Book of Names

by Slater, David Michael

  “There’s no lock!” he cried.

  “Is there a rope or a cord?”

  The wall along the steps was covered with hooks that held various tools. Quinn scanned them for second, then started fumbling with his belt. He ripped it out of his jeans, cinched it over the doorknob, then worked one the holes over an empty hook.

  “Good idea!” Daphna called.

  “Best I can do!” he said, rushing down the steps.

  Someone rattled the door, then yanked on it. It didn’t open. They pounded on it.

  “We’re coming down there!” Branwen railed before the rattling resumed. The door opened the slightest bit this time. “You’ll never see the light of day again!”

  Daphna knew they didn’t have much time. She folded the map and shoved it into her pocket, then whirled round, scanning the dusty, unfinished basement for anything that could hide a tunnel entrance. There was a water heater, a furnace, more filing cabinets, two old couches. Everything was coated with dust.

  “You’re dead!” Branwen screamed through the crack that was now exposed at the door. The belt was stretching.

  “It’s a belt!” she screamed. “Get a knife! Get a knife!”

  “It’s got to be a door in the floor, right?” Daphna asked, almost pleading.

  She and Quinn ran around, scanning. There were no carpets though, only exposed concrete. Neither saw any kind of squares or panels to pry up.

  “Honey, we’re home!” Branwen called through the increasingly large space at the door.

  “Where is it!” Daphna wailed.

  The basement door crashed open. Branwen let loose an exultant howl, but a moment later a man’s harsh voice hollered, “Police! Freeze!”

  After a moment of panicked silence, Daphna and Quinn—frozen where they stood—heard movement. Then, “Now, punks! Drop the knife and put your hands up on the wall over your heads! I said DO IT NOW!”

  “They’re down there!” Branwen protested. “We have to get them! We have to kill the witch!”

  An argument ensued. Daphna looked at Quinn, who nodded. They resumed their search, scanning for clues as quickly and quietly as they could. Daphna was sweating profusely, despite the cold down there.

  “Downstairs! She’s—!”

  “Drop the knife! Do it now!”

  Daphna pointed to a tall, hulking object in a dark corner, set against a wall. The bulb hanging over it had burned out, so it was mostly obscured by shadow. She and Quinn hurried over into the darkness where it stood.

  It was a wardrobe, as covered in dust as everything else down there.

  Except for its handle, which clearly had a handprint on it.

  “No way,” Quinn said, too loudly. “That’s it. That’s definitely it.” He tried the door, but it was locked. He touched the keyhole embedded in the handle, then turned to Daphna.

  Daphna fumbled to get Mr. G’s key out of her pocket. Her hands were shaking, but she inserted the key directly into the lock.

  It turned!

  Quinn eased the creaky door open.

  Jackets. Lots of jackets. They seemed to fill the entire space inside.

  But they knew this trick.

  A horrific thunderclap crashed outside, shaking the house. Daphna and Quinn both grabbed the wardrobe to avoid falling.

  Then the thunder crashed again, and again.

  “Get back here!” a cop demanded when it finally ended.

  “That witch is down there!” Branwen raged. “I’m telling you! She killed my best friends!”

  “Get back here!”

  Pounding footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Quinn and Daphna forced their way into the wardrobe. Daphna closed it the moment she could and was relieved to hear the lock click when the door latched. Quinn was behind her, already groping around at the back. There wasn’t enough room for Daphna to help, so she stayed where she was, trembling and sweating against the door.

  A struggle was taking place in the basement now. Things were being knocked over. Branwen screamed, “She’s down here! She’s down here! Don’t touch them! My parents will sue you! They’ll have your badges!”

  “Daphna,” Quinn whispered, his voice muffled by all the coats, “I can’t find any kind of door back here. It’s just—No wait, something’s leaning against the back. Feels like a long piece of wood.”

  “Get it out of the way!”

