By the time the boys reached the top of the pyramid, Nick’s mother was gone, and the temple was empty.
“She must have gone through that dead end somehow,” Angelo said as they slid the altar to the side, revealing the stone staircase below. “Let’s hope she left it open behind her.”
Walking down the stairs, Nick tried not to think about the dark stain on the side and top of the altar. Unfortunately, when they got to the end of the tunnel, it was blocked, just as it had been the first time they were here.
Angelo banged his hand on the cold stone wall. “That was a short trip.”
“There has to be some way in,” Nick said. “My mom found it. We can too.”
Carter got down on one knee and studied the wall. “There’s a hole here right under the picture of the moon. If we shove a couple of sticks of dynamite in, we can blow the whole wall.”
“And probably bring the temple down on top of us,” Angelo said.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Nick said. “We don’t have any dynamite.” He squatted down to look at the hole Carter had discovered. He pushed his finger into the hole but couldn’t feel anything. “Maybe it takes some kind of key.”
“Yes,” Angelo said. “A key.” He looked thoughtfully from the stair entrance to the door. “Of course!” he shouted, his face breaking into a smile. He ran to the mirror closest to the stairs. “Everybody stand back.”
Slowly Angelo adjusted the mirror until it caught the light of the moon from outside. He moved to the second mirror, adjusting it until the moonlight bounced from the first mirror reflected into it. One by one he adjusted the mirrors, creating a continuous beam of silvery moonlight.
“Cross your fingers,” he said, grabbing the last mirror. Carefully he moved the mirror until a single beam of light bounced from it straight into the hole in the wall. For a second, nothing happened. Then the wall began to move, and with a deep, grating sound it rumbled to the side until the entire entrance was open.
“We did it!” Carter said, pumping his fist.
Nick stepped through the open doorway and noticed several polished lengths of wood in a rack on the wall. “What are these?”
Angelo sniffed the wood. “Pino de Ocote. It’s a fatwood pine that grows all around here. I think they’re supposed to be used as torches.”
“How are we supposed to light them?” Nick asked. He pulled a torch from the wall and it immediately burst into flame. “Well, that’s convenient,” he said.
“Maybe the demons want to make it easy to get to them so they can eat us,” Carter said gloomily. He grabbed another length of wood and it lit as well. Soon all three of them were holding flaming torches.
“Let’s take this slowly,” Angelo said. “There could be any number of traps or tests here.”
“Looks clear to me,” Carter said. He held up his torch, revealing a wide, empty tunnel.
Nick couldn’t help agreeing. If there was a trap, it sure wasn’t in this tunnel. He started down the passage, but something moved in the dirt by his feet. He looked down just in time to see a gleaming white dome push up out of the ground. Another popped up from the ground in front of Carter, and two more to Angelo’s left. All over the tunnel, gleaming white domes—about the size of cantaloupes—began rising from the ground.
“What are they?” Nick asked.
A second later, his question was answered, and he wished he’d never asked. Below the white domes, empty black eye sockets appeared next to champing teeth. The white things weren’t cantaloupes. They were skulls—teeth opening and closing in silent chants. And the skulls were attached to skeleton bodies, covered with bits of tattered flesh and remnants of ancient Mayan clothing.
As soon as the nearest skeleton was out of the ground far enough to free its arms, it reached for Nick. Long, white bone fingers closed on the leg of his pants. “Get off me!” he screamed, waving his torch.
Dirt exploded into the air as dozens of skeletons dragged themselves out of the ground.
“Get back!” Angelo shouted, pulling Nick away from the clutching grasp of the sightless undead.
Carter turned and ran toward the stairs. “Retreat!”
Nick stood by the base of the stairs, panting. He could still feel the way the skeletal fingers had felt closing around his calf.
“I sure didn’t expect that,” Carter said. “You’d think they could put up a warning sign like Caution, Skeletons Popping Up from the Floor. They scared the beans out of me.”
“I’m pretty sure that was on purpose,” Angelo said.
The moment they’d all retreated past the entrance, the skeletons had sunk back into the ground. But Nick had no doubt they would climb out of their graves again if someone else trespassed into their tunnel.
“Now can we use dynamite?” Carter asked. “Even one of those hunting rifles would work.” He held out his hands like he was gripping a rifle. “Blam, blam. Blammety, blam.”
“How would bullets kill skeletons?” Angelo asked.
“No clue,” Carter said. “But if I was a skeleton and someone started shooting at me, I wouldn’t stick around to find out.”
Nick turned to Angelo. “How do we get past them?”
“What if we run?” Carter suggested. “It takes them a while to climb out of the ground. If we go fast, we can be past them before they can do anything but give us angry looks.”
“How do we get back?” Angelo said.
Carter threw his hands in the air. “Do you expect me to think of everything? I’ll figure that out when it’s time to come back.”
It sounded chancy. But Nick didn’t have any better ideas. “This is my problem. You guys wait here and I’ll make a break for it. If I don’t make it, maybe you can distract them or something.”
“Who do you think you are, the Lone Ranger?” Carter said. “We’re a team. Brothers from another mother. A creature-crunching crew.”
