When I fell back against the wall in my rental house, after
gracefully tripping over my own shoe lace, I thought it seemed a bit hard. Expensive
wallpaper with an intricate floral design gave no hint that anything was being
disguised and I laughed to myself as I ran my hands over it looking for a
hidden seam that would open up a secret door.
For good measure, I rapped my knuckles against it.
The wall felt solid, a bit too substantial for drywall and
studs. I have to admit, my curiosity was
piqued. My left foot banged up against
the base board and the board popped out sending out a puff of black sand across
the carpeting. I’ve never been one to
just walk away from an intriguing mystery, I did what only seemed logical. I reached down and pulled on the baseboard. It had been secured with heavy 16d sinker
nails and the odds of one coming loose were not very good. I managed to slip a couple fingers around
the loosened board and tugged. It moved
only a fraction and I pulled harder. The sound of cracking and splintering
filled the room and I suddenly found myself falling hard on my butt with a
broken piece of baseboard in my hand, a single sinker nail still dangling out
the backside. Laughing at myself and
how ridiculous I must appear, I looked back to the wall and saw the wallpaper had
torn and there was something behind it.
You would think the first thought in my head would be that
of how to hide the damage so my new landlord would not freak out. At one time, I might have had that as a first
thought, but the desire to know the mystery pushed that thought away and I
crawled back over to the wall and carefully lifted the torn paper. Whatever was there, it was metal and
old. It looked like wrought iron but not
the fancy detailed stuff with whirls and loops.
It appeared to be, rusty and impenetrable and ancient in
appearance.
It was an odd thing to find in a townhouse that couldn’t be
more than twenty years old. Logic at
this point was still hanging in the balance and so I started pulling away more
wallpaper, enjoying the sound of the tearing and marveling at how much it was
hiding. Eventually I had to stand and
kick away the piles of shredded flowery paper, my fingers stretched full trying
to reach the last bits up near the ceiling.
I stepped back and surveyed my handiwork. It was a door. A solid wrought iron door with a single looped
handle on the right side. It was flush with the rest of the wall which meant it
could only open by pushing in. I pushed.
It was like pushing on the side of a freight-liner, not that I had ever
done that, but it was what I imagined it would feel like. Hard, cold and
unyielding. I lunged at it, hoping my
excess 280 lbs would budge it. A dull
pain exploded in my shoulder the moment I made contact and a slid to the floor
clutching my arm and whimpering like a scolded puppy.
I leaned my back up against it and tilted my head so I could
peer up at the smoothed rounded loop that served as a handle. I looked away and down at the nest of torn
wallpaper I was sitting in and silently resigned myself to the fact that I was
going to have to explain myself and somehow come up with the money to fix the
damages I had just caused. With a
grunt, I reached up for the handle with the mindset of pulling myself to my
feet. Instead of the desired effect, the
handle pulled down and the door gave a screeching sound of metal upon metal as
it opened up and a gust of stale dusty air whooshed past me. I scrambled to my feet, and poked my head
inside, not really sure what to expect but my heart was thundering in my chest
and tingles were running down my spine.
I did a quick spider scan around the door to ensure no
sudden drop downs that would cause me to go into one of my infamous spider
dances that were reminiscent of a spastic windmill, and I took my first step
inside. Sunlight from my front windows
splashed through the door and covered a table laden with thick dust and an
empty flower vase in the center. I
ventured further in, pulling out my smartphone and clicking on the flashlight
application so that bright artificial light blanketed the room. It was disappointingly empty. I let out a pent up breath and turned back
to the living room. The debris from the
wallpaper was gone and sitting at the kitchen table was a small man dressed
like a garden gnome, impatiently drumming his fingers, and glaring at me. “Why have you opened the Forbidden
Passage?!”
I did the only thing I could think of. I laughed.
He did not.
