The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery

by Hautman, Pete/Logue, Mary

  She was in a chamber about the size of a classroom. She looked around quickly, checking for cave bears and trolls.

  She seemed to be alone. Just her, and the dangling rope, and a bunch of rocks scattered on the floor. She was lucky she hadn’t landed on one. She shined the light to where the rope disappeared into the shaft, five feet above her head. Could she climb back up into the shaft? Maybe if she held on to the rope and climbed up on Brian’s shoulders she could pull herself up.

  Maybe.

  But first she had to find Brian. She looked around the chamber again and found an opening leading into a passageway. She shined her light into the passage. Dark. That was the problem with caves. Too much dark.

  Brian came across his own stupid footprints four times before he finally noticed an opening he hadn’t seen before. At first he thought the six-inch-wide crack was too small to fit through. He shined his light into the crack and saw that it got wider.

  Might as well try, he thought. Turning sideways, he tried to wedge himself into the crack, but his chest was too wide. He took a couple of deep breaths, then blew all the air out of his lungs and tried again.

  It worked! He was squeezing through, almost as if the wall was swallowing him, when his shirt caught on a projecting chunk of rock. Brian panicked. He was stuck in a crevice with no air in his lungs. He closed his eyes and tried to will himself smaller, then pushed hard with his legs. He heard his shirt rip, the pressure on his chest eased and he sucked air into his lungs.

  He had made it. The bad news was that he’d have to do it again to get back out. Oh well, he would deal with that when the time came.

  The new passageway quickly widened. For the first time, Brian found footprints that were not his own. Yes! He followed the footprints.

  The passageway led to another chamber. Had he been here before? Brian shined his flashlight around. At first pass, he didn’t see anything. Then when he played the flashlight around the chamber more slowly, he saw something in the far corner. He jumped into the chamber and ran over to the scattered collection of bones.

  Dr. Dart’s rescuers had been none too kind to poor Yorick. His bones had been scattered and trampled as the rescue workers had put the injured archaeologist on a stretcher and carried him out of the cave. A few yards from the scattered bones he found the skull hiding behind a tumble of rocks. Brian picked up the skull, saying, “Don’t bite me or anything, Yorick. It’s me, the guy who swore an oath on your stupid bony head.”

  Yorick grinned up at him. Brian was glad the skull had a name—it made it not quite so grisly. He set the skull against the wall by the bones, then took out the disposable flash camera Roni had given him. Holding the flashlight and the camera at the same time, he framed the shot of the bones with the skull in the exact center, then hit the button.

  The flash lit up the cavern.

  But what was that? Brian thought he had seen an odd glare in Yorick’s skull. He took a step to the side and photographed the scene from a different angle.

  Again, the odd glare. He bent over the skull and shined his light into Yorick’s empty eye sockets. He could see through to the back of the skull. But what was that shiny thing?

  He picked up the skull and turned it around. On the back of the skull, part of the bone had been replaced by a shiny steel plate the size of a half-dollar.

  Brian stared at the metal patch for several seconds. Did ancient Native Americans do brain surgery? Possibly. But did they have steel? Brian thought about the turkey tail on his desk at home and shook his head. Anybody who had to make arrowheads out of rocks would not be able to patch a skull with stainless steel.

  There was only one possible conclusion. Whoever Yorick had been, he wasn’t ancient. He probably wasn’t even an Indian.

  Stupid Yorick. Probably just some old prospector who had wandered into the cave and died. Brian looked more closely at the pile of bones and saw something else—a black rubber cup about the size of a shot glass. Brian picked it up, trying to think what it was. It looked familiar.

  Whatever it was, it was definitely not Native American.

  So much for their saving an “Indian burial ground” from the bulldozers.

  He shrugged and added the rubber cup to the collection in his pocket, then started back toward the cave entrance—if he could find it.

  I do not like caves, Roni thought to herself as she inched her way along the passage. I do not like caves and I do not like secret passages. I do not like them at all. And if I see one more bat, I am going to scream my lungs out.

  The passage opened into another chamber much like the first. Only now there were two more openings. One might lead to Brian, the other to a bottomless pit, or worse.

  “Brian?” she called out. “Hello?” Her voice echoed briefly, then died. She examined the floor and found footprints going in and out of both exits. Great. Maybe she should go back to the entrance and wait for him to show up.

  Roni was still standing there, undecided, when she heard a faint noise on her left. She switched off her flashlight, pressed her back to the wall and waited.

  A few seconds later she saw a flashlight beam shine from the passageway, followed by Brian, wriggling out from a narrow crack in the wall. He was only a few feet away from her.

  What sound would a bear make? As soon as he was free of the opening, she let out a roar that sounded more like a sick cat than a cave bear, but worked perfectly. Brian yelped and jumped like a Pogo stick.

  Roni almost fell down laughing.

  “That’s not funny!” Brian said.

  “Yes it is,” Roni said, still laughing.

  “Okay, okay,” Brian said after a second. “Maybe it’s a little funny.” He shined his light around the chamber. “Say, do you know the way back?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Did you find Yorick?”

  “Yeah . . . only you’re not going to like this.”

