There was a metal ladder attached to the side of the building.
“There’s a ladder,” I said to Alec. “I’ll go down first. You follow right behind me.”
“No!” he screamed. “It’s not real.”
In my growing panic I’d forgotten about the illusions.
The old lady smiled at me as if she knew how close I’d come to going over the edge. She lifted up her hand and opened her palm in a gesture that meant only one thing.
Surrender the key.
The wind howled as the black ooze grew closer. What was it? Would it burn us? Was it a black hole that would suck us into a bottomless pit? Or would it catch our feet in its stickiness and drag us over the edge?
“Maybe we should give it to her,” Alec said with fear.
Thunder rumbled as lightning ripped through the clouds.
The woman stood with her hand outstretched, unwavering.
The ooze was only a few yards from us and flowing closer with each passing second. I looked back to the ladder.
It wasn’t there anymore. It had never been there. It was an illusion.
Knowing that actually gave me an idea.
“I think we’re okay!” I shouted to Alec. “None of this is real.”
“Are you sure?” he asked tentatively.
No, I wasn’t. But it wasn’t as though I had another plan. I stood up straight and called out to the old lady, “You’re not getting the key.”
It was a huge risk. Giving her the key would probably save us. But did we really need to be saved?
“Here,” Alec said.
He held the key out to me. It dangled from the leather cord the same way as when his father had held it out to me. His ghost father.
“Better you have it than her,” he added.
A twisted bolt of lightning blasted through the sky, followed by a gut-rumbling clap of thunder.
I looked to the old woman and saw something new.
Her expression had changed.
She looked angry.
The black ooze was only a few feet from us. A putrid rotten-egg smell wafted from it and stuck in the back of my throat, making me gag. The wind blew even harder. If it got any stronger, we wouldn’t have to worry about the black ick anymore. We’d be blown over the edge.
Alec clutched the leather cord in his small fist. The key on the other end was swept up by the wind, pulling the cord parallel to the roof.
I gave one last look at the old woman.
“No way,” I said defiantly. “This belonged to my father.”
I reached out and grabbed the key.
“Now it’s mine.”
It felt warm in my hand, as if being there was absolutely right.
The woman didn’t agree. She threw her head back and let out an unearthly bellow that sounded like a mixture of pain and anger so powerful that it made the roof tremble.
“Look!” Alec exclaimed, pointing to the sky.
The clouds were breaking up, allowing sunshine to peek through.
The wind died quickly, its shrieking faded to silence.
The rooftop was slowly bathed in warm golden light from above.
More important, the black pool was gone.
So was the old lady.
“Alec!” called Mrs. Swenor as she climbed up onto the roof.
Alec ran to meet his mom. She dropped to her knees as he slammed into her, nearly knocking her over. The two hugged as if neither would ever let go.
“I couldn’t open the window,” she cried, the tears flowing. “What were you thinking? Why did you come up here?”
“I was thinking about Daddy,” Alec said with confidence. “This was the last place I was with him. I thought maybe he’d tell me what to do.”
“Never, ever come up here again, do you understand?” she scolded.
“I won’t have to,” Alec said. “I gave the key to Marcus. I think it’s where it belongs now.”
The two looked up at me.
I felt the weight of the large key in my hand.
“I don’t know what that key is,” Mrs. Swenor said, “or why it’s so important. But your father wanted Michael to give it to you, so now it’s yours.”
“Thank you” was all I could think to say.
“Promise me one thing?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“Be very, very careful.”
The whole way back home, I kept looking over my shoulder in case the old lady was creeping up on me. In the subway station I pressed my back to the wall for fear she’d leap out of nowhere and shove me onto the tracks. On the train to Connecticut, I stared at my feet, afraid I’d catch her reflection in one of the windows.
Who was she? What was she? A witch? Another ghost? Why did she want the key so bad? It was just a key. A tool. The real question was, what did the key unlock?
The only good thing that came out of the whole mess was that I discovered who my real parents were. Jim and Joan Roxbury. They died in a sailboat accident when I was a year old.
And, oh yeah, my real father’s hobby was investigating the paranormal. Let’s not forget that. As much as I wondered about my biological parents and hoped I might be a perfect replica of them, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that my father would be a ghost hunter who would reach out to me from beyond the grave. Didn’t see that one coming.
As I rode my bike home from the Stony Brook station, I made a decision. I was tired of dealing with this on my own. I had to tell my parents what was going on. Maybe they’d think I was crazy, but I was willing to take that chance, because I needed help from someone, and they were the most likely candidates.
I finally rolled up to our house at four o’clock, a solid hour before Mom got home from work…
…except for today. When I turned into the driveway, I saw her car parked in front of the garage.
Uh-oh.
She had just pulled up and was climbing out when she spotted me. Her face fell instantly. There was a short moment of suspended animation as the two of us stood there, staring at each other, waiting for somebody to make the first move.
“Seriously?” she said through clenched teeth.
