“I don’t see anything,” I said. “Oh, this is so frustrating. And it’s not even that well-built. Look, a big old square-headed nail is sticking out here. I almost caught my shirt on it.” It wasn’t much of a shirt, but it was a dressy tank top I liked.
“Maybe you should take it off.”
“Funny.” And I giggled. Because itwasfunny, and Landon was back, and even if we weren’t finding anything, I was happy he was here.
“Where did you say that nail was?”
“Here.” I pointed. It was halfway up the wall between the floor and the shelf.
“Could it be that easy?” he murmured. He grasped the nail and pulled.
There was a click, and a small panel about three inches square popped out of the wall at an angle.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.
He ran a finger along the edge of the panel. “Looks like a handle.”
“To a door? To a secret room? OMG OMG OMG!”
“Easy, tiger.” He felt inside of it. “It’s hollowed out. I’m sure it’s a handle. Want to do the honors?”
I hesitated and whispered, “But what if there really is a ghost?”
“Then she probably doesn’t use doors.”
“Good point.” I took a deep breath, hooked my fingers on the handle and pulled.
Chapter 27
To my surprise, a door did emerge. It was a short folding door. A corner of the closet folded in on itself and then pushed aside, once I figured out how to manipulate the handle. We’d opened the portal to a dark, musty space.
Lightning flashed, and strangely, it also flashed inside that space beyond, revealing a small room almost overflowing with — it was hard to tell.
But it was creaking and groaning.
“Go ahead,” I said. “You have the light.”
Landon grinned at my timidity, ducked and went through the door. I followed. And then we were standing in a narrow room, perhaps six feet by twelve feet, lined with tool racks, shelves, work tables, junk and what I could only describe as gizmos.
The chaotic clusters of stuff were made more eerie by the occasional flash of lightning from a high horizontal window that was much wider than it was tall, much like room itself. How I hadn’t noticed the window from outside the house, I had no idea. I must’ve been so busy looking at the inside of the house, I didn’t even think about it.
I jumped as the creaking sound we’d heard earlier manifested itself right next to me.
“Is it a machine?” Landon asked, peering at the dark metal thing. It consisted of rings within rings on a stand, only there were cups and other pieces of metal to catch the wind and make it spin. And creak.
“A sculpture, I think. Look, there’s more of them. Where’s the wind coming from?” And then I realized a very old oscillating fan was operating just beyond the sculptures, churning the contraptions slowly whenever the fan rotated in their direction. “Wait. So that’s an electric fan?”
And then I heard the tinkling sound. In the dimness, hanging from shelves above the work benches, I saw wind chimes of varying descriptions — metal, glass, some pretty, some funky and made of bits of junk or wood. And they, too, moved and clinked and chuckled when the fan deigned to blow in their direction.
“But we heard all these noises before the electricity was even turned on,” Landon said.
Even weirder, I realized Landon’s phone wasn’t the only thing lighting the room. From a simple bronze fixture in one wall of the cozy room, a bulb cast a low, orange-yellow light. “But how can there be a modern Edison bulb in here when no one knew about this room?”
Landon snorted. “It’s not a modern Edison bulb. It’s vintage.”
“Vintage? A light bulb can’t last a hundred years!”
“Actually, there are a few that have. It’s not getting much use. And if it had the special touch of whoever built all this other stuff, who knows.”