  Quinn struggled a moment, then shoved something through the coats. It jabbed Daphna, so she pushed it to the side. It was almost as tall as she was.

  “The back wall,” Quinn whispered. “It’s metal. And it’s freezing cold.”

  “The tunnel! There’s got to be a latch! Feel around!”

  Something hit the wardrobe, inches from Daphna’s face. She couldn’t help crying out.

  “There! You heard that!” Branwen was evidently trying to open the door now. “In here! She must be hiding in here! I’m not leaving until—until we get them!” Now Branwen was kicking the door. “I’m not leaving until that Wax witch gets what she deserves!”

  Daphna turned around as best as she could, breathing in moldy fabric.

  “Hurry!” she urged.

  “I’m trying! I can’t see! It’s just a wall!”

  “Use your phone!”

  “Oh!”

  “The Wax twins? They really are here?”

  “Daphna! And her boyfriend!”

  A dim light came on in the wardrobe.

  “Well, well, well,” a cop said, “he wasn’t lying, then. Tell you what—We’re gonna cut you a break, all of you. Go on and get out. Go home. We’ll take it from here.”

  “No! She’s—!”

  Daphna heard gasps, loud and clear, right through the door, right through the coats.

  “How dare you point that thing at me!”

  “If I were you, I’d get going before there’s an unfortunate accident.”

  There was a long pause, then the sound of feet on the steps again.

  “You’ll regret this!” Branwen called, but then it was quiet.

  Then, a cop’s voice: “That you, Daphne? And the boy with the book?” The handle rattled a bit. “You guys playing kissey-face in the dark? Hope you made good use of your tongues!”

  Hearty laughter followed this.

  Daphna held her breath. Did she know that voice? Quinn continued to search the back wall, breathing frantically.

  “Come on out of there,” another cop said, pulling hard on the handle. These were those same cops! “We have some folks who’d like to talk to you about that book you gave them. No big deal.”

  Daphna ignored this, willing Quinn to find something.

  A cop kicked the wardrobe door. Hard. It splintered a bit.

  Daphna screamed.

  Another kick. This one caused a loud crack.

  Daphna jammed her body back through the coats to get away from the boot she was sure would break through the door. She bashed into Quinn, but he somehow gave way, as if there was more room back there than she’d imagined.

  Another kick.

  The door broke apart, but Daphna was falling into cold air.

  CHAPTER 22

  no right moment

  “It must be a hundred degrees,” Nora said. They were outside now, near the well.

  Dex had to agree. He was already a sweaty mess from the heat under all those books, and it was almost as bad outside. This was not normal.

  “We should rip that up,” Dex said.

  “I guess you’re right.” Nora looked down at the brittle old diary entry in her hand. “I can barely stand to touch it,” she said. “It feels evil, even if it is worth a fortune.”

  “I’ll do it,” Dex offered. “Destroying valuable texts is one of my specialties.”

  Nora handed it to him, and he proceeded to shred the page, the page that would have settled the dispute over Jack the Ripper’s identity once and for all, not to mention put his retirement issues to rest. But that thought didn’t occur to him until the deed was done
.

  Dex dropped the shreds into the well and watched them fall.

  “Uh oh,” Dex said. “I think some of them landed in the bucket.”

  Nora approached and leaned over to look.

  “It’s usually up,” she said. “It’s my fault. Father will be angry. Here, we’ll just haul it up and toss whatever it caught.” She started turning a crank mounted on the side of the well.

  When it came up, both Dex and Nora looked in, surprised to see more than just fragments of Gull’s entry.

  Along with them was the rest of the diary.

  “That’s weird,” Dex said, lifting it out. “Do you think your dad tossed it because he knew it was useless without the cover?”

  “I don’t think so,” Nora replied. “If he knew where the secret was, he wouldn’t have left the cover with us.”

  Dex thought a moment, then said, “He didn’t really seem like he wanted to find the book to begin with.”

