100 Cupboards

by N. D. Wilson

  She left Henry by himself sitting on the bed. He was looking at the door to Badon Hill. Soon he was feeling around the inside again. He pulled some crumbling wood and a beetle back through and then reached again, as far as he could. There was no top, just rough, rotting sides and an earthy bottom. Suddenly he felt the sunlight on the back of his hand and fingers. He sat back and thought. A periscope might work. Henry looked down at the black door. If it did work, then Henrietta would want to look through that one, and he would be sick again. The green towel still marked the spot of his first embarrassment.

  He pushed the towel with his toe. Then he bent over, rubbed the floor with it, stood up, and hurried downstairs, breathing through his mouth. In the kitchen, he rinsed the towel off in the sink, then climbed back up to the attic with fistfuls of paper towels. When he finished cleaning up, at least by a boy’s standards, he went down to the second-floor bathroom and plugged the toilet trying to flush everything at once. He watched the toilet burble and stew until he heard Henrietta come up. He looked at the toilet again, mentally shrugged, and went back to his stairs.

  When he reached his doorway, Henrietta was already trying to wiggle her periscope through the door to Badon Hill. She was having some trouble, but it finally slid through, pointing up at a very slight angle. She laughed out loud and clapped her hands.

  “Turn the light off, Henry. I want to see if there’s anything shining through before I look.” Henry slid between the wall and the bed and over to the lamp, but he didn’t turn it off.

  “Which way is it pointing?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean is your periscope looking up at the sky, down at the ground, or sideways? It won’t look straight out.”

  Henrietta looked at him blankly. “Why not?”

  “I think it must be pointing down.”

  Henry was right. Frank had made the periscope out of PVC pipe and old motorcycle mirrors. A viewing box was attached to the bottom, and Henrietta had it pointing up so she could look down into it. The length of pipe ran into the cupboard, and on the other end, where Henry and Henrietta couldn’t see, was a box pointing the opposite direction from the first one—almost straight down at the ground.

  Henrietta bent over the view box and looked.

  “I can see!” she said. “It’s all green.”

  “It’s probably grass,” Henry said.

  Henrietta sat back up. “So how do we look out?” she asked.

  “Well,” Henry said, “we’ll probably have to take the box off the other end.”

  “You mean break it?”

  “No, I mean take it off, so we can look straight out. We can always put it back on.”

  Henrietta wriggled the pipe back through the cupboard and handed it to Henry. “Be careful. I don’t want Dad to think I broke it.”

  “He wouldn’t notice anyway.” Henry gripped the pipe and pulled at the box on the top. He tugged and twisted until it came off in his hand.

  “He didn’t glue it,” Henry said. “It will go back on easy.”

  This time Henry tried to shove the pipe through the cupboard, but he just fumbled with it. Finally, Henrietta took it and fed it through.

  “Now turn off the light,” she said. Henry did, and then he shut his two doors. He and Henrietta both caught their breath. A solid beam of sunlight shone up through the view box, through the wandering dust in the air, eventually arriving in a bright spot on Henry’s ceiling.

  “There’s light,” Henrietta managed.

  “Look through,” Henry said. Henrietta leaned slowly over the view box, blinked a bit, and then looked. After a moment, she pulled away from the box. Her eyes were watering.

  “What did you see?” Henry asked.

  “Some grass and tall trees and the sky, and then I looked right at the sun by accident. And a big rock. Let’s put the box on. I want to look at the sides.”

  “Let me look first.”

  What Henry saw was green and upside down. He saw tall grass, blowing gently, around the end of the pipe. Beyond that was the gray, moss-topped surface of what seemed to be a large stone. Even farther were the tops of some very tall trees. Henry pushed his end of the periscope down as far as it would go, and the view climbed higher. There were leaves on the tops of trees but mostly a very blue sky, and in that blue sky was a single cloud.

