“I’m here. Where are you ?”
“Here! Just through the doorway!”
“I can’t see you. Come back!”
His voice came from behind me, which made sense. Turning my head, I saw the door frame. Just past it stood Karl. Though he was staring straight at me, it was obvious that he could not see me. At least he wasn’t far away. I tried to turn so I could go back through the door. But with nothing to push against, I couldn’t move.
“Karl! I don’t think I can get out!”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how to explain. There’s nothing here. Nothing! But I can see you; you’re only a few feet behind me.”
“Should I come in for you?” he asked, sounding as if it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.
“No! If you do, we might both be stuck. See if you can find a rope. Maybe you can pull me out.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Wait!” I started to say. “Don’t leave me. . . .”
Too late; he was gone.
I looked around nervously. Nothing. Nothing in all directions, nothing above, nothing below, nothing to the right or the left. Only the door behind me, floating in the darkness.
I glanced up. How far above me did this space extend? To the roof of the tower? Beyond?
How far down?
Wondering what kind of emptiness stretched beneath me made my stomach queasy, and I tried to push the thought away. I began to concentrate on trying to get out instead. Though I didn’t seem to be able to move forward or backward, I found that by squirming I could twist my body around.
After several minutes of this I was facing the door.
As I floated in the nothingness, hoping Karl would come back soon, my mind began to play tricks on me. The door looked as though it was starting to close.
Suddenly I realized it was no trick of my mind; the door was closing! The movement was slow, so slow I could barely notice it. But if I looked away, counted to a hundred, then looked back, it was clear the door’s position had changed.
It could have been caused by anything—a draft in the hall, gravity, magic. I didn’t care what was doing it, I just wanted it to stop! After a moment I wanted it bad enough to try to make it stop by talking to it.
“Don’t shut, door,” I pleaded. “Don’t leave me here in the darkness.”
From beyond the door something laughed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE MORNING AFTER
My spine tingling with terror, I stared at the slowly moving door. “Who’s there?” I cried.
No answer.
“Why are you doing this?”
No answer, save a slight creak from the door.
“Stop!” I screamed.
It didn’t work; the door continued to move.
What would happen when it closed completely? Would I be trapped in this nothingness forever? I squirmed and writhed, trying to push myself closer to the door. It was hopeless, like one of those dreams where you run and run but can’t seem to move. I strained my muscles trying to throw myself toward the opening.
The door, slow as it was, moved more than I did. Inch by inch it was shutting me in. Soon the light, the world, Igor, and everything would be gone. I would be lost to the nothingness.
Less than two inches to go.
“Please stop!” I begged.
Again that unearthly chuckle. And then another sound: feet running down the hall. At first I thought it was Karl. Then I realized I was hearing many feet, as if there were dozens of people out there. The thought was startling. That would be more people than I had seen in my entire life.
“Help!” I cried. “Please help me! Open the door!”
Pattering, pounding, slapping, the bare feet came on. A sudden uproar of voices, then the door was wrenched open.
“Hurray for William!” cried several voices.
“Nilbog, Nilbog!” cried several others.
“Who are you?” I shouted.
But my rescuers, whoever they were, were gone. I could hear the feet running in the opposite direction.
And one more sound—a wail of dismay, made by the same voice that had been laughing at me before. Then, for a long time, silence. I continued to twist and turn, trying to work myself closer to the doorway.
Footsteps again.
“Who’s there?” I cried nervously.
“It’s me—Karl.” A moment later I saw his handsome face at the door. His hair was tousled, and he looked frightened. “Are you still there?” he called, looking straight at me.
“Yes! Do you have the rope?”
“Yes. It wasn’t easy. Here.”
The rope came snaking through the doorway, three or four feet to the right of me.
I stretched, but it was useless.
“I can’t reach it,” I called.
Karl pulled the rope back and tried again. It took four attempts before he got it close enough for me to grab it. Then it was only a matter of seconds for him to pull me back into the hallway. I came flying out of the darkness with a pop! and fell in a heap at his feet.
“Thank you!” I gasped. “I thought I was never going to get out of there!”
“I had begun to wonder myself,” replied Karl.
Now that I was closer, I could see that he looked even more disheveled than I had realized.
“What’s going on out here?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s plenty strange. I think we should take shelter. It doesn’t seem safe in the halls.”
Even as he said that a crash sounded from the floor below us.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Who knows? Let’s get behind a door while we can.”
“As long as it’s not that one!” I said.
Karl nodded and swung the door shut. We decided to go to my room, since it was the closest. Once inside, we barred the door, then braced it shut with a chair for good measure.
Outside the noises continued as footsteps raced up and down the stairs, doors slammed, unknown objects crashed. Twice something rattled at my door, trying to open it. The bar held firm. The first time, whatever was on the other side of the door screamed in rage. The second time it laughed. The voices seemed to be different.
I felt safer having Karl with me. After a while, in spite of the uproar, exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I slept.
