He was shaken, but he managed to appear calm as he hung up. He even
relaxed against the wall. "I was trying to get the real estate agent on
the phone--these lights ought to be brighter--and I thought he could
refer us to his electrician."
"His what?" Melinee asked.
"Elec--" He halted. "Never mind, honey. I'm beat--rough day. I need
fried chicken." He hugged his trim, prim wife and they walked toward
the kitchen arm in arm. But it was not until they settled at the table
that he saw, under the bright electric light, that her hair was red,
not blonde, and he immediately felt he'd been gypped.
Her smirky little voice added to the shock. "Darling, don't call me
Melinee when my name is Marsha. It just isn't done."
* * * * *
On purpose, Ernie spent an uneventful evening, arose the next morning,
ignored his wife's red hair, conveniently forgot her name, avoided even
checking to see if the door was there, and saved up a sneer for the
telephone.
During the day, his business life was perfect. He got the Jenkins
account, lunched with the boss, and was asked to serve on the
membership committee in the Chamber of Commerce drive. However, during
the afternoon he developed a terrific headache and excused himself from
the office long enough to see the company physician.
The thin, foxy doctor handed him a pill and a glass of water. After
Ernie had swallowed the pill politely, the physician leaned forward
and gazed at his eyes and forehead. "Tell me, Lane--you're a newlywed,
aren't you?"
Ernie nodded.
"Then why the worried frown? You seem to be carrying the Rock of
Gibraltar on your shoulders. Is your job too much for you?"
"Of course not," Ernie said, smiling. "I told you I had a headache."
"Perhaps," the doctor said, smiling back. "You seemed to have been in
something of a prepossessed state when you came in. I was just curious."
Ernie laughed it off and at the doctor's request lay on a cot for a
period of ten minutes. When he returned to the office, there was a
request that he call a "Marsha."
The sudden venomous thoughts of the evening before spun before his
eyes. What the devil was going on with the woman? The new name, the new
hair-do, the new smirk in her voice--that wasn't the woman he married.
He grabbed the phone and called home.
Twenty rings. No answer.
It was a quarter of four when the switchboard notified him that his
wife was on the line. "Hello, Ernie? This is Melinee. I'm at the Lee
Hat Shop. Can you meet me in half an hour? I want to do some shopping
and I thought we'd have supper and maybe see a movie."
Melinee? It was all like a breath of spring. Away from that house, she
was a different person. Happily, he agreed to buying her a new hat,
supper and a ticket to Loew's State. For Melinee, anything. For Marsha,
nothing.
And when they met, surely enough her hair was blonde again and the
smirk in her voice was gone. She was his bride, and he forgot whatever
the past, present or future might hold.
The future, however, was not long coming. After the movie, they
returned home and were about to settle down when, passing along the
hallway, Ernie looked over his shoulder and saw the extra door.
Quickly, he reached past Melinee and grasped the knob with his hand.
"Ernie, what on _Earth_!"
She startled him. He laughed, and they went in to bed.
It was around one A.M. when Ernie decided he would not be able to put
off any longer the chore of exploring that hall door. It plainly had
not been there the night before; it plainly was there tonight.
He tiptoed softly from bed and left the room. Melinee did not even
stir. He closed the door lightly and cat-footed his way through the
darkness to the wall switch at the foot of the stairs.
Stealthily looking all about him, as if someone or something might
suddenly try to stop him, Ernie sneaked up on the door. He grabbed the
knob with both hands, turned it briskly and the door swung open.
The pale green wall of the hallway confronted him. It was as if the
door were merely hinged onto the wall. No opening whatever.
* * * * *
He tapped it with his knuckles. Then he examined the door. It was a
French style thing extending from floor to ceiling with contrasting
green slats. Identical with those appearing all along the hallways,
most of them closet doors.
Just for the heck of it, he thought he would drag out a hammer and
uncork the screws holding the false door--carry it to some conspicuous
place and observe as it went through its next disappearing act. But as
he turned to head for the tool cabinet, Ernie heard the din of distant
shouting--as if a room-full of men were playing cards.
And yet not so distant. For a moment the world became silent. Ernie
pressed an ear against the wall behind the false doorway. It seemed to
be coming from inside, and there were only a few words of any audible
clarity. "Maximum--not much longer--and logarithms--"
Ernie tried the adjacent door. It opened into a small storage room,
unlighted. He felt around the wall paneling, but no switch. Gauging
the dimensions, it seemed to him that the storage room practically
accounted for all the space behind the hall. If the fake door opened
onto a room, it could only be this room, and there was nothing here.
He listened. No sound inside the confines of the room. But the moment
he returned, pressed his ear against the outer wall, Ernie heard them
shouting again. It was as if the wall were twelve inches thick--as if
he were not hearing anything at all--and yet hearing.
