He came across it on the afternoon they shifted in. KC had been helping his mum and dad carry stuff into the kitchen (well, they'd been doing most of the actual carrying, KC had been more sort of supervising and making helpful remarks, like 'Why are there mushrooms growing in that cupboard?') when he noticed there was another room at the back of the kitchen, some hitherto unobserved space that KC just had to inspect.
He wandered through the canyons of boxes that were springing up on the lino, and made his way into the back room, pausing in the middle to stare around. He couldn't remember ever having been in a room this big before. The ceiling seemed about three miles high. The floor was a vast expense roughly the size of a playground. How were they ever going to fill it up? There weren't enough cardboard boxes in the world to do that.
Then he noticed the door.
It was tall, taller even than KC's dad (who was the tallest man in the world, KC was sure), but it still looked rather tiny sitting there in the middle of that monstrously huge blank wall. It looked thick and heavy, like the door at the front of the house. It must have been a very important door, it was made of very dark, oily wood. KC was utterly delighted with this find; his new home had all sorts of surprises. Hundreds of rooms to explore, as well as cupboards and fireplaces and wardrobes and all sorts of little nooks and crannies a boy could squeeze into when he wanted to hide from his older brother. Maybe this place just went on and on! Wouldn't that be just so cool!!
His old home had been nothing like this. KC had climbed over every inch of the house back at Ashville, and there had been absolutely nothing exciting about it (at least, not lately). Even mum's wardrobe had finally lost its fascination, and that, at one time, had been the scariest thing in existence (KC's brother had assured him that at least twenty ghosts lived in mum's creepy old wardrobe. He then proceeded to lock KC in that dark, confined hole for nearly thirty minutes until mum and dad came home and heard him screaming hard enough to split a lung).
KC walked over and studied the door with the sort of expertise normally reserved for a professional. Not only was the knob set at a perfect height, it was even the right size for his little fist. It gleamed in the lusty haze of the early afternoon, and KC decided it must be made of gold. The thought suddenly occurred to him that it might be locked. It had a big, black keyhole (odd for an inside door) just beneath the knob. What if it was locked, and they'd lost the key?
KC felt a sudden, jagged stab of panic. There had to be at least a zillion rooms hidden behind that door just begging KC to go exploring, and no one had a key to open it with! It was locked forever!! He'd never get to see what was on the other side now. He'd grow old and die without ever getting to set foot past the mystery doorway. No, that couldn't be right, this was his door, he'd discovered it before anyone else in the universe. KC clenched his fist with the iron-tight grip of utter hysteria and turned with all his might.
The door opened, swinging outwards with no resistance whatsoever.
KC almost collapsed with disappointment.
The door didn't go anywhere.
The door opened onto a brick wall.
It was brown and dull and streamered with cobwebs.
KC called out to his father in dismay.
Dad sauntered out of the kitchen, house-dust peppering his balding head. He had grime on his thick, blunt fingers and a screwdriver in his shirt pocket. Graham, KC's older brother, swaggered along behind, sneering in abject contempt at the sound of KC's voice.
'What's up, Doc?' dad asked, grinning. But KC wasn't going to be cheered up so easily. This must have been the biggest let down he'd ever known. Worse than that, he knew he was going to have to live with it, somehow.
KC pointed at the doorway.
'Dad - this door. It doesn't go anywhere.'
Graham curled his upper lip, staring down at the younger boy.
'So what?' he demanded, eyes flaming like lanterns fueled by hate.
So WHAT, you STUPID little JERK??!
Graham was fourteen, and considered himself to be some kind of god. He wore a black leather jacket and tight blue levis, which was evidently what all the gods were into that year.
Dad ignored his divine offspring and inspected the door to nowhere.
'Some of these old places are funny like that, KC', dad said, rattling the knob experimentally, 'bordered up fire places, bricked in windows, that sort of thing. You know'.
KC nodded to affirm he knew precisely what his father was talking about, although in actual fact, he hadn't the proverbial faintest. Several seconds later, he decided that betraying his ignorance was preferable to sending the next six years wondering.
'Why doesn't it go anywhere?' he asked.
