Gabe and I kept hugging. I’m not sure who was shaking more.
Then another flash of lightning illuminated—
“A bell tower! Over there!” I yelled, pointing toward the church.
Sam swerved, and we sped off the road and onto a soaking wet gravel parking lot. The tires spun as the car slid across the slick stones.
Lightning struck the bell tower, sending electric blue spikes down to the ground.
And that revealed a low stone wall.
“We’re headed right for it!” I yelled.
Sam slammed on the brakes. They squealed, and the car began to rumble and bounce. Then we stopped. I could see the stone wall just outside my door.
“And that’s how a boss parks a car,” Sam said. She turned off the engine.
The double doors of the church swung slightly in the wind about twenty feet away.
“Let’s make a run for it,” Sam said. “It’s just a little rain.”
Little rain? Who was she, Thor?
“Can’t we get closer first?” I asked.
The wind roared, and I’m pretty sure I saw a tree and a cow flying past us. Why was nature always out to get me?
“Forget running,” I said. “Staying in the car has got to be way safer.”
“I don’t think you know how tornados work,” Sam said. “This is the worst place to be right now.”
“I’ll take my chances.” I looked out at the driving rain. “Maybe you’ve noticed that your brother and I are not wearing bathing suits.”
“I’m not either, doofus.” Sam pointed at the church. “We’re heading there—now.” Rummaging around on the floor, she found an old newspaper. She spread it over her head and opened her door. “Follow me on three.”
She got out.
“One . . .”
Gabe started to open his door, but that was hard with me grabbing on to him for dear life. The rain was joined by pellets of hail.
“Two . . .”
The rain fell harder.
I shook my head. “We are never—”
“THREE!”
Sam sped away and disappeared through the doors.
I was still holding on to Gabe.
“I just saved your life, Gabe. And my sweater.”
“It’s just rain,” he said.
“It’s a TYPHOON!”
“We have an umbrella.” Gabe reached under the seat in front of him and pulled out something that might once have been a working umbrella but now resembled a mangled spider.
“It looks like something Jimi tried to fix,” I said.
“It’ll keep us dry.” He opened his door all the way.
“Are you bonkers?” I asked. “An umbrella attracts lightning.”
“Um, no. Science.” Gabe stepped outside and opened it up. It had so many holes, it stopped precisely zero percent of the driving rain.
“You look like a demented Mary Poppins.”
A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.
Gabe shrieked, tossed the umbrella to the ground and leapt back into the car, soaked completely through.
“Next great idea?” he said, shivering.
Before I could answer, there was a loud thump on his window.
“AHHH!”
Gabe and I jumped.
A shadow filled the window.
“The angel of death,” I whispered. “I knew it!”
Then a face appeared. A kindly woman smiled.
“I’m Darlene Stamford,” she said, cupping a hand around her mouth to be heard through the door.
Gabe opened the window a crack.
“I’m the minister here. Your sister suggested you might need some help?”
Darlene was wearing a dark suit and a white collar. The shadow we’d seen was an enormous umbrella. It appeared to have steel girders helping it withstand the wind.
Darlene noticed me eyeing the contraption. “Yes, we do get some very epic storms around here. Helps to be prepared. Your sister came and found me. I told her to wait inside. C’mon, let’s get you two some hot chocolate.”
Magic words.
The wind died down. The rain seemed to lessen. The lightning and thunder moved farther away. Birds tweeted.
Gabe and I poured out of the car and under the wide berth of Darlene’s umbrella.
To tell the truth, the rain was still beating down pretty hard.
We hustled toward the church. The spire rose so high it seemed to be lost in the low clouds. The rain made the old stone slick and glossy, like a giant candle.
“It’s a beautiful old church,” I said.
“Mm-hmm. And much drier inside than in your old car!” She let out a loud throaty laugh. I liked her instantly. “But you’re right—built just after the town was settled, about two hundred years ago or so. But the bell is the real beauty.”
Gabe and I exchanged looks.
“The bell?”
“Mm-hmm. It was made just after the Civil War. Out of melted-down bullets and cannonballs. That’s a powerful image of peace, if you ask me.” She lifted her head. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares . . . And nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Amen.”
As we approached the doors, I looked down and saw two deep grooves filled with water. Tire tracks. But there were no other cars in the parking lot.
We walked inside.
Sam was sitting by a warm radiator, sipping a cup of tea. She had a large blanket wrapped around her.
“Your hair looks like wet snakes,” I said.
“You’re lucky Darlene is a better human being than I am,” Sam said, then sneezed. “I’d have left you in the car until tomorrow.”
I pretended to be offended. Darlene had already told us that Sam had asked for her help.
“You are a monster,” I said.
“From you, that’s a compliment. But next time I tell you to run, RUN!”
I pinched my sweater sleeve and smiled. “And yet, I’m safe and bone dry.”
She scowled and sneezed again. “I notice you let my little brother take the brunt of the storm.”
Gabe looked down at the pool of water that had formed around his sneakers. “Good for flowers, good for me,” he said with his patented shrug.
