[Chapter 3] Failures

The plan had seemed brilliant when we came up with it. Unfortunately, after three days of searching, its brilliance had faded. In fact, the most interesting thing we’d found was a smelly old top hat.

“Well, this stinks,” Logan said cheerfully.

“I know! It’s probably about a hundred years old, and it’s been buried in moth balls that whole time,” I replied, handing him the hat.

“I bet it belonged to Abraham Lincoln!” Levi told me, coming out from behind a stack of old cardboard boxes.

“Not the hat, Kris! This whole exploration!” Logan exclaimed, sitting on top of another box.

“Yeah, no offense Liz, but this whole ‘treasure hunt’ isn’t going so well. It’s already been three days, and we haven’t found anything!” Zach complained, appearing from between two stacks of blankets. Niki and Liz also emerged from behind stacks of miscellaneous junk.

“Well…” Liz looked hopelessly at Niki and I. I just shrugged, not knowing what to say.

“Can one more day really hurt?” Niki asked, biting her lip and looking at each of the others. She waited anxiously for their responses.

“Just one day? You promise?”

“Then we can give up this whole thing?”

“For the rest of the trip?”

Zach, Logan, and Levi seemed okay with the idea, under those circumstances. From behind Levi, Baylee popped up, grinning and nodding her head in agreement.

“Yes! One more day, then we can go back to our regular vacation.” Liz assured them.

All eyes turned to Jake. He just blinked as his face remained blank.

“If it means that much to you guys… I guess one more day won’t hurt.”

“Thanks Jake! It wouldn’t be the same without everyone helping.” Liz smiled and sat down on a stack of old quilts nearby. All of the dust from between the blankets erupted into the air and formed a cloud around her.

Jake began coughing. “Hey! Be more careful with that dust, Liz!”

All eyes turned towards Jake. He seemed confused for a minute, then realized they were actually looking behind him. He turned too, and gasped. Liz had disappeared.

Of course, we all began to panic.

“Where’d she go?”

“Liz? Liz, this is a trick, right?”

“Check behind the quilts…”

“Maybe around those boxes?”

Their searching proved fruitless after nearly ten minutes. When they finally gave up, they all carefully took seats on the floor or surrounding boxes.

“How could she have just disappeared? It… it just doesn’t make sense!” Niki’s face grew worried as she thought more about it.

Jake moved to sit by her. “I don’t know,” he replied solemnly.

“Well, we’d better go get her grandparents,” Baylee said. She was always the one to reason through a situation while we all freaked out.

Levi stood up. “I’ll go get them.”

We all nodded, so he walked through the small door across the room and disappeared downstairs. For a moment, everything was quiet. No one knew what to think, let alone say. Then, Levi’s stomping up the stairs began echoing through the room. We heard his voice before we saw him.

“Guys! GUYS!!!” When we heard the urgency in his voice, Zach, Logan, Baylee and I stood. Jake and Niki looked up from where they sat. Levi came charging into the room out of breath, so we had to give him a second to regain his thought process. As he did, he was able to sputter:

“The Moores…they’re gone…not in basement…or rooms…or anything!”

“Gone?” I asked. “Is the car here? Maybe they went to town or something. Figure they’d tell us if they did though…”

“No, I checked! And it’s snowing outside! Like, a blizzard! Which means the phone lines are down, of course, because I checked those too.”

Once again struck speechless, we all just stared away into space, trying to come up with a reason they wouldn’t be… well, anywhere.

“Well, if they’re not here, and we can’t get a hold of anyone outside the cabin who could help, I guess we’ll just have to deal with this on our own.” Baylee wasn’t the only person in our family who could reason through a situation.

“But, Kris, don’t you think it’s a little weird that they’re just gone? And what about Kimmie?” Niki was obviously nervous.

“Oh yeah, Kimmie’s still here. She was taking a nap when I poked my head in her room. Should I go get her?”

“No, I will Levi,” Baylee volunteered. With that, she was out the door. The rest of us stood around thoughtfully. It was a lot to have thrown at us all at once. I knew, though, that we had to do something.

“So…” Jake said, trying to start someone talking.

“So we need a plan. We’ve got to go after Liz!”

“We don’t have any idea where she is!”

“Well, if we look around we might find like a clue or something. C’mon, let’s at least try.” Niki still didn’t look too happy, but everyone else nodded slowly. Without another word, we once again spread out through the small room, searching behind every box, hoping beyond hope to find something, anything. When Baylee returned with Kimmie, she set her down by a pile of dusty pillows Zach had just tossed over, and the little girl soon was asleep again.

Nothing was found in the first hour, and everyone was starting to get discouraged again. I didn’t know what to say to convince them to look even a little bit longer, so we took a break for dinner. After examining the leftovers, we sat down to a warm meal of biscuits and gravy, from the night before. The atmosphere in the room was still hopeless, except for Kimmie’s intermittent demands for more food from her high chair. Right after we ate, everyone headed to bed without another word about Liz or her grandparents. I was upset that they all seemed to have given up, but I didn’t want to make them mad. When I was sure they were asleep, I crept back up to the attic room to look around just a little bit more. I started behind the layer of boxes closest to the wall, meticulously looking around each stack. Only a few moments later, I felt something abnormal on the wall. It wasn’t just the wood’s texture; it felt like a groove. My fingers ran over the newfound shape, and followed its pattern as far as my arm could reach.