“We might have a better chance if we stick together,” Angelo said.
“Okay,” Nick said. “Here’s the plan. We line up at the door. I’ll count to three, and then we all run. We’re in this together, so if anyone gets grabbed, help them out.” He took a deep breath. “One, two, three.”
Either the skeletons were more prepared, having seen them once before, or they somehow guessed what the plan was. Nick hadn’t taken more than three steps into the tunnel when undead began popping up like jack-in-the-boxes.
Two of them closed in on Nick, hands outstretched and teeth champing. Nick backed away, waving his torch in front of him. To his right, Angelo tried to kick away a skeleton that had its arms wrapped in a bear hug around his knees. He hit the creature across the arms with his torch and it released its grip just long enough for Angelo to get away.
“Back!” Nick shouted. He and Angelo hurried out of the tunnel.
But Carter was having fun. Waving his torch like a sword, he danced around the undead and shouted insults. “Is that the best you’ve got, bonehead!” he yelled, whacking a skeleton in the ribs. “My mom can fight better than that,” he called, rolling across the ground and knocking one of the undead warrior’s legs out from under it.
Nick turned to Angelo. “Was there anything in the Popol Vuh about these guys?”
Angelo flipped through his monster notebook. “Maybe there’s a secret password or a special test.” He glared at Carter, who was still fighting the skeletons. “Would you cut that out so I can think?”
“Just one more.” Carter backed toward the doorway. He raised his torch in the air, yelled, “Die, you fleshless freak!” and bashed the skeleton directly on the top of its shiny white skull.
As soon as he hit it, the creature disappeared back into the ground.
“How did you do that?” Nick asked.
“I have no idea.” Another skeleton moved in. Carter leaped forward and whacked it on top of the head. That one disappeared into the ground too. “It’s like Whac-A-Mole with the undead,” Carter chirped gleefully. “If only we got prizes.”
Nick grinned at Angelo. “Anything about Whac-A-Mole in your Mayan studies?”
“Not a thing,” Angelo said. He leaped forward and whapped a skeleton of his own. As soon as he hit the creature, it sank. He hit another, and the same thing happened.
Soon all three of them were bashing the undead into the ground. After a few seconds, the skeletons started to rise again, but they were much slower once they’d been hit.
“We can’t just stand here bashing skeletons,” Nick said. “We have to get my mom.” When most of the skeletons were in the ground, he and his friends ran deeper into the tunnel. A hundred feet or so after the entrance, the tunnel turned sharply left and a steep staircase led down through a cave-like entrance into the heart of the pyramid.
“You think that was the only test?” Carter asked as the boys descended single file into the darkness, their torch light forming shadows on the carvings cut into the walls.
“It would be nice,” Nick said. “But somehow I doubt it.”
The deeper they went, the lower the temperature dropped, until Nick found himself shivering from the cold. The air smelled like the smoke from the torches, and something else. Something old and dark. Once again, he began to hear voices.
Turn back while you can.
Go away.
You don’t belong here.
He decided it might be best to keep what he was hearing to himself.
The staircase continued farther than seemed possible. He felt like they’d been walking for half a mile at least. “Does it feel like we should have reached the bottom of the pyramid by now?”
Angelo’s breath plumed in front of his face. “I don’t think we’re in the pyramid anymore. I think we’re entering the underworld.”
Carter shivered. “Do you really need to tell me that?”
At the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves standing in front of four doors—one to the left, one to the right, and two straight ahead. Each of the passages was a different color—red, black, white, and yellow.
Nick glanced down each of the passages. “Any suggestions?”
Angelo and Carter shook their heads.
“Okay, let’s try white,” he said.
Cautiously, the three boys filed down the passage. It went twenty or thirty feet before ending at an intersection that went left or right. A wet chewing sound came from the right.
“Left,” Carter said. “Definitely left.”
The passage curved around and then split into yet another fork.
“It’s a maze,” Angelo said.
Nick agreed. “Is anybody keeping track of this?”
“I’m trying.” Angelo scratched something into his monster notebook. “It’s hard to draw a map without an aerial view.”
“Let’s go right this time,” Carter said. “I’ve got a good feeling about it.” A minute later they came out back at the stairs where they’d started.
“How did we end up here?” Nick asked.
Carter shrugged. “Maybe we should have gone left the second time?”
Nick pointed to the door on the right. “Let’s start with that one.”
Again, they found themselves taking lefts and rights with no idea where they were. Once, Nick was sure he heard quiet voices to their left. But when they turned that direction, they again found themselves exactly where they’d started.
“Hang on,” Angelo said. “Something about these colors seems familiar.” He flipped through his monster notebook. “Here it is. In the Popol Vuh, the brothers had to choose one of four roads. They were red, black, white, and yellow, just like these.”
“Which one did they choose?” Nick asked.
Angelo examined the pages. “I should have taken better notes, but I didn’t think I’d need them. Black, maybe? I think that’s the color that took them to the lords of death.”
“Very comforting,” Carter said.
“It’s still a maze though,” Nick said. “Even after we take the black path, we have to figure out a way to leave a trail so we can tell where we’ve gone.”
