gladys.

  “Zack and Janice are keeping secrets!” said Sydney.

  “It’s my house, too!” said Mommy.

  “We’re not keeping secrets!” said Janice.

  “I no go!” said Dimitri.

  “Do I have to yell again?” warned Alexa.

  Everybody was quiet. Alexa enjoyed her little moment but was already feeling uncomfortable, so she walked over to Zack. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Mom did it,” he explained. “She went into Aunt Gladys’s memory and saw the mustached man luring her away at the carnival. Mom stopped him.”

  “And Aunt Gladys got her memory back!” deduced Alexa.

  “I got a good look at that man, honey,” said Mommy. “It was Dimitri, wearing a very obvious fake mustache.”

  “No! I no go in memory!”

  “I know what I saw, Dimitri!”

  “It’s true, Alexa. Pop-pop warned me about him before sending us back,” said Janice. “He’d been having suspicions.”

  “Is mistake! I no go!”

  Alexa frowned and shook her head. It made perfect sense for the big, dumb liar to be the big, dumb bad guy. She crossed her arms. “What do we do with him?” she asked.

  “Lock him up and throw away the key,” said Sydney, walking away from the condemned man. “Why didn’t you guys tell me about this?”

  “We weren’t sure,” said Zack. “We didn’t have any proof. I’m sorry.”

  Sydney nodded, accepting the apology.

  “Charlotte?” asked Aunt Gladys, stepping forward. “Is this true? You went into my memories?”

  “To save you, Aunt Gladys,” said Janice. “To help bring you back.”

  The two sisters faced each other, years of mistrust lying heavy in the air between them.

  “Well, there’s that,” said Mommy, nodding nervously. “But also…Still, it’s good…” Flustered, she put out her hand.

  Aunt Gladys eyed it like it was a venomous snake. “I know why you helped me,” she said. “You want Mother’s door.”

  Mommy dropped the hand, not bothering to deny the truth.

  “Can we get back to the real issue?” asked Janice. “Locking up Dimitri?”

  “Yes!” agreed Alexa. “Put the big, dumb liar away!”

  “One question,” commented Zack. “Behind what door do we lock him?”

  In the end, they simply tied Dimitri to a chair in the kitchen.

  Bowls of Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings were passed around, and everyone enjoyed a quiet lull after the madness of the past few hours. Alexa, however, was in serious pouting mode. It had become clear that even though Mommy was sitting right next to her (Alexa hadn’t let her out of her sight since she’d returned), Alexa and her siblings were still going to live with Aunt Gladys. This did not make Alexa happy.

  Now they were all sitting around, more or less waiting for Miss Guacaladilla to show up so Aunt Gladys could sign the papers and make everything official and nobody would have to go live in Uzbekistan.

  “Sorry about the cereal,” Aunt Gladys was saying. “I’ll go to the store. There’s a store nearby. I’ll go. Buy something besides cereal.”

  “I’ll go with you,” volunteered Zack quickly. “I know what my sisters like to eat.”

  Alexa smiled. She knew Zack just wanted to go shopping. He loved food and was not going to pass up an opportunity to stock the kitchen.

  “Char…Mom?” asked Sydney timidly. “What was it like? Going into Aunt Gladys’s memory?”

  “And how did that fix her?” asked Alexa, curious.

  “I unblocked her memories,” explained Mommy. “When Dimitri entered my sister’s memory of the carnival—”

  “I no go!” pleaded the condemned.

  “He took her home with him so that she wouldn’t be able to remember going home with us. When that happened, her mind chose to cut off access to the rest of her life’s memories.”

  “The mind can’t handle a paradox, little Abner,” interjected Aunt Gladys. “It blocks any memories that might cause one. They’re still there. Just blocked.”

  “And that’s why you couldn’t remember anything after the carnival?” Alexa asked, close to sorting it out in her head.

