The Downward Spiral

by Ridley Pearson

  “What . . . about . . . Mother?”

  The desk phone rang. Funny, we both looked over at it. Just a phone ringing, but there we were staring.

  Mr. Lehman started moving the moment the girl behind the desk looked in our direction. She cupped the phone to call out at him, but too late: Mr. Lehman was already out the door.

  Father’s journal sat on his chair, along with a few silver pearls of melted snow.

  I reached for it.

  She was looking at me, now. Far too intensely.

  I used a scream from the girls watching the show to make my own move for the door.

  CHAPTER 63

  WITH EVERY INTENTION TO FIND SHERLOCK, the only real clue I had was a note from NATO, telling me to talk to LeTona if I wanted to find Sherlock. I hated—hated!—having to deal with gorgeous LeTona. Why I should check with her about Sherlock I had no idea, but I wanted the fastest way to Sherlock, and I silently thanked Natalie for leaving the note.

  I ducked into the washroom on Bricks Middle 2 to send LeTona a text, hoping like everyone else she kept her phone handy. Otherwise it could take hours of running around to find her.

  It turned out she was only a long hallway from me, in the washroom of Bricks Middle 1.

  LeTona wore a black leotard top and gray gym pants with WILLIAMS COLLEGE running down the leg. She looked about twenty-four. She was soiling a white facecloth while removing makeup. I’d never known she even wore makeup. She was that good at it.

  “What’s up?”

  “Natalie said I should ask you where to find Sherlock.”

  She put the cloth down. I saw in the mirror a confused girl. “Did she? Sekulow or Anderson?”

  “Sekulow.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Why?” I asked. She looked legitimately troubled. “LeTona?”

  “She has a mad crush on him, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, that sounds about right.”

  I could see some deep thinking going on. Maybe reliving something. “Listen,” she said, “I did a favor for James, okay? I happen to like your brother, a lot. Probably too much. He asked me to deliver a message to Sherlock and I’m thinking maybe Sekulow overheard me or something.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I told Sherlock you’d be waiting for him in the chapel after dinner.”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “That’s what James asked me to do.”

  “So Sherlock’s waiting for me in the chapel?”

  “I suppose. I mean, dinner ended a while ago, so how should I know?”

  “And Natalie overheard you?”

  “I don’t know! She wrote the note, didn’t she?”

  “Why would James do that?” It just sort of slipped out.

  “He’s your brother!” she said. It wasn’t just a statement, but an accusation of some sort. “If you want to kind of drop a hint that I like him, I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

  I saw my mouth open in the mirror. I shut it.

  James had arranged a meeting with Sherlock in the chapel. But he’d tricked him into it.

  That couldn’t be good.

  CHAPTER 64

  I STARTED OUT FROM THE BRICKS ON A BEELINE to the chapel when I caught sight of my brother and his two idiots, Ryan Eisenower and Bret Thorndyke. They, too, appeared to be headed for the chapel.

  “Hey!” I called out angrily, stomping toward James. Only then did it register that the trio was not headed for the chapel, but toward Bricks 1, toward me, causing me to wonder if my brother had eyes and ears in every dorm. This was getting creepy.

  James took in our public surroundings. It was almost like a tic, an automatic response, and one I’d never seen before. I shivered as I strode toward him, then regained my composure.

  As if that wasn’t enough, using some unseen boy code, his two accomplices, looking eerily like bodyguards, stepped back to leave me and James alone as James took me—gently, I was pleased to note—by the arm and led me toward the shadows of the steps leading down into a breezeway connecting Bricks 1 to the Main House.

  “What’s this with LeTona?” I said in a raspy voice my brother knew only too well.

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes. That! I have no plans to meet Sherlock in the chapel, so what’s that about, Jamie?”

  In the dim light of the space I saw only the whites of his eyes. He was deeply troubled, unwilling to make eye contact.

  “You two should have included me,” he said.

  “Included you? We saved you.”

  “Don’t you think I know that!”