• • •
When the morning sun woke me I saw Karl sprawled in a big chair near the fireplace, snoring softly. Mervyn crouched on the windowsill, staring at him curiously. His whiskers were twitching as if to say, “What’s he doing here?”
I closed my eyes and listened carefully.
All was silent. Was the chaos over? Or had it simply ended with the morning light, to be resumed when darkness fell?
“Karl?” I whispered.
“Mmmmmm?”
“Karl, let’s go see what happened.”
“Mmmmmm,” he said, rolling his head to the side.
“Karl!”
He sat up quickly, almost falling off the chair. “What is it? Did something get in?”
“No, I think it’s over. At least for now. Let’s go out and look.”
He rubbed his hands over his face, then nodded warily. “I guess we’d better.”
I took off my nightshirt and got into some clothes. Moving cautiously, we went to the door. Karl moved the chair, and I lifted the bar. Then we stopped. I could tell that neither one of us wanted to open the door. Finally I reached forward and eased it slowly open, half expecting something to wrench it out of my hands and come bounding into the room.
The hall was empty.
As I put out my head, the clock on the first floor began to strike.
I counted, wondering what time it was.
Two bongs.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “It can’t be past noon.”
Karl looked troubled. “You’re right. But that clock has never been wrong in all the years I’ve l
ived here.”
Side by side we stepped into the hall. I peered about warily, waiting for something to jump out at us.
After a moment I noticed something odd.
“Karl, does the hall seem strange to you?”
“In what way?”
“Well—it’s clean .”
He blinked in surprise. “You’re right!”
We walked along, staring up at the ceiling, down at the baseboard. The familiar cobwebs were gone. The dust in which I had written my name the year before, which had been there until last night, was gone as well.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
Karl shook his head. “I don’t know.”
We passed an open door. I knew the room—I had often entered it from the secret passage. It was a bedroom much like mine. Only it was spotlessly clean.
That was strange enough. What made things even stranger was the fact that the furniture was all upside down.
We were stepping into the room to take a closer look when we heard a scream from below.
“That’s Hulda!” shouted Karl.
I followed him into the hall. He reached the stairs before me; he was halfway down when his feet flew into the air. “Yow!” he cried, crashing onto the stairs and sliding to the bottom.
“Are you all right?” I called. I was still on the stairs, worried that if I continued down them whatever had happened to Karl would happen to me as well.
He moaned, then said, “I don’t think there’s anything broken.”
“What happened?”
“I slipped on something.” He turned to look up at me. “Be careful coming down.”
Moving cautiously, I clutched the rail and bent to examine the steps. Four steps below me—about where Karl had lost his balance—I noticed something shiny. I ran my finger over it. It felt familiar. I lifted my finger to my nose and sniffed.
“Soap!” I shouted.
“What?”
“The step was coated with soap. That’s why you slipped.”
Karl frowned. “What is going on around here?”
“We can figure it out later. Right now we need to see what’s happening to Hulda.”
As if to emphasize my point, we heard another scream from below. This time I realized the emotion behind the scream wasn’t fear, it was anger.
“Maybe we should take our time after all,” I said.
Karl nodded. “Probably safer that way—for more than one reason.”
Moving cautiously, checking for booby traps, we continued toward the main floor of the castle. One floor above the main floor we had to climb through a maze of twine that had been woven in the hallway. It was like trying to work your way through some gigantic cobweb.
When we finally reached the main floor we followed the sound of Hulda’s voice to the laundry rooms. She was shouting now, not screaming, and I got the impression the Baron was with her.
“Look at this,” she bellowed when she saw us at the door. “Just look at it!”
She was holding up a sheet. It was freshly laundered and in fact looked cleaner than any sheet I had seen in years.
It was also completely tied in knots.
So was every other piece of cloth in the room. Shirts, sheets, trousers—everything that had accumulated in the months since Hulda had last tackled the washing—had been carefully washed and then tied into knots. The Baron sat in a corner, pulling at one of the knots with his teeth.
“Let’s have some breakfast,” he said, putting down the sheet. He stood and began to lead the way to the kitchen. The door was partially open. When he pushed it all the way a bucket of water fell onto his head.
That wasn’t the end of the mischief. The sugar bowl was glued to the table. When we finally got it loose it turned out to be full of salt, a fact I discovered by spooning it into my coffee, which I ended up spitting across the table.
“Well, what was it?” I finally cried. “What was behind that door?”
“I don’t know,” said the Baron, though it was clear that he knew which door I was talking about. “I’ve been trying to find out for years. I know my grandfather locked something away up there over a century ago, but I have never been able to find out what it was. I do think it might have been better if the door had been left shut.”
He stared at me with those astonishing eyes of his. I felt like crawling under the table.
“What do we do now?” asked Karl.
The Baron shook his head. “I don’t know. Prepare for the night, I guess. We’ll need to find ways to bar the doors to our rooms more securely.”
