The Door Page 4

  When Hannah stood up and brushed off her jeans, she felt a queasy tug in the tip of her pinky. A tiny sliver had lodged itself just beneath her skin. She pinched it between her nails.

  “Salamander,” she muttered, wincing at the odd sensation of an object sliding out of her finger. It was much larger than she could have imagined, and Hannah was astonished to be holding a thin wooden spike the size of a toothpick. Before she could flick it aside, the sliver burrowed into her thumb — the pain was barely a pinch — and disappeared completely. She examined her hand in disbelief, prodding and poking, but it had left no trace.

  Okay, Hannah thought, allowing herself a shudder of revulsion. That happened. She was going to have to accept it and move on, because there was no retreating back into the lighthouse: The doorway had vanished.

  Mom, you have to be here, she thought.

  A thump from below made her freeze. Had she stumbled into someone’s house? Was there a family of dead people having lunch a few rooms away? She imagined a skeletal hand pulling a cobwebby jar of peanut butter from a cupboard. The sound of muffled voices sent her to the window, the only possible escape route. There was no way to open it. She could probably break it with her elbow — she was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt — but after the odd behavior of the wooden splinter, she wasn’t keen on introducing her skin to shards of glass.

  Thick grime around the edges of the window faded to a filmy coating in the center, giving the world outside the look of an old photograph. The house across the street was a dreary mansion bristling with chimneys. It belonged near a manicured garden, a hedge maze, and a pond full of geese, yet here it was shoved up against its next-door neighbor, a decrepit palace whose balconies seemed to be spawning tendrils of creeping ivy. Candlelight flickered in an upper window. A woman sat down and began combing her hair with slow, leisurely strokes. Hannah rapped on the glass, trying to get her attention.

  “Hello!” Hannah called out.

  Hannah could tell that the woman wasn’t looking in a mirror; she was gazing out across the street.

  “Over here!”

  Now there were distinct footsteps in the room below the attic, and Hannah remembered her mother’s words: Trying to sneak through either one of these doors is a good way to summon an army of Watchers. She turned away from the window. Getting scooped up by the Watchers was the best possible thing that could happen. Once she explained her situation, they could check their files, or government database, or whatever system kept track of new arrivals. She imagined waiting in an office while a Watcher sat at a computer and scrolled down to a highlighted name: LEANNA SILVER.

  The Watchers would know where she was. After all, she’d just gotten here.

  Someone began pounding against the floor of the attic like an angry neighbor with a broomstick. Hannah remembered a helpful phrase from one of the playground games at yesterday’s recess.

  “Same team!” she called out, stamping her foot.

  A square panel in the floor opened, pointed straight at the ceiling, then collapsed flat, sending a plume of dust swirling into her eyes. She coughed and fanned the air with her hand. She felt sluggish, as if she were stirring an impossibly thick stew. A man joined her in the attic. His features were indistinct, shadowed by his shapeless hat, but Hannah could make out his eyes.

  It’s not a hat, she realized. It’s more like a strange tattoo.

  “I need your help,” she said in a faraway voice.

  The silent man wore the attic’s musty gloom like a cloak. Light from the window slunk away to cower in the eaves. He’s on my side, Hannah told herself as she backed into the corner. The Watcher’s face began to ripple in and out of a dark shroud, as if he were hiding behind a veil on a windy day.

  “Let me just tell you what happened,” she pleaded. Then the Watcher’s eyes gleamed and she lost herself in the radiance.

  Hannah’s cell was a concrete sphere. If she sat on her cot and faced the sink, there was a steel door to her left. To her right was a bench the size of a baby-changing station in a public restroom. The only flat surface was the floor, which she had to cross to get from the cot to the sink. She could make this crossing in three steps, and had done so eleven times. Sixty-six steps in all (there and back) and yet she still couldn’t figure out how to make the faucet work. It was shaped like the forked tongue of a lizard and had no handles or knobs.

