Beyond the Doors Read online

  “It’s kind of late for cereal,” said Zack.

  “Not in France,” responded Aunt Gladys, tapping her finger against her forehead for no apparent reason before ducking back out of the room.

  The four Rothbaums stared at the curtain as it swayed back and forth in the wake of their aunt’s passing.

  “She’s not all there, is she?” said Sydney.

  Alexa giggled and hopped off the swivelly chair (though not before spinning around one final time). “I think she’s fun,” she announced.

  “Fun?” asked Janice. “Alexa, we could have died in there.”

  “But we didn’t,” insisted Alexa.

  “But we could’ve,” repeated Janice.

  “But we didn’t,” repeated Alexa right back. “And Sydney got her shoe back.”

  She pointed at Sydney’s feet, and her three siblings were shocked into silence to find the shoe right back where it belonged. Then she sighed, bored of the conversation. “I’m hungry.” She headed to the door.

  “Hold on, Alexa,” said Zack. “We need to find out what’s going on. We need answers.”

  Alexa stopped, turned back, and put her hands on her hips in her best imitation of Sydney’s “serious” pose. “And who else besides Aunt Gladys has them?”

  “Father had a theory,” explained Aunt Gladys while pouring five bowls of cereal. “New worlds…new dimensions. Bubbles of reality. All from memories in the doors. He was right. Father was so smart.” She emptied the cereal box, set it aside, and reached for another one.

  “So we were in one of these new bubble worlds?” asked Zack.

  “Exactly, Zubin! See? You’re smart, too.”

  “But…but…” Alexa struggled to form her thoughts clearly. “But we saw the butler. He saw us. We changed what happened.”

  “You changed the memory, not the reality.” Aunt Gladys opened the new box and finished pouring. It was more a single pour over the five bowls rather than five separate pours, resulting in quite a bit of cereal spilling onto the counter. “You can’t change the actual past. You can change what we remember about the past. Eat! Eat!” She shoved the bowls across the counter at the children.

  Alexa looked down excitedly at her bowl, then paused. “What about milk?” she asked.

  “Milk? Yes. Very good for you,” said Aunt Gladys. “I approve.”

  “We need some in our bowls,” said Sydney.

  “You do? You do! Oh!” Aunt Gladys rose and bounced to the refrigerator.

  “Why don’t I take care of that, Aunt Gladys?” offered Zack. Alexa, remembering how well Aunt Gladys had poured the cereal, thought that was a good idea.

  “Oh! Thank you, Zeus.” She leaned across the counter to whisper conspiratorially to Alexa. “Such a nice boy, don’t you think?”

  Alexa shrugged and plopped some dry Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings into her mouth.

  “You can actually change what people remember?” asked Janice nervously.

  “Oh, yes!” Aunt Gladys shifted gears so fast Alexa nearly got whiplash. “That’s the danger. Of memory hopping. That’s why my doors are old. Old doors mean dead people. Like that nice butler. Long dead. Who cares if we change their memories? They’re dead. See? A little more, Zebulon,” she said, motioning for Zack to fill her bowl to the rim with milk. “Better. Perfect! Right. I have work to do.”

  She grabbed her bowl and stood.

  “It’s four-thirty in the morning!” said Janice, pointing at the clock.

  “Is it? Well, I’m up. You go back to bed. First eat, then bed.” She stood awkwardly for a moment, as if waiting for something. Finally, she shrugged and sashayed around the counter toward the doorway leading to the massive steel door.

  A thought popped into Alexa’s head. She considered ignoring it at first because she was enjoying her Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings, but it wouldn’t go away. “Aunt Gladys?” she asked just as the flighty woman reached the doorway. “Why did you break the door?”

  Aunt Gladys’s feet froze in midstep, once again a split second before the rest of her body, causing her to lurch forward like a dizzy mime. She threw her arms against the sides of the doorway to steady herself before addressing Alexa’s question. “Every time someone enters a memory, it…sours,” she explained. “Soon…you don’t go back in. Not good. Not good at all.”

  She peered at each of them in turn, nodding to herself, then turned and hurried down the hallway.

