by Deen Ferrell
“You didn’t answer my question, Willoughby. What does Antonio want you to do? Why is he suddenly interested in architecture?”
“He’s always been interested in architecture. It’s one of his hobbies.”
“And he needs you to take the measurements?”
“He wants me to…uh, to verify some things that he discovered.”
Mom furrowed her brow. Her face darkened as she restated the question. “You want me to give you permission to spend a whole afternoon alone in the middle of Georgetown?”
“It’s not in the middle of Georgetown, Mom. The Certus Grove is like a block from the metro station. Sam can drop me off around 3:30, and I’ll be waiting to catch the 5:20 commuter home with Klaas. He told me this morning that he’s not working late tomorrow, and he could save me a seat.”
“You’re talking about downtown D.C., Willoughby.”
“So? I’m not a kid anymore, Mom. I’m 16—”
“You’re 15,” Mom corrected, “and while I agree that you are decidedly mature in many areas, I may prefer you to wait until you’re really ancient—like maybe, 17—before I let you go traipsing around downtown D.C. alone.”
“So, I’ll be careful! I need to do this, Mom. Antonio’s a good friend.”
Mom looked over at him. “So, I’m your Mom. You can’t even remember to call me to tell me you’re over getting your hair cut. How can I trust you to make sure and get to the station on time?”
“You just do it,” Willoughby said. “You just trust me.”
At length, Mom sighed. “You promise you’ll call me as soon as you finish your measurements?”
“I’ll talk to you the whole walk to the subway station.”
She raised her eyebrows; “A whole eight-minute conversation! I’d die of shock…I will expect a glowing report from the rabble tonight. You do remember that the planning meeting for the home association is at seven-thirty, don’t you?”
Willoughby gave a quick nod. The rabble was Mom’s pet name for Densi and Cali. Both girls had Mom’s blue eyes, but Klaas’ white-blonde hair. Willoughby had neither. His eyes were a sort of hazel and his hair was dark brown. He raked a hand through the newly clipped bush, noting that his hand still trembled. “Do I get brownie points if they’re both still alive when you get home?”
Mom ignored the jab, though the girls in back had plenty to say about who would be still alive at the end of the evening. Densi shoved a dirty sock toward Willoughby, dangling it from the end of a straw. He pushed it away, giving her the look, the one that says “don’t push it!” She pulled the sock back, snickering and pushed it over toward Cali, who was much more vocal in her displeasure. With a sigh, Willoughby turned to look out the window. They were almost to the point where you could see the Certus Grove building from the freeway. Staring out at the city lights, he couldn’t help but let his mind drift back to the mysterious space at the top of the building, of the glowing number strings he had seen seeping out from the symbol, and of the number sequence on the taxi meter: 6, 6, 6…
4
Secrets of the Certus Grove
The next school day seemed almost endless. When sixth period finally came, Willoughby tried to appear attentive, but Professor Dobson made it difficult. He made the inflationary pressures in pre-war Germany sound as exciting as watching a snail cross a sidewalk in misty rain. The man’s voice could put an insomniac to sleep. Unlike typical high schools, Worthington Hills had no mere teachers. It staffed all classes with fully-accredited university-level professors. Everything about the school was stuffy and high-brow, which was one of the things Willoughby detested about it.
His chin slipped suddenly from the palm that had been propping it up. He jerked upright causing a ripple of giggles. Professor Dobson didn’t even seem to notice. He simply forged ahead; “…and one must remember that the German Democratic Socialists were more of a splinter group at this time. Now, let’s compare this time period with the anchors of German wealth immediately before the first world war…”
Willoughby leaned back, trying to will his eyes to stay open. The fact that he had laid awake most of the night didn’t help his situation. He had gone over and over his experience at the Corner Barber. He had dissected and considered every word of conversation he had overheard between the tattooed man and the mysterious tall man. He had thought of the space at the top of the Certus Grove building. Though he probably wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he had also thought about the gothic-looking violinist with the silky-black hair. Actually, he had thought about her quite a bit—thought about her and looked her up online and watched hours of YouTube videos of her concerts...
He wiped at his brow, feeling suddenly a little hot under the collar. He needed to focus. Going over the Certus Grove plans again in his mind, he tried to recall every detail Antonio had shown him. What could connect the symbol over Antonio’s shop with the cleverly hidden space atop the Certus Grove building?
An image of the muscle-bound man with tattoos crawling down his arms and up his neck flashed across his memory. Was there a chance the man could show up at the Certus Grove building? It was unlikely. After all, Antonio hadn’t shown him the plans until after the man had sped away, but still, the thought of the huge man made him nervous.
A tall girl with wavy, auburn hair looked over as if daring him to nod off. He winked at her and she raised a questioning eyebrow just as the bell rang. In seconds, he was up from his chair and out the door, racing through the quickly crowded hall to a less-used side door. He sprinted across the front quad and down to the pick-up lane where his limousine was third in line. Good old Sam! He was someone who could be counted on. The chauffeur gave a curt hello as he swung open the passenger door. Willoughby nodded and dove in.
