the floor, landing hard on one of the black squares.
“Shit!” yelled Jack. “Ben get through.”
“I’m through!” Ben called up from below.
“Check your watch!” said Stephen as the panel began to shut again.
Jack reached down and tried to halt the medium pace of the panel, but its speed was unchanged by his effort. He withdrew his hand and the panel finished its travel.
Stephen yelled at the panel — “Tell us when a minute is up.”
A muffled reply came from below: “Okay.”
They waited in silence. Stephen pointed his light over towards the open door on the far wall. Joining with his light, Jack looked at the door as well. The hallway beyond the door seemed to swallow their lights — the floor, ceiling, and walls were all flat black.
Their eyes were glued to the black rectangle and they both flinched when Ben’s voice floated up from below — “One minute!”
“Hmmm,” said Stephen. A second later the panel began to open again.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Jack.
Jack’s dad cooked on the grill. The boys gorged — after returning from the hotel they had worked up an appetite planning and assembling all the tools and materials they thought they would need. For the first time, they had left the stepladder in the woods near the hotel. Jack decided that it was risky to constantly move it in and out of the garage. But, for now, all the preparation was forgotten and the boys focused on dinner.
“This is great, mom,” said Jack.
“Tell your dad, he did the cooking,” she replied.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“What did you do today?” his dad asked. “You certainly have an appetite.”
“Nothing much,” Jack responded. “We played outside, and then messed around up in my room.”
“Did you talk to your mom?” Jack’s mom asked Stephen.
“Yes,” he began, “she said I should ask if it’s okay that I stay ‘til the end of the month.”
“Oh, of course, that’s fine,” Jack’s mom replied.
“And Ben, are you moving in for good?” she asked.
“If that’s okay,” smiled Ben.
“Hey Dad,” said Jack, “I heard a riddle today.”
“Difficulty?” his dad asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I thought easy, but I don’t know the answer. It’s definitely not a brain-buster.” Jack and his dad had always enjoyed solving puzzles and riddles together. Jack was good at the math and logic problems, and his dad excelled at the language and historic references. When they wanted a good challenge, they would turn to Jack’s “Book of Brain-Busters.”
“What would you consider the key line of the riddle?” his dad asked him.
“It was ‘Level heads have patience while their hands part and meet again,’ I think,” recited Jack.
“How old?”
“Um, not sure. Maybe fifteen or twenty years.” Jack didn’t want to reveal too much information.
“Well, patience suggests a time-reference, and it’s modern, so I would suspect that the hands are on clock. Could be minute-hand against the hour, or second-hand against either.” his dad replied.
“Oh, so it could mean have patience for a minute?” asked Stephen, joining the conversation.
“Or an hour,” said Jack.
“A bit more than an hour, actually,” corrected his dad. “If a minute hand travels around, it doesn’t catch the hour hand for sixty-five minutes.”
“Oh, right,” said Jack.
Stephen looked up at the clock on the wall and studied it until he figured out the extra five minutes.
“Not very hard for someone my age,” said Jack’s dad. “But you boys have probably never had a watch with hands.”
“Well, no, but we had to learn to tell time anyway,” protested Jack.
“No offense intended, sir,” Jack’s dad joked.
“It’s closed again,” announced Stephen. He was the first up the ladder and into the “Bishop’s room.” The boys had carefully agreed on names for all the locations they had seen during their discussions the night before. Now it was Sunday morning and they each carried a backpack with lunch and water.
“What, the door on the right?” asked Ben — he was heading up the ladder.
“Yeah, it must be spring-loaded, or motorized or something,” Stephen conjectured.
Picking his way, Ben stepped off the ladder onto the harlequin floor. Jack was right behind.
“It’s not surprising,” said Jack. “Everything else here resets.”
“Kinda like us,” said Ben. “We just do the same thing every day.”
“Wait a second,” said Jack, inflamed, “
“Me?” asked Ben. “I went to talk to you about it and you had already decided to keep going because you liked figuring out the clues in that letter.”
Ben turned away from his friends and started studying the wall with his light. A crack extended from the ceiling to about halfway down the wall; it was covered in black paint. By leaning over Ben was able to reach the crack and he picked away some of the paint, leaving a small white spot of gypsum exposed.
“What are you saying?” asked Jack. “You don’t even want to be here?”
“It’s not…” began Ben. “It’s not how I pictured spending my summer is all.”
“Don’t you even want to see what’s down that hall?” asked Stephen. He pointed his light at the door on the right at the end of the room.
“I don’t know,” Ben answered. “I guess so.”
“Look,” said Jack, “we have all day. Let’s just keep going a little while, have lunch, and then we’ll figure out what to do.”
“This place is creepy though,” said Ben. “How can you want to have lunch in here? I keep expecting to run across rats or dead bodies.”
“It’s just dark,” said Stephen. “We haven’t even seen anything unusual.”
“You don’t think that painting down below is unusual?” asked Ben. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some murderer painted that.”
“The guy’s gone though,” protested Jack. “The place is empty.”
“How do we really know that?” asked Ben.
Stephen and Jack looked at each other. For a moment they ignored Ben. They sized each other up to see if Ben’s idea had any resonance. Jack was the first to speak — “We’ll just see what’s past the door.”
Defeated, Ben agreed by moving across the tiles towards the door. Stephen led the way.
“Careful this time,” said Ben.
The door stood closed at the edge of Stephen’s reach. Leaning forward, he gingerly turned the handle and let the door force itself open. Jack circled to the left to get another angle on the doorway. When it banged open, Stephen moved towards the door. Once again, they saw a long, dark hallway. Its walls were painted the same black as the Bishop’s room. The floor was solid black.
Stephen stepped on each white tile on his way to the threshold. “Guess it doesn’t matter where I step,” he said as he passed a foot through the doorway and willed his body to follow. He brought his other foot across, turned around to face Jack and Ben, and then pointed his flashlight up. “I think we caught a break.”
“What is it?” asked Jack.
Stephen was facing him and looking up above the door-jam from the hallway side. “I don’t know,” said Stephen. “Something bolted to the wall up there. Looks like it could be bad news for people coming through the door, but it didn’t do anything to me.”
“Oh wait.” Stephen traced his flashlight down the right-hand side of the door. “There’s a wire that looks like it goes to the floor here. You guys should come through just like I did.”
