Tell Me True

TELL ME TRUE

Kristy Leigh

KC was nine when his family moved into the house on Carrington Drive. He was very big on secret agents and hidden passages at the time, and was thoroughly intrigued when he discovered a door which went nowhere. This was utterly outside of his experiences with doors up to that time: a door, by its very nature, had to lead somewhere. You walked through one to get from outside to inside, a doorway took you out of one room and into another. You knocked on one to get it open, flicked the latch to let people in. Most of their handles were too high for KC to reach, but this one had its knob set down low, just the right height, as if it had been built for KC and KC alone.

He came across it on the afternoon they shifted in. KC had been helping his Mom 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 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 huge blank wall. It was thick and heavy, like the door at the front of the house. It must have been a very important door, as it was made of 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 Mom'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 Mom's creepy old wardrobe. He then proceeded to lock KC in that dark, confined hole for nearly thirty minutes until Mom 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 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 gripped the knob 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, brown and dull and streamered with cobwebs. It must have been the most boring wall on the face of the planet. 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 from one side of his face to the other.

His smile was usually enough to warm KC's little heart, but he 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 fucking WHAT, you STUPID little SHIT??! Graham was fourteen, and considered himself to be some kind of deity. 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 fireplaces, 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 a fucking 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.

"What happened to it?" the boy asked.

"Torn down, I guess. This place is pretty old, Case."

"How old?"

"How old do you reckon?"

"About a thousand years!"

Dad laughed, ruffling his son's hair, and made his way back to the kitchen, chuckling to himself. Graham glared down at KC for two seconds, then strutted out of the room, a fourteen year-old hustler with a Marlon Brando jacket and the coolest moves in the space-time continuum. KC stared after them, then looked back in at the doorway. Hardly enough room for a mouse to fit in between the door and the brickwork. He closed it quietly, and went off to supervise the installation of the sofa in the living room.

Despite his disappointment, the Door to Nowhere continued to snare KC's attention. Once the excitement of The Big Move had died down, he spent most of his mornings playing out in the back room, eyes constantly circling around to the door and its shiny gold knob. It was a mystery. Sure, Dad had explained it all to him; old houses were built strange. But that hadn't really explained anything. The door didn't lead anywhere now, but it had led somewhere at some time.

And not to some boring old place like a laundry.

His Mom had been reading him a book back in Ashville called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was a story about some little kids who go through a creaky old wardrobe and find a whole new world called Narnia. It was always snowing in Narnia ("always winter but never Christmas") and there were all sorts of magical animals and fairy-story people: lions and tigers and giants and witches and goblins and a whole mess of other things with names KC could never remember. He just bet the door had led to some secret place like Narnia once.

The days drifted by, growing shorter and colder as the year turned to Autumn. Rising early in the mornings, KC could never resist the temptation to get up and peek behind the Door to Nowhere. Of course, there was never anything back there except the brown brick wall. But sometimes, he was absolutely certain there was something else in there, and KC was just about busting to know what it was.

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 now and then the teasing turned nasty – vicious on occasion. Times like that, Graham's incessant harassment crept inexorably across the line to straight out 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. Mom and Dad had been playing Bingo 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, KC, 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 Mom and Dad were out and there was no one around to stop Graham doing whatever he frigging-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 television. 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 Lief 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 humor KC barely understood, as well as On the Buses and The Two Ronnies ("The Two Ninnies," Mom used to call them – quite seriously, as if that was the program's real title). The undisputed king of them all was The Benny Hill Show, which aired every Thursday night at eight-thirty. KC would beg his parents' permission to stay up that one 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 humor 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 with a grand piano, 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. No sister, no female cousins, no women other than his Mom, and she didn't count. Of course, there had been little girls in his playgroup back in Ashville, but that was different. Little girls 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, KC 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, recalling the girl's coy little striptease the night before.

He tiptoed out to the hallway and pulled open the linen cupboard. Mom 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 in the red mini has strawberry blond hair and long, tapering legs. Stepping into the dressing room, she puts down her shoulder bag on the make-up table and hitches up her hemline, revealing a seemingly endless length of smooth, stockinged thigh. She poses in the window, completely oblivious of the council workers across the road. Benny and his friends suddenly pause in their labors, faces mesmerized by the prospect of seeing a pretty young girl adjusting her nylons before their very eyes.

