It struck me then that Thomas understood something I didn't. The journal was a nice thing to look at, but everything in it was old and growing older. It was a record of our past, of things done before, of good and bad memories alike. Our journey was into the future and the adventure it held, and today that journey had led us to the foot of the Wakefield House.
This was one place where my character matched up with that of my brother. We were both fully alive at times such as these, when a seemingly impossible task lay before us and everything was at stake. I was more afraid and cautious than Thomas,
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but there was not an ounce less electric joy in my view of the circumstances.
The Wakefield House would be conquered or it would conquer us, and this was just the way we liked it.
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***
CHAPTER 18
Through Haunted Passages
The Wakefield House rose so high into the air that it was easy to assume it wasn't very big around at the bottom. As we made our way to the other side, we were increasingly aware that this was a false notion. It was a six-sided structure, with sharp corners leading to each new side. The stones and beams looked more and more as though they'd been dropped out of the sky all at once and had only happened to fall in such a way that they all stood on top of one another. Colossal sharp rocks jutted out violently on every side and all the way up into the sky, with chunks and slabs of unfinished wood smashed in between. I was afraid to touch the Wakefield House, for fear that I might push it over and demolish the whole town in its crashing wake.
"There it is!" said Thomas, pointing down the side of the fourth outside wall we'd come around. He ran ahead, and when I came up beside him we both stood staring into a gaping hole big enough for a cart to fit through. There was no door, only the opening, which led directly to a set of stone stairs hidden in the shadows. The inside had a
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quality I couldn't place at first. It was murky in there, and it smelled cold and alone. We stepped inside and walked seven or eight steps to the foot of the stairs, where it felt as if we'd arrived deep in the belly of the Wakefield House.
It was both quieter and louder. When we'd stepped inside, the Wakefield House wasn't creaking and there was no sound at all. Every noise from the outside world was gone. But when the Wakefield House swayed ever so slightly, the sound we'd heard outside became a roar of echoes. It began at the top -- somewhere far over our heads -- and descended toward us, moving through unseen halls and passageways, growing louder until the sound crashed into us at the bottom of the stairs like a screaming mouthful of hot air.
The coming fury of the sound reminded me of when Madame Vickers came swiftly up the hill on her horse and cart, clamoring violently toward her house. She would pass us on the hill very close, as if to scare us with the sound of hooves and rolling metal. My heart would race with visions of my fingers being crushed beneath the wheels of the cart, but then she would pass, and the sound would weaken, and I would listen until it died altogether at Madame Vickers's front door.
"This place feels haunted," I whispered, finally finding the right word to describe how the Wakefield House felt inside.
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"That's exactly what I was going to say," said Thomas, who stood beside me craning his neck in every direction for a look around. It felt like a lot of lonely memories had been made here. If the walls could speak, I was sure they would bring a gathering gloom, a weight that could not be held up, like the very weight of the Wakefield House itself, and everything around us would come crashing down.
"Are we sure we want to do this?" Thomas said. I was surprised to hear him ask such a question, though his tone betrayed his motive. It was stated more as a taunt than a concern, and I thought the proper words out of his mouth given their meaning ought to have been, "You're not too afraid to go in, are youT
Brothers often have a language all their own, propelled by a complicated mix of rivalry and love.
"There's a reason we're here," I stated flatly. "A reason not like all the rest who've tried. And besides, we've no place else to go."
Thomas looked at the rising stairs before us and clapped his hands together loudly, as if to shoo away all the bad feelings and prove that we were the only ones there, that there was nothing to be feared that lay sleeping and hidden in a corner. The sound of the clap echoed as I expected it would, but it died coldly and quickly as we marched toward
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the first of many steps we would encounter in the Wakefield House.
The pitch was far steeper than I'd imagined, more like a ladder than a set of stairs, and it went on far enough that we both had to rest before reaching the top. There was more light as we went, and as we came off of the last stair and onto the first landing there were two open windows, one on either side of us. We had entered a room that surprised and horrified us both. The surprising thing about the room was that we were suddenly in a place that was nothing like the outside of the Wakefield House. Gone were the sharp stones and clumps of wood clashing together unevenly, replaced by smooth stone walls and a perfectly even wooden floor. It was as if the builder had thrown the entire thing up solid -- without an inside -- then magically cut his way through, crafting it perfectly as he went. The center of the room was solid stone, and we had to walk around it to get a good look at both windows.
"This is amazing," I said.
"And worse than we could have imagined," added Thomas.
The horrifying thing about the room was the number of doorways. On either side of the two stone windowsills were eight openings, each one leading in a different direction along the outside of the
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room. We went all the way around the stone center and saw that some openings shot up on steep stairways while others headed back down. Still others turned sharply in one way or another. And there was something else, something worse still.
