The Secret of the Sacred Four

by E J Elwin

  “Okay, let’s gather it up,” I said, rising from my chair.

  “Quickly,” said Harriet lightly. “Remember, we are being hunted.”

  It took all of about two minutes for me and Connor to gather all the clothes I had previously brought him. Harriet gave us her brown leather backpack to put it in since my own was filled with the clothes I had stuffed into it before escaping my bedroom. Connor changed from his sweatpants into a pair of my jeans, and I gave him one of my jackets before throwing on my black peacoat. We then stood in front of Harriet’s bedroom door with our backpacks slung over our shoulders, looking like two children heading off to school. Harriet emerged from her bedroom, and Connor and I both gasped in amazement as we saw what she held in her hand.

  A broom.

  But this wasn’t one of those neon-colored metal bars with uniform plastic bristles at the end of it. This broom was made of thick gnarled wood. It curved slightly, and was nicked and bumpy in places, but still looked extremely strong. The bundle of twigs that stuck out firmly at the end of it were rigid and unbent. No, this was not a broom. It was a broomstick.

  “Wow,” whispered Connor. He reached out a tentative hand toward the broomstick as if it were a living thing that might snap at him. “You really fly around on this thing?” he asked, prodding the wooden handle with his finger.

  “I haven’t in a long while actually,” said Harriet. “Modern witches have to be a lot more careful than our ancestors about flying since the invention of the airplane. In the twenty-first century, we not only have jet planes and helicopters, but also so much surveillance. Flying has to be done extremely carefully and always at night.”

  “Is it fast?” I asked.

  “It’ll zoom me away from here before the Brotherhood even realizes what happened.”

  “Ooh, can’t we go with you?” asked Connor, looking longingly at the broomstick.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Harriet smiled, “but only a witch can fly a broomstick.”

  “Damn,” said Connor.

  “What about your stuff?” I asked.

  “It’ll follow along behind me,” she said. “It doesn’t need a broomstick.”

  I imagined Harriet streaking across the night sky with all her possessions flying along unsupported behind her, bunched up together in a giant block like the dirt from Connor’s grave.

  “Alright,” she said, “let’s get you both down into the passageway.”

  It was nearly half past ten. We had an hour and a half before the barrier came down and the Brotherhood launched their new attack on the house. Connor and I followed Harriet into the guest room where she pulled back the rug in front of the fireplace. Beneath it, there was what at first looked like just more of the same hardwood floor that was everywhere else in the house. Then I saw the small metal latch set into a groove in the wood.

  Harriet gripped the latch and pulled, revealing the outlines of a trapdoor about the size of a manhole but square-shaped. The door was heavy and thick, and it creaked like the front door of the house as Harriet lifted it open. Behind this door however, there was nothing but darkness, a black abyss that looked endless.

  “Um…” said Connor, looking down into the blackness.

  “Oh, right,” said Harriet, and she cleared her throat.

  “Darkness to day, shadows at bay

  Light the way, for we cannot stay.”

  Flickering firelight illuminated a square of dirt about twenty feet below the house, at the end of a long narrow hole which had been drilled into the ground. Thick wooden rungs ran down along the inside of it, and it was just wide enough for one person to climb through at a time.

  “Here’s the address to my friends’ house,” said Harriet. She handed me a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it in purple ink. “When you get to the bus station in Seaside, call a cab to get you the rest of the way. Do you have money for it?”

  “In my bag,” I said, hoisting my backpack up on my shoulder.

  “Well then,” she said, “this is where we part, for now.” My stomach turned nervously. I reached out and hugged her. “It’ll be fine,” she said in my ear. “We’ll see each other very soon.”

  I pulled back from her and nodded. She opened her arms to embrace Connor.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice muffled in her shoulder. “I’d be dead without you.”

  Harriet laughed and held his face in her hands. “You are a treasure, Connor,” she said. “Now let’s get going before we’re all killed.”