  “Come on, guys,” said Zack, pushing his untouched bowl of cereal away. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  Nobody argued. Alexa shoved one final, sloppy spoonful of Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings into her mouth and hopped off her stool, beaming with excitement. She understood now what Mommy wanted.

  Somewhere in the house was Grammy’s door. She just needed to find it.

  Zack awoke hoping it had all been a dream.

  Finding himself in his bedroll on the floor with the lightly snoring Alexa curled up next to him forced him to admit that the whole “house burning down, Dad going into a coma, kids moving in with crazy Aunt Gladys” thing was real, but he still held out hope that the “traveling into other people’s memories” bit had been a really whacked-out dream. Maybe he’d eaten some bad Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings or something.

  “I can’t believe you actually managed to sleep,” grunted a voice he recognized as his older sister’s.

  “It’s what I do at night,” he said, squinting one eye open to find Janice leaning against the wall, arms crossed, staring at him. “You should try it sometime.”

  “Yeah, sure. Next time I find out I’m living with a mad scientist who hops through the dreams of dead people, I’ll give it a shot.”

  So it wasn’t a dream after all, thought Zack. Bummer.

  “Memories,” Zack corrected. “Not dreams.”

  “Whatever. Zack, what are we going to do?” asked Janice, kicking herself off the wall and dropping down to the floor next to Zack. “I wish Dad were here.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

  Zack paused, having no idea what to think. Seeing their father lying in the hospital…his whole world had been ripped open. Dad was the family’s rock. A slightly scatterbrained rock that could get lost in a task and forget his kids were there, but a rock nonetheless. Zack didn’t want to think about life without that rock.

  “He’s going to be fine,” he said finally. It was the only thing he could say.

  Janice nodded. “I hope he wakes up soon,” she said. “This place gives me the creeps. And after what happened last night…”

  “After what you got us into last night, you mean.” Zack immediately regretted his choice of words. “I’m sorry. I just woke up. I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did mean,” said Janice, drooping. “And you’re right. You didn’t want to go into that room. I did. I wish to God I hadn’t.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Why not? Who else should I blame?”

  “Why do we have to blame anybody?” asked a third voice from the doorway. “What’s so bad about what happened?” Sydney skipped into the room and joined her siblings on the floor.

  “We could have died!” said Janice.

  “Really?” asked Sydney. “You sure of that?”

  Zack had to admit it was a good question. If you got hurt or died in a memory, did you remain hurt or dead in real life? The whole concept of these memory bubble worlds made his head hurt. “Look, let’s just get up, have some breakfast, and talk to Aunt Gladys,” he said. “We’ll figure out where we go from there.”

  The three sat for a moment in silence, punctuated by a slightly-louder-than-normal snore coming from their youngest sister.

  “So who gets to wake Sleeping Beauty?” asked Janice grimly.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Sydney, quickly standing. “I gotta go potty.” She hurried from the room before either Zack or Janice could stop her.

  “I woke her la
st time,” said Zack.

  “Did you?” asked Janice.

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Rock, Paper, Scissors?”

  “Fine,” said Zack, sitting up. “Best two out of three.”

  After having his rock covered by Janice’s paper twice in a row, Zack gently nudged their younger sister awake. When that didn’t work, he shoved her a little harder, then finally gave her a pretty serious push. True to form, Alexa immediately jolted awake with a growl and glared at Zack like he’d just tortured a fluffy bunny. With a sigh, he led her to the kitchen. Soon enough, all four children were eating their bowls of cereal.

  “No sign of Aunt Gladys yet?” asked Zack.

  “Duh,” responded Sydney. “We’ve been in here with you.”

  “Not true,” retorted Zack. “Maybe you saw her when you went to go potty.”

  He snickered. Sydney frowned. “I didn’t say ‘go potty.’ ”

  “Yes, you did,” said Janice.

  “Really? Man, I’m starting to sound like her.”

  “Are we going to go into another memory today?” asked Alexa with the cheery innocence of youth restored now that she had some food in her stomach.

  “Um…,” started Janice.