Sam decided her tea was more interesting than this conversation and turned away.
“The storm warning is still on for a little bit,” Darlene said. “But the worst does seem to have passed.”
A ray of light even shined through a window, sending a beam of gold across the floor.
“Before the hot chocolate, can we have a look at the bell tower?” I asked Darlene.
She got a strange look on her face. “Wow! Three months with barely a visitor, and now two people on the same day wanna see our bell.”
Chapter 16
In the Belfry
A chill ran down my spine. I thought of the tire tracks I’d seen in the parking lot.
“Two people?” Gabe asked.
Darlene nodded. “A historian from some college out east. Said he was researching bells and wars and stuff. He was here a few hours ago. Left right before the storm.”
I calmed down a bit. It was just a coincidence, bad timing. But I knew enough about monster stories to know that you still had to be on guard in case a coincidence was something more.
Darlene led us over to a set of stairs. A red-velvet rope was strung across with the words “Do not enter” written on a handmade sign. She unclipped one side.
“The steps take you to the level under the bell. There’s a ladder and a trapdoor you gotta lift for that last little bit.”
“Thanks!” Gabe and I said in unison.
We hurried up the stairs.
Darlene called after us, but we were running so hard we couldn’t hear her over the pounding of our feet.
“What did she say?” I asked Gabe.
“I think she said something about the storm starting again soon.”
“We’d better be
quick, then.”
Turns out there are a lot of stairs in a two-hundredyear-old bell tower. And the ladder was about a gazillion feet high.
“Footprints,” I said, noting a few in the dust around the bottom of the ladder.
“Size twelve or so. Our historian is pretty tall.”
I climbed up first and stuck my head through the trapdoor.
A few pigeons squawked and flew out between the slats in the arched windows as I pulled myself up.
Gabe joined me. The floor was thick wooden planks covered in dust and bird poop. Spiderwebs floated gently in the breeze.
“No bats, though,” I said with a sad sigh.
The bell was suspended above us, out of reach. It was big and beautiful. We could read the inscription engraved along the rim. It was the same Bible quote that Darlene had recited in the parking lot.
Gabe took a couple of pictures.
“Think the quote might be the clue?” he asked.
“It doesn’t really match anything from the fragments.” I thought back to the grave we’d seen in Mantua. “There were numbers on Lysander’s headstone. Anything like that?”
Gabe and I walked around the bell.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Maybe inside the bell?”
We stared up into the dark bowl.
“I think I see something? Maybe?” Gabe said.
I looked around for a way to get up for a closer look.
There was a stepladder folded up and leaning against one wall. I grabbed it and set it up under the bell. It rocked slightly on the uneven floorboards.
“If I stand on the bottom rung and you balance on the top rung, I think we can reach inside the bell,” I said.
“Why do I have to get on the top rung?”
“Well, what if there’s an inscription inside, but it’s in Latin?”
Gabe thought for a second. “Fine. But you better hold on to me tight.”
He stepped up carefully. He had to stand on tiptoes to get his head into the bell.
I stood on the bottom rung and hugged his knees.
“Just need a second to adjust to the light,” he said.
“You’re heavier than you look,” I said.
“It’s my enormous brain.”
“Haha. See, Gabe? You can be funny. It’s rare, like a blood moon, but it happens.”
“Wait. I see something.” He stretched a little higher and pushed the heavy metal clapper to the side.
“Oh,” he sounded disappointed. “It’s not numbers. It says . . . ‘Big Blue.’”
“Big Blue?”
“Yeah. Maybe a reference to blue roses?”
“Seems like a bit of a stretch. I can’t think of any mention of ‘Big Blue’ in the fragments. Still, we’ll make a note of it.”
“Okay. Let’s go,” Gabe said.
But before we could move, there was a loud whirr from just above us.
“What the—”
The bell began to vibrate, then swing.
Gabe grabbed the lip of the bell for balance and was swung violently to the left. I strained to hold on. If I let go, Gabe would fly through the air.
The ladder teetered underneath me. But then the bell swung back, and we settled again.
“Let go!” I said.
“Okay!” Gabe said.
I looked up.
“DUCK!” I yelled.
Gabe hunched down just as the clapper swung by his head and slammed into the side of the bell.
BOONNNNGGGGGGG!
The sound was deafening.
The bell began to swing the other way, knocking us to the right.
This time, the ladder tipped over. Gabe fell on me and we both fell to the ground just as the bell tolled again.
BOONNNNGGGGGGG!
We scrambled to our feet, covered with dust, and practically jumped back down through the hatch.
We ran down the ladder and the stairs. The bell continued to ring, shaking the steps beneath our feet.
When we got back to the nave, Sam and Darlene weren’t there. The church doors were open, and light poured in.
We ran outside. They were both staring up at the tower. I assumed they were worried about us.
BOONNNNGGGGGGG!
“I never tire of that sound,” Darlene said.
“It is beautiful,” Sam agreed.
The sound echoed off the nearby trees.
