chapter 3: igor's repair shop

Escape from Nowhereby

Betsy Streeter

Chapter 3: Igor's Repair Shop

©2002 Betsy Streeter

www.droolydog.org

Escape from Nowhere by Betsy Streeter Chapter 3: Igor's Repair Shop©2002 Betsy Streeter www.droolydog.org of 13

3. Igor's Repair Shop

Violet climbed past the cars that defied gravity in their tilted parking spaces, past the flower shops and

the closed restaurants. About halfway to the top of the hill she turned right between a warehouse and a

brick building, into an alley that ended abruptly with a big metal rolling door. This was a spot where

trucks would frequently rumble in and out with loads of stage props, lighting equipment, boxes, crates

and a lot of what-have-you. It was not Violet’s destination, though; instead she turned again and used

her whole body to shove open a grey metal door with reflective sticker letters on it that read: IGOR’S

REPAIR SHOP.

Igor and his shop had been there since time began, or at least for a century or two. He stood like a

stocky tree rooted in front of his workbench, visible behind his dusty front window, peering through his

thick beard and glasses. Every time someone came in or out a little bell tinkled and he looked up,

smiled kindly, and looked back down.

Igor’s business seemingly required a limitless supply of what-have-you, and his shop was jammed with

every imaginable gadget, part and doodad. It was never really clear what Igor was repairing, but

whatever it was it kept him busy. The shop was heaven on Earth for Violet, the perfect place for her to

pursue her everything-collecting. It drew her there like a giant magnet after school, and she never tired

of sifting through the shelves and boxes and crates. She didn’t even notice the steep climb uphill to get

there.

Violet was not the only person who frequented Igor’s shop; it was a bit like a library, with people

quietly browsing up and down the aisles, feet scuffing along the cement floor. Some were on a quest for

a special item, maybe parts for an obsolete ice cream maker or an eight-track player. Regardless of your

interests, though, there were endless discoveries to be made: Engine parts. Boxes full of nuts and bolts.

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Wire, cable and string. Doorknobs. Hubcaps. Switches, levers and pulleys. Ancient radios, televisions,

telephones. Lawn mowers, refrigerators, coffee makers, faucets and fans. And lots and lots of things –

or parts of things – that were impossible to identify.

Violet would work her way up one aisle and down the next, and when she got to the end she would start

all over because there were always new things to see – even though no one ever saw Igor rearrange

anything.

Violet had progressed to the back of one of the last aisles when she spotted an intriguing box hiding

behind a collection of blenders. As she crouched to investigate, something caught her eye and she

peered between the shelves. There, between an old refrigerator and a stack of stereo equipment, was a

door standing open in the back wall of the shop. Now, Igor had lots of loose doors that just leaned up

against the walls and didn’t go anywhere, but this was the first time Violet had ever noticed a real door,

one that worked. She leaned forward onto her toes, but she couldn’t quite see through...

Suddenly a metal object clattered onto the floor, a distant voice from somewhere on the other side

cried, “NOOOOO!”... and the door slammed shut.

Violet froze, eyes wide, waiting to see if the door would open again. When it didn’t, she straightened

up and crept around to get a better look. Stepping toward the mysterious entrance, she kicked

something with her toe – a coin, about the size of a quarter. She picked it up and turned it over in her

hand – it looked beat up, like it had been dropped in a garbage disposal – and she couldn’t make out

any of the markings on it. She looked back up, dropping the coin in her pocket, and surveyed her

discovery. It was an unremarkable door with a plain round knob, but Violet was fascinated. Perhaps

Igor had more stuff, more rooms that she hadn’t even seen. She reached out and turned the knob.

She stepped into a cramped, square space with walls covered in beat up wood paneling and a single

lightbulb sticking out of the ceiling. All in all it was pretty disappointing, though one wall did seem to

fade into darkness. Or maybe it wasn’t a wall, maybe it was a door. Or a hallway. The more Violet



looked, the less sure she was. She leaned forward and put her hand out, like a person trying to find their

way across a room after turning out the lights.

Somewhere deep in the darkness, footsteps skidded as if rounding a corner too fast and came running

toward her. Violet instinctively backed up, feeling behind her for the doorknob. Where was it? She

must have gone in farther than she thought. The footsteps became louder and louder, bearing down on

her as she flailed her arms. At last she located the door, shoved it open, and leaped out. As she slammed

it shut behind her she heard a voice shrieking, “Give it to meeeeeee!”

Then silence. A few people browsed around the shop, but none of them seemed to take any notice of

Violet’s dramatic entrance. She spun around, fearing that whoever-it-was might burst through the door

at any second, but the door wasn’t there any more; It was just an empty wall.

