“That click is coming from up there. It sounds like a latch or something,” said Ben as he pointed up. He shone his light on the wall about seven feet up from where they stood.
“We have to get up there,” said Jack.
“Yeah,” agreed Stephen, “do you have a ladder?”
“Of course,” said Jack. “But we can’t carry it all the way out here.”
“See—there’s a secret door up there,” said Ben. “I told you guys.”
“Maybe,” said Stephen. “Hard to prove without a ladder.”
“Hey,” said Ben, “don’t you have a step-ladder in the garage?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Do you think that would be tall enough?”
“We can find out,” said Ben. “Let’s go.”
“Tonight?” asked Jack. “You want to go back to the house and come back here tonight?”
“It won’t take that long,” said Ben.
“Yeah, but by the time we back here we won’t have any time even if we do find something,” said Jack.
“Come on,” said Stephen, “we have hours until dawn.”
“Less than two,” said Jack. “The sun rises at 5:10 today. And it takes us twenty minutes to get back to the house from here.”
“We’ve got to get that restriction lifted,” said Stephen. “Then we could be here all day.”
“We doing this or not?” asked Ben.
“We’d have to jog the whole way,” said Jack. “And we have to leave here by quarter of five.
And
we have to bring the ladder back with us.”
“Let’s go,” said Ben, “what’s stopping us?”
“Just sanity,” laughed Stephen.
**********
“What do you see?” asked Jack.
Ben got to go first up the ladder. The folded ladder leaned against the building for support. Ben was on the next-to-last step while Jack and Stephen held it in place.
The mission to retrieve the ladder had gone almost perfectly. To avoid using the noisy garage door, they used the back door of the garage which was very close to the neighbors house. When leaving by the basement door they had the advantage of a hill that blocked the neighbors view and a deck that shielded them from above.
With the ladder in-hand, they felt naked crossing the yard. The neighbor’s dog barked. Jack kept his calm and moved at an even pace which forced Ben to suppress his urge to run. Even moving slowly, they had a couple of sketchy moments where they almost crashed into objects in the yard.
Now, at the hotel, Ben stretched up to determine if the wall had a hidden door build into it.
“Press the button,” said Ben.
“Hold on,” said Stephen. “You got it?” he asked Jack.
“Yeah, I can hold this,” answered Jack.
Stephen reached through the bottom steps of the ladder and pressed the button. After an initial click, the grinding sound began almost at once.
“Hey!” said Ben, “I can hear it—it’s right here. Keep pushing.”
“Like I was going to stop?” asked Stephen.
As before, the grinding stopped after several seconds, and Stephen felt and heard a loud click.
“Oh shit!” yelled Ben, atop the ladder.
“What? What is it?” asked Jack, trying to see around Ben in the night.
“The wall moves,” answered Ben. “It swings inward. It looked completely solid until that last click and then it gave way.”
“Open it!” said Stephen.
“Okay,” said Ben. He braced his knees against the building and pressed the section of wall he had been leaning on. The left side stopped after pushing in an inch, but the right side swung inward until it was perpendicular to the wall. The door measured two feet high and three feet wide. The top and bottom of the hatch were aligned on the edges of clapboards and the right and left sides were tight enough that the seams barely showed until Ben pressed the door open.
He swung the door inward until it stopped, revealing a rectangular hole in the side of the building. The bottom of the hatch was even with his stomach.
“Hand me a flashlight.” Ben extended his right hand down and beckoned.
“You’re going to have to grab it,” said Stephen. “I can’t reach.”
Annoyed, Ben reluctantly descended a few steps to grab the proffered light. Shining the light into the hole he was surprised.
“Wow,” said Ben. “It’s deep.”
“How deep?” asked Jack.
“I don’t know—I can’t see the bottom,” said Ben.
“What else can you see?” asked Stephen.
“Come down so we can have a chance to see,” said Jack.
“Jeez, give me a minute,” said Ben.
They took turns surveying the hatch and the hole it revealed. Their first glimpse inside the hotel showed them a vertical passageway that was about four feet to the opposite wall. The column was only as wide as the hatch—about three feet. Jack was the first to gauge the depth of the hole by shining two flashlights down at once. He reported that it looked about twenty feet deep, which put the floor at ground-level below the porch roof. Jack also noticed that the sides of the passage disappeared halfway down, suggesting a larger room below.
When it was Stephen’s turn atop the ladder, he immediately stuck his head through and looked up. “Hey,” he said. “There’s the concrete thing we keep hearing.”
Above the hole, a block of concrete was poised above the hatch door. Stephen surmised it would slide back into place when the hatch door was closed. His next discovery astonished the boys.
“There’s a switch!” said Stephen. The passage was capped about six inches over the hatch door, and on that ceiling, was mounted a single light-switch.
“Should I flip it?” he asked.
“Hold up,” said Ben. He went over to the edge of the roof and climbed down rapidly. Jack stood, holding the ladder, and Stephen waited up at the hatch. A few seconds later a stick landed at Jack’s feed.
