Here by Mistake Page 3

  The basement was as Quint had described it. Most things were in crates stacked high, with narrow paths running between the stacks. Some things were loose and could be looked at. Everything was filthy.

  “I should’ve worn old clothes,” Sarah moaned.

  Brandon found a pair of binoculars and tried looking at Sarah through them. When he put them down there were deep black circles around his eyes, and she burst out laughing. Brandon looked in a dusty mirror and laughed, too. Sarah gave him a pack of moistened towelettes; he pulled out two and wiped his face.

  Brandon and Sarah walked into the stacks and came upon a barrister bookcase with a brass plaque that said FIRST EDITIONS. Brandon used his towelettes to wipe the dust off the glass door fronting one of the shelves. “Gone with the Wind,” he murmured, peering through the glass. He raised the door up, slid it back, and pulled out the book. It was a brown leather volume embossed in gold. Brandon opened it to the first page, which had a signature and date: “Margaret Mitchell – June 10, 1936.” Sarah looked closely and caught her breath. “Signed by the author,” she said. She took the book and slid it carefully into its spot and closed the door. She and Brandon retraced their steps.

  As he emerged from the stacks, Brandon noticed a player piano he had missed when descending the stairs. It was constructed of dark oak or was very dirty (or both) and had a paper music roll loaded in its chamber. Brandon found a crank and gave it a full turn. The piano plinked out a few ragtime notes before the paper snapped and the mechanism seized.

  “B, you said we’d just look,” Sarah said.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Stephen backed into something that made a clanging sound. He spun around and found himself looking up at a suit of armor on a pedestal. “Wow, look, B,” he exclaimed. “Where’d your aunt ever get this?”

  “She went to Europe a lot. I guess she got it there. What’s the knight holding?”

  “A battle axe,” Stephen said. “I never even saw things this cool in a museum.”

  Brandon and Stephen crossed to the opposite wall and discovered shelving units extending to the end of the basement. The first unit groaned under the weight of reference books. One was Ballard's Illustrated Dictionary of the Modern American Language, which was almost a foot thick and had its copyright date of 1911 featured on its binding. Another was Ballard's English-Latin/Latin-English Dictionary from the same year. Black leather collector’s albums filled the remaining shelving units. The albums were thick with dust and mildew, but the words on their bindings were legible. Each one said COINS or STAMPS and had a sequence number. Brandon slid out COINS 57 and opened it to the middle. The Liberty heads on six rows of gold pieces stared back at him. “Wow, look, Stephen,” he said. Stephen looked and blinked. He took off his glasses and put them back on and looked again. Brandon closed the album and put it back in its spot.

  Brandon and Stephen followed the shelving units down the wall until Brandon’s foot hit something heavy. He bent down to find a metal strongbox with the word UNCATEGORIZED stenciled on top of it. The box had no lock, and Brandon raised the lid. His jaw dropped. Gold and silver coins, almost level with the top of the box, glinted in the basement’s dim light. Brandon tried to say, “Wow” but couldn’t find his voice. He thrust his hands into the coins and brought up two fistfuls. He let them rain down into the box. Suddenly he was seized by the temptation to fill his pockets. He shook it off and silently chided himself. He closed the strongbox hard. “Let’s get back to Sarah,” he said hoarsely to Stephen.

  Sarah had wandered far into the stacks on the other side of the basement. She turned a corner and screamed.

  “Sarah, what?” Brandon yelled.

  He and Stephen came running. They found Sarah backed into a corner by an eight-foot grizzly bear. Like the knight, the grizzly was standing on a pedestal. Its teeth and claws looked sharp, and its eyes were on Sarah.

  “Cool!” Brandon and Stephen said at once.

  Sarah was gasping. Brandon was breathless too. “Let’s see if there’re any more.” He and Stephen ran deeper into the stacks. Soon Stephen called out, “B, a moose!” and a few seconds after that they both cried “Cool!” again. Sarah didn’t go see the moose. She backed away from the grizzly and got out of the stacks.

