The Secret Bedroom (9 page)

Lea stared openmouthed.

Should she do it?

Should she open the door?

“P
lease open the door!”

The girl on the other side of the door repeated her desperate plea.

“Please!”

Lea was frozen by indecision. A frightening picture flashed into her mind. She saw a hideous monster with red eyes bulging out of its sockets and green slime drooling from its fang-filled mouth. The monster was hulking on the other side of the locked door, disguising its voice, using the voice of a frightened girl in order to fool Lea. Once the door was opened, it would growl in its natural, disgusting, horrifying voice—and pounce.

Lea closed her eyes tightly and forced the gruesome picture from her mind.

“Please open the door!” the muffled voice, now even more frightened and desperate, called out to Lea.

“I-I'll be right back,” Lea replied.

She had made her decision. She had decided to unlock the door.

Down the ladder. Through the hallway and down the stairs, her heart pounding, her mind racing crazily from thought to thought, wild pictures forming in her head of what the girl inside the room looked like. She found her father's big metal tool chest in the back pantry behind the kitchen. She shuffled through it, her hands moving rapidly, randomly tossing things aside, until she found the biggest claw hammer she could find. She found a small sledgehammer behind the chest and grabbed it too.

And then back up the stairs, tools in hand. She glanced at the clock on the kitchen stove as she passed. Nearly midnight. Her parents should be home soon.

What a surprise for them, she thought.

What a surprise for
everyone.

Cradling the heavy tools in her arms, Lea struggled back up the metal ladder and hurried to the locked attic door.

“Are you still there?” she called loudly, dropping the sledgehammer to the floor.

“Yes.” The voice sounded so tiny now, so far away. “Will you be so kind as to open the door?”

“I-I'll try,” Lea said uncertainly.

“Please open the door!”

“I'm going to try!” Lea repeated as loudly as she could. The girl sounded so distant, Lea wasn't sure she could hear her.

Lea reached up and pulled on the highest two-by-four.
It gave slightly and pulled away from the doorframe.

Not bad, Lea thought, encouraged. This may not be as hard as I thought.

She changed the position of her hands on the board, gripped it tightly, and tugged. The board was dry and had weakened over the years. It cracked and squeaked as one end pulled completely off the frame, leaving the nails in place. Lea used the claw hammer on the other end and pried it off quickly, almost effortlessly. She let the board fall to the floor at her feet, then bent over and tugged it out of the way.

One down, two more to go, she thought, pleased with herself.

The old boards were practically rotten, she realized. She pulled the remaining two off as easily as the first—she didn't even need the hammer—and dragged them to the center of the floor.

“Are you okay in there?” Lea called in.

Silence.

“Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“Please open the door,” the voice called.

“I'm trying!” Lea shouted. “I've pulled off the boards. Now I just have to figure out how to unlock the door.”

“Please hurry,” the girl called.

Lea bent down to examine the doorknob and the lock beneath it. To her shock, she saw a brass key in the lock.

“There's a key,” Lea announced excitedly to the girl on the other side. “I can unlock the door now!”

“Please—unlock it!” the voice pleaded.

Lea paused for a brief moment, her hand gripping the metal key. Once again she pictured a hulking monster, covered in hair and slime and blood, waiting eagerly on the other side, cleverly calling to her in its best imitation of a girl's voice.

But Lea hesitated for only a second. Then she turned the key. The lock clicked softly.

Lea turned the knob and pulled open the heavy door.

L
ea found herself staring into a beautifully decorated, old-fashioned-looking girl's bedroom. The room was lit with candles, two on a tall, mahogany dresser flickering against the back wall and one inside a glass hurricane lamp, glowing brightly from a low table in the corner.

The walls were papered in dark maroon wallpaper that appeared to be textured, like felt. A large canopy bed, all pink and satiny, with a heavy, quilted pink bedspread, practically filled the room.

And sitting on the canopy bed, her hands folded in her lap, was a girl.

The girl appeared to be about Lea's age. She was beautiful in a very old-fashioned kind of way.

Her hair was a mass of golden ringlets, worn without a part, the tight yellow curls tumbling onto her forehead and down the sides of her perfect oval-shaped
face. A black velvet hair ribbon was tied across the crown of her head.

She had white skin that looked as if it had never seen the sun, and tiny features, small blue eyes, a perfect, straight nose, a tiny mouth.

She was wearing a high-necked white blouse that seemed as if it would be stiff and uncomfortable. Ruffles ran down the front, and the sleeves were long and puffy at the shoulders. Her black wool skirt came down over her shoes. It looked heavy and cumbersome.

She's like a little Victorian doll, thought Lea, staring in from the doorway. She's even smaller than Deena, and more angelic looking.

The two girls stared at each other for a long time without speaking. The girl on the bed sat very erect, keeping her hands in her lap. Nothing moved except for the flickering shadows caused by the candlelight.

Finally Lea got over her shock well enough to break the silence. “Who are you?” she asked. She was still standing with one hand on the door.

“This is my house,” the girl said. Her mouth widened into a smile. Her eyes sparkled in the candle-light.

