Betwixt

Chapter Three

After Sarah's breakfast of biscuits and honey, Kate decided to go back to the shed. There was no way that she was going to let this be the end of her first real adventure.

As she stepped outside, Kate noticed immediately a change in the weather. The sky had grown a medium shade of gray, and the wind had picked up. It had also grown colder, and Kate quickly dashed inside the house to retrieve the red hooded sweatshirt she kept hanging by the front door. By the time she had walked the short distance across the yard to where the shed stood, she was definitely grateful for the heavy door of the building, which she shut behind her to keep the wind from whipping inside and ruining any of the fragile paper artworks that covered the walls or the thin crepé paper banners that strung in a zig-zag arrangement across the peaked roofline.

Kate sat on the floor, absentmindedly running her hands over the uneven surface. She reflected over the day's events. Everything still seemed so strange, like something out of one of Caroline's many novels- things like this only happened to made up characters in made up stories, not to thirteen-year-old girls named Kate who had spent their entire lives in a town almost too tiny to be considered a town, a town without even a stoplight. Anna often said that it was well on it's way to becoming a ghost town, nobody wanted to live in Marion Springs. Kate quite liked living in Marion Springs.

Kate took in the interior of the shed once again- the walls were painted a light shade of green where they peeped through the gallery of drawings, and the pearlescent pieces scattered among the matte pastel shells reflected the few rays of sunlight that made it past the continuously darkening clouds and through the window. They made patterns on the wall that reminded Kate of the way sunlight shone through water on the ripples of a sandbar. She ran her finger absentmindedly along a swirl of mother-of-pearl mosaic pieces as she tried to recall if there was anything, any small clue, that she could have missed during the previous night's events, but nothing came to mind.

Suddenly Kate noticed something odd. The shells that made up the conglomerate floor pattern seemed to be arranged completely random and nonlinear except in the particular area she was currently running her finger around. Upon further inspection, she noticed that the line of metallic pieces actually formed what appeared to be a perfect square. Kate's interest was sparked. She ran her nimble fingers along each edge, back and forth carefully, hoping to find some reason for the seemingly unusual placement of the pieces. On the third side of the square, Kate's fingernail slid downwards, into a crack. Kate grinned. Maybe this was like one of Caroline's novels after all.

Kate stuck her other hand in the ledge, and slowly began to force the panel upwards. Suddenly, there was a small pop as the piece of wood came unjammed and swung open to reveal what appeared to be total darkness. The space smelled of saltwater and Crayola crayons and a mix of spices Kate could precisely identify: cinnamon and nutmeg and paprika, the smell of Sarah's pumpkin pie spices when she baked the night before Thanksgiving. The thought made Kate smile.

Kate peered into the space below the trapdoor, and, as her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, she was able to make out the rungs of a ladder extending down into an impenetrable cloud of darkness. Kate glanced out the window and towards the house. Everything seemed peaceful, no prying eyes of nosy sisters looking out the windows, although it was starting to rain, little droplets running rivers down the glass windowpanes. Kate shrugged. A little water never hurt anyone- she could brave getting wet as she ran back to the house after her adventure to this mysterious basement or cellar or wherever this ladder led.

Kate took a deep breath. She had always been known as the "boring" sister. Alex was cute and spunky, and could sing like the birds that nested in the apple tree in spring. Caroline was dreamy, and probably destined to be a famous artist or poet someday, and Anna was popular with all the girls at school, she and Daisy were the ringleaders of a group of kids who went to parties on weekends and shopping after school. Sarah was practical- always in control of what was going on inside the house and out of it. Kate wasn't special in the least bit, or at least, the special parts of her, like her ability to listen and how she never missed anything that happened around her, were things she kept tucked deep inside. Maybe this was her chance to prove to her sisters, the kids at school, and most of all, herself, that she could do something worthwhile, make a discovery that would cause the others to think something of her.

Kate took a step down, feeling the cold metal rung of the ladder through the worn rubber sole of her black tennis shoe. She placed the other shoe down, then, step by step, made her way down the ladder. Left shoe, left hand, right foot, left hand. Kate was shaking with both fear and excitement, a combination of feelings she seemed to be experiencing a lot recently. Everything was going fine- enough light still filtered down through the dusty air as to not let the darkness obscure her view. Suddenly, there was a loud clap of thunder, and, startled, Kate lost her grip with her left hand as her foot was mid-step. She dangled precariously in the open space for a second, holding on with only one hand, her other three limbs floating over an inky pool of darkness. Then, with a small scream, Kate went tumbling down into the black abyss.