Shadow Days

by Andrea Cremer

  Before I had to find a shovel, Anthony and Becky rescued me, pointing out that one of the symbols I’d sketched was the pagan calendar. With a little more digging—I was still grateful I wasn’t doing the literal kind—I learned that the pagan calendar is also often called the witches’ wheel of the year. As much as that information was useful, it made me shudder. More witches. I wished I could find a clue that was, like Traci said, about rainbows and happy stuff. Then again, I was pretty sure Dante didn’t see any rainbows on his trip through hell.

  The wheel had been carved onto one of the wooden columns on the second floor of the library. I looked at it for a while. Weird words were carved around its circumference: Mabon, Samhain, Yule, Imbolc. Anthony had written that they were the eight major holidays of the year. Inside the first circle was another circle. These symbols I recognized as astrological signs.

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  Great. More puzzles. I was guessing I’d have to line up the astrological signs with specific holidays. Maybe I’d need to invest in a telescope. I ran my fingers over the polished wood, tracing one of the wheel’s spokes until my hand reached the intricately carved compass rose at its center. When I touched the rose, I thought I felt the wheel move.

  I put more pressure on the wood. The rose caved, retreating within the center of the wheel. Ignoring the sudden jump in my pulse, I pushed steadily until I heard a solid click.

  What had been an invisible line along the edge of the bookcase column widened, revealing a gap in the wood. I slid my fingers in the space and pulled. With a soft groan the panel swung open, revealing a hollow chamber inside the column.

  My heart was trying to climb out of my throat as I peered inside.

  More shelves were hidden in the dark space, and they weren’t only filled with books. Jars filled with what I could only guess was formaldehyde neatly lined one shelf. My guess was formaldehyde because of the objects floating in the jars. One looked like a rat fetus. Another held a heart. My own heart now had serious competition from my stomach for trying to relocate somewhere outside my body.

  I decided to stop looking at the jars and gazed at another shelf.

  The objects I found were just as disturbing as the jars. A whip rested next to a sickle-shaped blade. Beside these were a mortar and pestle and still more jars, but these held dried herbs, not next week’s biology dissection assignment.

  The top shelf was stacked with books. These books, however, weren’t the known works of literature I’d found in the rest of the library. They were obviously much older. I took one of the books from the shelf. It was large, and I rested it on the floor so I could easily look at it.

  Whether a biology text or some kind of bestiary, its contents were strange. It had no title or table of contents. Each page was filled 67

  with notes and illustrations that didn’t make any sense. I recognized some of the creatures as the same types that filled the gardens outside in statue form. In the book, however, they were laid out like speci-mens. Sometimes drawn in full form, others dissected as if the author intended his readers to desire close inspection of the mythic beasts.

  The most unusual illustrations appeared at the end of the book.

  One page featured a man in a style that reminded me of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” and on the opposite page was not a man, but a wolf drawn in the same style. The next dozen or so pages of the book held variations on the same theme, man and wolf. Sometimes completely separate, but sometimes the images were blended in forms ranging from grotesque to simply frightening. Though weird and morbidly fascinating, I didn’t know how it connected to the clues we’d found in the books. Not wanting to get off track, I set it aside and pulled down another book.

  Like the first book, this text was obviously very, very old. The title jumped off the cover in letters so black it looked like someone had stamped it there with a branding iron. I felt my eyes go wide as I read the words.

  Bellum Omnia Contra Omnes

  “I know this,” I said. A chill, like fingers brushing along my neck, made me jump at the same time I whirled around because I thought I’d heard something. A sound like a long, sad sigh had filled the room. My gaze swept the library, one, two, three times, but I was alone.

  The bright, gemstone colors from the stained glass windows were giving way to the thick pour of twilight. I didn’t want to be in the library after dark. I returned the animal book to the shelf but took the second text out of the library when I returned to my room.

  If this book was what I thought it was, I’d stumbled on a gold mine. I didn’t mean literally—this text was much too precious to sell, and I was proud if my family had been smart enough to hang on to 68

  it. It almost balanced out the gigantic ick factor of the jars, whip, and knife that had also been hidden in the column.

  Bellum Omnia Contra Omnes.

