Quest Chasers – The Deadly Cavern
Grace and Thomas Lockhaven
Edited by: David Aretha
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Faceplant
Mrs. Keystone’s class had never been so quiet. In front of the class stood Drew Morris. All eyes stared transfixed as he gesticulated wildly as if trapped in the world’s largest invisible spider web. Each of his classmates leaned forward in their desks, not wanting to miss a single word…
“This tree, it was different than all the other trees. It was gnarled and twisted and it was like it was alive!”
Drew’s eyes opened wider than one would think humanly possible when he said the word alive. Sara Williams, actress and star of many Swift Creek Middle School theatrical performances, raised a shaky hand to her head, let out an audible gasp, and swooned.
Drew, caught up in the moment, paused for effect and whispered.
“I’m not sure why,” he said, shaking his head, “but I walked closer to the tree. When I was just a few steps from it, the ground started shaking and then suddenly the roots ripped out of the ground like big, giant hands and they wrapped around me.” Drew slapped his hands together as he entwined his fingers like a meat sandwich, prompting the students in the front row to jerk their heads back. His face turned red, and his hands trembled as he squeezed them together as tightly as possible.
“Drew…Drew….” He was about to go into the part about how he escaped when his teacher’s voice finally broke through. “Drew!!!”
Drew looked up inquisitively at Mrs. Keystone, his English teacher, slightly annoyed at interruption.
“Drew.” She spoke kindly and calmly. “You were supposed to tell a story about the most exciting thing that has ever happened to you. This wasn’t a creative writing piece. Your story…”
Drew interrupted. He could immediately feel his round face growing red, his ears burning. “Mrs. Keystone, this is a true story! This really happened!”
The entire classroom erupted with laughter. Drew shrank back in embarrassed anger. “It’s true,” he said, his voice raising to a shriek. “It happened just two days ago, I’m not a liar!”
This only made everyone laugh harder.
“Drew,” said Mrs. Keystone as she gently placed her hand on his trembling shoulders, “please take a seat. We’ll talk after class.”
Drew nodded and turned toward his desk—then ever so elegantly tripped over Sara Williams’s bedazzled pink and silver converse and face-planted with a sickening thud onto the tile floor.
His lip quivered as the last bit of oxygen escaped his lips with an “ughhh.” This floor is incredibly cool.
The sound of laughter rang in his ears. “Epic,” yelled one of his classmates.
Drew felt a strong hand grab his own. He looked up into the face of Tommy Prescott.
Tommy smiled at him as he helped him to his feet. “Impressive face-plant; stunt work may be in your future,” said Tommy, arching his eyebrows matter-of-factly.
Drew cautiously climbed into his desk; he had had enough attention to last a lifetime.
Bristling with anger, Mrs. Keystone slammed her hand onto her metal desk. “Everyone be quiet,” she said, emphasizing each word.
Mrs. Keystone was a petite woman with kind eyes, but when the corners of her lips curled downward toward her chin, she looked like a giant—a giant that meant business. “I would have expected a little more understanding from you. Obviously, Drew misunderstood the project, and he, might I add, presented an excellent story.”
She stood perfectly still, except for her head, which smoothly swiveled like a radar dish from one side of the classroom to the other. She made sure that she met every student’s eyes before returning her attention back to Drew.
Her face softened when she spoke.
“Drew,” she spoke kindly. “I will expect a new actual story from you tomorrow.”
Drew wished that he could melt right into the seat of his desk. His neck prickled as he felt every single eye upon him, judging him. Feeling defeated and angry, he nodded his head.
“Yes, Mrs. Keystone.” He could barely whisper her name.
Drew sat quietly, his breathing shallow, his heart pounding. He wanted to cry; he wanted to tell the entire class that they were all jerks.
I’m an idiot—what did I think would happen? How could he blame them for laughing? I would have laughed too. But it did happen; I still have the scrapes and bruises all over my body. He slowly pushed up his shirtsleeve, revealing an arm covered in scrapes and bruises.
As Drew sat tormenting himself, he suddenly became aware of a folded slip of notebook paper sliding across his desk.
Great, the harassment continues…. What’s next? Facebook, Instagram?
Drew envisioned how it would play out. Pictures of him totally engrossed in his tree story with hashtags like #DrewsAnIdiot, #DrewsMagicalTree, #ExtremeTreeHugger, #FacePlanting101.
His life was over. Suddenly homeschooling seemed like his only option to gracefully live out the rest of his middle school and high school years. Do they have homeschooling for college?
Carefully he unfolded the paper behind his English book so Mrs. Keystone didn’t see.
On the page, there was a very simple handwritten note.
Drew, you are incredibly brave. We believe you! Meet us by Walter’s statue after school. Eevie and Tommy.
Drew didn’t turn around. In fact, he still felt doubtful that Eevie and Tommy believed him. He liked Eevie—she was incredibly smart and friendly and her eyes were like liquid sunshine. He thought about that for a moment, Eevie gazing…. But then there was Tommy. He didn’t really know Tommy too well, but he seemed nice enough. He knew one thing for sure, though: Eevie and Tommy were inseparable.
