The floor formed a continuous wall on both sides of their present position, extending upwards to meet high above their heads. It then zoomed off towards an opening far away. “It’s like we’re in a tunnel,” Matthew said. “Look…over there.” He was pointing at the distant round aperture through which weak light spilled into the place. His younger sister followed his arm and stared at this opening, beyond which could lie the answer to their dilemma. “How did we get here?” Matthew asked.
“I just wanna go home,” Stephanie whined.
Matthew stood up. Maintaining his balance on that sloping floor was easier than it looked. He raised his right hand but failed to touch the tunnel’s ceiling. Now he turned to the clear-cut opening in the distance, which probably encircled dawn breaking outside the structure. He wanted to get to that edge but kept wondering whether that was the best thing to do.
“Matthew, what happened to us? How did we get here?”
Stephanie’s voice sounded very cautious and distant in Matthew’s head, which was filled with all kinds of confusing thoughts. He turned to her with a baffled look. He didn’t have a ready reply. “We must get to that light, Steph,” he finally managed. “It’s the right thing to do.”
He helped her up and took the lead as they started moving towards the opening. Curiosity urged them on, but on hearing men’s voices coming from beyond the tunnel’s mouth, they stopped to turn startled faces at each other.
“What if they’re bad people?” Stephanie asked.
“I don’t think so,” Matthew said. “I know they’ll help us.” Still, he hesitated. Amidst the voices, he could also hear metal on metal as well as strange-sounding engines. Someone was shouting at the men. “They must be speaking a foreign language,” he said. “Can’t get a word.”
“Then let’s go back,” Stephanie suggested.
“No,” Matthew said. “We mustn’t be scared, Steph.”
“I’m not scared,” Stephanie blurted out. “I’m just being…careful.”
“Careful about what? Those men could be working near the mall, you know.”
“Then how did we get to the mall, Matt? And–And these men are speaking funny…where’re they from, Matt?”
Matthew frowned. What if they’d really walked out of the house in their sleep? He’d heard Mom and Dad discussing news about a boy who did just that in the neighborhood some days back. ‘Sleepwalking,’ they called it. Of course, that would answer all their questions if it was true, but how did they both sleepwalk at the same time? That could only deepen the mystery, and the only way to unravel it was to go outside through the tunnel’s gaping mouth, where the noisy men spoke in a foreign language surrounded by their noisy engines. Matthew turned to his sister and took her hand.
“What?” she began.
“Trust me, Steph...,” he said. “We need to go outside right now if we want to know what’s really happening…you trust me, right?” She nodded. “Good, let’s go.”
The voices and chugging vehicular noise grew louder as the children approached the tunnel’s entrance. More light spilled into the place, but they were yet to make out anything through the round aperture ahead of them.
Stephanie didn’t hesitate to voice her concern. “Matthew, let’s go back,” she said. Her brother was acting deaf. “Let’s go back, please?”
“Almost there, Steph,” he murmured. “We can’t go back now.”
“Why not?”
Matthew took his time. “Because we–we need to know where we are. We can’t do that if we turn back now.”
His sister fell silent. They were a few feet from the tunnel’s concrete edge. A dog barked in the distance, startling them both. Stephanie stopped to listen to the animal and Matthew had to slow down for her to catch up. He felt a bit relieved after this occurrence, though. It showed that people were living nearby. “Those men outside can only be construction workers, Steph,” he told his sister as they walked towards the tunnel’s entrance. “They’re definitely driving tractors and bulldozers. The engines sound very familiar now.”
But Stephanie still thought her brother had it all wrong. Something weird had happened to them, and they were yet to find out what it was.
They got to the tunnel’s mouth and realized that they were in a cave. The illumination was artificial. Bright light bulbs shone through intense smoke, which was the reason for the drastic reduction in visibility. These fumes wafted into the tunnel as the children stood on its edge staring at their surroundings. They could hear the familiar sound of a train’s engine chugging away to their left, but could see neither the train nor its tracks owing to the smoke. More so, the voices and vehicular engine noise were now at their loudest. The workers were shouting at one another.
