It had to be the secret door her brother had been yammering about while she was trying to sketch. She walked up to it and crouched to look inside. She could make out a long, low passageway that sloped downward and was punctuated by a very bright light in the distance.
“…and Dennis,” she added.
Samantha put on her sunglasses, got down on her hands and knees, and crawled through the opening. She stopped and twisted around to push the panel shut; then she headed toward the light.
She crawled for about thirty feet until the tunnel let out into a wide, round room.
She stood up and dusted off her pants.
Dennis sat across from her on the far side of the room, happily munching from the bag of crackers. The Blinky Barker bathed everything in bright white light. It reflected off silver panels that hung on the walls of the chamber and out through exits to the left and right. With each chew, blue sparkles swirled around the room as the light reflected off the big blue gem on his collar. The illumination revealed colorful drawings and symbols covering the ceiling and every inch of the wall.
There were large, dark gaps to the left and right where open doorways led to spaces beyond.
Samantha started to step forward—and stopped. A black circle took up most of the floor of the room. It was a deep, dark pit, surrounded by a narrow ledge.
She heard several faint grunting sounds. Fearfully, she inched forward and gazed into the hole.
“Nipper? Are you down there?” she asked.
She peered into the pit and saw smooth walls that extended far beyond the light from Dennis’s collar. It had to be at least fifty feet deep. Or five hundred. It was impossible to tell.
“Nipper?” she asked again.
Samantha’s heart raced as she thought about her brother falling into the pit, lying helpless and in pain way down at the bottom. She listened for another groan, or a crash or a thump or some other terrible sound of an eight-year-old who had gone splat.
She held her breath and stared into the darkness.
“Sam, is that you?” her brother’s voice echoed from a doorway on the right side of the room. “Come help me lift this chair. I think it’s solid gold.”
Samantha let out a sigh of relief. Then she began to inch carefully around the edge of the room. As she moved, she noticed that, unlike the temple above, which had a stone floor, this chamber was paved with red clay tiles. They were dirty and worn, and cracked with age.
Every few feet, a shiny metal panel stuck out from the wall, and each panel was held in place by a metal bracket. Between the panels, the walls were covered with drawings. They were strange—stranger than the ones in the Temple of Horus above. And there was a lot of writing. It was mysterious. It looked nothing like what she’d copied from “The Traveler and the Monkey King.”
There were lots of pictures of skulls and of weird people waving swords. There were all kinds of fish and birds. One large drawing appeared to show a giant squid.
The images seemed out of place. Samantha shivered. Everything here looked creepy. There was something bad about this place.
Samantha reached the doorway, turned right, and stepped into a new room.
Light streamed in behind her from Dennis’s collar, illuminating another chamber. It was bigger than the chamber with the pit in the center, and it was filled with fantastic objects. Everywhere she looked, the walls were covered with silver masks—creepy faces and skulls and animal heads. Ornate caskets and shimmering statues leaned against the walls. Baskets overflowing with coins and gems covered the floor.
Nipper was busy dragging a shiny chair toward the center of the room. The heavy scraping sound echoed as he tugged it, gouging out a trail of broken tiles and earth behind him. He was pulling it over to a pile of glistening silver skulls. Samantha could see spaces on the walls where Nipper had pried loose the masks. Dark soot trickled out of holes where the masks had been attached.
Nipper pushed the chair up against the mountain of objects and stopped. He adjusted some of the creepy silver faces that balanced on the pile.
Samantha didn’t know what he was up to, but she was sure it wasn’t good. “What are you doing?” she asked her brother nervously.
“This is my chance,” he said. “So use your big brain to help me figure out how I can haul these things home.”
“Your chance?” Samantha looked around the room. She could see that he had removed the tops from several large urns. A wooden sarcophagus covered in mysterious writing and speckled with pearls rested in one corner. Her brother had pried off the lid and propped it against a nearby wall. A stream of crud was oozing around the casket from a large hole in the wall where he had pulled a mask free.
“Nipper!” Samantha shouted. “Have you lost your mind?”
“No, Sam. I lost my Yankees,” he answered. “I’m going to sell this stuff so I can get my baseball team back.”
As he spoke, something on his hand flashed in the light. Nipper was wearing a large black-and-green ring on his finger. It was shaped like a scorpion and had two glittering green eyes. Samantha didn’t need her fashion-expert big sister Buffy to know that they were emeralds. Enormous emeralds.
“Where did you get that thing?” she asked.
“I pulled it off the mummy in the box,” he said, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the coffin. “It wasn’t making him look fabulous, that’s for sure. And I really need it so I can— Ouch!”
Nipper poked his thumb into his own eye.
For a moment, Samantha thought she saw the eyes on the scorpion ring glow.
Nipper crossed the room again and started to drag a heavy onyx table over to his treasure pile. It was covered in turquoise beads.
“I’ll have enough money to buy a second baseball team,” he said. “Maybe the Boston Red Sox. And you’ll get rich, too. There can be two Scarlett Hydrangeas in our family.”
He lost his grip and fell backward onto the floor. As he stood up, he smacked his forehead on the edge of the table.
