What Lies Hidden in Your Closet: Part Five

      Deep down, Kalina was not at all surprised to find the dollhouse moved, but a brief expression of confusion flickered across her face anyway. She dropped the diary from her right paw and closed the door slowly before rushing over to the miniature house. Desperately she tried to pry and muscle the house away from the wall, but it would not budge. She responded with a loud, frustrated groan and stalked toward the door. Why could nothing in her plan go right? Was something behind the door doing everything in its power to keep her from opening the knobless door?

      The closet door was locked. Kalina stared dumbly at the doorknob for a moment, not recalling whether she had locked the door before or not. With a sigh that sounded as equally frustrated as her earlier groan, she slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, and then she picked up the diary. While she was imprisoned in her own closet, the least she could do was read the diary.

     ***

      Creeeeeeeeeak!

      Jolted out of her light sleep, Kalina picked up the diary, which had been lying on her stomach during her slumber, and tried to find the source of the noise. It came again, just as loud as before. She couldn't help but wonder if her owner was able to hear the noise as well.

      What could be creaking? was her reoccurring thought. Her eyes swept over the walls of the closet and centered on the dollhouse. Of course! she thought, wondering how she could have ever thought the sounds came from anything else.

           From behind the dollhouse there soon appeared a bit of pale, ghostly blue, and the dollhouse moved smoothly and slowly away from the hidden door. Soon, the ghostly blue became more visible, revealing to Kalina that the original bit of blue that she had seen was a finger. Through time, an entire blue paw with a pale and illuminated mist coming off it appeared from behind the door. As Kalina stared across the dark closet, she realized that the door was still completely flat against the wall of the closet. Whatever the blue creature was, it was coming through the door, not from behind it.

      A small gasp escaped Kalina's mouth as she gaped at the blue figure coming through the wall. After the first blue paw there appeared a second, followed by two ears, two legs, and eventually, the entire figure was standing in front of her. The ghost was that of a young Aisha.

      She spoke. "Hello."

      "H-hi," responded Kalina, pressing herself up closer to the wall and trying to scoot toward the door. The ghost hadn't said anything threatening yet, but she felt more comfortable being close to the door, even though she knew it was locked.

      The ghost's eyes fell upon the diary that still rested on Kalina's lap. "You have been reading my diary," she said softly, reaching a single ghostly paw out to pick it up.

      "Y-y-yes," stuttered Kalina, now afraid that the ghost would be angry at her. A moment of silence existed between the two, and it was just long enough for Kalina to realize that the ghost had said the diary was hers. "You're..."

      "Yes," the ghostly Aisha said sadly, hanging her head a bit. "I'm Sury." Her eyes looked around the room for a moment, and then she sighed. "Come," she said, holding out her paw. "I will tell you the story."

      Kalina stared briefly up at Sury and blinked once before taking her paw. Although Sury's body was translucent, her paw felt solid. A questioning look was sent from Kalina to Sury, who interpreted it and said, "I will explain that, as well." Sury gently led her over to the wall and started to step through the wall.

      "Wait!" commanded Kalina, yanking her arm back. "I can't go through the door... I'm not a ghost. I'm solid."

      "Do not worry," was the response given by Sury. "As long as you have contact with me, your body will function like mine does. Come." Kalina obeyed and grasped Sury's paw once more and followed her through the wooden door.

      The passage that they stepped into was very dark, and it took several minutes before Kalina's eyes adjusted completely. She glanced down at her arm and found that it was now had the same visual properties as Sury's. In fact, she saw that her entire body had become translucent and blue, with a faint mist coming off it, which provided a soft illumination to the hallway.

      The hallway itself was quite different from the rest of the house. Throughout most of the rest of the house, the walls and floors were constructed from strong but dry bamboo. Here in this passage, the floor and the walls were made out of damp, gray stone. Periodically along the wall, there were wooden beams running from the floor to the ceiling. Even the temperature was different here than it had been in the closet. This passageway was cooler, and the air in it seemed to be much more damp. Kalina could feel a cool draft coming through the hallway.

      Sury continued to pull her down the hallway. They passed four or five doors, all without knobs, but continued past them. Finally, they reached the end of the hallway. Kalina had no idea where Sury was intending to go, since the hallway had ended, but Sury pulled her into a before-unseen passage leading from the main hallway.

      This new passage wasn't very wide at all, and Kalina couldn't help but feel a little claustrophobic walking through it. It opened up soon enough, however, into a large, stone room that resembled a laboratory. Grey tables with beakers of colored chemicals sat against several walls. In one corner stood an immense, dusty bookshelf made of dark wood, and it was full of old books, some of which appeared to be falling apart. Some equally old-looking and decomposing newspapers had taken up residence on some of the tables. Sury walked over to the opposite corner, where there were two dust-covered chairs. She sat down on one and released Kalina's paw, causing the Zafara to return to normal. Kalina blew the dust off the other chair the best she could, then sat down.

      Sury began her tale. "I, as you already know, am Surin. My owner was the one who built this house, and I was the first pet to live here. I was given all of the toys in the closet- well, all the ones that were in the closet when you moved here, anyway- when we moved into this house, and the closet became my playroom. I was in there all the time."

      "I know," interrupted Kalina. "I read your diary. What else can you tell me?"

      "I'm getting there," Sury replied patiently. "As you have read in my diary, I found the door in my owner's closet and entered it. Behind that door is this very room. After I entered it, I found that my owner was using it as a sort of potions laboratory. Before that day, I had had no idea whatsoever that my owner knew anything about potions at all! Naturally, I was curious about the types of potions she was making, so I did a bit of poking around: in her books, reading the labels on containers of chemicals, and even..." She looked away for a moment, as if embarrassed. "...tasting some of them. Some of them appeared to do absolutely nothing! I don't know if that's because I didn't drink enough of them, or because their effects were simply unnoticeable. Perhaps those potions weren't finished yet. Regardless of what the reason was, I found that many of the potions didn't have huge effects. I tried a great many potions, although I know that I shouldn't have. I was always worried that one day my owner would come into the hidden room and find that some of her newly crafted potion was missing. And after tasting my first few potions and finding that they had no apparent effects, I wasn't worried that one of them would cause a noticeable change in me."

      Then why did you keep tasting them? Kalina thought silently, not wanting to interrupt Sury again.

      "Why did I keep tasting them, you may wonder?" Kalina gazed back at her, surprised at the question. "It was curiosity, I suppose." Sury shrugged. "As far as the mind-reading goes, that will also be explained later in the story. But anyway, I wasn't worried about the effects of the potions... at least, not until..."

To be continued...