“What if they’re bad people?” Stephanie asked again.
“No, they won’t be.” Matthew sounded exasperated.
“And we can’t see,” Stephanie continued, but her brother ignored her. The structure’s edge was wider than it looked from afar. He bent down and jumped over it out of the tunnel. His feet hit the ground almost immediately. He started coughing. Stephanie climbed out of the tunnel without jumping. It wasn’t that high above ground. She began to cough as well. “What now?” she asked. “We still can’t see. The smoke...”
“We must move away from it,” Matthew said. He pulled his sister forward in a bid to do this, and they almost ran into a gray wall, which had suddenly loomed out from the smoke. Withdrawing behind a shield-like appendage attached to this imposing obstruction, they peeped out at the people working in the place, as well as the new structure blocking their way.
“What is it?” Stephanie wondered aloud. Her brother shook his head as his eyes swept across this behemoth metallic contraption. Then he noticed something. The many wheels attached to the wall? Weren’t those things below the wheels train tracks?
“It’s part of the train,” Matthew exclaimed. “Look.” His sister followed his pointing finger upwards and to the left of their position.
The high wall was one of a group of connected freight cars that swept out before them from the locomotive engine, which idled away fifteen or twenty freight cars behind their position but had been hidden by the smoke coming from its exhaust port. The children had stopped coughing once they stepped away from the smoke’s direct path, but their eyes were beginning to water owing to the intensity of the exhaust fumes surrounding them.
“The smoke is too much,” Stephanie complained.
“We’re in a cave, Steph,” Matthew said as if his sister was yet to appreciate this fact. He was studying their surroundings. “I can’t see any windows, so no way out for the smoke. We must find a way outside as soon as possible.”
“What of the tunnel?” Stephanie asked. “Is that not a way out for the smoke?”
Matthew blushed. Of course, the tunnel could be a large chimney for the trains stopping in this underground station. They had stopped coughing simply because the smoke was now going into the tunnel and would soon clear. The train was probably warming up to leave the station. How could he have missed that? “You’re right, Steph,” he agreed, nodding. “But we still need to get outside right now. We can’t know where we are if we remain here.”
“Do we have a cave at home?” Stephanie asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know if it’s this big.” Matthew was studying the men, most of whom were driving tractors and bulldozers onto platforms in-between the train’s freight cars. “They don’t look like construction workers,” he said. “They don’t even look like townsfolk. They look more like officers…soldiers.”
“Are they good people?”
“I don’t know, but I think they are.”
“Told you we shouldn’t have come out,” Stephanie began. “Now we can’t go back without being seen.”
“Stop whining like a baby,” Matthew chided her, although the warning continued ringing in his head. She could be right. None of the men looked friendly in their gray jackets and face caps, and why were some of
them carrying guns? What were they protecting the other workers from? Certainly not people from Sleepy Lake, who could never harm anyone. Were they guarding the train’s cargo of vehicles, which all looked shiny and new? “Those tractors and bulldozers,” he began.
“What about them?”
“They’re painted dead green instead of yellow. That’s very odd. Tractors and bulldozers are usually yellow, and what’s with the cross on their sides?”
“Who’s there?” a man demanded behind the children, and they turned to face him with beating hearts. Dressed in a gray overcoat unlike the other workers, this unsmiling fellow had a fierce-looking pistol, which he pointed at the two before him, even though he had seen that they were kids. Slowly, the children stepped backward, the tunnel’s mouth their primary destination. “Halt,” the man shouted, and they stopped in their tracks. At least, he spoke English.
“Excuse me, sir,” Matthew began, “but we need to get back to our house? It seems we’re lost.”
“French Jews,” the man exploded, visibly agitated. “How did you get here?” He drew nearer and the children moved further backward.