  “Like what?” Roni asked.

  “Like, he has a metal plate in his skull.”

  She’s taking this remarkably well, Brian thought as they moved slowly through the cramped passage, crouching to keep their heads from hitting the low ceiling.

  Roni, a few feet ahead of him, said, “I wonder who he was.”

  “Who knows?” Brian said. “But whoever he was, I’ll bet they won’t stop the development to find out.”

  “Hey, I forgot to tell you! I figured out how to stop the bulldozers.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. I found out that the Bloodwaters aren’t really Bloodwaters. Their real name is Oraczko.”

  “Gesundheit,” said Brian.

  “No, I mean that’s their name. Fitzroy and Camillia Oraczko.”

  “Fitzroy?” said Brian. “You’re kidding.”

  “Seriously. I found it on the Web. He’s been involved in a bunch of other real estate scams. It’s all a plot to steal money from the city. I can prove it.”

  Brian thought for a moment. “If you already figured all that out, what the heck are we doing in this cave?”

  “I thought you liked caves. Besides, we had to check out Yorick, right? And look for evidence of who attacked Dr. Dart. Did you find anything?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I—hey, are we here?”

  They had reached the end of the passageway and entered a familiar-looking chamber.

  “Ta-da!” Roni said. “Told you I knew how to get back.”

  Brian shined his flashlight around. This had to be the right chamber—but something was missing.

  “Where’s the rope?” he asked.

  35

  the black nose

  “Rope?”

  Roni looked up at the opening five feet above her head and her heart went thunk.

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “The rope. The thing we climbed down on. The thing we need so we can climb back out.”

  Roni looked up at the bottom of the shaft and shuddered. It was only five feet above her head, but with no rope it might as well be five miles.

&nbs
p; “It was there when I left,” she said.

  For several seconds they stood in silence, both flashlight beams on the ropeless opening above them.

  “Somebody must have pulled it up,” Brian said.

  “Good one, Watson. Do you have any other brilliant observations?”

  “I wonder who.”

  “I did see somebody out there with a flashlight. That’s why I climbed down here—so whoever it was wouldn’t see me.”

  “Who do you think it was? Who knew we were here?”

  Roni thought for a moment. “Eric, maybe,” she said.

  “You told Eric Bloodwater we were coming here? Are you nuts?”

  “It wasn’t like that. He called and . . .” Roni’s voice got small. “. . . I told him I was going spelunking. But I figured he wouldn’t know what I was talking about.” She added, “I suppose he could have looked it up.”

  “He’s probably laughing himself to death right now,” Brian said.

  “We don’t know for sure it was him. I also ran into Professor Bloom at the Quik Mart. He might have overheard me say something about caves when I was buying the camera.”

  “Why would Professor Bloom want to trap us in a cave?”

  “Good point. So it was probably Eric, trapping me in another dark passageway. I’m going to kill him.”

  “Uh-oh,” Brian said.

  “ ‘Uh-oh’ what?”

  “Jillian Greystone. I saw her up on the bluff when I was waiting for the bats to come out. She might have hidden in the woods and spied on us. So at least three people knew we were here.”

  “Three that we know of. Not that it does us any good.”

  “Actually, it does help. One of them might eventually tell the police.” Brian paused. “After we’ve been missing for a day or so.”

  “I’m hungry right now,” Roni said.

  Brian pulled something out of his pocket. “Care for a Tootsie Roll?”

  Roni took the Tootsie Roll and put it in her pocket. “I’ll save it for later.” She shined her light on the opening above them. “Maybe if you climb up on my shoulders?”

  “Not high enough,” Brian said. “I don’t suppose you have a ladder in your pocket?”

  “I left my ladder at home. Hey, don’t you have a phone?”

  “Of course!” Brian pulled out his dad’s cell phone and turned it on. He frowned.

  “Let me guess,” Roni said. “No signal.”

  Brian sat down on a chunk of limestone and switched off his flashlight. “Better turn yours off, too.”

  “Why?” Roni did not like the thought of sitting in the dark.

  “Because we have to save our batteries. No telling how long we’ll be in here.”

  Brian did his best thinking in the dark. He loved the way if he stared really hard in absolute darkness little floaters would appear. Especially if he closed his eyes and pressed on his eyeballs. He had read that the imaginary lights were called phosphenes. He liked to think of phosphenes as tiny idea berries ready to be plucked. One of them might know how to get out of this cave.

  “Stop humming!” Roni said.

  Brian started as if from a deep sleep. “Was I humming?”

  “Yes, you were, and it’s driving me crazy. Have you figured out how to make the ceiling lower?”

  “No . . . but hey! How about if we make the floor higher.”

  Roni didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she switched on her flashlight. “Good idea. We’d better get started.”

  They started by dragging all the loose rocks to the center of the chamber. The limestone chunks were mostly flat, like thick chunks of petrified peanut brittle. They shoved them all together to make an uneven platform directly beneath the hole.

  “Well, that gets us about six inches closer,” Brian said.

  Roni looked around the chamber. “We’re already out of rocks.”

  “Then let’s get some more,” Brian said as he ducked into the passageway.

