Jessie Delacroix and the Sanctum of Shadows (Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book 2)

by Constance Barker

  “Besides,” Zach continued, determine that he would not be the Cowardly Lion, “You’ve got the flaxen colored hair like a lion, and…” He pulled a small can of 3-in-1 from a zipper pouch on his belt. “…I’ve even got an oil can.”

  “Guys!” I had to break this up. “Are we really arguing over who is an imaginary lion?” The Cowardly Lion was always my favorite, so I didn’t see the problem anyway. “How about if you be Zach…you be Cammy…you be Ginny…”

  They all seemed to go along with that.

  “…and I’ll be Dorothy!” I gave them an impish wrinkly-nosed smirk. “Let’s go. C’mon, Toto.”

  “And that lady upstairs was like Glinda,” Ginny added. “She even said follow the footprints of mud…kind of like our own yellow brick road. Too bad we don’t have a wicked witch.”

  “Oh…she’s here,” I said. Arthur snarled and gave me a low growl. “All right, folks – it’s time to start our journey to the Sanctum of Shadows.”

  Cammy opened the door, and we took our first steps leading to the mysterious realm.

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  Chapter Nine

  “I can’t see a thing,” Cammy said, waving her small flashlight in front of her as the door slammed ominously behind us, like a prison door that was sealing our fate.

  “Yeah,” Ginny agreed, “it’s like an infinity of darkness is soaking up all the light from our flashlights or something.”

  Zach put on his night vision goggles. “That’s because there’s nothing to see straight ahead. There’s nothing close enough for the light to hit. Shine your lights down and to the sides.”

  I could see that the floor changed from dirt to old paving stones a few steps ahead. “Look for muddy footprints, you guys. I think there’s a wall over here.”

  “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Ginny was having the time of her life, but we needed to concentrate.

  “Shhh!”

  “You guys!” Cammy had gone ahead of us and found something. “There are footprints of mud on the stone floor, and they’re coming right towards us.”

  We picked up the pace to join her. Our small flashlights just lit a very small area.

  “Well, the prints end here where the floor becomes dirt. Maybe we’re supposed to follow them backwards.”

  Arthur was tugging on the leash off to the side and barked.

  “Quiet, Arthur, we’re busy.”

  But the little beagle was determined and latched onto the cuff of Zach’s pants with his teeth and pulled. Zach turned, and Arthur led him several steps to the left.

  “Wait – over here.” Zach was able to see more with his goggles. “The path turns here. The stones and footprints start up again in this long corridor to the left.”

  Ginny started singing. “Follow, follow, follow, follow…follow the footprints of mud!” She extended her elbows on each side.

  “We are not locking arms with you and skipping, Ginny.” Cammy burst her bubble, but it was for the best.

  It seemed like we had walked for half an hour, and the muddy footprints were not very muddy anymore.

  “There’s a light up ahead.” Ginny pointed. Our eyes had adjusted somewhat to the near darkness, and it also seemed to be getting a little brighter.

  “It looks like it’s coming from under a door up ahead,” Zach said.

  “And the air is getting fresher too.”

  “You’re right, Cammy.” I felt a little excitement replace some of my tension and fear. “Maybe we’re almost out of this place.”

  Ginny ran several yards to the door. As we approached her she pretended to read a sign on the door: “Bell out of order. Please…”

  “Ginny!”

  “Sorry.”

  The light beneath the door was quite dim. I shined my flashlight straight ahead and saw some letters carved in the door. It was a big “S,” a small “o,” and another big “S.”

  “SoS…?” I read it to the others, and we all took a closer look.

  “There must be people inside in need of help,” Zach said. “That’s the international code for help.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cammy said, rubbing her finger in the beautiful calligraphic script. “This wasn’t scratched in here in a hurry by someone who needs help. It was carved with real wood carving tools by the hand of an artisan. And it’s a small ‘o.’ It’s a sign – S-o-S. This must be the door to the Scoundrel of the Seas.”

  “Or,” I said, taking a deep breath and then exhaling slowly, “the Sanctum of Shadows.”