  Connor stepped toward the hole, and then I remembered something. “Wait!” I said. “What about disguises?”

  “Disguises?” asked Harriet.

  “Not just because of the Brotherhood,” I said. “You’re supposed to be dead, Connor. What if somebody recognizes you?”

  “Oh, right,” he said.

  “I’m afraid there’s no time,” said Harriet. “And remember that the fire in the cauldron needs to stay burning for the temporary disguises to work. The Brotherhood will break in here well before you get to Seaside. I could hide the cauldron down there—” she pointed into the passageway, “but if they find it and put the fire out, and your faces suddenly morph in front of a bus full of people or some poor cab driver… we’re going to have a lot more problems than just the Brotherhood.”

  She was right. We would have to risk it.

  “Put that hood on,” she said, indicating the hood on the jacket Connor was wearing. “Don’t attract attention to yourselves and you’ll be fine. Now go.”

  I landed on the soft dirt floor after Connor in a small cloud of dust. We stood at the opening of a long narrow tunnel that went off in a straight line with no visible end point. Torches were set into the walls in metal sconces on either side, flanking it like flaming sentinels. There were more of them placed at regular intervals along the tunnel walls, extending into the distance as far as the eye could see, so that the tunnel looked endless and our destination looked like nothing more than a flickering dot of golden light.

  “I’ll see you both in Seaside!” called Harriet. “Be safe!”

  Connor and I looked up at the trapdoor that now looked as small as a postcard.

  “Bye!” we both called at the same time. Then the postcard was gone. I looked at Connor, his blue eyes shimmering in the firelight.

  “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Escape

  We ran at full speed into the torchlit tunnel for a few minutes before stopping for a break. It never curved even slightly and hadn’t changed at all in appearance since we entered. The same torches in the same metal sconces burned at the same ten-foot intervals, and the dirt walls and ceiling remained the same even texture. We could have been running on a treadmill for all the change that we saw.

  “We have to be more than halfway there,” panted Connor, adjusting his backpack. “She said it was only a short distance away.”

  I nodded, panting. I wished we’d brought a watch. I knew we hadn’t been running for very long, but I wanted to be aware of the moment when the Brotherhood finally broke into the house.

  After a minute or two of catching our breath, Connor suggested we get back to running and so we took off once again, flying past the burning torches.

  It wasn’t until we were very close to it that we were able to clearly see the end of the passageway. The long line of torches ended a few feet away from another set of thick wooden rungs that led upward into a narrow dirt tube just like the first one. I wondered what we would find when we climbed out of the trapdoor. Harriet said that the passageway opened onto a road that was less than a mile from the bus station but she hadn’t said exactly where that spot was.

  “What if there’s someone around?” I asked Connor, as we looked up into the dark tube.

  “Only one way to find out,” he said.

  “I’ll go first, just in case.” I stepped onto the wooden rungs which were coated in dust. I climbed as far as I could remember climbing the other rungs, and then raise
d my arm at the place where I guessed the trapdoor to be, since I couldn’t see it in the dark. My palm hit a flat hard surface, and I pushed up at the door but it didn’t move. I felt around in the dark and found cold metal. A latch. I fumbled with it until it clicked, and then slowly pushed the trapdoor open.

  Leaves that were dimly lit by moonlight rustled in front of me. I pushed the door up just enough to see above them and saw the faint outlines of trees and bushes. I saw a group of dark silhouettes through an opening in the tree trunks and nearly slipped off the dusty wooden ladder before I realized what they were: monkey bars, a slide, a roundabout, a teeter totter. It was a public park, one that I was familiar with, and it appeared to be deserted.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered down to Connor, “it’s just King’s Park!”

  I pushed the trapdoor fully open and looked around. It had been very conveniently set at the center of a small circle of trees, so that even if someone were in the park, they wouldn’t notice it opening. It had also been buried beneath a thick pile of leaves and brush.

