by Susan May
First he tried pushing against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. It seemed as determined to stop him leaving as it had been in preventing him from entering. This time he didn’t waste any more time; he knew to kick it open.
He rolled onto his side and coiled up like a tight spring. Then he counted aloud.
“One. Two. Three.”
On three, he thrust both his legs toward the door, holding his breath as he anticipated the jarring of his feet as they connected with the wall.
This time though, he didn’t feel his feet connect with the door; instead it seemed to open before he’d even touched it. It was too dark to see, but his legs had seemed to simply go through the opening. He wiggled his body along until his feet met the outer closet door. There was no sound either, but he was too grateful to be out of the room to give it any more thought.
Cool air filtered over him, and he breathed it in, enjoying the freshness of its taste. There was no light in here, either, which puzzled him for a second.
Of course, the cupboard door was closed; beyond that, it must be night. Henry felt proud how smart he had become. It must be because the chair and his new role as king had made him so much wiser.
He wriggled himself through, crawling on his stomach like a baby—a proper baby, not a crybaby. Not once today had he cried, even when Clarissa and Parker almost found him and he was so scared his legs shook.
Now, half-inside the closet space, Henry bent his body to the left. Once through, he flipped over onto his stomach, brought his knees up under him, and stood up. Turning sideways, he pushed against the door, and found it swung open easily, the hinges creaking much more loudly than he remembered.
Henry emerged into the room as if he were an alien tentatively arriving from another world. He closed the door and turned to look around. The moon shone bright through the windows, and he felt relieved to finally see something other than black. Hurrying to the open door that led to the hall, he noticed the room seemed changed, but he couldn’t work out what exactly was different.
At the doorway he paused and leaned his head into the hall to listen for Clarissa and Parker. They could be anywhere, waiting to pounce. There was no sound of them, though. In fact, except for the sound of the wind blowing down the hall, there was nothing.
How strange. Mother hated drafts, so windows and doors were always kept closed. Yet the wind had somehow gotten inside.
Brown and yellow leaves rustled past the door, flitting and flying along, blown by the wind. He stood, transfixed by the sounds and images. There was an empty mood to the house, and he didn’t like how it made him feel.
The back of Henry’s shirt flapped gently against his back. At the same time, he noticed the air had suddenly become chillingly cold, as if the door of a refrigerator had opened behind him. Goosebumps rose on his arms.
Pulling his arms about himself, he wondered what he should do. The crybaby boogeyman might be on his way, brought by the wind. He heard no other sounds of people in the house, and that wasn’t right. Perhaps he should go back to the closet, or even further, into the secret room. Surely, his mother would come looking for him eventually.
What about the crybaby boogeyman? What if he found him first? Oh dear, oh dear. If only he hadn’t fallen asleep.
He turned back into the room, trying to decide what to do. The windows caught his attention immediately—or what was left of them. Every pane of glass was either cracked or broken. He began to count, so he could tell his mother how many were broken, but once he got to the forgotten number, he gave up. There were simply too many.
With each breath he exhaled, a snaking white mist rose from his mouth, and a strange little ache grew in the center of his forehead. He shivered and wrapped his arms about his body.
This was so confusing. It seemed as if he had been transported to a different version of his house while he’d slept. That idea didn’t make sense, but neither did the wind, or the leaves, or the broken windows.
He turned back to the hall again, and moved toward the door. The wind still whistled down its length, carrying its passenger leaves. He didn’t wait this time, but took off running toward the staircase, his footsteps echoing thumps as he passed by open doors, portals to empty, shadow-filled rooms.
At the top of the large wooden staircase he stared down over the railing. Below him, the formal entrance lay in darkness. The enormous crystal chandelier that normally glowed bright from dusk until dawn, hung across from him, dead and dark as the rest of the lights in the house. Where its crystals usually created dancing colored lights along the walls, it now only formed shadows.
Downward he bounded, two steps at a time, the echo of the sound of his shoes rebounding in the cavernous entrance. Small swirls of leaves flew upward, stirred by his passing.
So many leaves. Had a storm brought them into the house through the broken windows?
He’d missed so much while he was asleep. What more would he find? The bird was back inside his chest, now swooping into his tummy. He couldn’t control it. If he didn’t find his mother or father soon, he imagined it might burst from his chest.
He made it to the kitchen, normally a light-filled room both day and night, holding wonderful, hunger-inducing smells; now it was a desolate, empty sight. Other than leaves, it was empty of all furniture. No dining table. No chairs. No toaster. No vases of flowers, always perfectly arranged in the center of the table.
Above the sink, there were more broken windows, with the wind blowing through as if it had every right to invade the house. It seemed stronger in here, too, whistling and beating at him like he was the intruder. As he watched, groups of leaves caught in an eddy and were whipped against the wall.
He’d noticed since he’d entered the room only moments before, the sound of the wind had grown from a whistle to an angry moan.
He needed to find his family. He didn’t like the wind, or the dark, or being on his own, or the way the house had changed. Now he didn’t care if his mother was annoyed about dinner. He just wanted to feel her arms around him and to not be alone.