  “I noticed that,” Nora said. “I don’t think he trusted that man. I don’t think he believed he had anything to do with the Pope, talking about assassins and killing you and Daphna. I know my dad. He wouldn’t really try to hurt you. He must have assumed the man was a Mason and didn’t want him coming back for the book. He’s told me many times that if I have to get rid of something in a hurry to use the well. That’s why I’m always to have the bucket up.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Dex. “But that guy is definitely who he says he is. Though I don’t think anyone else in the Church knows what he does—even the Pope.” Dex tossed the book and fragments into the well. He watched them fall until he heard the block of pages splash.

  Just then a thunderclap crashed. If Dex’s head was in a pot and someone slammed the lid on it, the effect couldn’t have been any more jarring. It caused an immediate headache.

  Both Dex and Nora covered their ears and looked up to watch the lightning. It snapped, zigzagging overhead, then started to fade, a bit like the vapor trail of an airplane.

  Only it didn’t fade away completely this time. The faintest white lines stayed scratched across the sky, like the crazy criss-crossing marks ice skates leave on the ice when a crowd clears off.

  Something was happening up there, but it was hard to see clearly what it was. Impossible, actually, because the sky seemed to blur around the lines.

  “I’m scared,” Nora said, staring up at them. “I’m scared of that thunder, but I’m even more sacred of that lightning now. What’s it doing? It looks like heat rising up off a road when it’s hot—hot like this.”

  “That is heat,” Dex said.

  “Do you think so? From the lightning being so hot? It’s electricity, right?”

  “That’s not lightning.” Dex shook his head. It should have been obvious from the start.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those lines—” he said, “They’re not electricity.”

  “What are they then?”

  “Cracks.”

  “Cracks? In the sky? You—you don’t mean in Heaven, do you?”

  “Yes,” Dexter said. “The walls of Heaven must be cracking from the heat—from the fire. Anyway, the heat is leaking out. We better get a move on.”

  Dex headed down the drive leading down and around to the synagogue, but Nora remained fixed where she was, staring up at the ripples of heat coming down from above.

  “Nora,” he said gently, coming back, worried that this was going to be too much for her.

  Nora didn’t start praying. Instead, she looked at him, clearly all there in her eyes. Why were her eyes clear? Why were his?

  “I just wanted to say thank you again,” she said, “for understanding. For not leaving me back there like maybe you should have. You’ve done so much for me in just, I guess, a few hours.”

  “It’s okay, really,” Dex said. But he was pleased. So pleased.

  The pair made their way back past the playground and down around to the little paved way that linked the church and synagogue parking lots. They walked through all the cars, hunching a bit to avoid being seen, but there was no one out there. When they got around behind the building where the entry courtyard was, they stopped and squatted behind a van.

  “What exactly is our plan?” Nora asked. “I don’t think we can just walk right in and not get in trouble with the curfew and all.”

  “Good question,” Dex said. He wished, suddenly, that Daphna were there to offer a suggestion. He hoped she was okay. He’d have to call as soon as they had a minute. Maybe he should have called already. No, he should call right now.

  “Dex,” Nora said. She was pointing at something, the courtyard gate.

  People were suddenly flooding out through it. At the same time, a long line of cars started moving into the lot. Horns honked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “They have two services,” Nora explained. The first one must have just ended. And look, there are lots of kids.”

  And there were, of all ages. Most of them seemed rather agitated. Come to think of it, so did most of their parents. There was a lot of fussing going on: kids been dragged by the hands, parents shushing and hissing at them along the way.

  “They must have gotten exceptions!” Dex said, getting to his feet. “For the religious event! Let’s go.”

  Nora stood up and the pair walked swiftly into the crowd coming out.

  “Hey!” someone shouted as they squeezed past the first few people going the opposite direction.

  “Can’t you wait!” someone else demanded.

  But no one stopped them.