  I squinted through the space between the trees to make sure that no one was skulking around the park, then climbed out onto the grass. I put out a hand to Connor as he emerged and helped him out of the hole. Twenty feet below, the torchlight flickered on the square of dirt and then went out, leaving the passageway in pitch blackness just as it had been when we first saw it.

  “Harriet’s spell must have ended now that we made it through,” I said.

  I reached down and carefully closed the heavy door. There was a sharp clicking sound from behind the wood. The door had locked itself.

  “I guess it doesn’t want anyone coming in from this end,” said Connor.

  We knelt down and arranged the leaves and brush so that they covered the door.

  “Now onto the bus station,” I said.

  We crept through the trees and out into the park. Connor pulled on his hood as Harriet had instructed. We darted past the playground equipment toward the road, then ducked behind a tree as a car drove past. I wished we could take a stealthier route, but there was no other way to get to the bus station except through the main part of town. Thankfully, the businesses were all closed and the roads nearly deserted, and I was never more grateful, as we ventured onto the darkened main street, for what a quiet and early-to-bed town Wineville was.

  **

  It’s just less than a mile away, I thought as we hurried past the shuttered storefronts of the main street. I looked over my shoulder every few seconds like a paranoid criminal, which, technically, I was.

  “Ooh look, Rue’s!” whispered Connor. “I miss their ice cream!”

  I glanced at the darkened ice cream parlor as we walked past it, at the stacked chairs visible through the window, at its handmade ‘closed’ sign that had been embroidered by the owner herself, Ms. Rue. Despite my nerves at the situation at hand, I felt a twinge of sadness.

  Connor hadn’t been able to go anywhere outside of Harriet’s house since we’d brought him back. He hadn’t complained once, but it was sad to think that he would probably never be able to go to Rue’s Ice Cream Parlor again. Neither of us would. It was heartbreaking not just because of Ms. Rue and her delicious ice cream, but because of all the happy memories Connor and I had made there; most significantly, our first date. Of course, I hadn’t thought of it as being a date at the time.

  Connor and I were fourteen and had only recently met, and even though I’d been immediately taken with him, it had seemed like he only wanted to be friends. We were walking home from school one afternoon when I ducked into Rue’s to use the bathroom. When I came out, I found him nursing a cone stacked with two scoops of strawberry ice cream and holding another one in his other hand for me, only mine was Rocky Road. I was ecstatic that he had done something so thoughtful, and allowed myself to hope that he liked me the way I liked him.

  I had thought, as we sat in one of Ms. Rue’s cushiony little couches draped with lace, that his gifting me some ice cream would be the best thing that could possibly happen that afternoon. As we whittled down our cones, he was suddenly quiet and I worried I’d said something wrong. He looked at me, licking strawberry ice cream from his lips, and smiled. Then I smiled. Then he leaned forward and kissed me. And I was a goner.

  I knew then that it was a pivotal moment in my life, that my world was changed, and that I would always remember it; the way it tasted, like strawberry, like chocolate and marshmallows, like him. I even remembered the song that had been playing, which I had run home that evening to look up: “Eyes Without a Face” by Billy Idol, which, ironically, was about a man’s troubled relationship with a woman. To me, though, the song became permanently entwined with beauty and the magic of the unexpected. It was the song that played the day I began to know love.

  I wondered if Connor was thinking about it. Then, as if he had Harriet’s gift of intuition, he said: “Remember Billy Idol?” He looked sideways at me and smiled from under his hood.

  “Always,” I said, and then bid a silent goodbye to Rue’s as we left it behind.

  We pushed on through the dark streets. My entire body tensed up each time the occasional car passed by, but none of them slowed down. We hurried through the last few blocks, passing the Mom & Pop grocery store where dear old Morley hung out. There was actually an empty Styrofoam coffee cup still there on the bench by the entrance. We turned a corner and both breathed a sigh of relief as the bus station finally came into view.

