The Door Within Page 4

  He wondered why his parents wouldn’t trust him. Sure, he had an admittedly wild imagination—not to mention a voracious appetite for fantastic tales. But the strange nightmares, the thing lurking in the pine tree outside the bedroom window, and the scrolls . . . well, those things all really happened.

  Or maybe they didn’t.

  Aidan felt doubt creep into his mind like an early fall frost, premature in its coming and dangerous to new growth. As Aidan thumped down the basement steps, he began to wonder.

  Aidan bumped into the box with the one-eyed doll and awkwardly shuffled over to the workbench to flick on the light. Aidan and his parents stared at the dark alcove beneath the stairs. Even in the light of the small work lamp, there could be no mistake. There was nothing there.

  There wasn’t even a trace of the three broken clay pots that had contained the scrolls. Nothing. A numbing cold skittered over Aidan’s body.

  “I can’t believe I let you drag me all the way down here.” Aidan’s dad shrugged. “Clay pots! That’s a good one, Aidan.”

  “But, Dad! They were right here! I saw them . . . they just appeared!” Aidan pleaded.

  “The only thing that appeared, son, was your imagination.”

  “But what about the scrolls? I didn’t make those up!” Aidan argued, his own belief fading. “Would you at least look at the scrolls?”

  “Aidan, I don’t know. They’re prob—”

  “Please, Dad. Just look . . .”

  “Son, look, I don’t have time for this kind of . . .” Mr. Thomas hesitated, shifted uneasily, and then changed course. “Okay, okay! I’ll look through them, a little—after we finish dinner. But listen, no more of this stuff about clay pots. It was cute, but enough is enough.”

  Later, Aidan’s mom and dad took the scrolls and went upstairs. Aidan vaulted after them, only to see their bedroom door shut. Deciding that his parents would most likely need a good bit of time to examine the scrolls, Aidan flopped down on his bed to draw.

  He had just begun sketching the outline of a haunted house when his parents came out of their bedroom. Aidan’s father sat down on the corner of Aidan’s bed. He held two of the scrolls in his arms. Aidan’s mom stood behind him. She had the other scroll.

  “Well, I looked at your scrolls, son, and—”

  “But you’ve been gone for just ten minutes!”

  “Aidan, please don’t interrupt. The reason that I didn’t keep reading is that I think I’ve read this story before.”

  “You . . . you have?!” Aidan gasped.

  “When you described it to us at the table, it sounded familiar, but it’s been fifteen, maybe twenty years since I’ve read it.” Mr. Thomas glanced away. A look of irritation flickered on his face for a moment. “It’s called The Story. It was very popular, for a time.”

  “But on scrolls?” Aidan blurted out.

  “I’ve never seen it written on scrolls before. I’m wondering if these might be some of the original handwritten drafts.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “Uh, that I can’t remember. But if these are originals, they could be worth a bundle—even more than your baseball cards! We should check on it. I heard that an original manuscript of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow went for a half-million dollars at an auction!”

  “But, Dad, I don’t think this is just a story,” Aidan said. “It seemed so re—”

  “What? Real? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Aidan’s father snorted and looked at his wife, who had put her hand over her lips to stifle a laugh.

  “It’s not funny, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. But it just made me giggle.”

  Aidan’s father handed the two scrolls to Aidan. His mom gave Aidan the last one. “Be very careful with these,” she said. “If they are collector’s items, you should keep them in a safe place.”

  Aidan looked down at the scrolls and shook his head. They didn’t seem very magical anymore. “It could be real,” he offered weakly.

  “Son, this is a work of fiction, a fairy tale,” his father explained.

  “It’s different,” Aidan said.

  “Oh, Aidan, Mom and I both think this is a wonderful story full of beautiful ideas, but it’s just not true.”

  “How do you know?” Aidan said, a slight tremor in his voice.

  “Awww, now look, son,” he said sympathetically. “I know because . . . I know. That’s all. When you grow up, you learn how to judge things—tell the difference between reality and fantasy. It’s a story just like Snow White or The Sword in the Stone, or even Star Wars.”

  “But it said . . . for those who will believe.”

