by Todd Loyd
Three police officers waltz up to the Enchanted Forrest with their walkie talkies blaring. From his vantage point, he can see Titus Chick extending a hand to one of them. He tells himself, Better get out there, Howard. Be calm, relax.A tall mustached policeman in his Smokey the Bear-looking hat calls out, “Who's in charge here?”
“I am. Howard Snodgrass, General Manger.”
The policeman looks at him, apparently sizing him up, which doesn't take long.
“So you've got some AWOL kids, huh?”
Mr. Carnahan calls out, “They've been in there for over two hours, and they won't let us go in.”
Looking over at Carnahan, the policeman speaks to the assembly saying, “Looks like we've got quite a crowd. My officers and I will speak to each of you. Just hold your horses, and let us do our job. We will do everything—”
“We know. Everything in your power. We've heard that plenty tonight,” Wallace Braddock retorts.
Brenna elbows him in the stomach and hushes him with, “Wallace!”
The cop glowers at Wallace. Taking out a notebook from his belt, the policeman, with pencil ready, responds to the rebuke by asking, “Sir, what is your name?”
“Wallace Braddock. That's two d's,” Wallace asserts.
“Oh, the Wallace Braddock,” responds the policeman. Then he turns to his officers and says, “We've got Speed Trap Wally over here, gents.” This creates some muffled laughter from the police squad.
Brenna shoots a second elbow into Wallace's ribs and tells him, “You see, Wallace, I knew—”
“Look, Officer Howdy Duty,” Wallace says, stepping over to the officer. “I don't care what you call me as long as you do your job. My boy's in there, and you don't want to deal with me if you don't bring him out.”
“Are you threatening an officer, Mr. Braddock?”
“You mean Mr. Speed Trap?”
The two men size each other up. Neither is bluffing.
“Just do your job,” Wallace voices and then backs off, dragging Brenna with him.
The Officer tries to restore his command of the situation by saying, “Look, I know everyone is on edge here. But I expect everyone to keep cool and keep your less-than-helpful-comments to yourself.” He gives another look at Wallace.
Then the tall cop motions to a female officer and orders, “Quinn, take down the parents’ names and statements.”
Then, to another, “Markham, talk to these employees.”
Finally, he turns to Howard and says, “Mr. Snodgrass, I'd like to have a word with you.”
Howard thinks, Great—just great! Why did I ever take this job?
Chapter 90
The scene before Mason Chick sends his head spinning. To the left of him sits the little match girl on a stump, and he hears, “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,” being hummed lightly. Using both of his hands, he scratches his face in frustration.
Never in his entire life has he felt this lost. In his mind, this even trumps the time when he was seven and lost track of his father inside a Nashville Wal-Mart for 30 traumatizing minutes.
Fortunately, the match girl has not noticed their arrival, in spite of the slamming door. So, although expecting some self-righteous comment from Jack or Amy, Mason takes out the map for what seems to him like the fiftieth look at the room.
Jack approaches him and Mason thinks, Here we go.
“Look, there has got to be something we're missing,” Jack says. “It makes no sense. I suggest we search the room for another way out.”
Pacified that Jack has not suited up for another round, he agrees but adds, “What about the girl?”
“I don't know,” Jack says and shrugs. “Maybe she will leave us alone now.”
“Maybe,” says Mason, but then he sees Amy and utters, “No, no, no.”
Jack wheels around in the direction Mason is now pointing and sees Amy walking up to the girl.
“Here, Braddock,” says Mason, “you take the map. I'll take care of Amy.”
“No,” Jack responds, “I'll take care of Amy.” There is a hardened look on Jack's face.
“What is your deal? Just take the stinking map. A moment ago you were all hot and bothered about having the thing. I'll take care of Amy.”
Mason thinks that something about the look on Jack's face is weird.
“Fine,” Jack says with a flash of irritation. “Scotty and I will look for another door.”
Mason issues a guttural noise under his breath and says, “Okay then.” He stomps off toward Amy.
