Young Adventurers Page 9

  M1 pulled her. “We can’t stop.”

  They rounded another corner and passed another identical staircase. A left turn took them past more doors and another staircase up. A right turn, the same. Mina shook her hand free and stomped her feet on the floor. “Stop. This house–it’s not possible. Tell me what it is.”

  M1 sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “We’re going in circles.”

  “No. It’s the house. It keeps adding, growing. I don’t know. I can’t explain. I didn’t make it like this. I hate it here.”

  “Then why don’t you go back?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I can’t find my world.”

  The words tumbled down on Mina like a collapsing house. If M1 couldn’t find her way back, how would Mina? She looked at the staircase nearest to her. Was it the one back to her world? Were they all the same? All different? She reached down for her bracelet. It wasn’t there. The clasp must have loosened, and now it was lying somewhere in this endless house. She fought her tears. “How could this be happening?” She looked up at the other girl, so like her, but so different. “How could you do this to me?”

  M1 stroked Mina’s arm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I promise you. Once we defeat it, we can find our way back to where we belong.”

  “It?”

  “The monster.”

  It was all too much for Mina–this other world, this other girl, and now a monster. “I need to sit.”

  M1 bit her lip. “Okay. Just a couple of minutes.”

  The tread beneath her was stripped to its bare, rough state. Just a couple of minutes, she told herself, just to accept it all. So here she was, trapped in a world that wasn’t her own, with another version of herself and a monster. What choice did she have but to listen to M1? She could trust her, right? After all, she was her. It hurt her brain to think about it too much. “Okay, tell me about this monster.”

  M1 hugged Mina. “Thank God. I was terrified you’d leave me alone.”

  Mina didn’t tell her how she wished she never stepped through the mirror. Too late for regrets. “No, I’m not that type of person.”

  M1 smiled. “All I know is I’ve been here maybe a week.”

  “A week?”

  “I told you I couldn’t get back.”

  “Did you try?”

  “Of course I tried. Some mirrors I couldn’t step through.”

  “And the others?”

  M1 looked down at her shoes. “There were four that I could step through. None of them were my world. All of them were even worse than this place.”

  “What about leaving this house? I mean, if there’s a monster in here, then why didn’t you just run away and get the police?”

  “I’ll show you why.”

  M1 led Mina to the nearest door and opened it. Inside was a queen-size bed covered with an ivory comforter. A double bureau was on one wall, and a writing desk sat near the window.

  “Look outside.”

  Mina gazed through the glass. The sky was a twilight gray. It could have been morning, or evening, or simply overcast. There was no way to tell. A mist coated the ground. In the distance the lake glowed with a greenish phosphorescent tint.

  Then she saw it, clambering on the edge of the lake. About the size of a pit bull, it looked part lobster, part tarantula, with yellow fangs and bulbous eyes, and great big claws that clacked and snapped at the air. Then she saw another one. Then another. There were hordes.

  “That can’t be.”

  “Like this house can’t be? Like me and you–two of us–that can’t be?”

  “Those are monsters.”

  “Some kind of chemical mutations, I suppose. They’re the reason I can’t leave. I tried. They’re faster than they look. One nearly got my ankle.”

  Mina wished her father was here. He would surely know what to do. He always had an answer. He could always solve any problem. Well, almost any problem. “What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t worry.” M1 draped an arm around Mina and pulled her close. “I’ve been plotting a way to get out of here.”

  Mina shuddered but she took comfort in M1. She seemed so strong, so resolute. Surely if anyone could save them, stuck here, it would be her. “Okay. So what’s the plan?”

  M1 grinned. “We find this bastard and kill him.”

  Just then Mina heard a groan. It stretched into a screeching, like crows cawing in the wind. Then it sunk back down into a low rumble that carried through the air, moving closer and closer.

