by D. R. Martin
“Good,” Johnny said. “And now we wake ’em up.” He nodded at Marko, who hefted the heavy wrench he’d been carrying and knocked gently on the iron grate above. He did it three times, slowly.
Cloink. Cloink. Cloink.
Then again.
His heart in his mouth, Johnny waited. He hoped at least a few of these kids were insomniacs. It would be awful if no one heard that quiet cloinking.
But someone did.
A single, whispered word came fluttering down through the grate.
“Hullo?”
“Hi up there,” Johnny whispered back. “We’re here to rescue you.”
“You’re here to what?” the disembodied boy’s voice said.
“To rescue you, you dolt,” Marko said.
“But how?” the boy up above asked, apparently not offended by Marko’s rudeness.
It looked like Marko was about to say something discourteous again, but Johnny put up his hand, as if to say, let me answer.
“We have a wrench and you’re going to unscrew that grate and everyone’s going to escape through the rain culvert. Just go grab Nina Bain, and we’ll get this show on the road.”
“Ummm,” the boy said, his wide-eyed, dirty face now visible near the grate. “The girl in the hiking clothes? Curly black hair? With the weird goggles?”
“That’s her.”
“Sorry, mate. They took her away.”
Chapter 28
“Your friend was here less than half an hour,” the boy above the grate said. “Then the pretty blonde woman came in and hauled her off. There was a ghost with the woman, name of Brillgy, or some such thing. I can’t see ghosts, but he scared the sap out of Miss Bain, he did.”
Holy maroley, Johnny thought. Not only were Burilgi and Checheg here, but so was Pamela Worthington-Smythe. He wouldn’t be surprised if Percy Rathbone was hiding out in Bilbury Hall. It’s just Nina’s bad luck that she got recognized.
“Do you know where the woman took her?” Johnny asked.
“Probably up to the big house, old Bilbury Hall, I should guess.”
Johnny’s brain started churning. They needed to get these kids out of here. But they had to grab Nina before it was too late.
It seemed that Marko had read his mind. “We have to get moving, Johnny. Or we’ll miss our chance to free this lot. Nina’ll have to wait. Nothing else for it, I’m afraid.”
Johnny wanted to scream in frustration. But, of course, Marko was right.
Johnny took a deep breath. “My friend here’s going to pass up a wrench and you’re going to undo the four big nuts that are holding down this grate. Try not to make too much noise. By the way, what’s your name?”
The boy cleared his throat, his face still visible through the grate. “I’m Hastings, Basil Hastings. Of St. Egbert’s School for Boys.”
“Well, Basil,” Marko said, “I’m Marko Herne. And my friend here is Johnny Graphic.”
“I say,” Basil responded. “It is indeed a pleasure to meet you, Johnny. You too, Marko.”
“Now here’s the wrench and good luck,” Marko said. He held the handle up through the grate, and Basil took it.
Success depended on several things, Johnny realized. Were the nuts that held the grate frozen or movable? And was Basil Hastings strong enough to move them? If he wasn’t, was there another kid up there who had the muscle power?
Up toward the grate floated Petunia, whose green ghost glow helped Johnny to see Basil’s efforts.
Basil adjusted the wrench—a big, heavy plumber’s wrench—to fit the first nut. Then he spit on his hands, sucked in a lungful of air, and began to push the wrench handle in a counterclockwise direction. He made a sound deep in his throat. A kind of “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh…” Johnny knew that the kid was straining with all his might to loosen up that tiny bit of metal.
But nothing happened. The wrench, and therefore the nut, didn’t budge.
“Once again,” Basil muttered to himself, inhaling deeply.
“Try jerking it,” Johnny suggested.
“Okay.” Basil repeated the process, with some jerking motion.
This time there came a little metallic errrrk sound, and the wrench moved an inch.
Johnny almost shouted hurray. But Basil had more work to do before they celebrated. And Johnny hoped the kid didn’t rupture a muscle in the process.
Basil pushed again and there was another, longer errrrrrrrrk. The wrench went five or six inches. He kept pushing, the wrench rotating around two times. The first nut jumped free and made a crisp claaank as it bounced off and through the grate, onto the culvert tile right in front of Johnny’s feet.