  We looked at each other and nodded nervously.

  “I’m going in,” Ginny said, stepping to the front. Maybe Anika’s incantation had made her too fearless.

  “Stop, Ginny.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “It might be booby trapped.”

  She thought for a second. “There haven’t been any booby traps so far – no poison arrows shooting at us or rolling boulders when we came down that long hallway. My Spidey sense tells me it’s okay.”

  Without another thought or hesitation, she pulled the door open about halfway. The doorway was quite narrow, and on the other side was a grassy meadow followed by a sparse forest of young loblolly pines – much like I imagine the area behind the Inn would have looked centuries earlier. The air was fresh with a hint of a swampy smell. It seemed to be shortly before nightfall here, although it was already very dark in Whispering Pines when we left the Inn. The shadows of the trees were very long, aiming right towards us, but there was no sun behind them to cast the shadows. As Ginny slowly opened the door further the shadows all rotated to our right. She pulled the door back and forth several times, and the shadows followed.

  I pulled the door all the way open to get a better look, and the shadows seemed to lock into place, pointing to our right. They no longer moved with the motion of the door. Ginny turned to us with a smile and a wave and then stepped through the portal. The doorway got narrower after she ran through. Instantly she seemed to be transformed into a long narrow shadow pointing straight back toward us. The three of us were in shock. But as her shadow began its rotation to the right we could see her again, and we smiled in relief.

  “I guess the huge shadow just made it hard for us to see her,” I said.

  Ginny patted her knees and whistled, and Arthur dashed through the portal, dragging his leash behind. She waved for us to join her. “Come on in! It’s nice and warm in here!”

  Zach stepped toward the opening.

  “Wait, Zach,” I stepped in front of him and took Cammy’s hand. “The girls have to go first.”

  The doorway made a cracking sound and slowly started to get even narrower. I looked at Cammy Jo. “Let’s go!” I leapt inside, pulling her with me and heard a loud thundering boom behind me. I turned and saw dust rising behind Cammy from the spot that had once been an open doorway. The portal had slammed shut, and Zach was still on the other side.

  “I guess when she said to bring two friends, she really meant it,” I mumbled softly to myself.

  “Zach!” Cammy Jo screamed and banged her fist on the wall. Then she burst into tears.

  “Cammy Jo, Zach is all right. He can just go back to the Inn. Don’t worry.”

  My reassurance and hug didn’t seem to help.

  “Cammy…”

  It was then that I saw a transparent apparition of Anika float down in a bubble. She waved her magical fingers and said boldog. Just like that, Cammy was happy again.

  I looked at the immense wall. It was made of large, smooth stones like the ones you might find in a riverbed, mortared together with mud. It extended further than I could see in either direction, and the top of it disappeared into the foggy mist that was our sky. It was obvious that we weren’t going to get back home the way we came in, and I had no ruby slippers to click together.

  “This way, guys!” Ginny and Arthur were a hundred feet away from us now as we watched our long shadows turn directly towards them. “We have to foll
ow our shadows.”

  It was nice and homey here, but something felt very different. We caught up to Ginny and then stopped to get our bearings.

  “Do you guys feel…strange? I mean, like something is different?”

  Ginny had an answer right away. “Yup. It’s like my mind is in the shadow instead of my body.”

  Cammy was coming to the same realization. “That’s exactly what it is, Ginny. The person isn’t casting the shadow – the shadow is casting the person.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around the idea. “But my eyes and ears are still on my body.”

  “True,” Ginny said, “but I feel like I’m in the shadow. What’s real in this place are the shadows, and everything else is just a bunch of illusions that the shadows create.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but something did feel pretty odd here. Ginny and Cammy were looking at the trees, still consumed with their thoughts about this shadow reality, and I stooped down to give Arthur a pat on the head. I fell on my bottom when Granny suddenly popped her head out of Arthur’s and gave me a big smile.

