Beyond the Doors Page 3

  Exactly where a mother was supposed to be.

  Alexa sat up a little straighter as Miss Guacaladilla turned the car off the main road and drove up a long, bumpy gravel driveway winding its way around yet another empty, grassy hill. She flattened her face against the window, eagerly anticipating that first glimpse of their new home and—she was certain—of their mother.

  “It is so sad that your aunt lives so far away from anything or anyone,” Miss Guacaladilla was bemoaning. “You will all be tragically distant from modern civilization. You poor, poor dears. Why, you may even have to do without basic luxuries such as indoor plumbing, air-conditioning, or Wi-Fi access! Why must life be so cruel?”

  The children did not answer, as they had learned to tune out Miss Guacaladilla’s overly dramatic wailing.

  The car inched forward, tires bumping over every single pebble in the driveway as if loath to miss a single one. Then, all at once, Aunt Gladys’s home came into view.

  Alexa gasped.

  It was huge! And round! And…

  “Not what I expected,” admitted Zack.

  “It probably looks bigger than it is,” said Janice.

  “It’s ugly,” announced Sydney.

  Alexa ignored them and scanned the fabulous house for signs of her mother. When that failed, she looked for signs of Aunt Gladys. When that failed, she searched for signs of cute, cuddly baby animals. When that failed, she searched for any signs of life at all.

  That also failed.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” asked Zack as Miss Guacaladilla braked to a stop.

  “I’m so, so sorry, but this is the address Mr. Groskowsky gave me,” she answered with a sniff.

  “Who?” mumbled Sydney.

  “The sweaty guy,” offered Janice.

  Everyone tumbled out of the car and stood in the shadow of the massive-if-odd building rising up before them and blocking the sunlight. Though at first glance it appeared to be relatively round, a closer inspection showed a bunch of awkwardly placed, angular extensions jutting out from the walls here and there. A few seemingly pointless towers stuck up from the roof as well, ranging in size from only a couple of feet tall to one that rose a full two stories above the rest of the house. These asymmetrical details, combined with the distorted late-afternoon shadows, made the entire house look as if it were glaring at the children with pure malice. An old, dilapidated shed stood guard a few yards away amid the barren remains of a garden that hadn’t seen a green thumb in at least a decade.

  Alexa shivered.

  “How the heck do you get in?” asked Sydney.

  “Maybe you don’t,” answered Janice.

  Alexa couldn’t blame her sisters for wondering. Though this was obviously the front of the house, there didn’t seem to be a door. Also, a wide moat surrounded the house, and Alexa saw no way across. All in all, it was not a very inviting place.

  “Oh no! There’s no way in! How horrible!” Miss Guacaladilla quickly teared up at the inhumanity of it all.

  “There’s got to be a bell or knocker or something,” suggested Zack.

  “I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up,” she replied. “But I will look, if only to confirm your hopeless plight.” The ever-sobbing social worker dabbed her eyes dry with her pinkie and carefully walked to the edge of the moat, looking first left, then right.

  The children stayed by the car.

  “Do you see anything?” called Zack.

  “No,” she admitted. “No, I’m afraid I simply do not. It is but a dreary tomb of desolation. And to think, you poor, poor dears are doomed to reside within it…forever!” She broke into an uncontrollable sob. The children ignored her.

  “I don’t like this,” muttered Janice softly to her siblings. “Aunt Gladys knew we were coming, right?”

  “I’m so, so, so sorry, dears, but no. I was unable to contact her before we left,” said Miss Guacaladilla from the moat’s edge, surprising them all with her amazing sense of hearing. “Your aunt does not have a phone. Or an e-mail address. She doesn’t even tweet!” A single tear skirted down her nose at the thought of a life without tweeting.

  “Are you even sure she’s home?” asked Zack.

  “Or alive?” asked Janice.

  What the endlessly weeping Miss Guacaladilla was about to say the children would never know (though they assumed it would have been incredibly depressing), as all at once Janice and Zack’s questions were answered without the social worker’s help.

