Still dragging Fat Cat, I try to get back out to the room where I’d come in, but it’s so dark. There’s so much furniture crowded around me, and so much stuff piled on top of other stuff that I get confused. I go through a doorway and my phone light shows me a prehistoric-looking stone sink and a table with tall chairs around it. I back out and try again. I have to move all hunched over so I can hold onto the cat’s collar. When I find another doorway, my foot hits something hard, and before I can stop myself, I yelp. I’ve found a stairway. This is the way to the next floor. I back up again, and as I do, I stumble over something and hear the sound of heavy things sliding to the floor, one by one: thump, thump, thump.
It takes my heart a minute to stop trying to escape from my chest. I stand, completely still, listening, trying to breathe without a sound. So far, I don’t hear anything from upstairs.
But the moment I move, a door opens somewhere above my head, and a man’s voice calls out in English, “Who’s there?”
Fat Cat, you’re on your own.
I let go of his collar and he zips away. I straighten and aim my light around the room, until finally I find what must be the right doorway, and shoot through it. Wrong again.
It’s a bedroom, with a huge bed that’s so high I’d need a ladder to climb onto it, four big wooden posts, torn curtains, and I’m out of time. Footsteps thud down the stairs. I’m trapped.
What do I do? I have to hide! Panic sets in and I whirl around like I’m trying to make myself dizzy, and my cell phone glow reveals brief glimpses of the round mirror of a dressing table and oval portraits on the wall. My panicked brain registers a massive wooden cupboard that stands against one wall, so I run and yank on the doors. They don’t budge. By now the heavy footsteps are at the bottom of the stairs. The gruff voice is now mumbling inside the apartment.
I remember to switch off my phone the very moment I notice a large woven screen in the corner. I stumble over to it in total darkness, reach it and swing myself around to the other side, and a light turns on in the next room.
Hard objects dig into my back as I try to shrink against the wall. Fumbling around, I feel tall wooden frames behind me. More paintings are stacked behind the screen. Some are as tall as I am. Perfect! I worm myself into the space behind them, leaning them back against the wall so they form a kind of tent over my head. Then I crouch down and wait, breathing in dust and trying not to make any sound.
The man is moving around, switching on lights, calling again and again, “Who’s there?” and pushing things around so he can look into all the rooms. He sounds big and he speaks with a British accent. This scares me even more for some reason.
The bedroom light goes on. The guy checks the big cupboard and rattles the locked doors. He moves toward the bed, and I hear the torn curtains being pushed aside. He sneezes and mutters something about how filthy the place is. I hold one hand over my mouth and nose and try not to breathe, but I’m sure he’ll hear the sound of my heart, banging on my ribcage like a prisoner who wants to get out.
He moves closer. The screen rattles as it’s pushed aside, and my insides are flooded with ice. The tall paintings that protect me shudder. He’s moving them away from the wall, one by one. I’m frozen with terror. Every self-defense class Mom made me take did not prepare me for this. The guy’s voice seems to come from ten stories above my head. Trying to stay calm, I clench my phone in my fist and get ready to strike. If I can hit him in the face, maybe I’ll have a few seconds to get away.
The final painting shifts and begins to move. I tense, ready to spring forward and strike, but a sound comes from another room. Jangling bells! The ones on Fat Cat’s collar.
The man hears them too, because the paintings suddenly drop back into place, hitting the wall above my head as they fall like dominoes. I gasp in shock and pray the guy didn’t hear me.
Luckily, he must not have. His rapid footsteps thunder away and the bedroom plunges into darkness. I strain to listen as the man continues to search, pushing things to the floor, opening and closing cabinets, doors, stomping, muttering to himself, calling out, but Fat Cat’s bells are now silent. Finally, the glow from the other rooms go out as he switches lights off, one by one.
Footsteps pound back up the stairs. I wait, my legs scrunched up under me, my feet numb. At last, a door slams above. The dead, dusty silence that falls once more in the ancient apartment is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t want to move. I sit, hugging my cell phone and mentally thanking Fat Cat. I count to one hundred. Then I count to three hundred. When I get to four hundred forty-nine, I hear Jada’s laugh in my head, and know she would think I was a complete loser for cowering in here for so long. I finally move.
My numb legs don’t work at first, so I crawl on the gritty carpet in the dark, and make it back to the bedroom door. By this time, the moon is shining softly through one of the windows in the room I call the menagerie. It lights the other doorways and I find the one I missed. Able to stand on tingling legs, I inch my way through the crowded rooms, back through the dwarf-door to the narrow passageway and the door in my bedroom wall.