Deadman's Castle

by Iain Lawrence

I wasn’t sure I could ever find Angelo down in Deadman’s Castle. I’d never gone past the gaping hole Zoe had shown me. But I had no choice. I had to rescue Angelo.

  I picked up Smasher. Soaking wet, she shivered and shook in my hands. I tucked her under my T-shirt to warm her against my skin and followed the road to Deadman’s Castle. The hill began to loom in front of me.

  I walked toward the school I’d known in kindergarten and ached to be a little boy again. I wished the Lizard Man had never come into our lives. The moon darkened and shone again. The rain fell and stopped again. Little bursts of wind made the trees shake like wet dogs, flinging off the raindrops.

  On the field behind the school, long tire tracks were churned into the grass. They ended at the foot of the hill where I had sledded in a cardboard box. A big black car sat gleaming in the rain.

  Smasher started whining. I felt her heart beating fast against my hand. I was sure Angelo had been in that car—maybe he was still inside it.

  I didn’t want to go any closer. But I couldn’t see the Lizard Man anywhere, so I forced myself to walk toward the car, crouched low as I crossed the open field. All the way, I kept thinking that a door would fly open and the Lizard Man would leap out. The moon brightened, glowing on tinted windows. When I tried to peer into the back, all I saw was my own pale and frightened face looking back. I had to creep up to the front of the car, fighting my old horror that someone would grab my ankles and haul me down from underneath. Then I leaned over the hood and peered through the windshield.

  An air freshener shaped like a hula dancer dangled in front of me from the car’s rearview mirror. On the passenger’s seat was a huddled shape that I thought at first was Angelo. But it was only an old backpack, a heap of canvas and straps.

  For the first time since I’d tucked her there, Smasher started squirming inside my shirt. When her little claws scratched my stomach I couldn’t hold on to her. She wriggled free and tumbled across the car’s long hood. Before I could move she was gone, up the slope and into the forest. I turned on the flashlight and went after her.

  The Lizard Man’s footprints were pressed into the mud where the hill began. I could see where he had slipped and caught himself, where his hand had touched the ground to keep his balance. There were long gouges that must have been made by Angelo’s heels scraping through the mud, and now the tiny prints of Smasher’s paws ran right between them.

  The Lizard Man knew where he was going. Even where the trail divided, his footprints never backtracked. He had walked steadily, dragging my friend along.

  One last burst of rain fell hard through the forest. The sound rushed toward me, and the drops hammered down more heavily than I’d ever seen. But it passed quickly, and then there was a clean, fresh smell that let me know the worst of the storm was over.

  The trail became a river. Tiny waterfalls tumbled over roots and stones, digging little canyons in the mud. I had to grab hold of branches to pull myself along, and my feet kept slipping out from under me. The Lizard Man’s trail became harder to follow, then disappeared altogether.

  I couldn’t go very fast, but I was gaining on Smasher. I heard her whines at first, and then snuffled breaths as she searched for a scent deep among the bushes. It seemed she had lost her way in the rain and wandered from the trail. I reached into a thick tangle of bushes to pull her out. And my hand touched cold metal.

  There was a door set into the hillside. Maybe four feet high, oval-shaped, it looked like a submarine hatch.

  Another way out. I remembered Trevis talking about Zoe. Once, she went right to the bottom. She found a secret door down there.

  It was made of iron plates turned red by rust, studded with enormous rivets. But there was no handle, no hinge. I shone the flashlight all over it, then started scraping at the dirt. Beside me, Smasher did the same thing, her little claws chewing up the ground.

  I felt the metal move.

  It was just a tiny tremor through my fingertips. I thought I had worked something loose, but then it came again, a shudder from the metal when I wasn’t even touching the door. A flake of rust fell away as something banged inside. Someone was coming out.

  I grabbed Smasher and turned off my flashlight. I backed across the trail and into the trees.

  With a squeal of metal, the door cracked open. A line of yellow light appeared along the edges of the door. Fingers poked out, curling over the metal. The door opened wider, and out came the Lizard Man.

