Thomas Kindercook and the Pink Pyjamas

by Gerald Feather

  to get a key for this lock to fill,

  go quickly now for under floor,

  lies the key to opening this .

  Thomas paused again. This also seemed quite clear to him. Door. Simple enough. Okay... so what? His brow furrowed as he read the poem over again. Two riddles that seemed to have no bearing on anything at all. It was as if they had been plucked out of a fairytale book at random. Certainly there was no correlation between the riddles in the book and the house. Still it bothered him... why would the author of the book leave out the last word in each riddle? Thomas got an idea. He jumped up and recited the riddle out loud, ending with the missing word 'door.' With his fist raised to the sky and a triumphant look on his face, he stood there in the dead of night, in the dead of winter, and all was quiet as the dead.

  Nothing happened.

  This brought back unpleasant memories of the time he got so engrossed in a book, “The Wizard of Waring Lane” That he started to recite it out loud in the drama classroom at his school, during lunch. No one was there, and he had gotten quite into the part of the hero. When the story was reaching the climax, and the hero was shouting, “I will save thee fair maiden!” Thomas had raised his fist in the air, and used a voice quite deep and impressive, with layers of emphatic vibrato to recite the text. Emily, easily the most beautiful girl in grade 8 had wandered into the room unannounced. When Thomas had heard the giggle behind him, he turned three shades of crimson and quickly excused himself from the drama room, never again to return.

  But he was alone here. The only person who could overhear him was his grandfather. Honestly though, the chances of that were slim to nil.

  Alright, so the book puzzle wasn't an oral thing. Holding the book and saying the word 'door' didn't seem to do much either. Thomas yawned. It was definitely getting late and he was getting quite tired. If not for the riddle of the book, he would have passed out long ago. Thomas' eyebrows tightened into a knot. There must have been a reason why the author had left out words. Always the last word in the verse. Thomas drew a sketchbook out of his pack and started to write out the poem that he had just read. He fiddled with the letters, trying to copy the style of the text in the book. He had once heard his history teacher talk of similarly styled religious texts as as 'Illuminated Texts'. The amount of time it would have taken to 'illuminate' this book seemed like overkill to Thomas. He could only guess that, without television or computers, people had very little to do, and thus wasted time doing things like this. Still... there was a unique character to the letters that made the book all the more intriguing.

  Taking his best felt tipped fine liner out of his pack, and carefully sketching the missing word onto the page of the ancient book, Thomas silently hoped his grandfather wouldn't kill him when he found out that he had defaced his brother's book. It took longer than one would expect to print the word 'door' onto the page, but the 'd's' in this book were heavily decorated. As he finished, something odd happened. The word seemed to sink into the page and disappear. Thomas jumped back from the book with a jolt. There was a crack of thunder, a flash of light and the walls started to rumble.

  Thomas sat perfectly still for a second to allow his senses to confirm what he was feeling. He had never been in an earthquake before, but he believed he was experiencing his first now.

  Cracks started to appear in the wall in front of his bed and the boards seemed to be pulling apart. What were you supposed to do in an earthquake? It seemed to him that they had gone over this in school, but his mind was a blank. Thomas was too stunned to know whether to run screaming and hide, or just close his eyes really tight. He decided to do the latter. After what seemed an eternity of rumbling, all the noises seemed to die off. Even the wind seemed to have calmed down. Thomas slowly opened his eyes, scared to look at where the wall had appeared to be disintegrating before him. What he saw made him gasp. There, where the wall once was, a large door stood. It looked out of place even in his grandfather's old house. The door was much larger than normal doors, and had the look of centuries of wear to it. It didn't take long for Thomas' feeling of fear to melt away into pure curiosity. Suddenly, the theory his grandfather had told him of his great uncle's disappearance, was looking more plausible.

