Rick Shelley: Son of the Hero

I went back to the door with the green trout and touched the rings to the silver tracing on either side… and almost browned out. The blank concrete wall disappeared and showed me what looked like the interior of a cave, dim, with a hint of distant light off to the left. I jumped back and the wall returned. I tried again and jumped back just as quickly.

"Holy shit!" I shouted. I went out through the regular door and up to the kitchen. I had spotted a six-pack of Michelob in the fridge. I opened two and started drinking one with each hand-much too quickly. But the bottles were half empty before I could make myself stop.

"The whole family's crazy," I said, looking at the bottles. "I'm as loony as the rest." But that explanation didn't sit well. I went back down to the basement room with one way in and eight ways out. Crossing the main part of the cellar, I picked up a baseball-teenage memorabilia. I took the ball to the door with the green trout and put my rings against the silver tracing. The cave was still there. I dropped the baseball, bounced it off my knee, and watched it bounce twice on the floor of the cave, then roll away. When I pulled my hands away from the silver tracing, the wall returned and there was no hint of the baseball.

I stared at the door, at the bare concrete wall, for several minutes before I worked up the nerve to open the passage again. I took away just my right hand. The portal remained open. When I took the other hand away, the wall returned. I started over, reversing the order. Same result. Opening the way needed both rings on the tracing, but one hand would hold it open.

"If this is crazy," I started, but I didn't know how to finish. I went back to the table and looked through the pack-two changes of clothing (including one of those silly Robin Hood outfits), cigarette lighter and matches (and I don't smoke), water-purification tablets, aspirin, fishing lines and hooks, six freeze-dried meals (just add water and heat). It looked like an assortment Dad would prepare.

"Dad, if this is a joke, you're sure going to hear about it," I said. An answer would have been comforting, but there was none.

According to my watch, sunset was about an hour off. I didn't figure on hopping through that doorway any sooner than that, if then. But I really didn't want to do my waiting in that screwy room, so I went back upstairs. After a futile search for something decent to eat, I settled on a peanut butter sandwich. The bread was stale but didn't show any mold. It was passable, since I washed it down with the rest of the beer in my two open bottles. Then I went through the entire house, room by room, looking at all of the doors. The door to Dad's office had silver tracing. Looking in from the hallway, I put the rings against the silver, but nothing happened. I went into the office and tried from that side. Looking out, the hallway changed. It was still a hall, but the walls were made of large stones. There was a torch burning smokily in a bracket on the other side. The door between the master bedroom and its bath had the silver. Looking into the bathroom and touching the tracing, I saw what seemed to be a closet full of rough brooms and mops. Looking out from the bathroom, I saw a different bedroom with a huge canopied bed, torch brackets on stone walls, and a tatty-looking forest tapestry with unicorns and dragons. Two closet doors were also gimmicked.

After I finished my look-around, I went to the living room and turned on the TV to try to find something normal. I flipped through the channels-German soccer, American golf, baseball, a newly colorized Errol Flynn movie, a crafts show, news, news, Andy Griffith, Leave It to Beaver. Some things hadn't changed.

After twenty-one years of living with my parents, I shouldn't have been surprised by anything, but those doors in the basement weren't just against the rules, they weren't even within the range of cheating. It was as if somebody had added a phony chance card to the Monopoly set. "You have been abducted by aliens from another planet. Go straight to Arcturus III."

I turned off the TV. It wasn't doing the job. "Allen Funt, where are you when I need you?" I asked. Nobody answered. A second peanut butter sandwich didn't do anything but convince me that beer and peanut butter don't mix.

As the day's light started to fade, I locked the front door and went back to the basement. I put on the fatigues and combat boots, strapped on the belt with my sword, knife, and quiver, slipped on the backpack, and picked up my bow. There was no hat with the outfit, at least none I would wear. Mother had provided only a long green thing with a feather, part of the Robin Hood costume. So I went upstairs for one of my Chicago Cubs caps. That was in my room on the second floor. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror on my closet door.

"You look like a jackass, Gil Tyner," I said. I felt like one too.

"There's only one thing missing." I nodded at my reflection. "No, besides your sanity. A gun. If you're going into trouble, a gun might do more good than the rest of this garbage."

Mom didn't like guns-though she had nothing against swords, spears, battle-axes, halberds, bows, or similar pointed and edged weapons. For Dad, weapons were weapons-tools. He made me practice with all of them. The gun cabinet was in Dad's office. The cabinet was locked, but I knew the combination to his safe, and the keys to the gun cabinet were kept in there. Two guns were missing from the collection, an HK-91 assault rifle and a Smith Wesson automatic pistol. Dad's sword was missing from its pegs on the wall as well.

"He did expect trouble," I said. Somewhere along the line, I guess I had decided that it might not all be an elaborate and strange put-on.

I took the other Smith Wesson 9mm automatic with the double-column clip, filled two fourteen-shot magazines, stuck one in the gun and the other in a pouch on my belt. I also packed a full box of ammo. The pistol went under my shirt in a clip-on holster. I decided against taking a rifle on practical grounds. I already had enough weight to carry.

Sunset was gone. I shut off lights on my way to the basement; I grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen cabinet, checked the batteries, and stuck it in my pack. There wasn't much room left, but I managed to cram in the last four bottles of beer. I thought I might need them before the night was over.

Down to the basement-nothing had changed there. The green-trout door was still open. I looked through Mom's note again: "… just follow the path. Bear left at the fork and you'll come to Parthet's cottage." A hint about how far I had to follow the path might have been nice. I shoved the note into my shirt pocket and buttoned it. I left the room light on when I went to the open door with the green trout on it.

"Time for your grand entrance, fool," I mumbled. No more hesitating. I slipped my bow over my shoulder, then put my hands up so the rings touched the silver tracing. There was still a little light in the cave beyond, not much. I took a deep breath, and stepped forward…

… and fell flat on my face in the damp cave.

I didn't try to get to my feet right away. That wasn't because I felt foolish or anything like that-at least, not entirely. One of Dad's early lessons for me was to not jump right up after a fall but to stay down and take stock first to make sure that I wasn't badly hurt-unless staying down risked greater injury, as in a fight. I wasn't hurt, except maybe in the ego. My fall just knocked the air out of me. There was a difference in level between the basement and the cave, or the doorway was placed above the ground in the cave. I hadn't noticed. Banging my head on the rock floor of the cave didn't help. It wasn't the most auspicious start to my rescue mission.

After a moment the cave stopped spinning and I could breathe again. I became aware of a sore spot on my head and noticed the sound of water dripping nearby.