Excited, I pulled my arm back out, then pushed the stack of boxes back so I could see the wall. Sure enough, it wasn’t just a wall: there were carvings in the shapes of animals and trees, all inside the outline of an arching door. I was ecstatic. The others wouldn’t believe this; that after all our searching, we’d missed just one thing. Of course, they were all asleep now, but I was sure this was important enough to wake them up.

I ran down the stairs, almost tripping over the rug at the bottom. Regaining my balance, I rushed into Baylee’s room and tip-toed over to wake her up without disturbing Kimmie, who had only recently stopped whining and actually fallen asleep. Baylee gave me an awful look, but got up and slipped on her hoodie and slippers anyway. I whispered to her to meet me in the secret room, which she did reluctantly. Meanwhile, I rushed across the hall into Levi and Jake’s room. They both groaned as I shook them awake, but grabbed jackets and went upstairs as well. Logan and Zach were just as complying. It was only when I came to my own room that I met trouble. Niki was still awake, and glared at me when I came in.

“What have you been up to?” she questioned.

“Niki, I found a door, up in the secret room. You’ve gotta come see this!” Not seeing her seriousness, I almost left the room without her. She just stayed on the bed, staring me down. Suddenly worried, I stopped in my tracks and asked:

“What’s wrong? You don’t seem quite like yourself, Nik.”

“Well, Liz is gone, and so are her grandparents. That sure is wrong! And, well, you decided to do some late-night sleuthing, without telling me, so I had to wait up…”

“You didn’t have to wait up!” I retorted, suddenly understanding. “Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t see if you wanted to come help me. I just thought that you would all be too worn out, so I was just gonna let you all sleep. And I know that you’re worried. I am too! We all are! But I think I may have a solution – please come look. Forgive me, dear friend…”

She still didn’t smile, but got up and walked out of the room. With a slightly heavier heart, I followed. Once again, my spirits rose, though, when I walked into the room upstairs. Sleepy eyes looked up when I entered, but no one said anything. Trying to hold back my excitement, I told them about how I had come up later to look more, and found this door behind a stack of boxes. Then, I walked around them to get to the stack, which I pushed even further out of the way. No one moved.

“Don’t you see it? C’mon, the door, right there. Hello… is anyone awake?” I couldn’t believe that no one seemed to be as excited about this as I was.

Logan was the first to speak.

“I don’t see a door, Kris.”

Quickly, I turned to make sure it was still there. It was. Was he trying to make a joke?

“What do you mean? It’s right there!”

“No, it’s not. Are you kidding Kris? ‘Cause this isn’t really best time for jokes.” Zach began scrutinizing me, as though he could find some flaw in my “joke” just by looking at my face. I was speechless. No one seemed to be able to see it except for me. If that was true, though, I didn’t know what good it would be. I couldn’t do anything on my own without Niki getting more upset, but at this point I didn’t see another solution.

“Okay, guys, I can see the door. Honest, I can, clear as day, right here in front of me. I don’t know why you can’t. But I think this has something to do with Liz, and I’m going to go through the door to see what’s on the other side. Are any of you willing to help? You’ll have to trust me.”

“Oh yeah, great speech, Kris,” Levi told me, obviously still not believing me. “Very touching. But, you aren’t very convincing. And we’re all very tired. Maybe next time… Wait! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… I think I see it! That door…”

“Really?” Jake was probably wondering if Levi was in on my “prank” too.

“Why would I back my sister up if I really didn’t? Guys, this is no joke. It’s there.” Then he turned to me. “I’ll help, Kris, and I hope between the two of us, something will turn up.”

“Make it three,” Zach said.

One by one, every person agreed to help, even Niki. Only Baylee was left.

“I – I can’t. We can’t take Kimmie wherever we’re going, and we can’t leave her here all by herself. I’ll stay and take care of her. It’s no problem, really. Someone should probably stay on this side anyway.”

“Okay, great Baylee. Thanks. You can stay up here and guard, kind of. Just watch for anyone coming through the door. Or, well, through that part of the wall. We’ll try to come back in an hour at most.”

Levi had already moved toward the door.

“Okay, open it.” I told him.

Through the doorway was not what I had expected. Maybe a forest or wilderness scene was what I had imagined; not the black, pulsating “goo” I saw. Levi also made a face, but I was the only one who noticed, thank goodness.

“Alright. I’ll go through first and Levi will send you through to meet me.”

Slightly nervous now, I walked forward toward the doorway. Right before I went through, I heard Jake say:

“Man, Kris, it’s kinda funny watching you walk into a wall…”

Then, I was on the other side.