  Roni had never worked so hard in her entire life. Every rock had to be lifted and carried, rolled or dragged back through the passageway and added to the platform. The first few trips weren’t so bad, but Roni’s arms and back and legs soon began to burn and throb. But as the stone platform grew, Roni felt a fierce pride burning inside her.

  This was no ordinary pile of rocks. This pile of rocks was going to save their lives.

  Several times during the construction Brian tried to tell her it was high enough, but Roni kept saying no, it wasn’t quite there. “I want you up on my shoulders only once.”

  Shortly after midnight, Roni found a squarish chunk of limestone about three inches thick and as big around as a manhole cover—the perfect cap for their lifesaving pile.

  When she rolled it in, Brian was sitting cross-legged on the pile of rocks, holding his flashlight in his lap. The beam shined straight up, giving his face a spooky, horror show look. For some reason his nose was black, totally black.

  Roni pointed down at the slab. “Help me lift it up.”

  With much grunting and straining they managed to get the flat stone onto the top of the pile. They stepped back to admire their work, a pile almost as high as Brian was tall.

  “It’s beautiful,” Roni said. “Okay, I’ll bite. What is that thing on your nose?”

  “I don’t know.” Brian removed the black object and handed it to her. “I found it back by Yorick’s skeleton.”

  Roni looked at the small rubber cup. “It looks like one of those things you put on the leg of a chair to keep it from scratching the floor.” Deep inside her brain, pieces clicked into place, gears meshed, doors opened.

  “I know what this is!” she said.

  At that exact moment, her flashlight went out.

  “Uh-oh. I guess we’d better get out of here while we’ve still got one working flashlight,” Brian said. His own flashlight was fading.

  She climbed carefully onto the pile and stood on the flat stone at the top. A few of the rocks shifted slightly, then settled into place. Roni tipped her head back. The opening was so close she could reach up and touch it.

  “Give me your light.” She shined the beam up into the shaft. The light was too weak for her to see much of anything—then it died completely.

  36

  up and out

  Brian didn’t think he would ever try out for the cheerleading squad, but he had always thought the human pyramid was a neat routine. He never imagined, though, that he would have to climb up on somebody’s shoulders in utter darkness.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry!” Brian said.

  “Just . . . maybe if I crouch down, and then you sit on my shoulders and I stand up . . .”

  “I think I have to be actually standing on your shoulders for it to work. Look, just pretend you’re a tree, and I’ll climb you.”

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry.”

  After several tries, with Roni getting crankier by the minute, Brian was finally able to balance on Roni’s shoulders while she crouched down. That got him high enough that his head was almost inside the bottom of the shaft.

  “Okay, now stand up,” he said.

  He felt her body shaking.

  “You’re too heavy!”

  “No, I’m not. Just stand up.”

  “I can’t. Your feet are trying to dislocate my shoulders.”

  “Hot bath,” Brian said. “Fresh air, stop the bulldozers, French donuts, warm bed.”

  Roni groaned.

  “Bats,” Brian said. “The bats will be coming back.” He felt around in the shaft and found a handhold. He would be able to take a little weight off her. “On three! One bat, two bats, THREE BATS!”

  With a hoarse shout, Roni stood up, injecting Brian into the shaft.

  As soon as he was in, Brian jammed his back against the wall and kicked one leg up to brace himself. Suddenly there was no Roni beneath him. He swung his other foot up and wedged himself firmly in the shaft.

  Below him he heard Roni mutt
ering to herself.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “You kicked me in the head!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I think so,” Brian said, even though he wasn’t sure. He was afraid that if he moved even one of his feet off the wall, he’d crash down right on top of that pile of rocks and maybe Roni, too. But he had to try. He put his hands behind his back and pushed against them. Leaning forward, he started to walk up the wall. One hand, one foot, other hand, other foot. Inches at a time. If he slipped, there would be no rope to grab. He could see the stars above him, and soon he could see the rim of the shaft. Another few minutes of careful inching upward and he was able to touch the rocky rim. In one quick jerk he flung his arms over the edge of the hole and pushed as hard as he could with his feet. His chest hit the ground, and his legs were kicking in thin air. He stroked forward with his arms and wriggled out of the shaft.

  “Brian?” Roni’s voice sounded small and afraid.

  “I’m out,” he shouted back down.

  “Is the rope still there?”

  Brian looked around. The moon had risen, giving him enough light to see. He found the rope in a pile, still tied to the tree. He tugged on it to make sure the knot was secure, then dragged it back to the hole.

  “The rope’s coming down,” he shouted.

  He fed the rope into the hole.

  “Got it!” Roni said.

  “Think you can climb it?” he asked.

  Roni didn’t say anything. Several seconds passed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Eating my Tootsie Roll.”

  “Don’t forget about those bats,” Brian said.

  Silence.

  A few seconds later Brian felt the rope go taut.

  “Here I come,” Roni said.

  37

  a drastic measure

  They rolled to a stop in front of Brian’s house. It was after one o’clock in the morning and all the lights were on. So much for sneaking in without his mom knowing he’d been gone. Brian swung off the Vespa and stood staring at the house.