  “It must have heard us,” M1 hissed. “Come!” She pulled Mina toward the closet, shoved her inside and then followed, easing the door closed behind her. The closet was full of women’s clothes, and just before the latch clicked shut Mina could have sworn she noticed one of her mother’s dresses–light yellow with a white collar–hanging inside.

  Mina could hear her own heart pound. She begged it would stop. M1’s hand rested gently on her forearm and Mina took a scrap of solace from her touch. The door to the bedroom creaked open, a painfully long cracking. Mina gasped despite herself. M1 pressed a lone finger to her lips.

  Outside the closet door the thing scraped along the wood floor. It scrape-shuffle-scraped, stopped, then scrape-shuffle-scraped again. Mina imagined a misshapen thing sniffing the air, drunk on the tantalizing scent of two human girls. It scraped-shuffled-scraped closer, closer to where they hid. Mina wanted to grab in the darkness for anything that she could use as a weapon but she dared not move. Beads of sweat itched their way down her forehead. She fought to keep herself upright.

  Then she heard a clatter from somewhere deeper in the house. The creature outside the door released a sound like gurgling, choking phlegm. Then it scrape-shuffle-scraped away from the closet.

  The girls stood like statues long after the noises faded away.

  “We are so lucky,” M1 whispered.

  “What would it have done to us?”

  “What do you think?”

  Mina regretted ever asking the question. “I didn’t want to believe you. I hoped you were crazy, or a liar.”

  “Well I’m not.” M1 carefully opened the door. She poked her head out and looked around. “All clear.”

  “What was that noise?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is someone else here with us?”

  M1 shot her a cold stare. “I hope not, for their sake.”

  The air smelled like a mixture of burned meat and vomit. Mina scrunched her nose. “What do we do now?”

  “Simple.” M1 flashed a devious grin. “We go to where it lives, we trap it, and then we kill it.”

  Mina would rather spend an eternity trying the endless mirrors until she found the right one to lead her home. But she nodded. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  “Just to warn you, it won’t be easy.”

  “I’m braver than you think I am.”

  “I sure hope so, for both our sakes.”

  The hallway was dead. Mina followed M1 through the maze-like second floor corridor. She passed a painting on the wall. She recognized it from the original house. It was the one with the man on his knees, head twisted toward the sky as if begging God for mercy. But this one was different. The man was the same, but now he was surrounded by monstrous boars with giant tusks, sheep with fangs, sharp clawed birds, all tearing the flesh off his bones.

  “We’re close, I can feel it,” M1 whispered.

  “To what?”

  “To the staircase down to the first floor. There’s only one. Sometimes it moves.”

  “What if we never find it?”

  “We will. Getting downstairs is never the problem. It’s getting up to the third floor and out that’s almost impossible.”

  “Impossible?”

  “I said almost. God, you don’t have much faith, do you?”

  Mina thought of the moment when she discovered that her mother wasn’t just a little sick, th
at she would never live to see Mina graduate high school, or get married, or have children. She lost her faith that day, in her room, all alone on the Internet, when she learned what stage 4 recurrent really meant. She reflexively reached for her vanished bracelet. “Never mind about my faith. Let’s just go kill this thing and get it over with.”

  M1 glanced back and grinned. “That’s my girl.”

  They rounded another corner, past a staircase up and several doors identical to the ones they’d just seen. Ahead of them was the staircase down. It looked exactly like the one Mina remembered from Uncle Tao’s house. Hand in hand they tiptoed down. A dull light filtered in through the windowed door, and outside the clack clack clack of the creatures’ pincers called out their threat.

  “Do you think the monster is somewhere on this floor?” Mina whispered.

  “No, I don’t think so,” M1 said loudly. “It doesn’t come here for some reason. Only the basement and sometimes the second floor.”

  “Why?”

  M1 stopped in the foyer and stood face to face with Mina. “How the hell would I know? You think I made this place? You think I want to be here? You think I’m just hanging around to try and figure out the rules here?” M1’s hands trembled. “Well, no, I’m not. I’d do anything to leave. Anything. Get it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat before we give this bastard what it deserves.”