  Keeping to the wide path that ran down the middle of the basement, Sarah passed a roll-top desk of black wood and a brass telescope on a tripod with so much dust it looked fuzzy. She came to a pallet with four crumbling cardboard boxes and raised the lid off the first box. It held at least twenty bunches of pictures tied with strings. She took a bunch and walked on, thumbing through the pictures. The path ended and she raised her eyes.

  Leaning against the wall was a metal object as tall and almost as wide as the double doors in front of the house. The object had a border with strange lettering, a rounded top, and a recess that curved in and down. Its bright amber color stood out against the wood frame surrounding it.

  Brandon and Stephen ran out of the stacks and stood with Sarah.

  “What’s that?” Brandon asked.

  “You’re asking me?” Sarah said. “I don’t know. Is it a door?”

  Stephen smoothed his hand over the recess. “It’s a niche.”

  What’s it for?” Brandon snapped. At fourteen he still couldn’t make sense of the stuff in his aunt’s house.

  “Probably just for looking nice,” Stephen said. “Sometimes people put a statue or something in that inside part for decoration. Some people use a niche to pray, but this doesn’t look like it’s for praying. It looks . . .” His voice trailed off as he examined it closely.

  “What?” Brandon asked.

  “Weird. Look, the frame’s dirty like everything else down here, but the niche is clean. And doesn’t it look like it’s sort of . . . glowing?”

  Sarah ran her finger across some of the lettering. “That’s Latin, isn’t it?” Stephen nodded, and she smiled. “Well, you’re the Latin scholar. What’s it say?”

  “The slats cover some of it,” Stephen said. “It’s something about—” He stopped when Brandon grabbed a slat and yanked it off the frame.

  “B,” Sarah protested. “You said no tearing things apart. You said let’s just look.”

  Brandon held up his hands. “I’ll put them back after he reads it to us.” He pulled the other slats off the frame and set them against the wall. “Okay, Stephen, what’s the message?”

  Stephen opened his backpack and took out a notebook and pen. He copied down the words:

  UT TENER QUISNAM PUTO QUOD QUISNAM QUAERO NARRO SOMNIUM QUOD PANIS ORA

  “I need that Latin-English dictionary we saw. Just a second.” He ran up the wide path and was gone about five minutes.

  “Hey, Stephen, hurry up,” Brandon called out.

  Stephen ran down the path and handed Brandon a sheet of paper. “Here’s what it says in English,” he said proudly.

  Brandon read the words:

  TO THE YOUNG WHO BELIEVE AND WHO SEARCH SPEAK THE DREAM AND BREACH THE BOUNDARY

  He looked at Stephen. “What’s that mean? That’s as bad as the Latin.” He showed the paper to Sarah.

  Sarah giggled. “You’re a hopeless romantic, B. Let me try: If you really believe in something and search for it, you can find it.”

  “I think it’s saying more than that,” Stephen said quickly. “I think it’s saying the niche can help you find it.”

  “So, if I rub this thing a genie’ll grant me three wishes?” Brandon asked, smirking.

  Sarah reached up and smoothed his hair into place. “Well, you search a lot. You’re on a search right now.”

  “That’s right, B,” Stephen said. “Tell the niche your dream.”

  Something in his words brought Brandon back to thoughts of his aunt and her world. Sarah touched his cheek to reclaim his attention. “My dream,” he murmured. “I . . . want to see how things used to be.”

  “Used to be?”

  Brandon turned around with a sweeping gesture. “Look
at this stuff. It doesn’t belong to now. It belongs to my aunt’s time, and even before. That’s why I can’t figure it. I want to see the time it does belong to.”

  “Which time, B?” Stephen asked. “Some of this stuff’s old. Some of it’s ancient.”

  Sarah took a picture from the bunch she was holding and showed it to Brandon. “Would you settle for forty years ago?” she asked. “That’s when it was all brought here.”

  Brandon studied the picture. It showed a moving van parked in front of the Cherry Boulevard house. Four men were carrying a crate out of the van. The picture’s white border contained a tiny Nov. ‘65.

  “Sure, 1965,” Brandon said. “People then must’ve been able to figure out this stuff better than we can now.”

  “Well, B, ‘Speak the dream.’” Stephen smiled.