Violet turned her head side to side slowly, like a person waking from a scary dream. She looked up and

down a couple of aisles, wondering if she might have misplaced the door, gotten herself turned around

in her haste. But a door is a difficult thing to misplace, especially one that is attached to a wall. This

one had definitely vanished.

Feeling the coin in her pocket with one hand, she picked up her book bag with the other and headed for

the front of the shop. Igor looked up and smiled as she left.

**************

“It was right here. Seriously.” Violet moved her hands around in a big rectangle to show Xavier and

Jasmine where the door had appeared in Igor’s wall. “I went through and then somebody chased me

out. They wanted something. Maybe it was that coin.”

Xavier had been turning the coin over and over – he couldn’t seem to make out any details on it, the

markings were too faded and the light shifted around whenever he tried to look at it closely.



“Do you think you unlocked some sort of passage?” asked Jasmine. “Maybe if we did it right we could

find it again. Maybe it’s a secret alien portal. Or, wait! I bet it’s Igor’s secret laboratory. Where he

creates weird creatures with mismatched heads and bodies. Maybe...”

“Maybe we’ll never know, if we can’t figure out how it got here,” said Violet. “I wonder if there’s some

movement or signal or something we can do to make it come back.”

To test Violet’s theory the group flapped their arms, walked forward and backward, bent over, stood up,

waved the coin in the air, and generally made themselves look ridiculous. Having done this for a couple

of minutes they paused and peered around for any sign of the elusive door. There was none. The

flailing method had no effect. They pondered what to try next, but they couldn’t think of anything.

“Well shoot,” said Violet. “Now I want to know who that was, running after me. I mean, I only got to

go in there for about two seconds, but I think I saw a hallway or something. Maybe it goes into the

warehouse next door. Maybe that was a security guy in there. I don’t know.” She shrugged.

“Yeah, a security guy for the disappearing door,” quipped Xavier. “I don’t suppose he’s too busy.”

Violet glared at him.

They shuffled out the front door of the shop, with their coin and their questions. Igor looked up, smiled,

and looked back down again. Did he know he had a random disappearing door in his shop? Probably

not.

As they emerged from the alley into the bright sun, a gust of wind whooshed through their coats and

their hair. A bit of paper flew out of Jasmine’s pocket and fluttered onto the ground, a paper which she

recognized as her list-of-science-fiction-books-to-read. Not wanting to lose this important information,

Jasmine ran after the list and caught it under her shoe. When she picked it up, she noticed a plain, grey

door in the wall right smack in front of her with a note taped to it that said: THIS WAY.



“Hey guys,” she called, and nodded her head toward the note. “Do you think the door moves around?

Do you think this is it?”

“That door definitely was not there before,” said Xavier. “And look, someone’s been nice enough to

leave a note. How friendly.”

The door was shut pretty tight, so Jasmine yanked on it. After a few tries it scraped open, and they all

crowded through.

At first they stood still while their eyes adjusted from the bright sun outside to the gloomy dimness

within. The space where they stood was almost totally without features; no walls, really, and just a bare

grey floor. About 10 yards away, though, were two doors and a metal staircase leading up into the

darkness.

Violet tried one door, but it was locked. That’s when she noticed the other door had another note tacked

in the middle of it, which said: OVER HERE.

Okay, she thought, someone knows we’re here. I hope that’s a good thing. She stepped up to the door

with the note, pushed it open, and walked through.

Jasmine and Xavier followed Violet into... a gift shop. The world’s most cluttered, forgotten gift shop.

Posters of people who had been famous twenty years before languished next to a lava lamp display and

a collection of clocks made from burl wood, some of which featured paintings of Elvis or pine trees

and all of which gleamed with a heavy coat of lacquer. For all its clutter, though, the shop was

stupendously organized; the rows of Bigfoot figurines, lucite blocks containing various bugs, and snow

globes with little aliens and flying saucers sat in perfectly straight rows. The place was packed with

keychains, magnets, patches, shot glasses, ashtrays, stickers, lamps, puzzles, postcards, bookmarks

shaped like kitty cats, night lights shaped like howling coyotes – it was all perfectly arranged, and



perfectly awful. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead.

“Oh cool,” said Xavier, “we’ve passed into some sort of parallel universe where Violet runs a gift

shop.” Violet threw a rubber spider at him.

“Hello,” came a voice from behind a massive, old-fashioned cash register, “Good thing you made it – I

wasn’t sure if I had caught you in time.” A smallish woman emerged from the mess of ancient posters

and torn bumper stickers on the back wall. She had long, straight brown hair, big hoop earrings, and a t-

shirt with a peace sign worn under a plaid work shirt. “Please, come on in.”

