Ten Days at Federal Hill: Chapter Eight

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Chapter Eight: The Cobweb Curtain

Carla lay awake for hours Sunday night, pondering all the scattered puzzle pieces in her mind. Julia, missing. How would Aunt Velma react in the morning? The creepy newspaper article from the book in the Assembly Room. Why was it there? Who wanted to “never forget”? What was Grandmother Julia crying about? And did the mysterious tunnel really remind her of their own magical basement back home, or were she and Cecil simply confused and imagining things? She tossed in the bed till well past 1:00, and the rest of the night she listened in her dreams for the sound of Julia returning to her bed.

Carla overslept until 9:00. When she woke, Frances was dressed and gone, but Julia had not returned. Cecil was hiding under the stairwell when Carla came down at last.

“Psst!! Carla!” he said softly. She met him under the stairs.

“She’s not back,” Carla whispered. “What’re we gonna do? I’m scared to see Aunt Velma. What if she asks where Julia is?”

“We lie.”

“Well, yeah. But what lie?”

“We say … she’s still asleep. And she’s sick.”

“And then Aunt Velma will go take her temperature. That won’t go well.”

Cecil thought for a moment. “Okay, I don’t say anything. I’m not supposed to know anything about Julia. And you tell them you think she’s still in bed.”

“She kind of still is,” Carla replied.

“And then after breakfast we make some excuse to be together,” Cecil continued, “and we go back in the tunnel. Are you game?”

“Yeah. I can do it in daylight.”

Their plan went surprisingly well. Aunt Velma, worried about Ben’s foot, hardly noticed Julia’s absence at breakfast. Frances had cheerleader practice that morning. All the boys except Ben were ready to go outside and he was whining, and Grandmother Julia was not in her chair.

“She’s feeling puny this morning,” Aunt Velma explained.

Cecil and Carla each grabbed a muffin, and Cecil polished off a bowl of cereal too. They slipped from the kitchen before anyone noticed, retrieved the flashlight, made sure Frances was out of the way, and returned to Julia’s bed.

“What do we say if they ask where we disappeared to?” Carla inquired as they descended the ladder.

“We say we went exploring and got lost in the woods,” Cecil whispered back. It seemed the best plan.

* * * * *

Although they’d been there before, Carla’s fear of the tunnel seemed heightened now. She grabbed onto Cecil’s shirt as they walked.

“This is a very snaky place,” she whispered.

“No it’s not. Every place is snaky to you.”

“Well, it’s definitely spidery then.”

“Whatever.”

Silence.

“Ahhhhh! What’s that! I just stepped on something, and it moved!”

The siblings stopped. Cecil felt around on the ground under Carla’s feet.

“It’s a stick, Carla. A stick. Whatever happened to your sense of adventure? You didn’t used to be such a chicken.”

Carla grunted in frustration. “I think I learned to be afraid in that nasty workhouse.” She put her hand on the side of the tunnel again. “Maybe we’ll just go in circles again. Maybe it won’t lead anywhere.” She held Cecil’s shirt tighter until he squirmed.

For a couple of hours, the tunnel misdirected them in the same way it had the day before. Back and forth they walked from the trap door to the ladder, examining the bricks, the floor, the ceiling, looking for some way in which Julia could have disappeared in tunnel. Cecil reached the end of his patience.

“Maybe Julia’s not here at all!” Carla moaned.

At that moment, Julia stood silent and still, not twenty yards from them. She was exhausted from exploring the property around the dilapidated house and from sleeping in the tunnel overnight, too tired to do any more of this. She held her hand over her mouth. How could she prevent them from coming? She had no where to hide. They were sure to run into her. Then she remembered the spot in the tunnel – the statue above, the trap door, the pile of bricks, the curtain of cobwebs that always hung there – she must stop them before they reach it! She began running again.

“Carla! Cecil!” she yelled. “Stop! Don’t come any further!” She clicked her flashlight again and the beam bounced and flickered on the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. “Don’t come any – !”

But it was too late. As she approached her cousins, her light shone on Carla, waving her arms in the air, and Cecil, batting at his head and pulling cobwebs from his hair. They had stepped past the trap door under the statue and become entangled in the cobweb curtain.

“Oh --” Julia said.

“Get these nasty cobwebs off me!” Cecil bellowed.

“Hush!” Julia warned. “Somebody will hear you!”

“Julia! Where’ve you been?” He stopped and looked at her in the middle of his cobweb war. “We’ve been looking for you since yesterday ...” and he waved his hands to include the entire tunnel, “in this crazy place! You can’t just disappear down here like that!”

At this reprimand, Julia grew sullen. “It’s my secret. I’ve got my reasons!” she said. “Besides, I’m not usually gone that long. But you guys have come too far.”

“What do you mean, too far?” Carla asked. “We hunted this whole tunnel yesterday, over and over.”

“You couldn’t find me before, could you?” Julia responded.

“No!” Cecil answered. “The tunnel always ended up back at your bedroom. It was insane. We nearly gave up on finding you down here.”

“It’s the curtain,” Julia said.

She pointed behind them to the smaller tunnel that cut off to the side, and to the trap door above, and then to the nearly-invisible curtain of gossamer glistening threads that hung and draped from the tunnel’s arched ceiling against the far wall. “The curtain. It divides the tunnel between --” here she paused, “-- between the two places.” She hated to go on, but she had to say it. “And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes … well, I can’t get back.”

“You can’t get back?” Cecil stared at her in the gloom. “Like … like we couldn’t get through?”

“Not right away. I always get back eventually.” Julia walked forward and placed her palm carefully against the strands of sticky substance hanging like a sheer curtain in midair. “It’s like a filmy wall, a doorway with a curtain,” she explained. “Sometimes it lets you go back home, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“What happens when it doesn’t let you?” Carla asked.

Julia turned to look in her eyes. “You’re stuck, like I was last night. And you end up back at the other house, no matter which way you go in the tunnel.” She shrugged. “Both ends lead to the same place.”

“We know that feeling,” Cecil interjected. His stomach wrenched and his heart began to race. Their basement back home had sometimes been a fun place, but this tunnel was eerie and frightening.

“It hasn’t been a big deal so far,” Julia explained. “But a few times I’ve had to walk back and forth in the tunnel until finally it let me find my own ladder to my room.”

Carla cleared her throat. “I think I understand,” she said. Cecil turned to her, but Carla stared hard at Julia. “It won’t let you return sometimes, right? The other house – it keeps you there until it’s ready to let you go.”

“Uh huh,” Julia said softly. “I don’t know why.” Her voice sounded small and scared. “I don’t know where that house is, exactly. It looks like … well, it really looks just like --”

“Like your own house,” Carla finished for her.

“Yes,” Julia whispered.

Cecil’s flashlight flickered twice and went out. Water dripped from the roof of the tunnel, and creaky sounds echoed along the dark chamber. The children were silent.

“Cecil,” Carla whispered. “Two houses. Maybe it’s Lucie’s …?”

“And maybe it’s not.” Cecil moaned quietly. “Oh no. Not again.”

(To continue into the next chapter, Chapter Nine, click here.)

[Ten Days at Federal Hill is copyrighted, in its entirety, by the author, M.K. Christiansen.]