To the left or right of every single doorway, etched into the stone, were two harrowing words.
Wrong way.
It seemed as though different people had tried and failed at each door, found their way back, and left the little message to warn others, carving the words with a rock into the flat stone.
"But how can they all be the wrong way?" I asked. "That can't be right."
"Let's find out for ourselves," said Thomas. He walked through the nearest doorway, turning sharply to the right when he entered and moved out of sight.
"Thomas, wait!" I yelled. "The last thing we want to do is lose each other in here. We must stay close together."
We spent the next hour winding up and down passageways that turned nearly pitch-dark, then rose slowly with light as an approaching window came near. Every so often the Wakefield House began to roar from above, and we covered our ears until the frightening sound passed through. Sometimes we found ourselves higher off the ground,
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sometimes so low we could hardly believe it. And always we felt as though we were moving in circles, going nowhere at all. At length we looped back around to the room from which we'd begun, and we sat down beside one another exasperated, hungry, and tired.
"It would be good to have some of that yellow soup or some water," said Thomas. His voice was beginning to sound a little dry, and I cursed myself for not begging some water from Miss Flannery before entering the Wakefield House.
"The stairs that lead out are right there," I said, pointing to the way we'd come in. "We could sneak out, find some water and food, then try again."
"I don't think that's the way it works," said Thomas. "I have a feeling this is our one chance."
I had the same feeling, though I didn't say so.
"Should we try one of the other ways? The day is getting on, and this will be a lot harder without any light."
Thomas scratched his leg and looked thoughtfully at his knee, probably thinking the same thing I suddenly was. He rolled up his pant legs and revealed the marks across his skin in the soft light of the room
.
"I wonder if these would be of any help," he said, though it sounded to me like he didn't really
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think they had anything to do with getting to the top of the Wakefield House.
I rolled up my own pant legs and sat staring at the markings.
"I've lived with them so long I think I have every line memorized," I reflected, running my finger along the pattern as I'd done a thousand times before. I had pulled my legs up toward my chest and so had Thomas, and just then I let my knee hang limp. It drifted toward Thomas's knee and rested there while I kept running my finger along the lines.
We sat like that for a long, quiet moment, and then Thomas moved his outside knee so that it was next to his other, the three knees -- two of his and one of mine - sat together in a line. We'd never really thought to sit that way before and line things up, partly because there didn't seem to be any purpose in it, and partly because the markings on our knees were so different and we hadn't seen any real connection between the two. His markings were all of lines and squares, mine all of twists and circles.
"Come around the front," said Thomas. "There's something...." He looked at our knees like he was looking at a message hidden under moving water, like there was meaning he couldn't quite see, though clearly something was there.
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I shuffled on the floor until I sat facing him, and we knocked our knees together. I could only see my own knees clearly, the tips of where we touched like the peak of a small hill that drifted down the other side into Thomas's lap.
"Give me your hands," he said, holding his out in the air. We clutched each other by the wrists and pulled, lifting each other off the ground until we were even and could both look down on the four images coming together in the middle.
"Something's there," he said again. "Let's move to the window and try again."
It was rather dark where we sat, but when we moved under the light of the window and pulled each other up again, we both got a clear look at our four knees bunched together.
"Do you see it?" asked Thomas, excitement rising in his voice.
"I see it!" I exclaimed, and we both let go, tumbling backward and laughing out loud. We chattered nervously as we locked arms once more and held our position under the window. There, with our knees together, we saw the very room we were in. There were the eight doors and the two windows and, more important, there was a line that led a certain way, twisting and turning from my knees to his. My knees alone wouldn't show us how to
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navigate the Wakefield House, but our four knees together would.
"There are only a few hours of light remaining," said Thomas, glancing toward the window. "We'd better hurry if we don't want to spend the night in a haunted old house!"
"It begins with your knees," I said, looking intently at the fullness of the pattern. "With the squares and rectangles. But it ends with my knees, with the circles and swirls."
Thomas suddenly let go of my hands and I fell backward. He leaned forward, kneeling, then sat back on his feet. "This will be much easier," he said smiling, as if he'd figured out something rather obvious I should have noticed sooner.
I followed his lead and we touched knees again, this time with both of us kneeling on the floor. We were able to use our hands to point and decipher.
"The windows are here and here," said Thomas, putting one finger on each of his knees. "And this must be the stairway leading into the room." He pointed to a place where my knees met.
"That would mean," I said thoughtfully, pointing to one of the eight doors in the room, "we should go this way."
"That's right," Thomas said. "And that way is on my knee. All we need to do is follow it back and
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[ILLUSTRATION: The symbols on a leg.]
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forth between my two knees until it crosses over to your side, here." Thomas pointed to a strange little symbol on my right knee. It was something I'd never understood, an image I'd looked at a thousand times.