The girl unclips her suspenders one teasing strap at a time, then slipping off her shoes, peels down her stockings and hangs them carefully over the chair. Across the road, the accidents have started to happen. Preoccupied with the girl in the window, one of the ditch diggers unwittingly hurls a spade full of dirt over an elderly lady with a shopping stroller. Outraged beyond words, she shakes her fist at the workman and moves along in high dudgeon. Benny brings his sledge hammer down on an old man's foot, who instantly leaps into a frenzied one-legged dance, hopping frantically about until he falls into the ditch. Benny immediately tries to help the aged gentleman up, and is rewarded with a sharp clout on the head from the old man's walking stick.

The girl in the window straightens up and reaches around to unzip the back of her dress. She slips the straps off her shoulders, smiling a wide, naughty smile, and steps out of the mini in a single graceful movement. She hangs the dress up on the clothing rail, and stands revealed in a shiny white bra and half-slip. The slip is gauzy satin, so tiny that it barely covers the edges of her underpants. She walks about the dressing room on bare feet, swaying her hips and showing off her beautifully slender legs.

Across the road, the council gang has lapsed into utter chaos; the old man has climbed out and is chasing Benny around the ditch with his walking stick. Several more pedestrians join in the fracas; a bruiser with his cap pulled low over his face, an immaculately attired civil servant with an umbrella, a bald-headed priest attempting to restore order. An officious-looking police officer rushes into sight and begins taking down names.

Still completely unaware of the major conflict going on outside, the girl leans over the table and begins making up in the mirror. Neon-red lipstick, followed by a little powder. Picking up a brush, she shimmies across the room, inspecting the items on the clothing rail, then turns to brush her hair in the mirror. Her bra and slip are glaringly bright against her deeply tanned flesh, her waist so thin that a man could almost fit his palm around it. She circles back to the table, puts down the brush, then returns to the middle of the room. The commotion in the street outside reaches a crescendo.

By now, a dozen passerbys have joined in the general anarchy, waging war on the bumbling council workers. Benny is under siege from the old geezer on one side and the police constable on the other. The bobby starts clocking Benny on the crown with his day stick, alternating blows with the old man. Almost unnoticed by the rest of the crowd, a press team arrives with note pads and cameras ready to document the riot.

The girl inspects the lace trimmings on her satin slip, fiddling out a microscopic piece of lint, then places her hands on her hips, admiring her figure in the mirror. She smiles that brilliant, naughty-little-girl smile one more time, and takes off the slip, letting it slide to the carpet in a soft white pool. She stands exposed in the window, modeling her underwear for the entire street. Her panties shimmer like platinum in the afternoon light as she unhooks her lacy white suspender belt and places it over the chair with her stockings.

The melee across the road comes to an abrupt halt. Benny and his foes pause in mid-blow, stunned into complete immobility by the vision framed in the window. The PC puts his truncheon away and cocks his cap back on his forehead. The civil servant produces a pair of opera glasses, the old geezer with the walking stick takes out his glasses and steps forward for a better view. The press photographer begins reeling off snapshots.

The object of their undivided attention parades over to the clothing rail, sorting through the skirts, blouses and dresses hanging up there. Nothing seems quite right today; she pulls out a frock and looks it over carefully before replacing it with a dissatisfied pout.

Deciding to start at the top, she puts on a wide, canary-yellow hat and walks around the room, watching herself in the mirror. She weaves back and forth in her lingerie several times, still smiling her naughty little smile. Then, making a final half turn before the mirror, she looks straight out the window for the first time. Her eyes widen as she sees the tableaux outside: twenty slack jawed, motionless men – including her parish priest – looking in, their faces bulging with fascination.

Suddenly realizing that half the town is seeing her in nothing but her bra and panties, she gasps, covers her cleavage with her hands, and runs giggling over to hide beside the window. Peeking outside to see who actually saw her undressed, she modestly holds the curtain across her body.

With the girl out of sight, the battle resumes. Jaws are busted, noses pulled, lips fattened. The bald-headed priest tumbles into the ditch, still holding his bible aloft. In the background, all but lost in the general confusion, Benny is led away in an armlock by the PC . . .