  “I don’t want any!” came a voice from above. All five car-weary travelers looked up to spy a small female head poking out of a window on the third or fourth floor (it was hard to tell which).

  “Oh! Dear me! Are you Gladys Tulving?” asked Miss Guacaladilla.

  “Who, me? Am I? I am. Am I? Yes. Possibly.” The woman seemed to be deciding on the spot. Then she added, for good measure, “I don’t want any!”

  “My name is Lubella Guacaladilla,” claimed Miss Guacaladilla, ignoring Aunt Gladys’s odd behavior and launching into her official, yet still quite sad, tone of voice. “I am with Child Services.”

  “No children! Not here. Thank you. Not in years. I was a child. Not anymore.”

  Alexa caught Zack raising his left eyebrow at Janice, who responded by rolling her own eyes at the sky.

  “No, I’m sorry, but I’m not here…I mean, yes. I know you are not a child.” Flustered, Miss Guacaladilla gestured behind her. “These are the children.”

  “What are they selling? I don’t want any. Is it cookies? I like pie.”

  Alexa giggled. Aunt Gladys was funny.

  “May I come in and speak with you, please?” asked Miss Guacaladilla. “You see these poor, miserable children? They are yours. Or rather, no. They’re not your children—I’m so sorry. They are your nieces and nephew.”

  Aunt Gladys paused in her window, obviously confused. “No cookies?” she asked, sounding slightly disappointed despite her gruff rebuke. “Nieces? Nephew?”

  “From your sister,” confirmed Miss Guacaladilla, pressing her advantage.

  Aunt Gladys promptly dropped down beneath the window with a squeak.

  “Ms. Tulving?” asked Miss Guacaladilla, a bit concerned. “Ms. Tulving? Are you all right? Oh dear, what have I done? What horrible thing have I done?”

  A single, shaking hand rose up from below the window and grasped the sill. Then a second. Together, the two hands pulled Aunt Gladys up until she was able to just barely peek over the window ledge and gaze down at her four family members. “Charlotte?” she asked, sounding for all the world like nothing more than a frightened little girl.

  Alexa swelled with hope, thinking Aunt Gladys had just called for her sister—Alexa’s mother—to come to the window. But the hope was quickly dashed as Aunt Gladys shook her head clear and stood. She folded her arms defiantly and glared down at the children.

  “Charlotte’s children are not welcome,” she said.

  The siblings looked at one another, confused and slightly crestfallen. As one they turned to Miss Guacaladilla pleadingly. The social worker waved at them reassuringly and turned back to Aunt Gladys.

  “Ms. Tulving, these poor, miserable, downtrodden little children have lost their home. Their father is in a coma. Their mother is nowhere to be found. You are their only living relative who is both not in a coma and not someone who mysteriously disappeared six years ago. Surely you can open your heart and home to your family under such tragic circumstances?”

  “No,” answered Aunt Gladys, slamming the window shut.

  Zack felt as if somebody had slugged him in the gut.

  Nobody moved, nobody spoke. They all simply stared up at the shuttered window in shock, willing it to reopen.

  It didn’t.

  “Can she just reject us like that?” asked Janice.

  Miss Guacaladilla was stunned beyond the capacity to speak.

  “No way!” said Sydney. “She has to let us in! We’re family!”

  Miss Guacaladilla
continued to not say anything.

  And then the crying began.

  Of course it was just Miss Guacaladilla, so Zack didn’t really mind, but it jolted him into action. “It’ll be okay,” he promised.

  “It is NOT okay!” barked Sydney. Zack saw her cheeks reddening—a sure sign of imminent eruption—and he quickly moved to still the volcano gurgling inside his sister.

  “We’ll make it okay!” he insisted. “I promise, we won’t let them—”

  But whatever he wouldn’t let “them” do was forgotten when the eldest Rothbaum suddenly let out a scream.

  “Alexa!”

  Janice pointed in horror at the house. Spinning around, Zack felt his stomach drop as his youngest sister walked up to the very edge of the moat.

  “Alexa! Get back!” he called, hurrying forward to intercept.

