Ghost Door

I wrote this is as a short story for publication in a children's magazine, but now I see it more as a children's picture book. Anyone know the steps for getting a picture book published?

        Haywood Hicks had baloney between his ears.  Sam believed that fact to be true as he sat there, frowning.

       “It’s true, I tell you.  There’s this door that wasn’t there before. A door you can only see when you’re alone.  A ghost door.”

       “Haywood, stop telling your lies,” barked Marissa Stanley, a dark look in her eyes.  “We all know you tell the biggest whoppers in the whole school.”

       Sam smiled along with the rest of her friends at the third grade lunch table.  What Marissa had said was fact, and that fact helped break the spell Haywood had cast.

       “No, really, this is true.  I saw it just last night.  By the girls’ bathroom.”

       “A door? What kind of door?” asked Linda Sue Johansson. “What did it look like?”

       “Skinny,” Haywood said after some thought, “real thin like, and made of brick.”

       “Made of brick!” snorted Marissa. “No door is made of brick."

       “Go look for yourself,” Haywood replied, deadly serious. But you have to be alone.  I only saw it when I was by myself.”

       The third graders lined up by the cafeteria water fountain and waited for Mr. Weller to march them back to class. Haywood stood behind Sam, who still felt the tingle of possibility.  Maybe, she thought, maybe Haywood is telling the truth.  Maybe after all the tall tales and outright lies, maybe he really did see…a ghost door.

       “Did you really see it, Hay?  I’ll clobber you, so help me, if you’re making it up.”

       “Swear on my mother and father I did!  Just yesterday afternoon.  I came back to school after five.  The janitor let me in, because I left my homework. There was a doorknob sticking out of the brick, plain as the nose on my face.”

       The line began to move.  “Do you believe me?” Haywood hissed, breaking the sacred rule of “No Talking In The Hallway.”

       Sam didn’t answer, but felt a shiver go up her spine.

       That night at dinner, Sam told her dad all about Haywood’s story.

       “I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said between slurps of spaghetti. Sam had heard this before. It was Dad’s protection against ghosts.  He said that if you didn’t believe in them, they couldn’t hurt you.

       After dinner, Sam and her family bundled up and headed back to the school.  It was the night of the fifth and sixth grade music concert. The theme for the show was Cultures of the World. Sam had already seen the concert when the two older classes had performed for the school earlier that morning.

       The concert was more like a play.  A large chorus stood on risers.  On stage, costumed actors said lines that tied one song to the next. 

As the performance got underway Sam squirmed in her metal folding chair. She couldn’t stop thinking about the ghost door.  I don’t believe in ghosts, she muttered to herself. 

       “We’re the culture vultures…we fly through history,” sang sixth graders dressed as brilliant black birds with cardboard wings.

       The dark costumes made Sam squirm all the more.  They looked like ghosts, she thought.  Big black ghosts who pop out of secret doorways and drag you back with them to their ghost world. She couldn’t stop thinking about it no matter how many times she muttered that she didn’t believe.

        Soon, Sam began to squirm in her seat for another reason.  Too much milk.  She had drank three glasses because she did NOT like the spicy spaghetti sauce and milk had helped get the gross garlic flavor out of her mouth.

       She tugged on Mom’s sleeve and, after an irritated nod of approval; Sam was on her way to the girls’ bathroom.

       The girls’ bathroom.

Sam stopped, remembering Haywood’s story. “You only see it when you’re alone.” She considered going back and trying to get her mom to go with her.

       Then Sam remembered two things. First, she had followed Marissa and Linda Sue to that very spot after school.  Although they had to hurry their inspection so as not to miss the bus home, there was clearly no door other than what was supposed to be there.

       The second thought was that she wasn’t even going to the main bathroom, but would use the one off the cafeteria. Even if a door did appear to kids walking alone, she would be in another part of the school.

       So she went, alone.   

