He and his aunt had never been close, but he had always spoken of her with a twinkle in his eyes. "You never knew what Lizzie would be up to next," he would say, his eyes focused on something only he could see. "When she wasn't in the library, she was corresponding with several pen pals around the world and writing in her little notebooks. She must have had dozens of them. And always fiddling with things until they did what she wanted them to do. She had the travelling bug for sure, never knew where we would get a postcard from next."
That was the most she knew of her aunt, however, and now what she didn't know made her wonder again, just exactly what was going to happen next.
She put down the album just as the doorbell rang again.
"Now what?" she grumbled.
A short, stocky older man with piercing blue eyes squinting under a plain black ball cap stood at the door with a large grey great dane at his side. He stabbed his thumb at his chest. "Elias Mensch. I'm next door. This is Cinder," he said nodding his head at the dog.
"Hi, I'm Jenny…" she began, but he cut her off.
"Postman must be new," he said. "I think these are yours."
He thrust a handful of letters at her and nearly didn't wait for her to reach for them until he began to turn back down the stepping stone walk. "I'll make sure he knows where you are," he said over his shoulder. And he stalked off down the walk.
The dog, Cinder, however still stood and stared at her. He could have been made of stone. Jenny had never seen a dog this big and his glare seemed menacing, although he did not growl. In the meantime, Tidbit had appeared at the doorway as well, stropping her ankles. As he did so, he made the most eerie sound. It wasn't a meow or even a growl. It went from a deep mrrrr, ascending to a high pitch and down again. Cinder's eyes widened, and he took a step back, never taking his eyes off of the cat.
Tidbit stepped gracefully forward like a leopard Jenny had once seen in a jungle documentary. His front quarters were low, his tail twitched like a flicking finger. One step forward. Cinder backed up one step. Another step. Cinder backed again one careful step. Was that a whimper from the big gray dog? The mirrored action of the dog and the cat was almost a dance. For every slow forward stalking step Tidbit would take, Cinder would back up one step, constantly keeping wary eye contact with the cat, almost as if mesmerized.
As they reached the wrought iron gate, Cinder suddenly turned tail and ran full out with Tidbit in hot pursuit until they were out of sight. "Looks like you've got this well in hand, Tidbit," she murmured to herself, shaking her head. "Curiouser and curiouser."
She sorted through the pile of three letters. One was marked "resident.” One was obviously from her mom, covered in little heart stickers. And there was one thicker envelope from a bank.
She dropped into her reading chair with another sigh. She opened her mom's letter first. The letter went on and on about her mom's new Zumba group and the many goings-on of her siblings and concluded with:
"I'm glad to hear you're settling into your new 'digs'. Your dad says this is typical Lizzie, to spring something like this on someone. I am sure you are as surprised as the rest of us, but you should know that, although many thought your aunt was a bit 'dotty', she was a nice person. I always liked her, as much as I ever saw of her.
Dad and I may come down to visit in a few weeks. I've never been to her house before. It will be good to catch up and you can show us around. We got you a little house-warming present and we'll bring it with us when we come. Love, Mom"
Jenny grinned. Her mom always had such a positive take on things. She knew her parents were unused to the idea of someone working from home and being their own boss, but although they hadn't approved of it, they hadn't once discouraged her from doing her best at her chosen profession. Jenny thought they may have been a little disappointed that her writing career had left few traces. As a ghostwriter, she seldom got public credit for her work and that didn't leave much in the way of bragging rights.
She then hefted the thick envelope from the unknown bank. This must be the bank her aunt had told her about in her last missive. Inside the envelope was a debit card with her name on it and the details of her account with all the usual legalese. If her aunt hadn't mentioned it specifically, she would have been suspicious. She had received cards like this in the mail that had turned out to be fraudulent.
She goggled at the amount in the account. Lizzie's note had said something about the money sustaining her for a few years, but, considering her own spending habits, she calculated that she could live very well on this for many years to come, especially since her housing was rent free.