The emerald scorpion eyes flashed. Samantha was sure this time.
“I know, Sam. It’s an awesome magical ring and it’s cursed,” said Nipper. “I started stumbling all over this place and banging into things way before you got here.”
She watched him bend down to grab a small golden statue of a jackal.
“I’m just going to add a few more treasures to this pile and— SAMMY!”
Samantha hated being called Sammy. She liked Samantha or Sam, or even the occasional Mantha. The name Sammy, though, had always bothered her.
Three years ago, the Snoddgrass family had gotten a puppy. As a prank, Nipper convinced them to name it Sammy. For an entire summer, various family members would lean out a window and shout, “Sammy! Come here, Sammy. Good girl, Sammy!” several times a day. It drove Samantha crazy.
Samantha got revenge on her brother three months later. The night before school started, she filled in all of his permission slips using the first name “Pynchon.” Nipper handed in the forms without noticing. For the entire school year, whenever a teacher, coach, or chaperone called out “Pynchon Spinner,” the kids would shout, “Yes, sir!” or “Yes, ma’am!” And they’d give Nipper a pinch.
Nipper never called his sister Sammy again…until now.
The mummy from the coffin was standing upright, with both of its arms stretched out toward Nipper. It was seven feet tall, and it was a shambling mess. Putrid fingers poked through snarls of crusty linen strands. Mustard-colored soot leaked from the bandages that wrapped its face. It was the twenty-fifth-worst-smelling creature Nipper had ever encountered.
“Move away!” Samantha shouted as she jumped sideways and then dashed across the room.
“Wait, Mummy!” Nipper shouted up at the moldy figure. “I have money!” He reached into his pocket and held up the bill Uncle Paul had
given him.
The mummy continued sliding forward. Just as it was about to reach him, its arms fell from their sockets. Then its head turned upward, rolled backward, and dropped from the shoulders.
“Yaahhh!” Nipper shrieked, letting go of his bill.
Samantha caught a glimpse of President Woodrow Wilson as the money fluttered into the air.
The mummy fell forward, lifeless, and was propelled past Nipper by the stream of crud that now sprayed from the hole in the wall behind the casket. Then the wall started to crumble and the hole became wider. The slimy spray became stronger.
“Sam!” Nipper shouted, watching the bill flutter. “I lost my—”
With a sudden loud, belching sound, a jet of crud spewed forth, gushing from the opening in the wall. It knocked Nipper down and swept him up in a gooey brown tide.
“Saaa-meeeeee!” he screamed.
Samantha hugged the wall on the far side of the room. She looked all around, trying to think of a way to help her brother.
The filthy avalanche rumbled across the room, pushing aside the treasures and dragging Nipper along with it. His sunglasses fell off. Trapped in the sludge, he struggled to keep his face above the muck as it carried him out of the treasure room.
“Ahh!” Nipper screamed. “Ahh-ack!”
Something round and slimy slipped into his mouth. He pushed it around with his tongue. It might have been a big gem or one of the disintegrating mummy’s eyeballs—he couldn’t be sure. He spit it out as fast as he could.
He kept thrashing about in the sludge, but he couldn’t get free as he slid through the doorway and into the round chamber.
Dennis looked up from his empty plastic bag and saw the approaching wall of dust, mud, mummy parts, screaming boy, and slimy goo. He scampered quickly along the curved wall and out through the doorway on the opposite side of the chamber.
The gushing, grimy river banked along the walls and swirled around the edges of the room like a giant toilet bowl flushing. Green and brown crud covered most of Nipper’s face, and he could only see out of one eye. His desperate breath bubbled out of his nostrils and into the gooey muck.
In his heart he knew that if anyone ever wrote a book about his life, the title of this chapter would be “Exceptionally Gross.”
He watched helplessly as the patterns on the ceiling spiraled above him. The raging river of sludge swirled faster and faster and began to drain into the pit in the center of the room—dragging Nipper toward it as well. Flat on his back, he flowed along with the muck. Unable to escape, he gritted his teeth and prepared to tumble into the awful darkness.
“Nipper!”
He heard his sister shout and squinted with his one clear eye.
Samantha was above him, leaning in from the wall. With one hand she hung on to one of the brackets that held the shiny metal panels. Her other hand gripped the umbrella by its handle high above her.
“Saaaam-meeeeee!” Nipper screamed.
She plunged the umbrella down toward his neck. The metal tip pierced his shirt collar and drove into the floor like a magic spear.
Rumbling and roaring, the cascade of crud washed over Nipper and poured into the black pit. He gurgled and thrashed as the muck streamed around him, but the umbrella tip through his collar pinned him to the clay-tiled floor.
The deep, dark pit swallowed it all. The grimy river slowed to a trickle. Then it was spent.
Samantha walked over to Nipper. Without saying anything, she yanked the umbrella from the floor. She reached out to help him up but stopped herself when she looked at his slime-covered hand, and arm, and body.
“That’s okay, Sam,” Nipper said. His shoes squished as he stood up on his own.