  The War of All Against All.

  My friends in Portland already knew I was a philosophy geek. I read the classics almost as loyally as I did comics. I guess my online friends were about to get a big dose of Shay’s nerdy side too.

  Sitting on my bed, I ran my fingers over the words of the title, noticing the way the letters were indented in the cover.

  “Hey there, Mr. Hobbes,” I said. “Why didn’t this book of yours get published?”

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  twelve

  W

  i needed to brusH uP on my Latin if I was serious about reading the text. And I’d definitely need to unpack my Latin-English dictionary. This book was a beast. from the little I’d gleaned, it was history . . . or maybe philosophy. The book itself was broken up into three sections that I thought were related, but I didn’t know how. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. And it didn’t sound like Hobbes, which was disappointing. I worried that maybe the book was a Hobbes knockoff that one of my ancestors had found without bothering to investigate the book’s origins. Was I the heir of aspiring but failed philosophers? That wouldn’t be very encouraging.

  Even if it wasn’t Hobbes, it was unusual enough to hold my interest. One of the first things that caught my attention, besides the title, was that the book didn’t start with text. The first pages were all maps.

  There were four different maps, their sites and topography described in Latin. I’d searched the book for a publishing imprint or a publica-tion date but hadn’t been able to find one. from the style of the maps and the illuminations on the title pages I guessed it was from sometime in the Middle Ages. Not exactly precision dating.

  I’d spent the most time gazing at the first map. Something about it bothered me, but I hadn’t quite figured out why that was. I needed to post another video and get some feedback, but first I thought I’d clear my head with a serious hike, the kind that would eat up most 71

  of my day and make my legs feel like they were about to fall off. If I was exhausted enough, maybe I’d sleep through the nightly crash.

  I pulled out the map where I’d marked out the trails I wanted to hit. I stared.

  “No way,” I said.

  I stared some more.

  finally I opened Hobbes’s book to the first map.

  The terrain was identical. But that was impossible. The map in the book I’d found had to be at least five hundred years old. And it was European.

  It had to be a coincidence. for the next hour I pored over the two maps, searching for some discrepancy. Another mountain here, a different river there. But there was nothing. It was unmistakably the same place. The only difference was that my current map was filled with towns, but of course those wouldn’t have been around when the medieval map was created. But who could have made it? And why?

  I guessed I had another video to make.

  My phone rang when I was right in the middle of setting up the shot. I grabbed it, having had enough of phantom calls.

  “Leave me the hell alone!”

  “Excuse me?” My uncle’s voice was more amused than shocked.

  “Oh . . . Uncle Bosque,” I said. “S
orry. I’ve been getting prank calls.”

  “Do you want me to have the phone company look into it?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll work it out. I should have checked the number before I answered the call. I would have known it was you.”

  “No apologies needed, my boy,” Bosque said. “I haven’t been in touch as often I should have been. Is all well at Rowan Estate?”

  “Uh—”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Excellent. I’m sure you can guess why I’m calling.”

  “Uh—”

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  “The Mountain School is ready for you to join them,” he said.

  “You’ll start classes on Monday. Everything has been arranged. I’m sure Logan can drive you to your first day of school if you’d prefer not to go alone.”

  School? Now? What I’d been waiting for since I moved here was happening. I should have been happy—this meant things to do and people to see. But I needed more time.

  All I said was, “Logan doesn’t need to drive me. I bought a truck.”

  “A truck?” I heard him laugh. “Of course you did.”

  How was I going to solve these puzzles when I was at school all day? I guessed if I still got woken at 5 a.m., I could work in the library then.

  “And because I want to make sure everything goes smoothly,” Bosque continued, “I’ll be coming to stay with you for a bit.”

  “You’re coming home?”

  “I am,” he said. “I’ll be there Wednesday. You need only to weather the first two days on your own.”

  Eight days. He’d be here in eight days. Once Bosque returned to Rowan Estate, it was the end of my trips to the library.

  I had to find answers by the fastest means available.