“Brilliant, Basil!” Marko exclaimed. “One down, three to go.”
“You’ve got ’em on the run now, buddy,” Johnny said with a giant grin. This whole plan might work out after all! He snatched up the nut and stuck it in his pocket—a special souvenir from a dangerous adventure.
The next two nuts were even easier, now that Basil had mastered that jerking force. Just one tiny piece of metal stood between all those kids and their freedom. Piece of cake, Johnny thought.
Basil pushed and jerked and pushed and jerked, but the fourth nut would not budge. Johnny could hear him panting, could imagine his heart thumping like a drum in a big band. Basil tried again, but it was futile. The nut was frozen.
That’s when someone else arrived up above.
“Oy there, Hastings,” a boy said. “What’re you doing?”
Still panting, Basil stood up. “Some chaps…” More panting. “…down below…” Pant, pant. “…trying to rescue us.” A whoosh of breath going out. “Have to get the grate off. Can’t convince this fourth nut to let loose.”
At least three boys’ voices spoke at once. Johnny couldn’t make out what they said. Finally one voice took charge.
“Chaps down in the piping? No crazier, I suppose, than getting kidnapped by zombies,” the unseen boy said. “Here, let me have a go.”
The new arrivals all took a turn but not one could persuade the stubborn nut to rotate. Basil Hastings, having finally caught his breath, said that he’d try again. But then someone else arrived on the scene quite unexpectedly.
Centurion Quintus.
The boys up above obviously couldn’t see him when he floated down through the grate, right in front of Johnny and Marko.
Before the ghost could say anything, Johnny groaned. “They can’t budge the last of the four nuts.”
The scowling wraith snorted. “There is one more effort to be made.”
He floated back up and provoked a little yelp from the boy holding the plumber’s wrench, when he firmly yanked it away.
“What the…?” the boy yipped, rather too loudly.
“Shut up,” Johnny barked. “It’s a ghost trying to help you.”
“Well why didn’t you warn us?” the boy whined.
“’Cause I didn’t know what he was up to until just now,” Johnny snapped back.
Ignoring the arguing boys—the way a big dog ignores a pair of buzzing flies—Quintus knelt down with the wrench he had purloined, fitted it to the last remaining nut, and began to push in the counterclockwise direction. He grunted with the effort.
By this time, Johnny could hear more kids up above, muttering and talking. Obviously, they’d been wakened by Basil and his friends, and by the metallic noises. He just hoped they had the good sense to keep as quiet as possible. Too much activity in the barn so late at night might prompt a visit by their captors.
That’s when Johnny saw something almost miraculous. Quintus managed to turn the wrench ever so slightly—the muscles in his forearms bulging and quivering with the effort—and there came a very quiet reeeeeech sound. Had he done it?
The ancient ghost took a fresh grip on the wrench and pushed with all his might, moving the handle a good three inches.
With a nod of satisfaction, Quintus finished loosening the nut in a few slow but steady turns of the wrench. It rattled down through the gra
te, just like the first one. Quintus set the wrench down, lifted the grate—which Johnny figured had to weigh seventy or eighty pounds—and set it aside.
“Now,” Quintus said, floating down in front of Johnny and Marko, “I shall provide you with your diversion. The abominations shall become rather preoccupied very soon.”
“Just don’t do anything to the big house, okay?” Johnny said. “Nina may be in there.”
Quintus nodded. He zoomed up through the opening where the grate had been, vanishing in a wink.
Just then, a flash of light came from up above, and almost instantaneously a deafening BOOM of thunder.
It seemed that the stormy weather Johnny had noticed out to the west had arrived. And with it, probably there would be rain. It suddenly struck him that in a few moments they were going to be sending dozens of kids through a tight, dark culvert that might start to fill up with rainwater. They had to get a move on!
Johnny looked up and saw Basil Hastings peering down at him.
“Go wake up everyone,” Johnny barked. “Let them know that if they want out, they’re going to have to crawl through the culvert. We’ve gotta do this as quick as we can.”