  He lifted the view box and tried to make out the stone. It was not long before he recognized it. And it was after he recognized it that he saw what looked like bones perched against the left end of the stone. A skull, almost nose up, was leaning against the gray wall of the rock. Moss flecked yellow and ivory spread beneath it. Henry couldn’t see it well, but he could make out the long snout, part of an eye socket, and one row of upper teeth with big canines. His first thought was Wolf, then Dog, and finally Black Dog. Henry sat up quickly.

  He had forgotten most of his dream, but the thought of the black dog brought it all pouring back. All the images of his climb, the trees, and the stone scurried through his mind.

  “We’re in the crack of the old tree,” he said.

  “What?” Henrietta said. “What do you mean?”

  “I dreamed this place,” Henry said. And he described it all for her, from the beginning to the end. “We’re looking out from the crack of the old tree where the big black dog was scratching.”

  Henrietta sat still for a moment, silent. Henry sat still, wondering what to think.

  “Let’s look in Endor,” Henrietta said.

  “What?”

  “The black door. Let’s look through that one now.”

  Henry shook his head. “I don’t want to. I’ll be sick again.”

  “No, you won’t,” Henrietta said. “You didn’t dream anything bad about that door, did you? Oh, we should clean up where you threw up. I don’t want to slip on the towel in the dark.”

  “I already did,” Henry said. “When you were in the barn. But I plugged the toilet with the paper towels.”

  “Did it overflow?”

  “Not while I was in there.”

  Henrietta laughed. “You just left it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a plunger right beside the toilet. Let’s look through the black door.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, then go sit out in the attic and I’ll look.” Henrietta slid toward the wall. “Or go down and plunge the toilet. You’re being worse than Penny. She’s never curious.”

  Henry stood up. He didn’t say anything. Everything he wanted to say would sound childish. He knew he was afraid of the black door, and he thought that he should be. But he was embarrassed that he had thrown up, and Henrietta made him feel stupid. So he opened his bedroom doors, stepped out with only a slightly offended grunt, and went to plunge the toilet. He shut the doors behind him, hoping that Henrietta might feel a little afraid in the dark.

  Henry had never used a plunger before. Of course, there wasn’t much that he had used before. He had read about various devices and implements in boring books that his father had given him for birthdays and Christmas, so he knew about the float mechanism in the toilet tank, about water filtration and anti-lock brakes. He had read nothing about plungers.

  The plunger he was using was confusing him. The rubber part was black and somehow kept turning inside out. But Henry wasn’t thinking too much about it, and when, after he had slopped it around the toilet bowl a bit, he reached over and flushed the toilet, he hardly noticed how close to overflowing the water came.

  He was irritated with Henrietta and with himself. Why did he have to throw up just because he was scared? And pass out? And he was angry with Henrietta because she was being stupid. The door was obviously not a good door. More than that, he was angry with himself for leaving her alone to look through a door he was sure was bad. He shouldn’t have let her. He was bigger than she was.

  Suddenly all the water in the toilet gurgled and slurped its way down. Henry glanced at the toilet, wondered where all
the water had gone, then flushed it again. Without watching to see what would happen, he stuck the plunger back onto its holder beside the toilet and headed upstairs.

  He was preoccupied, collecting the words he would use to explain things to Henrietta, when his hand touched one of his doors. It was cold. He pulled the doors open quickly and stepped forward into the dark room. His bed was in the way.

  “Henrietta,” he said. Cold in the room sucked at him. His skin tightened and sent up bumps. His stomach knotted and burbled into his throat while his legs tried to collapse. He jumped onto the bed and lunged for his lamp. He knocked it over, but still found the small switch and pushed it.

  Henrietta was lying on her face between the bed and the wall. Her left arm was up to the shoulder in the black cupboard.

  Ignoring the pit of nausea in his stomach, Henry jumped to the floor, grabbed her shoulders, and tried to pull her away from the wall. She wouldn’t budge.

  On all fours above Henrietta, he leaned down and reached into the cupboard. He swallowed a gag and moved his hand along the chilled skin of her arm. He knew when his hand had passed out of the cupboard because Henrietta’s arm went from cold to frozen.

