The Midnight Door

by Sam Fisher

  “That’s weird,” James said. “Why would the door be unlocked?”

  “I don’t think we have time to care,” Morton said, and without pausing, he crept quietly into the store and led them past shadowy mounds of books to the green curtain.

  “This is it,” he said, raising his hand to push aside the curtain. As he did so, his hand brushed up against the painting, and instead of the cold, smooth plaster he’d felt the first time he’d touched it, he felt the fuzzy, soft warmth of velvet. Peering more closely he realized that this was not a painting at all, but a second, completely real curtain, and he looked up to see that the clock’s hands were set to just after midnight. “It looks like somebody has left all the doors open,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Melissa whispered, crowding in with the others behind him.

  Rather than explain, Morton quickly whipped the second curtain to one side, and there, where once there had been nothing, lay a narrow passage with oak-paneled walls, illuminated by the orange glow of wall-mounted Victorian gas lamps. The passage sloped gently downward and went on for as far as the eye could see.

  “I thought this curtain was supposed to be some kind of magical locked door,” Melissa said. “Why is it open?”

  “The clock’s on three minutes past midnight,” Morton explained, “which means somebody has gone through here in the last three minutes.”

  “Maybe Nolan?” Robbie said.

  “More likely Crooks,” James put in. “Perhaps we should think about this before we go any farther.”

  “We don’t have time,” Brad growled. “And anyway, I’m not afraid of some stupid old man.”

  “You should be,” Morton said. “He obviously knows a lot about magic.”

  Melissa, however, unsheathed her sword and stepped boldly through the curtain, pushing Morton aside. “I’m with Brad,” she said, to Morton’s surprise. “Trap or not, I’m ready to end this, and if Crooks is the one who’s been spying on me with those creepy Bat Eyes, then let me at him.”

  Brad immediately followed Melissa through the curtain and the two of them marched off ahead.

  Morton puffed his cheeks. “I suppose we don’t have much choice,” he said. “If we don’t find The Book of Parchments, then we’ll be eaten alive by Two-Headed Mutant Rodents before morning anyway.”

  “But what happens when the clock reaches five past?” Wendy asked. “Won’t the curtain turn back into a solid wall and trap us inside?”

  “Not if it works like the story in Scare Scape,” Morton said. “The clock only locks the door from the outside. You can always get out from the inside.”

  “Well, that’s some comfort, at least,” Wendy said, and then she and the others followed Brad and Melissa through the curtain into the wood-paneled passage beyond.

  As Morton trotted along, he wondered what they would find at the end of the hallway. Gas lamps lit the way, spaced at regular intervals, and a strip of paisley carpet ran along the floor. The space felt cozy and inviting, but musty, like a corridor in an old Victorian hotel. After a minute of walking though, Morton’s impression started to change. He noticed the wood panels were beginning to look more aged, with peeling varnish and wet, moldy patches. The paisley carpet became threadbare. The farther they walked, the more extreme the decay became until very soon the carpet had worn away and the panels were literally crumbling to dust, revealing a featureless stone wall behind.

  Eventually they were walking along a cold stone passage that smelled of damp earth and felt like it could easily be the entrance to a dungeon. A few minutes later, the stone tunnel branched into three directions and Melissa, who was still up front, paused.

  “Now which way?” James said, moving up beside Melissa and shining his flashlight down each of the three passages. Brad began sniffing at the air. After a moment he pointed to the path directly in front. “That way,” he said.

  Morton looked into Brad’s dark eyes and was about to ask him what he smelled but decided not to bother. A Snarf’s sense of smell was second only to a Shark Hound’s, and it was probably best just to trust it.

  They all resumed walking, and less than two minutes later the passage opened up into an immense atrium, easily ten times bigger than Crooks’s entire store.