  Wineville Station was a squat brick building that stood at the center of a large concrete lot surrounded by a tall chainlink fence. The fence was topped, for some reason, with barbed wire, and it made the place look more like a jail than a bus station. On either side of the building, there were bus bays marked by tall awnings. The fleet of shabby old buses was parked behind the building in a long row, dark and silent, like tired horses waiting to be ridden.

  Through the windows of the building, we could see the drab waiting area which was lit with sickly yellow fluorescent lights. A man wandered among the rows of metal chairs that were bolted to the floor. He had a large protruding belly that peeked out from under his shirt, and he sucked his thumb while clutching a filthy blanket. He looked like a child who was sleepwalking.

  “Lively place,” said Connor. “Do you think they even have buses leaving this late?”

  “They should,” I said anxiously. “Remember to keep your hood on.”

  Connor secured his hood and I pulled open the glass double doors into the station.

  There were four other people in the room besides the sleepwalking man. One of them, a young man who didn’t look much older than me and Connor, sat hunched over in one of the metal chairs, rocking back and forth and feverishly scratching himself. There was a couple, a man and a woman in their twenties, quietly holding each other in a corner. They had the same malnourished look, the bones in their faces a little too prominent, their eyes bulging and haunted.

  Finally, there was a middle-aged man dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a brief case. He sat upright in his chair and could have looked like he was simply at the end of a long ordinary day at work except that he was talking rapidly to himself and laughing in loud short bursts. Of everyone in the room, he was the only one to notice me and Connor. He stopped talking and watched us with wide eyes, then said in a stage whisper loud enough for the whole room to hear:

  “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

  “Arthur, look,” said Connor in a low voice.

  I turned to where he indicated, toward the ticketing booth at the other end of the room. A man sat behind a thick pane of glass, flipping through a magazine. Hanging against the glass was an electronic marquee that flashed the time in bright red pixels. It was eleven thirty. The pixels then rearranged themselves to spell out the words LAST BUSES AT MIDNIGHT.

  “Good, we came just in time!” I said, as the words on the marquee transitioned back to show the time by exploding into pixelated red fireworks.

  “No,
” said Connor, “under that.”

  Beneath the marquee was a sign taped to the glass. It read, in bold block letters: MINORS MAY NOT TRAVEL UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT.

  “That’s us, right?” Connor asked dryly.

  My heart sunk. Then I remembered something. “Wait!” I whispered. “It’s okay!” I pulled him to one of the metal chairs and pulled my backpack from my shoulders.

  “You have an adult to accompany us hidden in there?” he asked, watching me rummage through my backpack.

  “Almost…” I said, feeling around in the crowded backpack. “Yes!” My fingers found the thin piece of plastic, and I pulled it from the backpack and held it up to Connor victoriously.

  “No way!” he whispered. “You still have it!”

  It was a fake I.D.

  Months ago, when Connor and I were planning our weekend escape to Portland, we’d considered that we would want to buy alcohol in the city and maybe go into a nightclub. We’d gone to Titus for help, the boy at school who all the kids went to when they wanted a fake I.D. or any other illicit help. For a small fee, Titus had procured two incredibly realistic-looking I.D.s that used our actual photos but presented us as two twenty-two year olds with made-up names.

  “I still can’t believe Titus gave you that name,” said Connor, looking at the I.D.

  “Hey, I can be a Milton,” I said, and Connor laughed.

  At that same moment, several rows of metal chairs away from us, the man in the suit and tie also laughed, a manic burst of a laugh, even though he couldn’t have heard what we’d said. Connor and I looked over at him. He stared at the wall, at an old map of Oregon that was in a large frame, then spoke again in his loud stage whisper, his voice raspy:

  “When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools!”

  “Indeed,” whispered Connor, watching the man.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said quietly. “I’m going to buy our tickets.”

  I set my backpack down on the chair next to Connor, then walked to the ticket booth, where the man behind the glass was still flipping through his magazine with the most bored expression on his face. I stepped up to the booth and cleared my throat.