  His fingers crawled down her arm until they felt a hand gripping her wrist, clenched tight. In a split second, the hand let go of Henrietta and grabbed Henry.

  Henry yelled, tried to jump, and bent his elbow in the wrong direction in the cupboard. He twisted his hand hard, and pulled back. He was jerked against the wall, his head slamming against the knob of another cupboard. Loud words he did not understand poured out of the cupboard’s mouth, and the cold grew stronger. Henry writhed, lungs full but not exhaling, teeth grinding, body flopping and pulling. Even while he fought, he felt sickness growing inside him, welling into his chest. He felt the fingers on his wrist slip and quickly reclamp farther up, around his forearm and his shirtsleeve. He put both knees up on the wall and pulled back. His sleeve, gripped tight, slid down around his wrist.

  Henry didn’t think about what he did. He had done it before on the playground. He had been made fun of then. He slithered his hand back inside his sleeve. The other hand gripped and regripped, but Henry was shedding his shirt quickly now. When his arm came free into the body of his shirt, he ducked his head down and pulled it out. The whole shirt disappeared into the cupboard, and he fell back onto the floor. Then, before he could pull her hand from the door, Henrietta’s body slid closer to the wall. Henry turned, leaned across his bed, and grabbed his floppy-bladed knife off the nightstand.

  This time, when he dropped to the floor beside Henrietta, he gripped Henrietta’s shoulder with his right hand while his left, with thumb firmly holding the knife open, slid down her arm. When he thought he was almost to the back of the cupboard, he stopped and took a deep breath. Then he lunged straight through with the knife. The blade bit into something hard like bone but slipped and folded shut on his own fingers. On the other side of the cupboard, something shrieked. Henry felt Henrietta’s arm go limp. He dropped the knife, yanked his hand back, and rolled Henrietta away from the wall. Then he grabbed the black door, shook the gold chain back in, and slapped the door in place. He kicked it tight and sat still with both of his feet against it, breathing heavily.

  Henrietta wasn’t stirring. Henry looked at his fingers. Three of them were leaking blood onto the floor. He shivered, noticing again how cold the room was, especially without his shirt. He wanted to check on Henrietta. Instead, he sat for a very long time with his feet against the door to Endor. When enough time had passed that he was sure whoever it was couldn’t get the door open from the other side, or wasn’t going to try, he scooted over to Henrietta. She was almost snoring. He shook her a little.

  “Henrietta,” he said. She turned her head but didn’t wake. “Henrietta,” he said again, and shook her harder. He glanced up. Blake the cat was sitting on the bed looking at him. His white body was motionless, his ears were up, and his gray tail twitched. Henry stared back.

  “Did you see that?” Henry asked. The cat looked at the black door, then jumped down to lick Henrietta’s face with his sandpaper tongue. She opened her eyes and tried to sit up. Henry helped her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Henrietta yawned. “Where’s your shirt?”

  “It went through the black cupboard, so I guess it’s in Endor, if that’s its name.”

  “You shoved it through the cupboard?”

  “No—”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Do you remember anything?” Henry asked.

  “You plugged the toilet.”

  “After that.”

  “Oh.” Henrietta furrowed her brow and looked around the room. “I looked through the black cupboard.”

  “And?”

  “And the flashlight fell through.”

  “The flashlight? You were using a flashlight?”

  “I taped it onto a yardstick and stuck it through next to the periscope.”

  “Are you stupid?”

  Henrietta gave him a hard look. “That’s not nice.”

  “You are! You’re stupid!” Henry stood up and turned around in place. He pointed at her. “You’re really, really dumb! Why would you do that?”

  “Let me think,” Henrietta said, glaring. “Oh, right. It was dark on the other side, and I wanted to see. Isn’t that why people use flashlights?”

  Henry couldn’t stop moving. “And so you just stuck one into some strange, evil place, and it fell through.”