The matchstick girl is rocking back and forth. Her face is red, and her eyes are closed. Amy speaks to the girl in a tender, caring voice and says, “Hey there.”
“Amy, get back over here. We need to find a door,” Mason calls.
Upon hearing Mason's voice, the girl's eyes flash open. This time the pale blue eyes are replaced by fiery red ovals. Immediately, she lights a match and hurls it at Mason.
“Would you like to buy some matches!” she screams.
The match strikes Mason in the forearm. It stings.
“Hey! Stop that you little—,” Mason says and takes an aggressive step toward the girl.
Amy grabs his arm and tells him, “No you don't. Not again.”
“What? Are you crazy? She—”
Another match strikes Mason, who is unable to shield himself in time. The burning stick hits him in square in the jaw.
“Ouch!” Mason exclaims and brings his right arm to his face immediately.
Amy turns to the girl and says, “Stop that! We just want to leave. We can help you.”
“Over here!” Scotty yells.
Mason turns to see Scotty struggling to lift a brown wooden circle from a spot in the floor. Jack is helping him.
The girl strikes another match and flings it at Mason, whose attention has been drawn away from her. Amy steps in front of the match to deflect it with her hand, but she doesn't make contact and the match lands somewhere behind Amy.
“Look, we can help you,” Amy pleads with the girl who is busying herself lighting more matches.
Suddenly, a small puff of smoke begins to envelope Amy's head. She screams, “No!”
To his horror, Mason watches as a fire begins to ignite behind Amy's head. The match had landed in her hood.
Mason rushes to Amy and starts patting at the flames.
In the meantime, the little matchstick girl gives a sinister snarl because she has lit Mason's shirt on fire from behind.
The burning sensation flashes across his back. Mason drops to the floor and rolls vigorously.
The girl starts humming again and continues to light even more matches.
Scotty and Jack see the chaos and drop the wooden hatch. Thinking fast, Jack grabs Lucky from Scotty and slams the bear on top of the fire in Amy's hoodie. The flame smolders from the lack of oxygen, and Amy whimpers in fear. After removing the bear from atop her head, Jack sees a large black burn in the bear's fur, just a few inches down from where the viper had gotten a mouth full of fluff. Jack then joins Scotty in trying to put out Mason's burning shirt.
The matchstick girl continues flinging burning matches at Mason. “Won't you buy some matches?” she says as she flings each one. “Won't you buy some matches?”
As Mason rolls on the ground, he suddenly feels a crippling weight. Scotty has jumped on him. The tubby boy muffles the fire, while Jack, with Lucky in his hands, is suffocates the visible flames that Scotty has not stifled.
After a brief struggle, the fire is out.
“You okay, Mason?” Scotty asks, looking directly in the face of his friend.
Mason is a little taken aback by the proximity of Scotty's face above his own and says, “Get off me.”
“Guess that's a yes.” Scotty confirms.
The boys hear a scream and look over at the matchstick girl, who is now smiling, lighting match after match, and slinging them at the dodging figure of Amy while repeating, “Won't you buy some matches? Won't you buy some matches?”
Another match lands on Amy's face. She's now had enough. Amy beelines right toward the matchstick girl, flinging the flying matches away. “I wanted to help you!” Amy tells her.
The matchstick girl lights another match and flings it at Amy, who knocks it away in midair. Getting to the girl and using a wicked backhand, Amy slaps the matchbox from the girl's hand. Matches fly from the box, littering the floor. The girl then bends down and begins to pick up each one as if each was a valuable treasure.
“No, no, no,” the little girl says.
Amy's face switches to one of tenderness and of remorse for knocking the matches out of the girl's hands. She says, “Look, I'm sorry I….”
The matchstick girl is now talking to herself, saying, “I tried to sell the matches, I did, but they wouldn't buy them. Please don't be mad. Please don't be mad.”
Amy feels a hand on her arm, and she spins around to face her brother. Scotty tells her, “As soon as she gets them picked up, she's gonna start again. We need to go.”
