Following the fire blast, Simon’s cheeks and hands were slightly charred. When he lowered his fingers, white marks like war paint were torched onto the sides of his face where his thumbs had been. “I want to know what you are laughing at!”
“Never mind,” Will said, trying to restrain his smile. “We have to keep moving.” He looked to his friends for agreement and pulled the notebook from his backpack with a mischievous excitement. “Which way? Which way?”
“We don’t know where we are going. How can we know the way?” Andrew offered.
Will gently punched Andrew on the shoulder. “We’ll find the way, big guy. You already figured out the most important part of the challenge: avoid the wide gate. Now all we have to do is find the narrow one.” Will glanced at the notebook and slammed it shut. “How hard can that be?”
Flicking his helmet back, Will peered down the length of the balcony they stood upon. It took a sharp right turn above the wall of fire. There Will could see two openings—both of them pretty narrow. Without a word he walked past Andrew and Simon, leapt over the stone heads blocking his path, and approached the openings.
“We’d better follow him before things start flying again.” Andrew nudged the catatonic Simon and shuffled after Will.
Simon, in a bit of a daze, reluctantly gathered up the excess rope dangling from his waist and followed the others.
“This could be a problem,” Will said, standing in front of the two slim black tunnels in the wall before him. He inched his fingers under his helmet, scratching his head. “They’re both narrow gates. They’re identical.”
Simon took the end of his rope and measured the widths of the openings. “I’m afraid they are exactly the same size. So maybe we can go through both of them.” Simon dropped his rope to the ground. Andrew quickly scooped it up.
“I wouldn’t let your wick droop over the edge,” Andrew advised, looking down at the wall of fire beneath them. “With that oil on you, you’ll light up like a skinny hurricane lamp.”
Simon did not protest for once, but offered a grudging smile of thanks.
Will busily ran the beam of his flashlight into one of the slim openings and then moved on to the other. “I see,” he murmured. He showed the boys the difference between the two passages. Both went on for about eight feet, but the “gate” to the left had smooth interior walls and plenty of room. The one to the right was jagged, with bits of stone sticking out all along the passageway. “We’ll have to squeeze down this one. With the rocks and stuff on the wall, it seems like the most ‘narrow gate.’ ”
He replaced his flashlight, removed his helmet, and shimmied into the opening sideways.
Simon cut Andrew off at the entry, hustling to follow Will. “I’d better go first, Slim Jim. When you get stuck in there, I don’t want to be behind you.” He disappeared into the dark hole.
Vapor wafting up from the pool below caught Andrew’s attention. A tide of water had spilled in from the first chamber, extinguishing what was left of the flaming pool.
Andrew decided not to wait around to see how high the water would rise. He pushed out all the air in his lungs, sucked in his stomach, then crammed his bulk into the sliver of an opening, hoping he would make it to the other side.
Below, two Bottom Dwellers stealthily swam into the second chamber. Their cold eyes, just above the surface of the oil-laced water, searched for any movement—for the slightest sign of life.
“Sheriff Stout, we thank you for your report. But I find it hard to believe that there are—what did you call them?—‘reptilian, gatorlike creatures’ in the Perilous River,” Heinrich Crinshaw mockingly read from papers on the mahogany dais of the city council chambers. He sat in the center position, the chairman’s spot, his beady eyes trained on the sheriff standing before him.
“The members of this council might have a problem swallowing your contention that our fair town is being terrorized not by alligators—but by, uh…”—he again flipped through the report for dramatic effect—“ ‘creatures!’ One of your deputies even calls them ‘unknown river monsters’ in this exhaustive report. Do you really stand by these descriptions, sir?”
Sheriff Willy Stout stood silent and sweating like a bald polar bear marooned on an island in the Caribbean. After more than twenty minutes of interrogation by the city council, he couldn’t think of anything more to say. Clutching his green-brimmed officer’s hat to his chest, the sheriff simply nodded.
