Mumma's House

by Ike Hamill

  “Which way?” Sam asked.

  “Ummm,” Gus said, trying to think of the most interesting route. “This way.”

  He pointed through the door, down towards the wing.

  Sam led the way.

  # # # #

  “We need a chair or something,” Penny said.

  Isla looked around. The hall was empty. All the doors to the rooms were closed. She put her hand on a knob and tried to turn—it was locked. She went up the hall until she found a knob that turned. Once it did, she realized that she wasn’t certain that she wanted to see what was behind that door. She had never been in any of the rooms of that hall.

  “A chair?” Penny asked. “Remember?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Isla said. She pushed the door open, taking a step back as she did. The room looked almost blue from the light that filtered in through the window. The shade wasn’t quite drawn all the way down and she could see the snow piling up at the bottom of the panes. It was almost like they were in a cave and the entrance was going to be buried in snow by morning.

  “Lights?” Penny asked.

  Isla took another step back. Penny reached only her hand through the doorway and felt around for the switch. When the lights came on, Penny smiled. Isla rolled her eyes and walked through, trying to play off her fear as a joke.

  “What room is this?” Isla asked.

  “Who cares,” Penny said. “Grab that chair, will you?”

  Isla nodded and headed over towards it. The room was barely furnished. Under the window, a single bed had a bare mattress with vague old stains. The adjacent wall had a desk. The chair was by itself against the opposite wall. The spindles rising to form the back had been carved to almost look like bamboo. Isla didn’t think it was actual bamboo—the wood was too dark. At home, her room had a bamboo floor and that wood was really light.

  She grabbed the spindles and began to pull.

  The chair was light enough that it almost felt like the wood might be hollow. Dog bones were like that—the kind they chewed, not the kind inside them. The bones that dogs chewed on were hollow inside and felt much lighter than they looked. Isla wondered if maybe the chair was made from old bones, stained to look like wood.

  She pushed the thought out of her head.

  When she got back to the threshold, Isla realized that Penny had never set foot in the room. Her cousin appeared tough, but it was probably only an act. Penny moved out of the way and let Isla drag the chair down the hall.

  “Where do you want it?” Isla asked.

  Penny took over. She arranged the chair outside the other doorway and then dug in her pocket. From deep in there, she pulled out a stubby pencil with no eraser. Penny flashed a big smile before she climbed up on the chair.

  “What are you going to do?” Isla asked. She looked at the names and dates on the doorjamb. Every year, at some point during their visit, the cousins all marked their heights to see how much they had grown. The names and dates made a steady march up the painted wood. On the opposite side, the names were familiar and the years were large.

  “I’m going to trick Sam and Gus,” Penny said.

  Isla covered her mouth and giggled.

  “How?”

  “You’ll see,” Penny said. She reached way up with the pencil, standing with her toes on the chair.

  “Wait!” Isla said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not going to look right if you don’t have a ruler. You have to put a straight line. If you do it by hand, it’s going to be all squiggly.”

  “I can draw a straight line,” Penny said.

  “Hold on,” Isla said.

  She ran back towards the room, only hesitating a little as she crossed the threshold. The lights were off—Penny must have turned them off while Isla was dragging the chair out. Isla flipped them back on and went to the desk. The top drawer jerked out, stuck at first. Pencils and thumbtacks rattled in the tray when it popped free. Isla pushed aside some papers and saw what she had hoped to find. It was a wooden ruler with a thin edge of metal embedded in it.

  Under the ruler, someone had scratched their name into the bottom of the desk.

  It said, “Dean wuz here.”

  The wind rattled the glass and then snow pelted against it, sounding almost like sand.

  Isla grabbed the ruler and ran back to her cousin. Penny was already writing something on the door frame.

  “What’s it say?” Isla said, straining up to tiptoes to try to read.

  “I put Earl, and today’s date.”

  “Here,” Isla said, handing the ruler up.