  “Everything after the carnival was dependent on Gladys coming home with us,” confirmed Mommy. “So her mind cut off access to those memories. When I went in there and stopped Dimitri from kidnapping her, she was free to come home with the rest of us, and her mind released the rest of her life’s memory because the paradox was gone.”

  “Was it weird being back there?” asked Sydney. “Did you see yourself?”

  Their mother swallowed a mouthful of cereal and set her spoon down. “No,” she replied. “I had just thrown up all over my sister’s dress—”

  “Oh! I remember that!” exclaimed Aunt Gladys.

  “And Father had taken me to the first aid tent. I wasn’t around. Thankfully.”

  “Why thankfully?” asked Janice.

  Charlotte didn’t answer. Alexa looked up to find her staring off into space.

  “Is it dangerous?” asked Alexa.

  “Is what dangerous?” asked Mommy, blinking back into the present.

  “Meeting yourself in somebody else’s memory,” said Janice.

  Mommy stared at Janice in confusion. “What are you talking about?” She looked around the room, quite obviously growing more and more alarmed.

  “When you went into Aunt Gladys’s memory a few hours ago,” said Janice.

  “Who?” she asked.

  Alexa looked over to Janice, worried. Janice, in turn, looked at Zack.

  “Mom?” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m your mother?” she replied.

  “Mommy? Mommy!” Alexa tugged at her mother’s sleeve, her heart sinking.

  Mommy climbed off her chair, shaking her head and growing agitated. “Who are you people? Where am I? What’s going on?”

  “No, no, no!” Sydney jumped off her chair. “Aunt Gladys! They got Mom! What are we going to do?”

  In the silence that followed, all four Rothbaum children swiveled their heads about to stare in horror at their aunt, who stared back, equally horrified.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you doing in my house?”

  Alexa allowed a single tear to fall from her eye. Both her mother and her aunt were gone.

  “Mom? Aunt Gladys?” Sydney’s voice rose with each syllable, and Zack watched the imminent RAGE build to a head. “You know us, right? Tell me you know us!”

  “I’ve never seen you!” said their mother, raising her hands up as if to stop a slobbering puppy from licking her face. “Leave me alone!”

  “How is this possible?” asked Janice. “They were fine five seconds ago!”

  Sydney lurched over to Dimitri. “What did you do to them? Bring them back!”

  “I no go!” cried the hysterical man. “I no go!”

  “Bring them back!” repeated the increasingly frantic girl. The RAGE was boiling over. Zack knew they were moments away from it turning ugly.

&n
bsp; “Sydney,” he called, trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. “Sydney, stop. It wasn’t him!”

  “Bring! Them! Back!” She shoved Dimitri hard in the chest, her pent-up anxiety giving her just enough strength to tip the poor man backward.

  “Sydney! No!” Zack ran forward to catch Dimitri before he fell.

  Too late.

  The chair balanced on its back legs for an instant, before slowly teetering to the ground with a solid clunk.

  “That looked painful,” said Aunt Gladys.

  “You kids are monsters!” cried Charlotte, taking another step away from everybody.

  Zack kneeled down next to the now-prone Dimitri, who was still tied to the chair. “Dimitri, are you all right?”

  “I fine,” assured the accosted man, bringing a sigh of relief from Zack. “I lie down now. Is comfortable.”

  “Are you happy, Sydney?” Zack snapped.

  “He took their memories!” she accused.

  Zack stood and glared at his headstrong sister. “No, he didn’t! He was right here the whole time,” he said, gesturing down at Dimitri.

  “But he went back and…”

  “That’s not how it works,” said Janice. “Time passes in there the same as it does out here. Whatever happened to take their memories, it just happened. Just now. While we were all sitting in here, including Dimitri. So Dimitri couldn’t have done it.”

  “I no go,” repeated Dimitri from the floor.

  “But he’s a big, dumb liar,” protested Alexa.

  “Maybe,” agreed Zack. “But he didn’t take their memories. Not this time, at least.”