  Brandon struck a dramatic pose and laughed into the recess, “Show me 1965.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Don’t like my dream?” He grinned. “Too bad. This is what I want.” He held up the picture. “Show me this.” He touched the picture’s corner to the recess. At once, circular waves spread out over the surface.

  Brandon stumbled backward into Stephen. He gaped at the swirling recess of the niche, which had been solid metal a moment before. “St-Stephen, what’s it doing?”

  “B, I don’t know,” Stephen said with awe in his voice. “It looks like it’s made of water now.”

  Brandon gathered his nerve and approached the niche, staring into the recess. A haze settled over his mind and he felt strangely pulled toward the waves. Dive in. The thought thrust itself upon him. He gave his head a shake and the idea vanished. But the pull was still there.

  Sarah cried, “Get away from it.”

  “Don’t worry. I just want to see it.”

  “Come away from it. It looks—”

  “Sarah, I’ve got to see this.”

  Brandon touched the picture to the recess again. It passed through the surface as if through water. He pulled it out and checked it. It wasn’t wet, and the image was still sharp. He held his palms up to the recess. “It doesn’t feel hot.” He touched it lightly with his finger. “It’s not hot, and it doesn’t hurt.” He pushed his hand through the surface.

  “B!” Sarah cried.

  “It’s okay,” Brandon said, reaching in up to his elbow. “Stephen, this is wild. I can feel my fingers moving, but I can’t feel them rubbing against each other.” He pulled his arm out and checked it. His fingers were fine, and his arm was not wet. “Look behind it,” he said. “This—whaddayacallit, niche—goes back maybe six inches. And I had my arm in it to my elbow. It must be some kind of door, like you were saying, Sarah.”

  “Well, if it is, keep it closed,” Sarah said. “Stay away from it. You don’t know what it will do.”

  “It was wild,” Brandon said to Stephen. “I tried making a fist, but I couldn’t feel my fingers ball up. It was like my hand wasn’t there. And it pulls on you. It tries to suck you in deeper.” Stephen took his hand and turned it over. “It’s good, no problem.”

  The waves began to settle, and an image began to appear in the recess. Brandon, Stephen, and Sarah watched as the surface smoothed out and the image became sharp. They were now looking, as if through yellow glass, at an elegant room. There was a fireplace of light-colored brick, an overstuffed sofa, two end tables, and several chairs.

  “Look,” Brandon exclaimed, pointing to the upper left of the image. “The grandfather clock with the ships. That’s in the hall upstairs.”

  “That’s no hall, B,” Sarah said nervously.

  “No, that room’s not in this house, but that clock is. And . . . so’s some of the other stuff. Is that Aunt Faye’s house in New Orleans?”

  “That metal was just waving like the ocean,” Stephen marveled. “Now it’s showing us pictures.”

  “Let’s get out of here . . . now,” Sarah said. “Let’s admit what we did, give Quint back his keys, and forget this thing.”

  “We have to put the slats back on the frame,” Stephen said reasonably.

  “Forget the slats! I’m scared; I want to go.”

  “Just a sec,” Brandon said. He touched his finger to the grandfather clock, and the image dissolved into waves. “Stephen, I want to look inside it, but I don’t want to get pulled in all the way. Hold me around the waist so I can lean inside. Wear your backpack for more weight.”

  Sarah strode forward and stood between Brandon and the niche. “Are you crazy?” she gasped. “You don’t know what’s in there. If you put your head in there who knows what’ll happen?”

  “Sarah, my hand’s good, and I’ve got to take a look. I can’t just give it up and never know what this thing was.”

  She started to cry. “B, pleeease.”

  Brandon gently took her by the shoulders and moved her away from the niche. He grasped the border with his left hand. “Okay?” he asked Stephen.

  Stephen donned his backpack and wrapped his arms around Brandon’s waist. Brandon took a deep breath and leaned his head and shoulders into the recess. The waves became intense where he broke the surface. After a few seconds Stephen kicked his foot as a signal to pull back. Instead, Brandon’s hand slipped off the border, and most of his body went through the surface.

  “B! Sarah, I can’t hold him,” Stephen yelled as he struggled to back his friend out of the niche. Suddenly Brandon’s body lurched, and he and Stephen disappeared into the waves.