  Penny nodded and took it. She used it to draw a flat line next to the name.

  “Who’s Earl?” Isla asked.

  “It’s the guy my brother is afraid of. He doesn’t know that I know his name.”

  “Why is he afraid?” Isla asked.

  Penny grabbed the top rail of the chair to climb down. She looked down at her own hand and then snatched it back. She hadn’t liked the feel of the chair either. Isla thought maybe they would just leave it in the hall instead of touching that hollow-bone wood again.

  “It’s a made up guy,” Penny said. “You know, make believe. You can’t tell anyone about him, okay?”

  “I know about secrets,” Isla said.

  “Good. When my brother thinks that there’s someone hiding in his closet or under his bed, he always says it’s Earl. My mom always tells him that Earl is much too tall to fit under the bed and she closes the door tight on the closet because then Earl can’t get out. Sam makes us hide all the scissors because he thinks Earl will steal them.”

  Penny looked at the chair but didn’t touch it. Isla wondered if maybe Penny had come to the same conclusion. Penny surprised her. She reached out and grabbed the chair so she could drag it back towards Dean’s room. The expression on Penny’s face was clear—it was like when Millie had to throw something away in the kitchen trash can and there was already something stinky in there. Penny was dragging the chair even though it was pretty clear that she really didn’t want to be doing it.

  “So you made a line for Earl on the door?”

  “Yeah,” Penny said, flashing an evil smile at Isla. “If Sam doesn’t see it, your job is to point up at it and ask about it. Can you do that without everyone knowing that you’re playing a joke.”

  “Yup,” Isla said, nodding.

  “Good,” Penny said.

  Isla stood in the doorway of Dean’s room and watched as Penny put the chair back.

  “If my mom is there when we mark our heights, try to point out the Earl line when she isn’t listening to you. Try to do it when only Sam will hear, okay?” Penny asked.

  Isla nodded. Penny turned her back on the chair and came towards the doorway. She hit the light switch without even checking over her shoulder to make sure that there was nothing behind her, waiting for darkness to come so it could slip out of a shadow. Isla was brave—she knew it because she was never as scared as her sister, Millie—but Penny was able to be so casual sometimes, almost like she was an adult.

  As the darkness flooded the room, Isla kept her eyes locked on the chair. The shadows were gathering there—pooling into a shape of someone sitting. There was just enough light filtering through the snow and splitting the gap between the sill and the shade. That light made it difficult for Isla to focus on the outline of the person sitting in the chair. Maybe it was Dean. Maybe he was waiting until nightfall so he could get up from the chair and walk the halls of the giant house.

  “Wait!” Penny said. She flipped on the light again and the shadow-person disappeared.

  Isla took a breath and blinked up at her cousin.

  “Where did you get this?” Penny asked, snatching the ruler from Isla’s hand.

  Isla had to swallow twice to make her mouth work. All the spit had disappeared.

  “Desk,” she said.

  Penny rushed the ruler back to the desk, whipping out the top drawer and dropping the ruler before slamming it shut
. Isla kept her eyes on her cousin. She was afraid to look back to the chair. Despite the overhead lights, the darkness was growing there. The shadow was filling in the gaps between the chair’s slats. It was pooling under the seat and forming into what would be Dean’s legs.

  “Let’s go,” Penny said. She pulled the door shut and turned off the light, cutting them off from Dean with a bang.

  Isla was still rooted to her spot. She was afraid to move.

  “Come on,” Penny said. “I don’t like that room much.”

  When she grabbed Isla’s arm and jerked her off-balance, Isla finally found the courage to get going. They ran together back towards the doorway that had the markings. Penny slowed again, glancing back at Dean’s door before she stopped and turned her attention up.

  “You wait until only Sam is paying attention to you, and then you point up at the line, okay? But only do it if he doesn’t notice on his own.”

  Isla nodded. Honestly, she would have agreed to anything with the exception of returning to Dean’s door.