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  tHirteen

  E

  tHeir Arguments mAde sense. I couldn’t find

  fault with them. Going into an uncharted cavern system was dan-gerous. And yeah, I saw The Descent. It was nice to have so many people worried about me, seriously—and I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with this stuff if it hadn’t been for everybody’s help online. But I wasn’t going to listen this time. I thought about post-ing my climbing resume on my facebook page to prove that I wasn’t a novice but figured that would most likely make me look like a self-centered ass.

  But come on, I couldn’t ignore the caverns! After everything we’d been working through, I’d finally found something that might be real. This was different than confusing histories, family trees full of quasi-immortals, insane clues about witches and elemental forces, and gross things floating in jars. A map was concrete. A map offered a place I could go and things I could see.

  I’d been itching to try out spelunking no matter what. This connection had simply presented the best opportunity: kill two birds with one stone.

  I took all the precautions. I used the time I wasn’t sleeping to read up on the terrain. Some pretty serious storms had been moving through the valley, but they were supposed to clear out by Sunday.

  That’s when I would go.

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  I convinced myself that Victoria would have my back, but I felt guilty, knowing that Liz, Melissa, and Stephanie would be worried.

  Whether my online army of friends decided I was brave or a fool, I hoped that when I came back with answers, they’d forgive me.

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  fourteen

  F

  wHy HAdn’t i listened to them? I’d had my share of adventure in the eighteen years I’d spent on this mortal coil, but I never thought I’d meet my maker facing off with a bear. The grizzly stared at me, the sharp hazel of its eyes catching the autumn sunlight as though a fire kindled within. If I’d seen this beast on television, its bulk and hot breath safely separated from me by a web of fiber optic cables or satellite-beamed images, I might have thought it beautiful, or at least breathtaking.

  But here, alone on this path that I’d started to believe was only a game trail, the massive brown bear was nothing short of terrifying.

  The grizzly reared up, its head blocking out the sun when it reached full height. Twice my size, if not more.

  Its roar vibrated through my limbs, shaking them out of their frozen state. I backed up a few steps, hoping the bellow was a warning and not a sign of impending attack. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my lucky day.

  The bear dropped to all fours, snuffling the ground casually but all the while keeping watch. frothy drool dripped from its snout. It loped steadily forward, closing the distance. I knew it was about to charge. Something instinctual roiled through my blood, screaming at me that these were my last few minutes on earth.

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  I pushed my pack off my shoulders and tossed it on the ground in front of me, hoping the trail mix within would distract it.

  No interest.

  I took two steps backward before the bear barreled at me like the force of nature it was.

  Air fled my chest when the bear hit me, laying me flat out on the ground. I rolled onto my side, trying to remember what I was supposed to do.

  Curl into a ball. Protect your head.

  My muscles didn’t want to move. I reached for my legs, trying to pull them up to my chest. My hands touched warm liquid. Though I didn’t feel pain, I knew it was my blood. The lack of pain meant I was in shock, which was very, very bad.

  Strange flashes raced through my mind. A sting of guilt when I’d seen the NO TRESPASSING sign at the trailhead. The burnished autumn day, perfectly balanced between warm sunlight and chilled breezes, carrying me up the mountain slope. The solitude and silence of the towering pine trees. A low snuffle turning my head, alerting me to the approaching bear. Shock, followed by denial: there are no bears in this part of the Rockies. Only ghost grizzlies—sightings that no one believed were real. I’d read the guides. I knew this terrain.

  Disbelief had locked my knees, holding me in place. Denial gave way to hollow fear as the grizzly sighted me, its snuffling becoming growls, its gait lumbering but aggressive.

  My choices. My mistakes. The wrong turns I’d made. I’d let obsession drive me here.

  A final thought raced through my mind: I wish I’d never moved to Vail.

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  Thank you to everyone who befriended Shay

  on facebook, particularly:

  Melissa Nataly

  Victoria Elizabeth Sutherland

  Liz Woodworth

  Rachel Davis

  Traci Olsen

  Anthony David Tobias Swift-Washington

  Lindsi Coleman

  Emily Dye

  Jessica Spetolli

  Stefanie Painter

  Beck Boyer

  Courtney Rae

  Jessica Stewart

  Patrick Nottingham

  Stephanie Takes-Desbiens