Chairman Crinshaw released a pinched, staccato laugh. Other council members soon followed suit. “Are we to interpret your silence as confirming the contents of this report? These fairy tales? Are we to tell the victims’ families that ‘river monsters’ attacked their children and ‘gatorlike creatures’ are on the loose?”
Dan Wilder, sitting at the end of the raised dais, pressed his forehead into the heels of his hands.
“I move that we reject the sheriff’s ludicrous report,” Crinshaw suggested in a croaky monotone, “and authorize our own credible investigation.”
From the end of the table, without looking up, Dan Wilder spoke. “Mr. Chairman, I think Sheriff Stout has reported—is reporting—the facts as he and his team found them. None of this is inconsistent with the media reports or the evidence. Is it, Willy?”
The sheriff sheepishly shook his head. “No, sir.”
There were murmurs and concerned looks all along the dais.
A solitary fingernail, hard as a pickax, struck the council’s tabletop until there was silence. “I wish to offer some guidance, Mr. Chairman,” a female voice blared from the other end of the dais. It was Mayor Ava Lynch, who was herself one of the six city council members. “Speaking on behalf of the concerned citizens of Perilous Falls, I move that we accept the sheriff’s report, which we will seal from probing eyes. At the same time, we have been informed that certain individuals, not in the sheriff’s report, were spotted near the crime scenes—I mean accidents—on the Perilous River. Since the sheriff has obviously not pursued every lead, I should like the city council to authorize an independent, three-person investigative task force. It will pursue any and all persons near the crime scenes so that we may come to a full understanding of exactly what occurred on the river, and who or what is responsible. I nominate myself, the chairman, and Dan Wilder to the task force. Any objections?”
Dan shoved a hand into the air. “I object. I am not an investigator….Neither are you, Mr. Chairman…nor you, Ms. Mayor. We—we—we should leave this to the authorities—”
“Hearing no further objections…Thank you, Dan,” Heinrich Crinshaw pronounced, pounding the gavel before him with authority. “I move that we accept the mayor’s thoughtful proposal.”
After a quick vote of five to one, the task force was approved and the council members scattered.
Mayor Lynch triumphantly marched up behind Dan, placing two hands on his shoulders. “Why don’t you, Heinrich, and I confer in my office, sugar? We owe it to our citizens to start this investigation right away. I have lots of leads for us. See you upstairs.” The mayor patted Dan’s tense shoulders and trotted away.
Will squirmed free of the rocky tunnel, the “narrow gate,” exiting into a darkened space. The moment his foot touched the platform at the end of the passageway, torches in the columns along the walls of the third chamber ignited. It was a good thing too. Had Will taken four or five more steps, he would have plunged seventy feet straight down to the black polished floor of the narrow room below.
To Will this last chamber looked like a tricked-out empty swimming pool. From the platform where he stood, two curved stone staircases reached down to a granite surface. The chamber walls were granite too. The other side of the chamber looked vastly different.
Directly across from Will, a thin set of stairs led up from the bottom of the granite well to a pair of life-sized white statues. The statues stood on half a black disk, the other half of which bent upward to provide a backdrop. To Will’s eye, the carved figures appeared to be standin
g on a severely burned, open taco shell. A gleaming gold grate, like a wall, surrounded the rear edges of the “taco shell” but proceeded no farther—leaving the statue display completely unprotected.
Alone for the moment, Will considered the design of the room. He had been so focused on solving the riddle of each chamber and advancing to the next challenge that he’d barely allowed himself time to absorb any of his journey: the elaborate chambers Jacob Wilder had constructed to protect one old bone; the dangers and booby traps in each room that only a Wilder could navigate. With all this protection, Will reasoned, the relic must have miraculous powers. Maybe it can heal those who touch it. Maybe it does hold the floodwater back and…The relic! He needed to get that relic.
He forced himself to stop gawking at the exotic room and ripped open his great-grandfather’s notebook just as Simon came plowing out of the tunnel. Will grabbed his hyper friend by the shirttail before he could run off the edge of the platform. “Take it easy, Flash,” he advised, without glancing up from the notebook.
