by Peter Cox
No hidden door.
We checked the other side. Still nothing.
I huffed a frustrated sigh.
“There is a hidden room, but there’s nothing in it. There’s a really strange tapestry, but it doesn’t mean anything.”
Sam nodded, plopping down in one of the leather chairs with a great puff of dust.
After she was done coughing, she looked around the room again.
“I can’t figure it. This place seems like it has so many secrets to tell, but there’s nothing here. Just dust and cobwebs and ruined furniture.”
“Maybe upstairs?” I didn’t sound hopeful.
“Yeah, maybe. But I doubt it. Maybe we’re missing something.”
We looked around the room again, but didn’t notice anything.
“Maybe there’s a clue in one of the books?” I asked.
“I like to read, but not that much,” she laughed. “We couldn’t work through those books in a year.”
“I still feel like there’s something hidden in here. It’s the main room of the house.”
Sam looked around again, her eyes settling on the tapestry.
She laughed. “Man, Athena sure hates that clock.”
I looked up at the painting, and then it hit me.
The needlepoint poem.
“Sam! The clock!”
I ran over to it, and Sam watched me with a confused look.
“Follow the wrath when the world takes a bath! Athena’s angrily pointing at the clock!”
I reached up, and fiddled with the glass over the clock face.
“And time removes its mask,” I continued. “If I can take off its mask…” suddenly the glass swung outward with a little snap. I gently pulled on the clock hands, and the face of the clock came right off.
Behind it was a small, gold button.
Sam jumped up and rushed over to my side.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who can figure out a riddle,” she said patting me on the back.
“Guess I was bound to be useful sooner or later.”
I hesitated, but then went for it: I pushed the button.
Nothing.
We waited, listened.
Seconds ticked by, still nothing.
“Dang,” I said. “I figured it out, but the stupid thing’s broken.”
“We might’ve hit a dead end,” Sam said.
I didn’t want to admit it, but it looked like we had.
The light outside was starting to fade, and I didn’t really look forward to being in this big empty house in the middle of the woods in the dark.
“We should get going,” I said, a defeated tone in my voice.
“Hey, maybe we’ll have some ideas after we sleep on it.” Sam was trying to remain optimistic. “Or maybe your phantom will come back.”
“Oh, I’ll look forward to it. My heart could use a bit more attacking.”
Basset trotted ahead of us.
“Why don’t you go and sniff around the outside of the house buddy?” I said. “See if there’s anything unusual out there.”
“Are you sure?” Basset looked worried.
“We’ve already searched this whole floor. There’s nothing here that could hurt us. It’s alright, you go ahead. We’ll be fine.”
Basset ran out of the room, stopping once to glance back at me.
We were almost through the smaller sitting room when I glanced over at the mantelpiece, and I jumped back and almost fell over one of the chairs. An icy pit had settled in my stomach.
The head on the mantelpiece.
It was looking right at me.
Chapter 23
THE SCREAMING FACE
My heart was pounding against my ribs as I steadied myself, blinked once, twice, and realized that it was real.
The face on the mantel was now awake.
The granite eyes had opened, and were now staring blankly out at the room. The eyes had no pupils, just solid gray, like the face of the dead.
“What is i– ” Sam started to say, and then followed my gaze. “Ohmygosh.”
She approached the face slowly. “Holy cow. How did that happen?”
I gathered myself and forced my voice to remain level. Didn’t want a quiver of fear to escape.
“I don’t know. It’s not…. it’s not like, alive is it?”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth I realized how ridiculous they sounded, but I couldn’t take them back now.
Sam waved her hand in front of the eyes. No response.
“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that. I meant ‘it’s not moving.’ As in, it’s not a machine, or a security system, right?”
“Not that I can tell,” she said, leaning in for a closer look. “Jeez, that gave me a start.”
“Not me. I just thought it would be fun to jump backward, trip over my own feet, and slam into a chair. You know. Got to liven things up somehow.”
Sam laughed. “Of course.”
“Stone face opening its eyes and glaring at us? Nothing surprising there.”
I had regained my composure a little.
“Do you think it has something to do with the button I pushed?”
“Must.” Sam was still studying the eyes. “I don’t know why, though.”
“You mean why would you hide a button in a clock that makes a statue’s eyes open? Do you need a reason? Seems logical to me.”
“Makes perfect sense.”
I bent down next to her. I couldn’t shake the feeling that those blank eyes were looking at me, staring right into my eyes and studying me. I shivered.
“Yeah, it’s also creeping me out,” Sam said.
“Distracting too.” I reached up to cover the eyes with my hand so Sam and I could talk without the distraction. The second my hand closed over the eyes I felt a snap, and the statue’s mouth gaped open.
Before I could even react, the head shrieked.
For the second time I jumped back and tripped. My heart decided to start dancing again.
A blast of steam was coming out of the statue’s mouth, whistling like a teapot.