“So it was you who left the notes?” asked Jasmine. “What do you mean you’re not sure if you caught

us in time? In time for what?”

“Not in time for anything,” said the woman. “We had to reach you before you got yourselves lost. It

gets more complicated over time, much more complicated.”

“Um, who is we?” asked Xavier, “or, who are you, more specifically?”

“And, what is this place?” asked Violet. Their entrance had disappeared and been replaced with a rack

of souvenir keychains.

“My name’s Pearl,” said the woman calmly, unfazed by the torrent of questions. “This is my little

hideout, a place where we could talk without anyone bothering us.”

“How come we don’t want to be bothered?” asked Violet. She thought of whoever-it-was chasing her

out the door.

“Well it’s like this,” said Pearl. She stepped lightly but purposefully around to the front of the counter.

“You three have discovered Nowhere, and Nowhere is a dangerous place. So I’m here to explain to you



why it’s best if you just go back to where you started from, and stay there.”

“Nowhere?” said Jasmine. “What does that mean?”

“Nowhere is the place between places,” said Pearl, raising her arms in a big circle. They half expected

her to begin chanting or singing. “One of you has an key that unlocked the entrance. An object like a

stone, or a coin. Something that has belonged to a lot of different people, and has a lot of memories

attached to it.” She held her hands out in front of her. “These objects, they open the entrance to

Nowhere, the collective imagination.”

“I don’t get it,” said Jasmine. “How can you be in Nowhere? Wouldn’t you just cease to exist?” She

rifled through her mental catalogue of science fiction books. Was this a parallel universe? A space-time

anomaly? Xavier picked up a snow globe with little astronauts inside and shook it, watching the flakes

glimmer down over the lunar lander and onto the moon surface.

“Here is what you need to know,” said Pearl, looking each of them in the eye. “The imagination is a

powerful thing. It can create, it can destroy, all in a second. Even less than a second. Nowhere comes

from the mind, but it is very real.” She held up her index finger. “And it can be very dangerous. You

can become lost, even be destroyed yourself. This is the power of the imagination.” Behind her a glob

formed inside a pink lava lamp and meandered upward.

Xavier, Jasmine and Violet glanced at one other, considering the weight of what Pearl had just said.

Creation, destruction – this was a lot to think about. The glob in the lava lamp dissipated.

“And there’s more,” Pearl continued. “There are things happening in Nowhere. Terrible things. Things

you don’t want to get involved in. Now you are free people, of course, so it’s your decision. But I

would urge you to use your key only once more, to go back, and then get rid of it and never use it

again.”



They all paused there a moment, and shuffled their feet. Xavier stuck the snow globe back on the shelf.

Violet cleared her throat. “So you’re basically telling us to go away?”

“Yes,” said Pearl, “if you want to take it like that. But I think you would do the same if you were in my

position. It’s like seeing someone walking around in the middle of the freeway. You’d tell them to get

the heck out of there, wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” said Violet. “We’ll go back.”

“There’s one more thing,” said Pearl. “Igor knows about Nowhere. He knows a great deal. If you do get

in trouble, he can help you. But go easy on him, okay? He’s a good man, but he’s suffered a terrible

loss, and he doesn’t want to get involved. Only talk to him as a last resort.”

“Okay, we’ll go easy on Igor,” said Violet. “And we’ll get out of the freeway.”

Pearl smiled as they climbed through a closet door that had appeared in the wood paneling and then

pulled it shut behind them. In the corner behind the cash register, a macaw shifted from foot to foot and

shuffled its wings on its perch atop a stack of vinyl records.

“Do you think they’ll listen?” asked the macaw.

Pearl turned and hopped onto the cash register, rustling her raven feathers as her claws clacked on the

metal, searching for footing. “Don’t know,” she said. “I hope so.”

“It’s going to be more complicated when they try to get back...”

“Yes I know,” said Pearl. “Those young imaginations might get ahead of them a bit, we just have to

hope for the best.”



“Those kids are liable to create a pretty big disturbance.”

“Yes,” said Pearl, cocking her head to one side. “I think they already have.”

**********

Xavier, Violet and Jasmine stood on a shiny white linoleum floor in a broad hallway with tile walls and

an arched ceiling, which curved to both their left and their right as far as they could see and offered no

hints as to which direction might be hiding an exit.

“Which way do you want to try first?” asked Xavier.

“I don’t know,” said Jasmine, glancing around, “but we’d better keep moving – and stay together.”

Things in Nowhere had certainly changed a great deal, and quickly. Pearl wasn’t kidding.

