Behind the Bookcase Read online

  “I don’t know. Your Grandma Winnie seemed afraid of something up here.”

  “Like what?” Sarah asked, her voice trembling.

  “Not anything real,” Dad said. “Grandma Winnie was what some people call eccentric.”

  “That’s a masterpiece of understatement,” Mom said. “My mother wasn’t just eccentric and you know it.”

  “But what was she afraid of?” Billy asked.

  “Nothing,” Mom said. “Even if it was something, it doesn’t matter now. Let’s just get our stuff from the car and have dinner. We have a lot of work ahead of us tomorrow. The sooner we clean this place up, the sooner we can sell it and go back home.”

  Before anyone could say another word, Mom turned and walked out of the room.

  “Is she okay?” Sarah asked.

  Dad waited until he heard Mom’s footsteps on the stairs and then went down on one knee. “This is hard for your mother in a lot of ways, ones I think maybe even I don’t understand. The couple of times I met Grandma Winnie, she seemed perfectly normal. But your mom has told me some pretty weird stories about the things she used to say and do. She didn’t want your mom to leave home. She didn’t really want us to get married. But after you kids were born, she suddenly got interested in trying to be a family. And I think that upset your mother even more.”

  “I don’t understand,” Billy said.

  “I do,” Sarah said.

  Dad nodded to her. “Let’s just do what Mom asks and maybe we can get back home sooner than we expect.”

  Sarah smiled as Dad hugged her and Billy before getting back to his feet and heading downstairs.

  The rest of the day went exactly as Mom had said. They unpacked the car, and then, because Grandma’s house didn’t have anything edible in it, Dad picked up a pizza. By the time they changed the sheets on the beds in the upstairs rooms, Sarah was so tired she almost fell asleep brushing her teeth.

  Breakfast the next morning was a strange affair. Mom seemed in a better mood. But Dad seemed cranky. He kept asking Sarah and Billy if they had heard any noises the night before.

  “Like what?” Billy asked.

  “Like knocking.”

  Both Sarah and Billy said they hadn’t heard a thing, and Mom finally said, “I keep telling you, it was just the pipes. They used to do it all the time when I was a kid.”

  “But why aren’t they knocking now?”

  “I don’t know,” Mom said. “Can we please just forget about the pipes and talk about my plan for today?”

  “It wasn’t the pipes,” Dad said under his breath.

  “Maybe it was Grandma,” Billy said.

  The room fell silent. Billy looked at Sarah. Sarah looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom. Very quietly, Mom said, “It wasn’t Grandma.”

  “Yeah,” Dad added quickly, “I’m sure it was just the pipes. Now let’s listen to your mom’s plan.”

  Mom took a deep breath, then explained everyone’s assignments. First on the list for Sarah and Billy: clean everything out of the upstairs rooms.

  “Even the beds?” Billy asked.

  “Of course not,” Mom answered.

  “Not yet, anyway,” Dad said, then gave them boxes and tape before sending them upstairs to begin packing. The plan was to have their first garage sale over the weekend, which was only three days away, and for that, they needed to get everything downstairs and sort through it.

  Sarah helped Billy tape a couple of boxes together and then left him in the blue room while she went to the yellow room. As she began working, she realized how sad she was that she would never get to see Grandma Winnie again. Grandma had come for a visit after Billy was born, but Sarah had been only three years old, so she couldn’t remember anything about it, even with the photos and video her parents had shown her after she asked about it. Grandma had mentioned the visit in a letter to Sarah just over a year before. More letters had followed that first one, and she had often written about how she hoped she could visit again soon or that Sarah would come to her place. Sarah loved getting these weekly letters from Grandma. How sad it was that there would be no more letters; even sadder that Sarah and her family were finally here and Grandma Winnie wasn’t. And sadder still was the thought that those letters might have been upsetting to her mother.

  Suddenly, Sarah felt a hand run through her hair and she jumped. “Billy!” she shouted, and turned around, expecting to find her brother standing behind her, laughing at his practical joke. But there was no one there. A cold knot of fear formed in her stomach.

  “What?” Billy called to her from the other room.

  Sarah turned around again, but she really was alone. She stepped to the door and looked across the hall. Billy appeared in the doorway opposite.

  “Did you call me?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, not wanting to say anything about being scared. “I was just wondering how it was going over there.”

  “Good,” Billy said.

  Sarah gave him a thumbs-up and then went back into the yellow room.

  Something was wrong. The chair in front of the strange-looking dresser in the corner had been moved. She was sure that just a minute earlier it had been pushed all the way against the front of the dresser. Now it was at an angle, as if someone had pulled it out for her to sit in. Sarah felt the knot in her stomach tighten. She tried to remind herself what her father had told her about fear. “The only way to overcome something you’re scared of,” he always said, “is to face it head-on.” But this seemed ironic to her now. How could she “face” something that wasn’t even there?

  “You’re being silly,” she whispered. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Since she had to clean the dresser out anyway, she moved forward slowly, sat down in the chair, and opened the first drawer.

