The Secret Place

Jessica shows Shelly to a place no one else in town knows about.

It was two weeks after our night out at the club. Neither of our parents, to the best of my knowledge, knew anything about what we had done, or where we had been. Jessica’s parents really didn’t seem to care, and mine thought we had spent the whole time at Jessica’s house. No word on staying at either place had been spoken in all that time, and I felt a great deal of relief at this. I sort of felt it was better that we spent all of our time together at school, and none of it meeting outside those cold, unfeeling walls. My parents didn’t ask me if I would be going back to Jessica’s house, and I had to wonder if they even remembered my being at her place the first time. Jessica herself said nothing about going over again, and I sort of wondered if I might have done something that night that made her think it was better me not going out with her. Maybe her father had been more embarrassing than she had thought he would be, or maybe she just wanted to keep him out of jail. She still treated me the same at school, still sitting next to me in homeroom and still leading me around from one class to another. She still talked to me during lunch and talked with me after school until it was time for her to catch the bus, so I wasn’t sure if I had done anything or not. It didn’t seem so, so I really didn’t worry all that much about it. Besides, if I had hurt her feelings in some way, I’m sure she would have had no trouble telling me so.

Then, one day, Jessica leaned close to me before homeroom had started, and said, “Want to see the coolest thing?” She whispered the words as if they were the biggest conspiracy on the planet.

I shrugged my shoulders, and said, “Yeah, sure. I guess so.” I sat expectantly, waiting for her to pull something out of her pack that might be of some interest to someone, even if it wasn’t me. Jessica had never acted this way before, and I had no idea what it could be that she wanted to show me.

“Do you think your parents would let you stay the night again?”

Once again, I shrugged, wondering what she could have to show me that she couldn’t bring it to school with her. I wasn’t too hip into the idea of going back to her place, what with how crazy her father was, but then again, it might have been worse for me to bring Jessica’s displeasure down upon me. How did I get myself in these situations? “I guess they would. Why? What is it that you’ve got to show me?”

Jessica shook her head, holding one finger up to her lips. “It’s a secret. Can you keep a secret, a really, really big one?”

I nodded my head. “Sure. You know I can. I didn’t tell anyone about us going out to the club, did I?”

“Well, this is bigger. A lot bigger. Can I trust you?” She stared expectantly at me, as if she thought I would turn her in for some terrible crime she had committed, even though I had no idea what that crime might be.

Starting to feel a bit strange and confused, I once again nodded my head. “You know you can.”

“Great. Meet me at my place Friday after school.”
“Why do I have to meet you at your place? Wouldn’t it be easier if I took you home with me after school?”

“I won’t be here Friday. Just swing by my place.”
True to her word, Jessica wasn’t there Friday. It was the first time she had missed classes since we had started the school year a few months back, and I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on. What was she doing today that would keep her away from classes for the entire day, and what did she have to show me once I got over to her place? What was all this about, and what was going on? I had come to learn that with Jessica, it seemed that just about anything was possible, and that sort of unnerved me. I had already gotten permission from my parents to spend the night with her again, and so there was no turning back now.

I got over to Jessica’s place shortly after school, and sat in the truck for several minutes, debating on what to do next. I had sort of hoped she would just come out or be waiting for me when I had gotten there, but neither one of those happened, and so here I was, sitting in my truck, looking like a complete and totally idiot while trying to decide if I should go and knock on the door or not. She knew I was coming over, but I didn’t want to run the risk of her father opening the door instead of her. He did more than scare me just a bit, and I didn’t want to find out that I would have to spend any length of time waiting for her with only the guy to keep my company. Maybe I did fear having to testify against the guy in a court of law if I spent too much time alone with him.

I probably spent about ten minutes waiting there in an agony of indecision before Jessica finally came bounding out the door and down the cracked walkway towards me. She got in on the passenger side of the truck, and slammed the door shut. She had a worn, brown leather bag sitting on her lap, not the one she took to school with her, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what was in it. It was so stuffed with things that the sides were bulging, and I had to wonder how the seams weren’t bursting out. “Ready to go?” she asked, her eyes bright with excitement.

I looked towards her house, pointing and stammering. “I-I thought we were staying here.”