The clothes KC had taken from the linen cupboard were not exactly the same as the girl's on Benny Hill, but that wasn't a problem. KC's imagination required only a close approximation. There were a pair of frilly white underpants which fortuitously happen to fit him exactly, and a small, creamy colored crop top which – for KC – would double for a bra (KC didn't know what a brassiere was for, but it was unquestionably a necessary part of the costume). There had been no white satin half slip in the sewing bag, but he'd managed to find a bright pink cotton skirt with an elasticized waist. It was light and breezy, almost translucent, and KC judged it would feel cool and smooth against his flesh.

No stockings in his size, but there was a pair of longish girls' socks, which, to KC's inexperienced mind, was pretty much one and the same. The last piece of apparel had been the treat of the morning. Holding it up, KC wasn't quite certain what it was. A woman's blouse or top or something, but it was bright and red and stretchy; it would look just like the mini the Benny Hill girl had been wearing.

There was even a zip at the back. KC smiled, his eyes wide with innocent, childish pleasure, and began to take off his PJs.

10.

Something happened while KC changed.

He didn't just put on girl's clothing, he seemed to put on a girl's body. No, not quite. His body felt different, there was no question of that, but he seemed to have pulled on a great deal more than a girl's shape. He . . . felt like a girl. Or at least, what he imagined a girl would feel like, if she was sweet, and saucy, and pretty – and very, very naughty. He could not, at his age, have put it into words, but it was as if he had somehow slipped into a new identity.

He had become the girl. The one from last night. The one who'd taken off her clothes.

KC could see her very clearly in his mind. He had taken a snapshot of her with his eyes and developed the picture in his imagination. It was like a high resolution moving photograph; he could visualize the finest details, the texture of her skin, the lacquer on her fingernails, the deep redness of her lips, the sweep of her hair over her forehead. But the photo wasn't just in his imagination. It was as if that picture had somehow been superimposed onto his body.

KC had become The Girl.

11.

She played out the scene several times, recreating the scene from memory: the dressing room with its racks of feminine accouterments, the make-up table with its cosmetics and brushes, the tall, wide window looking out onto the street, the vaguely lecherous council workers leaning on their picks and shovels – she moved through a complex, constructed mind-space, shedding her clothing and parading before a non-existent audience.

The ecstasy swept over her, simmering in her body like a ball of liquid heat, leaving her trembling with excitement and a new emotion she couldn't name. Something had blossomed within her, something huge and pure and utterly beyond description. It was a breathless, gasping delight without comparison, something which she would seek for the remainder of her life. And although this sensual fire would remain forever beyond her reach, there were a few rare moments when she would come extremely close . . .

12.

She assumed her feminine role most mornings, basing her performances on TV programmes. It was the beginning of the seventies, an era of extreme political incorrectness and risque humour, when sexual innuendo insinuated itself into the least sexual of domestic comedies. Television provided her with an apparently inexhaustible source of inspiration for her fantasy-play.

At first it was enough just to become The Girl and act out her scenarios subjectively, but after a while she became curious to see what she actually looked like while she performed. KC couldn't let anyone see her dressed as The Girl, but at least she could watch herself.

KC had taken to hiding her props in an old suitcase under her bed. She rose at five one morning and dressed as The Girl, then examined herself closely in the dressing table mirror. She'd never performed in her bedroom before – there wasn't nearly enough space – but this morning she made an exception.

She stripped gradually down to her undies, smiling widely as each successive layer came off.

First her slippers, then her blouse, followed by skirt and singlet – the latter standing in for a full slip. Removing the slip was always the best part, the last thing to come off before her panties were displayed to the world. She felt thoroughly undressed, even though she was still wearing her bra and pants. Of course, the underwear was the most important part of the performance. If she'd been completely naked, she wouldn't have been The Girl at all. She just would have been some naked little boy. And where's the fun in that?

She didn't look much like the girls on television (they were all grown up, for one thing) but she was pleased by what she saw. Her striptease revealed a pretty little girl with short, curly brown hair and a roundish face, her body slightly pudgy with baby fat. If her hair had been slightly longer, she might have passed for any five year old girl, no different from the ones she used to play with back in Ashville.

