With their backs against the wall the three young adventurers moved on. Step by step they came closer to the corner of the big old house. Finally they arrived there. Around the corner however the situation wasn’t better. Still the bushes grew all the way up to the wall, so they couldn’t move very fast here either. Bit by bit they got to the door, on their way passing a big window that was boarded up. Robert tried to break the board. But that didn’t work, despite the fact that it looked very old. After a while they got to the front door. Looking to the right they could still see the street behind the gate. It looked like another world to them. The ball should have landed here somewhere. So they looked around for it. But the ball was nowhere to be seen. Not near the door, not on the path to the street, not in the bushes besides the street. Disappointed, Anna sat down on a stone flower pot that had fallen over. She looked at the boys.
“I think it’s no use. We can never find the ba…”
Mid sentence she stopped, and looked past the two boys in surprise. Curious as to what she saw, Tommy and Robert turned around. There, in the shadow of the door, on the floor, they saw it too. A small round object, dark from the shadow of the door, that could have been red in the right light. The boys followed Anna, who had eagerly passed them. When she came near the door, the ball seemed to roll away. Anna pushed the door wide open. She welcomed the help from Robert and Tommy; it was a heavy door. It squeaked a lot and then came to a stop against the wall with a big bang. Anna and the boys looked inside. They didn’t see the ball there. Carefully they walked in. Through the hallway, and into the wide lobby. Everything in there was covered in thick layers of dust. A wooden chair, a side table, a pair of slippers, the umbrella stand. The umbrella stand had an umbrella in it, but it was half eaten by moths. A gust of wind came in through the front door, and it shook the crystal chandelier that was hanging in the middle of the lobby. Dust fell down and on their heads. It made them look down and see a track. A track that could well have been formed by a ball. A red ball even. It went – not in a straight line – towards the stairs. The stairs were something spectacular. Even in the dim light they looked astonishing. Wide marble steps were surrounded by very beautiful guardrails, carved out of fine oak wood. The railings seemed to be covered in pure gold. On both sides of the lobby there were stairs. Somehow the track of the ball went up one of the stairs. After only a few moments of hesitation, the children followed it up the stairs, the one to the right. It took them some effort, because the steps were quite high.
The stairs took them higher and higher. Higher than they would have expected actually. Finally they saw the end. Relieved they took the last steps and ended up… exactly where they had begun. They were in the lobby again, but now on the left side. They saw their footprints in the dust, leading towards the staircase on the right.
“But that is impossible! We only went up…”
Tommy looked outside to confirm that they were actually still at ground level. And they were. With a puzzled look on their faces they found each others eyes. Without having to tell each other they simultaneously started walking to the left stairs. Again it took them a long time, but in the end… they were back where they had come from, but now of course on the right. Unbelievable.
“What is going on here?”
Anna asked a bit scared.
“I have an idea. Robert, you go up at that side, and then I go up here. Let’s see if we meet each other halfway.”
And so it was done. Robert went up on the left, Tommy on the right. Anna stayed downstairs in the lobby, waiting. After a while she heard voices talking far above her. She couldn’t hear them clearly enough, but she thought she recognized her friends. Not too much later she heard someone running down the stairs. Or better, two someones. It wasn’t long before Tommy arrived on the left, and Robert showed up at the right. It turned out they had met in the middle, and proposed to keep following their route to see where that would lead them.
Since there was apparently no way to get up a floor, they decided to explore the ground floor. Close together the two boys and the girl entered one of the doors that came out into the lobby. They took the one most to the right. It was a large room which must have once be brightly lit by all the big windows, but now it was rather dark. All over the wall were books in impressive old book cases. In the middle of the room stood a lonely leather chair. It was accompanied by a big globe. It was opened at the equator, and in its mouthlike shape the children could see empty glass bottles. A candle had melted all over the candlestick that was placed in the middle of a small round table. It had some red blotches on it. They found nothing interesting so they moved on. The only other door in the room led to a long corridor. The corridor seemed very high. It looked like it followed the corners of the house. At every corner, the children felt that it was lower. Suddenly Tommy noticed
“Hey, we have had four corners now, which means that we should have been back at the lobby by now.”