“You think you can squeeze out of line?” he asked when the driver had situated himself in the driver’s seat.
“I shall do my best, Master Willoughby,” Sam hummed as he snapped his seat belt. He glanced into the rearview mirror. “Was it that tough of a day?”
Willoughby shrugged. “I had to endure another lecture on inflationary pressures in pre-war Germany. I survived, but only just. I’ll have to buckle down and read the material this weekend, though. Last year, anyone who failed the chapter test was forced to read Mein Kampf.”
Sam gave a low chuckle as he threw the car into gear, backed up slightly, and swung the large car into the passing lane. He smoothly accelerated away from the line of other limousines. Willoughby peered at his chauffeur for a moment in the mirror. Sam may be quiet, but he’s basically a good guy, he thought as he pushed his backpack over and snapped into his seatbelt. He felt a little guilty pulling his iPod out and sticking in his earphones. Experience had taught him, though, that Sam was somewhat uncomfortable with conversation. He tended to give one word answers, like “yes,” “no,” “sometimes,” etc. The two had been driving together for over two years. Sam picked him up each morning at the train stop across from Klaas’s office, and dropped him back off at the office after school. Still, Willoughby didn’t know if the man had any hobbies or side jobs.
He turned to look out the window. Weird that he should be thinking of Sam’s communication skills when he had so many other thoughts to occupy his mind. He began, once again, to go over the building blueprints in his mind.
True to form, forty minutes and a grand total of ten words later, the limousine pulled up to the front of the Certus Grove building. Willoughby stepped out, smiled, and waved Sam away.
Once the car disappeared into traffic, he turned to take in his destination. The building was stunning—even more impressive up close than it had been from the freeway. He shouldered his pack and stumbled across the width of its front facade.
The building was unusually wide, taking up almost a full block, and was about half again as deep. Everything about it seemed designed to mask the height of its upper floor. A decorative ridge just below t
he top row of windows hid the fact that the top of the building angled in slightly. Dark shades were pulled to the same point in each of the windows, obscuring the floor’s actual height. Decorative soffits framed each window, angling opposite the inward tilt of the wall. The effect was an illusion that the distance between floors was more or less consistent.
The whole building was like a painting by the famous illusionist Escher. Willoughby thought of Escher’s work—the way he created endless looping stairways where figures were forever climbing or descending, and structures that bent perspective so that, no matter how you turned the picture, there was always some alcove or doorway grounded in your point of view. The Certus Grove was just this sort of structure. Someone had specifically designed it to trick the eye. The question that burned in Willoughby’s mind, though, was why? Was the architect just having a bit of fun? Was it his unique signature, so to speak, or was there a more practical reason? Was he trying to hide something?
Willoughby pulled out a scratchpad and a pen. He set off at a brisk clip, exploring the sides and back of the building. He mumbled to himself, as he often did when he was alone. “No interesting markings on the building exterior, and nothing visible on the roof.” He noted that the period-specific style of the architecture carried the same sort of nostalgic elegance that gave Antonio’s Corner Barber its quaint feel. Walking completely around the building, he filled about half a page on his notepad with estimated measurements and observations.
When he finally entered through the building’s tall glass doors, he found the reception hall tastefully functional. The floor was tiled. Marbled columns and crystal light fixtures extended down short corridors to either side of the entry doors. Willoughby carefully examined the decor. He was fascinated by the carefully-aged details that gave the building a sense of grand history. In the end, however, he found nothing particularly unusual about the ground floor. He strolled to one of the central elevators. There was no basement option, so he decided to go straight to the top of the building. He pushed the number 12. If there was a hidden floor, he thought, it would be the 13th. He grinned at the realization. Knowing the mythical bad luck associated with the number 13, it was no wonder that no one had gone looking for it. Or had they? He wasn’t frightened of 13. To him, 13 was just a number, and that was that.
The high-speed elevator abruptly decelerated, reminding him that, despite the building’s carefully-aged appearance, the building’s infrastructure was new. Within seconds, the elevator doors dinged open. He stepped out onto a tile floor consistent with the one he had just left. A large number 12 hung in gilded gold letters in front of him. He stepped out and began his careful inspection, checking the entire floor for anything out of the ordinary. He found nothing.
He walked the floor again, this time checking for loose ceiling tiles, or some other way to get access to the space that should be above. The floor was quiet and partially empty. No one challenged him as he poked around. The few people he did pass in the hallways only nodded politely and hurried on. He had a short speech prepared if someone asked what he was doing, but he never had to use it.
He turned a corner and caught the eye of a receptionist as she looked up from her desk in a glass-walled reception area. The business was called Skylark Annuities. He smiled and nodded pleasantly, but she only stared, unblinking. Her cold, stone-like face reminded him of something from atop a cathedral—a human gargoyle of some kind. He decided not to pass this particular reception area again.
Once he had covered the entire floor a second time and found no loose ceiling tiles, no open closets, and no way to get into the space above, he turned to the bathrooms. Both bathroom doors were locked. He took one last measurement toward the stairway door. Just as Antonio had said, the ceilings were ordinary height. He glanced back the way he had come and then slipped through the heavy stairway door marked “EXIT.” Maybe he could find a maintenance access at the top of the stairs.
