Super Max and the Mystery of Thornwood's Revenge

by Susan Vaught

  “Notice my surroundings,” I muttered, trying to pretend that wouldn’t include counting spiders and beetles and ants and probably mice, and maybe even rats. My head twisted to my left. Yeah, there was definitely light coming from that direction. Not a lot, but some.

  A bulb? A break in the tunnel? A way out?

  Oh, no. What if Ellis’s fire would only miss me here, right where I was?

  Stay alive.

  But didn’t I have a duty to Captain Coker and Bot and Mom and Lavender and that trooper? What about to my grandfather? What if he was in Thornwood by now, looking for me?

  My phone light bathed both of my arms, and I read the words I had drawn on them earlier, when my worst problem was the City Council going after Toppy, and maybe having to suffer through Mom and California for a little while.

  Strong.

  Strong.

  Well . . . was I, or wasn’t I?

  “I had the case completely right in the end,” I said to the bugs and rodents I imagined to be hiding in the shadows. “My profile. My assumptions. It wasn’t somebody Toppy wronged—it was a family member of the bad guy, just like Vivienne Thornwood. I bet I could get a degree in criminology and do okay. If I don’t get eaten by a cave snake.”

  Strong.

  Strong.

  Yep. I got the crime details mostly right. What I didn’t get right was the life details. Like, being so mad over the City Council treating Toppy badly, and running away from Mom and Lavender, and driving my chair into creaky old Thornwood Manor even after everybody said the place was about to fall down. I tried to make myself haul a load I shouldn’t have.

  Toppy would have a lot to say about that when I saw him.

  Because I was going to see him.

  And when he told me off and grounded me forever, I wouldn’t mind a bit. I’d write ten thousand sappy movie reports with zero complaining.

  A few more tears squeezed out of my eyes. I let them fall, then slipped my phone into my pocket, pointed myself toward the faint gray light on my left, and started to crawl.

  “No whining,” I said to myself. “You played superhero for years, right?”

  Elbows down, plant, and pull. My body moved. Slowly. Good thing my Support Toppy hoodie was pretty thick, even though it was already torn in places.

  My legs and feet dragged along behind me. I could hear them, feel the weight of them. I knew they had to be cold even through my winter jeans, but mostly they were just heavy. When I was little, crawling had been easy. Every year, though, it got harder.

  “You read about superheroes,” I said over and over, using it like a rhythm. Then I started naming them, DC first. “Adam Strange. Agent Liberty. Air Wave. Amazo.”

  DC had close to two hundred characters. I don’t know how long I recited names, or how long I spent arguing with myself about whether characters like Green Arrow, where one died and a kid took over the role, should count as one or two when I was keeping track. Somewhere around Red Tornado, I had to stop, heart racing, and just lie there and breathe.

  I did not feel like a superhero. And that gray light didn’t look any closer.

  I pulled out my phone and checked.

  No Service

  I put the phone back in my pocket and started again. Plant, pull. Plant, pull. After ten more pulls I had to stop, chest heaving. Okay, seriously, once I got out of this crappy mess, I was totally going to the gym, or making Toppy get me a weight machine. Screw superpowers. I needed a little muscle for times I got stranded without my wheels.

  Elbows down, plant, then pull. Elbows down, plant, then pull. Forward. After a time, tears just slid down my face. I wasn’t even sure I was crying. I swapped to listing Marvel superheroes, then decided I hated all of them.

  Wasn’t it heroic enough, just staying alive when life got this hard?

  I stopped and flopped. Took a deep breath—and smelled something. Fresh sweat broke across my forehead and neck, making me clammy. Was I imagining—?

  No.

  I smelled smoke. It was coming from behind me, from the direction of Thornwood Manor. I dug my elbows into the sharp granite and crumbly dirt, and I pulled. I pulled and I pulled. No more DC. No more Marvel. No more mad or impulsive or anything.

  Move. Stay alive. But I couldn’t go far enough. I couldn’t go fast enough. Captain Coker. Bot. Mom. Lavender. Toppy. All of them might be in that mansion—and because of me.

  “Pull,” I whispered, and moved. “Pull. Pull. Pull . . .”