  “Good,” Penny said.

  # # # #

  Gus knew where he was going, to a point. Connected to the wing, the shed was a maze of tiny rooms connected with doors that were made out of the same planks that the walls were made of. Some of the doors blended so well that it was only tiny difference in the gap between boards that indicated where to push. A lot of them closed on their own, too. Poppa had installed pulleys and used old sash weights to keep the doors shut. After the kids pushed through, the doors would start their slow, squeaky travel back to shut, erasing the doorway behind them.

  Relief finally flooded into Gus’s chest when he pushed through a door and saw the old milking room. For the first time in a while, he was certain that he knew where they were.

  “I bet you don’t even know where we’re going,” Sam said.

  With perfect confidence, Gus pointed.

  “Right through there,” he said. “That leads to the barn.”

  Sam didn’t bother to apologize. He simply ran for the huge door and put his weight against the handle. This door was on rollers, and it slid to the side so people could bring a cow through for milking. There was a trick to it. Laying flat against the wall, the door had too much friction to move. Gus let Sam struggle with it for a second. It was sweet revenge for Sam’s lack of confidence.

  “Why do they have so many sheds?” Millie asked.

  “It’s just one shed,” Gus said. “It’s just divided up into rooms for storage of stuff that they didn’t want the animals to get, or whatever. Actually, that room back there was where Andrew kept his horse. Remember Andrew and the horse?”

  “That’s not it at all,” Sam said. Despite his bad technique, he had managed to get the door open a couple of inches. He put his eye to the gap and saw the barn. Sam started tugging at the handle again.

  Sam said, “The only reason there are so many rooms is because they built the shed a little at a time. Look.” He kept one hand on the door handle as he pointed.

  Millie and Gus both turned.

  Gus was surprised to see that Sam had a point. One wall of the shed was shingled like the outside of the building. There was even the trim of a window frame that had been covered over. His eyes must have passed over that spot a dozen times, but Gus had never made the connection. The shed had grown towards the barn, layer after layer, like a tree adding rings each year.

  “This door doesn’t open,” Sam said, giving up on the handle.

  The moment had come. Gus walked to the door, extending two fingers. He pulled the door slightly and then slid it easily to the right, far enough for the kids to fit through.

  “Twat rag,” Sam said as he pushed by Gus.

  Sam strode into the dark and cold. The light coming through the far windows was so dim and blue that it might as well have been moonlight.

  “Wow,” Millie whispered.

  The sound made Gus jump a little.

  Sam kept moving until he was in the center of the space. He tilted his head back and looked up.

  “Is the snow really that deep?” Millie asked. She was pointing up to the line of windows above the far door. They must have been twenty feet up the wall, if not more.

  “Can’t be,” Gus said, even though the windows were completely painted with snow. “Must just be blowing against the glass you know? It’s just stuck there.”

  “You guys are so dumb,” Sam called. “If it were that deep, there wouldn’t be any light at all from these bottom windows.”

  There wasn’t much light coming from them, but there was some blue glow. Sam probably had a point.

  “And the glass would have broken from all the weight,” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” Gus agreed. The second point was hard to argue with. Some of those old panes were so thin and weary that they had cracked just from the wind and cold. Uncle Auggie had replaced one or two a few years before. The new glass looked flat and perfect compared to the antique neighbors.

  Auggie had said, “I should have replaced every pane. This old glass is dangerous. The defects can focus the sunlight and burn down a barn. But I guess if it’s been here this long, nothing bad is going to happen, right?”

  Gus wasn’t so sure. Other things got more fragile as they got older, he wasn’t sure why longevity meant that the old barn was safe.

  Sam cocked his arm back, made a few slow practice motions, and then threw his best airplane. He had built several—this one was meant for speed and distance. It lived up to its construction. The plane flew the length of the barn and was still going fast enough to make a snapping sound when it hit the far wall.