“Ummm,” Basil said, “that culvert might fill up with water. Oughtn’t we to wait?”
“The longer we wait, the greater the risk is that we’ll be discovered. We gotta move fast.”
“If anyone’s scared of going,” Marko added, “tell them they’ll just have to stay. To the daring goes the victory.”
And sometimes, Johnny reflected, the daring get themselves killed. But now wasn’t the time to mention that possibility.
“Carson, Leith,” Basil said. “Go wake up as many as you can. Tell them what’s up. Tell them if they don’t go, they may never see their families again.”
Within a minute, kids started jumping through the now-open hole in the barn floor. Johnny and Marko tried to catch them as they dropped down, but it was still a bit of a jolt when they landed on the tile floor of the culvert. One by one, white with dread, they went crawling off down the culvert, back in the direction from which Johnny, Marko, and Petunia had come not more than twenty minutes before.
Johnny counted eleven kids who had crawled off. Up above, Basil Hastings announced that a dozen more were ready to go. A few had refused to come, petrified of a long crawl in pitch-blackness to an unknown fate.
But that was life, wasn’t it? Sometimes all a fellow had was a bad choice and a worse choice.
Finally, Basil and his two friends, Carson and Leith, dropped down. All doing their best to look brave, they crawled away, jabbering at each other to keep their spirits high.
Then it was Marko’s turn to go, with Johnny and Petunia bringing up the rear.
Though there had been flashes of lightning and thunder from up above, only a trickle of water had come into the culvert so far—just enough to get a kid’s knees wet.
But just as he was about to crawl back into that cramped, awful place, Johnny noticed something that made his heart jump up into his throat.
The water had begun to flow more rapidly and to rise—two or three inches in just the last minute.
If it kept rising at this rate, Johnny could well end up like that repulsive rat he had mashed with his hand coming in.
Waterlogged, and quite dead.
Chapter 29
Johnny crawled as fast as he could, trying to keep up with Marko, who moved quite quickly on his hands and knees. To help him see, Johnny asked Petunia to fly up in front of him. What sense did it make to light the space where he’d been rather than the space where he was going? She happily obliged, but only after Johnny used the “magic word”—which he had forgotten about in the heat of the moment.
The little ghost zoomed forward, right through him, giving him that odd tingling sensation that he always got when a ghost passed through his body. There, up ahead ten or twelve feet, in her green ghost light, he saw Marko’s rear end and the bottoms of his shoes, rocketing along—well, rocketing as fast as one could rocket in a dreadful culvert. The air was filled with the sounds of splashing hands and knees.
They made good progress for a couple of minutes. Then Johnny noticed that the water, which once merely covered his hands, was now halfway up his forearms. The downpour outside must have intensified. He could hear and feel the thunder still booming, right through the culvert and the ground it was buried in.
But they were moving along nonstop, and Johnny had every reason to believe that they would make it to safety before the culvert totally flooded.
Creeping along, he was looking down, assaying the water’s rise, when, quite unexpectedly, he ran right into Marko—who had stopped dead in his tracks.
“What in heckfire are you doing, Marko?” Johnny exclaimed. “Get a move on!”
“Would if I could,” Marko snapped over his shoulder. “Someone’s jamming things up. Don’t know who. Hastings is right in front of me.”
“What’s going on up there?” Johnny bellowed. “We can’t stop. The water’s rising and we’ll drown like rats.” He’d been thinking a lot about that dead critter these last few minutes.
“Who’s plugging up the works?” Marko shouted, his angry voice echoing through the culvert.
“Not me,” came Basil Hastings’s reply.
“Nor me, dash it,” said Leith out of the dark up ahead. He sounded every bit as peeved as Marko.
Johnny expected to hear next from Carson, who had been the first of the three captive boys to scurry into the culvert, there in the last moments. But no word came from him.
“Carson, are you there?” Basil shouted.
“He’s here, sure enough,” said Leith. “His fat behind is right in front of me. Get a move on, Carson!”
Then Carson spoke up.
“Leith, stop pushing me,” he whined.