“Beautiful?” I said, panting for breath, my ears ringing. “You mean deadly!”
“That bell tried to kill us!” Gabe yelled.
Darlene looked at us, confused. “I said to remember that it’s almost noon.”
“I thought you said ‘soon,’” Gabe said.
“Or ‘loon’?” I suggested.
Darlene started to laugh so hard she nearly doubled over.
Sam narrowed her eyes. “Did you just say the bell tried to kill you? How?”
“The clapper almost knocked my head off!” Gabe said.
Sam looked amazed. “Are you telling me you had your head inside a giant metal bell?”
Before Gabe could answer, Sam marched toward him fast. I was about to yell “Run!” when she reached out her arms and hugged him.
“You are a bonehead,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” Darlene said. “I didn’t even consider that you kids would do something like that.”
Sam glared at me. “This has Zed written all over it. Darlene, is there a train station nearby with trains back to Canada? Or Siberia?”
I gasped.
“Don’t blame Zed. We both thought it was a good idea,” Gabe said.
“Well, it was a stupid idea.” Without warning, Sam came over and hugged me too! “Apparently, I need to keep a closer eye on you two.” She let me go.
“Thanks,” I said. I gave a sheepish smile.
Sam heaved a sigh. “Well, there’s good news: we found the clue.”
Gabe and I were totally flustered.
“How do you know about Big Blue?” I asked.
“Big Blue?” Darlene said. “But that’s just the name of the bell.”
Sam chuckled. “There’s a plaque outside the stairs you went up that tells you that.”
Darlene nodded. “Didn’t need to look inside a bell to find that out.”
Sam put a hand on my shoulder. “I meant that we found the clue—Darlene and me. See, we started talking and . . . well.” She pointed up at the side of the church tower, right over the doors we’d just run through.
Carved into the stone was a gargoyle. A BAT gargoyle. And it was clearly pointing at numbers.
1284
“What are those?” I asked.
Darlene smiled. “1284 North Cassandra Street. That’s the address for the church. Well, the old address, before the town made some changes a few years back. If you look online, we’re at 35 East Avenue now.”
“Cassandra Street!” Gabe and I said together. “So the address is the clue.”
Gabe pulled up the photo of Lysander’s grave. “We’ve got lots of numbers now. 1284 and 33. Or maybe 33 dot.”
“Dot?” Darlene asked.
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “The grave said ‘Aged 33.’ But there was a dot after the 33.”
“We thought it might have been a mistake—or, like, maybe a bullet hole or something. Because it was newer than the numbers.”
“How do you know?” Darlene asked.
“Lichen,” Gabe said. “It’s an organism that grows on old stones, and it was all over this one, except inside the dot. Which means someone added the dot much later.”
“So the dot might be significant,” I said. “But we don’t know for sure.”
“Let me see that picture,” Sam said. She looked at the photo and then back up at the gargoyle. Her face broke into a wide smile.
“Thank you, Professor Burns,” she said. She handed back the camera.
“Who’s Professor Burns?”
“My geology prof. She takes us out each term for a geo
caching tournament. And thanks to the dot, I think what we have here is a coordinate: 33 point 1284.”
“So we know where the treasure is!” Gabe and I were practically jumping up and down.
Sam held up her hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold your horses. We have one possible coordinate. Probably latitude, if we’re looking in the right part of the planet. So, 33.1284 north. You need both longitude and latitude to figure out an exact location.”
That only lowered our spirits a tiny bit. We could feel the thrill of the chase. We were on the right track!
That’s when I noticed them: large footprints in the gravel. But Darlene said the historian had left before the storm. Were these new prints or old ones that had filled with rain?
I was about to take a closer look when there was a clap of thunder and the skies opened again.
“Storm’s back,” Darlene said.
“Back into the church!” Sam yelled.
I might still have stayed to examine the prints, except a fleeing Darlene yelled, “And I have ice cream to go with that hot chocolate!”
Chapter 17
Huzzah!
I wanted to update the fan site with the exciting news, but the campground outside Arcadia was too remote and Sam’s phone just refused to connect.
I figured I’d try the next day and just enjoy the camping.
Well, not the camping so much, but definitely the veggie stew and celebratory s’mores for dinner.
Gabe and I, of course, had trouble sleeping. We could feel in our toes how close we were getting.
“Tomorrow we hit Huzzah, Missouri,” I said.
“Then we’ll have almost all the clues,” Gabe said, slightly louder.
“Nothing can stop us now!” I practically yelled.
This was followed by an even louder “BE QUIET” from Sam’s nearby tent.
So we stayed quiet, and eventually we fell asleep under sparkling stars, with visions of vampires and campfires dancing in our heads.
Not that everything was blue roses and sunshine when we did get back on the road.
The stretch of highway after Arcadia wasn’t what you’d call exciting.
Gabe and I tried and failed to play I spy.
“Wheat.”
“More wheat.”
“Corn.”
“More corn.”
“Sky.”
The Fabulous Zed Watson! Page 8