“Yeah,” said Jack. “Do you think that would be tall enough?”
“We can find out,” said Ben. “Let’s go.”
“Tonight?” asked Jack. “You want to go back to the house and come back here tonight?”
“It won’t take that long,” said Ben.
“Yeah, but by the time we back here we won’t have any time even if we do find something,” said Jack.
“Come on,” said Stephen, “we have hours until dawn.”
“Less than two,” said Jack. “The sun rises at 5:10 today. And it takes us twenty minutes to get back to the house from here.”
“We’ve got to get that restriction lifted,” said Stephen. “Then we could be here all day.”
“We doing this or not?” asked Ben.
“We’d have to jog the whole way,” said Jack. “And we have to leave here by quarter of five. And we have to bring the ladder back with us.”
“Let’s go,” said Ben, “what’s stopping us?”
“Just sanity,” laughed Stephen.
“What do you see?” asked Jack.
Ben got to go first up the ladder. The folded ladder leaned against the building for support. Ben was on the next-to-last step while Jack and Stephen held it in place.
The mission to retrieve the ladder had gone almost perfectly. To avoid using the noisy garage door, they used the back door of the garage which was very close to the neighbors house. When leaving by the basement door they had the advantage of a hill that blocked the neighbors view and a deck that shielded them from above.
With the ladder in-hand, they felt naked crossing the yard. The neighbor’s dog barked. Jack kept his calm and moved at an even pace which forced Ben to suppress his urge to run. Even moving slowly, they had a couple of sketchy moments where they almost crashed into objects in the yard.
Now, at the hotel, Ben stretched up to determine if the wall had a hidden door build into it.
“Press the button,” said Ben.
“Hold on,” said Stephen. “You got it?” he asked Jack.
“Yeah, I can hold this,” answered Jack.
Stephen reached through the bottom steps of the ladder and pressed the button. After an initial click, the grinding sound began almost at once.
“Hey!” said Ben, “I can hear it — it’s right here. Keep pushing.”
“Like I was going to stop?” asked Stephen.
As before, the grinding stopped after several seconds, and Stephen felt and heard a loud click.
“Oh shit!” yelled Ben, atop the ladder.
“What? What is it?” asked Jack, trying to see around Ben in the night.
“The wall moves,” answered Ben. “It swings inward. It looked completely solid until that last click and then it gave way.”
“Open it!” said Stephen.
“Okay,” said Ben. He braced his knees against the building and pressed the section of wall he had been leaning on. The left side stopped after pushing in an inch, but the right side swung inward until it was perpendicular to the wall. The door measured two feet high and three feet wide. The top and bottom of the hatch were aligned on the edges of clapboards and the right and left sides were tight enough that the seams barely showed until Ben pressed the door open.
He swung the door inward until it stopped, revealing a rectangular hole in the side of the building. The bottom of the hatch was even with his stomach.
“Hand me a flashlight.” Ben extended his right hand down and beckoned.
“You’re going to have to grab it,” said Stephen. “I can’t reach.”
Annoyed, Ben reluctantly descended a few steps to grab the proffered light. Shining the light into the hole he was surprised.
“Wow,” said Ben. “It’s deep.”
“How deep?” asked Jack.
“I don’t know — I can’t see the bottom,” said Ben.
“What else can you see?” asked Stephen.
“Come down so we can have a chance to see,” said Jack.
“Jeez, give me a minute,” said Ben.
They took turns surveying the hatch and the hole it revealed. Their first glimpse inside the hotel showed them a vertical passageway that was about four feet to the opposite wall. The column was only as wide as the hatch — about three feet. Jack was the first to gauge the depth of the hole by shining two flashlights down at once. He reported that it looked about twenty feet deep, which put the floor at ground-level below the porch roof. Jack also noticed that the sides of the passage disappeared halfway down, suggesting a larger room below.
When it was Stephen’s turn atop the ladder, he immediately stuck his head through and looked up. “Hey,” he said. “There’s the concrete thing we keep hearing.”
Above the hole, a block of concrete was poised above the hatch door. Stephen surmised it would slide back into place when the hatch door was closed. His next discovery astonished the boys.
“There’s a switch!” said Stephen. The passage was capped about six inches over the hatch door, and on that ceiling, was mounted a single light-switch.
“Should I flip it?” he asked.
“Hold up,” said Ben. He went over to the edge of the roof and climbed down rapidly. Jack stood, holding the ladder, and Stephen waited up at the hatch. A few seconds later a stick landed at Jack’s feed.
“Hand that up,” said Ben, climbing back on to the porch roof again.
Jack handed Stephen the stick. Balanced on the ladder, holding the flashlight in one hand and the stick in the other, Stephen tried to flip the switch with the end of the stick.
“Got it,” said Stephen, several tries later.
“Anything?” asked Jack.
“Don’t know yet. I’m going to lean in,” said Stephen. He looked up at the concrete block hanging over the doorway. He poked his head through and looked around. “Wait — there’s a light down there.”
“Awesome,” said Jack, “what else do you see.”
“That’s about it,” replied Stephen. “You can see the bottom and some light, but it must be around a corner or something.”
“Hey guys,” said Ben, looking at his watch. “It’s quarter of.”
“We’re going to need a rope or something anyway,” said Stephen.
Jack climbed down first; Stephen and Ben handed the ladder down to him. Exhausted, they managed to get back to the house right at dawn. The neighbor to the north, with the dog, should have seen them — he was leaving his house for a jog while they hustled the ladder back into the garage. But he seemed intent on his radio and didn’t glance their direction.
Sleep, it turned out, was not an option that night. Weary, they climbed into their fort and got into sleep positions, but their minds raced with the implications of what they had seen. They whispered ideas back and forth. Jack was focused on how to make it in and out of the building safely. Ben wondered when they could get back over there, and Stephen wanted to guess what they might find. They were just beginning to doze when they heard parents stirring around upstairs.
At breakfast, Jack’s mom could sense something was wrong.
“You boys look like death warmed over,” she said. “Aren’t you sleeping well downstairs?”
“I guess so,” said Jack. His head was propped up with one arm as he lifted cereal to his mouth.
“I think you should move upstairs,” she said. “Ben, you and Stephen can sleep in the guest room and then you’ll all have beds.”
“It’s okay mom, we sleep fine downstairs,” said Jack. He was beginning to get alarmed at the trend of this conversation.
“What are we talking about?” asked Jack’s dad as he entered the kitchen. He crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out a cup of yogurt.
“The boys aren’t sleeping well,” his mom said. “I thought they might want to switch to upstairs.”