  “We’re going to talk to Aunt Gladys,” said Zack. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Remember, we still need to go to school and all.”

  Alexa stuck out her tongue at this, and everyone had a good laugh.

  The laugh was abruptly cut off by Aunt Gladys walking into the room and screaming.

  “What?” asked Zack, jumping to his feet. “What is it?”

  “You! In my house! Who are you?” cried their aunt, stepping back and eyeing them suspiciously. “Are you robbers? Are you robbing me?”

  The children traded looks of confusion. “What are you talking about, Aunt Gladys?” asked Zack finally.

  Aunt Gladys whipped her hand out to grab the first thing she could find, which turned out to be an empty cereal bowl. “Keep away! I’m not afraid to use this!” She held the empty bowl protectively in front of her. “I have nothing to rob! Go away!”

  “We’re not robbing you, Aunt Gladys!” protested Alexa.

  “You’re lying! You’re robbing and lying!”

  “Why don’t you put the bowl down?” said Zack, trying to defuse the situation. “What’s wrong?”

  “As if you don’t know!” accused Aunt Gladys, most certainly not putting the bowl down. “What have you done with my doors?”

  “What?” All four kids perked up their ears at this.

  “The doors are gone?” asked Sydney.

  “Are you blind? Look around! No doors! In the entire house! Why steal my doors? Is that a thing?”

  “What? You took all the doors of this house down yourself,” said Zack, growing more and more confused with every word coming out of his batty aunt’s mouth.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Remove my own doors? Why?”

  Which was when Zack went from confused to worried.

  Aunt Gladys’s memories had been changed.

  “Was it something we did during the American Revolution?” whispered Sydney to the others after the children had convinced Aunt Gladys they weren’t robbers and had calmed her down enough to get her to pour some Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings into her defensive weapon of choice.

  “I don’t see how,” said Zack. “She was her normal, utterly loony self when we got back. Something must have happened after we went to bed.”

  “Unless one of you got up and went back into that room after we went to bed,” accused Janice.

  “Relax. Nobody went back into that room. Right? Sydney?”

  Sydney shook her head. Alexa also shook her head even though nobody had asked her.

  “So, then what?” pressed Janice. “Did she alter her own memories?”

  “Why would she do that?” asked Sydney.

  “How should I know? Like I understand anything at all about this stupid memory hopping business. Maybe she hates us and wanted to forget she ever knew us. Or maybe she’s faking it.”

  “This cereal is yummy,” commented Aunt Gladys at the next table.

  “Yeah, sounds like she’s faking it to me,” snarled Sydney sarcastically.

  “It is a yummy cereal,” agreed Alexa.

  Before Zack could comment on either the possibility that Aunt Gladys was faking her memory loss or the yumminess of Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings, the conversation was interrupted by a voice filtering through a speaker in the ceiling.

  “Hello? I am here.”

  Aunt Gladys dropped her spoon into her bowl, splashing soggy Ring-a-Dings all over the counter, and leaped to her feet.

  “A robber!” she cried.

  Zack rolled his eyes. “It’s not a robber,” he promised, getting to his feet. “Just the morning’s delivery.”

  Zack’s previous experience opening the massive wall/door of the house allowed him to crank the drawbridge down without smashing Dimitri’s toes. The husky man of indeterminable Eastern European ancestry stood proudly in front of his moving van, displaying his wares with all the fervor of a game show host showing off a new car.

  “Hello, boy!” he called with a frantic wave. “Is Dimitri! I drop off! I talk to Miss Gladys, yes?”

  Zack crossed the drawbridge and did his best to explain the situation, hoping Dimitri might be able to help. The smile on Dimitri’s face waned a bit but never actually went out.

  “Oooooo­ooooo­okay,” he said finally. “I bring doors. For Miss Gladys, yes?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” shouted a very frustrated Zack. “She doesn’t know anything about the doors! She doesn’t remember anything! Please, can you help us?”

  “Oooooo­ooooo­okay. Now is not good time?”

  Zack threw his hands in the air in surrender and turned to march back across the drawbridge when he spotted the others huddled just inside the wall, Aunt Gladys peeking out timidly behind them.