“What the-” Sam was cut off by an even louder snap. The head slowly started to sink into the mantel, and at the same time the rear of the fireplace started sliding back, with an awful dragging, grating sound.
“Another secret room!” Sam said in an awed whisper.
“Yeah, it’s always a good idea to scare the pants off yourself whenever you go into a room. Personally, I like my doors to be pants-peeingly-terrifying too.”
“I agree: it’s weird. A weird way to hide a door.”
Sam ducked into the fireplace, studying the head, which had now completely receded into the mantel.
“Compressed air or something,” she said. “Like hydraulics. The air releases, the door opens. Clever.”
“Good word. Shrieking hydraulic head. Clever.”
Sam disappeared into the darkness, and with a deep breath to steady myself, I followed.
The room was tiny, about the same size as the last hidden room, but the walls were made of old quarried stone. Like the walls of a dungeon.
The room was lit in the flickering orange glow of two torches attached to the walls.
“Someone’s been here,” Sam said. “Recently.”
I shivered again.
At the center of the room was a short stone slab, about the height of a table. In the center of the slab were a bunch of glass beakers and vials and tubes, all sitting in a pile of ash.
Pet carriers and cages were stacked up against the wall.
“It’s like a laboratory,” Sam said.
“Or an altar.”
It was Sam’s turn to shiver.
“What do you think was going on in here?” I asked.
“I don’t know if I want to know.” She sighed. “But I guess we have to find out. We need clues.”
I looked at the pile of ash. It grossed me out, but Sam was right: we needed clues. I reached into the pile.
I’d never stuck my hand in ashes before, and it wasn’t quite what I expected: it was sandy but also somehow greasy. In the middle of the pile I felt something metal.
I pulled it out.
In my hand was a melted mess of something, a twisted pile of metal and glass that had fused together in a fire and re-hardened.
“What is it?” Sam asked, coming next to me for a closer look.
“I’m not sure,” I said, but I had a good idea. The metal was silvery and thick. It looked like it had been a magnifying glass.
Like Guster’s ant-burning magnifying glass.
“Look, we need to know what kind of ash that is, and what happened to the animals that were in these cages,” Sam said. “You go out and find Basset. I’ll follow right behind you with a sample of the ash and one of the cages.”
She didn’t need to tell me twice. I wanted out of that claustrophobic room.
I stepped out again, and was shocked by how dark it had gotten so quickly. There was just a tiny bit of gray light left, making every object in the room into a shadowy shape so you couldn’t really tell what anything was.
“Better hurry up,” I called back into the fireplace.
“You go ahead, I’ll be right out.”
I quickly made my way through the remaining rooms and out the front door.
Basset was nowhere in sight.
And that’s when I heard the voices.
Chapter 24
GHOSTLY WHISPERS
I heard them the instant I came out the front door.
At first I thought it was just the rustling of the leaves in the wind, but soon I could pick out words.
Rising on the breeze, like silken strings fluttering in the twilight, I could hear the faintest voices. They sounded small, but definitely close, whispers rising and falling and rising again, whispers coming from the trees and the dark writhing leaves, harsh and cold. Each word sounded venomous.
Slowly, I could pick up more and more words until eventually I heard the same four lines repeated again and again.
“We are here and we are new
Ever we will rise on cue
Believe you we will rob
Something from all, the larges and the smalls.”
Despite the lack of rhyming in the last two lines (so half the poem), and the vagueness of it, the poem did its job. The whispering voices all carried the same rhythm, chanting it away like a sullen prayer or a death march.
It was pretty creepy.
My mind was scrambling for a rational explanation. I scanned the shadows, the trees, everywhere, for signs of speakers or birds or anything, but there was nothing. The voices seemed to just come straight from the air.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
I talk to animals, but that doesn’t mean I believe every crazy cockamamie alien legend or the existence of fairies or ghosts.
I mean, do you believe in ghosts? So why should I, just because there’s one weird thing about me?
Talking animals are real. Ghosts? That’s ridiculous.
The whispered chants only lasted a couple of seconds, but it seemed like a lot longer to me.
I heard Sam coming towards the front door, and I turned around to ask her if she could hear the voices too. But the instant she stepped over the threshold and onto the forest floor, the voices cut short.
I decided not to bring it up. It was probably hard enough for her to believe in talking animals. Didn’t want to give her any more evidence that I was a blathering nut job.
At that moment Basset came running around the side of the house.
“Nothing interesting to smell anywhere around here,” he said with a disappointed tone. “Nothing to eat either.”
“Not even some brown stuff?” I asked with a laugh.
Basset didn’t look amused. He knows me too well.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I didn’t want to lie to him. “Look, I’ll tell you later. It’s probably nothing.”
Sam and Basset gave me the same worried look, but didn’t push it.
“Basset, we found another hidden room in there,” Sam said. “I brought out a few clues and was hoping you could give them a sniff for us.”
She set two of the animal cages down.