Swift Creek Middle School had installed a new electronic tone system to denote the beginning and ending of classes. Instead of the clanging of a bell, there was a “tonal beep” that was supposed to enkindle calmness throughout the student body. Psychologists had figured that this soft tone gently persuaded the student body to move peacefully en masse from class to class. The final tone released the beasts into the wild.
The tone theory seemed to work well except for the final departure, where students stampeded out of the school like wildebeests in a National Geographic special. Drew, not wanting to be a part of the pack, surreptitiously slipped out the classroom. He darted through the art department and out the back of the school. Cautiously, he made his way to the corner of the school facing the parking lot.
Peering around the corner of the main building, he patiently waited a good five minutes until most of the students had boarded their buses or been picked up by their parents. He wanted to avoid further public humiliation at all cost. Head hung low, he tried to walk as inconspicuously as possible to the now almost empty bike rack.
Drew pulled his hoodie over his head and looked up at the statue of Walter Emery, founder of Swift Creek Middle School. Walter was a foreboding figure, and in every picture Drew had seen of the man, he looked as if he was bloated and suffering from horrible gas.
Even now, Drew felt as if Walter was staring down at him with a look of disdain, like someone had put a hot herring in his cummerbund, a crime for which there was no acquittal. Drew looked up to the afternoon sky. The gray and black clouds were in a heated argument, threaten
ing to pour down on him at any second.
“Drew! Drew!”
Drew jumped and cautiously peered out from the shelter of his hoodie. His classmate, Eevie, waved to him. He swallowed hard as she and Tommy Prescott approached.
“I never stared at her in class,” he blathered, looking from Eevie to Tommy as if pleading for his life, afraid that Tommy would know that the song “All of Me” by John Legend played in his head every time he looked at Eevie.
As Eevie drew closer, she gave him a reassuring smile. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” mumbled Drew, when he realized he wasn’t about to become Tommy’s personal tackle dummy.
“Tough crowd in there,” she said, punching his shoulder playfully. I’ll never wash that shoulder again, thought Drew to himself.
Eevie Davenport had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes with golden specks that sparkled in the sunlight. Her cheeks glowed red from the cold October breeze. Eevie was extremely kind to everyone and easy to like. She was a modern-day renaissance girl, incredibly smart and giving; she mentored other students if they began falling behind or even just needed some encouragement.
Everyone liked Eevie and instinctively, Drew knew he could trust her.
Then again, she was always accompanied by Tommy Prescott. Tommy was tall and athletic with blondish brown hair cut short. He had the face of certainty—that determined kind of face you see when you think of a soldier or an athlete. So Drew was surprised when Tommy said—
“Drew, it took a lot of courage to do what you did. I don’t think I could have done that. You should be proud of yourself for standing up in front of everyone. Not many people would have done that.”
Drew shook his head as a confused look crossed his face. He wanted to blurt out, Yes, not everyone has the skillset to become a social pariah like me in a matter of minutes.
But instead, he found himself saying, “You two believe me?”
He pulled his hoodie down off his head, his face matching the disbelief in his voice. The wind kicked up, tussling his curly red hair playfully. His hazel eyes narrowed as he searched their faces waiting for the joke where he was the punch line. “I basically told you that a tree grabbed me like an anaconda and tried to squeeze the life out of me, and you believe me?”
His eyes squinted, and he shook his head as if that would bring him back to reality, to a moment when Eevie was saying: “Hi, Drew. OK, this is what we call an intervention. Now my father is a child psychologist and….” His internal dialogue was interrupted by Eevie’s angelic voice.
“We do. We believe you,” said Eevie, her face breaking into a soothing smile. “I hadn’t really thought about it for a long time, but you made me remember a story my grandfather told me—a story about a tree, a twisted tree like the one that you described…. I always thought he was just trying to scare us kids, but when you started talking about the tree, all those memories came back to me.”
“The same thing happened to your grandfather?” asked Drew incredulously.
“Not quite the same thing,” said Eevie smiling, “but he used to play in Black Hallow Park when he was a little boy.”
Eevie leaned forward, the way that people do when they are about to tell something very interesting.
“He told me he went camping with a bunch of his friends. One of the older boys told a story about children mysteriously vanishing from the park. He, of course, thought that the older kid was just trying to scare him and his friends, but it frightened him so badly he couldn’t sleep that night. He said when he got home he was exhausted, and his father asked him why he hadn’t slept. Grandpa told him what the boys had said, and after that his father grew very silent. His dad’s face turned really pale, and he told my grandfather: ‘You are never to go into those woods.’ He remembered his dad lowering his face to him, nose to nose, saying: ‘Do you understand me? You are not to go back.’”
“OK,” said Tommy, extending the K and moving his eyes from Drew to Eevie and then back to Drew.
He looked closely at Drew; he was transfixed by Eevie’s story. Was Drew even breathing?
“Drew, Eevie, it’s Tommy,” he called out, waving his hand in front of their faces, “welcome back to what we like to call reality.”