This reminded her of the boxes sitting on her dining room table. What were all of those photo albums really about and why had Lizzie kept them separate from the other things left to her in the storage building? She felt like she needed time to catch her breath. All of this was happening so quickly. She remembered fantasizing as a kid about fairy godmothers and all, but in no way did she ever expect anything like this. And it was beginning to feel like this was about way more than just an estate from a "dotty" old aunt.
In the meantime, she heard Tidbit meowing loudly from the back yard. "Business taken care of?" she asked him, letting him in. He peered up at her with his big golden eyes for a moment and, after drinking daintily from his water bowl, he hopped up gracefully to his place on the window seat, curled up and closed his eyes.
She wandered back over to the dining room table. Surveying the first box, she decided to thumb through the remaining albums later. She was surprised to see that the light was already fading, the colors in the sky beyond the backyard fence diluted like watercolors and she realized she hadn't even thought about supper. She fixed herself a sandwich, took her plate into the office and ate while she considered what to say to her agency. She had never considered changing her vocation and she couldn't help but feel like Aunt Lizzie was taking a lot for granted.
True, she had provided a beautiful house and a substantial nest egg. Not to mention a cat, of all things. But the rest of this was so bizarre it set her to wondering if this was some elaborate joke. Again, she touched the key at her neck, which despite her ongoing efforts to find the catch she had been unable to remove. What was up with the little key? She had searched the house pretty thoroughly to discover some mysterious box that it might open. At first, she had been sure it went to a security box or jewelry box, but there had been nothing.
She didn't mind the cat. Tidbit was his own "person" and most of the time she didn't even know he was there. Occasionally he would strop her ankles with a rumbling purr or butt her hand to be petted, but mostly he had his own business either outside or contemplating the front garden from his perch on the window seat in the front room.
But what exactly had she gotten herself into? She passed the boxes in the dining room on her way to take her plate to the kitchen. And these boxes? A puzzle for tomorrow. WAIT! Not tomorrow. Tomorrow was her weekly meeting with her hiking club. They were going to hike Topanga Canyon, on one of her favorite trails. The nearly 10 years of drought had taken its toll, thinning the trees, lowering the water levels and yet it was still one of the most beautiful hikes in her area.
This meant she needed to set out her gear before bed, as it meant getting up at 4 a.m., if she was going to make the meeting at the trailhead. So, she washed up and as she walked past the dining room table she noticed the little passport, or so she had begun to think of it, sitting on the lid of one of the unopened boxes. She grabbed it to put into her wallet and headed off to get her things together and get to bed.
That night she dreamt she was walking in an unfamiliar forest. Up ahead of her were Aunt Lizzie and the large black man moving purposefully ahead at a quick pace. The trail ahead of her was clear, but try as she might, she couldn't quite catch up to them even though they didn't seem to be more than a couple hundred feet ahead of her. For some reason she knew she shouldn't call out to them, but she also knew, as one often does in a dream, that it was somehow im
portant not to lose their trail.
Chapter 4: The Hike
Her alarm broke her out of sleep and she remembered that it was hike day. She jumped out of bed, dressed in her hiking clothes, good hiking boots and her hat. The little gold key hanging around her neck felt so incongruous with her cotton shirt and jeans, her sweatshirt tied around her waist and her favorite ball cap. But there was nothing to be done for it.
She grabbed her backpack after eating a quick bowl of cereal, but as she was heading out the door, her backpack slung on her back, Tidbit showed up. He was mewling at her somewhat piteously, something he had not done before.
"What's up, kitty?" she asked him. "Are you hungry? There's food out for you in the kitchen."
Tidbit butted his head against her legs, still mewling. It was as if he wanted to push her in a certain direction. She checked her watch. She had a little bit of time. He was so pitiful that she couldn't leave him without finding out what was wrong. He continued to butt his big head against her leg. "O.K. ... Let's see what you need," she capitulated, somewhat amused at this new trick of her cat.
