And Al’s rusted sign appeared on the horizon as we made the next turn.
“Shoot,” Jo said.
“Is it closed?” Gabe asked.
She held up Sam’s cellphone. “No. But we just lost service, so we can’t use the phone as a GPS.”
Sam didn’t seem as concerned. “It’s cool. I’ve got a pretty good idea where we’re heading. I’ll get us close.”
I stared at the heat rippling off the ground, the miles of cacti and barren rock. I hoped Sam was right.
We pulled into Al’s. There was a sign on the pump that read, “Don’t pass this gas! Pay inside . . . unless Al’s died.”
Seriously, this guy!
Sam started filling up.
Jo went to find some motor oil and use the bathroom.
Gabe and I went to see what snacks Al might offer. I also wanted to share my five-star review of his signage.
A little bell dinged as we pushed open the screen door.
“Afternoon,” said a deep bass voice from somewhere to our right. “Can I help you all?”
Al, it turned out, was about a thousand years old.
He sat behind a scuffed tile counter with samples of beef jerky, beef rinds and some kind of beef-flavored gum.
“Anything without beef?” Gabe asked.
Al frowned. “Why would anyone want that?” Then he smiled. “Potato chips are back there behind the spark plugs. I think there’s a couple of non-beef-flavored varieties.”
Gabe went off to look.
“I LOVE your signs!” I said.
He bowed slowly. “Those signs don’t lie. I made them years ago, when this really was the only road through the desert. People would think, ‘I can skip Al’s and make it to the other side.’ They’d find them the next morning—lost, sometimes frozen to death. Or bitten by a rattler. Eaten by scorpions. Or coyotes.”
Seriously, could Al be any cooler?
He had more. “Or wild dogs. Or stabbed by a cactus.”
I heard Sam yell that she was done filling up.
Jo said something I couldn’t hear.
“Or trapped under a rockslide. Or—”
Rockslide.
I had an idea. “So, Al, you know this area really well?”
“Yup. Been here all my life. Old as the rocks, some say. Why?”
“Well, we’re looking for some kind of castle, and we really want to find it before sunset. But we don’t seem to have cell service anymore, so we’re kinda guessing about the coordinates.”
He listened, nodding. Then he rubbed his chin and looked at me.
“Can’t really help you with the numbers. Never had a cellphone myself. But did you say castle?”
“Yes. The Monster’s Castle.”
He smiled. “I know it very well. Used to hike around there as a kid. But you won’t find it on a map, leastways any official map.”
Gabe had rejoined us, his arms wrapped around about ten bags of chips. “Why not?”
“Well, the official maps all call it Table Top.” He laughed. “Stupid name for something so strange and beautiful. The locals, though, we’ve always called it the Monster’s Castle. Legend has it the cave there is haunted. Makes an awful racket when the wind blows.”
As if on cue, the wind began to blow outside, slapping Al’s screen door open and shut.
Okay, it was actually Sam and Jo coming in to pay, but it was getting windy.
“You’ve got some amazing tools in your garage,” Jo said. “Antiques!”
Al grinned. “Like me. But thank you.”
“Is the castle far?” I asked.
“It’d take a little while to walk. But in a car . . .” He got up and motioned for us to follow him. Once at the back door, he pointed. “You see that mountain top there in the distance?”
An almost perfect triangle cut into the sky.
We nodded.
“You head straight for that. You’ll have to pull off the main road when it turns. Then you gotta walk, but keep heading for the mountain. Okay so far?”
We nodded again.
“Okay, there’ll be a point where you see a riverbed split. One arm cuts to the left and the other heads down to the right. Go left. It’ll wind a little, almost like you’re in a valley. The Monster’s Castle is in among a bunch of other rock formations there.”
“Can’t miss it, I bet,” I said.
Al chuckled. “Oh, you can miss it. If you do, you’ll keep walking until your feet wear off. It can be like a maze inside that place, so don’t be hasty about it.”
He closed the door and shuffled back to his desk.
“That’ll be thirty dollars for the gas and oil and another twelve for the chips. The advice is free.”
Sam paid him and we headed back to the car, ready for the final leg of our epic adventure. The wind was actually picking up now, sending puffs of dust into the air.
Chapter 30
Lookouts
I caught Jo looking in the rear-view mirror as we headed away from Al’s and drove even deeper into the desert.
“Okay, what’s up?” I asked.
“There’s a lot of dust in the air behind us. Just trying to figure out if it’s a dust storm . . .”
“Or?”
Jo narrowed her eyes. “Well, if it is a dust storm, we’d better be ready to take cover. But if it’s a car—”
“We’re being followed,” we all said.
Sam almost imperceptibly sped up. “We’re almost where Al told us to park.”
Jo coughed.
“You okay?” I asked.
She caught my eye in the mirror. “That wasn’t me.”
The cough came back in spurts.
It was, of course, the stupid car.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sam said. She patted the dashboard. “C’mon, old girl. Just another couple of days.”
DRCR gave another hacking noise and then backfired. A cloud of black smoke filled the view out the back window.
Sam growled and then drove the car onto the shoulder of the road.