Angelo tried burning a spot on the wall with his torch, but the fire left no mark. He tried scraping the wall with the wood. That didn’t work either. “We could drop rocks.”
Carter pointed to the ground, which was as clean as the floor of a restaurant kitchen. “Have you seen any rocks in here?”
Nick hadn’t. “What about your yarn? That would work great.”
“Jiménez took it when he knocked me out.” Carter sighed. “And the hat I was working on too.”
“I had lots of stuff in my backpack,” Angelo said. “But he took that too.”
The three of them looked around for something to drop. Without a way to mark their path, they could end up wandering through the labyrinth for hours.
“You know . . . ,” Angelo said.
Nick followed his gaze and realized what he was thinking. Both of the boys looked at Carter with a combination of eagerness and pity.
“What?” Carter asked.
Nick pointed to a loose piece of yarn hanging from the bottom of Carter’s serape.
“No!” Carter said. “Do you have any idea how hard this was to make? I love it like a brother.”
“It’s the only way,” Nick said.
Carter bit his lip. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”
Nick patted him on the shoulder. “We don’t have to use all of it.”
Carter hugged the serape to his chest. “That’s like saying, ‘We don’t have to cut off all your fingers.’”
“It’s for Nick’s mom,” Angelo said.
Carter grimaced. “Fine.” He closed his eyes, grabbed the threaded end of the yarn, and tugged.
“It’s okay, little fellah,” Carter said, petting his serape.
Nick looked at Angelo, and they both raised their eyebrows at the same time. Nick had no idea how long they’d been down here. All he knew was that so far, Carter had unraveled almost a third of the yarn from the front of his serape, and they’d walked so long Nick’s feet were getting blisters.
They hadn’t managed to find their way through the maze. But at least thanks to the yarn they hadn’t ended up back where they started. Now they reached a dead end—one of at least a dozen they’d been blocked by so far. Carter patted what was left of his serape. “Daddy still loves you.”
“You know, it’s just a piece of clothing,” Angelo said as they doubled back.
“Seriously?” Carter glared at him. “If your friend’s cat died, would you say, ‘It’s just an animal’? When Travis had to shoot Old Yeller, did his mom say, ‘Stop blubbering. It’s only a dog’?”
Angelo looked away. “Sorry.”
“Point taken,” Nick said. “We really appreciate the sacrifice you’re making. And if it helps, I promise I’ll buy you like twenty packages of yarn if we make it out of this.”
“Skeins,” Carter muttered. “Yarn comes in balls and skeins.”
“Fine. I’ll buy you twenty skeins of yarn.”
“Look,” Angelo said. “It’s a door.”
Nick could barely believe his eyes. After all this time, he’d started to wonder if there even was a way out of the maze. The thought had crossed his mind that this was just a trap where they’d wander aimlessly until they died of thirst or starvation.
They hurried to the door, which was covered from top to bottom in Mayan script.
“What does it say?” Nick asked.
Angelo squinted at the carvings and shook his head. “I’m not sure. I should have spent more time studying Mayan before we left.”
“Only one way to find out,” Nick said. He pushed the heavy stone door and all their torches went out at once.
“What happened?” Nick asked. Appened-appened-appened, his voice echoed, as if they had entered a large cavern. Had they gone through the door then, or were they still in the maze? He reached out but couldn’t feel anything. It was so dark that even when he waved his hand in front of his face he couldn’t se
e so much as a shadow of movement.
“No clue,” Carter said. “But I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume the writing on the door said something about darkness.”
“Didn’t you say something about darkness being one of the tests in that book?” Nick asked.
“Yes. The house of darkness,” Angelo said.
That didn’t sound too bad. Nick didn’t exactly like the dark, and he had to admit he felt a little freaked out about having no idea where he was or what might be waiting for him. But he could live with that.
“Now isn’t the time to panic,” Angelo said. “Although I think this is where the first set of brothers died.”
“Died!” Carter yelped. “How did they die?”
Angelo coughed. “I . . . don’t remember. I know there was a house of darkness, and four or five others. A house of blades maybe?”
“Blades,” Carter said. “Now is definitely the time to panic.”
“We can get through this.” Nick moved in the direction Carter’s voice had come from, his hand held out in front of him.
Carter squealed. “Something touched me!”
“It’s just me,” Nick said. “Put your hand on my shoulder.”
Carter poked him in the face.
“I didn’t say pick my nose,” Nick said, moving Carter’s hand to his shoulder.
“Now, Angelo, walk toward the sound of my voice.” A moment later something bumped into his chest, and he barely kept from screaming.
He turned Angelo in the direction he thought was forward and placed his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Okay, Angelo, you lead the way. One step at a time. Shuffle your feet and hold your hands in front of you. There could be pits or walls. If you start to fall or run into anything, yell and I’ll pull you back. Carter, you hold on to me, and keep feeding out your yarn.”
“What if something grabs me from behind?” Carter asked.
“Scream like a little girl and hope it goes away.”
Step by step, the three of them moved through the darkness. Nick tried to keep cool, but with nothing to see or feel, every little sound made him sure something was about to grab him.
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