Cragbridge Hall, Book 1: The Inventor's Secret Hardcover

by Chad Morris

  “Yes, but the bad guys posed as the police before we got to the real ones, so they know more than they should. And I don’t think the real police will be helpful. This is beyond them. That’s why my grandpa left us the clues. We need to follow the clues to find him. But we can’t go any further without your code.”

  “Hmmm,” Carol said. “That sounds crazy. Which, don’t get me wrong, you’re very cute when you’re crazy, and I know that you’re in quite the emotional state right now, which also makes you a mopey kind of attractive. I’ll do it, if—”

  “If what?”

  “If ...” Carol got up and walked to her closet. She pulled out a rolled-up white T-shirt. “If you wear this,” she said. “For a whole day.” She tossed it to Derick.

  “Uh ...” Derick floundered. He was about to quickly accept but decided he’d better look at the shirt first. He unfolded it and gazed at big, bold red letters that said, “I’m in love.” Beneath the words was Carol’s face, smiling, her blonde hair in pigtails. He flipped the shirt over. Popuhilarity.com was printed on the back.

  Derick had no idea what to say. Carol apparently did.

  “They made them up for a promo for this web series pilot I was in—Popuhilarity. It’s the words popular and hilarity mixed together. I think they were trying to be clever, but most people didn’t get it. Anyway, I was this love-crazy girl. They said I was a natural. I was always saying ‘I’m in love.’ The pilot never got picked up by any of the prime networks, so they gave me the extra T-shirts. For some reason, I’ve never been able to persuade anyone to wear them except my mom.”

  “Okay,” Derick agreed quickly, trying not to imagine what people might say. He started to put the shirt on.

  “You can wear it right now if you want, but the deal is for a whole day, to classes and everything. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, because it’s such a good-looking shirt. Since today’s almost over, if you wear it now, you’ll have to wear it another day too.”

  Derick froze. “I’ll just wait until I can do it all at once,” he said, then realized it could hurt her feelings and tried to recover. “Just because it doesn’t really go with my ... shoes.”

  Carol looked down in thought. “You’re right. I should get you some bright red shoelaces to go with the shirt.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out,” Derick said. “So we have a deal?” He offered his hand to shake and seal the agreement.

  “Definitely,” Carol said, and shifted to his side to hold his hand, not to shake it. She intertwined her fingers in his.

  Derick couldn’t believe he’d left himself so open. They walked out of her room a few steps hand in hand before Derick pretended he had to look something up on his rings and wriggled his hand free.

  • • •

  By Endurance We Conquer. That was the motto. And it was put to the test.

  Shackleton drove screws through the bottoms of his boots to make them into improvised ice-climbing shoes. Two other men did the same; their thick clothes, covered in dirt and grime, weren’t enough to keep out the cold as they completed their task.

  From the Bridge, Abby, Derick, and Carol watched them shiver in the arctic air.

  One of the men looked up at the frozen mountains, then at their only map. “It only shows the coast. We have no idea what’s ahead,” he said.

  “Whatever is there,” Shackleton said, “we have to cross it.” He had a full beard and wore some sort of hat wrapped around his head. “We’ll make it. We’ll wait until the middle of the night when the snow is frozen and easier to walk across. We’ll travel light. No sleeping bags. Nothing we don’t need. We have to make it by the following night.”

  Carol fast-forwarded the Bridge event to get through the long wait. She slowed it down again about 3 a.m., when the men grabbed some rope and a few rations and began to hike across the first ice field. A plateau, then a series of snow-covered peaks lay ahead of them. It was one giant frozen obstacle.

  “I don’t know if I could do that,” Abby confessed.

  “Me neither,” Carol added. “I get cold when the air conditioner is on too high. I don’t think I’d last a day in Antarctica, let alone with only a rope and a little food. These guys haven’t eaten a good meal in forever. I wouldn’t want to even try a day hike on an empty stomach.”