She gave me a look that said ‘don’t be stupid’ and said, “Do you really want to stay here?”

“Well, no, but that’s what you told me we would be doing.”

She laughed, and shook her head. “No, I just said to ask your parents if you could spend the night. I didn’t say where we were spending it. My parents think I’m going over to your place tonight.”

“What if they call each other, and find out neither one of us is staying at the other’s place?” I asked, feeling a bit worried about how this was turning out. It was never a good idea to use other parents as a lie as to where you’re staying. At least I had never seen it work out well in the movies. I had had very little opportunity to do this sort of thing before in my life, and had no real idea how it actually worked out.

“Did your parents call mine last time we spent the night together?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t even think they remembered that they had a daughter that night.”
“Well, my parents will be the same way, so we’ve got the whole night to ourselves, and I’ve got the best thing in the world to show you. Come on, let’s go.”

I started up the engine, and asked, “So, where is this neatest thing in the world?”

“You’ll see. Just go where I tell you to.”

“It isn’t another club, is it?”

She shook her head. “No way. It’s better than that.”

I headed down the roads she pointed out to me, and in a short period of time, we were on the outskirts of town, passing over a low, concrete bridge. The water looked as if it would have happily jumped the bridge at any time, and I imagined that was exactly what it did in heavy rains. This was definitely not a place one would want to be in during a storm.

We drove past some deserted lots and a handful of small houses before Jessica pointed out a narrow, gravel road that had almost been overgrown by grass. I never would have noticed it if she hadn’t been with me. “Up there. Go that way.”

“What’s that way?” I asked, not too awfully sure I wanted to go that way. The road was surrounded by a thick clump of trees, making it impossible to see more than about ten feet in. It was like a wooded cave up there, and I wasn’t sure I felt safe about taking the old, trusty truck up there. What if there were bears or something up that way? Or worse.

“Just keep going,” my companion insisted.

“You sure this is a good idea?”

“Trust me. You’ll love it once we get to where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s just up this road.”

I couldn’t come up with any more arguments, and so I started up the road, going slowly so as not to loose sight of the road. After a bit, I finally gave in and turned the headlights on, even though there should have still be several hours of daylight left. The trees blocked out all but the tiniest bit of sunlight, and that had to struggle between the leaves to make it to the ground. The gravel crunched under the wheels of the truck, the only sounds that I could hear. There wasn’t even the sound of bird calls, and it wasn’t that late in the season yet. It was like we had dropped off the face of the planet, or had traveled back to some prehistoric time before man was even a thought on the earth. I couldn’t even begin to guess at the trees about us, I’m not that good at identifying trees, but they all seemed ancient, some of them close to death, and I just hoped that none of them decided it would be a good time to fall over and block the road, or land on the top of the truck.

It seemed as if we had been driving for ages, but I could still see bits of sunlight coming in between the leaves that hung above our heads. “How much further is it?” I finally had to ask.

“Just a little bit further. We’re almost out of the woods, and then you’ll see what I brought you out here for,” Jessica said, moving her head in such a manner that it seemed as if she were excitedly trying to see through the tree cover before us. What was it that had the girl this excited, and would I like it half as much as she seemed to?

It took a few more minutes of driving, mainly because of how slow I was going to make sure I didn‘t run over anything that might pop the tires, before we finally cleared the woods. What lay in front of us took my breath away.

Sitting several hundred yards away from us was what could only be described as a small castle, an honest to god castle. The structure was made of stones, and reached up into the sky a good two or three stories. The windows were darkened, barred affairs that dotted the stone structure here and there. Dark green ivy grew up the sides of the building, hiding a good portion of the darkened, grey stones, and even crept into some of the broken windows, twining their way around the old, rusted bars. An iron fence encircled the place, each bar being tipped with a sharp, iron spike that looked like they were ready to do a decent amount of damage to anyone who wanted to try to climb over the fence. A small stream of water ran around the place, and there was even a tower off to the far corner of the place, adding another two stories to the entire height of the structure. There were a number of old, dieing trees littered about the property, most of them the white of a bleached skeleton, devoid of bark and covered with twisted, gnarled branches that reached out in all directions as if they were reaching out to bring any living thing into the world of the dead with them.