  “Aidan,” he said, stiffening, growing irritable. “Believing in something does not make it real. Life just doesn’t work that way!

  This, this is nothing more than a fairy tale. Do you believe that Little Red Riding Hood is real? Could a big, bad wolf really knock on our door? Or what about Jack and the Beanstalk? What about geese that lay golden eggs?”

  “Dear,” whispered Aidan’s mom.

  “No, he’s a teenager now. He needs to leave this imaginary stuff behind. Do you understand me, son?”

  Aidan gritted his teeth and nodded.

  His parents gone, Aidan sat alone with the scrolls. He felt betrayed both by his parents and by himself. It wouldn’t be the first time my imagination got the better of me. But just once, I wish they’d believe me.

  “Stupid!” Aidan yelled at himself as he recklessly knocked the scrolls onto the floor. He threw his face into his pillow and glanced one more time at the scrolls. They had unraveled, a page of the third scroll on top. It was the page with the poem.

  Aidan drifted off into an uneasy sleep, with the words “Believe and enter” still dancing in his mind.

  7

  A NEW ALLY

  Acar door slammed and woke Aidan earlier than he wanted to be up on a summer day. With some effort, he opened his eyes and uncoiled an arm from his favorite goose-down pillow, the one his mom had bought for him when he was five. For some reason, Aidan had immediately grown attached to it. And now, many years later, no matter where it was on the bed when he went to sleep, the pillow always ended up tucked snugly under his arm.

  Aidan put his pillow aside, sat up, and blinked. Bands of light streamed in from the blinds and fell upon the scrolls, which were neatly bundled at the foot of his bed. The parchments looked golden in the sunlight.

  Mom must have picked them up off the floor, he thought.

  Aidan immediately felt the urge to read them again. Why? He did not know. They had, after all, gotten his hopes sky-high for nothing. Still, the urge was there.

  Forget it! I won’t give in! He shook his head and threw a corner of his blanket over the scrolls, leaving a peculiar oblong hump at the end of the bed. The sunlight lingered on the hump for a few moments more but faded as dark clouds rolled in from the Rockies and smothered the sun.

  After a quick change, Aidan was online, checking email. Nothing but spam, as usual since Robby had been at camp. It didn’t stop Aidan from jotting a quick note to Robby anyway. The message complete, his finger hovered over the mouse, ready to click SEND. But then he hesitated.

  Aidan’s stomach did a flip-flop and tightened uncomfortably— like he’d just broken something precious in a gift shop but couldn’t afford to pay for it. Then, he glanced over at the hump on the bed and had a thought. Aidan clicked the mouse back in the email field and typed “P.S.” underneath his original message. After all, he thought, Robby would believe it.

  Then again, Robby might just say: “Ri-ight, Aidan. Magic scrolls?”

  Aidan deleted the postscript and hit SEND. His stomach did another flip-flop.

  Hoping to cure his churning belly, Aidan wandered downstairs in search of breakfast. As he poured a large bowl of cereal, his thoughts began to drift. There was a small part of him that wasn’t convinced that the events of the previous day had been figments of his wild imagination. A timid but determined voice spoke up
in his mind.

  The clay pots were there, and I know it!

  Well, where are they now, then? answered a blustery, skeptical second voice.

  Maybe they dissolve after a few minutes.

  Yeah, right! That’s way out there, Aidan. So the pots just went “Poof!” and vanished without a clue? Good one.

  But I saw them. I touched one even. It must’ve ju— “Aidan, that you?” Grampin asked, snapping Aidan out of his dueling thoughts. He immediately realized that he had overflowed his bowl with cereal, spilling it all over the counter.

  “Yeah, Grampin, what do you want? You need something to drink or something?”

  “No, I need you to come here for a minute!” Grampin’s voice snapped like a whip.

  Aidan stomped into the living room, expecting Grampin to scold him for spilling the cereal. If the old guy dares to lecture me, Aidan thought, he’ll get an earful back, and then some. Aidan didn’t get what he expected.