Tidbit seemed to understand that she would follow him and began to walk through the hall between the dining room and the bedrooms. Halfway down the hall he stopped in front of a closet. Wait! A closet? There were no closets in the hallway of her house. She was sure she would have noticed it before. The door was painted the same as the rest of the walls, for sure, but still. It was a door, it was an obvious door. The brass handle definitely gave it away, she thought wryly. How in the world could she have possibly missed it?
Tidbit was looking up at her expectantly. It appeared he wanted her to open the door. She shifted her knapsack, eyeing the cat with renewed confusion. "Is there something in here that you need?" she asked him, one hand on her hip. Tidbit mewled again, cocking his head as if to say, "What are you waiting for?"
Jenny reached for the handle and suddenly the little key on her neck warmed, not uncomfortably, but it definitely was growing warm to the touch, more than was accounted for by her body heat.
She pulled the door open and, to her astonishment, it wasn't a closet at all. It was a room that could not possibly be accounted for. She stepped into the room in amazement. It was like a little office. There were shelves full of books and various unusual pieces of statuary, large and small, on the tops of those shelves. A small, plain office desk with an antique wooden swivel chair behind it stood at the back wall and a large something that looked like some sort of clock sat at one end of the desk.
The clock didn't have numbers on it and there were multiple hands pointing to icons which had no meaning to Jenny. This windowless room was not, in and of itself, terribly out of the ordinary except for the undeniable fact that it couldn't possibly exist. There was absolutely no room for it in the floorplan of the house. And there, on the opposite wall of this impossible room was another door!
She turned to Tidbit who was purring his big rumbling purr, obviously happy to be in this room. She noticed that next to the desk, on the floor, was a comfortable looking cat bed that looked very much lived in.
"OK, cat. What is this all about?" Her mind was racing and, although she knew she would get no answers from the cat, she couldn't help herself. Tidbit launched himself up onto the red cushion on the wooden desk chair and looked expectantly at the desk. Sure enough, there on the desk was another lavender envelope with her name on it in green ink.
She shooed him from the chair and sat down, her mind racing. She opened the envelope with a certain trepidation. What could this possibly have to do with her and how could this room even be here? She remembered from her childhood one Christmas when her parents had sent her on a treasure hunt with little clues hidden all over the house. The final stop had been a shiny new blue bicycle with a huge red bow on the handlebars. This was beginning to feel like that, but she was pretty sure there was no toy at the end of this trail.
"Speaking of trails," she said aloud, thinking that her hiking group wouldn't wait long for her, if she got there late. They would expect her to catch up. There was little to no cell signal where they hiked, so she couldn't even send them a text. "I really don't have time for this." Nevertheless, she pulled out 2 sheets of lavender paper. The note said:
"Jenny. This is an important day. When you read this, you will have been guided to the door and the key on your neck will have granted you access. As you have experienced, this key need not be inserted into the door. It is like a pass. I can't explain the technology to you, except to say that it is of ancient date and it works well to keep those out who should not have access to this room and all it contains.
Yes, I know this appears impossible. And no, you aren't dreaming, hallucinating or losing your marbles. This cozy little room is a dimensional portal. The physics of it is beyond anything on our world. It isn't a time tunnel or a wormhole. It isn't magic, although it certainly feels like it. Having said that, you should know that a lot of what you will experience in and through this room will definitely feel like magic, as our folklore would describe it.
Very little of what you think you know is as factual as it is presented to be by scientists. A lot of things you are used to counting on will prove to be unhelpful. However, you have a bright and inquisitive mind. You also have your mother's fierce independence and your father's knack of solving puzzles. It's one of the reasons you are such an amazing writer. (Yes, I have been following you online for a long time.)