That was true. But they weren’t. All that was there was the endless and lowering corridor, with pictures of old people at the wall that would get only larger. They walked on, and rounded another corner. Again the corridor continued and the ceiling became lower. A grown man would have had to tilt his head a bit by now. Confused the children went forth. The corridors just didn’t seem to end, and at every corner they became lower, the paintings becoming bigger. At one point the paintings were too big for the corridors, so the old people started missing heads. Robert, Tommy and Anna got tired. But still the corridors weren’t at an end. By now they had to tilt their head a bit. And it only got worse.
“Hey guys, do you see that?”
Tommy pointed at a painting. All it showed were the arms of a no doubt old and dead man. He had 10 fingers up in front of him. They hurried to the next portrait, but nothing. And so for the next portraits. But in the last painting the man held up 9 fingers.
“Maybe that’s a sign that we are getting closer to the end.”
Robert remarked. They didn’t know if it was true, but at least they kept finding portraits with fewer and fewer fingers held up. In the end they had to crawl, and the portrait showed only one finger held horizontally. It was at another corner. But around the corner a surprise awaited them. There was a door. A very tiny door. A grown man wouldn’t have been able to get trough it, but for the children it wasn’t too much of a problem. One at a time they pulled themselves through. When all three had passed the door, they looked up. And they almost fell over in astonishment. Because there was something very wrong in this room. Everything was turned over 90 degrees. The carpet, the chairs and the table seemed to be on the side wall, and the window was at the ceiling. They were walking between some cupboards. Apparently they were in the kitchen.
Suddenly they boys heard a thud and a scream. They looked back. Anna rubbed her toe. She had bumped into the stove. Not knowing what else to do, they headed for the next door. They had to climb through it. Now they found themselves in the living room. But not at the floor, and not at the wall. They were standing on the ceiling. Everything was upside down. Or they were upside down and everything was normal. But anyway, something was again very wrong. Tommy started to get nauseous a bit from all the changes in perspective. Quickly they made their way to the next door, trying to avoid the standing lamps that hung from the floor, and the big chandelier that rose from the ceiling. They jumped for the door that was now high above them, and rolled into the bedroom. At least it was the right way up. In the middle there was a big bed, bigger than they had ever seen. In the middle of the bed was a big bump. It looked round, and exactly the size of the ball they had been looking for. Robert and Tommy each went to a side of the bed, and took a point of the sheet. Slowly they rolled the sheet back over the bed. When they reached the bump, they hesitated a bit. But at Anna’s encouragement they continued. And there it was, Anna’s red ball. Anna jumped on the bed and grabbed it. Tommy looked around; he saw stairs in the corner. Not as beautiful as the one in the lobby, just a simple wooden stairs. Anna got of the bed and joined Robert and Tommy. They climb the wooden stairs. The stairs crack under their weight, but they don’t break. Just when the light from the bedroom starts to fade, they reach a door. With some trouble Robert turns the knob, and pushes the door open. To their surprise they are back in the lobby again, the door most on the left. How was that possible? They hadn’t gone down, had they? But anyway, they were back near the exit again, and that was a good thing. With al last look at the marble stairs and all the other doors they left the house through the big wooden doors. Robert closes the doors behind him. Slowly it swings to a close while the children walk over the path towards the gate. With a big bang it closes behind them. The group walks towards the gate. There is a switch they can use to open it. It’s rusty, like the rest of the gate and the fence, but with a little push it starts to work. Without looking back the children leave the garden. And that’s a pity. Because if they had looked back, they would have seen the sign above the entrance door. The door closing had caused the dust above the entrance to fall off, and reveal a sign that said: ‘Welcome to the mystery and imagination of Mister Darius’. Behind the glass window next to the door an old man appeared in the shadows. With a sad look on his face he looked at the backs of the children. A small and wrinkled hand came up, and waved. Mister Darius went in again. Maybe next time someone would stay and really enjoy his house…
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