KC was five 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??! Graham had just turned fourteen and considered himself to be some kind of adolescent 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, Kase".
"How old?"
"How old do you reckon?"
"About a thousand years!"

Dad laughed, ruffling his son's hair, and made his way back in 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.

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