“You are nuts.”
“Let’s go.
With my manhood on the line again, I didn’t feel like I had a lot of choice.
We fumbled our way around to the back of the house. The fruit-cellar doors were big, heavy things made of old planks that sat almost flat on the ground, with iron handles to pull up with. Wyn grabbed one and yanked. It came only partly open and then broke, the handle coming off in her hands as she fell backwards.
“Are you okay?” I asked, helping her up.
Then a sound came out of the darkness, the slow, creaking sound of the fruit-cellar door opening by itself and slamming on the ground. Instantly we were hugging each other. It felt surprisingly good, but I realized what I was doing right away and pulled back. So did she. And then we were running, all the way around the house to the front.
We flew through the front yard and over the stone wall and started tearing down the hill. Or at least that’s what I thought we were doing. Soon I realized that I was running on my own. I stopped, then turned around. Wyn was nowhere to be seen. For a moment I just stood still, listening. It really was incredible how silent it could be up north. No animals or human beings were stupid enough to be outside, I figured. That’s why.
I walked slowly back towards the house. And I still can’t believe what I did next. I actually climbed back over the wall and dropped down into the front yard again. Wyn Dixon wasn’t going to make me look like a coward. If she was still here. Maybe she took another route home? Maybe the old man came out and grabbed her!
I edged around to the back of the house, got down on my hands and knees, and crept up to the cellar door. It was open! Feeling around with my hands, I found the stairs leading down into the basement. I got to my feet and took each downward step like it was my last. Then I stopped and listened for a moment. I couldn’t see anything. I raised my hands and felt along the low ceiling until…I found it! A light bulb. I located the string and pulled it. That was when I screamed for the second time. There was a face. Staring at me. Inches away!
Wynona’s Dixon’s face.
“A little nervous, are we?” she said.
Oh man! Two screams in front of a girl. And she didn’t even seem upset. There was something strange about her.
“Can we proceed?” she asked.
“Abs—” My voice cracked. Perfect timing, Dylan. “Absolutely,” I said again, deeply, sounding like I was about to read the CBC National News. “Let’s find the stairs,” I said, trying to seem in control.
“I thought you wanted to look for dead bodies?”
Minutes later that didn’t seem so far-fetched. As we moved gingerly through the filthy, freezing basement, winding our way past old boxes, prospector’s pick hammers, and smelly miner’s gear, we approached the stairs, dim in the fading light at the far end of the basement. But at first there didn’t seem to be any way up, because the bottom four or five steps had disappeared, as if you were expected to float up there. Then Wyn noticed a long wooden box leaning against a wall.
“Dylan!” she whispered loudly. “Help me get this box down and we’ll use it to climb up.” We grabbed it and shoved it to the floor. It landed with a resounding thud and made a hollow sound. Something made me glance down at it as Wyn jumped onto it. By the time she had gripped the side of the stairs and was trying desperately to pull herself up, I was staring at the letters on the box, which I could see clearly now.
“Dylan! Dylan, shove me up here. Will you give me a hand?!”
But I was silent.
Wyn fell. She landed on the box and looked very displeased.
“Dylan, what the hell are you doing?!”
“Get off the box, Wyn.”
“What do you mean?” She looked at me and saw the strange expression on my face. “What?”
“There’s a name on the box, Wyn.”
“So what?”
“It says, ‘Theobald T. Larocque.’”
“So?”
“Wyn…it’s a coffin.”
When Wynona Dixon jumped, her head nearly went through the ceiling, and she set her very own world record: for greatest distance ever leapt from a coffin. For an instant she actually got behind me, but then she realized what she was doing and stepped forward, trying to seem calm.
“Wh-why do you think he’d have a coffin down here, Dylan?” she asked, shakily.
“Not just a coffin, Wyn, his own coffin.”
But Wyn didn’t answer. She was moving towards the cellar doors, walking backwards, as if she had to keep her face towards danger. I hesitated, wondering if this was my moment to seem brave and suggest that we go forward. But it wasn’t my moment. No no no. Soon I was going with her. I had left one of the cellar doors wide open and we were making for it on the double. But only halfway across the basement floor we heard a loud SLAM!
We didn’t have to say anything. We both knew what it was. The cellar door had shut again, in the wind or whatever. Worse, when we arrived, we couldn’t get it open. The handle must have jammed shut on the outside. There were no windows in the basement and now, it seemed, there was no way out. Unless it was over that coffin, up the vanishing staircase, onto Theobald T. Larocque’s first floor, and out the front door.
“We have to go up the stairs,” I said grimly.
Wynona nodded.
Being a couple of inches shorter, Wyn went first, with a boost from me. Then it was my turn. I stepped lightly on the coffin and kept moving around on it, as if a decomposing hand might suddenly come up and grab me by the ankles. Before long I had pulled myself up and the two of us stood there, shaking, at the entrance to the first floor.
