Jack Gregson & the Forgotten Portal (2 page)

“Have the flowers arrived? What about the
caterers? Bob! Bob get up! I need your help!” Mrs Gregson started
walking out of the room in search of her husband, with Alice
walking along behind her.

“The flowers and food won’t be here for
hours, it’s only 6:15 Mrs Gregson...” Alice called out after
her.

“Looks like Aunty Mauve has already started
getting everything ready for lunch,” Jack said, getting up from the
chair.

“Mum loves organising a party,” replied
Rosie.

“And bossing everyone around while doing
it,” added David.

“Let’s go,” Jack said as he continued down
the passage. He reached the end, coming to a ladder leading
upwards. There were no staircases in the secret passages, so this
would take them to the second floor and then it was just a short
trip to the entrance in their Great Uncle’s room.

They climbed the ladder, walked down another
dark dusty corridor, until they reached a small panel in the wall
that was open a crack. Jack pulled the it open and crawled
through.

“Back so soon?” An old mans voice called
out.

“Yes Uncle,” replied Jack as he stumbled out
of the wardrobe. Not only was the secret doorway small, the
wardrobe it was hidden in was cluttered with a large assortment of
clothes, hats, hankies and shoes. Everything stank of
mothballs.

“Did it work?” He asked excitedly.

“It didn’t make a dent,” replied David
dramatically.

Their Uncle frowned and lay back further
into his pillows, of which there were many. The bed was huge, with
four large posts at each corner. He wore dark blue Pyjamas covered
in comets and stars, which were obviously designed for a much
younger man, if not a child. “I was sure it would work,” he
said.

“That’s what I said!” David replied
annoyed.

“Well,” their uncle said bleakly. “Hopefully
someone will manage to open it later today,”

Jack moved closer to the bed and said
softly, as almost afraid to mention it, “No one has managed to open
the door in hundreds of years Uncle. Not even dynamite worked. Do
you really think someone will get it open today?”

“Something has changed boy. I don’t know
what but Gregson Manor feels…wrong. I feel that if we could get the
door open, we could somehow fix whatever it is.” He sighed, “But
the house doesn’t seem to agree and perhaps we should trust it
knows what it’s doing and stop trying to force it. If it needs our
help, it will guide someone to the door. The stories say it has in
the past, so it will do so again.”

“Uncle, what do you mean about the house
showing us the way. It’s just a house….” Rosie began, before being
silenced by him putting his finger to his lips.

“Later, Rosemary. There are stories you have
perhaps not heard before, ones I probably should not be sharing. I
will think it over and recall the details of one suitable to tell
at lunch later on,” he assured her before turning to Jack, “But
perhaps we should hear a story now that we cannot share later. Was
it a big explosion?”

“You should’ve seen it.” Jack replied, a
smile growing on his face as he recalled. “It was the loudest thing
I’ve ever heard! Did you hear it? And the smoke, did you see the
smoke? We should do it again another morning and you can come and
watch. Do you have anymore dynamite?”

Suddenly a voice roared from the doorway of
the bedroom, causing everyone in there to jump, “DYNAMITE!”

Chapter Two

The Discovery

Jack, David and Rosie sat in the library,
lounging on the old leather chairs, bored and a little annoyed.
Earlier that day, Mrs Gregson had screamed at them for twenty
minutes until she was red in the face. She had then turned on Great
Uncle Peter and given him the same treatment, for being an
“irresponsible, impossible old man.”

Even him explaining the stick of dynamite
had actually been tiny, little more than a cracker hadn’t calmed
her down. Jack wondered if that had just been a small stick, how
big would the explosion have been with a full sized one?

“I still don’t get why Great Uncle got to go
to the lunch. It’s not fair,” grumbled David.

“Mum can’t exactly ground her own Uncle,”
replied Rosie.

“It’s his fault though. I don’t see why we
should be punished for something he made us do,” David fired
back.

“I don’t think he made you do anything. You
wanted to light that thing the second you saw it.”