The engine stopped coughing . . . because it stopped altogether.
Sam got out and popped the hood.
Jo joined her to see what, if anything, they could do to get Dolly running again.
Gabe and I looked at each other.
“Together?” I said, holding up the map.
“Together.” He held up the key.
“We’ll leave Aloysius here to watch over the mechanics.”
Gabe grabbed his backpack from the floor.
We threw in some water and the potato chips and opened the doors.
Sam looked up from under the hood, grease smudged all over her arms. “What do you two think you’re doing?”
“You said we’re close.” I pointed at the horizon. “I can see the riverbed Al talked about right there. We’ve got some daylight left, and we are not waiting to see if the historian is following us.”
I stole a look back down the road. Whatever dust had been churned up had settled or blown away. Still, I had an uneasy feeling.
“Pleeeeeeease, Sam?”
She turned her head and stared at the horizon.
Jo was grabbing her tools from the trunk.
“Fine, but stay in touch,” Sam said. She handed Gabe her cellphone.
“I thought there wasn’t any service out here?” he said.
I tried to step on his foot to stop him from saying anything more, but he wasn’t standing close enough.
Sam said something I won’t repeat. “Maybe there’s some over there,” she said, kicking the front tire.
But I could see our little side trip evaporating like water on sand.
Then Jo came back like a guardian angel and handed me a walkie-talkie.
She turned the other one on and placed it on the ground next to the car. Mine gave a short squawk, then emitted a low sizzling sound.
“Jimi’s boosters actually work pretty well. Keep yours on. If you hear the static stop, you’ll know
you’ve walked out of range. Stop and turn back RIGHT AWAY. But you can keep exploring as long as you can hear the static. Deal?”
I looked at Sam. She nodded. “But if we call you to come back, you turn back immediately.”
“Deal!” I said. I clipped the walkie-talkie to my backpack.
Sam turned to Jo. “And this way, if we are being followed, we can keep an eye out—and maybe a couple of arms.” She flexed her biceps.
“Lookouts. I like it,” Jo said.
My muscles actually relaxed.
“Thanks, you two,” I said.
Jo wiped some sweat off her forehead with a cloth. “We’ll also get our faithful steed ready for your return with the Holy Grail.”
Sam gave me and Gabe love taps on our shoulders. “Go find this treasure.”
Gabe hugged his sister. “Thanks, Sis.”
We opened a bag of chips, took a handful each and marched off.
Chapter 31
The Monster’s Castle
The desert plays tricks on you.
Everyone knows about mirages. Like you think you see water ahead, but then it’s just heat waves reflecting off a hot surface.
But there are other tricks up the desert’s sleeves, let me tell you.
For example, when Gabe and I reached the riverbed, it split just like Al had said it would. But when we looked to the left, the ground seemed totally flat. Cracked like a giant sandy eggshell, but flat.
The right fork, on the other hand, seemed to lead to a bunch of rocky piles like the ones on the map.
We stood at the crossroads, confused.
“Al said left, right?” Gabe said.
“Right.”
“You mean go right? Or right, go left, right?”
“Gabe, you’re making my head hurt.” I turned his shoulders toward the left and pushed. “Let’s just trust that Ancient Al knows what he’s talking about.”
And this is how we discovered the trick.
The land looked flat, but as we walked along, we started sloping downward. What looked like cracked flat earth from above was actually a disguised mini valley of rocky towers and pillars.
“Wow!” we said as we entered this forest of stone.
All the time, the walkie-talkie crackled and fizzed. I turned the volume almost down to zero as the static buzzed off the sides of the rock.
“Sounds too much like a swarm of killer bees calling for reinforcements,” I said.
“Or a rattlesnake getting ready to nibble.”
“Yeah. I want to be able to hear THOSE things clearly.”
You could still hear the static if you strained, which I felt was in the spirit of Jo’s command.
The air seemed to get thicker and cooler, and the light fainter, as we walked through the columns of stone. Then we turned a corner, and despite what Al had said, we didn’t miss it. And we knew it was the right place.
In a large wide clearing, a pile of rocks unlike any other.
“THE MONSTER’S CASTLE!” Gabe and I said together.
We rushed toward it, lucky not to step on any snakes or killer scorpions.
A breeze rustled the brush, and we heard a low moan from the castle. We stopped and listened.
The breeze picked up and the moan got louder.
The wind paused and the moan stopped.
We walked quickly along the base, looking for the source of the sound. A breeze came up again and the moan returned, low and deep.
“It’s coming from behind that boulder!” Gabe said.
We looked behind and found a crack. A Zed-and-Gabe-walking-side-by-side-sized crack!
We knew what we had to do.
We held hands and bowed.
“May the ancient ones who guard the Monster’s Castle speed OUR safe passage through its halls.”
Then we walked in, tingling all over. It was cool and damp inside, and dark.
“Flashlight?” I asked.
“There’s one on Sam’s phone,” Gabe said. He pulled it out. “Still no service, but it does have a light.” He flicked it on. The light revealed a cave about thirty feet long and ten feet wide. The ceiling soared a good thirty feet above us.