“Your relic must be over there,” Simon exploded, pointing at the gold grille on the other side of the chamber. He then jutted his head forward. “Is that a statue of Jesus and St. Thomas? Oh, that must be the moment where Thomas was told to stick his hand in Jesus’s side and feel His nail wounds—to prove that He had risen from the dead.”
“Thanks for the Sunday school lesson,” Will droned, intently studying the notebook.
Andrew painfully removed himself from the jagged passageway. His arms were scratched and bruised from the journey. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Will assured him. “Here’s what the notebook says about this last chamber.”
DIDYMUS’S WAY
One alone may climb the stair to reach the saint’s remains.
To pass this way, beware, you’ll need faith as well as brains;
Thomas could be moved,
and indeed he still can be.
What direction did the saint proceed
having seen the Risen One from Galilee?
“Who is Diddy-muss?” Andrew asked. “Sounds like an old rapper or something.”
“Didymus was another name for Thomas, moron,” Simon explained. “It’s Greek for ‘twin.’ ”
Will started moving down the stairs to the granite floor on the lower level. The boys followed him down. “I’m going over to the statues. You guys better hang back. ‘One alone may climb the stair,’ ” he read from the notebook.
Simon and Andrew grumbled about being left behind.
“I should go up. I know more about this than you do,” Simon protested, reaching the shiny black floor.
“But I’m the Wilder,” Will said defensively. He gazed up at the two statues from the lower level as if possessed. “Stay here. I’ll need your help.” Will scrambled up the narrow staircase to the lifelike images, which were about two yards apart.
The figure of Christ held his robe open, exposing a chest wound; the palm of his left hand extended toward the other statue. Deep holes in the marble marked the palm and the chest of the image. The other figure was presumably St. Thomas. He too had a beard, long hair, and flowing robes. The chiseled Thomas pointed a single marble finger toward Jesus, his head leaning back in awe.
Will checked the floor. The Christ figure was firmly attached to the black granite base. But the Thomas statue slid along a metal track that stretched from the Christ image to the granite disk’s edge. Where he stood a compass had been etched into the polished base, complete with gold arrows marking north, south, east, and west. Will pushed his weight against the back of the Thomas statue and it lurched forward.
“Okay, guys,” Will called down, “this one must be Thomas—and since he’s on a track, he can ‘be moved.’ The question is: Where?” Will leaned over the ledge, awaiting a response from the boys below. Receiving only blank stares, he sought answers in Jacob Wilder’s scrawlings. “ ‘What direction did the saint proceed, having seen the Risen One from Galilee?’ ”
“Proceed? Who proceeds?” Andrew fussed.
“Driven people proceed,” Simon lectured. “Apostles proceed. I proceed. People of limited brain capacity—whom I won’t mention—probably just ‘go.’ They go to the bathroom, go to fast-food joints, and occasionally go to juvenile detention facilities, but everyone else ‘proceeds.’ ”
Andrew lunged for him, but Simon ducked and darted away. “I will proceed over here.”
“That might be the last time you proceed—ever,” Andrew threatened.
“Guys, focus,” Will urged from above. “ ‘Having seen the Risen One from Galilee,’ did St. Thomas ‘proceed’ to touch Jesus’s wounds? Is that what he did?”
“I already told you. Jesus instructed Thomas to inspect His wounds. So maybe you’d better push the Thomas statue toward the Jesus one,” Simon said.
Will took a deep breath and nudged the Thomas statue forward, pushing it with both hands from behind. The pointed marble finger closed in on the other statue. As the sculpture moved along the track, Will wondered aloud: “Andrew might be onto something. The notebook asks, ‘What direction did the saint proceed…?’ It doesn’t ask what he did, but where he proceeded….”
St. Thomas’s marble finger then made contact with the hole in the open palm of the Christ statue. It was a perfect fit.
A groaning creak echoed through the chamber. Will’s head snapped toward the opposite wall, his eyes searching out the location of the sound.
