dangerous.
When she reached the screen door, she opened it as if expecting it to bite her, and was only slightly encouraged when it didn’t. She stepped onto the porch, the wooden slats of the floor creaking beneath her feet. She stopped halfway to the front door because shewanted to make sure that she really had felt what she thought she’d felt: a cool breeze, blowing through the screen around the porch and filling the air with the welcome scent of fresh air and newly cut grass. It was so real to her nose that she could almost believe that the house inside the house was really standing outside, in some nice place in farm country.
She walked through the inner door and into the front hall of a cozy family house. To her left was a dining room with a long polished table and enough seating for ten; to her right was a living room with couches, a fireplace, and a wall of books. In front of her was a long hallway leading to an open kitchen alongside a narrow staircase leading up.
She called again: “Gustav?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
Fernie was not ready to climb that staircase yet, not without permission. She’d seen too many scary movies about girls who walk into abandoned houses and, like idiots, climb staircases leading to floors where some awful monsters lie in wait, eager to pounce on them.
The only thing
stupider
than climbing those stairs, Fernie believed, would be to go pokingaround in the basement, where there would almost
certainly
be a slavering monster who ate people. Or, if not a monster, then at least spiders.
She entered the living room, noting as she did that the windows all looked out upon what seemed to be green countryside, but which any close look revealed to be nothing more than a painted backdrop, the kind of thing she would have expected to find behind a window in a stage play.
“Gustav!” she called again.
There was still no answer.
Unsure what she should be doing, she approached the bookcase, mostly because she had never spotted a bookcase inside somebody’s home without immediately taking a closer look to see what books the owners had been reading. She found a complete Shakespeare, a collected Charles Dickens, a book by someone named Shirley Jackson called
The Haunting of Hill House
, a few others she recognized, and on the top shelf a row of hardcover books with scarlet dust jackets. She picked up one of those and glanced at the title.
It was called
Beyond the Veil
, by Dr. Lemuel Gloom, PhD.
“Gustav!” she yelled. “Who’s Lemuel Gloom?”
He didn’t answer.
Fernie flipped the pages and turned to the back cover, which had a few words about the author beneath a big picture of his face.
Lemuel Gloom,
she read,
is an award-winning physicist, infamous for his controversial theories about worlds beyond our own. He is most notorious for his beliefs in the secret nature of shadows. Born in Liechtenstein, Dr. Gloom now lives in America with his wife, Magda, and his young son, Hans.
Lemuel Gloom had a shiny bald head and a red beard that flared to white points at both sides of his mouth. He looked like a silly man, though possibly a friendly one.
Fernie flipped through the pages. The book was filled with strange charts and complicated equations. Fernie had always been a strong reader, but the one long sentence she started reading at the beginning of one chapter lost her after about seven words. It extended well past the bottom of the page and was still going strong at the end of the two-page spread after that.
A sentence like that contained either a lot of information or a lot of wind, and she didn’t have the time right now for either. She returned the book, turned her back on the bookcase, and wentto look at the framed photos on the wall.
They all depicted the same young couple, a pretty blond woman with bright hazel eyes and a man with a hawk nose and a smile that suggested he saw something funny he wouldn’t mention out of politeness. There were photos of them wearing
When she reached the screen door, she opened it as if expecting it to bite her, and was only slightly encouraged when it didn’t. She stepped onto the porch, the wooden slats of the floor creaking beneath her feet. She stopped halfway to the front door because shewanted to make sure that she really had felt what she thought she’d felt: a cool breeze, blowing through the screen around the porch and filling the air with the welcome scent of fresh air and newly cut grass. It was so real to her nose that she could almost believe that the house inside the house was really standing outside, in some nice place in farm country.
She walked through the inner door and into the front hall of a cozy family house. To her left was a dining room with a long polished table and enough seating for ten; to her right was a living room with couches, a fireplace, and a wall of books. In front of her was a long hallway leading to an open kitchen alongside a narrow staircase leading up.
She called again: “Gustav?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
Fernie was not ready to climb that staircase yet, not without permission. She’d seen too many scary movies about girls who walk into abandoned houses and, like idiots, climb staircases leading to floors where some awful monsters lie in wait, eager to pounce on them.
The only thing
stupider
than climbing those stairs, Fernie believed, would be to go pokingaround in the basement, where there would almost
certainly
be a slavering monster who ate people. Or, if not a monster, then at least spiders.
She entered the living room, noting as she did that the windows all looked out upon what seemed to be green countryside, but which any close look revealed to be nothing more than a painted backdrop, the kind of thing she would have expected to find behind a window in a stage play.
“Gustav!” she called again.
There was still no answer.
Unsure what she should be doing, she approached the bookcase, mostly because she had never spotted a bookcase inside somebody’s home without immediately taking a closer look to see what books the owners had been reading. She found a complete Shakespeare, a collected Charles Dickens, a book by someone named Shirley Jackson called
The Haunting of Hill House
, a few others she recognized, and on the top shelf a row of hardcover books with scarlet dust jackets. She picked up one of those and glanced at the title.
It was called
Beyond the Veil
, by Dr. Lemuel Gloom, PhD.
“Gustav!” she yelled. “Who’s Lemuel Gloom?”
He didn’t answer.
Fernie flipped the pages and turned to the back cover, which had a few words about the author beneath a big picture of his face.
Lemuel Gloom,
she read,
is an award-winning physicist, infamous for his controversial theories about worlds beyond our own. He is most notorious for his beliefs in the secret nature of shadows. Born in Liechtenstein, Dr. Gloom now lives in America with his wife, Magda, and his young son, Hans.
Lemuel Gloom had a shiny bald head and a red beard that flared to white points at both sides of his mouth. He looked like a silly man, though possibly a friendly one.
Fernie flipped through the pages. The book was filled with strange charts and complicated equations. Fernie had always been a strong reader, but the one long sentence she started reading at the beginning of one chapter lost her after about seven words. It extended well past the bottom of the page and was still going strong at the end of the two-page spread after that.
A sentence like that contained either a lot of information or a lot of wind, and she didn’t have the time right now for either. She returned the book, turned her back on the bookcase, and wentto look at the framed photos on the wall.
They all depicted the same young couple, a pretty blond woman with bright hazel eyes and a man with a hawk nose and a smile that suggested he saw something funny he wouldn’t mention out of politeness. There were photos of them wearing
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