  “Then what? Why did you want Sher— Oh, Jamie! What’s going to happen?” I started off, but he seized my arm, this time not so gently. He held me there.

  “Don’t,” he said. “You can’t go there.”

  “I can, and I will! You coward! What’s supposed to happen?”

  “You and him . . . keep too many secrets. He doesn’t share enough. Now he will.”

  “They’re our secrets, Jamie. Our family. Lock is helping us! What’s supposed to happen to him?”

  “You can’t change that,” my brother said.

  “But you can, Jamie!” I pulled. I kicked out at him. “Whose secrets are they, anyway?” A hand clasped over my mouth. Arms wrapped around and held me from behind. The two beasts. Where had they come from?

  “My boy there behind you saw your little meeting with Sherlost in the practice room.” I wiggled to be free. I tried to speak, which proved useless. “Oh, yes, Mo, I’ve been keeping an eye on you—for your own protection. He has things that belong to us, knows things that belong to us.”

  Again, I struggled. I broke my mouth free of the hand for a precious moment. “This isn’t us, James! It isn’t Father!” Now I understood Sherlock’s long look at the window in the practice room. It had been closed when we’d entered. He’d known that, but didn’t want to frighten me. Eisenower or Thorndyke had pried it open, startling us when the shade clapped against the window frame. The spy had missed Sherlock explaining that the necklace in his pocket was Ruby Berliner’s artwork. James thought it was the real one!

  My brother’s expression changed from anger to realization. “Our secrets,” James said, as if it had suddenly just occurred to him. He told the goons, “Tie her up. Gag her. Keep her down there.” He looked at the pavement. “If I’m not back in an hour, let her go.”

  I struggled. Eisenower—it must have been Ryan, given the boy’s strength—lifted me off my feet, so that I flailed like a spoiled infant in a parent’s arms.

  “One of you stays with her at all times,” James called as he hurried up the brick steps. “You protect her at all costs!”

  CHAPTER 65

  THE RAVEN STOOD ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE kneeling Sir Galahad statue, the distant stained-glass windows fitting his head like a crown of color.

  “Costumes,” a nervous Sherlock said. “No one told me!”

  Nothing.

  “I’d like my friend back, please.”

  “I warned you, Mr. Holmes. This is a time to shut up, listen, and cooperate, believe me.” The strange, disturbing bird beak muffled the caped man’s low voice.

  “Let her go, and we may have a covenant,” Sherlock said. “You don’t want her hearing this.”

  “No, it’s true.”

  A man wearing a bandit’s handkerchief mask slapped a cloth onto Natalie’s face. She struggled and went slack.

  “There was no need for that,” Sherlock said.

  “The necklace you stole from the museum,” said the Raven. “We are prepared to win the information in any number of ways, none of which will appeal to you or your friend here.”

  “I see.”

  “You will hand it over. One of my associates will accompany you back to the dorm, if necessary. But,” the Raven said, preventing Sherlock from speaking, “any games, any attempt on your part to cross me, and there will be Devil’s work at play.” He raised his arm in a priestly fashion that gav
e Sherlock misgivings.

  “And after we make this exchange, I suppose one of your . . . fledglings . . . here is going to what? Drug me? Beat me silly until I lie to you how to use it?”

  “Something like that. More’s the pity.”

  “Just think how I feel?”

  “Suffice it to say, you will not be leaving here until I say so.”

  “Or, more like until I do!” James’s voice rose from behind Sherlock.

  The Raven’s beak lifted slightly. Sherlock could see the man’s chin. Who is it? he wondered.

  “Leave, now!” crowed the Raven. “We agreed on this.”

  “I’ve reconsidered,” James told the Raven.

  “It’s too late,” said the Raven.

  “Think carefully,” said James in a commanding and defiant tone. “We’re scrubbing this plan. Think very, very carefully.”

  “It cannot be reversed,” the Raven declared. “What’s done is done. You’re a moment too late.”

  Sherlock didn’t like the sound of that. “The girl,” he said. “She’s an innocent victim in all this.”

  “No one is truly innocent,” said the Raven.

