by Mike Rich
The large man smirked at his partner, jabbing a thumb in Jack’s direction. He tossed the remaining stones in his hand onto the ground, then slowly reached into his own pocket.
“I ain’t never heard of no Johnny Flynn, no Jimmy Flynn, no nobody Flynn,” he said as he pulled out a rusted knife. “This, however,” he warned, “you can call whatever you want.”
“Jack?” Henry quietly, yet urgently, asked.
But Johnny Flynn’s so-called nephew was already tough-talking the knife-wielding man again. “Well, that’s too bad,” he said with his low voice. “Because we have heard of him, and I think we’re already late. Babbitt! Time to go!”
Jack whipped around and gave Henry a shove in the back. Both boys bolted in the opposite direction, the walkway gravel flying from beneath their shoes. The scarred men came right after them.
In a dead sprint the hunters ran. Not out of Five Points, but deeper into it. Down one street, then down another. A block this way, a block that way.
Still . . . the ragged, scarred men gave chase. Faster than Henry thought they might.
The next few blocks felt like the twisty and winding path Jack had led Henry through back in Hell’s Kitchen, only they were covering this route a whole lot faster.
Up and over a broken and leaning fence; dashing through two dark, but fortunately empty, wet alleyways; then down a pair of garbage-strewn streets. Thankfully, the boys didn’t encounter any people. Not so thankfully, their path seemed to be leading them deeper and deeper into danger.
“Keep going, Babbitt!” Jack yelled as he glanced over his shoulder. “Faster! We got ’em!”
“You boys are DEAD! DEAD!” the knife-packing man shouted from behind, but his voice was already beginning to fade in the distance.
Neither Jack nor Henry, though, looked as if they were about to risk slowing down. Not here. Not now.
Keep goin’, keep goin’! I don’t care where we end up, let’s just get away from these guys!
Jack skidded around the corner of a seedy broken building, his shoulder brushing the bricks while Henry stayed right behind him. Still running. Running, running, running.
One more block . . . one more street . . . just to make sure . . .
. . . until Jack allowed himself one final look and a quiet laugh as he slowed to a stop. He leaned over, hands on his knees. His breathing was deep and loud.
Henry slowed and stopped right in front of him. He cocked his head in each direction, not wanting to say a single word until his breathing settled and he was sure the two scarred men were gone.
Once he felt it was safe, he finally turned his head and looked Jack right in the eye.
“That . . . was your . . . idea? That?!” he asked in between heaving breaths. “Johnny Flynn . . . and then RUN?!”
Jack grinned at him.
“Game . . . ON . . . Babbitt!” he answered, his laughter making it even harder to catch his own breath.
Henry couldn’t help but laugh too. And then they were both laughing. Right there in the worst part of New York . . . laughing harder at their near-death experience than at any time since they’d met.
“Okay, ’nuff of that,” Jack said, finally pushing himself up. “Let’s find out where we are, all right?”
Ten minutes and four blocks later, they both knew. Through the darkness of that last stretch, there had been a shimmer of dull light, illuminating what appeared to be an opening to a common area of some sort.
A handful of people walked back and forth. Their faces were filled with despair and their eyes were vacant. Not so with the seedy panhandlers. Their eyes were alert and darting, seeking unfamiliar faces who might be able to spare something. Anything.
The boys turned down a few of them as they walked into the open square between the pale and narrowing buildings. They then stopped and took a long, depressing look all around them.
The area resembled a rotting center hub of a disgusting wheel.
They had just walked past Little Water, the street name simply carved into a crumbling brick wall. Cross looked to be up ahead at eleven o’clock. Mulberry and Orange had to be the two streets on their left. And Anthony was where they now stood.
They were standing in the heart of Five Points.
Old leaking barrels of unknown ooze spilled into the muddy ruts that ran through the filthy epicenter of the neighborhood. The open windows on some of the taller buildings looked like glaring eyes, silently asking the two boys why they had even bothered to come.