Jack was lying back looking up at the
ceiling, barely listening to his cousin’s squabble. He was used to
them arguing back and forth. They may have been brother and sister,
but Jack thought the only thing they had in common was the blonde
hair on their heads. Rosie was small and skinny, while David was
tall and a little chubby. He loved to play football, while she
loved her books. Jack was happy that he liked to read and play
sport, as he had something in common with both of them.

He sighed and thought about earlier that
day. The three of them had been banned from the day’s festivities
and confined to the house. No lunch, no stories and no games. He’d
been banned from his favourite day of the year!

After the yelling had finally stopped, the
three of them had retreated to Jacks bedroom while the house came
to life around them. Family members arrived and put their luggage
in the guest rooms of the great old house, talking loudly and
jovially as some hadn’t seen each other since the previous party a
year ago. While Jack looked forward to seeing them all, they had
decided it was better to wait until the evening, when hopefully
things had calmed down and their morning adventure had been
forgotten about.

Eventually they had heard everyone leave the
house and make their way down to the Western Garden for lunch. Only
then had they left Jacks room for the library, hoping to find
something to do.

“Jack?”

“Huh?” Jack mumbled sitting up and turning
to his cousins.

“I asked if you wanted to play a board
game,” said Rosie.

“I don’t feel like it,” he replied, just as
he noticed a book sitting on the coffee table in front of him. “Is
this the book you were talking about earlier? The one about the
house?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

Jack picked it up, feeling the weight in his
hands. It was a big book, thick with 100’s of pages and a dark
brown leather cover. “The Gregson Estate” was written on it in
fancy silver script and as Rosie had said before there was no
mention of an author. He placed the book on his lap and opened it
to the contents page. There was a chapter on every room in the
house. Not only that, there were chapters for each of the gardens
and one called Secret Passageways. He noted the page number for the
library they were sitting in, flipped open to that chapter and
started reading:

The library is one of the original rooms of
Gregson Manor. Designed to hold thousands of books, it was built
with shelves from floor to ceiling. The designer was adamant that
there be no bare walls in the room, just shelves and shelves of
books surrounding the reading desks and chairs. All the wood to
build the bookcases was imported….

Jack flipped the page, skipping paragraphs
about the design of each and every bookcase.

There are three leather couches in the
Library, imported from Italy. The larger lounge can seat two people
while the other two are single pieces. The single chairs are
identical, except that one has a really bad drawing of a dog on the
back of it, drawn by David Gregson when he was seven years old.

“What!” exclaimed Jack, jumping up from his
seat. He walked around to the back of the chair he’d been sitting
on and examined it.

“What is it?” asked Rosie.

Jack didn’t reply but moved over to the
other chair where David was sitting, scanning the back of the
seat.

“There!” he yelled excitedly. ”A crap
picture of a dog!”

“What are you talking about?” Rosie
wondered, standing up.

“The book. I was reading about the library
and it mentions this bad picture David drew when he was seven. And
look,” he said pointing.

“That’s not possible, the book’s really old.
David’s only thirteen. It must mean something else,” Rosie
replied.

David stood and walked around to inspect the
back of the chair. “What do they mean bad? It’s Twiggy. I even
remember drawing it,” he said referring to the crude outline of
their family pet.

“Give me a look,” Rosie said, grabbing the
book out of Jacks hands. As she read, she kept glancing from the
chair back to the book.

“You can see the ears and the nose. And
that’s the tail,” continued David pointing at the chair.

“David, it’s truly awful. How anyone could
look at that and see a dog is beyond me,” replied Rosie. “But how
is it written in this old book? It must have been printed recently
and made to look old.”

“The funny thing is, I didn’t think anyone
knew about the drawing,” David said. “I figured I’d get in trouble,
so I never told anyone.”

Rosie flipped through the book and came to
the last page of the Library chapter. Printed there was an old
black and white photograph of the room. It looked like the layout
hadn’t been changed at all since the photo had been taken. All the
books, tables, chairs, and rugs were arranged exactly as they were
now. There was even a vase of flowers in exactly the same position
on the antique table by the door. They were the same type of
flowers too, in the same vase.