  “But they have to, or their friends are going to die,” Derick said.

  Sick and freezing comrades were depending on Shackleton to reach them. The three men hiked the wind-raked, icy ground, their feet crunching in the frozen snow.

  “This doesn’t look safe at all,” Abby said.

  “It isn’t,” Derick agreed. “They have no idea where hidden crevasses are under the snow. With any step, they could fall to their deaths.”

  Carol giggled.

  “I didn’t think any of that was funny,” Derick said.

  “You ...” Carol giggled again. “You said crevasses. I used to think that was a swear word, so now every time I hear it, I laugh.”

  Abby smiled, welcoming a break in the tension. She couldn’t believe this whole ordeal. They’d watched Shackleton’s expedition for over two hours now, and still had no clues.

  First Shackleton and his crew of twenty-six adventurers, plus one stowaway, launched for Antarctica. They traveled through ice-riddled waters until, during the night, the water had frozen around their ship, trapping them in the middle of a huge ice sheet. Abby heard the cracks and groans of the ship as ice grew, expanded, and eventually crushed the boat. It sounded like a war, with explosions and counter fire. The broken masts and sunken hull left the men stranded on a huge slab of ice hundreds of miles from land and without a way home.

  The men salvaged three small lifeboats and supplies and marched across the ice. At one point, the ice became too thin, and a man fell through. Shackleton reached into the frigid waters and pulled the man back to safety.

  Then they rowed in their lifeboats for seven days straight. Sometimes huge waves crashed over them. They were soaked through with freezing arctic water. Abby felt cold just watching it. When the men traded rowing shifts, their hands were often frozen to the oars—they had to chip them free from the wood. Their ears were covered in frostbite.

  Finally, they found land—Elephant Island. Abby had thought that was the end—the ordeal had already lasted months—but it was a desolate island. Other boats never visited it, so there was no hope for rescue without moving on. By then, most of the men were freezing and sick.

  Shackleton handpicked a few of the best sailors, and together they headed out eight hundred miles to South Georgia Island, to a whaler’s station. Abby could hardly believe it—traveling eight hundred miles in a makeshift sailboat. The men talked about their chances, knowing they wouldn’t be able to see much over the waves to chart their course, and if they were even a degree off, they could miss the island by sixty miles, and sail out into the open ocean. If that happened, all of them—on the boat and back on the island—would either starve or freeze to death, whichever came first. Carol fast-forwarded through their chilling journey. Abby saw blowholes of killer whales nearby as they struggled through the icy ocean.

  The men barely managed to land on the other island, but their boat could no longer sail, and the whaler’s station was on the other side of the frozen land.

  Abby watched the three men take step after step into unknown terrain, moving forward and upward—the same repetitive motion over and over, their breath escaping in little clouds. They talked little.

  “How long have they been lost now?” Carol asked.

  “Looks like”—Derick flicked his fingers, searching the net for a few moments—“whoa ... about a year and a half.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Carol said. “And I think I have it rough when I have to wait in a long line to get French fries. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still a pain, but it’s nothing compared to this.”

  Abby had never really thought about how much some people had gone through to survive.

&n
bsp; Carol moved the image forward until the next evening. The party had been hiking since three in the morning, walked all day long, and yet they still moved forward as it neared midnight. Abby calculated the time in her head—twenty-one hours of straight hiking—hard hiking, trekking up and down mountains without trails. They were nearing the top of another peak, with wind whipping at their faces.

  “We’ve got to get down soon,” one man said, panting.

  “You’re right,” Shackleton answered. “We can’t be caught up here during the night.”

  “We’ve got no sleeping bags to fight this cold off,” the other answered. “Not that we planned on sleeping.”

  “We’ll get down,” Shackleton said and approached the peak. As soon as the view down was visible, none of them spoke. The mountain dropped so steeply, it was impossible to walk down. The men paced along the top, looking for a safer way down—nothing. They met back together.

