The World Beyond the Stairs: Mary's Journey

The World Beyond

the Stairs

J.T. Grainger

MARY’S

JOURNEY

Cali-FLY Books

Indianapolis

The World Beyond the Stairs: Mary’s Journey

Smashwords Edition

Published by Cali-FLY Books at Smashwords

Cover art by Kristen Kidd

Copyright 2018 J.T. Grainger.

License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and remains the copyrighted property of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Poem

Chapter 2: The Trail

Chapter 3: The Bear

Chapter 4: The Light

Chapter 5: The Next Morning

Chapter 6: The Mirror

Chapter 7: The Brelinner

Chapter 8: The Table Discussion

Chapter 9: The Eldest Sister

Chapter 10: The Boy Who Would Be Count

Chapter 11: The Ban Is Lifted

Chapter 12: The Three Truths

Chapter 13: The New Law Is Enforced

Chapter 14: The Forgotten Goodbye

Chapter 15: The Late Afternoon Stroll

Chapter 16: The Moonfly

Chapter 17: The Town Of Gnesh

Chapter 18: The Guide

Chapter 19: The Journey Northward

Chapter 20: The Prowler

Chapter 21: The Land Bridge

About J.T. Grainger

Connect With Me

Reading Guide

DEDICATION

The following is dedicated to my loving wife, Missy, the ‘real’ Mary Reynolds. Let’s be honest, there is NO WAY I could have finished this book series without you. Thank you for your continued support and encouragement. I love you more than words can express.

Acknowledgments

It goes without saying that there are a number of you who have encouraged me to write over the years or have urged me to pursue my dream of being an author. In some way, I hope this acknowledgement helps to shine light on just how much your inspiration means to me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, EVERYONE!

In particular, thank you to my mother-in-law, Helen Million, for devoting countless hours during the editing process of this book. You really helped to sharpen my literary voice.

To my seventh grade English teacher, Claudia Murphy, I will never forget my time in your class. It nurtured my desire to be a writer.

And lastly, to the late Angela Teusch, I still remember the warm smile you greeted me with when we worked together. Your kindness lives on. In fact, it was my reason for creating the character Angelaa.

Chapter 1

The Poem

Mary Reynolds had no idea of the journey to come. She sat alone in her grandmother’s basement, quietly rifling through some old knick-knacks that had been boxed up for several decades. Wearing a long bed shirt, a pair of her Grandma Margaret’s old bed slippers and a teal-colored bathrobe, she eased her 42-year old body into a rickety old rocking chair. The sound of freezing rain beat against the exterior of the basement’s glass blocks.

Mary had arrived at her grandmother’s doorstep only a few hours earlier - tired, wet, cold, hungry and homeless for the night. She had been trying to make her way over to her parents’ house from work to pick up her kids. But, to her great dismay, every interstate running through or around downtown Indianapolis had been closed for several hours due to dangerous icy conditions.

As a result, Mary had reluctantly taken a short cut down Meridian Street and spent the better part of three hours sitting in her car without food or warmth, listening to countless traffic updates, while cursing her luck and hoping that the roads leading to her parents’ home would open again soon. Once she had finally come to the realization there was no way she’d be able to reach their house that evening, she had decided to wait out the insufferable ice storm by heading to the home of her nearest relative. Fortunately, her grandmother only lived a few blocks away and easily won out as the best option.

Mary remembered the way her grandmother had answered the door earlier that night. She had been wearing a childlike smile and had given Mary a kiss on the cheek and a giant warm embrace. Her grandmother, Grandma Margaret, was a short, white-haired matronly lady with sagging skin around her eyes and mouth.

She was almost 92-years-old, though somehow, she didn’t look a day over seventy. In fact, it made Mary a little envious to think that while her own muscles were beginning to ache and her body was starting to show signs of middle age, her grandmother still felt and acted younger and spryer than she did. She could tell it by the way her grandmother had seemed to bounce around the house, filling her in on all the latest news on the road conditions. She had been so energetic and full of life that Mary only hoped she felt the same way when she was her grandmother’s age. However, at that particular moment, every part of Mary’s body was sore, and she couldn’t help but feel exhausted by the mere thought of her grandmother’s enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, not wanting Mary to catch a cold or pneumonia, Mary’s grandmother had started a fire and allowed Mary to dry off in front of it. She had even given her some nice warm clothes to wear. Even though they were at least two sizes too small for her, Mary had been very glad to have them and even happier to be out of the cold for the night.