So, now that the portal has accepted you, there are steps you must take. First, make sure you have your passport. (I knew it was a passport! How did I know that? Jenny wondered.) Second, take the cat with you. This is important. Lastly, be nice to The Gatekeeper. (Gatekeeper?)
I expect great things from you.
Love, Lizzie"
Jenny sank back into the chair. She wanted to scratch her head. What in the world or out of it was actually happening here? She looked down at Tidbit who had made himself quite comfortable in his white wicker bed with a great red cushion in it. "What does this have to do with you? And what's behind that other door?" Tidbit looked up at her, unblinking golden eyes staring solemnly into hers. His ears had swiveled forward in what looked like a question.
All thoughts of the hike had fled from her mind. She hadn't even noticed that the backpack was still slung on her back as she leaned back. Tidbit stood in his bed and stretched a long luxurious stretch, his hindquarters high in the air, his tail tucked under his body and his shoulders low on the floor. Then, tail held high with a little crook in the end like a little flag, he sauntered over to the door on the other side of the room and turned to look at Jenny expectantly.
"I take it I'm supposed to go through that door?" Jenny said shaking her head. "I guess I'm up to rummaging through another room. The guys will have to go on without me."
Shaking her head that she was even considering this, she reached for the door handle and opened the door.
It didn't lead into another room. Rather it was a long hallway…a very long hallway. She actually couldn't seem to see the end of it. The hallway was wide, covered in a dark grass-green carpet and lined with doors on either side, somewhat like a large hotel. She couldn't see the end of the hallway, as it bended slightly to the right. She gawked for a moment, once again looking to Tidbit for a clue as to what to do next. He went and stood, waiting, before a green door, the first on the right.
Jenny sighed and reached once again for a handle, wondering what kind of maze she had found herself in. This was all so impossible. She opened the door and…
…the warm breeze smelled of something akin to lilacs with a slight difference, more tangy than sweet. Before her stretched a long black sand beach, but unlike anything she remembered seeing. "I don't think we're in Kansas, er, California anymore, Toto. I mean, Tidbit." As she turned to look at the cat she gasped. There, behind her on what appeared to be a porch of a small hut, was not her cat, but the immense black man in the photo her aunt had sent her.
"Who are you
and what have you done with my cat?" she demanded.
"I am Tarafau Bane," he replied calmly in a deep, resonant voice. There was a slight sing song cadence that felt foreign, but nothing she could put her finger on. "I am your cat, Jenny Japhet."
"You're my…" Jenny breathed.
"Your cat is me." He said, showing large white teeth in a grin. Fangs. He had fangs. Not just eyeteeth, but fangs, if not as exaggerated as a fantasy vampire. They were longer and thinner than a normal person. "I cannot assume my favorite form in your dimension. But I like being a cat. Very amusing."
Jenny stared at him, completely undone. Her aunt had told her in that letter that this was not a dream or a hallucination, but she was having a hard time believing it at the moment. "I'm still in my bed," she thought. "In a moment I'll wake up and the cat will still be a cat and I can go on my hike."
He stood there his muscled arms folded confidently across his broad chest. He was dressed in a flowing robe in colors and patterns that seemed to be a cross between traditional African and Polynesian patterns. The bright colors contrasted well with his almost blue-black skin, coincidentally nearly the identical colors of Tidbit's dark fur. His eyes twinkled, and the corners of his large amber eyes were wrinkled in amusement.
"You're my cat. You are Tidbit? How is that possible?"
"I am a Daringi. Our people are shape-changers. I am "The Guide.” It is my job to get you safely where you need to be and guide your footsteps as we bring order to the shape of things in the dimensions. For now, I must take you to The Gatekeeper. She will explain."
He paused, waiting expectantly for her to comment. She shook her head, she had no reply for any of this.
"First you must be scanned, of course," he continued, obviously by the tilt of his head and his wide grin, amused by her reaction. "It's ok," he continued. "It won't hurt you and it is necessary."
The House on Infinity Loop Page 3