Graham shook his head in snide, knowing arrogance: Only an IDIOT wouldn't know that.
'Probably did once', Dad explained, waving the door back and forth, as if this would confirm his theory, 'Might have been another room out there at some point - a laundry, preservatives room, something or other. Maybe an extra bedroom. Who knows?' He looked down at KC and smiled.
KC dreaded the evenings his parents went out. Terrible things happened when he was left alone with his brother. Usually it was just ordinary sibling teasing, like ice cubes down the back of his shirt, or putting vinegar in his cordial and making him drink it. KC could usually put up with dumb jokes and the odd clip around the back of the head. But sometimes the teasing turned nasty - vicious on occasion. Times like that, Graham's incessant harrassment crept inexorably across the line dividing ordinary teasing from psychological abuse.
The torment invariably involved KC's worst fears - darkness, ghosts, suffocation. KC was an asthmatic, and had come close to asphyxiation on several occasions. One time Graham had filled the bath half-full of freezing cold water and held KC's head under until his breath had given out and he was sure he was going to drown. Mum and dad had been down at the pokies that night, which meant that Graham had been granted carte blanche to torture KC for close to an hour.
It seemed to have gone on forever, KC wet and shivering and pleading for mercy, Graham holding him by the back of the neck and digging his fingers into the boy's soft flesh. He'd been utterly merciless, even after KC's chest had seized up and he'd started begging pathetically for his medication. The drowning game had continued until KC was so exhausted he could no longer even struggle. Graham lost all interest at that point and dumped him on the bathroom floor; a limp, dripping, trembling heap, lacking even the strength to cry out loud.
The drowning game had been pretty bad, but Graham's mind had come up with far more ingenious tortures, which was why KC tended to play outside whenever he and Graham were home alone. At least outside, you could run away. Inside, particularly at night, there was no escape.
The worst had been the spiders.
KC had always been terrified of spiders, particularly the big, black hairy variety. Graham had discovered an empty closet in the hallway that was absolutely teeming with spiders. Huge, dark, bloated things with bright red spots on their swollen bodies. They sat by the thousands in that nightmare cubicle, nesting balefully in their webs. One evening Graham had dragged KC to the brink, warning him in a harsh, gravel whisper that one day, he was going to lock him in there with all those black, scuttling horrors.
I'm gonna shove you in there and nail the door shut, and you'll be trapped in there with all those SPIDERS crawling all over your face and in your hair and every time you open your mouth to scream they'll climb right in and down your throat and into your stomach, biting and stinging and EATING YOU ALIVE until there's nothing left but a quivering mass of hairy black SPIDERS, inside and out!!!
KC had tried to warn his parents what Graham was planning to do to him, but they just laughed and patted him reassuringly on the head: Don't be silly, Gray's just trying to scare you. He'd never do a thing like that. No, never. Go on, he's just teasing.
But KC hadn't been convinced. He wasn't an idiot, he knew precisely what Graham was capable of doing, and this was the sort of wanton, senseless cruelty that good ole Gray-boy regularly perpetrated in the name of good, clean fun. KC knew when it was most likely to happen; some long, cold, endless evening when mum and dad were out and there was no one around to stop Graham doing whatever he damn well pleased. It mightn't happen the first time, but it was going to happen.
KC could only wait and pray to God that his parents stayed home for the rest of his life.
Happily, Graham tended to be absent most nights, once they'd settled into their new residence. He trained with the local rugby team three times a week and quickly made friends with the pubescent sociopaths hanging out at the Southmead Penny Arcade.
Some weekends he brought them over to watch football on the TV. KC hated football; who in their right minds would prefer to watch a bunch of ugly men running around beating each other up when there were Marvel Super Heroes doing the same thing on the other channel?!
There was always a lot of yelling and hollering and horsing around whenever Graham's friends turned up. They spent most of the afternoon sitting around telling the filthiest jokes imaginable - the sort that would have gotten KC yelled at if he'd ever tried to tell one - but dad loved the atmosphere and would often laugh until all four of his chins were quivering in unison.
Still, it wasn't too bad the rest of the week. With Graham out of the house, KC could get back to the most serious business of life: settling down on the sofa between his parents to watch television.