Once she had finished changing into the borrowed garments, Mary had decided to phone her husband, Derrick, to let him know that she wouldn’t be able to make it home with their kids. She had informed him all about her parents insisting they keep the kids and she stay somewhere safe for the night. It was no big surprise to her that he had agreed with her parents on the matter. After all, he was always doing that sort of thing, especially whenever it had to do with her or their kids’ well-being.

As Mary continued looking through the items in the basement, she let out a sigh of relief and had an overwhelming feeling of appreciation. It was the first time Mary had allowed herself to relax that night. She was also fairly certain that her grandmother enjoyed her stopping by. After all, she had been living alone ever since Mary’s grandfather, Grandpa Al, had passed away a few years prior.

Earlier that evening, she and her grandmother sat near the fireplace in the living room, and spent several hours catching up. Once the hour had gotten late enough, her grandmother had announced that she was going to bed and advised Mary she could sleep in her father’s old bedroom. This relieved Mary, who had been a little worried she might have to spend the night roughing it on her grandmother’s hardback sofa.

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, Mary had soon found it hard to sleep in an unfamiliar environment. Her body had craved the comfort and familiarity of her own bed. But, much to her dismay, a foreign bed would have to suffice. For years before his death, Grandpa Al had become obsessed with collecting and restoring various relics from previous wars. This included replacing Mary’s father’s old twin-sized bed with a replica of George Washington’s field bed from 1775. According to folklore, the founding father had used this kind of bed during the American Revolution as he and his army moved from battlefield to battlefield.

The bed itself had been designed with portability in mind. Its wooden sides had been hinged in the center which had allowed it to be folded for easy transit. It had been roughly two meters long. It also had four extended bed posts which jutted upward over a meter before arching together above Mary’s head. Draping down from its arched frame, there had been some sort of long white linen curtains that had yellowed slightly with age.

As Mary recalled, the hanging curtains had resembled a canopy which had made her feel as if she were sleeping inside a small white tent in the woods. Normally, such a thing would not have been all that dreadful to endure, except that night Mary’s body had longed for a comfortable night’s sleep. To make matters worse, the antique field bed’s frame had not offered her body much support. Instead of utilizing traditional wooden slats and a box spring, the bottom of the bed’s frame had been lined with a narrow strip of canvas that had been handsewn from hemp material and tied into place using a lengthy piece of woven rope.

Positioned just above it had been a long thin mattress stuffed with an abundance of faux goose feathers. The end result culminated in what Mary felt had been like lying in a poorly constructed hammock for the night. No matter how hard she had tried, she could not prevent her body from sagging awkwardly towards the floor. In fact, she had even inspected the bed’s intertwined rope hoping for an easy fix. But, by her estimation, it had to have been decades since the rope had been properly retied or tightened.

It was because of all this that Mary had spent time tossing and turning restlessly. The uncomfortable bed and the lingering smell of the hot chocolate her grandmother had made earlier that evening had done their best to keep her awake. As she lay in bed lamenting over the comforting beverage, she had found it hard to believe that her grandmother had prepared the cocoa by simply melting down a couple of chocolate bars and adding a carton of whole milk, and what’s more, her mind kept torturing her with the knowledge that there was still a pot of it warming on the kitchen stove.

Eventually, Mary had given in to the aroma and resolved to get up and pour herself some more. In fact, she had just finished her third cup, when she noticed that the light from her grandmother’s basement was still on. Since the basement was located towards the back of the kitchen area, she had decided to turn off the light before she returned to bed. She had opened the door leading down to the basement and noticed that there was no light switch at the top of the stairs. She had peered down the steps to see a pull string light switch hanging from the basement ceiling. With sleepy eyes, she had slowly headed down the stairway to turn off the light.