  Shackleton looked at the other two. “We’ve got to take a risk. Are you game?” The men didn’t answer. “We’ll slide,” Shackleton said. He took their rope and coiled it up so they could sit on it, kind of like a saucer-type sled.

  After a few moments, the men agreed.

  “They have no idea what’s down there,” Carol said. “I mean, there could be, like, sharp rocks, or huge cracks in the ice, or a giant cliff. They don’t know.”

  “They have to try something,” Derick said. “Or they’re all dead.”

  The men sat on the rope, latched to one another, and slid off the top of the mountain. They tried to brace themselves against the snow to slow themselves down, but they rushed down the mountainside. The wind pulled at their clothes and faces. They leaned and twisted, trying to stay together to keep the rope sled beneath them. A bump nearly sent them sprawling, but they regrouped as they continued to careen out of control down the slope. Finally, they crashed into a snow bank. A moment later, all three men stood and brushed themselves off. There were no screams of delight; there was no celebration. The nearly broken men solemnly shook hands. Their gamble had paid off.

  Finally, at about 5 a.m., they were at the base of another hill and sat down to rest. Abby did the math. They had been hiking for twenty-six hours. Within moments, both of Shackleton’s companions were asleep. Shackleton himself blinked hard and struggled to stay awake.

  “If he falls asleep,” Derick whispered to himself, “all three of them will probably never wake up—they’ll freeze to death.”

  After about five minutes, Shackleton shook the other two back to consciousness. “It’s been a half an hour,” he lied. “Time for a fresh start.”

  Carol fast-forwarded the image. An hour and a half later, they could see the bay, and by three in the afternoon, they’d arrived at the whaler’s home. They had successfully finished a thirty-six-hour, nearly nonstop hike over a frozen island.

  But that wasn’t the most moving part for Abby. Shackleton and the other two men were rescued quickly, but those on Elephant Island had to wait. Shackleton tried to reach them four times before getting through the packed ice. When he finally succeeded, and Shackleton counted the silhouettes that emerged from a small hut the men had made from the two remaining boats, Abby had to blink away tears.

  At last Shackleton said, “They’re all here.”

  Abby couldn’t believe it. Stranded for nearly two years in Antarctica, and they had all survived. Maybe part of why Grandpa wanted them to study this expedition was to see the power of endurance, the power of hope. Maybe he wanted them to know what people could overcome if they kept trying, going on when they had no more reason to hope. Maybe Grandpa and her parents were okay, and more importantly, maybe they were going to be back soon.

  “We have to figure this out,” Abby said, with new determination. “How does knowing about Shackleton lead us to the next clue?”

  23

  Simulator

  Grandpa had written Shackleton’s motto on the slip of paper, and Shackleton’s ship was portrayed on one of the little squares from the inner side of the cube, but Derick, Abby, and Carol still had no idea what Shackleton had to do with Oscar Cragbridge. They turned to the other small pictures from the cube, hoping those might have some answers.

  The next miniature painting was of a Civil War battle; the blue and gray uniforms gave that part away. A boy in the next picture must have been about to have some sort of surgery, but there was no figuring out who the boy was.

  Carol suggested that the girl with the wounded neck in another picture may have been Joan of Arc, and after some research, they felt it was probable. But what did she have to do with the Civil War? With Shackleton? With the boy having surgery? How were they related? They found a lot of information, but they still couldn’t put the pieces together to make any sense of them.

  The three students didn’t stop for dinner. They took turns sneaking down to the cafeteria one by one to eat while the other two worked.

  Abby insisted she take the last turn. She couldn’t help but think of her parents and grandfather and wonder where they were and how they were doing—if they were still alive at all. A lump stuck to the sides of her throat as she thought about the possibilities.

  She eventually stepped out of the Bridge to eat, leaving Derick and Carol to continue without her. As she closed the door, she was glad they had a clear goal, or leaving Derick alone with Carol would have been downright cruel.