  “Granny, get back inside Arthur before the girls see you! I think they’ve had enough mind bending experiences for one day!”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but I put my finger to my lips, reminding her to speak telepathically.

  “Jessie, this is a place for people like me! I can be free here. I don’t have to be at the INN or inside my little buddy here. I have to get out!”

  I nodded. “Okay. Get back in for a minute.”

  “Girls, I have to take Arthur into the trees for a second. He had a lot of water before we left.”

  They just nodded and didn’t skip a beat in their conversation.

  As soon as we got into the shadows behind some trees Granny popped out. She took a deep breath, extended her arms, and twirled like Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Then she began to work every joint and muscle in her body. The biggest smile grew on her face, and her eyes shone like stars in the sky.

  I see her everyday in the kitchen at the Tea Room, but this was different. She was…real. I could hug her…and I did.

  “You’re real, Granny. I held her tightly and struggled to hold back my tears.

  “No, sweetheart, I’m not. It just feels that way here.”

  “But I can hug you and touch you.”

  “That’s because you’re not real either – at least, not this body. Just your shadow is real here.”

  So they were right. Arthur was excited to meet his frequent companion and was bouncing like a kid on Christmas.

  “How am I going to explain you to the others?” We stepped out from behind the trees and headed toward Cammy Jo and Ginny.

  “Not a problem.” Granny held her open hand out to me. “Give me that map that Anika gave you.”

  I had forgotten all about it. “Oh…” I reached into my shoulder bag. “Here.”

  The girls were a little shocked and confused to see me return with an old woman in a polka dot dress and perfectly permed short grey hair.

  Arthur pulled us eagerly back to Ginny and Cammy Jo.

  “Hi,” Cammy greeted her. “Are you lost?”

  “Oh, not at all.” Granny smiled, seeming to have left all of her grumpiness back at the Inn. “I’m here to make sure you don’t get lost during your visit with us. I’m you guide, uh…Elizabeth Taylor.”

  I rolled my eyes and gave Granny a poke in the ribs.

  “But you can call me Miss Aggie.”

  “I’m Ginny, and this here is Cammy Jo.” Ginny said, shaking Granny’s hand. “There’s something real familiar about you, Miss Aggie. I feel like I know you already.”

  Oh, please don’t figure out that this is Granny.

  “I guess I just have one of those friendly spirits!”

  Riiiight.

  “Well. Let’s just follow our shadows, girls.” Granny unrolled the map and pointed the way.

  “Miss Aggie…” Ginny wasn’t sure if she should say what she was thinking. “Uh…you don’t have a shadow. Why is that?”

  “Of course I have a shadow, Virginia. You’re looking at it. Those of us who belong to this realm have already shed our corporeal bodies. It’s your bodies that appear to be shadows to you here.”

  “I get it. So you’re like a ghost or something.”

  Granny gave a confirming shrug.

  Cammy Jo opened her eyes as far as she could and looked at me with an enormous phony smile plastered on her face. Then she pressed her index finger to her temple like a gun and pulled the trigger with her thumb. Hang in there, Cammy.

  Granny unrolled the map and held it up for us both to see. Now, in the light of the eternal dusk here in the Sanctum of Shadows, we could see the writing on the parchment. I recognized the river and our entry portal, but couldn’t really figure out the rest. There were several spots marked with a big red “X,” and Granny tapped her finger on the nearest one.

  The shadows all turned about 45 degrees to our left, pointing into a densely forested area where the thin pine forest converged with other trees and brush over the next hill. We followed our shadows to the edge of the forest and found a beaten path leading into woods, still aligned with our shadows.

  “Ahoy! Who goes there?”

  The brusque voice stopped us in our tracks. Up ahead a surly stereotypical pirate with a red bandana and a peg leg hobbled out from the trees onto the path.

  “What have we here?” He looked us up and down as our lives flashed before our eyes. “Three beauteous wenches, and an old sea hag. “Boys!” he hollered loudly, “come and take a gander! It looks like we’ll all be havin’ some fun tonight!”

  His brazen laugh sent shivers through my spine, and a feeling of helplessness came over me.