As she recalled, her Grandpa Al had almost finished the basement before he passed away. He had even moved some of their old-fashioned living room furniture down there to create a small recreational area. The entire concrete floor in the basement was covered in outdated lime-green shag carpeting, and she had felt at the time that the old furniture looked perfectly hideous sitting atop of it. So much so, that as she looked at it now from the rocking chair, she couldn’t help chuckling to herself.

As Mary thought back to how she wound up in her grandmother’s basement, she could not help but recall how earlier she had innocently climbed down the basement stairway. After reaching the last step and extending her arm to turn out the light, she had suddenly noticed a bunch of long forgotten boxes fastidiously tucked away in a nearby corner. At first, she had disregarded the notion of seeing what was in them, but in the end, her curiosity got the best of her.

Alas, this was the predicament she now found herself in. There she was, meticulously opening each timeworn box in the pile. She had uncovered an array of old holiday decorations, a bunch of outdated children’s clothing (which she presumed had belonged to her dad or her Aunt Molly at one time), a menagerie of flowery bed sheets and pillow cases, several slightly tarnished bowling trophies belonging to her Grandpa Al, and at least a dozen or so cookbooks that looked like they had been published in the 1940’s or 50’s.

As she moved on to the final box in the stack, she noticed it was labeled, Misc. Things. From its exterior, it looked like a normal brown box, but she couldn’t help think it might be kind of fun to find something interesting inside that she could ask her grandmother about in the morning. She pulled out the box and neatly stacked the other ones back in the corner. In doing so, she discovered that the box she wanted was far too heavy for her to lift on her own. So, summoning every ounce of strength she had, she grabbed one of its flaps and pulled it over to a nearby chair. At that moment, she couldn’t help but feel as though she resembled a tiny hunter, dragging home an oversized kill.

Once the box was in place, she immediately began rummaging through it for anything she could use as a good conversation piece. She found several old photo albums and a tarnished jewelry box full of costumed jewelry, but nothing about these objects stood out to her. She had almost decided to give up and go back to bed when she noticed there was a piece of paper near the bottom of the box.

The sheet of paper itself had once been white, but over time had turned a light, tawny color. The handwriting on the paper looked a lot like the scribbling of a child, and Mary found it quite difficult to read at first. Thankfully, after a brief period of examining the document closely, she was able to decipher the first sentence on the page which read:

"It is closer than you think."

She studied the words on the page carefully wanting to be sure she was reading them correctly as she tried her best to make sense of the mysterious handwriting.

What’s closer than I think? she thought.

She read on, hoping that the answer would soon be revealed.

"The paper you hold in your hand is a map to the gateway of a faraway land."

Upon reading these words, Mary thought her actions were foolish and began to snicker a little at her interest in the writing on the page.

Why, this must be an old poem or limerick that my father wrote when he was a boy. she deduced.

Oh, how silly! she exclaimed with a giggle.

She was about to place the worn down sheet of paper back into the box when she noticed what the final passage on the page said:

"This world is not for a child to find, but you will find the truth inside. Come beneath the stairs. You will find a doorway waiting there."

Mary burst out in spontaneous laughter.

Oh, this is so ridiculous! she declared. My father was quite the poet!

She read the words on the page aloud, just to hear how humorous they sounded. She couldn’t wait to see her dad the next day, for she planned to show him the poem and give him a good ribbing about his ‘literary masterpiece’. After the last of her chuckles had died away, Mary placed the other contents from the box back exactly as she had found them. Then, once everything had been returned to its proper place, she put away the box, turned off the basement light and started back up the stairs. She was almost to the top of the stairs when the sheet of paper in her hand came loose from her grasp and fell down an opening in between two basement steps.

Great! she thought sarcastically. That’s just what I needed!

Mary sulked back down the steps and turned on the ceiling light. She walked around to the side of the basement stairs and began searching the ground for her father’s missing poem. Mary thought if the paper she was looking for was still there, it really did a great job of blending in among the other rubbish. There were boxes of her father’s old clothes marked, Robert: age 7-9 and her aunt’s old clothes marked, Molly: age 11- 13. She could tell that her grandmother had stacked each box meticulously on the opposite side of the entrance leading behind the stairway.