Wyn let me lead this time. I put my hand on the old door. A spider ran across it. I shook it off, violently. Then I took a deep breath and pressed the door open. It creaked and swung wide. I took a few baby steps inside and Wyn followed. It was as cold up there as it had been in the basement, and the smell was overpowering. It was like a compost heap, like rotting food. Behind me, I could hear the door close and a sudden intake of breath from Wyn.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“It’s the door. It closed and locked from the other side too. I can’t open it now.”
“We’re not going back anyway. Let’s just find the front door and get out of here.”
We looked around but couldn’t find a door leading outside, anywhere.
“Don’t you know where the front door is?” I asked. “No.”
“What do you mean, no? I thought you said your grandfather told you where everything was.”
“Well, I sort of lied. My grandpa wouldn’t tell me anything like that.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks great-grandpa is crazy. Crazy and dangerous. He wouldn’t have ever wanted me to come in here. I didn’t tell you that because I knew you wouldn’t come if I did.”
“Oh, great!” I said. For an instant I had forgotten where I was. I had spoken loudly, in complete exasperation.
We each held our breath. There was numbing silence. Then the sound of…something getting to its feet…and footsteps!
They were on the upper floor. They moved at a slow, terrifying pace. And there was a dragging sound, like chains scraping across wood. A cane hit the floor with each laboured stride. Something was moaning: like the wind, but human.
Wynona Dixon and I froze.
Then the footsteps started coming down the stairs.
7
In Front of the Fire
There was nowhere to run. The only thing we could do was stay silent. We stood as still as statues, uncomfortably close to each other, forced to look into one another’s eyes because we feared that even moving an iris, or flicking a lid, would betray our presence.
Old man Larocque, or whatever was coming down the stairs, sounded a little to me like the ghost of Marley from A Christmas Carol, th
e movie the parental units had to watch at least once every December. I’d always thought the ghost was the coolest thing in the show, all weird and dragging chains. But why did Larocque need chains? He wasn’t dead. Or was he?
The footsteps stopped halfway down the stairs. Now, as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we could see our breath puffing out in clouds in front of our faces. Wynona dropped her blue eyes from mine and looked very slightly relieved. But then we heard a voice hissing down the staircase, hoarse and grating, faint, yet every word clear. It seemed to echo in the building and brought Wynona’s eyes back up to attention. It cut into us like a knife.
“Come up!” it spat. “Come up…or die!”
There was a long pause, and then we heard those footsteps climbing the stairs again, the chains dragging behind. They shuffled across the upstairs floor and finally stopped.
Wynona’s eyes were as large as hockey pucks. I could only imagine my own face. We turned without speaking and began moving slowly up the stairs, like zombies. Each wooden step creaked beneath us and threatened to collapse under our weight.
As we approached the landing, our surroundings began to come into view, lit by a dull glow. And when we reached the second floor we could see the whole room. It was hard to describe, as strange a place as I had ever seen. It just seemed old, like some place from a time long before I was born. There were old theatre posters on the wall, old furniture, an oil lamp on an ancient-looking bookshelf, and an unlit chandelier that looked like an antique. Mom and Dad have a big one in the dining room at home. It’s old too, but nothing like this one—this was right out of a history show. He didn’t have a TV, just a radio; it looked like a museum exhibit and was about the size of two goalie’s pads. Over against the far wall was a massive pile of wood, reaching up to the ceiling, and next to it a huge fire, roaring and cracking in the fireplace like something from hell.
In front, slouched in a giant wooden chair, was old man Larocque. Or at least that’s what we guessed. All we could see was one of his hands, old and bony like a claw. It gripped the chair’s arm as though it was going to rip it of.
“Come here!” hissed the voice. The hand beckoned us. I could see his nails now, extending way past his fingertips.
We glanced at each other and then started to walk. About two metres from the chair the voice snarled again.
“Stop!”
We stopped, believe me. Then there was a long pause. We could hear ourselves breathing, loud and nervously. We knew the old man could too. What has she gotten us into? I thought. What is this freak going to do with us?
“How dare you come into my home! HOW DARE YOU!!”
The chandelier shook from the force of his voice.
“WHO ARE YOU?” he demanded.
Wyn stepped forward. I couldn’t believe it, but she did. She must have thought we had nothing to lose.
“I…I’m Wynona Dixon…Great-grandpa.”
We heard a little sound, a sort of moan, come from the old man, as if he had felt a stab of pain. There was another long pause. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he rose. As he turned we could see his face and the tears in his eyes, dropping down his sagging, waxen, mask-like face. Whiskers and bristles sprouted here and there from his cheek and chin, as if he had clipped them with scissors. His wild white hair grew down to his shoulders, and he seemed to be wearing work clothes, like a miner’s from another time, all under a sleeping bag that was wrapped around his thin frame. He shivered, despite the heat from the fireplace. At the bottom of the sleeping bag I could see a huge zipper, torn from the rest of the material. It made a scraping sound on the floor as the old man staggered forward: the chains of Marley’s ghost.
“Wynona,” the old man sobbed, “Wynona. Come here, my child.”