I knew she was still angry about the suspension, but now she’d found out that I had taken off instead of spending the day at home in leg irons. This was not going to go well. I had to be careful about what I said. How much did she really know? I didn’t want to lie to her, but if I told her that I’d been to the city before she heard the whole story, she’d never trust me again.
I shrugged as if it was no big deal and said, “I didn’t think the suspension was supposed to last all day.”
“Why, Marcus?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you always do the exact opposite of what I ask?”
“I don’t,” I argued, not too strongly, and left it at that.
“But you do,” she said with frustration. “What is your deal? Do you take some odd pleasure from disobeying us? Do you actually like fighting? Is there a switch in your head that flips every time we ask you to do something, that makes you do the exact opposite of what we ask? Do you like seeing me angry? Help me out here. I want to know.”
“Really, Mom? Do you really think everything I do is about making you angry?”
“I have no idea why you do the things you do,” she said, exasperated.
I should have let it go. Truth was, she had caught me doing something wrong. But her anger wasn’t just about today. It had been building up for a long time, and I felt as though I had to defend myself.
“Well, maybe I’m just not the kind of kid you wanted,” I said.
I figured that would guilt her into backing off.
It didn’t.
“Maybe you aren’t,” she said.
Her words hit me like a punch to the gut.
The shocked expression on her face made it seem as though she was just as surprised that those words had come out of her mouth as I was. But, shock or no, she had said them.
“That’s what I figured,” I said. I dropped my bike and pushed past her, headed for the door.
“Marcus, come back here,” she called after me.
I kept going, stormed into the house and up the stairs. I wanted to slam the bedroom door shut behind me, but that would have only added fuel to the fire. Any thoughts I had about confiding in my parents about what I was going through were blown up in those few minutes. My biggest fear had proved to be true. She’d finally admitted it.
Whenever they looked at me, all they saw was one big disappointment.
I pulled out my cell phone, thinking I’d call Lu or Theo to unload, but threw the phone onto my bed. That was a conversation that needed to be had in person. I sat down on the bed, not knowing what to do next, my leg pumping with angry energy.
It didn’t take long to figure it out.
I reached into my hoodie pocket and grasped the key, waiting a few seconds before pulling it out. Examining this key was the next step on this adventure. It might possibly tell me more about my father and mother. My real father and mother.
I pulled the key out, opened my fingers, and stared at the piece of metal that lay across my palm. It was made of brass that was dark from tarnish. I guess the one word I could use to describe it was fancy. And old-fashioned. Okay, that’s two words. The part that was inserted into the lock was complicated, with many intricate ridges and points. This key fit into only one lock, but which one? It was definitely something from a long time ago, like the big old door of a castle or a giant pirate’s chest. It didn’t look as though it would fit anything that was made in this century. Or the last.
This key was as much a trophy as it was a tool. The shaft was engraved with an ocean-wave pattern. The leaves of the four-leaf-clover design had tiny ridges and cutouts that looked like the veins of actual leaves. It’s weird to say that something like a key could be beautiful, but this sure was beautiful. I could imagine it sitting on a pillow behind glass in a museum.
Unfortunately, I had no way to know what it unlocked or why my real father wanted me to have it. Whatever the reason, it was the only physical proof I had that my biological parents had ever existed. I went to my desk to put it into a drawer so Mom and Dad wouldn’t find it. They’d probably think I’d stolen it. I was about to drop it when I felt an odd sensation.
The key had grown warm…far warmer than my hand would have made it.
When the same thing happened on the roof in New York, I thought it was my imagination running wild because of the craziness that was swirling around. But now, in the quiet of my room, it felt real. The impossible thought flew into my head that it was somehow alive.
I dropped it onto my desk in case it got hot enough to burn my hand. After a few seconds I risked touching it again. It wasn’t hot. It wasn’t even warm.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to tell somebody, even if the only person around was my mother. At least she could be a witness.
I scooped it up and headed for the door…
…as the key warmed up again.
There was no mistake. I stopped and took a few steps back from the door, and the key went cold. Huh? I took a step closer to the door, and the key heated up again. I backed away, and it cooled off.
“What the heck?” I said to nobody.
I experimented a few more times. When I raised the key toward the door, it warmed up. When I pulled it away, it cooled off. This was no illusion. It was physical evidence that something weird was happening.
I cautiously walked to the door while holding the key out to see how hot it would get. I got it to within a few inches of the door when something even more impossible happened. A black spot appeared on the door’s surface, just below the knob. It was as if the wood were burning. But the key wasn’t hot enough to burn anything. I pulled it away quickly, and the mark disappeared.
I cautiously raised the key again. The burn mark returned, growing from a center point until it became a solid, perfect circle about an inch across. I kept moving the key closer until it almost touched the center of the mark. The “burn” continued to change. It looked as though the wood had turned molten. But wood didn’t melt. Wood burned. Right? Not this wood. The dark circle seemed to go liquid and continued to move and swirl until it formed a hole.