There was a hole in the ceiling that rose all the way to the top. I could make out a tiny circle of blue sky.
“There is a monster’s chimney!” I said.
The breeze resumed, and the low moaning sound echoed down the chimney and off the walls of the cave.
“Like blowing over top of a bottle,” Gabe said.
“Cool. Now where’s the treasure?”
We ran the light across the walls.
And saw, almost hidden in a pile of rubble against the far wall, a painted stone. We hurried over, and with a delicate finger, I brushed off the years of dust, revealing an unmistakable blood-red X.
“Looks like a good place for scorpions,” Gabe said.
I trusted his scientific understanding of nature, so I grabbed my pen and super carefully began lifting the stones and pebbles.
Finally, after holding my breath, I heard a scratch as the pen slid across not stone but metal.
My heart raced, and I could feel tears in my eyes as I quickly brushed aside the remaining stones, revealing a plain metal box. It was painted gray and had a small slightly rusted keyhole at the front of the lid. No decoration. No symbols. No etched poem. Nothing to signify this contained anything special, even though inside there might be the only complete copy of the greatest book in the world.
“We did it,” I said, standing up and holding the box as gently as I could.
“And we did it together,” Gabe said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Actually,” said a voice from the shadows, “I’ll take that box.”
Chapter 32
History
Gabe and I slowly turned around. I was now clutching the box so tightly my fingers ached. This couldn’t be happening.
Not now. Not so close to the end of our quest.
“Put the box down. Slowly.” A man’s voice. The historian? Here.
A shadow blocked the light from the outside. The setting sun gave the man an eerie orange aura. He was holding something. A long stick, or maybe even a rifle. My knees shook.
“What have you done with my sister?!” Gabe yelled.
“And Jo?”
“They’re fine,” said the man, raising the stick. “I saw the big black puff of smoke while I was following you. I know a dying car when I smell one. So I stopped down the road and went around them. They’re still back there, trying to get that lemon to work again.”
He stepped forward, letting in more light.
I could see him now. Tall. Large feet crunched against the stones. The stick wasn’t a rifle, thank goodness, but it wasn’t much better. He held a heavy blue crowbar in his right hand and tapped it against his open left palm.
“I said, put down the box. NOW.”
I hesitated, and he took another step closer.
“Maybe we should do as he says.” I turned my head slightly to face Gabe and winked my left eye quickly.
He nodded. I felt him lower his hands. One of them brushed against my backpack.
“I think you’re right, Zed.” Gabe lifted his right hand. “But first, sir, we’d like some answers.”
“I know you didn’t come in here with any weapons,” the man said. “So you’re not exactly in a position to make demands.”
I bent down and placed the box at my feet. I spoke with a clear, loud voice.
“Gabe, you and I wanted to find the treasure. We have. But it doesn’t matter as long as the world finally knows the truth about what’s in this box.”
The man took another step toward me. “True. It will see the light of day. And I alone will bask in the glory of that light.”
I stood up. “It’s yours. No one needs to get hurt.”
He actually stopped tapping the crowbar. “I agree. Once I get that box, I’ll leave. No one will trust the word of two freaks who have no idea how the rea
l world works, over a trusted academic like me. Especially not two freak kids.”
Something he said tweaked a memory.
“So wait, why do you want this box so badly?”
He smirked. “To secure my future as a best-selling author. Once I get the final manuscript—the world’s only copy—I can submit it to my editor as the remaining chapters of my own masterpiece.”
I gasped. “You . . . you’re Roger Stan! The hack who wrote all those horrible monster stories!”
“The jerk we kicked off the fan site!” Gabe said.
Stan smirked. “For being smarter than the rest of you pathetic sycophants.”
I whispered to Gabe, “Is that Latin?”
“It means you’re a bunch of slobbering fools!” Stan shouted.
Good, I needed him shouting. The louder the better.
“Taylor is probably long dead. Anyone who’s read this book is too. The publishers went bankrupt. No one cares about it except you two! Where are all the other fans, huh? Did they come on this trip? No. Just a couple of dumb kids who don’t know any better. No one is going to take your word for anything.”
“You really think you can get away with passing this masterpiece off as your own?! No one will believe it!” I shouted.
Roger was close enough now to reach for the box with the crowbar.
“You think I’m a monster, don’t you?” he said, leaning forward and using the bar to grab the box.
“I would never insult a monster with that comparison.” It was proof Roger had no love for this book, no understanding of what it could mean to people who needed a story like this.
I understood in a flash that the librarian had led us to the map for a reason. They trusted us. Trusted us to do right by Taylor’s memory. To do justice for the misunderstood monsters in the book.
I hoped even harder that my plan was working.
It was time to find out.
“You reached the library before us, didn’t you?” I said. “But the librarian sent you away with nothing.”
Stan stopped dragging the box. He stood up, his face twisted in a sickly grin.
“No, I got there after you. I lost track of the route after you stopped posting stuff on the site. And when you didn’t take the bait and head to South Carolina, I figured you did know where you were going. So I followed.”
The Fabulous Zed Watson! Page 15