My Three Cousins

Chapter Eight

For the rest of the day at least one of my cousins stayed close enough to me to watch my every move.  They never directly said they were keeping an eye on me or even really talked to me but if I was in the living room watching tv Helen was reading on the sofa, if I went to my bed to lay down Ruth was across the hall keeping an eye out from her room, and if I went outside Joan conveniently decided that was the best time to work out.  The later it got the more desperate I grew.  I knew I needed to figure out where they planned to go tonight but I couldn't get even a minute alone to look.  Finally, around nine I grew desperate and decided I needed help.  I went up to my room, hoping they would think I was just going to bed, but Ruth followed to her room.  Once in my room I closed the door and motioned for Fitz, who had been playing a game on his bed.

"What?" He said not bothering to whisper.

I glared at him, and he paused his game and sat on the bed next to me, "what?" he whispered this time.

"I need a favor."

"What do you need?" He was clearly annoyed to be interrupted.

"Right now, Ruth is spying on me."  He looked around the room confused.  "From her room," I added, "and I need you to figure out where the other two are going while she's watching me."

"So, like follow them?"  He asked with a sour expression.

"Yes, but don't get caught."

He rolled his eyes, and I could tell he didn't want to do what I was asking.  "Where is Vivian?" I asked without whispering, raising the octave of my voice a bit in mock friendliness like I had often heard Helen do.

"She's playing," he said understanding the threat in my words, since it was his turn to babysit and he clearly wasn't watching her.  He got up off the bed with a annoyed grunt and threw his game aside.

"Please watch our cousins better than you watched our sister," I whispered, trying hard to contain my nervous excitement.

"Yeah, yeah," he said before heading out the door.  I listened at my door to make sure that Ruth didn't follow him then I laid on my bed and waited for Fitz to come back.  It took him a while to return but when he did his face was flushed and he was practically vibrating with excitement.

"What the hell is going on Addison?"  He whispered, pacing around the room as he spoke.

I was shocked by his reaction and could feel my own feelings of excitement growing.  My pulse was quickening, and I was verging on panic.  "What happened?"

"There's a secret passage in Aunt Maggie's room." 

My mouth fell open and I didn't know what to say, but I at least knew I had the answer I was looking for.  "How did you find it?  Tell me everything." Underneath my excitement I had a pang of jealousy that my brother got to be the one to discover the first big development in a mystery I had been working to solve.

"Basically, I went to go find Helen, because Joan scares me, but I couldn't find her anywhere.  Then I heard her voice talking about how Ruth would be better at 'this'" he put air quotes around this, "it was coming from Aunt Maggie's room and then Joan told her to be quiet and they walked right out of her room.  Once they were gone, I went in the room to see what they were doing in there but there wasn't anything weird in there.  Joan came back like a minute later, so I freaked out and hid under the bed.  When I tell you I was so close to picking the closet.  You would be brotherless.  I'm talking looking for my body..."  He started to get sidetracked from his own story.

"Focus Fitz," I scolded.

"Whatever, she came in and went to the closet and pulled on the shelves in there and they swung out like a door.  There was a tunnel down there and she went in the tunnel.  A few minutes later Helen came and went in the tunnel too."  At this he flopped down onto my bed, and I noticed it almost seemed to be work for him to keep his body still after what he had seen.

"What's in the tunnel?" 

"Are you nuts?  I didn't go down there."

"Then what took you so long?"

"I couldn't crawl out from under the bed until they both left the tunnel, which they did a few minutes ago and they went to Ruth's room."  His explanation made sense and I was glad he hadn't stolen all of the surprises from me but then a thought occurred to me.

"What time is it?" 

"Like twelve thirty."

I shoved him off my bed.  "Pretend to be asleep.  Now."  He climbed into his bed and convincingly faked sleep.  I did the same.  My feeling was proven correct only moments later when Joan gently pushed the door open to check if we were sleeping.  It felt like she stood in the door for a long time and at one point she even closed it behind her but didn't leave.  A few moments later she left, and Fitz started to sit up.  I opened my eyes long enough to shoot him a meaningful look and he laid his head back down.  We stayed that way for five minutes then Joan walked back in and looked at us again before leaving.

"I think we're in the clear," I whispered nervously after she walked away.  I moved closer to Fitz so I could whisper more quietly and still be heard.  "We need to follow them.  They're going to meet up."

"Follow them?" He asked incredulously, "Into the creepy tunnel under Aunt Maggie's room?"

"Yes," I said pulling on my shoes.

"No," he said definitively. "Has anyone ever told you that you'd die in a horror movie?"

"This isn't a horror movie, they're our cousins."

"Yeah, and there is nothing stopping our cousins from being a real-life horror movie.  I'm minding my business and going to sleep." With that he rolled over and even though I would have felt safer with Fitz by my side I headed out to find my cousins.

Once outside the room I didn't hear anyone, and Ruth's room was empty.  I walked downstairs to Aunt Maggie's room and put my ear to the door.  It was once again silent.  I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the possibility that my cousins were just being quiet on the other side of the door.

Luckily when I pushed the door open the room was empty.  It felt weird to be in Aunt Maggie's room.  The last time I had been in here she was alive and showing me dresses her and my mom used to wear when they were in high school.  It still smelled like her, and the girls hadn't moved any of her things.  For a moment I was slowed down by the wave of emotion I felt, and tears stung my eyes as I missed my aunt.  A part of me wondered if this summer would have gone this way if Aunt Maggie was still alive.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to refocus on the task at hand.  I made my way to the mirrored closet door and slid it open.  I had to fight that feeling of sadness again as I stepped into her seemingly untouched closet.  The shelving unit Fitz had mentioned was right in front of me.  It was six shelves from floor to ceiling and looked as mounted to the wall as the rest of the closet.  I reached out at about eye level and pulled but the shelf didn't move.  There was a part of me that was relieved, if that had moved, I would be facing Joan's wrath right now but instead I was still safely surrounded by the memory of my aunt.

Despite my terror, I wasn't ready to give up.  I thought again about what Fitz had said: a tunnel.  This time I reached lower onto the second shelf from the bottom and pulled.  It easily swung open without a sound and revealed a dark, downward sloping tunnel that seemed to lead under the house.