Henry ran from the kitchen, heading for the sitting room as fast as he could, as if the crybaby boogeyman was right behind, chasing him with arms outstretched and jaws open wide. He’d reached the center of the room before he came to a sliding halt.
This room was empty, just like all the other rooms. Where there were once towering, antique bookshelves there was nothing. The chairs, the piano, the sideboards, mother’s ornaments and picture frames so carefully placed on the sideboard and tables… gone.
Just as in the kitchen, in the upstairs bedroom, and in the rest of the house, this room, too, was empty. It was clear, now, his family had disappeared and left him behind. All Henry could think was his mother must be very angry with him.
Like a doll on a music box, he stood in the center of the room, slowly turning, searching for anything familiar or even for a clue telling where they had gone and why. The ceiling-high windows, leading out to the sandstone balcony overlooking the fields, towered before him, making him feel like a little mouse. They, too, were mostly broken. Their once luxurious, cream and black tapestry curtains danced and billowed in the wind, nothing more than tattered shreds with gaping holes.
Through the windows, the moon shone into the room like a giant flashlight, the yellow-white light creating a glowing path along the dark carpet. As Henry watched the ghostly, moving patterns on the floor, he noticed the wind increasing, as if his presence were some encouragement to it. It shrieked through the shattered portals, kicked up the piles of leaves and hurled them into the air before throwing them back to the floor and toward the corners of the room.
Henry worried if he stayed in the room much longer he, too, would be blown into the air or pinned against a wall, held helplessly there by the force. As if the wind had read his mind, a sudden gust hit with enough force to almost topple him. He staggered backward for a moment, then righted himself. This was scary, and it felt dangerous.
Grabbing at h
is flapping shirt to hold it down, Henry turned his back to the wind. He now faced the enormous, white-marble fireplace, which until he fell asleep had been a place of warmth and comfort. Now, in his imagination, it was a black-holed entrance to the home of a snarling, red-eyed monster. Swaying cobwebs stretched across its hearth, and the mantelpiece glistened and shimmered in the moonlight.
The possibility of the crybaby boogeyman emerging from the hollow seemed very real. Henry began to back away, placing one foot carefully behind the other, too afraid to look away.
Behind him, buffeted by the wind, the double entry doors banged violently against their frames, as if they, too, were attempting escape. Henry used the sound as his guide. In only a few more steps he’d be close enough to the doors to safely turn and run through them.
Two more steps … one more step … now turn.
As he began to turn, something white, fluttering at the base of the fireplace, caught his attention, its movement and color such a contrast to the soot-blackened hearth.
He stopped and stared at it.
It seemed to be a piece of paper with one edge stuck beneath a leg of the iron grate. Even though it flapped like a captured moth, he could see there was something written on it.
A message from his mother, perhaps? She often wrote notes. His heart lifted.
Henry desperately wanted to run from the wind and the fireplace, to look for his family, or find somewhere to hide until they came back if he couldn’t find them. If this was a message, he needed to get it.
Like a waving white hand, the paper beckoned him forward.
He fought his way back against a wind that battered and tore at him as if it didn’t want him to reach the paper. Leaves beat at his face, arms, and legs, their sharp edges biting into his skin, but he kept going. Henry held up his hands and covered his face, leaving his fingers slightly parted over his eyes so he could see. Each step took so much more effort than it had taken only minutes before.
At the grate, he bent down and pulled at the paper. It flapped in his hand as if it were a caught fish. Several times he grabbed for it before gaining a grip and yanking it hard. It tore away easily, but left a small piece of the edge wedged under the grate leg.
Henry clutched the paper, as the wind pulled at his prize. In the dim light, he couldn’t make out the words, but he decided if he took it to the window he might be able to see something, with the help of the moonlight.
He pushed and struggled against the wind in a battle of determination. The wind his enemy, the moon his friend, as it appeared to glow even brighter as he came nearer to the windows. He still couldn’t read or see anything on the page as he tussled with the wind to simply hold on to the paper.
Then Henry had an idea. He dropped to the floor, placing the bottom edge of the paper under his knees, while his hands held the top to keep it flat. The wind now couldn’t catch the edges. Although it flicked at his prize, the page remained steady enough for Henry to examine it. He felt proud to have beaten the wind at this challenge.
Now the paper was still, he saw it was a page torn from a newspaper. His father often read the paper on a Sunday morning; sometimes Henry would sit on his lap until he was told he wriggled too much, and to get down. His father must have left it.
What was on the page was the last thing he’d expected.
There at the top was a picture of him sitting behind a cake. The photo was from his fifth birthday last year; he remembered the cake. He had worn his birthday hat and held the toy plane given him by his Grandma.
Below the picture were many words. They were a problem. He couldn’t read them, except for a few easy ones he’d learned at school. How he wished he knew more words.
He scanned the page, and was stopped by another picture in the middle. This one he’d never seen before today. It was of his mother, father, Clarissa, and Parker. They looked odd. His mother always told him he must smile in photos. Yet in this picture, his family looked sad, their mouths turned down like upside down “U”s. His father’s arm was stretched about his mother’s shoulders, and her head lay against his chest. Standing before them, his brother and sister huddled together so close they looked as if they were joined at the waist.