  Grampin was sitting in his chair, but his posture was different. He sat, shoulders back, chest out, chin up—far from his normal slouch-slump. Blue eyes, though faded with age, gleamed from under his wiry white brows, and his stubbly jaw was set firmly. All together, he looked like an aging but still-proud army general. The serious look on his face softened as Aidan drew near.

  “I’m sorry that your daddy was so hard on ye last night,” he said. “Didn’t believe ye about the scrolls, did he?”

  “No,” Aidan whispered. He felt stunned. After festering all morning, he had tromped into the living room, walls up—poised for battle.

  Grampin’s question smashed down the walls, and disarmed Aidan’s heart.

  “Dad said I made it all up.”

  “So I heard, Aidan, and again, I’m sorry. He was wrong to say those things.”

  “No, Grampin, it’s okay. He wasn’t being that mean.”

  “You’re missin’ my point, boy. Now listen. What I mean is that your daddy, smart as he is, was wrong to doubt you.”

  Aidan stared.

  Grampin smiled.

  “I wanted to say something last night, but ye ran up to yer room ’fore I could make a peep. Then, I heard ye in the kitchen, so now here it is: Aidan, I believe you.”

  Aidan gasped. “You do?”

  Was Grampin serious or . . . senile? Aidan wasn’t sure, but having any adult agree with him felt pretty good.

  “Heh, heh, heh . . . yes, sir, I do,” Grampin replied. His volume climbed excitedly as he spoke. “The clay pots, the scrolls, the new words on the pages, and most important, the story in the scrolls— I believe it all!”

  Aidan thumped down into an easy chair near Grampin. His thoughts and feelings were so conflicted it was like having a battle going on in his head. He had been dying for someone to believe him about the scrolls, but he never expected his ally to be Grampin. This is the guy who ruined my life! Aidan thought. Why should I trust him?

  And maybe time had finally caught up with him. Grampin’s face was so stretched and weathered, his arms and legs so thin and frail— maybe the years that had withered him physically had finally begun to diminish him mentally as well. Aidan stared hard at his grandfather for several silent moments.

  “But, Grampin, Dad says it’s not true,” Aidan said finally. “And Mom doesn’t believe it either.”

  “Yes, I know they didn’t—or maybe wouldn’t is a better word. For your parents, things just don’t appear out of thin air. You, on the other hand, you were open. In fact, I bet you were just waitin’ for something amazing to happen.”

  “I was, Grampin. Lots of weird things have been happening to me—I was kinda expecting it.”

  “See!”

  “But, how come when we went back down there, the pots were gone?”

  “I’m not sure, Aidan. Maybe your mom and dad talked you outta trusting yer heart. A little doubt can be poisonous to new faith.”

  Aidan nodded. His father had made a pretty convincing case against the scrolls’ magically appearing. He was right, wasn’t he? Aidan wondered. Things really don’t appear out of thin air, do they?

  “Look here, Aidan, I’ve been where your daddy’s at. There was a time, years ago, when I was as stubborn as an alley cat on a diving board.”

  Aidan smiled. Then, Grampin leaned forward in his wheelchair and grew more serious. “I was a bitter young man then, Aidan. Mad at the world about my parents.”

  “What happened to your parents?” Aidan asked.

  “When I was sixteen, my mother got sick. It was an awful thing to watch her go like that. Muscles seizing up. Always in pain. My father died a year later. They said it was his heart, but I knew better. That man died of grief.”

  “I’m sorry, Grampin.”

  “I was too, Aidan. But I didn’t let it get me like it did my father. No, I threw myself into my job. I worked hard, but I guess people could always tell there was something wrong. Someone at the factory where I worked—guy named Kaleb Shipley, I remember—tried to tell me a story from the scrolls. Said it would help me understand the world better, but I didn’t want to hear a word. A whole lot a’ hooey, I told him. I just wasn’t ready then. It took me fifty years to get ready.

  “But gettin’ old makes you look at things differently—bein’ closer to the end, I reckon. Your heart either gets so hard that you close up inside for good, or you start to wonderin’ if there’s more to life than what meets the eye. Well, it seemed to me that there just has to be more, so I started to wonder.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Aidan, aside from my parents dying when I was young, I’ve really had a good life—met and married the finest woman in the world, raised a good family, had decent jobs. I had few complaints. Still, eighty-some-odd-years a’ fun in the sun on this giant spinning mud ball can’t be all there is. I mean, what’s the point of it all? Is everybody jest goin’ through the motions a’ life until, one day, life runs out? And what really worried me was, what happens after?”