The thought struck him--there was a laundry chute opening from the
second floor to the storage room. Provided they wanted to install a
chute. Meanwhile, the agent had told him, it would remain just a hole
in the floor.
He and Melinee had not made any plans for developing the second floor.
It was evident that his mother would one day have to live with them,
and her own invalid sister, in time. And then whatever children there
might be. But so far he and Melinee had actually made only one trip up
there with the agent.
In fact, there was no electrical connection to the upstairs whatever.
Ernie remembered the layout, however, and made his way up the stairs
that creaked in defiance of the agent's compliments. When he reached
the top in the pitch blackness, he felt for the wall.
A strange coldness not at all common to the summer season moved out
along the hallway. It seemed to hover around him, curious of the
intruder.
Imagination.
He walked on, an inch at a time, for he remembered a small table about
half way along. But he never felt the table. Ernie reached the end of
the hall before he was sure--and where had the table gone?
He returned along the opposite wall until he felt the small square
paneling. Then a brass knob. He pulled it open, half expecting the end
of the world. And at that point, a bluish haze filled with gaseous,
luminous smoke rose out and blinded him.
When the obnoxious odor of the smoke was gone, he took a deep breath
and stuck his head in again. Directly below him sat three men, fat and
jovial, shaking their pipes at one another. There was a row of red and
white lighted tubes, not unlike fluorescents, a mahoganylike counter
that might pass for a bar, and a row of bottles against a mirror.
* * * * *
The dimensions immediately struck Ernie as all wrong. It was far bigger
than the hall closet where it was supposed to be. In fact, the portion
he saw seemed to be the focal point of a large dance hall or bar room.
But the most obvious quality of the scene was the tilted floor. The
whole thing seemed to be about thirty degrees lopsided.
Ernie could go immediately back to bed and tell of his dream tomorrow,
or he could make things worse by yelling at the men below.
* * * * *
It wasn't necessary to yell. As if they had seen him through the tops
of their balding heads, they motioned to the bartender, then pointed
squarely at his vantage point. Ernie felt the quavering impulse to run,
and yet even in a nightmare you try desperately to learn the ending.
The man in the white coat set the ladder firmly against the floor so
that the top ended in the slightest kind of tilt near the chute door.
It was not Ernie's intention to crawl through the door, but the way the
man motioned, and the way the men turned briefly and waved, simply as
if they might be old acquaintances waiting for him in a hotel lobby--it
was, to say the very least, overwhelming.
There was a fragrance, an allure about the room. It smelled of apples
and tobacco and brought nostalgic thoughts of college days and--and
faint wisps of the past that were not nostalgic. He thought of Melinee.
He really ought to tell her about this.
The chalky finger motioning at him, the unconcerned old men on the
sofa--and the table. It was the antique table, missing from the
upstairs hall, that lured him in. There it sat against the far wall. He
grabbed a jutting two-by-four and twisted his body through the opening.
The ladder must have been shoved to one side, or perhaps it was the
claustrophobic effect of going through the small opening--anyway,
something. It turned his mind, his body, wrong-side out. Like the
squeezing out of a wet mop by a steamroller.
At the foot of the ladder, the man in the bartender's jacket led him to
the three men. One of them, exceptionally fat, jovial, excused himself
politely and took Ernie aside.
"You look pale, Ernie," he said. "Having trouble?"
Groggily, Ernie looked about him. "It's this room. It's lopsided. I
think a good thirty degrees cattywonkus."
The man doused a cigar and a quick frown crossed his brow. "Good point.
Very good point. Come with me, Ernie."
Ernie looked; the other men paid him no mind. The little man waddled
through a maze of foundation columns, as if the whole world were
suspended above them. He walked behind the bar to a small glass-encased
desk, U-shaped and covered with dials all reading A-B-C-D.
"Kronkite!" the man called. A whirring inside the room shut off. A man
with goggles and a metal halo stuck his head out the door. "Kronkite,
Ernie here says we are thirty degrees off. Can you shift the
equilibrium? Frankly, I hadn't noticed it."
* * * * *
With a silent nod, the man named Kronkite shut the transparent door,
turned three knobs, a bell clanged and the floor of the whole affair
sank some thirty degrees on one side, rose thirty on the other. Then
the whirring in the chamber resumed and Ernie was led back to the bar.
"Have yourself a drink, man," his host coaxed.
"I don't need one," Ernie said. "Listen, before we go on, just one
question--"
The man smiled pleasantly.
"Where the heck am I? And what is this going on in my basement?"
The smile continued. It was maddening.
"Well?" said Ernie.
"You are here," the man finally said. "And don't be silly, Ernie. Your
house has no basement."