He studied the image. Why were they sad? Why was his picture there? Printed in big black letters at the top of the page were important looking words. What did they say? The words looked very difficult, much harder than he’d learned so far at school.
What didn’t help either was the paper seemed determined to escape, the wind playing tug-of-war with him. Henry kept readjusting his legs and hands to keep it flat. Each time he did, he risked losing hold of it. While his hands were occupied, his face was left undefended against leaves whipping past. Their jagged edges flicked and tore at his skin, and he had to fight the desire to reach up and scratch at his face. It itched terribly from their impact.
As he stared at the puzzling letters, his teacher’s words popped into his mind. “When you want to read a big word, sound out the letters.”
Henry was suddenly excited. That he could do.
He studied each one of the big, black headline letters and silently mouthed them. Repeatedly he tried to make weren’t happening in his head. Maybe he needed to say them out loud and listen to them with his ears; this was going to take a long time.
He glanced around the room, checking the doors, the windows, and the fireplace for signs of the crybaby boogeyman. Except for the leaves and moonlight, he seemed alone. He didn’t want to be here, but he needed to know what the words said, and why the pictures of him and of his family were in the newspaper.
He turned back to the page and began on the letters.
“Geh. Aa. Ss. Ga … ss—Gas.”
That was the word. Gas!
Yes! It worked. He had the word.
His joy was short-lived. The next word wasn’t so simple. No matter how many tries he took, he couldn’t work out what it said.
It started with a ka sound, but the rest was beyond him. K.I.L.L.S
He recognized the letter I, but I had so many sounds he wasn’t sure how he should say it. Eventually, he gave up and went on to the next word.
“Be. Oh. Ye. Be-OY—Boy.”
Boy. It said boy.
Mrs. Walsh was right. Sounding out did work.
Now he had Gas … something … boy.
The next word was a problem. He sounded it out aloud, his forehead creased in concentration.
“Beh … Oh … Da.”
The last letter, the Y, was tricky. He said it the way the Y sounded in boy.
“Bod-ya?”
It didn’t sound right, though.
He kept trying, but could only put the first three letters together, and bod without the sound of the Y didn’t make sense. He stared and stared at it, but the word was too difficult.
The next word he wasn’t even going to attempt. It looked like a puzzle; after one attempt, he knew he had no chance of working it out.
F.O.U.N.D
A.F.T.E.R. followed it. It presented the same problem. He could get the “af” bit but how to say the rest wouldn’t come to him. Quickly, he gave up on that one, too.
The next word made Henry laugh. It wasn’t a word. It was a number. A special number—in fact, the number he couldn’t remember. His heart gave a little skip. Things were starting to go very right for him.
After everything that had gone wrong—falling asleep, missing dinner, getting lost and finding the house deserted and filled with leaves—at least he knew the number. Seeing it printed there on the page jogged his memory, and the name for the number dropped into his mind like a coin dropping into a slot.
Twelve.
He was getting somewhere. The word that followed twelve was easy, because not only was it on the calendar hung on the classroom wall, but also Mrs. Walsh repeated it often.
“Seven days in a week,” she would say, pointing to the word every morning.
Days.
See Mrs. Walsh, he thought, I was lis
tening and not off with the fairies. It’s just my memory isn’t there sometimes.
Now he had four words he knew for sure and four he didn’t know.
Gas. Kills. Boy. Bod-ya. F.O.U.N.D. AFTER 12. Days.
Gas… something … boy … 12 … days.
No, it was no good. It didn’t make sense.
Just then, the wind kicked up a whole other level, the frenzied leaves tearing at his skin, the sound of the wind hurting his ears. After kneeling on the hard floor for so long, his knees ached. Worst of all his heart was pounding in his chest. He didn’t like this wind. Didn’t like the dark. Didn’t like being on his own. He needed to find his family.
The longer he stayed here trying to read the words, the longer it would take him to find his family. If they weren’t in the house, maybe they were outside. He’d try to read the words again later; if he found his mother, she could read the paper to him.
Yes. That seemed like a good idea.
He didn’t want to lose the paper, though. The wind seemed very determined to tear it from his hand. Or he might even forget and leave it somewhere—he did that sometimes.
Suddenly he had an idea.
Henry stood up, clutching the paper tightly. Then, despite being buffeted even more by the wind, he took great care in folding it in half, being meticulous not to crease either of the pictures. Then he made his way back to the grate, silently congratulating himself for creating a good plan.
So far today he’d done so many things of which he could be proud. He’d discovered the room and worked out how to get inside, found the chair, come up with some fantastic rules as king, and even worked out how to read some of the words in the newspaper. All of this, he’d done on his own, without any help from his brother and sister, or his parents.
He’d been scared, too, but that hadn’t stopped him. What a big, brave boy he’d become. He really wished Clarissa and Parker were here, because he might actually tell them to go away when they teased him. Maybe, when he found his siblings, he wouldn’t wait until he turned six to tell them he didn’t want to play hide-and-seek anymore.