“No,” whispered Rosie under her breath. She
dropped the book on the seat and ran over to the table, picking up
the vase.

“What are you doing?” asked Jack.

Rosie carried the vase over to the writing
desk and then ran back to the book. She looked at the photo, the
vase was no longer on the table by the door, but rather sitting on
the writing desk, exactly where she’d put it.

“Eep!” Rosie yelped, throwing the book onto
the ground.

David bent over and grabbed the book and
scanned through until he found the photograph.

“The flowers moved!”

“Moved?” asked Jack, confused.

“Here, hold this.” David said, shoving the
book into Jacks arms. He then turned and grabbed one of the single
chairs and turned it around so it was facing one of the bookcases.
He walked back to Jack and pointed at the photo. “Look.”

“That’s impossible,” Jack said quietly as he
looked at the photograph. The chair was now turned around facing
the other way. “What the heck is going on?”

“Where did you say you found this book?”
David asked as he took it back from Jack.

Rosie, who was still in shock, slowly turned
her head to the boys. “It was just on the coffee table, although it
wasn’t there the day before.” After a moments pause, she continued,
“Maybe Alice found it when cleaning the room. I did notice she had
done some dusting in here the day I found it.”

“I’ve heard the same stories you have about
the door, but never about a book that keeps an up-to-date
description of the house,” said Jack to Rosie.

“Me neither. You’d think something like that
would be part of the great Gregson family secret.”

“Surely there’s a logical reason for all of
this. I mean could the book really be magic?” Jack wondered.
“Should we ask Great Uncle?”

“He’ll be down in the Gardens by now with
the rest of them, and if we’re caught there we’ll never be allowed
out again,” replied Rosie clearly frustrated. “I wish there was a
room with a window overlooking the gardens, I bet they’re having a
great time.”

“Maybe we can see them from the attic,”
David called out. While Jack and Rosie had been talking, he had
returned to the lounge and was laying back, the book in his
lap.

“Gregson Manor doesn’t have an attic, you
know that,” Rosie replied shortly.

“I’ve lived here my whole life, I know it
like the back of my hand, and there’s no attic” Jack said.

“Chapter Three: The Attic” David said
dramatically as he sat up and turned the open book to face them.
”Who wants to take a look?”

Chapter Three

The Attic

Jack and his cousins ran up the stairs to the
third floor of the house. The library was located on the first
level, so by the time they reached the top they were out of
breath.

“Now where?” asked Jack panting. He knew
every inch of the house yet he had no idea where the entrance to an
attic he’d never heard of would be.

Rosie, who had brought the Gregson Manor
book with her, opened it and began reading:

“The attic first appeared in Gregson Manor
when Greg Gregson took residence of the house after his late father
Richard Gregson.”

First appeared? Jack wondered what that
could mean.

Rosie continued, “The attic made the
entrance to its walls secret, and only appears when it’s needed or
wants to look out upon the gardens.” She scanned the page she was
on and flipped to the next one, skipping over strange passages
about the Attics fondness for water lilies and ponds. “The attic,
who was also very fond of Richard Gregson, decided to make the
entrance to her walls behind the great portrait of Richard himself,
in the hallway on level three.”

Jack ran down the hall, knowing the painting
the book was referring to. As he came to it, he stopped and looked
up at the large portrait on the wall. A very serious man looked
back down at him. The painting of Richard Gregson, wearing a smart
suit and a stern look had always given Jack the creeps. Growing up,
he had always wondered if the man had ever smiled when he was
alive, or if he had always been an angry man, without any friends.
At least someone had liked him, he thought. Well not someone, an
attic.

“What now?” Jack asked impatiently as Rosie
and David caught up to him.

“I never liked this painting,” David
declared. “He looks like a real grouch. Plus he named his son Greg.
Greg Gregson. Are we going to talk about that?”