Henry and Jack looked around the sorrowful gloom, looking for a door with Skavenger’s name and making sure to avoid meeting the gaze of anyone. The few looks they did receive were largely indifferent. Even the painted ladies of the aptly named Orange Street looked bored and disinterested in them.
“All right, this is where he said it’d be,” Jack muttered as he looked at the decaying neighborhood. “See any doors look promising? Anything with ‘Skavenger’ carved right into the wood? Maybe it might even be burned in. Who knows?”
Henry was trying to figure that part out himself.
Even if Skavenger managed to put his name on a door, it had to be dangerous for him too. What’d he do? Bring his fancy carriage right down the middle of Anthony Street into Five Points?
Henry glanced to his left, checking Orange Street again. Most of the buildings over there were completely dark except for a few flickering candles. Best he could tell, there wasn’t a single door with a name on it. Not that he could see.
He turned to Mulberry Street, which looked just as desolate.
Maybe we already walked by it. He glanced back in the direction from which they’d come. Maybe it was back there on Little Water . . . or here on—
He took in a sudden and sharp breath.
No.
No, no, no.
Henry couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe.
There . . . beyond one of the dripping wedge-shaped buildings, under a broken streetlamp, a figure stood in the shadows. Its blackened outline was darker than the surrounding night.
The Dark Man.
And not just any Dark Man.
Grace.
He was there. Somehow, he’d found them. It was past midnight in Five Points, and yet there he stood, Henry was absolutely sure of it. A silhouette, yes, but it was Grace all the same. Just like Henry had known it was him on the train heading to St. Louis.
“All right, sooo where ya wanna start, Babbitt?” Jack sighed, unaware of what—of whom—Henry was looking at.
He can’t be here. There was no clue for him to find, no way he could have known we left Paris. How? Wha . . ? They must have been on Le Chasseur all along!
“Ja . . .” he tried whispering. “Jac . . .”
SOOOOOOOOOON . . .
The cold word chillingly rolled through Henry’s head as Jack finally turned.
“All right, what do you say we go over—” His voice caught as he saw the look on Henry’s face. “Holy smokes, Babbitt! What’s wrong?!”
Henry could only dip his forehead toward the dark image under the streetlamp.
“It’s him.” He gulped, seeing the icy-blue glint of the man’s devious eyes, even from a distance. “It’s Grace.”
Jack fell silent as he looked, his eyes quickly finding him as well. “No, no. It can’t be,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s impossible.”
For a short moment, all they could do was stare. Stare and stare some more, in growing disbelief.
Until, with one intimidating stride, Grace began to walk toward them. Slowly, steadily, moving closer.
And then the nightmare grew worse.
With Grace now heading for Henry and Jack, two more of the Dark Men appeared at the ends of Anthony and Cross. They began to walk toward the boys. Then the fourth emerged from the gloom of Little Water behind them.
“All of them,” Henry’s voice quivered. “We gotta do something, we gotta do something, Jack. What do we do?”
Jack let out a deep breath. Bu
t Henry could tell there was something strangely different about it, even here . . . even now.
It was an angry breath.
“We do what we came here to do,” Jack growled as he shoved Henry toward Cross Street. “Nobody’s takin’ my chance or your chance away from us. This is our hunt, not theirs!”
They walked as fast as they could, not wanting to run unless it was absolutely necessary. Even so, the gaunt neighborhood stragglers despondently leaning against the crumbling brick buildings seemed to know something out of the ordinary was taking place.
Jack shook his head as he quickened his stride. “Maybe they’ll walk away like they did on the train.”
“They were on the ship going to Paris too,” Henry chose to admit.
“You saw ’em? All four of ’em?!”
Henry looked back again. “Just the one out front.” He nodded at Grace. “Doubt was there too.”
“Doubt was on the ship?!” Jack sped up a little more. “How come you never told us?!”
“Would it have helped?”
“I dunno. Prob’ly not, I guess.”