  Nobody came to give her food. And anyway, she wasn’t hungry. This made it impossible to tell how much time had passed since the cell had taken shape around her as abruptly as the attic had vanished. The overhead light, a circular fluorescent tube, was always on. Bathed in its washed-out glow, she sat on the cot’s thin cushion and studied her thumb. The fact that it didn’t hurt was alarming.

  The skin of her face felt the same as ever. Her jeans and checked flannel shirt (snaps, not buttons) still smelled like fabric softener. She couldn’t tell if she was thirsty or not, but figured it had been too long since her last drink of water — her mother had given her a glass before bed, which might have already been days ago, for all she knew.

  Three steps to the sink. Hannah ran her finger along the smooth curve of the faucet, tracing its sea-monster humps, tapping both forks of the tongue. She closed one eye and peered at it from every angle. No openings in the faucet, no drain in the basin. She waved her hand, hoping to trigger a sensor.

  “ ‘Lizard tongue,’ ” said a familiar voice, “means a sink that doesn’t work.”

  “Nancy!” Hannah said, tapping the faucet with a fingertip. “Help me figure this out.”

  Now it was Belinda’s turn to chime in. “Why don’t you just sit still instead of fidgeting — I’m sure someone will be along to help if you’ll just be patient.”

  Hannah scoffed at Belinda’s school-teacher tone. The old woman’s advice always involved acting mature and being polite.

  “What if it’s not even a faucet? Ever thought of it that way?” This new voice belonged to a boy. “Anyway, who cares.”

  Her hands were gripping the sides of the basin. The voices weren’t coming from her head. They were echoing inside the cell, crisp and audible. It was as if Nancy and Belinda and the boy were —

  “Maybe the metal thing under the sink needs to be hooked up,” Nancy suggested.

  Hannah turned. Leaning against the door was a girl who could be her twin — except this girl’s acid-washed jeans were ripped at the knees and her hair was cut short and spiky. The cot was occupied by an elderly woman who sat with her legs primly crossed; instead of the floral housecoat that Hannah had always imagined, she wore linen pants and a long-sleeved blouse. A pale, hollow-cheeked boy was sitting on the floor, knees hugged to his chest, head tilted back against the wall, his half-lidded eyes focused on nothing.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Slowly, as if it required an incredible amount of effort, the boy raised the lids of his eyes and moved his head slightly to look at Hannah.

  “Seriously?”

  “That’s Albert,” Nancy said, jerking her thumb in the boy’s direction. “He’s new.”

  “He is not new,” Belinda corrected. “In fact, he’s been around longer than you, Nancy. Isn’t that right, young man?”

  Albert sighed, closing his eyes. “Whatever.” There was a sound like a faint coastal wind, and Hannah’s shirt collar fluttered. She approached the cot — seventy, seventy-one, seventy-two steps — and reached out with an unsteady hand.

  Belinda nodded. “Go ahead.”

  Hannah took the sleeve of the old woman’s blouse, rolled a bit of fabric between her fingers, and was surprised to find that it felt like real clothing. Gently, she prodded the woman’s arm — skin, with muscle and bone underneath. Hannah had always pictured the voices in her head as cartoons with a few basic characteristics. But Belinda’s face bore the markings of an entire life — a real life — lived in full. Wrinkles and plucked eyebrows and a beauty mark just to the left of her nose. A bit too much concealer, cracking in places.r />
  “How did you get here?” Hannah asked.

  “Same way you did,” Nancy said. “Through the lighthouse.”

  “You followed me?”

  Nancy scratched at the exposed skin of her knee. Albert mumbled something. Belinda patted the cushion beside her and said, “Why don’t you have a seat, and we’ll chat.”

  Hannah was brimming with questions, but right now there were only two that mattered. “Can you help me find a way out of here? And do you know where my mother is?”

  It occurred to her that the Watchers were probably spying on her. She wondered if they were gathered around a screen, laughing at the crazy girl talking to herself. Or maybe, in this place, Belinda and Nancy and Albert were visible to everyone.

