Free The Somebodies by N. E. Bode Page B

they couldn’t see where they were.
    “Whoa, Charlie Horse!” the elevator operator called out. The elevator started to screech and shiver. Fern thought she smelled a fine whiff of something burning. Brakes? she wondered. The elevator slowed down, began stuttering. The elevator operator’s final button snapped loose and ricocheted, pinging against all the walls, and then with a high-pitched whine, the elevator ground to a stop.
    Fern and Howard and the miniature pony were dazed. From overhead, the elevator speaker plinked out a warped, warbling, exhausted song. And the shiny gold button rolled to a stop in the middle of the floor.
    But when Fern and Howard looked up to see if it was now safe to stand, the elevator operator had a new row of polished buttons, highly pressurized, glinting down his vest.

3
THE BED BENEATH THE BED
    THE ELEVATOR WAS WET WITH CONDENSATION from the effort of the trip, and so the elevator operator slipped off his stool and began wiping down the moist walls with a small towel he’d pulled from his trouser pocket. “Good old Charlie Horse. We survived another one,” he said. He looked nervous. “What’s next? Where will we be off to this time?”
    Fern and Howard stood and slowly turned circles to see where, exactly, they’d ended up. On the other side of the glass door, there were six wood panels. And looking through the glass walls to their left and right, Fern and Howard saw fur—thick, glossy, brown fur—which, I’m happy to report, did not seem to be attachedto live bears. It was simply fur. Behind them there was, of all the strangest things, what looked like snow, falling softly, and a distant light. “Where are we?” Fern asked, feeling like the place was strangely familiar.
    “Six-oh-one,” the elevator operator said. “Like the clipboard said.”
    “Six-oh-one?” Howard asked.
    “Room Six-oh-one, of course,” the elevator operator said. He was holding the towel and Fern noticed his hands were shaking. He was talking to himself now, looking off into the distant snow outside the elevator. “Who do you think will ring us next? Who do you think? Will we survive the next one?” He pulled a Twinkie out of his jacket pocket and unwrapped it quickly.
    “I know this place,” Fern said. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”
    “Here?” Howard was astounded. “We don’t even really know where here is!” (Of course, I, N. E. Bode, your trusty narrator, know exactly where here is. I know exactly all the lovely and odd and scary things that lie before them. But they didn’t, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
    “I can’t explain it, Howard. It’s just how I feel. There’s something about the fur and the snow and that light back there through the snow. And this, too, the wood.”
    “Well, I want to get out of here.” And then Howard paused. “I think.”
    With that, the elevator operator hit a button. The pony was sitting up in Fern’s pocket, its hooves hooked over the edge, looking around with its large eyes. Howard held the book and closed his eyes and waited. The elevator gave a weary bing , and the doors slid open. But the wood paneling was still blocking their way.
    “Oh, sorry about that,” the elevator operator said, his words muffled by a Twinkie. “You sure you want to go? I don’t mind kids. They don’t weigh as much. Less chance of, you know, disaster!” He opened a little hook on the wood paneling, and two doors swung awayfrom each other. The miniature pony whinnied, and the sound bounced around the small room.
    “I think we’ve got to go,” Fern said. “You’ll be okay.”
    “Will I?” the elevator operator asked, opening another Twinkie.
    “I have a thing with sweets myself,” Howard said. “Might want to lay off them.”
    Fern wanted to help the elevator operator, to say the right thing, but she wasn’t sure what that right thing would be. He was a grown-up, she thought. Grown-ups should know how to take care of themselves. Fern