Eevie glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” said Tommy apologetically. “I’m sure there is a rational explanation for all of this. Or, as they like to say on the National Geographic channel, a natural phenomenon.”
Eevie ignored him and continued. “So here is where the story turns a little weird.”
Tommy coughed and then pretended to be fascinated by the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, starts to get weird?”
Eevie continued, ignoring Tommy’s comment. “He said a few days after he told his parents about the story, they had to travel to a funeral for a close friend of theirs. So his grandmother came to stay with him while they were gone. His dad had a study that he always kept locked, and while his grandmother was sleeping, he broke into his dad’s office with a shoehorn.”
“Pardon me, a what?” asked Tommy, a confused look on his face.
“A shoehorn. A metal thingy that you put on the back of your heel to help get your shoe on.”
“OK, no idea. However, please continue.”
Tommy arched his eyebrows and looked down at Drew. “Don’t you even pretend like you know what the heck a shoehorn is.”
Eevie shook her head in disbelief. “Just Google it. May I continue now?”
“Yes, please,” smiled Tommy. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Drew’s thumbs busily searching “shoehorn” on his iPhone.
“So anyways, he said he went straight to the desk, but it was locked. He…”
Tommy looked up at the sky. “Eevie, can you give us the CliffsNotes version of the story? It looks like it’s about to pour any second.”
Eevie gasped and rolled her eyes skyward in exasperation. “Really?”
“Found it!” Drew proudly showed everyone a picture of a shoehorn on his iPhone.
“Oh, cool. I need one of those for my soccer shoes,” said Tommy, staring at Drew’s phone.
“Ugh,” Eevie groaned. “Seriously? May I finish the story?”
“Sorry,” whispered Drew. “Your grandpa was pretty smart—I would have never thought of that.”
Tommy nodded in agreement. “Super smart. I honestly thought that it was a horn for your shoe. You know, like if the mall is really busy and you need to get through a crowd, you just honk your shoe horn.”
“Drew! Tommy! You two are killing me. Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Sorry,” the boys said in unison, cowering under Eevie’s admonishing gaze.
She shook her head and began again. “Here’s the CliffsNotes version. He finally got the desk drawer open by prying it open with….” Exasperated, she looked at them knowing what was coming. “…the shoehorn.”
She looked up surprised. “What, no comments from the peanut gallery?”
“No, we are riveted,” Tommy, said. “Please continue.”
“He said that when he was trying to pull the drawer open, he accidentally completely pulled it out of the desk, and underneath the drawer he found a thick envelope. He ripped that off and hid it in his pajamas. Now, this is where my grandpa’s smarts make you guys look like a couple of rookies. He just managed to get the door shut when his grandma came around the corner.”
“Oh, he is soooo dead,” said Drew with a nod of his head.
“Nope, this is where my grandpa’s sneak gene kicked in. He said he apologized to her and told her that he had a problem sleepwalking. He told her he had fallen down the stairs and acted like he had bruised his arm and twisted his ankle.”
“Whoa, smart guy,” said Drew, admiringly. “I would have probably just tried to stand really still like a statue, hoping that she was incredibly nearsighted.”
“If you picked up a globe and took off your shirt, I’m
pretty sure she would think you were Atlas,” laughed Tommy.
“Seriously? Drew was almost killed by a tree, then the entire class thinks he had a psychotic episode, and you two are making jokes?”
“I was just trying to lighten the tension a little, Eevie. Geesh. Of course we’re listening to you. I for one am spellbound.” Tommy looked at Drew for support. “Go ahead, Eevie.”
“My grandpa said he limped into the kitchen and had to wait for what seemed an eternity for his grandmother to make him some hot milk, which is supposedly a cure for sleepwalking. Finally, she went to bed.”
“Sooooo…what was in the envelope?” whispered Drew.
“Inside there was a stack of newspaper clippings, each one describing the disappearance of numerous people at Black Hallow Park.”
“So his friend wasn’t lying,” said Drew, suddenly excited.
“But,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect, “there was one clipping that caught his eye. The person in one of the clippings had the same last name. The clipping was from September 14, 1942, and the person who had disappeared was his dad’s twin brother. He never realized his father had a brother. No one ever spoke about him. He said he sat and stared at the picture in the article. His dad’s brother had the same eyes, the same smile as his father.”
Eevie looked at Drew. “Today is September 16th. You were attacked on the same day—seventy-five years later. That’s really creepy….
“Drew,” said Eevie, excitedly, “this may be our chance to prove that you were telling the truth and find out what’s really out there!”
“That sounds like a very bad idea,” said Drew.
“What’s out there is a very unhappy tree with some serious anger issues,” said Tommy. “Most likely it wasn’t nurtured as a sapling.”
“Really,” said Eevie, her voice filled with mock annoyance. “I don’t think it was the tree that wasn’t nurtured,” she said smiling at Tommy. “Drew, do you think you can show us where we can find the tree?”
“I can show you,” said Drew, “but I’m not going near that tree again.” He shook his head no as he spoke each word. “That tree nearly killed me!”
Quest Chasers: The Deadly Cavern (A Magic Fantasy Adventure Book Series) Page 1