The two of them began to discuss how we could protect ourselves that night. When it became clear they were not going to ask my opinion, I decided to leave the table. I wanted to see what else had happened overnight. I also wanted to get away from the others because I was feeling enormously guilty for having opened the door, and I didn’t know how to make up for it.
I went to the main hall. More mischief. Someone had tied a ribbon around the neck of the great stone toad. The bars of its cage had been bent, as if it were being invited to escape. The helmets from the suits of armor had all been switched around so that none of them matched. I was starting to put them back in place when a voice whispered, “William!”
To my astonishment, I saw Igor beside one of the suits of armor. He was standing as close to the wall as his hump would allow, as if he were trying to blend into the stones.
“Igor remembered!” he said, shaking his bear triumphantly.
“Remembered what?”
He rolled his eyes. “What was in North Tower.”
CHAPTER NINE
IGOR EXPLAINS
“Tell me!” I said eagerly.
“Come with Igor,” he replied.
He led me to a secret passage I had never seen before and soon we were on our way to the dungeons. As we entered one of the long passages that wound beneath the castle I heard a scratching sound behind us, and then the sound of feet running: pad pad pad, pad pad pad. All of a sudden a small shape went dashing past us.
“There go one!” cried Igor. He lunged out to catch it, but missed.
“What was that ?” I asked nervously.
“Wait till we get to Igor’s room. Igor explain everything.”
As we traveled I heard laughter and scratching, shrieks and moans.
I was glad Igor was with me.
When we finally reached Igor’s cell he motioned to his pile of rags with his bear. “Sit, William. Igor got to tell you story.”
I sat. He was silent for a moment, and his eyes rolled around in his head as if he were sorting out his thoughts. Finally he began.
“Long time ago, long before William come to live with Baron, Igor used to live upstairs sometimes. We had different Baron here back then, and Igor was his best helper. Igor loved that stupid old Baron, ’cause he would always talk to Igor. He say things like, ‘Good Igor,’ and ‘Stupid Igor,’ and ‘Out of my way, you fool!’ and ‘What would I do without you, Igor?’ and he only kick Igor once in a while. So Igor love that old Baron.
“Old Baron was good to people around here, and he try to help them. Back then there was goblins running all over at night causing trouble. They lived deep down in the mountains, way in the dark, ’cause they hated the light.”
It was the most I had heard Igor say at one time, and the effort seemed to be taking a toll on him. But he pressed on.
“We had all kind of goblins: big ones and little ones, ones with tails and ones with no tails, some with arms so long they got to walk on their knuckles, and some that just roll around. They all had big fiery eyes and sharp gnashing teeth. They used to do rotten stuff. At night they come out of their mountain and go to town. Then they tear things up and scare animals and throw stuff in wells. And if any person come out at night, which mostly no one stupid enough to do, goblins take that person to Goblin Land and make them stay there for ever and ever.
“This make people unhappy and miserable, so old Baron decide
to do something about it. He get big book from library and look and look for right spells. Then he turn all them goblins into spirits and lock them in tower and seal door so they can’t get out unless someone open it.”
I began to blush. But I didn’t tell Igor what I had done. I was too ashamed.
“That what ‘Most dangerous night’ message was about. Night was coming when goblins be most strong, have chance to get out. Now they out!” He looked troubled. “Whoever done that very stupid. Anyway, new Baron don’t know how to lock up them goblins. And now that they out they will be getting their bodies back.”
Bending low, Igor looked me in the eye and whispered. “That what in these dungeons, William. When Baron made all them goblins be spirits he say to me, ‘Igor you brute’ (that’s what he like to call me: Igor-you-brute), ‘Igor,’ he say, ‘you take them bodies down to dungeons and lock ’em up.’ And I say to Baron, ‘Why don’t we burn ’em?’
“Old Baron whack me on side of head and say, ‘’Cause we need their bodies to hold ’em here. Burn bodies, spirits get loose and cause more trouble!’
“So Igor carry all them goblin bodies down to dungeons. It scare Igor plenty, ’cause they not really dead. They keep twitching and moaning and groaning, ’cause they want their spirits back so they can go make more trouble. Baron say, ‘Igor, stay here and watch them bodies. If they start moving too much, like they coming back to life, you come get me.’ ”
Igor looked down at his hairy hands, which hung helplessly in his lap. “That long time ago. After while Igor forget about them goblin spirits locked up in top of castle. He just keep watching bodies. That Igor’s job. After another while old Baron gone. No one come to talk to Igor. No one know about Igor. But Igor keep doing job.
“Now someone let them spirits out, and they come back to get their bodies. There gonna be trouble, William—more trouble than Igor can think about.”
We sat for a long time, staring at the wall.
Finally I said, “What can we do, Igor?”
He looked at me with fear in his eyes.
“Only one thing to do. Got to go see Granny Pinchbottom.”
“What?”
Igor looked at me with concern. “William got bad ears?”
“My ears are fine. What did you just say?”