  Captain Coker, now there was a real-life superhero. Strong, kind—and she could sort of read minds. And what about Bot? He could practically touch people and turn them happy and make them sing Christmas carols.

  “Pull,” I said out loud. My elbows burned. They felt sticky and wet. Mom—well, Mom turned plain photos into scenes from other worlds and took people away. That was something, right?

  Smoke billowed past me in little puffs.

  Lavender and Ms. Springfield, both of them sparkled and brought color into everything and everywhere. Now there were some superpowers the world needed, right?

  More smoke.

  The sharp tang made my eyes water. I couldn’t let myself think that any of the people in my life would get hurt in Thornwood Manor as it burned. My teeth hammered together, but I pulled. Weak, but not helpless. I could do this. Moving was super enough for me, for now, maybe forever. Plant, then pull. Plant, then pull. Watch the breathing. Rest for counts of three. Plant, then pull. Move. Move. Move!

  I crawled past discarded brown bottles. Small. Old. I made sure not to break them. I didn’t need glass slicing up my legs.

  Plant, pull.

  My grandfather was the super-est hero of Blue Creek. I couldn’t even list all his great powers. If Marvel or DC drew him into comic panels, I’d name him Toppy the Wise and Exceedingly Grumpy. Plant, pull. Plant, pull. As I dragged myself through the endless tunnel, I suddenly imagined him with yellow tights, the same color as his Earl Grey teabags.

  I giggled.

  The sound scared me half to death.

  Blood coated my arms. Everything hurt. Everything stung.

  Plant, pull.

  I heard something I didn’t understand, a ping-like noise, and stopped. For a few seconds, the sound of my own ragged wheezing blocked out all sounds, but there was definitely more light here, and—

  Snow.

  Flakes drifted down in front of me, and I reached one shaking hand out and touched a few. Wet. Cold. Real.

  I watched them hit the ground, but no. Wait. They didn’t hit. They passed by my face and floated down, down into—

  Darkness.

  Oh, wow. I was on a ledge. I had crawled right through an opening in a dirt wall, and I had almost crawled straight off the ledge into a great big hole.

  I pulled myself to the very edge of the overhang, careful not to go too far, rolled onto my back, and looked up into a dizzying collection of snowflakes, backlit by a single streetlamp. I could make out a circular opening way above my head.

  Ping. Ping!

  That sound again.

  Wait. That was my phone’s text tone!

  I rolled to my belly and inched backward, off the ledge, until I was just inside the tunnel again. Then I fumbled with my phone and finally got it out of my pocket. My hands and fingers felt like floppy noodles.

  I had a signal! But just one bar. I tried a call, but it wouldn’t work. I knew texts would go through even when calls wouldn’t, and I was getting those, so I opened them.

  Before I read anything, I chose Lavender’s name and sent a message:

  Get everyone away from Thornwood. Ellis burning it down. Bot and Captain C in the front hall—fell through the floor. I think I’m under the grounds on the north side, in the well. Help.

  For good measure, I sent the text to everyone on my contact list who wasn’t Ellis, and watched each bar send until I knew the messages had gone through.

  Then I started reading.

  Riley: Mayor C blocked the firing. Council
pissed.

  Lavender: You’re a horrible friend, and I hate you.

  Ms. Springfield: Lavender said you ran away. Don’t do this, honey. It’s cold out tonight and your grandfather will have a meltdown.

  Mom: We’re coming up there and you are going to be SO sorry young lady.

  Lavender: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU.

  Riley: Dude, what did you do? Lav’s freaking.

  Lavender: Okay, Max, not funny. I’m scared.

  The next text was from later, probably after the floor collapsed under my chair.

  Lavender: Where are you WHERE ARE YOU WHEREAREYOU

  And one more from a number I recognized but couldn’t quite believe: C Al L

  “Oh my God, the world is ending! Toppy the Wise and Exceedingly Grumpy sent a text.” I started laughing. I didn’t even think his flip phone could text. I laughed some more. Then I started crying really hard, and that’s right about when I heard a rumbling-roar that sounded a whole lot like a huge Harley hog churning across grass and snow.

