Untitled - Beatrice, age 12

Matilda crept along the silent hallway. It was half past 3 in the morning, and everyone was sound asleep. She thought that this was the best time to go on nightly adventures, which she did often for cookies from the kitchen, because everyone else in the house was asleep, even the dog. But this time, it was not just a midnight snack she was looking for - it was whatever was behind the basement door. Her parents never let Matilda or her brother into the basement, or even to look into it.

They hid the key in a new hiding spot every week, so if the spot was discovered, the key would be moved. Perhaps they thought Matilda would give up trying to find it, and put it out of her mind. But once she had her mind set on a thing, she stuck with it. Yesterday, she had been as lucky as to happen upon her mother, who hadn’t seen her, hiding the key on top of the fridge. Just now Matilda had snatched the key from the fridge and took it along the hallway to the basement door. She was jittery with anticipation, for why would her parents hide the key if there wasn’t something very important behind that door? Matilda absolutely had to see for herself.

Presently, she came upon the mahogany basement door. It was locked as usual, but she easily remedied that with her stolen key. A winding staircase went down into the darkness of the basement. Unfazed, she took out her flashlight and started down, carefully closing the door behind her.
It was a short staircase, surprisingly short, in fact, so Matilda tripped over her own feet at the bottom. Her glasses flew off and her frizzy black hair covered her face.

Blindly, she reached out a hand to retrieve them. She caught a vial instead. Surprised, she held the vial in one hand and groped for her glasses with the other, which she found a few feet away. She sat up and examined the vial with the flashlight. It was made of glass with a cork at the top. The light from the flashlight bounced off of it eerily and reflected on her nightgown. Inside of the vial was a glowing liquid, almost golden in color with flecks of silver and purple. Matilda uncorked it and sniffed. It smelled like plum pudding. Strange, she thought. It doesn’t look like plum pudding. But why do my parents have a vial of this?

Setting the vial down, Matilda stood up. After whipping the beam of light around the room, she could see that the walls were covered with shelves groaning under the weight of hundreds of strange looking objects. Upon one shelf, there were vials not unlike the one she had just seen. On another, clay pots holding strange looking plants she had never seen before and was sure weren’t in her book of North America’s Native Plant Species. A whole wall of shelves were dedicated to thick, leather-bound books with gold and silver bindings.

Matilda took one down and read the title. 101 Advanced Techniques for the Brewing and Rationing of Animal Related Potions. That’s absurd, she thought. She read another. Opus Carter on: 50 Great Spells Every Wizard Should Know. Are all the books this silly? she thought. Maybe they’re, I don’t know, Harry Potter books. I didn’t know these existed! Why don’t Mom and Dad let us go down here? These are cool!

Matilda checked her watch. It was almost 4! She needed to get back to her room. She ran over to the stairs, but bumped into a cage in the middle of the floor that she hadn’t noticed before. She peered inside. And a pair of reproachful eyes stared back at her. Matilda screamed, and then clapped her hands over her mouth, cursing. She didn’t want her mom and dad coming down and finding her. But after a minute, no one came, and so she bent back down to the cage.

Inside it was a peculiar creature. It had dark wide eyes and thick brown fur that was almost purple. But what was most strange were the tiny wings sprouted from its back. Matilda was frozen with shock. What was this creature? Why was it in her basement? Finally, she came to her senses and bolted up the stairs, out of the door, down the hallway, and into her room. Her parents had some huge explaining to do.

Back in the basement, there was a stirring. Strange creatures began slithering, crawling, and swooping out of their hiding places and into the hallway. Because for now she did not know it, but Matilda had left the door open.