  “Then who did?” asked Sydney.

  No one had an answer.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said Aunt Gladys after a moment. “I have some questions. Little things. Who are you? Where am I? What’s going on? Finally, may I eat this?” She pointed down at the bowl of Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings in front of her.

  Zack nodded, then turned to his mother. “You probably have the same questions?” he asked.

  “Aside from eating the cereal, yes,” she admitted.

  “What are we going to do, Zack?” asked Janice.

  It was a good question. Did they go back into the MemorySphere and try to fix everyone again? How? They had no idea where to look, what door to hook up, whose memory to enter. For that matter, how did both their mother and aunt go blank at the same time? Didn’t changes in the MemorySphere only affect the owner of the memory?

  Fortunately, Zack was spared the need to answer Janice’s question right then.

  Because a more immediate problem arrived.

  “Hello? Hello? Is anybody home or has something absolutely terrible happened?”

  “Oh, no,” breathed Sydney. “Miss Guacaladilla.”

  The ever-tearful social worker rounded the corner, followed by two very large, very burly, and very grim-looking men. “I’m so, so sorry to have entered without an invitation, but the wall was open.” She tried to smile at everyone, but the effort proved too difficult for her to manage. Dropping her gaze to the floor, she spotted Dimitri. “That man is lying on the floor, tied to a chair,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Have we come at a bad time?”

  Zack could only gawk, jaw hanging open and mind empty. He soon became aware, however, that most, if not all, of the eyeballs in the room were pointed more or less in his direction. So he carefully closed his mouth and said the first thing that came to his head.

  “Huh.”

  “We found Mommy!” exclaimed Alexa, weaving through legs to reach her mother’s side.

  “Oh?” Miss Guacaladilla’s eyebrows rose along with her voice.

  Charlotte, however, stepped away from her youngest daughter. “Oh, no you don’t!” she said. “I’m not anyone’s mother.”

  “But…but…” Alexa’s lips quivered.

  “She…has amnesia,” explained Zack.

  “Another one?” asked Miss Guacaladilla. “First your aunt, now your own mother doesn’t remember you? How horrible! How tragic! You children have been chosen to suffer!” Tears dribbled uncontested down her cheek.

  “Not to mention the fire,” added Janice quietly. Zack threw Sydney a look, realizing they’d yet to tell their sisters exactly who had started that fire. Sydney shook her head slowly, her meaning clear.

  “Oh, the fire! The fire!” screeched Miss Guacaladilla. “You mentioned it!” She dissolved into hysterics and had to be comforted by one of the two very large, very burly, and very grim-looking men who pounded on her back, apparently not very good at comforting people.

  Alexa, meanwhile, continued to look up at her mother, her lips still quivering. “Please, Mommy?” she breathed. “Please?”

  “I’m…sorry,” responded Charlotte, seeming to melt just a little in the face of Alexa’s shockingly heart-wrenching plea.

  “Well!” Miss Guacaladilla gave one huge sniff and dabbed her pinkies under her eyes. “Do you have the marriage certificate?” she finally asked, addressing Dimitri on the floor.

  “Dimitri tied up right now,” he answered.

  “Yes, I see that. It’s horrible!”

  “Is okay,” he said.

  “We haven’t had a chance to find it yet,” said Zack, stepping in. “Things have been a little crazy around here.”

  Miss Guacaladilla’s face scrunched up sadly, her lips thrusting out into official pouting position. “Oh no! Without that certificate…I can’t…legally…” She squeezed out a few squeaks of misery. Behind her, the two very large, very burly, and very grim-looking men shuffled their feet impatiently.

  “But they’re married! Really, they are!” claimed Janice.

  “Without proof…” The waterlogged social worker shook her head. “I can’t legally leave you children here to live among strangers.”

  “This is our family!” stressed Sydney.