  “Yes. I did. Because I didn’t run away scared, like you. I might be a girl, but you act more like one than I do.”

  Henry grunted.

  “And it was my favorite,” Henrietta said. “So when it fell, I reached in to see if I could find it. Do you think we could fish it back through?” “No!” Henry yelled. “No! No! No!” He jumped.

  “No! You don’t remember being grabbed? When I came upstairs, you were unconscious, up to your shoulder in the cupboard, face down on the floor. Someone was pulling you, and I had to reach in and stab them with my knife. No!”

  Henrietta smiled and put her eyebrows up. “Really?” she said. “Well, if there is someone on the other side, it’s not like they could do anything from in there. It’s just a cut on your hand.”

  Now Henry was truly furious. He kicked the wall. He kicked the bed. He looked for something to throw. The cat sat by Henrietta and watched all of it. Henry almost said a lot of things, but his mouth and mind couldn’t find them at the same time. He couldn’t speak until he finally slowed down and stood breathing heavily.

  “You’re not allowed in my room,” he said. “You’re not allowed to look at my cupboards. You’re not allowed to open them or talk to me about them. You are not allowed.”

  “It’s not like I could open them if I’m not in your room,” Henrietta said. She stood up and picked up the cat. “I think you’re being silly,” she said.

  She knelt on Henry’s bed and waddled across it to the doors. Without another word, she walked out of Henry’s bedroom and down the stairs.

  Henry flopped onto his bed, and his steam leaked slowly out. He began telling himself a story in his head. It was about how just and kind and understanding he was. It was about how right he had been, how necessary his tone and word choice. It was about a girl who just didn’t understand, who was completely ignorant. Then, for some reason, the narrator of the story included an incident in which Henry had pushed an envelope into a strange place just to see what would happen. It hadn’t even been an accident. The incident did not fit with the rest of the story, so Henry tried to ignore it. He couldn’t ignore it, so he tried to explain it. Completely different things. The post office was obviously not dangerous. It was yellow. I just wanted to see what the mailman would do. The flashlight was stupid. I didn’t shine a flashlight into the post office. She didn’t even act sorry. I would have acted sorry. I always act sorry when people get upset. She didn’t even care that I probably saved her life. She didn
’t know. She was unconscious. Oh, shut up.

  Henry got to his feet and found a new shirt and told himself to forget about it. When he walked downstairs, he made himself whistle. Henrietta was sitting at the dining room table eating a sandwich.

  “Yours is in the fridge,” she told him.

  “Thanks,” Henry said, and went to find it. “Want a drink?” he asked from the kitchen.

  “Sure.”

  Henry came back out and sat down with his sandwich and two milks.

  “I’m sorry I was stupid,” Henrietta said. She reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, but she didn’t look at him.

  “I’m sorry I said you were stupid,” Henry replied.

  “I didn’t mean to knock the flashlight in.” Henrietta’s voice was quiet.

  Henry took a bite. “It was dumb to even have it.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Henrietta muttered. “You would have done it if you hadn’t been afraid.”

  Henry began to get angry and stopped himself. “It would have been just as stupid if I’d done it.”

  “And you would have,” Henrietta said, finally looking at him.

  Henry sniffed and spoke slowly. “I did not want to look in the black cupboard.”

  Henrietta stared back down at her plate. “But if you had wanted to, you would have used a flashlight.”

  “But I wouldn’t have shoved it through,” Henry said.

  Both of them continued eating.

  “I’m sorry I was stupid,” Henrietta said again.

  Henry took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I got mad and said you were stupid.”

  Henrietta pointed. “You should wash the blood off your hand. It’s kind of gross, eating like that.”

  Henry shrugged. He hadn’t washed for two reasons. First, because his fingers didn’t hurt that much, and he thought that washing them might. Second, because he felt about ten years older every time he saw his bloody hand.

  “We can finish putting all the names on the doors after lunch,” Henrietta said.

  “No,” Henry said.

  Henrietta looked at him. “What do you mean? I said I was sorry.”