  Less than a minute later, voices shouted above me. Flashlight beams cut across the circle above my head.

  Somebody—Mom, I think—said, “Dad, don’t. The well head’s made out of stone, but we don’t know if those dirt walls are stable!”

  Then Junior Thornwood. “Here, sir. I got you. I’m plenty big enough to anchor, and I can pull you out on the bike.”

  “Ohmygodohmygod.” That sounded like Lavender.

  And then her mom. “It’s okay, honey. The chief’s here. He’s got this.”

  A few seconds later, a shape blotted out the light, then dropped straight toward me and stopped right outside the hole.

  I blinked at my grandfather, hanging there in his dress uniform, wearing a makeshift rope harness he had looped around both legs and his midsection until it looked like funny brown underwear.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth to tell him no, but said, “You need a cape.”

  He frowned. “You hit your head pretty hard.”

  I tried to gather my thoughts, but I just started crying again, gulping air between sobs.

  “Max, look at me,” Toppy demanded in his Chief-of-Police voice.

  I obeyed. The sight of his sharp, focused eyes and familiar face calmed me enough to say, “Bumps and scratches. And yes, my head’s kind of fuzzy.”

  “Crawl forward,” he instructed. “Carefully.”

  But I was already moving. As I eased out of the hole, I reached for my grandfather and dropped my phone into the well. A count of two later, it hit way down below with a sick shattering sound.

  Toppy gazed after it for a second, then made eye contact with me. “Good riddance,” he said. Then he winked.

  Another laugh-cry tore out of my chest, right about the time he swung over, snatched me up, and hugged me fiercely against his chest.

  “Hoist!” he hollered to Junior.

  A motor roared.

  The rope started to move, slowly but steadily, towing us toward the moonlight and the snow.

  I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Toppy kissed the top of my head as I asked, “Do you think the well gave us arsenic poisoning?”

  “Nah,” Toppy said. “But if you don’t want to die a horrible death by poisoning, I wouldn’t eat in Lavender’s presence for a few months.”

  27

  DECEMBER 18

  A week after Thornwood Manor burned, Elvis Presley sang Blue Christmas from the living room as I put on water for two cups of tea, squirted a little honey in the bottom of two holiday mugs, and dropped bags of Earl Grey over the sides.

  My fingers and arms still felt sore, but overall, I came out pretty good for somebody who plunged through a floor tied to a hundred-pound weight. Captain Coker, on the other hand, had a broken ankle from the hall cave-in. Bot, who had found Ellis’s patched wires and figured out how to get down to the room where Ellis had his server, got a busted elbow and a concussion when the floor and Captain Coker fell on him.

  Bot’s heart took the biggest blow, though. He couldn’t believe what Ellis had done, and Riley was working hard to heal his foster dad by selling out everything in the store to increase their holiday profits. Luckily, most of the money Ellis stole had been recovered by federal investigators and returned to accounts and city funds in time to keep the holidays from being a total bust for Blue Creek.

  I hit the pewter Harley skull knob serving as the joystick on my chair, rested my elbow on the custom Harley heat-insulated wrapped exhaust pipe Junior had welded on as my armrest, and tried not to notice the roar of my repaired motor as I headed toward the kitchen table.

  “I bet Elvis wouldn’t have grounded his granddaughter over winter break if she almost died,” I grumped, rolling up beside my grandfather.

  Toppy, who was wearing brand new Superman pajamas I made him open from under the tree after he rescued me, gazed at me over his glasses. His pencil lifted from his crossword puzzle book, and his eyes shifted first to his steaming bowl of vomit-with-blueberries, then to my bowl, and finally to the notebook, pen, and brand new iPhone next to my bowl.

  “Write your essays, Max,” he said. “Or lose that phone.”

  I sighed and looked at my notebook, which had about twenty pages full of essay titles filled in by my grandfather, separated by three pages each. I had already written papers on Twenty Dangers of Interfering with Police Investigations, How to Assess Foundational Stability in Old Houses, The True Horror of Termite Damage, and Thirty-Two Ways Real Life Differs from Detective Movies. The title of my next essay was Heroines Who Are Too Silly to Live.

  I held back a groan. “What does this even mean?”