I slowly got out of the truck, my eyes popping out of my head and my mouth hanging so far open that I could swear my chin was resting on the gravel of the drive I had pulled into. “Oh. My. God,” I breathed, unable to really say anything else.

“See, told you this place was neat,” Jessica said from right beside me. I hadn’t even noticed her getting out of the truck.

I turned to look at her, asking, “How did you find out about this place? I doubt anyone would have even thought to go down that dirt path of a road we just used.”

She shrugged. “I do a lot of biking during the weekends, and came across this place a few months back. I come out here most every weekend now, and it seemed like the coolest place to make a…Oh, I don’t know…a secret club or something like that.”

“Aren’t we a little old to have a secret club house?” I asked. Still, I sort of liked the idea of us being the only two people in town who knew about this place, maybe even the only two people in the world. It looked like it had been abandoned for years and years, and I just bet that the only records of this particular structure were collecting dust back at city hall. No one would know where we were or what we were doing. Now, this wasn’t my idea of fun when in a dangerous situation, but with no one else around, it seemed like a grand idea. A place to go to let it all out, without thinking of how others would treat you or think about you. Besides, the place was huge. It would take weeks to just explore the entire thing, if we came only on the weekends. It was something to past the time, at least, and I sort of liked the idea of exploring an abandoned castle.

Jessica shrugged again. “Well, it doesn’t have to be called a club house, and there’s only two of us, so it really isn’t a club. It’s just our…place to hang out. What do you think?”

What did I think? I thought it was a great idea. I had always fantasized about seeing a real, honest to God castle, but had thought it would never happen in my lifetime. I hadn’t thought I lived in an area where one could hope to see such a sight. I had always thought I would have to go over to Europe to even come close to seeing a castle, and Europe wasn’t on my parents list of vacation sites. Now, here was my chance, and it seemed as if the only other person I would have to share this experience with would be the one person who seemed as if she always wanted to be with me. What could be better than this? “I…guess it sounds like fun,” I said. I was never the sort of person who did a good job at expressing my emotions, so I usually went for a more apathetic tone when it came to things that really excited me.

She giggled happily, and took hold of my hand. We ran to the rusted gate, and stopped the moment we saw the iron padlock that held the two sides of the gate together. It was threaded through a chain that looked as if it had been hanging there since the dark ages. I wondered if we could break it, if it was old enough to just come apart with one, swift tug. Looking at how thick the links in the chain were, I sort of doubted either one of us would have the strength to break it. “Now what?” I asked, looking up to see the metal spikes sticking out of the top of the bars. There was no way to climb over, and going under was just a ludicrous idea. Besides, to the best of my knowledge, neither one of us had thought to bring a shovel along. I was now eager to see how Jessica had been getting into and out of the place.

“This way,” she said, pushing at the gate as hard as she could. The two sides of the gate parted just enough for her to squirm through. Once on the other side, she turned back to me with one of her wicked smiles. “Now, your turn.”

I was just a bit heavier set than she was, and had to wiggle and squiggle just a little bit more than she had, but I soon made it through and was on the other side with her. If there was ever a time when I would need to get in or out of this place quickly, that would be out of the question, but at least I could get through the gate, given enough time.

We walked down the cracked and crumbling concrete drive that lead up to the front door of the place, looking about at all the foliage that had encroached upon the path. There were a number of colorful weeds and some actual wild flowers that had run rampant over the grounds, claiming their stake wherever they could, and they were doing a wonderful job of taking the place over. I bet that in a few years the entire place would be covered with greenery from weeds and various wild plants.

We reached the front door, and Jessica pushed it open. It swung on its hinges with a loud, creaking sound. It was a good thing the place was empty. With as much noise as the door made, there was no way anyone inside would not have been able to hear us coming in.