  “B! Stephen!” Sarah screamed. She gaped at the roiling surface and saw nothing. “B! Stephen!” she wailed. There was no answer. “Nooo!” She ran a few steps toward the stairs, stopped, and ran back. “Somebody help us! Help us!” Panicked and shrieking, she dashed blindly after her friends and was gone.

  FOUR

  New Orleans

  “Ow,” Brandon cried. He had just stood up when Sarah’s head clipped his chin and knocked him on his tailbone. She sailed past him and fell on her face in the middle of a carpet. Stephen rushed to her.

  “Leave me alone,” Sarah gasped. She sat up and drew her legs into her arms.

  Brandon crawled over to her. “Sarah, are you okay?” he asked anxiously.

  She was sobbing into her knees.

  “Please, Sarah, don’t,” Brandon whispered. He never knew what to do when Sarah cried. He awkwardly patted her shoulder and kept whispering, “Please don’t.” After a minute she wiped her eyes and tried to stand. Brandon and Stephen helped her to her feet.

  They stood up in the middle of an elegant room. Brandon knew it immediately as the room they had seen in the niche. He made sure Sarah was okay and went to check out the grandfather clock. The detailed sailing ships carved into the cabinet left no doubt that it was the clock from his aunt’s house.

  Stephen straightened his glasses and looked about him. “B,” he said suddenly. “The armor.”

  Brandon looked and did a double-take. Standing in a sunny alcove was the knight with the battle axe. A few minutes earlier it had been thick with dirt, stuck in a corner of his aunt’s basement. Now it was dazzling in the sun, and he had to squint to look at it.

  Sarah pulled a towelette out of her pack and wiped her face. She turned around and let out a shriek. Brandon and Stephen spun around.

  “It can’t be,” Stephen gasped.

  “No way,” Brandon exclaimed.

  It was the niche, attached to the wall facing them, minus the wood frame. The recess was as solid as the rest of it. Brandon, Stephen, and Sarah stood transfixed.

  “We came through that,” Stephen said finally.

  “How?” Sarah asked, wiping away a tear. “The inside part’s not moving.”

  “It must’ve been waving when we came through,” Stephen said. “It’s like you said. It’s some kind of doorway. We must’ve unlocked it at the other end.”

  Brandon stepped to the niche and examined it closely. “Maybe . . . it’s not the same one?” he suggested.

  Sarah snapped: “Just how many of these
things do you think are running around, B?”

  “But how can it be in two places at once?” Brandon asked defensively.

  “You say that clock’s in your aunt’s hallway. And the armor’s in the basement. They’re in two places at once.”

  Stephen trembled. He took a seat on a straight-backed chair. “Two places, but not at once,” he whispered. “Remember your ‘dream,’ B?”

  “I said show us 1965,” Brandon said. He blinked at Stephen. “So what’re you saying? This is 1965? That’s crazy.”

  “No crazier than what we’ve already seen,” Stephen said, with a fearful nod at the niche.

  Sarah felt behind her for a chair of her own. “1965?” she asked in a shaking voice. “I was born in 1991.”

  “Hold it, wait a sec,” Brandon said. He stared into the recess. “Niche, show us where we were.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Show us the basement in Aunt Faye’s house.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Take us back,” Brandon yelled, bringing his fist down hard on the recess. It hit with a dull thud. “Ow!” He rubbed his hand briskly.

  “You got it going with the picture in the basement,” Sarah said.

  “That’s right,” Brandon said. He reached into his pocket and brought out the snapshot of Quint and himself. “Niche,” he said, holding it up, “take us to this place and . . . and time.” He touched the picture’s corner to the recess.

  Nothing happened.

  Brandon drew back his fist—and let it drop.

  “It won’t work now,” Stephen said.

  “‘It won’t work now,’” Brandon said sarcastically. “And how do you know? Are you an expert on niches?”

  “Remember the Latin,” Stephen said. “‘The young who believe and who search.’ You—we—haven’t searched for anything or found it. We’re trying to go back before we even try. The niche won’t let us do that.”

  Brandon started to speak, but Sarah cut in. “Stephen, we don’t know anything about that niche. How can you know a thing like that?”