Wyn walked to him and he hugged her, pulling her right into the sleeping bag. I thought I could hear him whisper something like, “I knew you’d come.” But all I heard clearly was what Larocque said when he looked my way, suspiciously. “And who is this?” he barked, pointing at my head with his cane.
“A…a friend…a good friend…a very very very very good friend,” I stammered. At this point I was wondering if my black hair, which always looks like it is plastered to my head, was actually standing straight up in the air.
“This is Dylan Maples,” said Wynona.
A traitor. She’s a dirty, low-down traitor, I thought. Now they’re going to tie me to a rack somewhere or put me in that coffin in the basement. I should have realized they were in this together.
“Maples!” snapped Larocque, his eyes bulging.
Perhaps you should have introduced me as Satan, Wyn, that might have gone over a little better.
“And he is here to help us. He’s our only hope.”
The old man kept glaring at me, but then he slowly lowered his cane. “It isn’t your fault anyway, youngster. We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers. I tried to tell Brown that, long ago…. Maybe you are right, Wynona. Maybe there is some hope in this whitefaced child.”
Praise the Lord. A stay of execution.
“I need to sit down,” said the old man. He shuffled back to his chair and motioned for us to come forward. As we made our way towards him we could see that what he had been sitting in wasn’t really a chair but a loveseat, an antique-looking little sofa for two. He looked at Wyn and patted the space beside him, and then motioned with his cane for me to sit in another chair nearby. Needless to say, I was very obedient. We sat, all three, facing that fire. I couldn’t believe how huge it was and how powerful. It roared like a furnace that might have powered an old steamship on the ocean…maybe the Titanic. It was also hard to imagine that the old man could keep it going, all by himself. But there was something in his eyes, something stubborn and defiant, that said he could do nearly anything he wanted to do.
For a few minutes no one spoke; we all just stared into the fire. I could feel my face getting hot, and as I gazed at the flames they seemed almost to hypnotize me. I started thinking I could see things in there.
Finally the old man spoke.
“What did you mean when you said this boy is here to help us? Help us do what?”
“Beat the Brown family.”
The old man laughed. But as his laugh went on, it was hard to tell if that’s what it really was. It almost sounded like crying. Then he stopped and stared so intently into the fire that it seemed it would burn holes in his eyes. He spoke in a sort of trance.
“You don’t know what you are saying, child. They can’t be beaten. And neither can I.”
“Well, it seems to me that they will win…if you never tell your side of the story.”
“Maybe the facts have to stay hidden,” said the old man.
I was dying to say something, but thought better of it. The old guy might just reach over and swipe my head off with that cane, or pitch me into the fire. Yes, keep quiet, good plan.
“I don’t believe that,” said Wyn.
“You are just a youngster. You have no idea how evil we grown-ups are.”
The old man appeared to be lost in thought. He grunted to himself a few times and soon seemed to be saying something under his breath. It sounded like, “For a child shall lead them.” Then, believe it or not, he turned to me.
Gulp.
“What do you think, boy? You whose father is a slave to this…this devil from the south. Do you think you have it in your young soul to really do something about this?”
“Uh…yes, sir.”
“Even if it meant pain to your father and mother?”
I paused. “Uh…I don’t know, sir.”
The old man regarded me for a while. We locked eyes. His looked like they were on fire. Then he smiled. “You may not be so bad after all. Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to tell you two a few things. Maybe your generation should know something of what went on in those dark days long ag
o. Soon I’ll be gone, and I’ll take most of it with me anyway, all the important parts. I can’t tell you much…I just can’t.”
He stopped for a moment before he went on. “If you can solve it, figure it out, from what I say…then maybe…I’ll just have to…maybe that’s as it should be.”
He paused again, staring into the fire.
“It’s all a series of secrets, you see. And in the end…there’s a…big secret.”
He looked at me.
“Boy, go down into the cellar again. Find my coffin, open it up, and bring back what you find inside.”
8
What Happened Long Ago
All the way down the stairs to the first floor I couldn’t get the old man’s smile off my mind. Why would anyone grin like that when telling you to open up a coffin? What was in there? Was this going to be some sort of revenge for what Dad was doing?
At first I’d just stood stock-still when the old man gave me this little errand. I might as well have been actually glued to the floor. That was when Larocque gave me that smile, like something the bad guy flashes you in the movies just before he shoots you in the head. And that’s when I moved, on the double.
At first I’d had one thought in my mind and one thought only—go down the stairs and out the first window you find and never look back until you are a quivering mass in your mother’s arms. But at the bottom of the stairs I started to change my mind. Larocque obviously knew that I could fly the coop. He must have been giving me some sort of test. And Wyn was up there, waiting for me to return, wondering if I was a hero or a coward. The coward option seemed like the smart one, and a smart decision was always the best one—the parental units had taught me that long ago. But something about Wyn Dixon made me head towards the basement door. I just couldn’t let her down.
I gripped the door handle heroically, like Luke Skywalker…and almost brained myself. I’d forgotten that it was locked from the other side, and I smacked my head into it as I pulled my whole body forward without the door moving an inch. The sound obviously registered upstairs.
The Secret of the Silver Mines Page 5