So this was home.
Letting myself in through the front door of the house led into a totally enclosed porch. I had to say, it was fancy, in a '50s or '60s kind of way. I had seen many different kinds of porches and this seemed like the real deal. It wasn't an 'enclosed' porch, nor was it a screened-in porch. It was an actual room that felt like it was supposed to be part of the house. I was reluctant to call it a porch, it was more like an entryway. Wasn't there a word for this kind of room, an old-timey word? Parlor? I looked around this room and set down my bags.
Most of the front wall, (behind me), was taken up by windows that were streaked with rain, not showing much besides trees and some branches pressing up against the glass in some areas. The floors looked old but well-maintained, they were beautiful hardwood. Although, I decided as I stared at the walls, maybe this did feel like a porch, if only because the walls were made of siding, the only hint that this room had been added on after the fact.
There was stuff in the porch that didn't look like anything we owned: some very low to the floor wooden sling-back chairs, the kind that made you sit way back if you sat down in them. They were ugly and, I realized, probably belonged to my mysterious great uncle Oscar. As I continued looking around, my eyes suddenly latched on to something that was very out of place. Directly ahead of me were a pair of doors and there was a note stuck to one of them.
Okay, maybe I'd get some answers after all.
I crossed the room and began reading the note, immediately recognizing Sam's handwriting. Though it was kind of messy, as if she'd written it in a hurry.
Katie,
I'm sorry I can't be there to
see you, but it is impossible.
Please, please don't go digging
around trying to find out
where I am. I don't want
Mom and Dad anyone to know.
We'll see each other again
some day. Don't be worried.
I love you.
-Sam
Oh crap...what the hell did that mean? Feeling worry begin to seriously gnaw at me, I grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it, but it wouldn't budge. Locked. Sighing, I tried the next one. Same deal. Locked down tight. I resisted the urge to curse as I tried to look in through the stained glass windows built into each door, but they were too opaque to see literally anything, so I gave up the effort. I had to get inside.
If something had happened to Sam...
I turned around, looking around the room again. Of course I didn't have a key...so where would I find one? They had to leave a key for me, right? I didn't relish the idea of wandering around the exterior of the house in the rainy darkness, not even a flashlight to my name, trying to find an unlocked window or another open door.
Then I spied a squat cabinet that I did recognize from our old living room. It used to sit right next to the front door and mom or dad would always toss their keys and the mail onto it after they got in. Now, there was a little lamp and a potted plant that looked new atop it. There were two lights on already, built in lights meant to look like old lanterns on either side of the door, but it wasn't enough to make me comfortable.
Plus, one of them was flickering periodically.
I marched over to the cabinet, flicked on the lamp and crouched, pulling open the two doors and peering inside.
I couldn't help but smile as I saw what was within. Next to a tangle of Christmas lights atop some very cheesy, generic ornaments mom insisted on hanging around the house every year was none other than the Christmas Duck.
Seeing the old thing made me feel warm inside in a way I hadn't for what seemed like a long time now. It was a bit battered, a bit old. Hey, it had been in the family for ten years now. It was a simple, roughly life-size figurine of a duck with a green wreath with a red bow around its neck. I could still remember its inception into the family.
It was December, all the way back in '85. Mom and dad were going shopping for Christmas dinner, which was looming on the horizon, only about three days away. Family was coming into town since Christmas was going to be at the Greenbriar's that year and my parents had left the shopping kind of late. While we were making our way through Bert's Market, an ugly converted warehouse with a lot of water damage and poor lighting, shouldering our way through the crowd, my mother had all at once noticed that Sam was holding a toy duck.
"Sam..." she'd said, and we all stopped in the frozen foods aisle, looking for frozen peas, "where did you get that?"
"I found it," Sam replied simply. She was seven then, and it was enough of an explanation for her, apparently.
"We'll have to put it back," my dad said.
"No!" Sam exclaimed. "It's the Christmas Duck! It wants to come home with me!"
I'd expected frustration from one or both of my parents. Sam could be...difficult, even then. At that point in time, I was eleven, and I felt a little superior, because I was the 'mature' one. Instead, a bemused smile touched my mom's lips.
"The Christmas Duck?" she asked.
"Yes! He wants to come home with us!" Sam repeated firmly.
"Here, let me see him, honey."
Sam reluctantly passed the Christmas Duck up to mom, who looked it over, eventually finding a pricetag on the bottom. "It's just six bucks, Terry," she said. "Why don't we grab it for her?"
"All right, fine," my dad replied.
And so it was: the Christmas Duck was born.
Reaching in, I picked him up and, sure enough, there was a key underneath. I retrieved it. Before putting him back, I flipped him over. Yep, the pricetag was still there. $5.99 in black text against a faded, still faintly shiny gold background. For a moment, I was struck by how crazy that was. For ten years we had all been growing and living and changing and doing everything in our lives...but this sticker was still on this duck...
The moment passed and, with a mixture of worry and anticipation, I moved back over to the front door and slid the key in the lock.
Bingo.
Turning it let me right in and as I stepped in through the front door, I realized that the porch was indeed a porch...because this was the entryway to the house. It was huge! The room spread out before me, all of it done up in dark wood. I saw open areas that looked like they led off to other parts of the house to the left and right, as well as a door to my immediate left and one to my immediate right. But directly ahead of me, dominating my view, cast in a flickering light, was a massive wooden stairway, leading up to the second story of the mansion.
Okay, this place was definitely big!
For a moment, I felt totally dwarfed, not just by the size of the place, but by wondering just how the heck I was going to find out what happened to Sam. Where would I start looking? I glanced at my watch. It was creeping up on one thirty in the morning now. There was obviously no way I was going to sleep any time soon, I had to find out what had happened to my little sister. For a moment, I just stood there, thinking.