  “Oh no!” wailed Miss Guacaladilla. “She’s going to jump! The poor, sad, brokenhearted little girl is going to jump!”

  “She’s not going to jump!” snapped Zack as he reached Alexa, who—it should be noted—had no plans to jump. Instead, she stood at the very edge of the moat, raised her head toward the shuttered window, and said simply, “Please?”

  “Please?” asked Zack. “What do you mean, please? Please what?”

  Rather than answer, the defiant seven-year-old took a breath, looked up at the window, and repeated, “Please?”

  And Zack got it.

  “Please, Aunt Gladys?” he added. Alexa smiled at him and took his hand. Together, they continued their quiet plea.

  “Please, Aunt Gladys?” they asked in unison.

  Janice stepped up and took Zack’s hand, adding her voice to the simple question.

  “Please, Aunt Gladys?”

  “Oh, this is so tragically dramatic!” espoused Miss Guacaladilla. “My heart is going to burst from the pathos!”

  “Please, Aunt Gladys?” they asked again, this time with the fourth and final Rothbaum temporary orphan joining in. “Please?” It was a desperate, shameless play to their aunt’s emotions. Having never met her before, they had no reason to think it would work.

  But it did.

  “Stop that,” came Aunt Gladys’s voice from behind a different window.

  “Please, Aunt Gladys?” they repeated in as syrupy a tone as possible.

  “Go away,” she grumbled from yet another window.

  “Please, Aunt Gladys?” This time even Miss Guacaladilla chimed in, adding extra misery to the cause.

  Suddenly, the shutters of a window on the second floor burst open and Aunt Gladys stood there wagging a finger at the five of them. “Not fair,” she reprimanded. “So not fair. Shameless. Below the belt.”

  Trusting his gut, Zack silently led the others back a single step to leave little Alexa standing alone, facing the wavering woman.

  “Please take us in, Aunt Gladys,” she said.

  Aunt Gladys peered at Alexa. Alexa smiled back at Aunt Gladys through eyes blurry with tears.

  “You look so much…,” breathed Aunt Gladys in a bare whisper.

  “Like our mother?” finished Zack.

  “Charlotte? No! No, no, no.” She waved her hand dismissively, and Zack worried he’d overplayed their hand, but his aunt softened with another look at Alexa. “Like my mother.”

  Alexa smiled.

  Aunt Gladys suddenly snapped her fingers and jolted awake, all business. “Get back,” she ordered, dropping from view.

  “Back?” asked Zack, confused. He turned to Janice for help, but she shrugged.

  “Back!” came Aunt Gladys’s call from within the house. “Back, back, back!”

  “Is she sending us away again?” demanded Sydney. Zack wasn’t sure, but he felt it might be a good idea to do as their odd relative had asked. He ushered the frowning Sydney away from the moat while Janice took Alexa’s hand and pulled her back as well. Nobody thought to urge Miss Guacaladilla, but she managed to drift back anyway, leaving a surprisingly large puddle of tears in her wake.

  “Geronimo!” yelled Aunt Gladys.

  There came a deep, rhythmic booming of massive chains and an ungodly squeaking noise. Then a massive chunk of the house fell forward.

  “Run!” screamed Zack, who realized now that none of them had moved back far enough. All five individuals (even Miss Guacaladilla) turned and ran as a slice of wall four stories high and easily twenty feet across fell to the ground with a resounding crash.

  When the dust cleared, Zack (who found himself huddling protectively over Sydney) turned back to the house, speechless.

  “That is not right,” said a wide-eyed Sydney.

  Zack had to agree. He’d certainly never seen anything like it in his life.

  An entire twenty-foot-wide section of the house lay bare to the world, encompassing four floors. The wall that had once protected these rooms from the elements now lay across the moat, massively thick chains reaching from the farthest edge back up to the roof.

  It was a drawbridge.

  “Did I squish anybody?” asked Aunt Gladys.