Trouble was, KC wasn't trying to look like a little girl. She wanted to look like The Girl, tall and leggy and almost-adult. They were more like princesses in a fairy tale: always laughing, always falling in love and always living Happily Ever After. And best of all, The Girl could be naughty and get away with it. The Girl could get away with just about anything.

13.

She'd forgotten all about the spiders.

14.

Mom and Dad had gone out to Bingo, leaving KC alone with Graham and one of his friends from Lachlan High, a short, scrawny boy named Franky Curtis. Franky was an ugly little bastard who was constantly grinning like a weasel. KC thought he had one of the most unpleasant faces in human existence. Years later, she discovered that quite a number of people agreed with this description. No one seemed to like him, except Graham, and even this assumption was debatable. Mom couldn't stand a bar of "that Curtis boy" and refused to let him inside the house if he dropped by when Graham was out. Even Dad used to refer to Franky as "the chinless wonder" behind his back.

KC quickly learned to avoid coming within arm's length of Franky whenever they were in the same room. That stupid, hyena-faced smile disguised a streak of brainless, gibbering cruelty. The chinless wonder scared her much worse than Graham ever had. Franky had this way of looking at her, as if she was an insect that he was about to step on for the sheer, vindictive fun of it. Fortunately, he wasn't too bright, and KC found that if she stayed out of his sight, Franky wouldn't bother her. Most of the time, KC was safe.

Not this night, however. She was drawing pictures in her bedroom when they came to get her.

15.

KC realized almost immediately what they intended to do, and lapsed into tears and pleas as they dragged her out to the hallway. They had opened the spider-cupboard in preparation for the evening's entertainments. It looked to KC like a square, black mouth ready to swallow her alive. She shrieked when she saw it, a wild, keening, despairing noise barely contained by her tiny throat.

Franky's face swiveled down towards her. His eyes were huge and glassy. That enormous, vacant grin was back, more hideous than KC had ever seen it before. He looked barely human, more like some lunatic monstrosity from a nightmare. He was giggling to himself, an idiotic, meaningless sound that was halfway between laughter and drooling baby-talk.

KC looked up at her brother.

Graham's face wore the same expression of angry, impatient determination he'd had the night of the drowning game. Graham was a man of grim purpose, and nothing was going to interfere with the execution of his responsibilities. He'd made KC a promise months ago, and he was going to keep it. His eyes were dark and narrowed and completely devoid of mercy: Graham was a REAL MAN, and real men had no time for compassion.

KC's chest clenched up, as if a huge fist was crushing her lungs. She began to gasp for her ventolin. Graham ignored her. Franky continued to slobber out his demented laughter. KC's breath came in wheezing, grating sobs. She struggled against them, setting her feet against the floor, but Graham dealt her a stunning blow to the back of the head. She fell forward, gasping weakly. Frankly grabbed a handful of her hair and continued to drag her over to the cupboard. By now, KC was nearly passing out from fright.

They dumped her before the cupboard's gaping doorway. Huddled in abject fear, not even daring to look into the spider-lair, KC wrapped her arms around Graham's legs. Franky's hands descended onto her. She was pulled away and forced to stare in. The spiders were no more than a foot away now. Her face convulsed with absolute terror. They were going to put her in there, shove her in with all those swollen, scampering, biting horrors and slam the door shut, leave her in there to scream and claw and cry all night. She opened her mouth to wail with all her strength. A strangled, choking cough caught in her throat. Nothing else came out. It was the asthma.

Magnified by the lens of hysteria, the spiders looked supernaturally huge, their midnight bodies like shiny, jet-black grapefruit, their thousands of eyes red with fury. They would swarm all over her body, peeling back her flesh and boring into her deepest, most secret parts. There would be no escape, they would fill every crevice inside her, squirming beneath her skin, biting her to death.

They thrust her, weeping and hopeless, into that crawl space from hell. Graham braced the door with a chair, and they returned to the lounge room to watch Disneyland.

16.

An unknowable length of time later:

Cry-baby! Look at the CRY-BABY. Not like a REAL bloke is he?

No. He isn't.

Hey, cry-baby! What are you, a fuckin GIRL or somethin? A real man wouldn't cry like that. C'mon, GIRL, showus –

Leave him.