We came into a room that was lit with only what light was coming in through the windows, but that was enough to get a good look at the place. Dust motes danced like fairies around the motionless air. The floors were of a hard wood that echoed with the sounds of our footfalls, and we really weren’t wearing that hard of a soled shoe. The ceiling was far above our heads, and you could see the wooden supports that held up the stone structure. They were massive things, so huge that I doubted that both Jessica and I together would have been able to get our arms around the things. A large, metal chandelier with place holdings for candles swayed slowly above our heads. I had my fingers crossed that the chain that held it in place would continue to hold for the duration of our stay. It looked solid enough, but neither one of us could even guess as to how old that chain was, or how to tell if it was still in decent condition or not.

The furniture itself was moth eaten in places, the stuffing of many a cushion hanging out. Yellowed cotton was strung across the floor in places were vermin had tried to use the stuff as bedding for their homes. What wasn’t ruined was a good portion of the furniture that was made entirely of wood. There were a few chairs and a couple of small tables sitting about the room that were dusty with age, and nothing more was wrong with them then that. It was decided that these pieces of furniture were in good enough condition for us to actually use, if we only cleaned them up a bit. Some Pledge and a few, good rags would do wonders for part of the furniture, and some mopping would get the floor looking great.

There were a couple of old paintings and tapestries hanging on the walls, but none of them had survived the years all that well, and there would be no saving them, in our opinion. One painting had completely disintegrated to the point where one would be hard press to even guess at what the original image had been. The other one sort of reminded me of a picture depicting a fox hunt, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was some epic battle fought long ago. I couldn’t be sure. The tapestries were in even worse shape, being little more than threads hanging on the walls.

There were three doorways leading off of this first room, and a set of stairs off to one side, almost hidden in a niche in the wall. Turning to Jessica, I asked, “Which way?”

She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Which way do you want to go?”

Biting my lips, I looked at all the exits from the room. I could see nothing of any of the rooms that lay beyond them due to the fact that each one lead into a short hallway that didn’t really allow anyone to see further than a few feet down any of the passages. The staircase wasn’t any help in figuring out what might have been up there. Shrugging, I finally pointed to the doorway on the extreme left. “That way.”

We headed off that way, I wondering what I would find, and Jessica already knowing but not telling me, I was sure of that. She had had weeks to explore this place, and I couldn‘t believe that she had not already gone into each of the doorways leading off the first room. We walked down the short hallway to find ourselves in a rather large dining room. The table in the center of the long, narrow room was huge, stretching from one end of the room almost to the other. Chairs had been set around it some time ago, and after counting each and every one, I figured that at least thirty or so people could have easily sat around the table to have their dinner. I found myself wondering what sort of food had been served to those who had eaten here. I bet it had been something grand and on the foreign side. No burgers and fries here. A bank of windows off to one side let in a great amount of light from the sun, illuminating just about everything in the room. I imagined that at night it would have been wonderfully beautiful to see by the light of a full moon. There were several pots around the edges of the room that would have once held what could have been beautiful plants, but now had nothing but ancient, deadened weeds sticking out of them here and there. Those would have to be removed as soon as possible. I didn’t have a green thumb at all, so I just didn’t think we would be replacing the plants that had once been there, not unless Jessica was more successful with greenery than I was.

“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” asked Jessica from beside me.

“Are you kidding? This is the best place I’ve ever been. And to think that no one lives here, there’s no one to run us off.”

Giggling, Jessica grabbed my wrist, and pulled me out of the dining room. “Okay, you got to pick the first room. Now it’s my turn.” She dragged me back to the first room we had walked into, and rushed to the doorway on the opposite side of the room. Once we had gotten past the hallway, we found ourselves in the most incredible room I had ever seen in my life.

I couldn’t think of any way of describing the room other than to say it looked very much like the laboratory of a mad scientist from one of those really old, scary movies that used to give my parents the creeps, but that a person from my generation would laugh at. There were wires and glass tubes all over the place. Beakers and test tubes and Bunsen burners and chemicals of various colors in various containers. Some of the containers still held a good amount of whatever was in them, and others looked as if their contents must have evaporated some time ago. I was more than thrilled that these things all had stoppers on them, for I had very little idea what most of the things could be, and had no idea if any of them were toxic in any way, shape or form. I did know enough about chemistry to know that some chemicals could kill a person just by inhaling them, and I wasn’t sure if whoever had lived here once upon a time had kept anything that dangerous about or not. What labels there were had faded with age, and proved impossible to read. Actually, I knew nothing of who might have owned this place when there had been people living in it, but I was starting to think that maybe the guy might not have been all that sane. Who kept such places in their own homes?