  Morton was amazed by the sight. Where the path behind had been carved out of dull gray rock, this entire chamber was finished in brightly polished red marble with magnificent columns, ornately designed floors, and a truly spectacular series of vaulted ceilings. The center of the room was furnished with a very large and elaborately carved table, standing upon the largest Persian rug Morton had ever seen. The table itself held a row of oil lamps that cast pools of light along its length, illuminating a jumble of vials and glass jars containing strange, unrecognizable things. But the sight that really made Morton’s heart skip was the ring of large wooden bookshelves that framed the room like some Neolithic literary monument.

  He almost sighed with relief. This surely, at last, was the lost library of King.

  Everyone spilled out of the narrow hallway and into the cavernous room, which filled immediately with echoes of their footsteps.

  Morton wandered toward the center of the room, noticing that off behind the bookshelves were several more arched openings with large shadowy alcoves beyond. Curiously, in the nearest alcove a tall cage, which reminded him of the cages that divers use when photographing sharks, stood incongruously right beside one of the stone pillars. He walked quietly over to it and, as he approached, caught a sudden glimpse of a lank figure curled up inside like a sleeping dog. The figure, roused by the sound of footsteps, jolted into a sitting position and looked around in confusion. Morton instantly recognized the dark, frightened face of Nolan Shaw.

  “Nolan!” Morton screeched.

  His cry alerted the others, who quickly came running over, and Brad hobbled right up to the cage and clutched his bandaged hands around the bars. “You’re alive!” he said in a tone that made Morton think that Brad was more relieved than anyone.

  Nolan blinked at the room around him as if to be sure he wasn’t dreaming. “What are you all doing here?” he said groggily.

  “When you didn’t come back, I didn’t know what to do,” Brad said. “So I asked them to help. What happened to you?”

  Nolan clambered to his feet and steadied himself on the bars, rubbing at a nasty graze on his forehead. “Crooks must have been expecting me,” he said. “I waited until I saw him leave the store. Then I let myself in with this.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small silver key with a skull at one end.

  “The skeleton key,” Morton exclaimed. “Of course! It opens any door.”

  “Yeah, not that it did me any good,” Nolan said. “Somehow Crooks doubled back on me and was waiting inside. I don’t know how he did it. I was sure I saw him leave.”

  “Wait a minute,” Robbie said, stepping closer to Nolan. “Why are you still in that cage if you have a key that can open any lock?”

  Nolan held up his palms, gesturing at the cage before him. “There is no lock,” he said.

  For the first time, Morton examined the cage closely and realized that not only did the cage not have a padlock, it didn’t even have a door. The whole thing seemed to have been made from one continuous piece of iron.

  “That’s weird,” he said. “How did Crooks even get you in there in the first place?”

  “More important, why did he lock him up at all?” James said.

  “I locked him up because he’s a thief,” came a croaky, high-pitched voice from behind them, “and no doubt I should do the same to you.”

  Everyone swirled around in shock to see the short stocky figure of Sydenham Crooks standing at the end of the narrow corridor. He was alone and unarmed, and Morton noticed that his face was a flushed ruddy red, not pale and gray as he remembered it. Despite this, there was still something about the curl of his lip that made him look confident and dangerous.

  Without another word, he strutted over to
the immense table, seated himself at the only chair, and opened a slender book that he’d had tucked under his arm.

  “Since you will be spending quite a bit of time here, I should probably welcome you to my drawing room,” he said, lifting a long pencil from the desk and holding it poised above the book as if he were about to write their names down.

  “We weren’t actually planning on staying,” Melissa said, swinging her sword lightly in her hand.

  Crooks gave Melissa a sour smile. “I doubt you were, but that’s irrelevant. I can’t let you leave now.”

  Brad strutted to the front of the group and growled angrily. “I’d like to see you stop us,” he said.

  Crooks locked eyes with Brad and sniffed dismissively. “Snarf is it? That’s what you get for playing with things you don’t understand.”

  Brad growled again and lumbered closer to the table, but Crooks looked down and calmly scribbled something on the page before him.