  Many questions reeled through her mind as she walked down the hall. So what if Shackleton and his men survived a horrendous journey? What if the battle they were looking at was really during the Civil War? Where did any of it lead? They had gained another key, but what was it for? None of it seemed to bring her any closer to her parents or grandfather.

  As she walked, she looked at the walls of Cragbridge Hall, not wanting to make any eye contact with anyone who passed. If she couldn’t be alone physically, she’d be alone with her thoughts. She looked at the patterns in the bricks. She watched the lockers. She glanced at a painting—a picture of two armies facing off with a field between them.

  Abby slowed as she passed the painting. It definitely wasn’t the same picture as the one in the cube, but there were some striking similarities. It could have been another artist’s version of one of many Civil War battles. The questions and answers haunted her. Abby wanted to scream. The picture hung there silently as a testament that she couldn’t figure out the next clue.

  “It’s called a painting,” a voice said.

  Abby turned to see Jacqueline flanked by two of her friends.

  “Leave me alone, Jacqueline,” Abby said.

  “I was just trying to help,” Jacqueline said. “It starts with a canvas, and then someone dips a brush into paint. With little bristles on a brush, they put the paint onto the canvas. That’s why we call it a painting.”

  Abby closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip. She wanted to say so many things to Jacqueline, but refused. The words wanting to come out definitely weren’t nice, and they wouldn’t help her situation. She started to walk away.

  “Maybe,” Jacqueline called after her, “at a different school you could take a class where you’d learn something ...”

  Maybe the pressure had built up in Abby for too long. Maybe she couldn’t take the teasing anymore. Or maybe Jacqueline was too rude at the wrong time. Regardless of the reason, Abby cracked.

  “Stop it!” she yelled. “Don’t you read the news? Don’t you know that my grandpa and my parents are missing? Do you think I’m worried about your little clique or some upcoming test—or a stupid painting? I thought you had an exceptional mind. I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that it’s not the stress of school that has me worried.”

  Jacqueline took a step back, a look of surprise on her face.

  “I’m ... I’m sorry,” Abby said, calming down. “I just ...”

  Jacqueline looked at her friends. One stepped away from her and toward Abby. “I’m sorry about your grandpa and your parents,” Jacqueline said quick
ly. “I really am. And I hope the police find them soon.” Her voice chilled a bit. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that you don’t deserve to be here. In fact, this might be the perfect time—”

  “To quit talking to you,” Abby said, finishing Jacqueline’s sentence. “I couldn’t agree more.” And Abby turned and walked away.

  “I wasn’t done,” Jacqueline called out after her.

  “I was,” Abby said, surprised at her tone. She didn’t turn around; she simply put one foot in front of the other and continued down the hall. She thought she heard Jacqueline say something else, but she couldn’t hear. More importantly, she didn’t care.

  Abby walked for another minute before noticing another painting on a wall—a boy on a bed, surrounded by doctors. Abby nearly passed it before turning back. This was also similar to one from the cube. Abby read the note about it. It was a boy named Joseph Smith. He was seven years old when doctors cut open his leg and chipped away fourteen pieces of infected bone—all without anesthesia. Abby shuddered just reading about it. The surgery had saved the boy’s leg, but afterward, he walked on crutches for three years, and had a slight limp for the rest of his life. Joseph Smith grew up to be the founder of a new American religion.

  Excited now, Abby rushed down the hall until she found another painting, this one of a ship with a man dangling from the rope beside it. The plaque said the man was John Howland and that the ship was the Mayflower. He was being pulled back to safety after falling overboard. The paintings all matched those from the cube. Abby touched the frame. This painting certainly looked old enough to have been there since the founding of Cragbridge Hall. She tried to pull it from the wall to see if anything was behind it, but it was mounted fast against the bricks. It was meant to stay put—maybe even be there permanently.