Jack skirted an approaching panhandler, and Henry now had to work to keep up. It wasn’t that hard to do, though, thanks to the sound growing louder behind him.
Kuhthump kuhthump kuhthump kuhthump . . .
The boots of the four Dark Men seemed to thunder against the wet grit of the street. Striding side by side. Insistent.
Henry looked back just as a rat scurried in front of Grace. His boot landed on the grimy rodent’s tail. The rat squealed with pain, but Grace didn’t blink.
We gotta get outta here! We gotta get outta here NOW!
“No, no, we stay. We finish this,” Jack firmly ordered as if sensing what Henry was feeling.
Stay? We can’t stay! They’re gonna herd us right into some dead end. Look at ’em, Jack! They’re right back there!
Henry’s rattling thoughts stopped for a short second when he heard Jack laugh under his breath. An actual laugh.
“Heck of an adventure, huh, Babbitt?” Jack looked over his shoulder again. “When you and I get outta here, we’re gonna do somethin’ like this again. Maybe not with these four jokers, but somethin’, that’s for sure. And then we’ll go on another one and another one after that. You with me?”
The words, so similar to his own father’s, made Henry stand up straighter. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m with you,” Henry replied as he turned to smile at his great-great-grandfather . . .
And then he stopped.
Stopped right in the very middle of Cross Street. Stopped, even though he could still hear the Dark Men approaching.
Kuhthump kuhthump kuhthump kuhthump . . .
“Come on, Babbitt! C’mon!” Jack spun around and reached for Henry’s jacket. “We can’t stop. Gotta keep walkin’, gotta keep . . . NOOOO! BABBITT!”
Henry had already started running.
Not running away from the foursome of pursuing men, but running toward something. Something else. His beaten shoes slipped on the scattered gravel, but he kept on moving.
“Hey! HEY!” Jack shouted as he ran after him.
“Babbitt! Stop!”
Henry took the steps leading up to a broken building two at a time. He stopped on the landing, facing a single front door that featured two solitary letters:
The letters had been carved right into the wood, and they were fresh. Henry reached out to touch them as Jack came running up the steps. Seeing the Dark Men still on approach, he took them three by three, jumping over a broken whiskey bottle with his long final leap.
Henry reached for the doorknob . . . and then hesitated. Not out of fear, but with the panic-laced knowledge that . . .
It’s the last door. The last one. This is it.
“Open it!” Jack yelled as the four men drew near.
Henry gave it a turn.
Click.
The doorknob turned the width of only a fingernail before firmly catching.
C’mon, c’mon, not here! Not now!
It was locked. Seemingly locked tight. But it had turned just enough to convince him to give it one more try—heck, ten more tries.
Henry closed his eyes.
Under his breath, he said the words that had worked once before at a mansion in this same city.
“Your journey . . .”
The Dark Men were nearly at the bottom of the stairs. Henry had to catch his breath before trying again.
“Your journey shall be . . . unlocked.”
The twelve-year-old hunter twisted the knob and heard the tumbler give way. Jack reached over his shoulder and thumped the door open with the heel of his hand.
In.
And.
Thump.
SHUT!
They slammed the door closed behind them. The corridor in which they now found themselves was dark, but there were hints of light coming from within. Henry and Jack looked down a long, barren hallway, and it was the lure of that feeble light that almost made Henry forget to—
“Lock the door!” He whirled around, but Jack was already clicking the bolts, of which there were two. Hopefully they were strong ones.
The two boys looked at each other. They were trapped, Henry knew that much, but there was something else he knew.
“Jack!” he whispered, still short on breath. “We made it! We’re here!”
“Yeah, I know. We’re all here, if ya know what I mean. Whatta we do now?”
Henry turned his head and looked down the paint-peeled hallway, a crackling sound coming from deep inside the room—the part that was hidden around a corner twenty feet ahead of them.