It was coming from the lower level, between the stone staircases. As if in slow motion, the black metal door behind Simon and Andrew—the one leading to the previous chamber—cracked open. A cascade of foul water and oil spilled in from the door’s edges. Water pooled on the granite, rising quickly.
“Get up the stairs!” Will yelled to his friends. Andrew and Simon charged up the single, narrow staircase nearest Will. With each step, the stairs disintegrated under their feet like a sandcastle swamped by the surf. Soon the whole staircase had melted before their eyes.
“This can’t be happening,” Simon said.
On the platform above, Will instinctively yanked the St. Thomas statue away from the Christ figure. A possible solution to the riddle occurred to him. Thomas stuck his fingers into the wounds of Jesus to make certain that Jesus was the “Risen One from Galilee”! But where did he “proceed” after confirming that he had seen “the Risen One”?
Mayhem broke out on the floor below. The stinking, oil-laden water from the previous chamber gushed in. With the dissolving of the narrow staircase and the water already up to their knees, Andrew and Simon raced back toward the only things above the waterline: the curved stairways they had taken down to the lower level.
Simon began wimpering, on the verge of tears. Andrew stayed close, pushing him up the stairs. “Just keep moving. We’ll be okay. At least we’ll be dry.”
“We’re going backward. We shouldn’t be going backward,” Simon moaned. “How will we reach Will? How will we get out of here? Will? Will!”
Will paid the boys no attention as he tugged at the arm of the St. Thomas statue and began to spin it around.
“Guys, I’ve solved it. Mr. Bartimaeus told me that Thomas went to India after seeing ‘the Risen One.’ He went east.” Will consulted the compass on the marble at his feet. East was the direction opposite the Christ figure. “He ‘proceeded’ east. This has to be right.”
“We are marooned in this pit, Will. We don’t really care what direction your statue is pointed,” Simon raged. “It is your responsibility to get us out of here. Are you even listening?”
Murky water now covered the first seven steps of the staircase the boys had climbed, and it continued advancing toward their platform up top.
Across the way, Will finally redirected the Thomas statue toward the east. A loud click sounded the moment it was in position. Before Will knew what was happening, the entire black disk supporting him and the statues rotated 180 degrees, propelling him out of the chamb
er. Holding fast to the marble arm of St. Thomas, he found himself on the other side of the gold grille. He had finally reached the Keep! Facing him, on a high filigreed gold stand, was the object of his desire: the relic of St. Thomas.
Will leapt in the air and even did a little jig. He took his pith helmet off and gave it a kiss.
“We did it, Great-Grandfather.” He then pressed his face between the gold bars of the grate, seeking out his distressed friends. “Guys, we did it. The relic…St. Thomas’s finger. It’s here.”
“Use it to zap us to your side, would ya?” Andrew asked.
Simon was sucking on his inhaler, and he didn’t look happy. The water level in their chamber rose by the second, gradually filling the granite pool.
“I’ll get you guys out of there soon,” Will said. “If I spin the St. Thomas statue around, the granite platform will probably swivel back. Then you can swim over and join me in here. Okay?”
Will began tugging on the St. Thomas statue again. As he rotated the figure, the disk beneath him trembled. Before it moved, he jumped off, landing on all fours near the relic. The statues disappeared from sight, spinning away on the black granite base. In their place stood a flat semicircle slab engraved with the words “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Will utterly ignored the writing.
He ran to the bars of the grate again, issuing orders to his friends. “When the water rises a little higher, swim over and turn the statue right—toward the east. I won’t be gone long. I promise,” Will said, retreating into the Keep.
“What if the water starts burning again? Or if the statue refuses to move?” Simon screamed over the water separating them.
Andrew grabbed Simon’s shoulder and gave it a shake. “Will you relax, you little twerp?” he cried over the rushing water. “Have I let anything happen to you so far?”
As rattled as Simon was, he believed the big lug and even relaxed a bit.
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