  Thomas hopped down from the bed. Had his grandfather heard that? Even with his poor hearing, it seemed impossible that he could have slept through all the rumbling. He waited a few seconds, but there seemed to be no other sounds coming from the house. Actually there seemed to be no sound coming from anywhere inside or out. That was strange. Everything was deathly still. Thomas crept slowly and carefully toward the old door. It was amazing. It had the look of old sturdy wood that had been hand carved. Something of indeterminable age. There was no turning back now. As surely as the book had beckoned him, the door was luring him now. Slowly, he grasped the handle, and turned it until it gave a low and distant clunk as if something were shifting into place. He pulled the door toward him and peeked into the darkness. Darkness may not have even been the right term. Beyond the door was entirely devoid of light. He couldn't make anything out at all. Usually his eyes were quite sharp, and he could pick out hints of details here and there from the ambient light that bounced through windows and off walls, but as he stared beyond the doorway, it was as if the area beyond sucked the light out of existence. Thomas felt the first pang of apprehension. Should he really go in? Or should he go back to bed, close his eyes, click his heels together three times, and hope he woke up in the morning to discover it was all a dream. As with most people Thomas' age, curiosity won the battle over caution. Then he remembered the flashlight on the bed. Thomas had to shake it a few times to get it to stay on. Even with new batteries, the thing seemed to blink in and out. He aimed the blinking flashlight toward the doorway and peered inside. It felt like the space beyond was sucking the light right out of the flashlight, dampening it somehow. Of course, that was impossible, thought Thomas. Then, everything seemed to start to come into focus at once, as if the interior beyond the door was only now just deciding on what was supposed to lay beyond. At first it looked like a swirl of dark twisted wood, but then it settled into the interior of a closet.

  Somehow this seemed anti-climactic to Thomas. An old closet didn't seem to fit too well with everything else that had happened. Thomas looked at the closet closely. There really wasn't anything in it. A lot of ancient dust and a terribly musty smell, but that was about it. He was about ready to close the closet again when a slight glint caught his eye. There was something a little odd about the floor. He got down to take a closer look. A faint line ran across the bottom of the closet. When he looked even closer, he could make out a square that seemed to have been cut into the floorboards. To Thomas this had “Trap Door” written all over it.Thomas ran his fingers along the crack of the hatch. Completely smooth. He needed something to pry this open. He leaped up and ran downstairs. The house was still very quiet. He didn't even hear his grandfather snoring. Usually he was louder than a freight train going over an elevated bridge. He ran into the kitchen to grab an old fashioned butter knife. He hoped that this was enough to pry it open. Quickly as he could, he ran back to the room hoping the door was still there. He had the overwhelming feeling that the moment he left it alone, it would disappear. He was also hoping he wasn't losing his sanity. Life was difficult enough already without having to second guess your eyes.

  Thomas quickly returned to the hatch and began to pry at the floor. This turned out not to be as hard as he thought it might. The door seemed to want him to open it, he just knew it. Once he managed to find a gap large enough to slip the knife into, he merely twisted the handle a little to apply pressure as he pulled upward. The hatch popped up as surely as if the knife were the key made for this task. Slipping his fingers under the small gap, Thomas pulled it open the rest of the way. It was still too dark to see anything properly. He groped around to find where he had put the flashlight, grabbed it, and started to fiddle with the on / off switch. The flashlight was already on, but
appeared to be dead. Rather than waste time looking for the batteries in his pack, He felt around in the hole. Normally, this was not the sort of thing that he enjoyed doing. The thought of centuries of creepy crawly things living in dark places like this made Thomas feel very tentative about rooting around blindly. Inside there appeared to be a box of some type. He pulled it out of the hole quickly and walked over closer to the window. The night sky had cleared and the storm had disappeared. By the moonlight, he could make out the street below. The trees stood unmoving. Not a hint of a winter breeze disturbed anything. Everything seemed so surreal he couldn't help but wonder if he was dreaming. However, no dream had ever been this realistic before.

  The box was rather plain, made of old wood, and had no markings. Set in the top, there was a single dull looking metal loop. Thomas pulled the loop up, and the top of the box swung open. What was inside, was as confusing as everything else had been so far. There, in the bottom of the box, sat a neatly folded set of pink clothes. No dust, not even the musty smell you might expect from something that had been packed away for a period of time. Thomas sighed. His adventure into the unknown was about to end in yielding him some ancient pink clothing. Thomas lifted the soft, lace fringed garments into the moonlight and they unfolded themselves as he did.

