Chapter 2
1245 Words
2
That little adventure happened a long time ago. Two decades, to be exact. Nearly my entire lifetime, and at the ripe old age of twenty-four I found myself wondering what to do with my little old existence. College was nearing its end without a focus-or job-in sight, I was without a boyfriend, and my roommates were too fixated on theirs to be of much company. So what was a lonely girl to do to think her life over?
Maybe she’d go home, and that’s exactly what I did. Home to that little cottage nestled against the woods with all its wonderful memories. Maybe the scent of the summer trees and the green grass would reinvigorate my tired soul.
I gave them a call, was rewarded by a quick chat with their answering machine, and headed off for the far reaches of Colmouth, a city of bright lights, hot concrete, and a cute little cottage with my room waiting for me like a shrine waiting for its god. Seriously. My grandma had preserved it since my leaving four years before. For that I was grateful and amused, mostly because my grandpa had had plans to enlarge his library by consuming my former bedroom.
The main road into the city passed through the fields and forests that made up the hinterlands of the large hamlet. The sun was starting to set as I reached the thick patch that abutted that little cottage. I rolled down my window and breathed in the fresh scent of leaves and morning dew that survived in the darkest shadows of the woods.
As I rolled to a stop along the wide shoulder of the road and took in the sights. It was a surreal moment. Beside me was the busy traffic of the normal world, and before me lay the mystical land of untouched wilderness. A part of me yearned to know what lay in those shadows.
A flock of birds flew out of the trees. Their screeching broke the misty spell of the silence and made me start back. In that brief moment something inside the shadows moved.
I leaned forward and squinted at the growing darkness, but only caught the dark trunks of trees and bushes. The black forms of the birds disappeared in the distance, leaving nothing but the silence once more.
Still, a small voice inside me warned me that something wasn’t quite right. I put on my blinker and eagerly rejoined the traffic.
My childhood home was only three miles from the road as the crow flies, but the roads weren’t as straightforward. Twenty minutes later found me pulling into the driveway. A beat-up old pickup, a rustic relic my grandfather refused to get rid of, sat in the left-hand spot while my usual spot was open to me.
I stepped out and looked up at the quaint, two-floor cottage. The firehouse-red shutters smiled down at me like heavy mascara against the tan walls of the rest of the house. The door was a brilliant violet purple courtesy of my grandmother’s zany fondness for colors that didn’t match. I remember them receiving a lot of complaints from the home owner’s association, and one letter was especially strongly worded. It had demanded my grandmother remove from the lawn a herd of stuffed beavers she had acquired from a taxidermist friend. That had been a prickly situation.
I tugged my two suitcases out of the passenger seat of my small car and hefted them up to the stoop. A small sign on the left of the door made me pause and smile. It read Cave Canem, Latin for ‘Beware of Dog.’ The funny thing was we’d never owned a dog, but my grandfather was so fond of the old saying, dusted off from one of his many books, that he’d put up the sign, anyway.
I opened the door-they never kept it locked-and stepped into the small hall. The stairs to the second floor stood against the wall to my left, and on either side of me were doorways to the rest of the ground floor, along with a narrow hall to the back rooms of the house.
I dropped my suitcases in a pile at my feet and took a deep breath. “Grandma! Grandpa! I’m home!” My grandmother flew out of the dining room on my left and clasped one of my hands in hers. Her large blue hair comb, an ever-present fixture atop her head, nearly wedged itself up my nose. She looked up into my eyes with such a pleading look that I almost laughed. “You’ve lost something again, haven’t you?”
My grandfather followed after her and ran a hand through his wispy, thinning white hair. “And very well, too. We’ve looked everywhere for the phone, but we can’t find it.”
“So you guys didn’t get my message?” I asked him.
He snorted. “We haven’t been able to find the blasted thing for a week.”
“Did you try calling it?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “We would but we’ve only got the one, and its battery is dead.”
I snorted. “I wondered why I got sent to your answering machine without a ring.”
Grandma squeezed my hand and her lower lip trembled. “You’ll find the poor thing for us, won’t you? It’s lost somewhere in this large house.”
I smiled and patted the top of her hands. “It’s all right, Grandma. I’ve got this.”
I slipped out of her clutches and stepped into the living room. My fingers danced over the side table on my right as I scanned the room. The phone wasn’t in the obvious places. Maybe it wasn’t obvious. I tapped the cover of a book that lay near the lamp on the table. Maybe it was-
Something caught my attention. I squinted at the bookcase against the wall to my right. A smile slipped onto my lips. “I think I may have found it.”
I walked over to the bookcase as my grandparents stepped into to the doorway. Three of the large volumes were pushed out from the wall. The usual habit of my grandparents was to have the books pushed against the wall so they could put small curiosities in front of the books. I reached behind the books and a moment later drew out my hand, and the missing phone.
Grandma clapped. “So wonderful!”
I shrugged as Grandpa took the phone. He glared at the object. “So much trouble. . .”
“It’s a marvel of modern technology, Simon,” Grandma scolded him.
He scoffed. “Modern is a subjective word, Bee.” His gaze fell on me and he noticed I was staring hard at the bookshelf. “Something the matter, pumpkin?”
I swept my eyes over the bookcase. “No, but it’s just-well-” I snorted and shook my head. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothing is something,” he argued as he took the phone from my gleeful grandmother.
“It’s just that I always thought there was something behind this wall,” I admitted as my eyes fell on the space where the phone had been hidden. Near the three books sat a dry tome about the inner workings of a sexton. “You know, like a secret passage or something like that.” I reached out of the book.
“Shouldn’t you get to unpacking before reading?” Grandpa advised me.
I dropped my hand and turned to him with a teasing smile. “You guys don’t mind me moving back for a little while and cramping your style?”
“We’ll manage somehow,” he quipped with a devilish glint in his eyes.
Grandma stepped up and grasped my hands in hers as she smiled at me. “Welcome home, Jane.”
And what a welcoming party awaited us that night.
- Writer