       As Sam left the bathroom, and realized just how alone she was. Her first thought was to run back into the Auditorium. But Sam knew that this was her chance once and for all to prove that Haywood Hicks was just a big baloney-head to believe in ghosts.

She went right instead of going straight, and took off at a run.  If she was going to do this, then there was no turning back.  Either she ran all the way, or she would chicken out before she made it around the first corner.

       In no time, she was there, in front of the girls’ bathroom in the main hall.  Alone.

       There were lights left on at either end of the hall, but the door to the girls restroom stood smack in the middle of the darkened hallway.  There was just enough light make out the word “Girls” above the little drawing of a stick figure wearing a triangle for a skirt.

Sam skidded to a stop, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked up and down the walls.  On one side was a bank of water fountains, on the other side was the door to the boys’ bathroom.  Next to that door was the only wall on which a ghost door could possibly appear. On its wood surface were tacked science posters about rocks and minerals, made by the fourth graders.  Sam looked and found no doorknob between the pages.  Sam let out her breath, which she now realized she had been holding.  She smiled, and then chuckled.  She reached out and ran her hand over the wall.  No door.  No ghost.

       Oh Haywood, she thought, Haywood, Haywood, Haywood.  Doors made of brick…

       Sam stopped cold.  Door made of brick…he said, not wood.  He said brick.  Could he have meant wood? Also, he said the ghost door was right next to the girl’s bathroom. Sam looked to confirm the impossible. Water fountains on one side, door to the boys’ bathroom on the other.  There was no room for a door NEXT to the girl’s bathroom.

If Haywood had seen the door in the wall next to the BOYS’ bathroom, why did he specifically say the GIRLS’?

Then Sam remembered where she had just come from.  The Girl’s bathroom by the back door of the school.  It was the only bathroom in that hallway because the boy’s bathroom was on the other side of the auditorium. The walls in that hallway were not covered in wood, but in dark, red brick.

Sam stopped breathing again.  That must have been where the janitor let Haywood into the school, through the back door.  It would have been the same door Haywood would have used to leave the school…alone.

Haywood had never said which girls’ bathroom he had seen the ghost door.

Sam began running again.  She ran past the hallway that held the bathroom she had used, intending to go around the cafeteria and enter from the hallway that had the Boy’s bathroom.  There would be no hidden door on that side, nothing to let a ghost in or keep a ghost out.

But she never made it.  Curiosity is a strong force, and it pulled at Sam like a giant magnet.  She could almost feel something tug on the back of her sweater, on the back of her shoes.  She slowed, stopped, and began to walk backward.  Then the magnetic pull of just-have-to-know whirled her around and she began to sprint towards the girls’ hallway.  Before she knew it, she was galloping down, headed straight for the girls’ bathroom.

The concert was in full swing, the chorus in the middle of Sam’s favorite song.  It was a rocking number about the great painters.

“Michael, Michael"ANGELO, painted the Sistine Chapel from down below.”

Sam barely heard any of it.  All of her concentration poured through her eyes and she stared dumbstruck at the small, round door handle sticking out of the brick wall.

It was just as Haywood had said.  There was a door handle coming from nowhere, going to nowhere, and certainly had not been there before.  But now Sam was looking for, and had found, the entrance to a ghostly realm.  Her eyes looked to the right of the knob, and she saw the dark crack that split the brick up and down.  She followed it up and saw that it indeed snaked across the top and back down, forming a narrow, thin, SKINNY door.

Rembrandt, Rembrandt, he’s our man, if can’t paint it, no one can! came through the auditorium wall. 

Sam reached out and touched the door handle.  She wanted to run, but she also wanted to know.  Now that she actually saw the door, the pull of curiosity was too strong.  She had to find out.

The metal of the knob was cold to the touch. Would she have expected anything less on a door to another dimension?

The door seemed locked. Not about to give up, Sam grabbed the handle with both hand and twisted with all her might.  With a click the knob turned and the door creaked open.