  Grampin was speaking to Aidan eye-to-eye, man-to-man about deep, meaningful things—it felt so good to be treated as valuable, even as an equal. Aidan leaned forward; he wanted to hear more. “What happened?”

  “Well,” Grampin continued, “it was about that time that some scrolls showed up in my library. And there they were, the answers to all of my questions. Best dang thing that ever happened to me!”

  Grampin leaned back in his wheelchair and a joyful grin widened on his stubbly face. He began to laugh, almost a cackle. “Heh, heh, heh.”

  “What’s so funny, Grampin?”

  “Well, you probably don’t remember, but when you were just a little squirt and came to visit with yer Grandma and me, I used to tell you bedtime stories. You sat on my bed in your blue footy pajamas and munched gingerbread cookies, and I used to act out the stories with different accents and voices, heh, heh.”

  “Sure, Grampin, I remember. So what’s so funny?”

  “Those stories, Aidan, every one of them, came right out of the scrolls! Drove yer daddy nuts, that I was fillin’ your head with such nonsense.”

  “Really?” Aidan laughed. Grampin’s mood was contagious, but Aidan was still skeptical. “I didn’t recognize the stories when I read my scrolls.”

  “That was ten or eleven years ago, Aidan. And I suspect that a person receives the scrolls they need. Besides, if the story is no more meaningful to you than bedtime entertainment, it fades from yer memory.”

  The clock’s ticking grew loud. Aidan was silent. But his mind was like a beehive that had just been hit with a stone. Jubilant thoughts— I was right! The scrolls are real! I knew it! Wait’ll I tell Robby! — careened around and crashed into demanding rebuttals and urgent questions. The latter were piling up and could not be ignored.

  “Grampin, Dad said that lots of people have the story from the scrolls, that it’s even in bookstores—is that true?”

  “Yes, that much is true. There are dozens of different versions. Shame of it is, there are millions of folk all over who have
The Story collectin’ dust right on their shelves—and not the slightest guess that it’s all real.”

  “But, Grampin, how can it be real? I mean, castles and drag—”

  “Aidan, listen. Your father said that believing in something doesn’t make it real. But what he don’t understand is that there are things—incredible things!—that are real whether we want to believe in them or not. The Story is real, all right, but he won’t see it until he’s willing to believe.”

  Aidan squinted, wanting to understand but still questioning.

  “Believing in something or someone is a very special thing, my boy. It can be risky ’cause if you believe in something, you stand up for it. You fight for it sometimes. If what you believe turns out to be a lie, you could end up humiliated or . . . worse. My own son thinks I’m a kook for believin’ The Story, and he’s not the only one, heh, heh.”

  “So, Grampin, you’re serious—you believe it all, what the scrolls say?”

  “I do, Aidan. The big question is, do you believe?”

  “Well, I don’t know . . . Dad said—”

  “I know what yer father says, but ye need to decide for yerself. Now, you go to the scrolls, ye hear? The key is there. The Door Within is closer than you think.”

  “But—”

  “Son, you best git! It’s time for my nap!”

  Aidan had never seen Grampin so stirred up before. He certainly didn’t look ready for a nap. Aidan half expected the old guy to get up out of his wheelchair and boot him a good one in the rear if he didn’t get moving. So Aidan flew up the stairs, threw the covers off the bed, and scooped up the scrolls.

  A key? Aidan thought as he spread the first scroll. I don’t see a key in here.

  In turn, he examined every page of the scrolls, shook them, even waved them around like magic wands, but nothing fell out.

  Outside Aidan’s window, a catbird chirped angrily. The pines in the front yard were a playground for many wild creatures, but the birds took over around ten every morning. Squawking, twirping, and peeping, dozens of them hopped from branch to branch among the evergreens. Aidan liked to watch them at times, but today, he had other concerns.