  Quite suddenly, from out of nowhere, a small section of bars appeared directly between Crooks and Brad, preventing Brad from getting any closer. Brad turned to look questioningly back at the others, but even as he did so, another small section of bars appeared behind him, then, before he had time to react, two more sections appeared on either side of him, followed by two more above and below. Brad was now completely contained in a cage almost identical to Nolan’s, and it looked as though Crooks had conjured the cage simply by drawing something on the pages of the book. A sudden realization hit Morton.

  “The Book of Parchments!” he exclaimed. “It makes whatever you draw real.”

  Crooks looked up at Morton and chuckled knowingly. “It does far more than that. This entire room exists in its pages, and you will soon learn that in here, the pen really is mightier than the sword.” And as he said this, he quickly sketched something else. At the same instant a clan of Gristle Grunts appeared from nowhere and charged at Melissa, throwing her to the ground. She fell with a painful crack and her sword slipped out of her hands and slid across the glistening floor. Crooks then scribbled again in his book and a small Swag Sprite popped out of thin air, grabbed Melissa’s sword, and then vanished again, taking the sword with it.

  Brad grunted angrily and pulled at the bars of his cage, but they were completely solid, despite having been nonexistent a mere few seconds before.

  The Gristle Grunts then backed away from Melissa, and she pulled herself to her feet, rubbing her arm painfully.

  “Wait! We didn’t come here to steal,” James exclaimed. “We need help. We need to get rid of the rats and Brad’s curse.”

  “And why should I help?” Crooks said in a dispassionate tone. “I had nothing to do with your misfortunes. You’ve brought those upon yourselves.”

  “But it was an accident,” James pleaded. “It wasn’t our fault.”

  “I know that!” Crooks snapped, jumping angrily to his feet. “I know exactly whose fault it was. It’s the same everywhere he goes. Don’t think I haven’t watched him. Don’t think I haven’t seen his dark deeds, how mysterious things lurk in his shadow, how creatures emerge from the houses he inhabits, how innocent people die around him like moths in a killing jar. Believe me, I know whose fault it is. The man is a walking plague and you’ll suffer at his hands just as I have.”

  “Who’s he talking about?” Melissa whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

  Morton could think of only one person. “He must be talking about King,” he whispered back.

  “King! Ha!” Crooks spat. “He was no king, although he was arrogant enough to give himself that name. He wasn’t even a Smith when I found him. He was a nameless beggar, living under a bridge. I should have left him there. Left him to starve to death and spare the world the misery of his existence.”

  “But he was your brother,” Morton said, feeling strangely defensive of the man he’d never even met. “Wasn’t he?”

  “In name only,” Crooks replied, a bitter resentment in his voice. “But I don’t share any of that black poison that ran through his veins.”

  “I take it you two didn’t get along,” Melissa said.

  Crooks rankled at these words and appeared to be making a concerted effort to maintain his composure.

  “It’s impossible to ‘get along’ with a man with no soul,” he said, looking back down at his book. “Now, if you’d all be so kind as to move to the alcove over there, please. This won’t take a moment.”

  Melissa gaped at him in disbelief. “We’re not just pieces of furniture, you know.”

  Crooks sighed crossly and began sketching again. Morton watched as something else emerged in thin air, just as the cage and the Grunts had done. The thing started out as a small white wormlike object, but as Crooks scratched rapidly across the page, Morton realized that this was just the tail of something much larger. Within seconds a spiny body, fearsome head, and finally a double row of rotating teeth appeared before them, and the immense Snarf, fully ten feet long, let out a piercing cry and lunged forward. The room filled with screams and Morton thought for a moment that those teeth would be the last thing he ever saw, but the beast stopped short, as if yanked back on some invisible leash.

  “I thought you liked monsters?” Crooks said in a cruel voice, glaring at Morton. “How about this one?” And as his hand scratched across the page, a giant Toxic Vapor Worm appeared beside the Snarf. “Or these,” Crooks said, and this time he produced a clutch of hungry-looking Ten-Eyed Salamanders, a Visible Fang, and two slavering Shark Hounds. The creatures all began to stomp, shuffle, and slither forward as if with one mind.