  “Eat the stuffing out of the cushion,” Nancy suggested. “They’ll have to take you to a hospital, and it’ll be easier to escape from there.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort!” Belinda said. “Bide your time. Watchers and Guardians are supposed to work together. This is just a misunderstanding, I’m sure.”

  Then came the unmistakable sound of a key in a lock. Hannah found herself alone as the steel door swung open.

  * * *

  “When did the banished ones first contact you?”

  The Watcher sat on the cement bench. His voice was reedy and distorted, as if the words were swimming across a vast distance. Hannah could barely look at him; the fluid tattoo that slithered about his face reflected the overhead light, and the harsh glow veiled everything but his eyes.

  “Years ago?” he asked. “Months? Weeks? Days?” His hands were folded carefully in his lap.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hannah said. “Nobody contacted me about anything.” She was hugging her knees to her chest, just like Albert had been doing before he vanished along with Nancy and Belinda at the sound of the door.

  A second Watcher leaned casually against the sink, arms folded across the front of her evening gown. This woman’s face glinted with silver as it picked up hints of her necklace to spin through its camouflage. Gaudy jewelry ringed her wrists and ankles, and her strappy shoes looked like they had come from an expensive vintage shop.

  “I know we’d both appreciate it if you’d help us put together a little timeline of events, Hannah. Okay?” The woman’s voice was slightly more pleasant than her partner’s.

  “When did the banished ones first contact you?” There was no variation in the man’s tone, as if he were playing a recording of himself.

  “Chalkdust!” Hannah said. “Stop asking me that, I told you I don’t know.”

  “There’s no need to swear at us, Hannah. We’re not your enemies.”

  The woman kept saying her name, which was almost as maddening as the man’s broken-record question.

  “I wasn’t swearing.”

  The woman uncrossed her arms and said something to the man that was impossible for Hannah to make out. Their voices sounded like a sped-up song, chirpy and quick. Then they went back to normal — or at least as close to normal as their voices ever got.

  “Crepuscular slurp,” the woman said.

  Hannah’s eyes widened. “You speak Muffin?”

  “Grenadine magnetism,” the man confirmed.

  “If you know so much about me, then you know I’m telling the truth.”

  “We just need some help filling in the blanks,” the woman said. “But let’s back up. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, Hannah?”

  The man chirped angrily at his partner, who ignored him. Frustrated, he stood up from his cement seat. Hannah forced herself to peer beyond the wormy brightness of his tattoo. She expected to see the grim, unsmiling face of a man who enjoyed asking the same question over and over, but it was like staring into the sun. She closed her eyes.

  “If I talk to you, will you take me to my mother?” she asked.

  “Think of it like this,” the man said, leaning in close. His presence was like humid air making its way through a swamp. “If you don’t tell us what we want to know, you’ll never see your mother again. Porcelain?”

  Hannah swallowed. “Porcelain,” she said weakly.

  The woman began to emit a sound like Styrofoam being rubbed together. Hannah’s skin erupted into goose bumps. With her forehead pressed against her knees, she shivered, focusing on the fading smell of home. The laundry room at Cliff House vented out into the side yard. Hannah tried to put herself there among the waist-high flowers and clouds of fragrant steam. The voices of the Watchers blended into dissonant music, a symphony of fingernails on chalkboards.

  “What are the banished ones going to do?” the man asked, his new question coming through loud and clear. He was somehow able to argue with his partner and interrogate Hannah at the same time. “What are they planning?”

  Sunflowers, Hannah thought. Laundry steam. But it was no use — she was wreathed in the dank heat of the Watcher’s breath. She clamped her palms over her ears and began to shriek. It felt terrific. When she stopped, out of breath, the cell was deathly quiet. She opened her eyes. The man was sitting on his cement seat, silent and still, hands folded in his lap. The woman was leaning against the sink. It was as if they had hit rewind and arrived at the beginning of the session.

  “Would you like a drink?” the woman asked.

  Hannah still couldn’t tell if she was thirsty or not.

