B. Larson - Creatures

I shook my head. “Not Thomas. He’s not that imaginative. I want to see what’s going on up in that attic.”

“Thrown out of the mansion the day Vater shows up,” muttered Jake, but he came along after me.

We’d made it as far as the next dimly lit hallway when the hardwood floors creaked behind us. I froze, melting against the wall. Jake, seemingly more awake now, pressed himself into a shadow beside me. We breathed there for a moment, listening. Nothing.

We crept forward and I peeked out to look around the corner into a side passage. I knew this hall led up to a fold-down stairway that allowed access to the attic. It wasn’t the main stairs, but a back way I’d noticed while cleaning up there earlier.

“Just what do you boys think you’re doing?”

We froze again and rotated our heads. I was thinking of Urdo, but there stood a much shorter figure, only a few feet behind us, hands on her hips. It was Beth.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you sneak off and get in trouble without me, did you?” she said with a grin.

“Oh,” said Jake, letting all the air whoosh out of him. “Great imitation of Urdo, you creep. I all but wet myself.”

I snorted and shook my head. I didn’t see any easy way to get rid of her, nor did I want to. I beckoned and the three of us proceeded into the dark side-passage.

The attic trapdoor opened and let down the stairs with what seemed like a tremendous clattering sound. I tried to do it slowly, but that just made it creak and squeal on unoiled hinges and springs. I let it go fast at the end, and it snapped down onto the carpet that ran down the middle of the hardwood floor with a resonating thump. We all winced.

“Do you want to wake the dead?” asked Beth.

“Don’t say that,” said Jake.

She gave him a funny look. I shushed them and we all listened for a few minutes. Someone opened a distant door. I heard a toilet flush. Another door opened and shut. Still, we waited, hearing nothing but the sounds of our own breathing. Cold, musty air poured down into our faces from the open trapdoor.

“It must be freezing up there,” whispered Beth.

“I don’t think anyone’s coming to investigate,” said Jake.

I nodded. We put on jackets and headed up the folding steps into the cold darkness above.

“This is a bad idea,” hissed Jake. He was the last one in the hall, looking up at us.

“Do you want to stay behind?” I asked.

“It’s just… I don’t know why we need to do this right now. I’m sleepy.”

“I knew you’d chicken,” I said, not doing a good job of hiding the disgust in my voice.

“I’m a sleepy toad, not an attic rat,” he muttered back.

My neck felt hot suddenly and I became angry. I realized somewhere in the back of my mind I was going to have to hear rat comments for the rest of my life and I already didn’t like it.

“This will work out perfectly,” said Beth, laying a hand on my shoulder. “He can stay behind and close up the stairway. We don’t want anyone coming along and finding the stairs folded down. They might come up here to investigate.”

I made a sour face, and then nodded. “All right you old toad. Close it up and do a quieter job of it than we did when we opened it.”

Jake smiled wanly, “I could hardly make it louder.”

A few minutes later, the trapdoor was closed and the attic became very dark. I opened my cellphone. It was one of those phones that only worked when you had money in the account for it, and of course mine was empty. But, the dim blue glow of the screen did help light up the room a bit. A very little bit.

“Is that your idea of a light source?” asked Beth. She made a tsking sound and produced a small flashlight. “I’ve always got one in my backpack.”

The flashlight was no thicker than my thumb, but it produced enough light to see by. I snapped my cell phone shut again. I looked at it for a second.

“What?” asked Beth.

“Funny,” I said. “My mom never called me tonight. She would normally call me if I’m spending the night somewhere.”

“Got any minutes on it?”

“Shouldn’t matter,” I said. “It’s one of those deals where certain numbers are free.”

“I see,” she whispered. “My aunt didn’t call me either, and I’ve got minutes. Maybe we are too far out in the boondocks to get a signal.”

“Probably,” I said. I looked at it again. The display showed only one bar of signal. “One bar. That’s pretty iffy.”

“Well, now what?” asked Beth, shining her light in my face and making me squint.

“Now, we are going to see what is up in that lab, that laboratory, that Forever Room. I’m curious about some things.”

I crept through the attic passages with Beth close behind.

“So are we just going to the laboratory?” she asked.

“It’s a place to start.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever Thomas was talking about,” I said. “There was a funny look in his eyes. He really did see something.”

We made our way with only a few bumped heads and scraped knees in the dark, cramped attic to the tiny square door that led into the laboratory. I tried the knob. It clicked and opened.

“It’s not locked,” hissed Beth.

“Urdo has been busy.”

We moved inside. It was very dark and very cold. The metal dome over the telescope was closed, but I could feel the winter seeping in from outside. The wind blew and whistled through the cracks in the dome.

Beth shined her light around inside. It passed over the brass telescope, which gleamed with yellowy brightness. The gears that cranked the scope were dusty and still. I noticed a single tooth had broken off of one of the cogs.

“How did that thing know?” I asked in a hushed voice.

“Know what?”

“That I would become a mouse,” I said. I put out a hand and touched the cold tube of the telescope. When faced with one of the strange devices that my people sometimes come up with, I always feel a sense of wonder.

Beth made a sniffing sound and shook her head. “I’m not totally convinced it did. Maybe it just gives you a general answer that seems to work for everyone. Like a fortune cookie or a newspaper horoscope.”

I shook my head in return. “You don’t know my people yet. We actually do stuff like this. It’s creepy, but real.”

She looked at me and chewed her lip. She had seen us change into animals, so she believed in that. But predicting the future? That was too much for her somehow. I could tell that maybe she didn’t want to believe it. I could tell that maybe, she was scared. I didn’t blame her and so I dropped it.

I frowned at the telescope and the broken metal tooth. “I don’t think that cog had a broken tooth before, you know.” I examined the jagged metal and touched it. The metal was sharp and made a tiny red nick in the pad of my thumb.

“Well,” said Beth. “Maybe it just broke recently, or it was there before and hidden. Maybe we didn’t see it until now because the cog was in a different position.”

I nodded. “Either way, someone has been using the telescope. Let’s look through it.”

She sighed. “I knew you were going to say that.”

I grinned and waved her over to the mechanism that slid open the slot in the dome and let the telescope poke out into the heavens. She worked the lever, and it creaked open with what seemed like a hideous screeching sound.

I was about to look into the eye cup when Beth gasped.

“What?” I asked.

“The plant!” she said, pointing to the potted plant in the roll top desk. I followed the beam from her flashlight. My eyes widened. The plant had flowered.