  Once inside with their meager belongings, Miss Guacaladilla quickly herded Aunt Gladys off to discuss whether the Rothbaum children would be staying in the house until their father awoke from his coma, leaving the kids to fend for themselves. Before following the social worker deeper into the bowels of her home, however, Aunt Gladys ran over some basic dos and don’ts for the siblings.

  “Don’t scream. This is a no-scream house,” she began. “If you have to go, use a potty. No eating off the floor. Wash your hands. Did I mention no screaming?”

  “Yes, Aunt Gladys,” replied Zack.

  “Good. And don’t touch the doors. That’s important. No door touching.”

  Satisfied, the skittish little woman turned and marched past Miss Guacaladilla through an archway into the next room.

  “ ‘Don’t touch the doors’?” asked Sydney incredulously. “ ‘Use a potty’? Does she think we’re three?”

  “I’m seven,” announced Alexa defensively.

  “Guys, don’t worry about it,” said Zack. “She had to say something, right? I don’t think she spends a lot of time with kids, so she’s probably a little nervous.”

  “Let’s explore,” said Janice. Nobody objected.

  Aside from the front door—or, Zack supposed, the front drawbridge—the only exits from the rather narrow front room were the archway Aunt Gladys had led Miss Guacaladilla through to the right and a similar archway on the left. Relishing a moment away from Miss Guacaladilla’s waterworks, the children turned left.

  They were a bit surprised to immediately find themselves in what looked to be Aunt Gladys’s bedroom. As narrow as the front room—really more hallway than room—it contained a small twin bed, a side table, a dresser, and a large, open closet filled with very tacky dresses in far too many colors. Another archway beckoned on the far side of the room.

  “This is weird,” said Janice, frowning.

  “Aunt Gladys is weird,” muttered Sydney.

  Zack wasn’t about to disagree. He stepped up to the closet—which had no doors—and carefully pushed the clothes aside, peering at the wall behind them.

  “Huh,” he said.

  “Huh?” asked Sydney. “What, huh?”

  Rather than answer, Zack led his sisters into the next room, an equally narrow hallway/room containing a flight of stairs leading up to the next floor and yet another open archway beyond.

  “Huh,” repeated Zack.

  “Will you stop with the huhs?” demanded an increasingly irked Sydney.

  “Zack,” began Janice. “What are you—”

  But Zack held up one finger and raced into the next room, which appeared to be the kitchen. It was as narrow as the other rooms, but quite a bit longer. The inner wall was lined with a stove, fridge, sink, cabinets—pretty much all you’d need for a kitchen but in a single, extended row. Zack jogged into the middle of the room and inspected this odd “Wall of All Things Kitcheny,” looking back and f
orth and frowning.

  “I’m tired,” said Alexa, dropping to the floor.

  “Zack, you want to tell us why we’re running around like antsy gazelles?” asked Janice.

  “You guys notice anything strange about these rooms?” he asked.

  “Like what?” asked Janice. “Aside from the fact that there aren’t any doors in this place? Which is weird since she very specifically told us not to touch the doors.”

  “The rooms are all curved!” he exclaimed. “I bet if we keep going, we’ll eventually run into Aunt Gladys and Miss Guacaladilla and, after that, be back at the front door. Front drawbridge. Whatever.”

  Janice furrowed her brow and took a closer look at the inside wall. “Huh,” she said.

  “Not you, too,” moaned Sydney.

  “We’re circling something,” said Janice.

  “What?” asked Alexa. “What are we circling?”

  “I have no idea,” admitted Zack.

  Miss Guacaladilla could hardly say goodbye through her sobbing.

  “Oh, my poor, poor dears! I know your new home can never replace what you unfortunate children have lost, nor will it ever serve to soothe your broken hearts should your father never recover—which I fear is all too likely! But I pray you will find the tiniest shred of solace within these roughly circular walls.”

  While the rest of her siblings rolled their eyes and hid laughs behind awkward coughs, Janice shivered at the melodramatic woman’s words.

  She knows something, she thought. There’s something she’s not telling us. Something horrible.

  The others retreated back across the drawbridge as Janice watched Miss Guacaladilla climb into her car and drive off, taking whatever horrible thing she might or might not have known with her.