“We could order Chinese food and ask the cookie.”
“That’s… no, that actually sounds like a great idea.” I punched in the number for Panda Palace and recklessly spent my last gig’s earnings on beef lo mein and broccoli and pork fried rice.
I had to drive to pick it up. (Simon graciously threw himself on my Irish coffee.) As I pulled away, I stared up at the top floor of the building. Was it really only two stories? Could it be two and a half? The brick facade was stairstepped at the top; maybe you could hide another corridor in there. That didn’t explain how we could have walked so far forward, but maybe it wasn’t that big. Maybe it was one of those buildings they make with odd angles so that you think you’re going straight, but you’re really veering sideways and it’s all optical illusions.
It had to be something like that, didn’t it?
The alternatives were… well…
Black magic or aliens?
I didn’t believe in either one. Uncle Earl, I knew, believed in both.
I wondered which one of us was right.
* * *
“Okay,” I said, stabbing my fork into the pork fried rice, “what do we need to explore the hallway?”
“Oh, God, we’re really doing this.” Simon stared at his beef lo mein as if it might save him.
“Don’t you want to?”
“Obviously I want to, I just feel like one of us should say ‘Don’t go in there!’ ”
“We’re not in a horror movie, Simon.”
“How do you know?”
“Because one of us would have to be spunky and virginal.”
Simon digested this for a moment. “I’m spunky.”
I gave him a Look.
“…Fair. We’ll need flashlights, I guess. Better ones than our phones.”
“And a tape measure,” I said. “Or at least a string.”
He looked blank.
“So we can measure how long the hallway is. That way we’ll know if it’s impossible or… I dunno, if it’s a weird optical illusion or something.”
“Yeah, okay.” He nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. Maybe it’s just like a hall of mirrors, and we’re not going as far as we think we are.”
Despite his protests, he was still saying “we.” I was glad of this. I did not feel any urge to explore the concrete hallway by myself. I might not believe in black magic, aliens, Bigfoot, or brain goblins, but people who go exploring alone in haunted houses get horribly murdered.
Horror movie or not, the hallway was starting to feel a lot like a haunted house that had somehow been grafted onto my uncle’s museum.
“Do you think Uncle Earl knows it’s there?” I asked.
“He’s never said anything about it. And I can’t imagine him just walling off space and ignoring it. Not when he could be using it for exhibits.”
I pointed my fork at Simon. “Yes. Exactly.”
“So when are we doing this?”
I frowned. “I dunno. Tomorrow night?” Tomorrow was Friday. Given the choice between being stuck in the museum on a Friday night, looking at social media about how my friends were out partying, and trying not to spy on my ex-husband’s life, I would much rather explore a haunted house.
Apparently Simon had the same amount of social life that I did, because he nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll kick off a few hours early.”
“Your boss won’t mind?”
He rolled his eyes. “My sister’s always telling me to take more time off. I tell her I don’t have anything to do, might as well make money, but, eh. You know how they are.”
“Only child,” I said.
“Lucky you.”
I thought of my mother and the possibility of having another sibling to blunt the intensity. “We may have to agree to disagree on that one. Anyway—tomorrow at… seven? Will that work?”
“It’s a date.” He fished out one of the fortune cookies. “Here, let’s see if cookiemancy works any better than the coin.”
I snapped apart my cookie. The fortune said “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” “Ugh. Platitude cookie.” I tossed it aside. “You do any better?”
“ ‘A business opportunity is coming your way.’ We should probably have stuck with the coin.”
“Oh, well.” I picked up my leftovers and my new Irish coffee. “Tomorrow at seven. Be there or be square?”
Simon, possibly the least square human being I knew, just raised an eyebrow at me and shook his head.
* * *
At 7:00 p.m. the next day, we assembled with flashlights, string, and a tape measure. Simon had a thermos of coffee. He said it was medicinal.
He had dressed for exploration in camo cargo shorts, black fishnets, a pair of stomping boots that would fit in a mosh pit, and a top hat with a pheasant feather on it. His T-shirt read SILENT NIGHTCLUB.
In my Wonder Museum T-shirt and jeans, I felt distinctly underdressed.
“Have you told your uncle there’s a portal to Narnia in his museum?” Simon asked as we climbed the stairs to the otter room.
“No. He has surgery tomorrow and I don’t want to worry him.”
“You think he’d worry?”
“I think he’d come back here, knee or no knee, to see what was going on.”
We stepped through the hole and into the hallway. I had taken the precaution of locking Beau in the bathroom, a crime for which I was going to pay heavily in feline scorn.
“Which way?” asked Simon.
“You’re asking me?”
“It’s your museum.”
“Ugh.” I turned to the left. “Well, we haven’t gone this way yet.”
Simon turned on his flashlight and followed.
If nothing weird was going on, except maybe for optical illusions, we should have been behind the upper story of the boutique. I was no longer quite willing to swear that nothing weird was going on.
The corridor went—you know, I don’t know how far it went. It didn’t seem as if it went that far, but distances were clearly a little wonky at the moment. I didn’t break out the twine and measure it, anyhow.
It ended in another door, but this one stood halfway open. The room behind it seemed very dark.
Simon and I stared at the door.
“I liked the abandoned mental hospital better,” he said a bit plaintively. “It had linoleum.”
“If you want to bring some linoleum next time, I won’t stop you.”
“Ha.”
I took a step forward, then another. Brain goblins did not leap out and eat me. I touched the door.
It was stuck in place, but open wide enough to get through. Unlike the other door, this one had a metal grate inset into it, which had wept rust in long red streaks.
I slid through, light held in front of me.
This was a small room, smaller than my bedroom in the museum. It had a single bed and a metal cupboard. Empty tin cans littered the floor. Something in the corner looked like a fifty-five-gallon oil drum.
The beam of light crossed the floor to the mattress and up.
There was a dead body on the bed.