  Pink lace pyjamas. Thomas sighed. What could be less exciting than pink lace sleeping garments. It seemed strange that someone would go to the trouble of hiding the sleep wear in a box, under the floor of a closet that was behind a hidden door. He was about to put them back in the box when something in the bottom came into the light. There were two more small boxes in the bottom of the larger box.

  Thomas picked one of the boxes up and carefully opened it. Inside was a shiny golden ring inlaid with decorative silver designs. He took it out and held it up to the moonlight to examine it. The ring was heavy and cold. The surface was carved in intricate lettering similar to that of the book. The only difference was the lettering wasn't in any language that Thomas recognized.

  A gold ring was sort of a neat thing to find. Maybe the night wasn't a complete loss after all. He checked the other box to find another ring that was identical to the one he was holding. Thomas decided to leave this one where it was and keep the other. If he lost one, at least he would have another one to replace it.

  It had been a very long night. Thomas had no idea how he was going to explain to his grandfather about the new door in his room but exhaustion was setting in, and he needed sleep before he thought about anything else.

  Thomas lay down, and quickly drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  ENDLESS NIGHT

  Thomas' dreams were filled with hidden monsters pursuing him across an endless void. He yelled at the faceless demons, but his voice was swallowed by the overwhelming darkness. When Thomas finally awoke, his sleep had been anything but restful.

  Groggily he opened one eye and then the other. It was still dark out. He had thought he had been asleep forever, but apparently it wasn't even morning yet. Sighing, he glanced over to where the door still stood in the once blank wall of his bedroom. Maybe he really was going insane.

  He jumped off the bed and walked in a daze downstairs to the living room. His grandfather really had few modern amenities. An old black and white television set with rabbit ears sat on top of an old beat up steamer trunk. Rabbit ears were those metal rods that stuck out of the top of old television sets, which, like radios, picked up signals out of the air. The image was often grainy, and the picture would roll up the screen with large black bars if the signal wasn't strong enough. They were able to get exactly 2 channels on it and were lucky if those came in, in a watchable state. This was one of the few areas that still had broadcasting towers that were sending out television signals. The age of modern recordings had passed them by. No shelves with VHS tapes or DVD's. No gaming consoles or stereos. There was an old Victorola that stood in one of the corners of the living room, and while Thomas found the hand cranking music machine fascinating, it could only hold his attention for so long. It could be that his grandfather thought the absence of modern technology was somehow supposed to enrich his life, but more likely he was simply stuck in his own era. Nearly everything these days was digital.

  Thomas walked over to the television set and flicked it on. Nothing happened. He groaned as he remembered that the power had gone off the night before. This was turning out to be a wonderful weekend.

  Getting up from the couch, and being careful not to run into anything in the dark, Thomas walked over to the kitchen. A prevailing darkness, broken only by scattered moonbeams filtering through the branches of the evergreen trees outside, was complimented by a silence so total, the only noise Thomas could discern was his blood pulsing through his veins. It was starting to grind on his nerves. Something just simply didn't seem right. It had been like this for far too long. Yes, it was winter, but even so, it seemed like it had been an eternity since the sun was out. Another thing that bothered him was the power outage. Their house sat at the top of a hill on a drive that overlooked the distant city. Not a light twinkled across the valley that normally glowed with city life. The power seemed to be out everywhere. He had never seen that happen before. When was the last time he had heard the humming from the old lighting, and the whirr of the 1950's fridge? Panic was taking over. The wall of denial was starting to break down. It wasn't just the storm that had stopped, but everything. Even the old house, which had a bit of a life of its own was deathly still. Usually the doors would gently shake as the pressure in the house changed, which made it seem as if someone were rattling them. Floors would creak on their own, but at the moment, the house was entirely quiet. Not a single noise.