“But Scotty, she—”
“You can't fix her, Amy. We need to go.”
Scotty heads off toward the wooden hatch. He passes Mason, who's getting up off the ground without accepting Jack's offered help.
The group manages to get the hatch open, and they see a ladder leading down.
The humming starts again, and they all freeze.
“Get in the hole!” Scotty yells.
The little girl is moving toward them with her matches in hand.
The group scrambles to get down the hatch. Mason goes first and then Amy. Scotty starts to descend and then sees Lucky. He calls out, “Jack, get Lucky!”
“Leave him,” Jack says.
“No, he's getting out of here with us.”
Jack snatches the bear as Scotty disappears into the hole. Jack tosses the bear in and climbs down, pulling the wooden cover over him. From above, he hears a horrible scream. This causes them all to pause and listen for what will come next.
“Father. No, I tried to sell them. I did. But they wouldn't buy them. Please don't be mad. Please don't be mad.”
Chapter 91
Jack has been descending the ladder for at least five minutes. So far, the teens have all climbed in silence, dwelling on the fate of the match girl. As Jack climbs, he's taking inventory of this whole ordeal, which he realizes has probably been the most agonizing thing in his life. He snuck out of his house, stole a goose, was nearly killed by a poisonous snake, was almost eaten by a bear, was chased by a wolf and a venomous spider, and came close to being set aflame by a little girl. Plus, his relationship with Mason is on thin ice, although the ordeal with the girl had at least brought them a little closer to the same team. On top of it all, the one positive aspect about the night has been a budding relationship with Amy, but Jack senses that things have cooled off a bit, and those first forays of flirtation back at the roller coaster seem like a long time ago to him. In fact, he even thinks about how this new “thing” he and Amy have going has been like a roller coaster itself with her taking his hand one minute and siding with Mason the next.
Breaking the silence, Mason informs, “I can see the bottom.”
The climbers let out a sigh of relief.
Jack takes a peek, himself, and he, too, can see the bottom. He doesn't hurry up and eventually arrives on a smooth concrete slab of a floor. They are in a long narrow room, and lit torches adorn the walls. Two lengthy walkways are visible on either side of a large trough of water that has been etched out in the concrete floor. Black water spills down from an opening at the top of the wall on the far end of the trough. It ripples and splashes until it disappears through a metal grate at the end closest to them.
Amy and Scotty are looking around, and Scotty offers, “Some kind of sewer, I think.”
Mason is also surveying the tunnel-like room and says, “Hey, that thing about crocodiles in sewers…that a fairy tale, right?”
“A myth,” Scotty responds. “Different thing.”
“So, no crocodiles?” confirms Mason.
“I dunno. I haven't ever been here before,” answers Scotty.
“Let's just stay alert, okay?” Jack advises. “In this place anything is likely to happen.”
Everyone nods in agreement.
Jack asks, “So where to now?”
“Looks like there's another ladder up ahead,” Scotty points out.
A black ladder is at the other end of the room on the same side of the trough that the group is on.
“You okay, Amy?” Jack asks.
She simply nods, looking dazed and bewildered. Her hair has been singed, and it is tussled from the constant scratching she has been doing since the incident. Still, in this moment, Jack thinks Amy is as pretty as ever.
Amy offers Jack a little smile and motions to her hair, asking, “Is it bad?”
“Looks fine to me.”
“Yeah, ha ha.”
“'Course we are about a thousand feet underground in the dark on the banks of a sewer with black, nasty water, so I am not sure there's any sort of fashion code down here to abide by.”
She laughs a little and Jack smiles. He thinks how “the roller coaster” just went on the up.
“Not sure what we would have done if you guys hadn't found that hatch,” Mason confides. “Finch did not do a very good job with that little detail in his map. He should have written wooden hatch or something like that. It sure could have saved us time.”
Jack bristles at the mention of the map. Even though all is clearly not settled between them, a temporary truce is understood, and none of them wants to restart the bitter infighting they had experienced over the last hour or so.
A rumble of hunger rips through Jack's stomach, but right now he's too exhausted to care.