The image gave me a chill, for it was clearly the beginning of a second way we must take, a way of swirls and circles that looked unbearably confusing. As if to provoke us into action, the Wakefield House began to groan from above.
"We'd best be on our way," I said, and we both hopped to our feet together.
We went through the door with Thomas leading, checking his knees whenever we came to a window where he could see clearly. We became lost only once during the next hour and then doubled back, finding our way again. The path never did lead back to the room where we'd begun, and it was very clear that we were rising steadily into the air. Each time we came to a new window we were another floor higher, until we were so high up it scared me to look out. The higher we rose the less noisy were the sounds the Wakefield House made, but the more noticeable were its sways. I truly felt that if I leaned out one of the high windows at the wrong time my weight would be enough to topple the Wakefield House on its side. Thomas had no such concern, and was quickly at every window we
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encountered, leaning out and looking up to see how far we'd come.
"We're almost there!" he shouted as we came upon a new room. The rooms were growing steadily smaller as we rose, and the one we were in wasn't much bigger than Madame Vickers's kitchen.
"Come look!" said Thomas, waving me close. I listened for the creaking sound of the Wakefield House. Then, hearing nothing, I walked to the win-dowsill, leaned out, and looked down. I could hardly believe how far we'd come. I could see Miss Flannery's house and even her horse. Both looked unimaginably small from such great heights. I turned my eyes to the sky and saw that we were only one floor from the very top.
"It sways a lot up here," I said, moving away from the window. "Do you think it will fall apart?"
Thomas knew I didn't like ledges and high places, so he also knew how to calm me down.
"It's been here a long time," he reassured me. "I think it can hold two skinny brothers just fine."
He looked at his knees, but only for a moment, and then he gazed at the two doors before us.
"That one," he announced with confidence. "The end is through that door."
We went out of the room, up a set of steep stairs, and then through a zigzagging passageway where it quickly became too dark to see.
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"Do you know the way?" I asked Thomas, wanting to grab his hand in the darkness but finding myself too proud to do it.
"Just follow my voice," he said. "Skip the first opening you come to."
I did as I was instructed, feeling the open air of a passage we did not take. The way I was to go cut a sharp turn, and I bumped into my brother from behind.
"Watch where you're going!" he said.
"Very funny. Why aren't we moving?"
"Because we've come to the end."
I reached over my brother's shoulder and felt a wall of stone before us.
"We've gone the wrong way!" I said, suddenly losing my nerve and feeling claustrophobic in the black corner we'd wound our way into. "You must have made a mistake somewhere."
"There's no mistake," said Thomas. He was moving again, but I couldn't understand where he was going. I felt the cold of the walls with my hands and realized he was gone.
"Thomas! Where are you?" I yelled. A sliver of light appeared over my head, followed by the sound of something very old being opened and a flood of light pouring into the space where I stood.
"I'm here," said Thomas, looking down at me from above. With the light pouring in, I saw that
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there were notches in the wall for hands and feet and that Thomas had climbed up and pushed open a door. He climbed the rest of the way up, jumped inside the room above, and held his arm down to me.
"Come on!" he yelled down. "We've made it, Roland - we've made it to the top of the Wakefield House!"
I scampered up the stone ladder as fast as I could and bounded through the door into the soft light of a new room. As soon
as I entered, Thomas let go of the door. It was heavy and only opened partway to begin with. It was restricted by a thick chain that would only allow it to open far enough for a person to get through. As soon as Thomas let it go, my heart sank, for when it closed it made a loud click.
"Thomas?" I said.
"What?" he answered. It was a voice mesmerized by what he had done.
"Was there a latch under there?" I asked.
"There was," he answered flatly.
We couldn't even see the door we'd come through, so perfect was its match into the floorboards of the room. There was no handle, no rope with which to pull the door back open.
The way from which we'd come was no longer open to us.
We were trapped at the top of the Wakefield House.
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***
CHAPTER 19
The Circle of Light
The very top of the Wakefield House greeted us with a sway and a groan. The sound it made was almost as quiet as it had been when we were outside on the ground. There was only one window in the room at the very top, and the room was shaped unlike any of the rooms before it. All along the way as we'd come up it had felt as if we were near the outer edge of the Wakefield House, like there was a solid inner core that ran straight up through the middle, a core we were being kept away from on our ascent to the top. Some of the rooms we'd entered were on one side of the Wakefield House, while others were on the other side, and all the rooms were in some way curved like the middle part of a letter C. But this room was different, for it went all the way around in a circle, a thin passageway wrapped around a stone column.
Thomas and I walked around the passage, touching the column and moving toward the waning light of the window. The Wakefield House swayed so much at the very top it made me feel like I was standing on water with gigantic but peaceful
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