  “What should we do?” Nora asked. “Find the rabbi?” They were wedging their way into a rather peaceful courtyard made up of pavers inscribed with people’s names.

  “I guess,” Dex said. “But we better hurry before the service starts. Let’s get inside.”

  It was no easy task getting in through the crowds leaving the main entrance, but once they managed it, Dex and Nora found themselves in a foyer facing three sets of wooden doors. People were flowing out through all three. There appeared to be many rows of benches behind them.

  They forced their way through again, irritating just about everyone they brushed by.

  Dex saw a man collecting prayer books, so he approached him.

  “Ah,” he said, “is the rabbi around?”

  The man, a full-bellied guy wearing a green and yellow Oregon Ducks tie with a matching skullcap, looked put out by the question.

  “He’s resting between services,” he said.

  “We really need to see him.”

  “Everyone needs him today!” the man snarled. “And it’s mostly because of kids like you! The first service was a disaster! Go home and give the guy a break!”

  “Okay, okay,” Dex said, backing away. But he’d seen the man glance across the sanctuary toward the raised platform on which the ark resided. The towering glass cabinet was fronted by glass etched with colorful geometric patterns. It was topped by a little replica of the Ten Commandments. Dex knew it housed the Torah.

  The rabbi was obviously not in there. Tall chairs sat on either side of it, only they were all empty. But there was a door, a little door he now saw, in what looked like a short hall next to the platform.

  “Thanks, anyway,” Dex said, taking Nora by the hand.

  The room was filling up now as people streamed in for the second service, so there was plenty of cover for the pair as Dex led the way to the little door. The walls of the hall it was in were covered with dark little plaques engraved with what looked like names and dates—names were everywhere, it seemed. Dex squinted at one, assuming they were commemorations for deceased congregants, but Nora nudged him.

  The door was right there. Dex turned and looked at it, then scanned the crowd. He could hear angry talk about the outrageous thunder and heat and the even more outrageous children. He was waiting for the right moment.

  But there was no right moment, so Dex just grabbed the knob, which, thankfully, tur
ned. He opened the door just enough for Nora to slip inside.

  After one more quick check to make sure they’d not been seen, Dex slipped in behind her.

  CHAPTER 23

  going underground

  Daphna landed on Quinn, then rolled onto a dirt floor. Quinn didn’t seem any worse for the wear. He immediately jumped up, and she watched him reach up to close the door they’d fallen through.

  A tunnel! They were in a tunnel!

  The hidden door clicked under Quinn’s hand and became invisible, blending in with the wall of earth into which it was set.

  Quinn let out a huge sigh and stepped back.

  “There was a little button,” he said, picking up his phone, which had fallen but was still casting a bit of light on some kind of beam running up along the wall. “It was way up in the corner.”

  Daphna got up, took her phone out, and waved it around. The beam was part of a roof support. It looked like others were spaced every so often into the distance, but it was too dark to be sure.

  “Look at this,” Quinn said. He was aiming his phone now at the beam at about eye-level.

  Daphna moved to see what he was looking at. There was something scratched into the wood there. Upon close inspection, she saw that it was quite clearly a butterfly.

  “Maybe it’s a marker for your teacher’s house,” Quinn said, “since he’s into butterflies. Like an address.”

  “Yes,” Daphna agreed. “That must be what it—”

  There was a clang that made the pair jump. One of the cops had kicked the wardrobe’s metal door.

  Daphna remembered her panic.

  “Where should we go?” she hissed.

  The door was struck again, with tremendous force. The clang echoed in the dark. The door buckled a bit, but did not give way.

  Quinn and Daphna both waved their phones around. Tunnels led off in several directions.

  Quinn rushed into one. “Look!”

  Daphna followed. In the meager light produced by their phones, she saw a motorized scooter—in fact, a whole line of scooters, all leaning against the wall.

  They heard one more clang, and then the sound of the door falling into the tunnel. They heard the cops jump down.