“Sure could use a rest,” he says.
“You can say that again,” Mason responds. He ruffles with the work belt adjusting it around his waist.
Meanwhile, Scotty has found Lucky on the bank of the nasty water. He picks him up and declares, “At least he didn't go for a swim.”
Noticing Lucky enveloped in Scotty's embrace, Mason confidently says to the others, “You see, my prize has been a hero more than once. Here, Scotty, no need to carry him all the way.”
“No, I've got him, Mason,” Scotty answers. He appears to be almost jealously guarding the bear.
“Give me the bear, Scotty. I don't want you getting too attached. Lucky here deserves a place of honor in my room.”
Scotty begrudgingly hands the bear over.
And with that, the group begins to move toward the other ladder. Jack is walking next to Amy. Their hands brush and then clasp. This causes Jack to stand a little taller.
As they continue to the ladder, Jack looks around more at their surroundings. He is particularly confused by the room and wonders, Why a sewer? Every other room in this place has related to some fairy tale or nursery rhyme? What's this all about? After they walk a little further, Scotty hunches over and confesses, “I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.”
Amy, still messing with the top of her head, says, “We have to keep moving, Scotty. We're all tired, but we can't just stay here.”
The long walk to the exit is tedious and the tuckered-out group gazes right and left, expecting something to emerge from shadow.
Then, just as they are a few feet from the ladder, Jack sees movement from a small crack in the stone wall to his right.
Amy shrieks, “Rats!”
A procession of more than 50 rats spills out onto the floor and begins running around and in between four sets of legs.
Chapter 92
As they dance and weave to avoid the rats, Scotty looks at the crack in the wall and sees 20 more grey and black rats scurrying out. These repulsive looking rodents aren't anything like the pleasant lab mice they had seen earlier in the night. Some of the larger ones could pass for small dogs.
Sniffing and squeaking, the rats fill the space below their fe
et. One hideous rat scampers over Scotty's right foot. He kicks the varmint, and it lands on top of another but scurries around again.
“Just get up the ladder,” Jack proposes.
“I can't move! These things are swarming!” Amy cries.
“They're just rats. Keep going,” Mason demands.
The flowing water accompanied by the loud squeaking and clicking of hundreds of tiny feet is almost deafening. Nonetheless, from somewhere in the room, the teens are just able to make out the faint sound of music. It is soothing music, the kind you hear from an Irish wooden flute. The music begins to rise in volume, eventually eclipsing the sound of the rats, and it seems to have an effect on the rodents, for they start to line up in two single-file rows, standing on their hind legs and facing the end of the tunnel. Then they slowly edge forward in a bizarre trance, almost marching in time with the music.
The group is mystified by the vermin parade and have halted their progress toward the ladder while staring at the marching rats. Something, though, causes Scotty to look to his left, and he sees a man walk into the tunnel from a hidden passage. He's wearing a long green cloak that flows over his body and drapes over the top of his head like a cowl. Scotty can't make out any features of the man's face except for two bright yellow circles, which seem less like eyes than two beams of light, but he does notice that the man is playing a wooden pan flute. The instrument glides across where Scotty suspects his mouth would be if he could see it. The tune it produces is simply enthralling.
A sense of peace envelopes Scotty and his body longs to join the mice in following this elf-like individual back to the ladder they had originally descended. He is unable to resist, and he, too, beings to march.
Suddenly, Scotty realizes that he knows who this is, the Pied Piper. He tries to say something, but he can't. He's caught in the Piper's hypnotic music.
Chapter 93
Jack is also lured by the piper's tune. He can't stop his feet from moving toward the ladder he doesn't want to ascend. He tells himself to step right, but the order isn't followed. One foot at a time, he follows the procession. As the line turns, he catches a glimpse of the strange cloaked figure playing the wooden flute. Jack tries to pivot his foot again, but he can't. He wants to call out, but his mouth feels full of cotton. Amy, Mason, and Scotty walk before him in the same hypnotic shuffle.