“I wondered what those were for,” Basset said, eyeing them warily. “I got scared we were going on a surprise vet trip.”
“We’d never trick you like that buddy,” I said.
He went up to the cages and sniffed them. He went back and forth between them, sniffing again and again.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he responded with a huff. “These were empty. No animals were ever in them.”
“Weird,” Sam said.
“Yeah, but at least we know that – whatever was going on in there – they weren’t sacrificing puppies or something,” I said.
“Was that a possibility?” Basset asked with a startled look.
“We also found this,” Sam said, showing him a handful of the ash.
“Let me see,” Basset said, giving it a couple of careful sniffs. He didn’t want to inhale it. “Burnt paper and wood. That’s it. Just a regular fire.”
“Also weird,” Sam said.
“So there’s a hidden room with empty cages, and a small wood fire hidden behind a fireplace. Why not just use the fireplace instead of building a fire in a secret room behind it?”
“Maybe they were burning something they didn’t want anyone to see. Evidence or something,” Sam said.
“If it was evidence, it’s destroyed. That ash is useless now.”
“Yeah. I guess we should head back.”
It was almost completely dark, but with Basset’s nose leading us I was sure we’d be okay in the woods.
We made it back to civilization without any trouble, but I was jumpy the whole walk. Every rustle of leaves, every whisper of wind made me prick up my ears.
Those ghostly voices had me spooked.
During the walk we reviewed what we had learned. Baskertonn Manor was real, and it was just as mysterious as we had expected. Based on the stolen cages, it was obvious the Masked Marauder was using the house as a base of operations.
But what were the cages for? What was he up to? And, most importantly, how could we stop him?
“We could stake out the place, you know, wait for him to arrive and catch him,” Sam said. “Some of the stolen goods are there. That’s evidence enough.”
“I don’t want you confronting any criminals face to face,” Basset said. “Too dangerous. Why don’t you call the police?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “The stolen cages are there, that’s reason enough for them to go out to the house, and then they can do a stakeout.”
“I guess,” Sam said. “But a police interrogation won’t think to ask him about the birds. We’ll probably never find out what he was up to if the police get involved. And this was just a few burglaries; he’ll be out of jail in a couple of years, and he can start his plan all over again.”
I nodded. “True.” I paused, thinking. “Look, my parents don’t usually take the time to really pay attention to my problems and think them through, but they’re smart. If I tell them I know where the Masked Marauder is hanging out, I think that’ll get their attention. And they’ll know what to do.”
“Will you tell them about the birds?” Sam asked.
“I think so. They’ll probably say it’s nothing, but I’m more likely to convince my parents than I am to convince the cops. And the cops will definitely listen to my parents more than they’d ever listen to a kid.”
“Good point. That sounds like a plan. Why don’t you meet me out at the fort tonight around midnight if you can sneak out, and tell me how it went.”
“Deal,” I said as we approached my driveway. All the lights were on, and I was sure dinner would be waiting inside. “See ya tonight!” I shouted as I waved.
“See ya!” Sam shouted back.
As we walked u
p the driveway I heard a familiar croak, followed by a high-pitched whistling. I looked down and saw a fat bullfrog sitting in the lawn like a blob of green Jell-O.
If green Jell-O was covered in warts.
Basset had introduced me to Gerald the bullfrog the first morning of summer vacation. Gerald was extremely friendly and lived in a small pond in the woods behind my parents’ house.
“Where you boys been all day?” he asked in a raspy voice.
“Just exploring the woods,” I said.
“Ugh,” he responded, which sounded exactly like a froggy burp. “Wandering around all day. Just the thought makes me exhausted.”
Frogs are notoriously lazy. The only thing fast about them is their tongues, and only when they’re catching flies. They talk shockingly slowly.
“Speaking of, I ought to be getting back to the wife to get some sleep,” he said, drawing out each word painfully. “If I get started now I should be home in four hours. Plenty of time.”
His pond was about 300 yards away. I could carry him over there in two minutes.
I’d offered him a ride once or twice, but he always turned me down. He said my “breakneck speed” would make him sick, but I think he was really too proud to get carried around by a human.
“Alright, have a good night,” I waved as he hopped once and stopped to catch his breath.
As we walked up the driveway, Basset’s tail was wagging.
“Looking forward to some dinner, boy?”
“I sure am. But I’m also excited that this is almost over. We’ve almost caught the bad guy, then we can go back to a normal summer.”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh of relief. This had been exciting and kind of fun to piece together clues, but there was a lot of pressure. “It’s almost over.”
If only I knew: it was just beginning.
Chapter 25
KIDNAPPED
The second I walked into my house I knew there was trouble.
There was no noise. No Dad watching TV or Mom chatting on the phone with one of the village ladies. No microwave cooking up some dinner. Not even the clatter of dishes or the sound of footsteps.
Nothing.
“Mom! Dad!” I called out. The only sound was my own voice echoing back at me.