Be Careful Where You Step

by Mary

As with all readers, bookcases have been a constant presence in my living spaces.

The first graced a Victorian terraced house, the attic of which became the bedroom I shared with my sister. Its furnishings included a tall, white-painted bookcase which for unfathomable reasons had at some point been sawn in half vertically and was therefore held together by its shelves. Its idiosyncratic construction went well with the attic's working gas light and the previous tenants' tartan wallpaper clashing in eye-watering fashion with a contemporary sofa covered in fabric patterned with angular yellow and orange shapes that would have gladdened the hearts of cubist painters.

Since the bookcase had no back, we could see its lower part blocked a small door in the wall. Naturally we opened it and found it disclosed a clear view of a concealed narrow space running down the street between our neighbours' attic walls and their eaves overhangs. What purpose it could have served remains a mystery to this day. Assuming neighbouring attics had similar little doors, the arrangement would certainly have been useful for leaving the premises unnoticed and in haste when an urgent need for departure presented itself, such as when the rent man came to call or a polite policeman appeared at the front door.

Such secret places and especially hidden rooms have long fascinated me, so I particularly enjoyed reading Allan Fea's Secret Chambers and Hiding Places last month. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13918 Published in the early 1900s, it describes a number of concealed hiding places utilised by, for example, priests during religious persecutions and fleeing royal personages and their supporters at times of civil unrest. Most of these concealed chambers, often situated behind fireplaces or wainscoting, were in great country houses and displayed impressive ingenuity in their construction. Lots of ideas here for authors who need a secret room for plot purposes!

As Mr Fea's book relates, the entrances to these secret rooms were to be found in a variety of locations, including under window-seats, behind cupboards (one mentioned swung backwards, shelves included, to reveal the hidden space), or concealed behind paintings or sliding panels. My favourite in the latter category formed the back of a -- you have guessed it! -- bookcase seemingly fixed to the wall. Disguised trap doors are also touched upon. Fine workmanship was displayed by a particularly ingenious mechanism, whereby a hidden space could only be opened by pulling up the head of what appeared to be a nail in the floor, thereby releasing a spring opening the trapdoor. I was particularly struck by a correspondent quoted in the book who revealed touching an unspecified part of the family shield displayed in the state-room of his castle caused said decoration to revolve and reveal a hidden staircase. Its oddly numbered steps were solid but, he reveals, treading on any of the others started concealed machinery that collapsed the staircase, precipitating unwary pursuers into a vault seventy feet or so below. A devilish device worthy of the lairs in which Fu Manchu lurked!

Constructing such concealed spaces was necessarily done in great secrecy but time marches on and nowadays there are Youtube tutorials on how to build them. However, the nearest I've been to a hidden space, or knowingly at least, was when I lived in a flat in Florida. It was a couple of weeks before I realised the shelved wall in a cupboard next to the front door could be moved. The space thus revealed held part of the air conditioning equipment and was just big enough to admit someone to work on it without ending up with bruised elbows. On the other hand, a couple I know once lived in an old house converted into flats. On my first visit, they pointed out the sash window of a room they noticed had no visible door inside the house. Even more peculiar, the top half of the window was slightly down. It may be they were pulling my leg, but recollecting that white bookcase makes me wonder...

Hiding places for people or objects swarm in fiction. Stolen gems, wills, and compromising correspondence are commonly hidden in them. Sometimes concealment is temporary but on occasion the person involved remains entombed by accident or design until death releases them from durance vile. Apart from the fictional examples mentioned, my meanderings through literary gardens have led me to drawers hidden *within* hidden drawers and objects concealed in locations as diverse as a sundial, wells, a watch or pudding, between paving stones, in the handle of a tennis racquet, and down a rabbit hole.