  “Let’s skip the tired philosophy, shall we?” Sherlock proposed. “This is where I offer you this,” he said, withdrawing the cross necklace from his pocket, dangling it from the string of pearls, “and you trade me the girl.”

  “What girl?” James asked. “MORIA!?”

  “It’s Natalie Sekulow,” said Sherlock, correcting. “These beasts—or fowls, or whatever—have chloroformed poor Natalie unconscious.”

  “What?” James said, astonished and angry.

  Two of the bandits approached Sherlock.

  “A word of caution,” Sherlock said. “The jewel attached is not a jewel at all, but a specially crafted prism of glass. If you approach any closer I shall shatter it.” Sherlock spun the necklace.

  The Raven was working hard to disguise his voice. Sherlock could not determine his identity.

  “Then you’d better set it down gently, boy.”

  “Of course . . . I will not. Smashed into a thousand pieces, I promise.”

  “If you put it down, the girl goes free. We give you something to wipe these events from your memory, and we all go on as if nothing happened. Believe me, boy, you want this deal.”

  “To the contrary. You want this prism. And whether you know it or not, you want my memory, because I know how to use the prism. So trust you, I do not. Nor will I.” Sherlock stood his ground. “Natalie, or you are going to be sweeping up glass.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The bandits charged.

  Sherlock rarely regretted his lack of athleticism, until a moment when he was under attack. He had only the one chance. He spun and threw the necklace underhanded, giving it a great deal of height and arc—right for the stained-glass window, as he’d previously arranged.

  A small panel at the bottom of each stained-glass window was opened for ventilation. Sherlock had noticed it earlier in the day, prior to making the arrangement for someone to be out there in the cold.

  With everyone watching, the necklace flew in a perfect arc, struck the angled piece of glass, and ricocheted outside.

  “Cripes!” the Raven said.

  James took off running for the chapel doors.

  “No, James!” Not in the plan! he wanted to cry out.

  With his attackers distracted, Sherlock hurried deeper into the chapel toward the Raven. He slammed the man into Sir Galahad, sprinting toward the hidden panel behind the altar, a panel that was supposed to have been known only to the Scowerers.

  CHAPTER 66

  JAMES ROUNDED THE CORNER OF THE CHAPEL, lost his balance, and slipped. His hand landed on a fist-sized rock. He clutched it, prepared to throw it at the shape of a man bent over while picking up the necklace.

  Obviously a Scowerer—or worse, a Meirleach. James suddenly felt an allegiance to Sherlock and Natalie.

  “Leave it!” James shouted before hurling the rock like a baseball when the man failed to respond.

  James was good at baseball; he had an accurate arm.

  The man collapsed lifelessly, the necklace falling in slow motion along with him.

  James hurried and slid on his knees, searching the snowy grass for the necklace before the man came to grudgingly and began to fight him for it.

  There! James had it!

  He kicked out at the fallen man to prove his point, exert his superiority. “See?” he called.

  Two men appeared from the back of the chapel. No masks. Meirleach? he wondered.

  The two ran toward him. James would need the necklace to free Natalie, just as Sherlock had tried.

  The difference was, the Raven would listen to James.

  The two drew closer but suddenly James’s legs wouldn’t move. He scooched back on his bottom away from the body, his eyes adjusting to the dark.

  There was something black on the side of the man’s head.

  A good deal of blood. Blood that was draining from the hole in the man’s scalp, oozing really, because the man’s heart had stopped.

  Out of the dark, a shadow ripped into the two intruders. One of the two smacked headfirst into the chapel and fell unconscious. The other tried a martial arts move of some sort, but had his legs cut out from beneath him.

  Espiranzo. He had saved James. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I . . .” James couldn’t speak another word. It wasn’t the blood of the man he’d hit with the rock, it was the stitches on his victim’s exposed forearm.

  He knew the wound, knew the stitches, remembered his own rescue from Camden Cod and Shellfish. The stitches belonged to Ralph.