Aw, c'mon Graham –

Mom and Dad'll be home soon. Can't let them see him like this. Get up you little shit. Get up.

KC lay unmoving on the floor. A spider scuttled out from under her elbow and disappeared back into the cupboard. Graham had to kick her several times before she got to her knees and crawled slowly towards her bedroom. Graham was careful not to kick too hard. He didn't want to leave any obvious marks.

17.

KC said nothing to her parents about the spider-cupboard. Graham had warned her that if she told anyone – anyone at all – he'd kill her. KC never doubted Graham's capacity to follow through on such a threat, but it wasn't the only reason why she kept her ordeal secret. She simply couldn't talk about it – she could hardly think about it without wanting to run away and cry. She was incapable of articulating the humiliation and shame the episode had instilled in her. And whenever she closed her eyes . . .

Cry-baby! Look at the CRY-BABY. Not like a REAL bloke is he?

KC had begun to hate herself.

She couldn't have explained why, but she had come to believe that the whole thing had been her own fault, that she had deserved everything that had happened to her. She had done something to get Graham mad at her, something she couldn't quite understand, but it seemed to have been connected to what Franky had said after they pulled her out of the cupboard: What are you, a fuckin GIRL or somethin? A real man wouldn't cry like that.

Early morning:

KC stared at her face in the mirror. Had they known? Had Graham found out what she was doing, dressing up like a girl when everyone else was asleep? Had he told Franky about it, discussed plans to teach her a lesson one night when Mom and Dad were out? Did they lock her in the spider-cupboard as some kind of punishment? Punishment for not being a real man? Was it really so bad? Wanting to be The Girl?

She took the suitcase from its hiding place beneath the bed, took out its contents, dressed before the mirror. Nothing happened. There was no warmth, no ecstasy, no magic transformation. The Girl was gone. A single, large tear formed in corner of her right eye, overflowed, trickled down her cheek. She – he wasn't a girl. He was just a dumb kid in a dress, pretending to be a lady.

KC began to undress. This time, however, he didn't bother to look at himself disrobing.

18.

Life crawls by at a snail's pace for an unhappy child. A minute lasts for hours, a day seems to grow longer with the slow passage of each empty moment. A month stretches into the realms of the infinite. A year was the length of time it takes the winds to erode the Alpine ranges to sea level.

Graham gave KC the grand tour of hell.

They had all the time in the world.

19.

KC's parents noticed the change in their son. Dad commented to his wife that 'Case' wasn't looking his usual chipper self these days. You sure there's nothing bothering the lad? Hardly know he's in the house, most of the time. Talk about seen but not heard. You're lucky to get more than two words out of him in as many hours.

Mom shrugged her shoulders and put it down to boredom and maybe a little loneliness since they'd left Ashville a few months back. He was missing his friends at the playgroup. Kids are like that you know. Still, it was good they'd made the move when they did.

Dad lit a cigarette and nodded in agreement. Yeah, he was young, he'd make plenty of new friends once he started school again. Maybe they could look 'round for another playgroup in the meantime. I mean to say, we can't have the boy moping around the place tripping over his own lip, can we?

Oh, he'll be all right, Harry. He's just fretting over something or other. He'll cheer up soon enough.

Guess you're right. I mean, he's only nine years old, isn't he?

20.

Rising early was a difficult habit to break. KC still got up around five-thirty and played in the back room until the cartoons came on. However, entertaining himself presented something of a problem now. He felt miserable and listless most of the time. Nothing was fun anymore, nothing seemed worth the effort of doing. He wished Dad was home more often, wished Mom was less busy during the day. He also wished that Graham would leave home and live with his friends, like he was always saying he would.

Climbing out of bed, KC picked up one of his trucks and walked out to the kitchen. The toy was virtually useless, a cheap plastic cement mixer which had lost all of its wheels. He suspected Graham had broken them off deliberately (Graham made a habit of destroying anything that KC loved) but he hadn't cried when he discovered the damage. He'd experienced much worse than a broken toy over the last few months. It was still dark outside. The house was dim and still, the lino cold against his feet.