A reader may well find concealed rooms in works other than mysteries. The Sanctuary by E. F. Benson I consider among the more disturbing of hidden room tales. Though I knew the plot, it still gave me a touch of creeping heebie-jeebies when I reread it recently. Edward Bulwer-Litton offered his readers a trapdoor leading to a hidden room in a house with an evil reputation in The Haunted and the Haunters. Were a vote taken it's possible the most widely read locked room story would be Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, where the hidden room is used to punish.

While writing An Empire For Ravens, we donned hard hats and big boots to construct an underground cistern, one column of which we fitted with a secret door turning on a pivot. This arrangement permitted our protagonist John and other characters access to a catacomb in Rome. Sounds somewhat unlikely, but oh, brabjous day! In passing Mr Fea mentions sections of massive stone columns in some ecclesiastical buildings and castles were capable of being rotated to reveal hidden spaces, thus showing our architectural invention was not as unlikely as it seems.

Interview with a Shadow Man

by Eric

It's mid-afternoon and the cafe in downtown Manhattan is brightly lit but the actor who goes by the name A. Mann is only a fleeting motion at the corner of my vision as he arrives for our interview and settles into a chair behind a pillar. He professes to feeling nervous about talking to me but I am the one who shivers as a sudden chill slithers down my spine.

If you've ever watched a horror movie or a thriller, you've seen A. "Shadow" Mann, though you won't find that name in any credits. He is the figure flashing past the open doorway, crossing the end of the hallway, lurking at the window. As often as not he is nothing more than a featureless shadow.

"As a child I used to startle people," says Mann, when I ask what led him to a movie career. "I'd walk up behind my mother and she'd jump. 'Oh, I didn't know you were there' she'd say. 'You move so quietly.' It was a talent I had. I liked making people jump. Movies gave me the chance to make a living at it."

His voice is not unusual. I remark upon that.

"Did you expect a Rod Serling voice, perhaps?" he says. "We do have something in common. When I appear in a movie, like Mr Serling, I tell movie goers without words that they are in a zone where things are out of the ordinary. In my case, a zone where people are likely to die horribly."

I lean back in my chair, attempting to see around the pillar, but Mann somehow contrives to remain just out of sight. "And you do this without words. Your parts never call for you to speak, do they?"

"No. Speaking would give away too much, too early. For quite a while I've been the world's highest paid silent actor."

"Do you take inspiration from the stars of the silent era?"

"Actually I study ballet dancers. What I do is all in the movement. You only see me for an instant. Gliding, creeping, lurching, scuttling, whatever is appropriate. I wish I could have seen the Russian dancer Nijinsky. There's hardly any film. I imagine he would have scuttled magnificently."

The disembodied voice is making me uneasy. What is he doing that I can't see? He might be contemplating the sort of wound a butter knife could inflict. For all I know he could be foaming at the mouth. Or a giant insect. I barely saw him arriving. I try to steady my voice. "You only appear for seconds at a time but your roles carry a huge responsibility."

"Yes. I'm the glimpse of evil and menace the audience sees first. It's up to me to capture the essence of the character in that instant when I race by. To instill a sense of dread. I lay the foundation that the actor or special effects crew builds on to portray the maniac or monster."

"Do you ever wish you had more screen time?"

"Not at all. That would ruin the effect. The horror the audience imagines after seeing my vague shape for a second is always far worse than what eventually appears fully fleshed out. Or partially fleshed out as the case may be."

Now I wonder if Mann's flesh is hanging in shreds or whether he is sporting scales instead. My voice starts shaking. "I've been told that you are the most in demand actor in Hollywood."

The statement is greeted with a soft laugh. Not in the least sinister. Not in the least. "Let's just say that I've played every kind of monster you can think of, human and otherwise, including most of the ones you've heard of. Actors like Robert Englund have been in plenty of films but I am, as they say, Legion."

Suddenly I must see him. I leap up and step around the pillar.

Mann is gone, as anyone who's ever seen a horror film knew he would be. I look around the room. No sign of him. Diners are eating and conversing unconcerned. Of course, they didn't notice the shadowy thing slinking in and out.

They have no idea of what they're up against.

Yet.