The stairwell was gray, cold, and deserted. Willoughby peered down. Each floor had a landing with stairs leading both up and down, continuing around in a tight square. A hollow space in the center extended all the way to the ground floor. The view, looking down, was geometric—a square, repeating itself 12 times. It reminded him again of the artist Escher.
Curiously, though, a bank of steps led up from the 12th floor. His eye followed them to a railed ledge about halfway between where he stood and the stairwell’s high ceiling. On the left side of the ledge, a metal ladder extended up another 10 or so feet to a padlocked hatch in the ceiling. The ledge itself seemed to be 5 or 6 feet wide and extended the entire width of the stairwell. It seemed to dead-end into a smooth wall.
Willoughby began to climb. “Well, there is extra space between the 12th floor ceiling and the roof,” he mumbled to himself. “There has to be some way to access it.” As he came to the ledge, his mind raced and his heartbeat quickened. Maybe there was an access from the roof. He climbed slowly up the metal ladder, but the roof hatch was padlocked shut. He inspected it. No one had opened this hatch for a long time. Spider webs were strewn across the corners and the lock was visibly rusted. He climbed back down and turned his attention to the ledge.
Walking the length of the empty ledge, he sighed. To one side was a railing and everywhere else was blank walls. He ran a hand over the large expanse of blank wall. No matter how he looked at it, the blank walls were just that—smooth, featureless walls. If he couldn’t come up with something fast, he had to face the fact that he might come away from his exploration empty-handed. He turned to start back toward the stairway, and then stopped. Something wasn’t right. Why build a section of ledge only to dead-end into bare wall? He moved back along the seemingly pointless ledge to the segment of wall. Along its lower-left side, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye--a glow, or a glint, that flared only for a fraction of a second, but long enough to pique his curiosity. He bent to study the area of interest and noted a slight dimpling.
As he carefully explored the rest of the smooth wall, keeping at roughly the same level from the floor, his hand found a second imperfection on the lower-right side of the wall. He took out his tape measure. Both imperfections were roughly 18” from the floor and about 24” from the edges of the wall. This was too mathematically exact to be coincidence.
He began to probe the imperfections closely. They were formed by small groups of dots arranged across a barely perceptible plate of some kind, very flat and thin, attached to the wall and painted over. What interested him most was the shape of the plate. The left plate came to a point on the outside, like a triangle that had been tipped onto its left side. The right-side plate came to a point on the outside like a triangle tipped onto its right side, pointing in the opposite direction. It was as if the two plates were actually indicating lines of a larger triangle.
Willoughby stepped back. He lifted his eyes slowly up the wall, but there were no other visible imperfections, even if he put his eye right up to the wall and squinted at where he thought the top of the triangle should be. He wished he had a ladder so he could climb up and physically run his hand over the spot, but he did not. The upper wall appeared to be unbroken and completely smooth. He knelt at one of the plates and ran his fingers over the dots again. They seemed to be ordered, not random. His mind seized upon the answer: Braille! He had studied Braille once on the internet. The logic behind creating a series of dots that could translate language into a touch-based system had intrigued him. He pulled out his cell phone and connected to the internet. Also pulling out his notepad, he began to slowly interpret the letters: T, A, N, G, E, N, T. He stepped back. The letters spelled the word “TANGENT.”
He moved to the second plate and ran his fingers over the dots; T, N, E, G, N, A, T. He stared at the letters, trying to make sense of them, before suddenly recognizing that they represented the same word spelled backwards.
“Odd,” he mumbled aloud. What was the purpose of the two plate
s and the larger triangle they seemed to indicate? Why was the word tangent spelled forward on one plaque and backwards on the other?
He frowned, stepping away from the wall to lean against the railing. He thought about what he knew of the word tangent. In trigonometry, it’s the ratio between the leg opposite an acute angle and the leg adjacent to it. That seemed to fit, but if the line between the plates was supposed to indicate the base of a right triangle, where was the point to indicate the tip of it? He moved up to the wall again, placing his eye close and carefully scanning the wall above, paying particular attention to the area where the point, or tip of the triangle, should be. Again, he saw nothing but smooth wall.
In geometry, a tangent line, or tangent, is the point at which the line touches a curve. A curve…The thought gave him an idea.
Willoughby pulled his tape measure from his pocket and began to carefully measure the distance between the two plates. He made a small pencil mark on the wall at the exact center between the imperfections. “This is the pivot axis,” he mumbled aloud. “A right triangle has vertical and horizontal lines that are equal, so, if I consider the horizontal distance here, and turn the tape measure up,” he held the tape measure against the wall so that its tip pointed up from the small pencil mark he had made. He mentally drew the back to back right triangles on the wall. He paused, staring at the wall.
“Okay. If the right triangle is pivoted 180 degrees, it will mirror itself on the other side. That would account for the word being frontward on one side and backward on the other. In the process of pivoting, it would also create a curve across the floor. If this is some kind of three-dimensional puzzle, perhaps it’s the curve that’s key.”