  “But they don’t know that, dear,” said Miss Guacaladilla as patiently as if she were trying to explain algebra to a confused ferret. “And with your father still in a coma, I’m afraid there’s no one else to take care of you.”

  “But Dimitri—” began Zack.

  “Is not legally family. Not without a marriage certificate. Plus he’s currently tied to a chair, which, frankly, is not proper parental behavior. I’m afraid you four will have to come with me.”

  Zack’s stomach dropped. This wasn’t happening. A few minutes ago, they had been reunited with their mother and gotten their aunt back, and their fortunes had seemed on the upswing. How had it gone so bad so quickly?

  “Are you sending us to Uzbekistan?” asked Alexa.

  “I’m so sorry, but the Uzbekistanian family has been scooped up by a lucky little orphan from Barberville who lost her parents in a blimp accident. I’m afraid there will be no pool for any of you.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, as if not going to live in Uzbekistan was the worst thing to have ever happened to them. “However, there is a new family who lives in the jungles of Uruguay. They are near a river. Which one of you is the strongest swimmer?”

  “You’re sending these children to South America?” asked Charlotte.

  “One of them. If we act quickly. This Uruguayan family is a hot property and won’t be on the market long.”

  Zack watched his mother struggle internally with the situation. He knew deep down she was a good person, and he could see the wheels turning. Unfortunately, he knew they wouldn’t turn fast enough.

  “We should be going,” declared Miss Guacaladilla. “Children, collect your things. If you’ve anything heavy, ask Gonzo or Pixie to carry it for you.” She gestured to the two very large, very burly, and very grim-faced men. Neither of whom looked like either a Gonzo or a Pixie.

  “No!” screamed Sydney. “No, no, no!” She ran forward and kicked one of the very large, very burly, and very grim-faced men in the shin. He didn’t react.

  “Sydney, stop it!” snapped Janice, pulling her sister away.

  “Let go of me! I don’t want
to go to Uruguay!”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that, dear!” sobbed Miss Guacaladilla. “But we can always send one of your siblings down there instead. Perhaps little Alexa. I think she’d enjoy the jungle.”

  Alexa crossed her arms defiantly in response to the suggestion that she’d like to live in the jungle.

  “You can’t take us away!” shouted Sydney. “This is our family!”

  Zack was impressed by the strength of Sydney’s passion but saw determination in the tear-soaked eyes of the social worker. She was not going to be dissuaded.

  “They really have to be taken away?” asked Charlotte again.

  “I’m afraid so,” answered Miss Guacaladilla. “Though it pains me to no end. Though my heart breaks for these unfortunate urchins. Though every fiber in my being tells me that ripping them away from one another is wrong. The law is, sadly, the law.”

  “Zack!” cried a very desperate Janice. “Do something!”

  And there it was. The plea. Zack’s mind churned into overdrive. There had to be a way to fix this. A way to save his sisters.

  A plan slowly took shape.

  “Gonzo, Pixie, would you please help these miserable little darlings?” asked Miss Guacaladilla. “They may need some encouragement.”

  Gonzo and Pixie smirked in a very un–social worker way. Zack quickly held up his hand.

  “No, it’s okay. We’ll go,” he said.

  “What?” asked Janice.

  “What?” asked Alexa.

  “Are you crazy?” asked Sydney.

  “She’s right,” continued Zack, slapping the pieces of his plan together on the fly. “We’re just kids. We need adult supervision.”

  “I don’t need—” began Sydney.

  “Yes, you do,” interrupted Zack. “Now we’re going to go gather. Our. Things.” He looked Sydney in the eye and narrowed his brow, praying she’d play along.

  “Gather…our things,” she repeated.

  “Exactly,” he said, breathing a slight sigh of relief.

  “Oh, I am so, so pleased to hear you say that,” said Miss Guacaladilla. “Gonzo and Pixie will help—”

  “We don’t have anything heavy,” said Zack, walking backward to the refrigerator. “First, we should probably empty the fridge.”