The note had begged me not to go looking...which implied that there was something, somewhere in this house that would give me an answer. Probably. And Sam didn't want me to find it. I fully intended to disobey that particular request. There was no way I was just going to let this slide! And besides, if I tried to pull a disappearing act like this, Sam would shake apart Heaven and Earth looking for me, I just knew it.
So where to begin?
I immediately thought that there'd be something in her room, some clue, but...well, wasn't that too obvious? And why would Sam want to hide it anyway? Then I remember the other part of the note. She'd scratched out mom and dad...if they went looking, her room would be the first place. Where was somewhere less obvious?
Ugh, if only I knew this house better...
Then it hit me. Something Sam had begged and begged our parents for throughout her life, since she was young, was a dark room to develop photos in. Sam loved taking pictures and it was her dream. She'd written to me tons of times about the fact that now that she lived here, mom and dad had finally caved and given her one...
In the attic.
Okay, well, that was a start. I moved across the room, grateful that the overhead light had stopped flickering at least. I glanced up as I passed under that light, which had been hidden from view because it was in a recessed area of the ceiling, and found myself staring at an honest-to-goodness chandelier. Okay, it didn't have a million pieces of hanging glass or crystal like the ones in rich people's homes or in movies, but it was definitely a chandelier and kind of impressive. I didn't linger for long though, the desire for knowledge pushed me on.
I made my way up the stairs, went across the small landing and through the dark doorway at the back. I was in a dark hallway and, after a minute of hunting, I found the light switch. Except it wasn't a switch, but a button. I pushed it and a bunch of lamps that hung from the wall, done up in a kind of flower design, snapped to life.
The hallway extended away from me to the right, and to the left was a little niche area with a window and an endtable. I almost turned away from it but something caught my eye on the table. The in-the-moment curiosity ended up beating out the larger curiosity, at least for now, and I stepped over to the endtable.
It was my mom's personal planner.
For a moment, I resisted the urge to look inside. It was private...but she obviously wasn't here. I was alone in this house and, again, curiosity won. I opened it to the most recent page with writing in it. Each page had four blank rectangles on it, each one apparently meant to be a week. Not a very good planner, not much detail.
All of the weeks had
Monday: Couples Bowling
Wednesday: Cooking Class
Friday: Ballroom Dancing
written in them. Only, starting at the first week and going down, every example of Couple's Bowling was hastily scratched out. Then, starting on the second week, Ballroom Dancing was scratched out, too. At the very bottom was: Cook the big meal for Katy and Sam! That made me smile but, as I replaced the planner on the table, the smile faded.
Apparently mom had talked dad into not one, but two things that got him out of the house. For as long as I could remember, dad was a recluse. He didn't leave if he could help it. He was a writer, and I guess a lot of writers were just like that. But obviously it hadn't panned out. I knew that was something they fought about. Mom wanted to go out a lot, dad didn't. It had kind of died off during my last few years of high school.
It kind of felt like mom had just given up.
There was something kind of...I don't know, worrying maybe, about this planner. Like, she had actually convinced him to go, and it had fallen through both times. Maybe I was projecting, but I could see mom angrily scratching out all the instances of Ballroom Dancing and Couples Bowling with an intense frown on her face and maybe tears in her eyes following some fight over it. It wasn't impossible. Man, it wasn't even unlikely.
Finally, my larger curiosity and concern about Sam reasserted itself and I turned away from the endtable and its planner. As I started walking down the hall, I could immediately tell that the door at its end led to Sam's room. There was a bright yellow paper stuck to the front of it with a big black radioactive symbol scrawled across it. It bore a warning: CAUTION RADIATION AREA KEEP OUT.
Of course, classic Sam.
I was briefly tempted to check out her room, but I wanted to see that attic first. It just felt right. She'd called it her hideaway more than once in her letters. I turned left and found another long stretch of hall with two clearly visible doors and another hallway leading off to the right, about halfway down. Holy crap! It was hard to get over just how big this place was. I was used to cramped apartments and moderately sized houses.
I moved down the corridor, glancing briefly down the side hall and seeing another two doors, though one of them looked like it was just a secondary entrance to Sam's room, then kept going. As I approached the end of this second hall, my eyes caught on another piece of paper. Another note? I had to pass through an area of uncomfortable dimness to get there, apparently there just weren't enough lights to go around, and when I reached the paper, tucked halfway underneath a door at its end, I crouched, retrieved it, and began to read it.
Katie-
Mom and Dad were going to
make up the guestroom for
you to stay in over the
summer, but you came
home on such short notice
that they weren't around
to do it.
You can use my room if you
want. I won't be needing
it anyways.
-Sam
I didn't think I'd come home on short notice...but from the way things had turned out, and the few conversations we'd had leading up to the event, I do think that my family was very distracted and they weren't keeping track of my travel plans too well. It was easy to resist the urge to check out the guest bedroom, especially when I glanced up from reading the paper and saw that the next (and final) hallway came to an end not too far away.
And it was bathed in red light.
Setting the paper back down on the floor, I passed another partially open door and came to the end of the hall, looking up. There was the attic trapdoor in the ceiling, and there were glowing red Christmas lights strung up all around it. Glancing down, I saw a piece of white construction paper taped to the wall directly ahead of me.
SAM'S DARKROOM
DO NOT ENTER
IF RED LIGHTS
ARE ON!!!!
I grinned. Trying every little trick to keep me out...but those red lights wouldn't stop me! It wasn't like she was up there developing photos...or what if she was? I suddenly wondered if Sam was playing a joke on me. It was totally possible. Oh well...either way, I needed to know. Reaching up, I grabbed the handle and pulled.
The trapdoor jerked in my hand, but stayed firmly shut.
I spied a keyhole.
It was locked...great. Now what?