He paused next to the kitchen table, looking out into the back room. Something was different about it this morning. It was like one of those dreams where you walked into your house and found yourself surrounded by strangely unfamiliar faces. The people you spoke to claimed to be your family – and indeed they looked and sounded exactly like them – but you knew, deep inside, that they weren't. Everything had changed, but you couldn't explain how.

KC blinked several times, then walked carefully forward, placing the toy truck on the table. He'd suddenly lost all interest in playing. Oddly, he felt no fear, as perhaps he should have under the circumstances. Any other time, he might have sensed ghosts or monsters lurking in the darkness and run away to wake his parents up. But this time there was no hint of threat. He had a mystery to solve.

Then he saw it. There was a sliver of light slashing across the floor of the back room. A fine, radiant shaft that might be cast by a light hidden behind a door which was ever so slightly ajar. And that, KC knew, was not possible. There were no doors on that side of the room. Only the one that led to –

No. It couldn't be. But there it was: The Door to Nowhere was open. And light was spilling out of it.

KC gaped at this marvel in childish disbelief. His life had been a montage of daydreams and fantasies up to this point. Months ago, he'd imagined that the door might open into Narnia or some other magical land. But he'd tested that particular fancy dozens of times; he knew that the door was merely a cover for a brick wall, nothing else. His mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing. Yet, here he was, the door was open, and there was light coming from somewhere behind it. Even from this distance he could tell it wasn't artificial light: it was too warm, too . . . gentle. It was a soft afternoon haze. Another impossibility. He could look out the back window to confirm that the sun wasn't even properly up.

I must be dreaming, KC thought.

But he wasn't. He was awake, slowly approaching the Door to Nowhere, already reaching out with his tiny hand to grip the golden knob. The one which was perfect for his height, as if the door had been built for him and him alone. His heart was racing, his breath shallow: not with fear, but with an oddly exultant feeling, an emotion poised midway between anticipation and excitement.

He hesitated, relishing the scent of flowers drifting through the door. Roses, KC was certain, fresh cut roses, like the ones he and his Mother saw in the florist every time they walked into town. He could almost see them now, carmine red and dripping with cool, sweet water. Rosewater, he thought for no reason at all, and swung the door open.

21.

A momentary confusion: KC seemed to be looking into his own room. No, not his room. But he had recognized it, nonetheless. It was Her room. The Girl's.

He was looking into The Girl's bedroom.

'Bedroom' wasn't the right word. There was another word, something his Mother used on occasion, something that sounded dainty and enchanting, a word ladies might use. Pretty ladies.

Boudoir.

It flashed through his mind and was gone. The room was aglow with pastel colors, muted pinks and lilacs, traces of midday blue. Stepping through the doorway, he felt a curious shifting sensation, like the start of a lucid dream. It would be years before KC could make such a comparison, but that was precisely what it was like: stepping consciously into a dream.

He halted, closed his eyes, and inhaled the subtle, flowing fragrance lacing the air. The smell of flowers struck him once again, but the roses were only masking something even more delicious and untouchable. He'd thought the room was empty, but he'd been wrong – the Girl was here; invisible, intangible, but present in every sense other than the physical.

He was breathing in The Girl.

KC opened her eyes.

22.

The bed was an antique four poster, covered with an ornate satin quilt and plumped with half a dozen pillows. There was a skirt and blouse on the bed, along with a small number of delicates. KC approached, only vaguely surprised that clothes had been laid out for her. It was her room, after all. She picked up the skirt and held it against her waist, as if taking its measure. It was a little girl's full circle, blue with a white lace trim around the hem. She turned to face the three-way mirror at the far end of the room. The mirror, like everything else in the (boudoir) room was the perfect size for a five year old child.

KC studied her reflection. She'd never noticed before how funny she looked in boy's pajamas. Cute, sweet, but funny all the same. A little girl posing as a boy. She felt a giggle bubbling up in her throat. It was the first time she'd felt like laughing in months. Yes, she looked funny, no question about it. She replaced the skirt on the bed, walked over to the door, and shut it quietly, once she'd ascertained that there was a knob on the inside. She supposed she wouldn't want to be trapped in here. Then again, maybe she wouldn't want to leave. Who knows?