A keyhole.
The burn mark had transformed into a perfect keyhole with a fancy, circular brass plate around it.
I pulled the key away in surprise.
The keyhole and the round brass plate disappeared.
“Oh jeez,” I said, gasping.
My heart raced. Sweat from my forehead dripped into my eyes.
Was this a dream?
I lifted the key again. The brass circle with the keyhole magically returned. It was an old-fashioned keyhole, the kind that takes an old-fashioned key.
I happened to be holding an old-fashioned key.
I pushed the key forward and tentatively inserted the intricate blade into the hole.
Yeah, it fit. Perfectly. I grasped the head and twisted. I felt the tumblers of the lock inside turn easily. But that was impossible. There was no lock in this door. I continued turning the key until I heard the definite click of a lock being released. At the same time, the door popped open a crack.
“It’s another illusion,” I said to myself.
I had had enough. I yanked the door open and ran out of the room.
“Mom!” I screamed.
But I wasn’t in the hallway.
Instead of leaving my room and entering the upstairs hallway of my house, I was in a room that looked like a library. Old-school wooden shelves filled with thousands of books formed long aisles that stretched into the darkness of forever.
I took a few cautious steps inside, staring in wonder at the world that I felt certain my brain had created.
Slam!
The door banged shut behind me.
I spun quickly to see an old man standing between me and the exit.
In one arm he clutched a stack of books.
In the other he held up the key he had pulled out of the lock.
“Never lose track of this, lad,” he said sternly. “Unless you don’t mind being lost forever.”
The old man tossed the key to me as he looked me up and down, checking me out.
“Close your mouth,” he said curtly. “You look like a stupefied trout.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
The guy was short and chubby and had to be at least seventy years old. He was mostly bald but had a horseshoe of snow-white hair that wrapped around the back of his head from ear to ear. He even had big, bushy sideburns that spread halfway down his cheeks. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and if only he’d had a white beard and a sack of toys, he could have passed for Saint Nick. He didn’t seem all that jolly, though. Rather than a red suit, he wore gray tweedy pants with a vest to match and a white shirt that was rolled up at the sleeves.
“Better,” he said. “Have to say, you’re a wee bit younger than I expected.”
He spoke with the slightest hint of an Irish accent.
“How did…how did I…?” I whispered, barely able to get the words out because my mouth was as numb as my brain.
“What’re you trying to say, boy-o?” the guy snapped. “How’d you get here?”
I nodded quickly.
“The Paradox key brought you here, of course.”
“The what?”
He pointed to the key in my hand.
“The Paradox key. Works on any door. Always brings you right here.”
“What is here?” I asked, looking around at the deep aisles lined with old books.
“What does it look like?” he asked impatiently. “It’s a library. I call it…” He paused for dramatic effect. “The Library.”
He looked to me for a reaction.
I didn’t give him one.
He sniffed and said, “Fine. Not exactly original, but it fits.”
I held up the key and gazed at it with newfound wonder.
/> “So any door I use this on will magically bring me into a library?” I asked, as stupefied as the trout he had mentioned.
“Not any library. This library. I need to put these down; me arms are screaming.”
He hurried past me toward a wooden table that sat at the end of one long aisle of bookshelves. He dumped the stack and caught his breath.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Ain’t that obvious?”
“There’s nothing obvious about this place except for the name you gave it.”
“I’m the librarian. Everett’s the name. I’m guessing you’re Marcus O’Mara.”
“Wha—? How do you know me?” I asked, upshifting into the next gear of confusion.
The old man, Everett, broke out in a mischievous grin. “You learn all sorts of things in the Library. Let me show you around.”
Everett walked off but stopped when he realized I wasn’t following.
“Nothing to be afraid of here, Marcus. You can leave anytime you want.”
“Nothing to be afraid of?” I said, incredulous. “I just stuck a key into my bedroom door and got transported to another place. That’s a little bit scary.”
Everett chuckled. “S’pose so. I forget that coming here for the first time can be a tad…unsettling.”
“That’s one word for it. I can think of a few more. Have I gone crazy?”
“I’m not one to judge. But this library is as real as rain, so if you’re a wee bit mad, it’s got nothing to do with this place.”
“I think I’m going to leave now,” I said, backing toward the door.
“Ain’t you the least bit curious about where you’ve landed?” he asked.
Truth was, I was hugely curious. Besides, if this was a dream, the old guy couldn’t hurt me. Right?
“I am,” I said tentatively.
“Now we’re talkin’!” he said enthusiastically, and motioned for me to follow him.
I took a quick look back at the door to judge exactly where to go in case I had to make a quick getaway. It was an old-fashioned, heavy wooden door, as opposed to my normal, modern bedroom door. I sure hoped my house was on the other side of it. I clutched the key and followed the old man.
The Library looked like something out of the nineteenth century. There was a musty smell, as if the books had been there a very long time. The shelves were wooden, and the lights hanging from the ceiling were gas-burning flames.