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soft and stale, swirled over me. I could see by the closet light that the stairway turned to the right after about ten steps.
    I started down, still gripping the hammer. I could still hear my parents fighting, but the sound was faint, like poodles barking in the distance.
    When I think of myself entering that staircase, without hesitation, without even a flashlight, Iwonder what I could have been thinking. What I remember most vividly is the sound of my shoes on the steps, a soft crunching sound, the dried husks of long-dead insects crumbling.
    I reached the turn in the stairs. The steps continued down into deeper darkness. I moved down slowly, using the last echoes of light from above to reach the next turn. After ten steps I came to another landing. I stopped. The stairs continued to the left, the blackness below so total that I could see nothing but the little gray spots and squiggles in my own eyes. I had to feel with my feet for each new step, keeping one hand on the wall, one probing the darkness with the hammer, sweeping away the ancient cobwebs, counting each invisible, crunching step.
    At the next landing, a faint illumination became visible from below. I could see the bottom of the stairs, and a rectangular shape of some sort. Was it
the
door? The proportions seemed right, but it was hard to see. I took a step, my foot hit something, and suddenly I was falling, my feet in the air. My butt hit the steps and I went sliding painfully down, following the clatter of the hammer and something else, whatever it was that I’d stepped on. For several booming heartbeats I lay crumpled and still at the bottom of the stairs. My butt hurt, and I’d whacked my elbow pretty good, but mostly everything seemed to be okay.
    The door was right in front of me, soft green light emanating from its metal surface. Its squat shape was as I remembered from my dream.
    I rolled onto my hands and knees and felt for the knob. There it was, high on the door, cold, textured metal, its raised design pressing into the flesh of my fingers. It turned with the same grinding sound I had heard in my dreams. I completely forgot the pain in my rear and my throbbing elbow. A sense of urgency propelled me, as if I knew I had to move quickly before common sense and fear could stop me. I tugged and pushed, but the door remained solid and motionless. Feeling its surface, I discovered a board had been nailed across it. Someone, sometime, had not wanted this door to be found, or to be used.
    I felt around on the gritty floor, looking for the hammer. I found the thing I had stepped on first, a little car or something with four metal wheels. No, it wasn’t a car. It had leather straps, and it was shaped something like a foot. An old-fashioned roller skate, like kids used to strap onto their shoes. The hammer had tumbled off to the left. I found it leaning against a wall.
    It only took a second to rip the board away from the doorway. I grabbed the knob again, and pulled the door open.
    Warm, moist, fragrant air flooded over me. I was looking out through a screen of large, dark leaves into a shadowy garden. A greenhouse? There was no greenhouse on the property. I could hear the buzz of insects, and the peeping of tree frogs. What was this place? I pushed the leaves aside for a better look.
    If it was a greenhouse, it was bigger than any I’dever seen or heard of. But if it wasn’t a greenhouse, then why wasn’t everything covered by three feet of snow? Where had winter gone? The moon, as full and round and bright as it gets, beamed down on what looked like an overgrown field. Was I still in Boggs’s End? I forced my way through the vines, stepped out into the knee-high grass. To my right, past the crown of the bluff, I could see a body of water glittering in the distance. I looked back at the doorway, at the vine-covered walls.
    It was Boggs’s End all right, but it had changed. The paint was flaking off the sides, the windows were