  Expecting clothes, she was surprised to find stacks of paper and boxes of pencils. She opened the next drawer and found boxes of envelopes and stamps. Then she realized that this wasn’t a dresser at all; it was a desk. The top part—what she had thought was a drawer without a handle—flipped down to make a writing surface. Behind that, Sarah found even more pencils and pens, along with tiny metal boxes full of rubber bands and paper clips, all squirreled away in cute little cubbyholes. She saw her name on an envelope, and when she pulled it out, a piece of folded paper came with it and floated through the air, moving back and forth as if it were attached to strings and someone was moving it around. After what seemed an impossibly long time, the paper landed on the floor and slid to a stop in front of the short bookcase built into the wall.

  Sarah got to her feet, walked over to the paper, bent down, and picked it up. Even before she unfolded it, she could see writing on it.

  “My sweet Sarah,” the note started out, just like all Grandma’s letters did. Sarah scanned the page and then realized the letter was unfinished. The last line on the page stopped in midsentence.

  Sarah sat down on the bed to read the letter more care fully. The opening few lines were all the usual inquiries about how school was going and how the rest of the family was. Then the tone shifted. “I’m worried, my dear girl,” it said. “Strange things are happening behind the bookcase. I can feel it. And without someone to take over my job watching the doors, I don’t know what sort of havoc will come of it. You absolutely must come for a visit as soon as possible. I can’t think of anyone else to trust. Never mind what your mother says. You must keep asking until she agrees. I simply don’t know how much—”

  And that was it.

  Sarah frowned. Grandma Winnie had never sounded like this in one of her letters. What “doors” was she talking about? Then she looked at the top of the page and saw that it was dated May 3. That was right around the time Grandma Winnie had died. Was this her last letter? Had she died writing it? Suddenly, Sarah didn’t feel so good. She threw the letter back into the desk as if it were on fire, then slammed the top shut.

  When she turned around, there was a huge man standing in the doorway. Sarah screamed.

&nb
sp; “Whoa!” Dad said. “It’s just me.”

  Sarah caught her breath, relieved that the giant man in the doorway was just her dad. “Don’t do that!” she shouted.

  “What’d he do?” Billy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “And she’s not even a teenager.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Did you want something?” she asked.

  Dad nodded. “We’ve got a load of stuff from the downstairs bedrooms that needs to be moved into the basement.”

  “Cool,” Billy said. “I’ve been wanting to go down there.”

  “Me too,” Sarah said. Their house in California didn’t have a basement, and she was eager to see what one was like.

  “Well, good on that,” Dad said, and took them downstairs.

  He gave each of them a box from the stack outside the master bedroom, then took them through the kitchen and down another set of stairs into the basement.

  Sarah was surprised to see that it was already crowded with boxes and furniture.

  “Okay, you two,” Dad said, “we need to find a place to put these boxes so we can still get through.”

  “What is all this stuff?” Sarah asked as she moved forward slowly.

  “ ‘All this stuff’ belonged to your mother’s aunt Adeline,” Dad said. “Mom says Grandma Winnie inherited it from her after she died and just never did anything with it.”

  Sarah shook her head and kept walking, Billy close behind her. They wound their way between walls made of furniture and boxes. Past the washer and dryer, they came to a squat black machine with thick pipes shooting out of it in every direction.

  “Hey, Dad,” Billy said, “what is that thing?”

  Dad appeared behind them and squinted at it. “The boiler, I think.”

  “What does it do?”

  “During the winter, hot water from there goes upstairs to those radiators in every room. That’s how you keep the house warm.”

  Sarah continued forward, edging her way around the big black boiler. The space beyond it was dark, and while she hesitated, Billy plunged forward. She thought she could see a door in the far wall and she wondered where it went.

  “Hey, Dad,” Billy said. “Where does this door go?”

  “What door?” Dad asked, pushing his way along the narrow path between the furniture and boxes.

  “That one,” Sarah said, pointing.

  Dad found the chain for the overhead light and pulled it. The bright bulb threw shadows from the boiler across the walls like giant spiders, but they could see the door now. Dad frowned. “Hmmm,” he said, “that’s weird.”

  “What is?”

  He stared at the ceiling. “That door looks like it’s beyond the foundation of the house.”

  “What does that mean?” Sarah asked.

  “Usually basements only go right under a house. Whatever is past that door looks like it goes farther out than it should. And from the looks of that lock, Grandma Winnie didn’t want anyone to know what was in there.”

  Sarah knew what he meant. The lock was so big and old it looked like something from a fairy tale, like the kind of lock an evil queen would keep on her dungeon doors.

  “I’ll tell you what’s behind that door,” Mom said, and everyone turned around. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, a box in her hand. She set the box down and walked toward them slowly. “It’s a place called Penumbra.”

  Dad laughed. “Penum-who?” he said. Billy thought this was very funny and he laughed extra hard.

  “Don’t laugh,” Mom said. “Penumbra is where the souls of the dead go to sleep.”

  Billy stopped laughing abruptly, as if someone had hit his Off switch. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Of course she’s kidding,” Dad said. “But I don’t think it’s very funny.”

  “I don’t, either,” Mom said. “But that’s what Grandma Winnie used to tell me.”