As one walked further into the room, you would come to a glassed off enclosure that held a number of animal skeletons within it. Considering that each skeleton had a number of metal pipes going through them to hold them up, I thought it was safe to say that the animals had been dead before they had been put into the glass case, and that they had been put in there on purpose. I’m not good at identifying things from their bones, but I was pretty sure that there was at least two, medium size cats, a couple of bats suspended from the top of the enclosure by metal lines, a handful of mice, three snakes of different sizes, and a few things that I had no idea what they could be at all. I thought they were small mammals, like possums or something like that, but I wasn’t too awfully sure. Anyway, the place was a science teacher’s grandest dream.

Past this enclosure was yet another one with taxidermy animals in it. Here I could tell that there were three bobcats, a bird of prey of some kind, a few raccoons and two snakes. Their fur was patchy with age, and you could see the skin beneath in some places. The snakes’ scales looked rather lackluster, and I was sure if it hadn’t been for how well the glass case was sealed that everything in it would have been covered in dust. As it was, I think all the cases were, amazingly enough, rather vacuumed sealed to keep out the dust. The place was put together awfully well, for an armature scientist. Maybe this had been the home of some sort of madman.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Jessica said, a smile plastered to her face as if she were enjoying the entire thing. “What about you?”

I had to nod my head. “Yeah, I’m waiting for Dr. Frankenstein to jump out of the wood works and chases us off.”

Jessica laughed at this, a full, healthy laugh as if I had just said the funniest thing she had ever heard. “Come on, there’s more.”

She lead me further into the lab, and we came across a table with a very old microscope on it. Besides the microscope was a small box filled with slides. On each slide was a rusty looking smear and a label. Most of the labels had faded long ago, but some of them were still intact enough to tell that they were blood samples from various different animals. There was a book sitting off to one side of the table, and looking at it I could tell that they were notes taken about the blood samples, but I couldn’t quite figure out what any of it meant. I’m not sure what the guy was studying, or what he had discovered, if he had discovered anything of interest. The pages of the book had yellowed, but the pages held intact well enough to allow me to turn several of them, which I did while trying to figure out what had been going on here. I sort of wondered what the guy had been searching for, and if he had found it.

We left the lab through a second door, and found ourselves in the largest, personal library I had ever seen, not that I had actually seen all that many personal libraries in my life, but I’m sure if I had, this one would still be the largest. Dozens of bookshelves littered the room, all of them towering well above our heads. Large ladders on rollers allowed access to the books higher up on the shelves. Three, large, wooden tables were scattered about the room with ancient candle stick holders sitting upon them. It looked as if the guy had little to no use for electricity in this part of the structure, and I wondered if any other part of the place aside from the lab was even wired for it. How old was this place? How long ago had it been abandoned?

I moved over to the nearest bookshelf, and took a look at the titles that were to be seen there. I could read a number of the titles, but they made very little actual sense to me, so I assumed they were very old, scientific journals, as I’m not too familiar with such things. I might be good at some sciences, but this guy dealt in stuff I didn’t have a clue about. His biology knowledge was far beyond anything I had ever studied, and I wasn’t all that good at chemistry, seeing how terrible I am at math. A number of the other books were written in various languages. I thought some were Latin and others might be German, but languages aren’t my forte either. I did notice a few star charts sitting off to one side, and took a few minutes to study these. They were a bit outdated, but still not bad, for their time.

Jessica, never being one for the scholarly thing, just sort of wondered around for a bit, running her fingers over the spines of many a dusty book before finally coming back over to me and saying. “Isn’t this place great?”

I had to nod my head. “Yeah, I could see spending a lot of time here.”

Looking at her watch, Jessica said, “Well, it’s getting a bit late. Think it’s time to have something to eat.”

“Wait, we’re eating here?” I asked, not sure I was quite ready for that yet.

Jessica gave me one of her patented smiles, and said, “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you? We’re staying here tonight.”

Author's Note

First Draft