“Hand that up,” said Ben, climbing back on to the porch roof again.
Jack handed Stephen the stick. Balanced on the ladder, holding the flashlight in one hand and the stick in the other, Stephen tried to flip the switch with the end of the stick.
“Got it,” said Stephen, several tries later.
“Anything?” asked Jack.
“Don’t know yet. I’m going to lean in,” said Stephen. He looked up at the concrete block hanging over the doorway. He poked his head through and looked around. “Wait—there’s a light down there.”
“Awesome,” said Jack, “what else do you see.”
“That’s about it,” replied Stephen. “You can see the bottom and some light, but it must be around a corner or something.”
“Hey guys,” said Ben, looking at his watch. “It’s quarter of.”
“We’re going to need a rope or something anyway,” said Stephen.
Jack climbed down first; Stephen and Ben handed the ladder down to him. Exhausted, they managed to get back to the house right at dawn. The neighbor to the north, with the dog, should have seen them—he was leaving his house for a jog while they hustled the ladder back into the garage. But he seemed intent on his radio and didn’t glance their direction.
Sleep, it turned out, was not an option that night. Weary, they climbed into their fort and got into sleep positions, but their minds raced with the implications of what they had seen. They whispered ideas back and forth. Jack was focused on how to make it in and out of the building safely. Ben wondered when they could get back over there, and Stephen wanted to guess what they might find. They were just beginning to doze when they heard parents stirring around upstairs.
**********
At breakfast, Jack’s mom could sense something was wrong.
“You boys look like death warmed over,” she said. “Aren’t you sleeping well downstairs?”
“I guess so,” said Jack. His head was propped up with one arm as he lifted cereal to his mouth.
“I think you should move upstairs,” she said. “Ben, you and Stephen can sleep in the guest room and then you’ll all have beds.”
“It’s okay mom, we sleep fine downstairs,” said Jack. He was beginning to get alarmed at the trend of this conversation.
“What are we talking about?” asked Jack’s dad as he entered the kitchen. He crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out a cup of yogurt.
“The boys aren’t sleeping well,” his mom said. “I thought they might want to switch to upstairs.”
“They probably aren’t getting enough exercise,” his dad said. He turned to face the three boys—“you’ve just been sitting around the house all week.”
“But we’re not allowed to go anywhere,” said Jack. He was about to continue, but his dad cut him off.
“Hold on, let me finish,” he paused to open his yogurt. “I was going to suggest that you could resume
short
hiking. Nothing out of the neighborhood.”
“Really?” said Jack—he looked to Ben and Stephen.
“Yes, really. You’ve had five days, I hope that’s enough to impress upon you the importance of avoiding trouble,” he continued.
The boys were riveted.
“You can go as far as the power lines, but not past them,” he said. “And if you see anything suspicious or dangerous, you’re to let us know
immediately.
”
“Of course!” offered Jack.
“But, we also want you to sleep inside at night, and put away the camping gear,” he added.
“And, you need to keep a journal of your trips,” said his mom. “No less than two hundred words apiece.” His mom had always been big on writing and had pushed Jack in that direction every chance she got. Jack wasn’t bothered by this condition, he knew he could knock out two hundred words in no time. Ben and Stephen looked nervous at the proposition.
“I’ve got to get to work,” said Jack’s dad. “You boys be good. See ya, honey,” he said to his wife and then strode from the kitchen.
**********
Outside, the boys dove into the task of dismantling their campsite. They buzzed with excitement at the idea of being able to regain some freedom.
“I was just starting to like being nocturnal,” said Stephen.
“Yeah, well we’re going to have to be extra careful,” said Ben.
“I’ve got an idea about the hatch, and the drop on the inside,” said Jack.
Ben looked up—“Yeah, what?”
“We’ve got an emergency fire ladder,” said Jack. “It’s in the chest in the guest room. It’s one of those rope things that you hook to the window-sill.”
“Can we get it out of the house?” asked Stephen. “Let’s go right now.”
“That would be too suspicious,” said Ben. “Let’s say we’re going to plan a trip for this afternoon and then we’ll have plenty of time to figure everything out.”
“Good plan,” said Jack.
**********
They were scared to approach the hotel in daylight. The day was still and hot—the boys sweated as they huddled in the woods behind the building, watching carefully. In the distance, they could hear the occasional car on the road that bordered the other side of the hotel, but nothing stirred near them. Jack felt they were being watched.
Ben was the first to dare into the field—hunched over, he trotted up the drainage ditch to the corner of the building. He wore a backpack containing the rope ladder. Briefly looking down the sides of the building, he gave Jack and Stephen a thumbs-up.
Jack and Stephen followed Ben’s path to the hotel, carrying the stepladder between them. When they got to the back of the hotel, they propped the ladder against the side of the building and Ben climbed up on top of the back porch roof. The other two followed and Jack reached over the side and managed to haul the ladder on the porch roof with them.
With no discussion, they took their places. They had planned these steps all morning. Stephen held the ladder, Ben pressed the button, and Jack climbed up to open the hatch as soon as he heard the click.