  “I guess.”

  The lady tapped the faucet with one of her bejeweled fingers, and the forked tongue slithered across the cell. Hovering in front of Hannah’s face, the tongue moved inquisitively, as if it were trying to sniff her. She moved along the cot, sliding as far away from it as she could.

  “Never mind,” Hannah said quickly. “I’m okay.”

  The Watcher leaned over and whispered into the basin. The tongue retracted.

  “Why don’t we let you collect your thoughts,” the woman said, straightening up. “I think we could all use a break. How would you feel about that, Hannah?”

  Hannah didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about any of this. Why was the Watcher suddenly acting like Hannah had a choice in the matter? She couldn’t help but feel slightly grateful to the woman for getting the man to stop with his questions. Maybe the key to finding her mother was to tell them what they wanted to hear. But what was that? She decided that collecting her thoughts would be a good idea.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Without another word, the Watchers left the cell. Keeping a wary eye on the faucet, Hannah waited for Nancy, Belinda, and Albert to reappear. But they did not, and she was back to passing the time alone. When she closed her eyes she could see the Watchers’ disguises wriggling against a dark backdrop, bursting like fireworks, receding. To distract herself, she chose a moment from her past and tried to lose herself in it.

  * * *

  On the fourth floor at Cliff House, up a short staircase that curved to make Hannah feel like she was turning her back on the sea, was a bedroom that faced the woods. The closet at the back of the room smelled like cedar. Once upon a time she would have been able to pull a string for light, but nobody had bothered to change the bulb in years.

  The first thing Hannah saw when she clicked on her flashlight was a shoebox. It was full of guitar picks, each one labeled FENDER MEDIUM. In her mother’s photo albums, Hannah had seen pictures of her father strumming a beat-up acoustic guitar, wearing a necklace made from a yellow guitar pick threaded onto a string.

  Nestled among the picks was a Slinky. How strange to think of the man she’d never met prodding the wiry toy down the stairs. She didn’t know if stores even sold Slinkys anymore — there had been a Toy Palace in Carbine Pass, but her mother had stopped taking her when it turned into a GameStop. That was okay: Hannah was nine years old, hadn’t yet punched a single key on the library computer, and Cliff House was full of ways to pass the time.

  It was a Saturday morning, and her mother was out in the garden. No lessons today — Hannah could stay in her p
ajamas until dinner. Crouched at the top of the Tree Room landing, she sighted down the Slinky as if it were a telescope. Satisfied that it was lined up in the exact center of the staircase, she gave it a nudge. The Slinky moved end over end in an arcing tumble. Hannah urged it on silently, counting the steps. Halfway down, the Slinky was swept aside, as if by a gust of wind, and tossed unceremoniously against the railing where it stopped — bent, twisted, and useless. Or at least, half of it did. The other half bounced down the stairs like any old piece of junk. The Slinky’s grace had been taken from it so quickly, and in such a strange way, that Hannah had been stunned.

  Way to go, dummy.

  Hannah’s lower lip trembled. She had been having self-critical bursts of thought lately, and they were getting louder.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she whispered.

  Tap your feet twice on the seventh step or you’ll be sliced in half, too.

  “What?”

  Trust me, just do it.

  She made her way down the stairs, stopping at the sixth step. This was really stupid. And yet — her skin was prickling, sensing a big, looming presence nearby. The air smelled like rust. She placed her toe against the next step and obeyed the voice: tap-tap. Then she pulled half the Slinky from the railing. Down in the Tree Room, she found the other half.

  The Slinky would never work again, even after she glued it together. Forever unbalanced, it would be returned to the closet. And Hannah would always remember to tap her foot twice on the seventh step.

  What do you call a moment you remember vividly when you’re half-asleep? Not a dream, Hannah thought. Not quite a memory, either. She could feel the Slinky in her hands, trace its severed edge with her thumb, and then it was gone. The cell’s overhead light made it impossible to close her eyes for very long. She stood up, stretched — and froze.