The basement steps were hand carved and made of thick, oak wood from the late 1800’s, but Mary’s grandfather had decided to cover them up with the same chartreuse shag-carpeting he had used for the concrete, basement floor. The basement stairs had eighteen-centimeter gaps in between each step, and when looking directly beneath them, Mary could see only darkness. This is precisely why throughout Mary’s search, the pull string lighting fixture on the basement ceiling didn’t help much. Once she had finished checking around the boxes of old clothes, she decided to search the area behind her, underneath the basement steps.

The distant light near the bottom of the stairs faded away gradually as she inched forward. She kept heading further and further behind the stairs in search of her father’s fallen poem. She kept going and going until she could see nothing in front of her or behind her. In fact, the deeper behind the stairway she progressed the harder it was to see her hand in front of her face.

For a brief moment, she looked above her head and thought it was strange that she only saw blackness in between the basement steps. She was now well underneath the stairway and had expected to see the basement light breaking through from overhead. Through the vast darkness she searched for the crumbled piece of paper with scribbling on it. It seemed hopeless to her, and then all at once, she heard the sweet sound of paper stuck to the bottom of her right house shoe.

Eagerly, she bent down to pluck it off of her slipper. It was during this maneuver that she made a startling discovery, and this is really where Mary’s journey begins…

Chapter 2

The Trail

Mary leaned over and removed her father’s old poem from the bottom of her house slipper. She then quickly folded it up and stuffed it into the front pocket of her bathrobe. As she bent down, she had expected to feel Grandpa Al’s shag carpeting along her fingertips. But, to her surprise, as her small clumsy hands felt about the basement floor, what she had assumed would be carpeting, did not feel like carpeting at all. For, instead of Mary feeling its thickness brushing across the surface of her skin, the basement floor felt more like tiny blades of warm luscious grass. In fact, if Mary hadn’t known better, she would have sworn that the fibers running along her fingertips belonged to an actual lawn of some sort.

How absurd? she thought.

Mary knew such a notion was preposterous to consider. After all, she was still under the assumption she was in her grandmother’s basement. However, what Mary didn’t realize was that she was no longer in her grandmother’s basement at all. For by going underneath the basement staircase to locate her father’s poem, Mary had inadvertently crossed through a doorway leading to a distant realm called Divinity.

This extraordinary world had once been created by a powerful deity who also lived there. But unfortunately, Mary knew nothing of this yet, or of the adventure that awaited her in the new land. If she had, she would have tried harder to cross back over to her grandmother’s basement.

Suddenly, Mary felt a warm breeze sneak underneath her bathrobe. She retied the garment and took a deep breath trying desperately to get a firm handle on things. Her wandering eyes felt useless in the dark, as the only images she could make out, made absolutely no sense to her at all. She looked up and realized that the darkness coming from the stairs above her head was now a brilliant night sky filled with trillions of tiny stars. She saw a gigantic moon rise from the ground like the sun, and bury itself among the distant shimmering lights in the sky. She searched her thoughts, trying to figure out how she had left her grandmother’s basement, how she had wandered outdoors and where all the snow and ice had gone. She desperately rubbed her eyes, trying to force herself awake. It was no use, this was no dream. Mary was wide awake and she suddenly realized that the images in front of her were real.

She looked back the same way she had just come- expecting to see the stack of storage boxes labeled in black Sharpie ink her grandmother had stockpiled near the basement steps. The same cardboard boxes, Mary had spent time going through only moments before. However, just like the missing basement staircase above her head, the boxes of her father’s and aunt’s belongings were also gone now. Miraculously, they had each been replaced by a dark, empty field of overgrown crabgrass.

Mary stood speechless and still, letting the reality of the situation sink into her like the warm wind upon her neck. She quietly admitted to herself that her predicament was laughable, as it reminded her a little of a poorly written piece of fantasy fiction. Of course, she had not read a terrible amount of those kinds of stories growing up, but she felt she had read just enough to realize what a terrible cliché the situation was. For out of every fantasy fiction story she had read as a child, most of them involved a main character wandering into a strange new place and assuming they were