the closet!" Keshawn enthused, the words bursting out of his mouth at the same time that his little legs hit the floor running.
"Kes! Stop running off!"
Emma followed her rambunctious son into another bedroom. His familiarity with the location of the mysterious door suggested that he had already explored this room before she had managed to find him upstairs. She watched as he slid open an ordinary door for a built-in wall closet, revealing a second door in the wall behind. This one looked old, sitting comfortably recessed into a back brick wall that appeared to have been part of an earlier structure. A brass keyhole, polished clean, invited further scrutiny. Emma tried her house key in the lock, but it did not fit.
"Here, let me try," Keshawn directed her. Emma contemplated the implications of the forceful attitude her child seemed to be developing.
"Let me try, please!" she corrected him.
"Yes mother," Keshawn capitulated, rolling his eyes. He produced the alternate key and slid it into the lock. It turned over without any apparent resistance at all, as if the mechanism had been kept well oiled. Keshawn opened the door and Emma reached forward to pull it a little wider, allowing the light in the room to fill the darkness of the recessed compartment. That was all it was, just a slight recess in the wall that led nowhere. A tall, full length mirror in an old style swivel frame was the only object stored inside.
"Why would someone lock a mirror inside a secret closet?" Emma wondered aloud. Though the available light was dim, it was sufficient to see that the ancient bricks had been kept dusted. There wasn't a cobweb in sight.
"Maybe Great Aunt April was a witch, like in Snow White!" Kes suggested. His enthusiasm for the theory made Emma smile, then suddenly a hissing sound startled her and she grabbed her son protectively and spun round to see the source of the disturbance. Her shoulders relaxed and she let Kes squirm out of her grasp. It was only the grey cat they had seen on the front porch.
"Close that door," Emma ordered. "I don't think the cat likes having it open."
Keshawn obeyed, then walked over to the cat and stroked her back. A purring sound started instantly and she rubbed against the child's legs, enjoying the attention.
"Can we keep her, Mom? She was probably Aunt April's cat and there's no one else to take care of her."
Emma regarded the small animal. She seemed harmless enough.
"She's probably been having to hunt her own food in the fields these past two months," Emma said. "We'll get her some cat food and see if she decides to stay."
A pair of large, green eyes looked up at Emma then and she imagined that the little cat understood her every word. She could swear the tiny mouth curled in a smile when she agreed to adopt the creature.
"Somebody has saved us a lot of work, keeping this place clean. I wish I knew who to thank." The cat moved to Emma's legs and started rubbing up against them. Emma bent down and picked up the animal and held it close, scritching behind its ears.
"I suppose we can call you April, after my aunt." The purring suddenly got louder.
"Mom!"
Emma looked up at the urgent sound of her son's voice. Her mouth dropped open in unbelief at what she saw.
"I think I'm in trouble, Mom."
The door to the secret closet stood open again, revealing the mirror, but Keshawn was not standing in front of it this time. Somehow, his image was inside the glass, looking out. Keshawn was feeling around the edges of the frame, looking for some way to get out.
Emma sat the cat down and rushed to the mirror, dropping to her knees. She tried to reach through the glass, but encountered the solid resistance that any ordinary mirror would present.
"How did you get in there?" Emma tried not to let the panic show in her voice. She had to stay calm, for Keshawn. The cat meowed loudly from behind her, but she had no time to give it attention now.
"Tell me exactly what happened!"
Keshawn looked confused for a moment, trying to remember. Then he looked up, into his mother's eyes.
"I smelled something... like incense. The sandalwood stuff you get, sort of. When I looked around, it seemed to be coming from the mirror and I saw a long, brick hallway inside it."
"In the mirror?" Emma asked. The high note her voice had taken on unsettled her more than the bizarre story.
"It was like a portal, like in all those movies, and I just stepped into the hall and was in a different place. I turned around and couldn't get back through the mirror."
Emma took deep breaths, forcing herself to stay calm.