  “Check the list of examples on the next page,” Toppy said. “Think of how those ladies, and a certain other girl, got into trouble due to doing things about as smart as poking a rabid skunk with a stick.”

  When I didn’t say anything, he added, “I want you to discuss how those film ladies might have made different choices, and, oh, I don’t know, maybe ended up without a destroyed wheelchair, a concussion, stitched-up elbows, a bunch of bruises, road rash on both legs, and a best friend swearing to never speak to them again.”

  “Lavender’s speaking to me,” I said. “As of yesterday.”

  Toppy inclined his head. “Good to hear. And I finally managed to talk your Social Studies teacher into an incomplete over that paper you didn’t turn in, instead of an F. He said he was willing to be patient, since Captain Coker and Bot probably would have died in that fire if you hadn’t acted like you had no sense, and seeing as how you helped save the town and all.”

  “I got the paper finished last night,” I said. “It’s in my room.”

  The King of Rock and Roll switched to Silent Night. My alarm beeped, and I shifted my weight from one achy hip to the other. Then I turned my essay page, tore out Toppy’s list of books and movies, and read through the titles.

  “I’m not sure Rocky Horror Picture Show counts as an actual movie,” I said. “And isn’t this kind of sexist or something? I mean, heroes can make bad moves, too.”

  “That’s your next essay topic,” Toppy informed me.

  My text message tone sounded, and I immediately checked my phone.

  Lavender: Did you see the paper today?

  The message had a link to the Blue Creek Gazette.

  When I clicked it, I found myself staring at a picture of me in Toppy’s arms, getting hauled out of the well. A second picture showed the little brown bottles I had crawled past without breaking.

  “TRACES OF ARSENIC!” the headline blared, and I scrolled to the next photo—Vivienne Thornwood, gazing at me from underneath all those brown curls and that bright red bonnet.

  “Wooooow, so Thornwood was murdered after all,” I murmured. “Vivienne poisoned him and killed herself, too.”

  “Yep,” Toppy said, still writing in his puzzle. “I figure she got her daughter out of those tunnels, maybe had her hauled up the well just like I took
you out of there. And after that, she took care of business, because her husband’s reign of terror over everyone in Blue Creek had to end.”

  I tried to take all that in, but had trouble wrapping my mind around it. “This is going to spawn a whole new bunch of legends, isn’t it?”

  “No doubt.”

  In the next few pictures, I saw Mom and Lavender and Ms. Springfield standing around the well, and the trooper who had been our guard for the night, and Junior with his big three-wheeled bike that had carried Toppy to me. Two aldermen from the meeting were in another picture running toward us with Mayor Chandler right behind them. In the background, Thornwood Manor burned spectacularly, tower and eaves shooting flames into the dark, snowy night.

  Another headline called us “THE LAST VICTIMS OF THORNWOOD’S REVENGE.”

  “Oh, wow,” I mumbled, realizing I had just become part of the Thornwood Manor lore forever.

  I’m famous, I told Lavender. We’re famous!

  I know, right? she typed back.

  The caption under the photo read, “Maxine Brennan.”

  “That’s me,” I whispered, reading the article below:

  Maxine Brennan, granddaughter of Blue Creek’s long-serving police chief, Thomas “Toppy” Brennan, must have been exhausted after crawling for her life. Her family reports that she’s recovering nicely at home. Her mother, Callinda Brennan, declined an interview before heading back to California for work, but she stated, “I think Max is stronger than ten superheroes.”

  Heading back for work. I almost laughed. Mom had booked it out of Blue Creek just about as fast as she could, before I even got out of the hospital, saying she had to get ready for an art show. That was Mom.

  Just a few months ago, I would have been so mad at her that I’d have let it eat me up inside and turn me mean, but really, what was the point? I was glad she left, that I could have life back to sort-of-normal—if you didn’t count the Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-looking patched-up, welded, half-Harley-part-wheelchair that clanked like an airplane engine whenever I drove it. I didn’t mind texting with her. We exchanged a few messages every day, which was more than we did before. She told me she’d be moving to a new place so I’d feel better visiting, but I filed that under, “Believe it when I see it.”