  Thomas was being deafened by the sound of his ever increasing blood pressure. Before lingering fear gave way to complete panic, he decided that it would be a great idea to wake his grandfather up.

  The door to his grandfather's room was never closed. His grandfather slept with it ajar so he could keep an ear open for trouble. Trouble would, of course, have to come right up to him and scream in his ear if it was going to get his attention when he was asleep.

  Thomas crept into his grandfather's room, conscious of how loud his steps seemed to be in the dead of night. The moonlight played through the window and painted the normally bland grey walls, a cool yellow. It washed over the floor and bathed the empty bed of Grandpa Kindercook.

  Thomas' face went completely pale. How was this possible? His grandfather would never leave him alone in the house. He was conscious of the fact that his breathing was becoming erratic. The room was spinning. This was bad.

  Thomas screamed out, “Grandpa!”

  Silence.

  “Grandpa! Where are you?”

  Silence.

  Thomas backed out of the room, slowly at first, then broke into a sprint. Room by room Thomas tore through the house looking for his missing grandfather. He knew somehow he wasn't going to find him. The disappearance of his great uncle was tickling the back of his consciousness. Thomas finally tore out of the front door of the house.

  “Help! Someone help!”

  The road was barren. The moonlight danced off the houses and parked cars, but there was no sign of life anywhere. Even stranger was the weather. This was the middle of the winter, yet it wasn't cold at all. Thomas needed to think. He walked back to the house, back to his room, and sat on the bed. He sat there for what must have been hours, holding his knees to his chest. Ever since he had read that riddle, and found that chest, nothing had seemed right. The storm had ended the moment that he had written in that book.

  Shaking his head, Thomas picked up the book that lay at his feet. He had been in shock, and hadn't touched the thing since writing in it had torn open a doorway in his room. The ancient text no longer seemed to promise a great adventure. Instead, it seemed to be taunting him with disaster. He took a deep breath and opened it again. Thomas began to flip through the pages, more and more frantically. The pages were blank! No wait!
In the place where he had read the poem of the pink pyjamas there was something new written. What was going on?

  What you have started,

  Must be done,

  Get started on this,

  for time to run.

  Put on the clothes of pink and lace,

  Take what you need,

  The puzzle starts, that you must face,

  Be careful what you read.

  Stuck between here and there

  waiting for a ride,

  A hole in time you will tear,

  sleeping to get inside.

  Thomas stared at the words. That was it. That was all that was written in the entire book now. Oddly there were no missing words this time. It read more like a set of instructions. Thomas puzzled it out a little. There seemed to be little room for misinterpretation this time. Don the pink pyjamas, laced in silk and set off on an adventure by slumbering. Were this not happening to him, Thomas may have laughed.

  Naps and frilly pink girl's pyjamas. Somehow Thomas couldn't remember anything like this ever happening to Indiana Jones. What should he take with him? Better yet, where was he going? He hoped it was just to kick things back to normal, although, he wasn't looking forward to his grandfather waking him up while he wore these pyjamas. He was sure that would raise a few questions as well as eyebrows. As if the extra door wasn't going to be hard enough to explain. Whatever it was that would happen, it was better to be prepared. Thomas wandered downstairs and packed a few essentials into his school pack. Some soda, chips, a knife, spoon and a fork. He packed a little bit of this, and a bit of that. Some of this, a lot of that. By the end of an hour, his pack was so stuffed with odds and ends it would barely close.

  Thomas sighed. He hoped this would hold him through whatever it was that lay ahead, but who could say. When he got back to the room, he stood in the doorway staring at the pink pyjamas, which lay neatly folded on the foot of the bed. Thomas felt a little foolish putting them on, but what else was he to do? If anyone caught him like this, he didn't know if he would ever be able to live it down. Though he had to admit that the material was far softer than anything he had worn before. He tucked the book into the back of the pink pyjamas. He wanted to keep it as close as humanly possible, as it was probably the only key to get out of the situation he was finding himself in. He suddenly thought about the rings that had been in the box with the clothes. It had sounded like they were important.