"What does the mirror look like from your side?"
"It's the same as that side, except it's mounted on a wall. And I can see you, and the bedroom. And the cat."
Emma turned a moment and looked at the cat, sitting on the bed and meowing incessantly. She wondered what it knew and wished the animal could talk. Suddenly it ran out of the room, still meowing loudly. Emma turned back to her son, wondering what to do. She heard the cat again, but the sound was faint and seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the mirror.
"Do you hear that?" she asked her son.
Keshawn turned and looked behind himself.
"April is in here. I can hear her."
"What can you see?" Emma could see nothing but her son and the reflection of the room behind her.
"There's a long hallway," Keshawn said. "There are doors on both sides, but the cat sounds like she's straight ahead. I can't see the end of the hall."
Emma hesitated a moment. Her fear that her son could get hopelessly lost in some labyrinth battled with the logic that told her that the cat was in the house... the normal part of the house, and if she told Keshawn to follow it, there might be a way out.
"Wait right there a minute," she told him. "I'm going to see where she went. I'll be right back! Don't go anywhere!"
"Okay, Mom. I'll stay right here," Keshawn promised.
Emma tore herself away from the image of her son and stuck her head out of the bedroom, listening for the cat's meowing. She heard it faintly, coming from the landing. With one, quick worried look over her shoulder, she followed the sound. By the time she reached the landing, the sound had grown much louder. The cat was close, but she could not see her. She looked around, listening carefully to determine whether the meows were coming from down the stairs, but they were not.
The strange alcove to the left of the landing drew her attention. She walked over to it and looked up, into a narrow, spiraled stairwell. She climbed the steps until she came to a hidden dead end with a door at the top. The door looked similar to the one in the closet that had hidden the mirror. The cat was sitting on the top step, still meowing loudly for all she was worth. Emma tried her key in the lock, but it did not fit. Keshawn still had the key that had opened the hidden closet door.
Emma ran back to the bedroom. As soon as she bolted through the door, the panic began to take over. She could feel her arms shaking and her knees go wobbly. Though the sliding closet door was still open, the secret door was shut.
"No..." she whimpered out loud. She sprinted to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked tight.
"Keshawn!" she shouted through the door, holding her face close to the keyhole and trying to send her voice through the small opening as best she could. There was no answer.
"Keshawn, can you follow the sound of the cat? Don't go anywhere else, just follow the cat. She's in front of a door and I think your key will fit!"
She listened carefully, but there was no sound from the weathered door. The incongruity of a door inside a room suffering the ravages of nature niggled at the back of Emma's mind, but there was no time to think about that now. She had to find her son!
She could hear the cat faintly behind her now, but not through the closet door. She turned and ran back to the alcove and up the steps. The cat was pacing now, still making as much noise as it could, though the meow was beginning to come out in a rasp. Emma thought to try the door this time, but wasn't surprised to find it locked.
She bru
shed tears from her cheek with the back of her hand as she sat on the step next to the cat and joined her in her attempts to attract the child's attention.
"Keshawn! Can you hear me!" She heard the note of despair in her own voice and chided herself for allowing the vulnerability to show where Keshawn might hear and be frightened by it.
At first there was no sound, then a faint, child's voice answered, "I'm here, Mom!"
He had apparently disobeyed her earlier command and followed the sound of the cat, but for once his independent streak had brought him to where she could reach him.
"Can you see the door lock on your side?" she called. "I think your key might fit."
Emma heard the clicking of metal on metal. It seemed to go on forever, as if Keshawn was having trouble seeing the lock in the darkness. Then suddenly the distinctive clatter of a lock turning over was all Emma needed to lunge forward and fling the door open. Keshawn stood there, a look of surprise on his face, and Emma wrapped her arms around her son and pulled him through to her side of the door. The key was still in the lock. She shifted Keshawn's weight to her hip and took the key out of the lock and dropped it safely into her own