  “Are those my doors?” she asked.

  “Yes!” announced a cheery Dimitri. “Fresh doors! For you! All new!”

  “New? I liked the old ones. Where are they? Who are you?”

  Dimitri opened his mouth to speak, but his mind suddenly realized it was confused and didn’t know what to say. He ended up not so much speaking as barking incoherently. An awkward silence stretched the length of the drawbridge as Zack waited for understanding to dawn on Dimitri’s face. The usually jovial man went through a cavalcade of emotions as he slowly pieced together what was happening. Finally, he looked to Zack. “Oooooo­ooooo­okay. Miss Gladys…not remember Dimitri?”

  Zack shook his head.

  It was as if Dimitri were an inflatable balloon character at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. All the air was sucked out of him in front of Zack’s eyes. The man’s shoulders hunched, his arms drooped, his face sagged. Even his wavy locks fell limp on his head. Quite simply, the man was crushed.

  “Dimitri?” asked Zack quietly. “Can you help us? We don’t know what to do.”

  For a long time, Dimitri did not answer. Zack nervously glanced back at his sisters, who stood waiting for him to come up with a plan and make everything all right.

  “What’s going on?” asked Aunt Gladys. “Who is this? Why is he bringing…? They’re not my doors? Good heavens! Am I a robber?”

  “Zack?” called Janice. “What do we do?”

  Zack looked from Dimitri to Aunt Gladys to his sisters, feeling the weight of everyone’s expectations crush him down to size. Standing in the middle of the drawbridge, he had never felt so alone, so helpless. The fuzzy rug of his life had been repeatedly yanked out from under him these past few days, with each new unexpected tug flopping him back down whenever he tried to stand. It wasn’t fair. Dad would know what to do, but he wasn’t Dad. He was just a kid, and he honestly didn’t know how much more he could take.

  And then Miss Guacaladilla drove up.

  “Oh, you poor, miserable
, forlorn, despondent, woebegone children!” cried Miss Guacaladilla, choking back a flood of tears. “Amnesia! In one so sprightly as your aunt!”

  “Only temporary amnesia,” explained Zack in what Janice felt was a surprisingly confident tone. “The doctors say she’ll be right as rain in a few days.”

  The siblings and Miss Guacaladilla were gathered around the kitchen table, while Aunt Gladys stood behind the long kitchen counter, hovering protectively over her bowl of Honey Nut Oat Blast Ring-a-Dings. Dimitri stood in the doorway, nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot. Zack had come up with the amnesia idea, and Janice and her sisters had jumped on board.

  “A few days!” erupted Miss Guacaladilla, her lips trembling. “Oh, the agony! The unfairness! These guardianship papers need to be signed today!”

  “Why?” asked Janice, certain there was something the social worker was not telling them. “She’s not our guardian. Not really. Just until Dad’s better.”

  “Your father could be in a coma for years! Decades! Eternity!” Miss Guacaladilla raised her fists to heaven and shook them in the face of the cruel fate she apparently saw on the ceiling. “You poor, unfortunate children must be legally looked after by an adult!”

  “Fine. Aunt Gladys can sign them,” said Zack. “Right, Aunt Gladys?”

  “Oh! Well…! I mean…!” Aunt Gladys looked about, utterly confused. The four Rothbaum siblings smiled imploringly back at her, causing the flustered woman to be overcome by an emphatic case of “don’t look at me, I’m eating my cereal.”

  All four children visibly sagged.

  “She doesn’t know who you are! Oh, if only there was something I could do!”

  “We told you, the amnesia is only temporary,” stressed Janice.

  “Temporary or not, I cannot allow her to sign legally binding papers in her present condition. Oh, why must the law be so cruel?” pleaded Miss Guacaladilla.

  Janice shot her brother a worried look. If Miss Guacaladilla wasn’t going to let Aunt Gladys sign the papers, where would that leave them? “How about we call you when she’s got her memory again and you can come back?” suggested Zack finally. “I know it means another trip out here, but surely under the circumstances…?”