  “I guess you’re a fan of your brother’s work after all,” Melissa taunted.

  “His work!” Crooks exclaimed, walking menacingly over to them, with complete disregard for the host of monsters standing right in the middle of his Persian rug. “Is that what they are to you? Monsters from a stupid children’s comic? Ridiculous! You think King imagined these? King had no imagination. He invented nothing! These creatures all exist in other worlds, magical realms that King knew nothing about until my father showed them to him. They were in my father’s books, the very same books that King stole. That’s how selfish he was. He stole from the man who took him in and fed him. The very man who taught him to read!”

  “That’s certainly unfortunate,” Wendy said in her politest voice, “but what does that have to do with us?”

  At first, Crooks seemed to ignore the question, his eyes fixed on a distant point in the shadows, but finally he spoke again. “I spent my life tracking your beloved John King down, although he was always just John to me,” he said. “We were only boys when we met. I found him living under a bridge by the river. He was starving, so I brought him food from home, and we became friends. At least, he pretended to be my friend. I learned later that he would say or do anything to get what he wanted. But we both liked to draw, and soon he got me to steal paper and pencils for him, as well as food, and we spent many happy hours sitting in parks, on street corners, wherever we could find a quiet place, just drawing the world as it passed by.

  “But then one day my father caught me stealing and made me tell him why, so I took him to see John in his hovel under the bridge. That was a day I will regret all of my life. My father was a kind, compassionate man, and of course he couldn’t bear to see a child suffer that way. He insisted on taking him in. Soon after, the boy with no name became John Crooks, my adopted brother.”

  The room became suddenly very still and Morton realized that everyone was listening with bated breath. Crooks was still gazing off into space, clearly possessed by some vivid image from his past.

  “For a time that wasn’t so bad,” Crooks went on. “We played and drew and learned together, but as John got older he wasn’t satisfied to have only my father’s name and my father’s roof over his head. He wanted more. He wanted my father’s love. And that’s when he started to play his games. He’d start doing extra chores around my father’s bookstore to make me look bad. He pretended to b
e interested in the business and offered to help with the bookkeeping and stock taking and all those things that no honest child really gives a care about. At first I thought my father would see through it, that he would never fall for such obvious truckling, but King was clever.

  “He wormed his way into my father’s graces until one day my father made a terrible mistake, just as I had done when I first befriended John. He allowed him to see the truly rare books he hid away in his private study — books so powerful and dangerous that he wouldn’t even let me, his real son, see them. Of course I knew of the books, and I knew that’s how my father made his money. That was obvious even to a child. The rest of the store was just a front. The heart of the business lay in the truly rare books, and his serious customers would meet him by appointment after hours. But no matter how I begged, he wouldn’t let me see inside his study. Only John was worthy of that apparently.”

  Suddenly Brad, who had been slumped over in his cage for the last few minutes, let out a shriek of pain, doubled over, and belched out an immense cloud of yellow smog. Crooks coughed and waved his hand fiercely in front of his face.

  “We have to help him,” James said in a pleading voice. “He doesn’t have much time.”

  Crooks grabbed the book from the table and held it open over his left arm.

  “Time?” he said, his gruff tone returning. “What does a child know of time? I am old, and I can tell you of time. One day, many years ago, your beloved John King broke into my father’s study and stole everything. He took every last book and vanished from the face of the earth. The lost library of King is in truth the stolen library of Erasmus Crooks, my father, and I have spent an entire life working to reclaim it. So don’t talk to me of time.

  “At long last, after forty years of searching, I have found my birthright — the key to powers that my father intended for me to have, powers I would have had all along, if not for John. And then you come to try to steal them again! I have no intention of letting that happen, nor do I intend to let you leave with my secret. No, you will remain here.”