They took off to their left, their footsteps echoing all around them. The corridor curved mutely ahead,

smelling of standing water and cigarette butts. After several minutes of walking faster and faster and

getting more and more nervous, they finally spied a dull grey door on their right, the kind that might

normally be ignored as the probable home of a utility closet or some water pipes. Violet rushed over to

it and tried the knob. It was locked. Maybe it was just a utility closet.

“Okay,” said Violet, “this isn’t looking so good. Maybe Pearl was too late. Man, what do we do?”

“My guess is, there’s gotta be a way out somewhere,” said Jasmine, “we just have to look for it. Pearl

said, Nowhere gets more complicated the more you’re here. But we do have that coin, and that’s our

key to unlock the exit. So let’s keep going.”

They scurried along, eyes darting back and forth in search of any break in the tile monotony. They

began to feel as if they were just curving around and around endlessly. Had they made a big circle? Was



there any exit here at all?

After way too long, they finally came upon a stairway leading down to their right. This had to be better

than the roundabout, so they scrambled downward, hands in the air for balance. Upon reaching the

bottom they shot out onto an underground train platform, with tracks that stretched away into tunnels at

either end. There were no signs of any kind; no station name, no map, nothing to indicate where these

tracks might go. It was completely blank, just a huge bare expanse with a dingy curved ceiling and

sickly yellowish lights in metal cages.

“Well, here’s a place where we could use a note from somebody,” said Xavier.

The tunnel at the opposite end lit up, and blinding headlights swung into view. The air filled with the

sound of screeching wheels as a boxy subway train rattled into the station and then shuddered to a stop.

The doors clicked and slid open.

They stood there like tourists, staring into the train. No one made a move to get on. “There’s nobody on

board,” said Jasmine.

“Hey, there’s something,” said Violet, pointing. Just inside the door a small purple blob sat perched on

the edge of a seat. Violet crept forward, leaning in to get a better look. “I wonder what that is.”

“Don’t get on there,” said Xavier, knowing Violet was going to do just that.

Violet stepped onto the train and looked left and right. Then she leaned down and picked up the purple

thing, a single glove, small enough to fit the hand of a little girl. “There’s just one glove,” she said,

holding it up, “like someone took off in a hurry and forgot it.”

“Great, well why don’t you take off in a hurry too,” said Xavier, fidgeting. “It’s not like we can come

get you if this thing decides to drive off with you in it.”



Violet did finally step off the train, and none to soon, since the doors came back to life and smacked

shut right behind her. So close in fact that they closed on the glove, snatching it from Violet’s grasp.

Violet tugged hard but the fingers just stretched and the glove stayed firmly in place.

At the far end of the train a dark figure had disembarked, a black inkblot almost lost in all the linoleum

and tile. It shifted in place a moment, so far away that it seemed to stand still. But in a split-second it

doubled in size, then doubled again as it drew closer, tattered and sooty robes billowing behind it. It

flew forward with the fury of a wretched, raging vulture, bony feet clawing at the ground. It was

headed straight for them.

The train, meanwhile, rumbled out of the station with the stuck glove. Violet hung on and ran with it a

little way, hoping the glove might come loose. But finally she released her grip and turned back toward

Xavier and Jasmine. That’s when she let out a scream.

The black thing responded with a bone-shattering howl that nearly drowned out the departing train. All

three of them spun around on the slick floor and sprinted back toward the stairway and up, taking the

steps in chunks. When they reached the top the hallway had vanished into a dead end with a forbidding,

shiny metal door. Xavier skidded to a stop, grabbed the knob, prayed briefly, and twisted with all his

might. This one was unlocked, and they all tumbled through as the thing bellowed from the stairs

behind them.

They stumbled out into the bright afternoon sunlight of the alleyway outside Igor’s shop. Jasmine

yanked the door shut behind them with both hands and they ran over gravel and asphalt to the street,

legs shaking. Then they stopped and stood close together, breathing hard, hands on their hips. Violet

looked over her shoulder to be sure the door was gone... it was. At least that part didn’t seem to change.

“Wow, what the heck was that?” said Xavier.



“I don’t know. Something in there wants this coin, I think,” said Violet, holding it out in her palm.

“That’s all I can figure.”

“Well, that thing can’t have it,” said Jasmine. “We’ve gotta do something with it. Dump it in the ocean

or something.”

“Yeah,” said Xavier. “Or we could bury it. Or mail it to some big company. Then nobody would ever

find it.”

They all laughed, which relaxed them a little. Then they went to find some pizza, which they figured

would help them feel even better.


chapter 3: igor's repair shop

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