  The foyer looked identical to the one that Mina remembered in the original house. Except for a few differences. There was the clock. As it ticked the hands moved backward. And the numbers themselves, not only were they out of order, but there were three numbers she didn’t even recognize. And then there were the portraits that hung on either side of the clock. In her world they were a colonial-era man and woman–normal and boring. Here the man’s flesh fell off his cheeks in gray chunks, his lips chewed off. The woman’s eyeballs dangled from her sockets, a spear skewering her skull.

  Mina turned away. “I’m not that hungry.”

  “Your loss.”

  They treaded lightly into the kitchen. This kitchen was not the same as the one she’d remembered. This one wasn’t tidy and old, it was sleek and new: black cabinets with white marble counters and a double-sized stainless steel refrigerator.

  M1 opened a cabinet. It was stocked with food–cans and bags and boxes. “Whoever was here before me sure liked to eat well, thank God.” She pulled out a bag of Doritos and hopped up on the counter.

  Across from the counter was a dark wood table with four chairs and four plates laid out. Scraps of uneaten food lay gray and moldy on the plates–abandoned, as if someone had fled in a hurry.

  “What about that?” Mina pointed to the plates.

  M1 shrugged. “Not my problem.”

  “You couldn’t even wash them?”

  M1 narrowed her eyes. “Like I said, not my problem.” She ripped open the Doritos bag and began stuffing chips into her mouth. “I could eat these forever.”

  Mina pulled one of the chairs away from the table, far enough so she wouldn’t have to look at the abandoned dinner. “Okay, but please don’t take forever.”

  M1 crunched a chip slowly. Crumbs fell on her skirt. She flicked them onto the floor. “I’ll take as long as I want.”

  “Why are you being so mean?”

  “Why are you being such a pain?”

  “Because I don’t want to be here.”

  M1 stuffed more chips in her mouth. “You know, it’s not too bad here, besides there being a monster and all.”

  “How could you say that?”

  “Simple. No one here to tell me what to do. No one to tell me what I can and can’t eat. No one to yell at me for dressing how I want.”

  Mina glanced at the table set for four, then she remembered the closet with the dress that looked so much like her mother’s. “But you only have the clothes you came in, right?” M1 glared at Mina and kept chewing. “Right?”

  “I found some more, in a bedroom, and, well, they fit me.”

  That’s when Mina realized there must have been another version of her own family here–Reed, her father, her mother, maybe even Uncle Tao, and herself as well. And they were all gone. Mina pointed to the table. “They’re all probably dead, you know that.”

  M1 put the bag down. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you can at least act like you care. You can pretend to be sad or respectful. You shouldn’t act like it was just nothing.”

  M1 wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I know it’s not nothing.” She gazed at the floor. “I just want to live, that’s all. Don’t hate me.”

  Mina sighed. She walked over to M1 and held her hands. “I don’t hate you. I couldn’t. That would be like hating myself, kind of.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  M1 smiled. “Thank you. And I promise you that together we’ll take care of this monster.”

  The thought of actually seeing–and fighting–this creature made Mina want to disappear. But M1 was right: they had to fight.

  Through the kitchen they walked into the parlor. The light that filtered through the window cast the room in a dusty haze. Mina followed M1 to the fireplace. Above the mantle was a deer head. As Mina came closer she realized it was not a deer. The thing had four eyes and fangs that curled outside an elongated jaw. The antlers were a greenish blossom of razor tips.

  “Here.” M1 hoisted a metal poker. “Give it a feel.”

  It was heavy in Mina’s hands. She gave it a swing and imagined breaking the monster’s spine. She wondered if she would have the strength, even with such a weapon. She passed it back. “Is there one for me?”

  “You can have the shovel, I suppose. Don’t worry, I’ll be the one taking care of it. I’ve been practicing.”

  The shovel with its smudged brass base wasn’t half as solid as the poker. Mina was surprised to find herself disappointed. “Okay.”