“What?” Lea gripped the door tightly.

“This is my house. I live here,” the girl repeated. Her voice was tiny and sounded like a small child's voice.

“But how did you get in here?” Lea insisted. “I mean, up here? In this room?”

“Do you like my room?” the girl asked eagerly. She
slid off the pink quilt and stood up. She moved her hand in a sweeping motion, showing off her room. Her hand, like a small, white dove, fluttered in the long candlelit shadows.

“Yes, it's very nice,” Lea said uncertainly, fear beginning to creep up her spine. “But I don't really understand.”

“I've been so terribly lonely,” the girl said, tilting her head to one side, the golden ringlets falling with it. “So terribly lonely, for so many years.”

She's a ghost, Lea realized, staring wide-eyed as the girl slowly began to move toward her, a strange smile on her lips.

A ghost.

But that's impossible
—isn't
it?

“I've been so very lonely,” the girl said, stretching her arms out toward Lea as she walked toward her. Her expression was so needy, so—hungry.

The girl shimmered in the candlelight, her image fading in the shadows, then growing bright again when she moved into the light.

A ghost, Lea thought.

Coming toward me, her arms outstretched.

“No!”

Lea hadn't even realized that she had uttered the cry. She began backing up, backing toward the safety of the attic.

“Please don't go,” the girl pleaded in her tiny voice.

“You're a ghost,” Lea mumbled, taking another step back, gripped with fear, heavy fear that weighted her legs, that made every step a struggle.

“I'm so lonely,” the girl said, forming her small lips into a child's pout. “Can I touch you? Can I touch your hair?”

“No!” Lea screamed again, her terror making her voice high and hoarse. “No—please!”

“I won't hurt you,” the girl said, her arms still outstretched, her face glowing in the dim candlelight, her eyes sparkling like pale jewels.

“No!”

Lea slammed the door shut and, struggling to control her trembling hand, turned the key in the lock.

Then she stood staring at the smooth wood of the door, licking her lips, swallowing hard, her mouth dry, her throat choked with fear, trying to catch her breath.

I never should have pulled off the boards, she thought. I never should have opened that door.

“Please don't go away,” the tiny voice called from the other side of the locked door, “I'm so lonely. I just want to touch your hair.”

“This can't be real,” Lea said aloud. She turned and ran to the ladder.

She was awakened the next morning by the wind rattling her twin bedroom windows. The noise startled her awake. She sat straight up in bed. The room felt cold. The morning sky outside the windows was gray and threatening.

Her covers were heaped at the foot of her bed, and Lea realized she must have kicked them off in the night.

While I was having that dream, she thought.

It
was
a dream—wasn't it?

Lea had no memory of leaving the attic after seeing the ghost. She didn't remember turning off the attic light, or climbing back down the metal ladder, replacing the trapdoor, returning to her room, or getting into bed.

It had to have been a dream, she told herself. A very vivid and frightening nightmare.

So real. So many details.

But a dream nevertheless.

At breakfast she decided not to trouble her parents with it. Her dad had already been to the lumber yard, which opened early on Sunday mornings for people like him, and he and her mother were heatedly discussing their project for the day—the renovation of the screened-in porch on the side of the house.

They're so wrapped up in their plans, they don't even know I'm here, Lea thought. She felt amused by their childlike enthusiasm, but also a little hurt, a little left out.

As Lea was finishing her pancakes, sopping up the last drop of dark syrup from her plate, the phone rang. It was Deena, asking if Lea'd like to go to the indoor tennis club Deena belonged to and hit a few balls.

Lea dressed quickly, pleased by the invitation. Watching the sky grow more threatening outside her bedroom windows, she pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt. Then she searched her dresser drawers for a more appropriate tennis outfit to change into at the club.

It'll feel good to get some exercise, she thought. And I'll be able to tell Deena about the weird dream I had last night.

Deena picked Lea up in her parents' station wagon. Driving through the gray streets, a light, wet snow beginning to fall, she talked about Luke, her new boyfriend, telling Lea about the concert he took her to the night before, not leaving out a single detail, as far as Lea could tell.

It was warm and bright inside the domed tennis club, and most of the courts were taken even though it was Sunday morning. As they began to volley, Lea could tell right away that Deena was the better player.

They volleyed for a while, then played a game. “I really need a new racket,” Lea apologized after missing two of Deena's serves in a row.

It's funny how people stare at their rackets after missing a ball or messing up, Lea thought. As if the racket were at fault and not the arm that swung it.

Deena eased up on her serve, and the two girls continued their game. “You have a pretty good backhand,” Deena said as they changed into their street clothes afterward.

“You went easy on me,” Lea said, a little embarrassed.

“A little bit,” Deena admitted. “But only a little bit.”

Both girls laughed.

Outside, the snow had stopped, but the sky remained gray and threatening and the sidewalks were wet.

As they walked to Deena's car, Lea began to tell her about the dream, about pulling the boards off the door, about the old-fashioned bedroom, and the girl behind the door.

As she talked, her breath formed puffs of white vapor in front of her. Like ghosts, she thought. Ghosts floating up and vanishing.