  A half-dozen buccaneers appeared behind him, and another four emerged from the trees behind us. Only a very few of them seemed to be casting shadows. Three of the tidier ones, each with a mouthful of relatively clean teeth and a more reserved demeanor, gathered nearest to the peg-legged commander. The others had sabers drawn were drooling like starving lions surrounding a cluster of doomed young antelope. They probably hadn’t seen a woman in 300 years.

  “I git that one,” I heard one say from behind. “They’re all kinda scrawny, but she’s got a nice wide bottom on her.”

  Well, that wasn’t me. Probably Cammy Jo.

  “I get the long one with the hair of fire,” said another with a sleazy and sinister rough baritone voice.

  “Nay, Paddy, you don’t. That one’s mine. I’ll teach her how to use those big red lips.” He let out a low and treacherous laugh.

  Now they’re fighting over Ginny, but this was one time I didn’t mind being picked last. The stares made us feel naked, and the comments and laughter were humiliating. Maybe this is what all guys are thinking, and the pirates just say it out loud, I thought.

  “Look at the fine balcony on Goldilocks in the middle. Mmmm. Her babies will never go hungry!”

  The crude laughter sickened me. My throat went dry, and my body became cold and paralyzed with fear. I could hear Cammy Jo’s mind: “Great. I always wanted to die getting gang banged by a bunch of smelly pirates.”

  There was one tall, shirtless man standing at the right hand of the leader – the only one of the bunch that might clean up into a strapping hero fit for the cover of a romance novel. He was silent with kind eyes, and he looked only at me. His presence calmed me a little.

  Arthur was barking and growling, but I’d much rather have had Zach with us at the moment. I could see Cammy Jo looking toward the pistol in her boot, but there were just too many men.

  Ginny walked over and whispered something in Granny’s ear. Granny nodded.

  The sleaziest one of them all, with an eye patch and a huge belly, stepped toward us. “Let’s strip ’em down and see what we got!”

  “Shut up, you bilge rats!” the leader with the peg leg barked. “I’ll say what we do and who’s gettin’ what around here.” He took a step forward to
get a closer look.

  “Stop!” Granny commanded as she ascended six feet into the air and slowly turned all the way around.

  The men became silent and awestruck by the floating old lady, and the girls were pretty surprised too. They listened as Granny continued.

  “These girls…er, wenches are a gift from, uh, King Hamlet of Denmark, intended only for the pleasure and company of Captain Gentry Olivant himself. I don’t think he would take kindly to any man who took it upon himself to spoil these perfect young…virgins, who were chosen for him by the King himself.”

  Granny descended slowly, and none of the men dared to move or speak. “Of course, I’m just their governess, not promised to anybody, so I’m available for a little fun tonight.”

  The men looked at each other in silence for a moment, then they broke the tense mood with a hearty round of laughter. “No one’s going to lie with a witch!” one said.

  “Dang it! If I hadn’t floated up like that I might have had a chance,” Granny muttered to herself.

  “Percival,” the leader said to the handsome shirtless man, “see to the needs of these fine scrumpets, and make sure nothing befalls them before the Captain has his way with them.”

  “Aye, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Maybe he’ll give us his rejects and leftovers. Gangway now, or I’ll keelhaul the lot of ya.”

  The disappointed men dispersed, and Morgan and Percival approached us. Our relief came with a feeling of weakness, and we girls all had to sit.

  “Kind sir,” I said to the swarthy little leader in my most delicate Disney Princess voice, searching for any words from Shakespeare and Jane Austen novels that I could think of.

  “Aye, me beauty?”

  “Prithee, first we must see the new prisoner. The one that was taken the night after the full moon.” I figured Phineas Bandersnatch had to have gone somewhere, so this place seemed as likely as any, especially since there were pirates here.

  He and Percival exchanged glances that confirmed I was onto something.

  “The foppish gentleman with a moustache and wearing strange clothing. Can you bring us to him?” I smiled at Percival with my best submissive look. “Please, sir?”