Watching the narrow strip of brick pull away from the wall startled Sam and she let go of the door with a gasp.  Then she looked closer and saw that the brick on the door was actually on a thin sheet of wood paneling, made to look like brick. She pushed the door open wider now and could see that the back of the door was made out of ordinary wood, with cobwebs covered hinges holding it to the wall of a little room.

By the light of the hall, Sam peered into the narrow room that stretched back into darkness. Near the door, Sam could see pipes. She realized that they went to and from the girls’ bathroom.  Her ghost door was nothing more than a way to get to the plumbing!

Just as Sam was about to close the door and return to her seat, she saw a strange, greenish glow coming from the far end of the narrow little room.  It seemed to be coming from the ceiling and was so faint she couldn’t tell if it was really there or not. 

DaVinci Davinci, can you convince me? echoed from behind. The song was almost over and Sam knew that there was only the finale after that her parents would come look for her.

Without knowing why, Sam stepped into the room and began to scoot flat-footed towards the glow coming from the ceiling.  She bumped her shins painfully on a pipe, but hardly seemed to notice.  She felt pulled by the same force that had brought her this far.  She just had to know. 

I don’t believe in ghosts, she thought.  I don’t believe, and you can’t hurt me if I don’t believe…

 Sam reached the end.  She only knew she was at the end because her outstretched had had come into contact with something metallic and cold.  Another pipe?  She felt a foot above the metal shape and felt another just like it, and then another.  She then understood that she was feeling the rungs of a metal ladder! 

She looked up to where the ladder must go and could just make out a square hole in the ceiling.

Sam began to climb.  The ladder was rough beneath her fingers, and once she had disappeared through the ceiling, all was dark save for the faintest glimmer of light directly above.  She could not see the ladder in front of her, could not see behind her, and could not see the floor below.  As she climbed, she lost all sense of direction and distance. Rung by rung, step by step, she went always looking up.  The greenish glow grew a little brighter.

Then the ladder ended.  The light seemed to be coming from all around her now, and she squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.  Had she entered another world?  Had she crossed over to become a ghost?  Would she ever see her family again?

She began to climb back down, but had no more moved her foot away from the rung when she felt it brush against something hard behind her leg.

Sam screamed as the shock of unexpected contact sent her reeling off the ladder.  But instead of falling all the way back to the room below, she fell backward only a couple feet onto a dusty wooden platform. 

After Sam realized she was not dead, she opened her eyes.  She saw a ring of windows circling the walls of a round room.  She got up carefully, and standing on tiptoe was able to peek out of one of the windows. Beneath her, Sam saw a streetlight attached to the roof of the school.  Its greenish white glow had led her all this way. She looked up and could just make out the shape of a large bell hanging overhead.

Sam had found the school’s old bell tower.

Now that she knew exactly where she was, Sam began to breathe again.  She laughed out loud, and thought about the story she had to tell.   Sam thought about how she could finally prove that Haywood Hicks had nothing but baloney between his ears.

Then Sam remembered why she was there.

She too had believed. She had searched out the ghost door and followed what she was sure was the way to “the other side.”  The ghosts in her head had been real and had scared her silly, because unlike her father, she did believe.

No, Sam decided, as she headed back down, she wouldn’t tease Haywood.   In fact, she wouldn’t say anything at all. This night was between her and the ghosts she now knew to be everywhere and nowhere at all. 

Author's Note

Most who have read this have commented on how they "could see everything" and thus suggested I find an illustrator and turn this into a children's picture book.

Any ideas how to go about doing that?

Reviews

[Sam Cambell]

This would make a good picture book, you're right, although you may have to cut down on the detail a little. I don't know much about publishing, but I do know that it's incredibly hard to get someone to even look at your book without the right connections. I would start by sending a manuscript to well known children's editors like Scholastic, and I read somewhere that calling to ask if they recieved it can help speed the process. Good luck :D