The room had dimmed when Dennis went through the doorway opposite the treasure room. They followed the light and walked along the curved path.
Just before they passed through the doorway, Samantha tapped Nipper on the shoulder.
“These are yours, I believe,” she said, holding out his sunglasses.
Both kids donned their shades at the same time and walked into the new room.
This rectangular chamber was lined with elaborate banners. Long sheets of fabric of different patterns and colors covered every space on every wall from floor to ceiling. Some were in solid colors, and some were striped. Several were covered in Egyptian-looking symbols. Others featured geometric patterns. Most of them were streaked with dust and cobwebs.
Lighting the room with his collar, Dennis shuffled around the chamber, sniffing at the floor.
Samantha and Nipper watched their dog move about. He sniffed his way over to a wide, dark shape on the floor and stopped. He stared at the floor and began to whimper softly.
“What’s up, pug?” Nipper asked.
Dennis stopped whining and looked up at the kids. His nose was flecked with tiny orange dots.
“Dennis,” said Samantha. “What did you find that— Oh my.”
Dennis stood in the center of the wide black mark. Something had been burning there recently, scorching the floor and leaving ashes and strange orange flecks. For several feet in all directions, the floor was covered with bright orange bits. Nervously, Samantha leaned forward and took a closer look at the floor.
There were blown-up pieces of orange shoes everywhere.
“I…was right,” Nipper said softly. “Uncle Paul exploded.”
When he’d said that weeks ago, Samantha had thought it was absurd. She had never even considered that Uncle Paul might really be dead. She was sure she was going to find him. She had never given up.
But there were blown-up flip-flops all around them.
Her brother was right. The silly officers were right.
Uncle Paul was really gone.
Samantha and Nipper stood in the center of the awful spot for a long time, staring at the floor. Neither of them had anything to say. Not even Nipper.
Dennis whined again and looked up at them.
Nipper reached out to pet the pug, but Dennis sniffed his hand several times and shrank back.
“I don’t blame you,” Nipper said.
“Hold on,” said Samantha.
She reached over to the wall and pulled at one of the long banners that hung from high above. She held it out for her brother to use as a towel.
Nipper took the cloth and began to wipe away his coating of grime.
Samantha stood there, watching her brother.
As Nipper dried his hair, she looked over his shoulder and noticed something odd about the fabric behind him on the wall. Unlike the old, faded textile she had just handed him, this one was crisp and clean. It was a long blue flannel sheet printed with cows and horses. The faces on all the cows were printed upside down. The horses had five legs each.
She followed the pattern down to where the fabric touched the floor. In the lower-right corner, she eyed the all-too-familiar letter S curved around the letters F and C.
“Seattle Fabric Center,” Samantha announced as she reached out and grabbed the sheet made of 90-percent-off misprinted flannel. She yanked it from the wall. It slid off the pole that ran along the ceiling and fell to the floor.
Nipper finished wiping his head and turned.
Both kids gazed at the newly revealed wall. It was bare stone from the floor to the ceiling, except for four large tiles that formed a square, about even with their faces. Each tile had a simple picture in its center.
“Waves, flames, moon, sun,” said Samantha, naming the images on the tiles.
“What do you think, Sam?” Nipper asked. “Does that mean anything to you?”
She examined the tiles again.
“Water, fire, night, day,” she said.
They both stared at the wall a while longer. Then Samantha took a step back and turned away.
She let o
ut a big sigh. “I give up,” she said sadly. “And if Uncle Paul’s really gone, I’m not sure I care anymore.”
She hung the umbrella on her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps,” she said, and started heading out of the room.
But an arm popped up, blocking her path. It was Nipper’s.
“Waitaminute, waitaminute, waitaminute!” he yelled.
Samantha stopped and turned around.
Nipper pointed at the picture of the sun.
“Uncle Paul told me not to miss opening day!” he shouted.
“So?” asked Samantha.
“So that’s day,” he said, and started tapping at the tile with his index finger.
There was a hollow click.
Nipper froze with a surprised look on his face. He yanked his hand away.
Slowly, the tile with the picture of the sun flipped open. Behind it was a space in the wall.
“See?” said Nipper triumphantly. “I didn’t miss opening day!”
The space was about the size of a shoe box. Samantha peeked inside and saw a letter wedged at the back. She reached in and plucked it out.
She smiled.
“Wait,” said Nipper. “How do you know that’s meant for you?”
It was a single sheet of paper, folded in thirds and sealed with a scratch-and-sniff sticker shaped like a strawberry.
Samantha rubbed the sticker and sniffed. Immediately she thought of Uncle Paul and his strawberry waffles, and all the mornings they’d spent together waiting for the bus, and all the afternoons they’d spent collecting things, and all the evenings they’d spent sharing stories, solving puzzles, and talking about amazing places around the world.
Then she unfolded the paper and read out loud.
“Dear Samantha,
When I found out about the umbrella, it was the beginning of an adventure…and a whole lot of trouble!
Those ninjas were using it to steal from everyone everywhere, so I knew I had to take it away from them.
Samantha Spinner and the Super-Secret Plans Page 10