KC was a big fan of TV. He was just old enough to recall the first run of Star Trek and The Wild, Wild West, both of which instilled in him a love for fantasy and the unusual which lasted out his childhood. Danger Man (and later on, The Prisoner) had given him his fascination for secret doors. Richard Greene fought his incessant battle against the evil sheriff of Nottingham ('Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen; Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his bandit men . . .'), while Leif Erikson and The Vikings harried the British shorelines daily, carrying off innocent young maidens to unknown fates in foreign lands.
He'd tuned in night after night (same bat-time, same bat-channel) to the adventures of the dynamic duo, sometimes knotting a towel around his neck and bounding about the room hurling imaginary batarangs at invisible villains ('Holy Bat-Traps, Batman!!!')
However, the shows he liked best were the British comedies. There was Please Sir, The Rag Trade and Doctor in the House; each of which featured humour KC barely understood, as well as On the Buses, Me Mammy and The Two Ronnies ('The Two Ninnies', mum used to call them - quite seriously, as if that was the programme's real title). The undisputed king of them all was The Benny Hill Show, which played every thursday night at eight-thirty. KC would beg his parents' permission to stay up that one more crucial hour, then patiently endure being teased almost beyond human endurance. They always gave in at the end, indulging his wishes with the kind of parental largess that provokes parricide in later life.
Watching Benny's shows, KC and his folks laughed themselves silly, and unlike the other comedies, KC knew what he was laughing at most of the time. Benny Hill's humour was easy to understand, particularly the sketches where no one said anything. Those parts were about the funniest things that had ever happened in the history of the universe; especially the chase scenes at the end, where about fifty people went running after Benny shaking their fists in the air.
This particular episode, something happened, something KC hadn't been expecting. It wasn't exactly funny; at least not in the way it was funny seeing someone get hit on the head or sit on a red hot iron poker, but it was surprising and funny in a different sort of way. It was something that made his dad snicker and his mother shake her head in disapproval, so KC knew it was something he shouldn't ask questions about. If he had, however, the question would have been why is that girl taking off all her clothes?
Of course, she hadn't taken off all her clothes, just her dress and slip, but that was something KC had never seen before. Not even his mum. Of course, there had been the other children at the play group back in Ashville, but that was different. Little kids run around half naked all the time, everybody knew that. The girl on The Benny Hill Show had been grown up - well, mostly grown up, anyway.
Later on that night, after he'd gone to bed, he lay thinking about the way the girl had smiled while she stripped down to her underwear. It had been a secret, naughty kind of smile, as if showing off her bra and panties like that was fun.
KC lay in the dark, replaying the scene over and over in his mind.
Remembering made him smile too.
Most mornings he lay in bed until the cartoons came on at seven, but on this occasion he decided to get up an hour earlier, before the rest of the family started their yawning preparations for the day. An idea had occurred to him as soon as he'd woken up, thinking about the girl's coy, naughty striptease the night before.
He tiptoed out to the hallway and pulled open the linen cupboard. Mum always put her old remnants in there, bits and pieces that she sometimes repaired on her Singer Sewing Machine (that was how she said it: with capitals, as if she were announcing a knighthood). It was one of her hobbies, making children's clothes. She gave most of her experiments to friends or to welfare shops. KC foraged around in the remnants bag, smiling the Benny Hill girl's smile to himself, until he found the things he was looking for.
Bundling these items in his arms, he walked through to the kitchen, glancing over his shoulder to make certain no one had risen early to catch him out. It was extremely important that nobody - especially Graham - saw what he was about to do. He couldn't have said why, as he was too young to really understand the way adults think, but somehow, he simply knew it was something he had to keep hidden. From everybody.
He stepped into the back room, closing the double doors quietly behind him. He glanced automatically at the Door to Nowhere, but dismissed it from his thoughts almost immediately. He had something else on his mind for the moment. He walked over to the middle of the floor and laid out the remnants he'd borrowed from his mother's sewing bag. Not remnants, really. More like second hand clothes she'd repaired good as new.
Girl's clothes.
The girl's smile touched his lips again.
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