  Mina followed M1 back out through the kitchen and into a small pantry. Inside the pantry was a scuffed door that led to the basement. M1 rested her free hand on the knob. “This is it. Are you sure you’re ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Absolutely sure?”

  “I said ‘yes,’ didn’t I?”

  “You better be.”

  “Come on. Stop treating me like a baby.”

  “Listen,” M1 leaned in close. “I have a plan, and you’ve got to trust me 100 percent, no matter what. If you don’t, we’ll both end up dead. Do you understand?”

  Mina nodded.

  “Say it.”

  “I trust you, no matter what.” Mina didn’t quite believe her own words, but there was nothing else for her to say.

  “Good.” M1 grinned. “Let’s do this.” She opened the door and both girls descended into the mildewy darkness.

  Each step was an eternity. Each creak was a scream. A thin-wired bulb shed a wisp of light at the bottom of the stairs. Mina almost wished it could remain pitch black.

  “Were you…”

  “Quiet,” M1 whispered.

  “Sorry. Were you ever down here before?” M1 nodded. “And you weren’t scared?”

  “Of course I was. But you fight through it, ’cause you have to.”

  The girls touched down on the concrete floor. Mina peered through the meager light. The basement didn’t seem nearly as large as the endless second floor. A long narrow space was framed by shelves and topped with tiny rectangle gray-lit windows. On the other side was a long cinderblock wall. Mina couldn’t make out what lay at the end.

  M1 walked through the corridor with Mina close behind. The shelves were lined with board games, stuffed animals, balls and blocks, all cobwebbed and dusty. She grazed a finger against the arm of a headless doll. It was slimy. She wiped it on her jeans. “This place is gross.”

  M1 shook her head and didn’t even turn around. “You have no idea.”

  At the end of the corridor was a doo
r. It was hard, maybe steel, Mina guessed. And there was a bolt on the outside. M1 gripped the fireplace poker tight. She spun around and whispered in Mina’s ear. “We’ve got to be quick. If I say ‘run’ that means the creature’s in there. You run back up to the kitchen. If it’s not in here, then we can move on with our plan.”

  “But I don’t even know what the plan is.”

  “Ssh.” M1 unlatched the bolt. She turned the knob and opened the door. Then she slipped inside.

  Mina pressed her back against the wall. The cinderblocks were rough against her head. Every creak of the sagging house was the monster on its way. She hoisted the thin shovel but it felt silly in her hands. Maybe it would buy her a minute, if that. She stared at the stacks of toys and thought of the children who played with them. Where were they now?

  M1 poked her head out. “It’s clear.” She beckoned Mina inside. “Hurry up. It’ll smell us soon enough.”

  Mina dashed into the room. It was larger than she’d imagined. There was a brown-splattered sink and a cage of mechanical equipment–large rusted tools, crushed and twisted metal–at one end. The floor was littered with newspapers and tufts of cloth–sheets and towels, matted and stained. The smell was feral.

  “This is where it lives?” Mina asked.

  “Where else?”

  “It’s worse than I imagined.”

  M1 shrugged. “Well, don’t start crying now.”

  Mina hated that this other her might think she was nothing more than a scared baby. “I’m fine.”

  “Good, because it’s only going to get harder from here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  M1 led her to the far wall. There were piles of clothes and blankets stacked like firewood. Beside the stack was a metal loop embedded in the wall. Attached to the loop was a handcuff. One end dangled open.

  “What’s that for?” Mina asked.

  “You ever see in movies how there are two soldiers and one of them runs across a field to draw fire from the bad guys while the other one shoots the bad guys?”

  Mina didn’t like war movies. “I guess.”

  M1 cradled the fireplace poker. “Guess which one you’re going to be?”

  “I…have no idea.”

  M1 rolled her eyes. “God, what is it with you? Okay, here’s the plan. You’re going to be bait, and I’m going to hide. When the monster comes for you, I sneak up behind him and bash his head in.”