Matthew stared at the man’s uniform and suddenly became alarmed as realization dawned on him. Why was a very small version of the cross painted on the tractors and bulldozers pinned to this fellow’s great overcoat? Slowly, he pulled Stephanie further backward.
“Answer me,” the man roared and quickly came at them.
“He’s bad, Steph,” Matthew shouted. “Back to the tunnel.” He turned and scampered into the tunnel behind his sister.
The officer stopped and turned to some guards behind him. “They came through the tunnel,” he yelled. “Follow me. We must catch them before they escape to French pigs and tell our secret. Quickly!” He clambered into the tunnel. Both kids were making progress down its dark belly. “Stop right there or I shoot,” he called out. “Halt!” He went after them.
“Matthew, he has a torch!” Stephanie shouted with fright.
“Stop talking! Run.”
The path was difficult at the pace they were going and smoke from the train now filled the structure, making them cough the more as they blinked back overwhelming tears. In addition, a new source of light basked their backs and this was not good.
“What if he shoots us?” Stephanie asked, ignoring her brother’s order.
Matthew looked back at the figure bearing down on them and realized that the tunnel and smoke were also hampering the man. Due to this, they’d given the fellow a wide gap and that was good. “He can’t try it here,” the boy breathed. “It could hit him instead.”
But their situation was about to get worse. The tunnel suddenly opened into a bigger one, and they tumbled out.
Matthew grabbed Stephanie. He wasted no time.
“Where are we going?” she asked him. They’d been running for a while, and she was beginning to tire.
“We mustn’t stop now, Steph,” Matthew urged her. He knew they couldn’t stop then. They didn’t have that luxury. “Gosh! It’s a dead-end,” he suddenly cried, and they almost crashed into the high wall cutting them off around the corner. Sunlight spilled in from a wide window high above them, and they realized it was still noon. “We can’t get up there,” Matthew said. For the first time in his life, he was scared stiff. Stephanie looked like she’d seen a ghost.
Their fear burst out from behind them, and they backed the wall. Matthew pushed Stephanie behind him and faced the new threat. “What do you want from us?” His voice lacked confidence.
“Jewish pigs,” the man spat out. He wore weird-looking pants, which he tucked into black leather knee-length boots. “You belong to a concentration camp.”
“We’re not Jewish pigs,” Stephanie said.
“Leave that for me to decide,” the man growled, and the little girl zipped her mouth. The soldier glared at Matthew and put away his service pistol to take a step forward.
“My…sister’s right, sir,” the boy said boldly. “We’re not French, and we’re not Jewish. We’re Americans, and we’ve lost our way.”
“Americans?” This appeared to be significant because the man stopped in his tracks. “Lost, you say?”
Matthew realized that the fellow had never said a word of German.
“But it’s true,” the officer continued, covering the distance between them. “You don’t speak like the French. You don’t look like them. You’re only dressed like them…and I can see that now.”
Matthew sighed in relief.
“So where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The book, you fool,” the soldier snapped, fuming. “I know you must be with it. I’ve waited for a year now and will strangle you if you lie to me.”
The boy realized he was still holding the book before he was brutishly grabbed by the neck, and it was desperately snatched from him.
Matthew’s attacker could not contain his excitement and shook all over as he pushed the boy to the ground, and threatened a scared Stephanie further back. “Must escape! Must escape!” the man muttered repeatedly as he quickly flipped through the book’s pages, and tried to use the light pouring in from above.
Suddenly, a deafening noise erupted in the enclosure as a staccato burst of machine gun fire poured in as well. The German officer was riddled with bullets before he could discern what was happening. His men faced the same fate when they appeared behind him. The whole place was like a blur. Stephanie was screaming.
“Quick,” a new character snapped near the scared children. “We must get out of here! Rapide!” He pumped more bullets into the enemy.
Matthew grabbed the book and scampered through a secret door of rock behind Stephanie.
He could hear the bullets raining down behind him.
* * *
THE BLACK BOOK
whisks its characters away from their serene lives into an ancient dispute.
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