  “Really?”

  Mom nodded. “I had forgotten about it,” she said. “She used to tell me all kinds of stories. Stuff she read in those books upstairs, I’m sure. Like how this house was full of secrets and doors to places with names I can’t even remember now. Things she said that I couldn’t understand then, but that I would someday.”

  “Things behind the bookcases, too?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “How did you know that?”

  “One of her letters.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  Sarah shook her head. “One she didn’t send.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I think that runs in the family,” Dad said, and Mom raised her eyebrows at him.

  Sarah explained about finding the unfinished letter upstairs, and both Mom and Dad shook their heads.

  “Now, that sounds like something more than just eccentric,” Dad said.

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked. “Like Grandma was crazy or something?”

  “Maybe,” Mom said. “The stories she used to tell certainly were. And sometimes I think she believed them a bit too much.”

  “So that’s not really Carumba back there?” Billy asked.

  Mom laughed. “Penumbra,” she said.

  “And no,” Dad put in quickly, “there aren’t any sleeping dead souls back there.”

  “Oh,” Billy said with great disappointment.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “So what is back there?”

  Mom shrugged.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Dad said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means that if we can’t find the key to that lock, I’ll have to go to the hardware store and get some bolt cutters.”

  “What are those?” Sarah asked.

  “Like big scissors. Only for locks.”

  “Why would we need those?” Mom asked.

  “We can’t sell a house with a locked door in it,” Dad said. “Any realtor is going to ask that it be opened anyway, so let’s get it over with. What are you worried about?”

  Mom sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just my childhood coming back up on me. My mother really used to scare me with all those stories.”

  “That explains a lot,” Dad said, then playfully nudged Mom in the side and pulled her toward the stairs. “All right,” he said, “let’s have some lunch. I’m starved!”

  All during lunch, Sarah couldn’t stop thinking about what Mom had said about that door in the basement. About how Grandma had told her this house was full of secrets. She knew that it was silly. They had to be stories. But if they were just stories, why had that unfinished letter sounded so serious?

  Standing now in the doorway of the yellow room, Sarah knew there was only one way to find out. Afraid that the rest of her family might think she was losing her grip on reality the way they thought Grandma Winnie had, she closed the door and then walked to the bookcase.

  It was small, maybe four feet high by two or three feet wide, about the same size as the little door to the storage area. Quickly, she took the books off the shelves and put them into empty boxes.

  “This is silly,” she whispered. But she couldn’t help herself. She had to know. She took a deep breath and then, carefully, she put one hand on the middle shelf and pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  She examined the edges of the bookcase, where the molding met the wall, but it seemed as solid as could be. She knelt down and felt along the bottom edge. Nothing. With her hand still on the middle shelf, she pushed herself to her feet. As she did, she heard something snap. She pulled her hand away fast, worried that she had broken the shelf. She knelt again and looked but couldn’t see any place where it was broken. She got to her feet and pushed, more gently this time. She heard the snap again and now saw that the top edge of the bookcase was coming away from the wall. She put her hand above the space and felt cool air rushing out. Slipping her fingers into the crack, she pulled a little bit, and to her surprise, the whole bookcase started to slide out of the wall.


  “No way,” Sarah whispered, suddenly overcome with excitement. She almost called Mom to come quickly and see that Grandma had been telling the truth, but she stopped herself. Not yet, she thought. Not until I get a chance to see what this is all about.

  Sarah grabbed the middle shelf like a handle and pulled straight out. The bookcase came out of the wall, scraping over the floor, and Sarah sat down with a loud thump.

  “What’s going on up there?” Mom yelled from downstairs. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” Sarah yelled back. “I just dropped a box.”

  Sarah stood quickly and listened to make sure Mom wasn’t coming upstairs. Then she pulled the bookcase out just a bit more. The space behind it was completely dark, and the cool air that rushed out over her face felt good in the summer heat.

  Sarah still couldn’t believe it. This was like something from one of the mysteries she liked to read so much. She had her dad to thank for that—he also liked to read mysteries. He’d started when he was a kid, with books about the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators. When Sarah had been Billy’s age, her dad had read those same books to her. She had become so obsessed with being a detective that her parents had given her a whole collection of investigation gear on her last birthday.

  Quickly, she went to her backpack and dug around inside until she found the detective stuff: walkie-talkies, a magnifying glass, an invisible-ink pen, and a flashlight. When she found the flashlight, she turned it on and went back to the bookcase.

  She shined the light into the dark space and saw wooden walls that looked very much like those in the storage room behind the short door. But this room was a real secret room. She was sure even her mom didn’t know about it. If she had, she would have told Sarah and Billy about it just to tell them to stay out. Maybe that was why Grandma Winnie hadn’t let Mom in these rooms when she was a kid. Sarah decided she would explore this secret room later, and then maybe, just maybe, she would tell her mom and dad about it, depending on what she found.

  She switched off the flashlight and set it on the floor. Then she lined up the bookcase and used her feet to push it back into the wall. When it was all the way in, she stood up and ran her fingers around the edges. It was just like before. No one would be able to tell it had ever been out of the wall.