Orange and yellow light danced on the weary ceiling at the far end of the hall; it was enough to convince Henry of at least one thing about the section of the room neither of them could see.
A fireplace? With a fire in it? Here in Five Points?
There was a click as the knob on the front door began to turn, one way and then the other, followed by the unsettling tapping of a long fingernail against the knob itself.
They’re trying to get in.
Right now.
The four Dark Men.
Henry tried to ignore it, while Jack nodded his head toward the wavering light coming from inside. Slowly, quietly, the two of them stepped their way along the splintered wood floor to the tempting opening.
Jack bumped into Henry as he stopped at the threshold. “Sorry,” he said, but it wasn’t necessary . . .
Because of what they saw.
The room stood nearly empty except for an oak table situated to one side of a roaring fireplace. An even older leather case, a satchel, was positioned precisely in the center of the table, six burning candles surrounding it.
There was an old gray chair facing the fire, its high-arching back blocking any view of who might be sitting in it.
But Henry knew there was someone there.
He could see a hand on top of a walking stick. Its owner, face still unseen, basked in the warmth of the curling flames.
“Congratulations,” Henry heard a familiar voice coldly utter. He felt his throat go dry.
Can’t be . . . no . . .
Hiram Doubt slowly stood and prodded the fire with the tip of his cane, not looking at either of the young men. He flicked a stray burning ember back into the hot pit, then turned to his two guests. The wicked grin Henry first saw outside the Vanderbilt Mansion was on the sinister man’s face once more; a shadow crept over the teardrop scar as he turned his back on the fire. In this very moment, though, the smile wasn’t just wicked—it was much worse than that.
It was victorious.
Henry’s shoulders sagged.
We lost. It’s over. I don’t know how, but it is. Everything the four of us did. Every clue, every step to get here. Mattie. All of it for nothing.
The malevolent winner of the hunt stepped closer to Henry. His cold features began to take shape as the young man’s eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Seems we meet once mo
re, my friend,” Doubt said with his icy tone. “Though I’m quite sure I’ve neglected, up until now at least, to give you my proper name.”
He held out his hand, the deadly chill of his bleak eyes filling with sudden and unexpected warmth.
“Hunter S. Skavenger,” he smiled as he introduced himself. “The honor is mine.”
TWENTY-THREE
Find Me
SKAVENGER? SKAVENGER!
The shock of the introduction was so great, Henry’s hands shook worse than if he actually had been greeted by Hiram Doubt. In that very moment, he realized there was no Doubt. There never had been. All along, the legendary villain had been nothing more than a brilliant idea inside the head of the man before him—the man who had designed and constructed the hunt.
The hunt the boys had just won.
“You’re Hunter Skavenger?” Jack asked, his mouth hanging half-open.
“Indeed,” the gentleman replied as they shook hands. “And you,” he added with a now-steady smile, “you are Jackson Babbitt, yes?”
“Uhhh, yes, I . . .” Jack started to reply, then stopped. “How’d you know that?”
Skavenger winked and left the question unanswered as he extended his hand to Henry. The twelve-year-old victorious hunter held out his own trembling hand, and the mythical creator of the Great Hunt took it with a reassuring grip.
“Hi.” Henry finally found a word he could form. “I’m . . .”
“Henry Babbitt, I know,” Skavenger kindly acknowledged, his voice no longer holding its sinister edge. “Such bravery, such courage. The both of you.”
Neither of them had heard the front door open, and Henry felt a familiar hand fall onto his shoulder from behind. A hand that was no longer cold.
It was Grace, backed by his three shadowy friends—not a one of them frightening any longer, just as Doubt was no longer Doubt.
“My closest associate,” Skavenger informed them. “Mr. Jonathan Grace.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Grace said as he squeezed Henry’s shoulder, though very gently this time. “And not a moment too soon, it seems.”
This time there was no chill in the word. No hissing that had taken up residence in Henry’s nightmares. Simply a good supply of genuine warmth in both his voice and his eyes.