“Carson, what’s the problem?” Johnny hollered.
Carson’s voice came back down the culvert to Johnny’s ears, quavering and thin.
“I can’t do this! I can’t do this! We’re going to die. Let me through, Leith. I want to go back. Let me go back!” And there came the sounds of two boys struggling in a very confined space.
There wasn’t room in the culvert to turn around, so Carson must have been trying to back up, while Leith pushed forward. Whatever they were doing up there was the opposite of a tug-of-war, Johnny thought. A push-of-war?
“The water’s rising, Carson,” he shouted, now feeling panicked himself. He looked down. Illuminated by Petunia’s green ghost glow, the flow was almost up to his elbows. “It’ll take more time to go back than to go forward. Just get moving and everything’ll be okay.”
There were some more scuffling sounds from up ahead. “Ow! That hurt!” Leith yelped.
“You’ve got to go forward, Carson, or we’ll all drown,” Basil yelled. “For heaven’s sake, move it!”
For a brief moment, all that Johnny could hear in the culvert was the sound of four boys panting furiously. Then he had an idea. Petunia had retreated behind him, and he whispered back to her, over his shoulder, telling her what he wanted her to do—pretty please. She didn’t think it was a nice, polite thing. But when Johnny said they could all die without her help, she reluctantly agreed. Provided Johnny would apologize afterward. He said he would. Happily.
Now pretty much in the dark, with Petunia gone, Johnny waited in the ominous silence. It took about ten seconds.
Suddenly, there came a squawk of shock and outrage up ahead. From Carson.
“Ow! What’s happening? Who’s there?”
Johnny heard some scuffling noises, and Carson exclaimed, “Get it off me, dash it! Stop that!”
In the near-blackness Johnny couldn’t tell if his idea was working. But one thing was certain—the water was coming higher.
Out of nowhere Leith yelled, “The blighter’s moving! Carson’s going forward!”
Johnny said a silent thank you to Petunia. He had told her to yank on Carson’s hair and box his ears
a few times. It must have worked.
There was another brief, nervous silence in the dark. Then Marko barked, “I’m moving, Johnny! Basil must be rolling, too. Come on!”
Johnny began to crawl, fast as he could. He was scraping his hands, banging up his knees, and whacking the back of his head as he went along. But he didn’t care. There were bandages and iodine in the bag he’d left at the end of the culvert.
The only thing he could think about was the water that now rushed along just below his chest. In a way, the current was helping, pushing him forward.
But if any of those four boys up ahead—or any of the kids further along—got jammed up in the culvert… It would be a watery grave for everyone who tumbled into them from behind.
Johnny had no notion of how long it had been since he, Marko, and the other three boys had started crawling through the culvert. Five minutes? Fifty minutes? Five hours? Time had compressed and distorted. His journey in this terrible tile tube seemed as if it had become his entire life. There was only forward progress and rising water. Everything else was meaningless.
The water now reached up to his chin. Soon it would cover his mouth, then his nostrils. And then it would all be over. Johnny had read that drowning was an easy, peaceful way to die. But somehow, he didn’t think that filling up his lungs with water would be all that pleasant.
Still, it shocked him when he swallowed a mouthful of filthy rainwater. All he had to breathe with now was his nostrils. He twisted his head upward and sucked in air through his nose, then scampered furiously forward. When he tried to breathe that way again—nose up toward the culvert top—he inhaled water.
This was it!
Dead at only twelve and three-quarters!
He flailed and struggled and tried to scream out how unfair this all was.
Then, like a popgun shooting out a cork, the raging water spat Johnny right out of the culvert mouth onto the muddy bank of the drainage pond.
Coughing up water and fighting for breath, he scrambled to his feet. Someone grabbed him by the arm and hauled him aside, out of the force of the gusher.
Johnny blinked at his rescuer. A muddy, dripping boy in a grimy suit coat and trousers grinned at him, then grabbed his hand for a vigorous shaking. The rain was still bucketing down. The only light they had came from the buildings that Quintus had set on fire. The other kids who had escaped stood around. Except for being soaked and exhausted, they all looked fine.