  “Wow!” Gus said. He and Sam were both running towards the wall where the plane had landed.

  Gus knew enough to slow down when they passed under the loft on the north side of the barn. The dirt floor was uneven there. The spring groundwater seeped into the dirt and, in the winter, it erupted into clumpy frost heaves. Sam was too focused on his airplane to notice. His toe hit a mound and he went down, rolling to a stop.

  The lights came on.

  Gus turned back and saw Millie standing near the switch.

  “Careful,” she called. Her little voice echoed in the barn.

  “Thanks,” Sam muttered, getting to his feet and then brushing himself off. He picked up his plane and straightened the dented tip. “Watch this.”

  Sam pulled back his arm and let the thing go again. It rose so fast that Gus figured it would hit one of the beams of the loft. It barely missed, still rising as it crossed out into the big center aisle of the barn.

  “That’s a good one,” Gus said.

  “Shit,” Sam said.

  A moment later, Gus figured out what had made Sam curse. The plane was too good. It was going to land up in one of the lofts.

  Millie ran out from her spot near the light switch. She reached them as they heard the plane land up there somewhere.

  “That plane was awesome,” Millie said. “Too bad.”

  “Too bad, what?” Sam asked. He was already over at one of the posts that rose from a concrete pier along the aisle. He put his hands around the back of the post and a foot against it. On TV, Gus had seen a guy climb a palm tree that way. But the palm tree was slightly curved and had a rough texture that provided a decent grip. Sam’s foot slipped immediately.

  “Too bad it’s gone now,” Millie said.

  Gus went over to the wall. There had been a ladder there, at one point. He could still see the outline of the rungs on the wall. The bottom rungs had all been removed. The lowest rung was still high above jumping range.

  “It’s not gone, it’s just stuck,” Sam said. He joined Gus at the wall. “Who busted the ladder?”

  “Uncle Auggie did it a long time ago. He said it was too dangerous up there.”

  “He’s dumb,” Sam said.

  “Hey!” Millie said, turning her mouth down into a frown.

  Sam turned to her. “If it’s dangerous, then he should have explained it, not just b
roken the ladder. Now, nobody can use it, regardless of how careful they are.”

  “There used to be a real ladder to put up,” Gus said. “But it broke. He used to use that.”

  Sam turned his hands up towards Gus, like his point was proven by the statement.

  “There is another way,” Gus said.

  “How?” Sam asked.

  “We went up the other day, when we went to get Trudy’s slippers. You have to go through the wing. I’m not sure that I can find it.”

  “You just went there the other day and you don’t know if you can find it? It’s just a house, man, how hard could it be?” Sam asked.

  “Just make another plane,” Millie said.

  Sam looked up at the underside of the loft. He shook his head.

  Gus knew what his cousin was thinking. Paper airplanes were more than just a combination of their folds. Sometimes, there was something special that was breathed into the paper during construction. Certain paper airplanes captured magic in their wings.

  “I bet I can find the way,” Gus said to Millie.

  # # # #

  Isla tried one more time to entice Penny into a trip to the laundry room.

  “You can see the hole in the dryer tube,” Isla said. “It’s taped up now, but you can see it.”

  “Nah,” Penny said. “Let’s go see if my mom will let us use her tablet. I bet we can stream a movie or something.”

  Isla nodded.

  When they pushed through the door to the living room, Isla realized how warm it was in there compared to the rest of the house. It was almost like coming in from outside. She pushed up her sleeves and went to the couch where her mom was sitting.

  Uncle Jules was in the middle of a story that he seemed to be telling to Cousin Deidra.

  “We were high as shit, so you can take this with a grain of salt,” Jules said.

  “Psst!” Aunt June said. “Language,” she whispered.

  “Sorry,” Jules said. He turned back to Aunt Deidra as he returned to his story. “It was Chris and Chris in the lead, then me, and then Stuart Libby.”