  CHAPTER 67

  SHERLOCK WAS CAUGHT, NOT BY THE SCOWERERS outsmarting him or anticipating he might try to use their underground sanctuary as a means of escape, but because of a shoelace. He tripped at the top of the stone steps, tumbled head over heels like an uncoordinated gymnast, and lay dazed at the bottom, making him easy prey.

  Hauled to his feet by a pair of foul-smelling Scowerers, he was blindfolded and dragged into the center of the torch-lit space. It smelled of earth and kerosene, decaying leaves and campfires. The flickering yellow flames threw dancing shadows onto his blindfold.

  Sherlock was deposited into a chair and tied in place. He heard others enter from the tunnel to the Alumni House basement, a tunnel that he himself had once used. They dragged something heavy and released it.

  Someone lumbered down the staircase. The Raven, Sherlock thought. The man was moving painfully because of the shove Sherlock had given him. Sherlock used a memory technique, assigning a particular memory to a place in a room. He used Mr. Moriarty’s office as his memory room: the man’s desk became the necklace; the fireplace, the chapel; the oil painting, the Raven. He stored these in case he was subjected to the amnesia concoction they’d already threatened him with.

  Before they’d blindfolded him, he’d seen Natalie Sekulow, apparently unconscious and tied to a chair.

  From behind came the faster feet of someone lighter and more agile hurrying down the stairs from the chapel.

  James, Sherlock thought. Confirmed when his roommate spoke a moment later.

  “Let him go!” James called.

  “The necklace,” the Raven said.

  “Is mine,” James said. “I have it, and I’ll keep it.”

  “You will hand it over.” The Raven left a long pause. “And when you do, the boy goes free. The girl, too, though she may take a tad longer to come around.”

  “I won’t. It belongs to me and my family.”

  “Nrff-rum-de-hmph!” the gagged Sherlock said.

  James untied the gag. No one stopped him.

  “Give it to them,” Sherlock said. “On balance it seems a good tradeoff from where I sit.”

  “Listen to him,” the Raven said.

  “Think of the necklace like the mouse you heard in our room, my dear boy,” Sherlock said. “Just a mouse,
after all.”

  Everyone in the cavern could feel James thinking during the long-harbored silence that followed.

  “I told you to shut him up!” the Raven complained.

  “Here,” James said, “it’s yours for the two of them, but it happens now. Right now.”

  “We’re on the same side here,” said the Raven.

  “I wonder.”

  “No need for such negotiations,” the man said.

  “The two outside . . .” James said. “They were Meirleach.”

  “Yes,” Espiranzo said, now following down the stairs behind James. “I’m here for Mr. Moriarty,” he added.

  “You’re assigned to him on my orders,” the Raven said.

  “No, sir. I’m assigned to him on his orders. And I’ll be performing my duties. My brethren here, they took the same oath. Not you to, Director, but to the young man himself. To his line. Eh, boys?”

  “Both Sherlock and Natalie for the necklace. That was the deal,” James said.

  “You’ll find the girl in need of a good night’s sleep. She won’t be coming round for a good twelve hours or more.”

  “Take her,” Espiranzo said, addressing one of the men who’d been with the Raven. The man obeyed. That was when James knew it was going to work out.

  Sherlock remained blindfolded as he was led by James through what he knew to be the tunnel to the alumni building. But for once he kept his knowledge to himself.

  Once outside, the blindfold was removed and the two boys walked a few paces behind Espiranzo and the Scowerer who carried Natalie in his arms.

  “You take her to the infirmary,” Espiranzo said to his man. “Ask for Alice. Tell her the girl’ll be fine after a night’s sleep. She won’t question you.”

  Espiranzo led the boys along the back road adjacent to the Lower Bricks. Sherlock and James trailed him by several yards.

  “The mouse wasn’t a mouse,” James said quietly. “It was the Meirleach trying to sneak in our window.”

  “And the necklace isn’t the necklace,” Sherlock said. “The pearls are poor imitation. The gold is spray paint over a cross from the metal shop. Ruby Berliner fixed it up for me as a special gift.”