She walked back to the bed and started unbuttoning her pajama top. Maybe this was a dream – that was the only way to explain what was happening – but KC was no longer sure whose dream it was. KC knew she wasn't asleep, so this had to be someone else's vision. Well, it didn't matter who was having it, KC was happy again. In a dream, anything could happen. Anything at all.

She stood naked, looking down at the underwear on the bed. This was nothing like the old throwaways from Mom's remnants bag. Brand new, almost sparkling. There was a singlet, a pair of briefs and some long socks, the kind with a lacy ruffle at the top. All pink, a very faint hue that was almost white. No bra, KC noted, but for some reason, she felt no disappointment. Right now, she didn't mind being a little girl. She reached down, picked up the panties, and turned to face the mirror. KC smiled at her reflection.

The smile flickered out after a few seconds. KC staggered back, recoiling from her image in gape-mouthed shock.

The mirror showed a real girl.

23.

KC's hands flashed down between her legs. Paradoxically, a glancing inspection affirmed that everything was still in its proper place. She handled her boy-things gingerly, assuring herself that they hadn't simply evaporated off her body (not that this would have been such a bad idea, KC would later speculate, but it had been one hell of a fright at the time). She then looked back at the mirror.

The girl in the three-way had nothing downstairs. Nothing at all. KC changed her position several times until she was absolutely certain of this. The flesh seemed to fold under and vanish between her legs, leaving only a dimple where KC's thing was.

What was going on?

KC walked up for a closer look. She noticed almost immediately that the girl in the mirror was not a precise duplicate of herself. She had larger eyes, and her face was fractionally softer and prettier. Her limbs and shoulders a little more rounded, her hair a little longer and curlier. She was more like KC's twin sister.

No, that wasn't right, not at all. The mirror-girl wasn't KC's twin, she was KC. The mirror was special; magical. It didn't show KC as she was, but how she should be. She swung around and wriggled her tushie at the three-way. It was plump and rosy-pink and smooth as a baby's bottom, so to speak. KC giggled to herself and looked away, blushing. She began to see how much fun she could have, playing her dress-up games in front of this magic mirror.

24.

All the clothes fitted perfectly. Fully dressed, she admired herself in triple view, turning around several times, trying to see herself from as many angles as possible. She finished by twirling about like a top. Her skirt flickered up, revealing her thighs, like a dancer from one of those old Hollywood musicals her parents enjoyed watching. She came to a stop, paused, and glanced around the room, curious to explore.

A large window looked out to a late afternoon landscape. It was a familiar setting; the backyard of their house, except that there were clumps of Oak trees and no fence bordering the property. Perhaps she was looking into another time, 'the olden-days', as Mom was fond of calling the past. KC wondered if it were real. If she opened the window, could she climb out and go play in the shade of one of those old, weathered oaks?

Well, she could investigate that possibility later. Best not roam too far right now. If, as she suspected, this was an incredibly vivid dream, what would happen to KC when whoever was having it woke up? She decided to stay near the door for the time being. Not that she was really worried, of course. This was The Girl's (boudoir) bedroom, not the spider-cupboard: nothing bad was going to happen to her in here. The rest of the house might have belonged to Graham, but this room was hers.

She opened the folding doors of the built-in wardrobes, and discovered they were full of girl's things; blouses, frocks, dresses, shoes, and skirts. The dressing table contained nighties and underwear and various knick-knacks – brushes, combs, lacy handkerchiefs and cotton scarves, hairclips, oddsocks and buttons. A thousand small items for which KC had no name for. Things that might represent the bits and pieces of a little girl's life.

Her life.

KC's.

She looked over at the door for a few seconds, wondering what was happening out there, what time of day it might be. In here, it was late in the afternoon. Beyond the door, it was still morning. Mom would just be getting up to put on the kettle and call Dad to breakfast. That was a good place, in some ways, but it wasn't perfect. It had some terrible, dark corners. It had fear and hurt and shame lurking in the shadows. Most of all, it had Graham and Franky and the spider-cupboard. The Girl's room was better. Much better.

KC walked over and lay down on the bed, nestling in the cool satin depths of the quilt. It was just as she'd thought before: maybe she wouldn't mind being trapped in here, maybe she wouldn't want to leave. Ever.

I've come home, KC whispered to herself, and closed her eyes.

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