  He looked like a creature crawling from a cave, a hunched-over shape shuffling through the door. He wore a hat like a gangster would wear, and he carried a lantern with a lens as big as a car’s headlight. As he turned back to close the door I heard Angelo screaming inside: “Help me! Please!”

  His voice was faint and distant, but Smasher twitched in my arms, turning her head. Afraid she would bark, I clamped my fingers around her muzzle. Only a whimper came out of her, but the Lizard Man heard it.

  The beam from his lantern slashed like a sword through the dark as he swung it around in my direction.

  Already pressed against a tree, I couldn’t move any farther away. The light kept sweeping toward me, leaping through the branches, stabbing into the forest. It flashed above my head, moved on and back again, then settled on the door.

  The Lizard Man pressed his shoulder against the metal. With Angelo screaming inside, the door squealed shut and closed with a clank.

  Still crouched over, the Lizard Man backed out of the bushes. He came so close to me that I smelled his sweat and shaving lotion. Then he lowered his lantern, and the beam lit up the ground in front of him. I was afraid he would look down and see my footprints, and Smasher’s, mixed in with his own. But he switched off the lantern, and in the dim moonlight he stood up and set off down the hill.

  I took my hand from Smasher’s muzzle but didn’t move until I heard the car start up and drive away. Then I turned on my flashlight, set it down on the ground, and tried again to get into the castle. Holding Smasher with one hand, I pulled and pushed at the door. But no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t budge. I picked up the flashlight and climbed up the hill.

  At the top, the bricks of the ruined walls shone darkly. Sensing Angelo in the rooms below, Smasher started whining as I started down into the castle. Water plopped from the ceiling, and painted devils seemed to leap from the dark as I swept my flashlight across the walls.

  My clothes dripped puddles of water, and my shoes squelched on the hard floor as I walked on through the ruins, past the old mattress, past the bottles with their candle stubs. In the silence of the rooms the trickling of water sounded like laughter and whispering voices. With the hair prickling on my neck, I crept to the edge of the bottomless pit and pointed my flashlight down into nothing. “Angelo?” I called. “Angelo!”

  His voice echoed up through the floors, small and frightened. “Igor?”

  Smasher yelped and cried and struggled to get free. I shouted at Angelo, “Can you come up?”

  “I’m locked in a room.” His voice was as faint as a breath of wind. “You gotta come down!”

  “I’ll go home and get help,” I said.

  “No!” he screamed. “There isn’t time. The guy’s coming back. He’s gone to get something and he’s coming right back!”

  I shone my flashlight on the planks that spanned the awful gap in front of me. They were old and cracked, bent in the middle, and they looked far too narrow for me to cross. I felt like this was my last chance to turn back and find someone to help me. If I went any farther I might never get out again.

  “Hurry!” pleaded Angelo.

  I held on to Smasher and took two tiny steps onto the planks. They twisted underneath me, bending with my weight. I had to force myself across them, shuffling like an old man on an icy sidewalk. As I reached the middle, the planks bent so far that their ends lifted from the concrete floors.

  I slid my left foot forward. I slid my right foot forward. The planks rocked and tilted, chattering on the concrete.
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  My flashlight suddenly flickered. The batteries were running out.

  BREATHING IN THE DARK

  I couldn’t imagine what I would do if my flashlight quit when I was down in Deadman’s Castle. It would drive me crazy, I thought, to be suddenly trapped in pure blackness. Again I wondered if I should run back and find help. But I was afraid for Angelo, and I couldn’t leave him alone down there.

  On I went across those planks, maybe the bravest thing I’d ever done. On the other side of the bottomless pit I groped through the pockets of my cargo pants and pulled out the tie Mom had given me.

  It seemed so long ago that she had done that. I wondered how much longer it would be until she found out I wasn’t home. Hours would pass before she even woke up. Hours more would go by before she decided the house was too quiet and went up to my room to knock on the door. How long would she wait for an answer?

  I imagined her opening the door very slowly, poking her head inside, asking, “Igor? Angelo?” in a whisper at first. Then she would see that the room was empty, and in my mind I heard her screaming.

  Dad would go running to see what was wrong. What would happen when he learned that his worst fear had come true?

  I didn’t want to think about that. I threaded the tie around Smasher’s collar, put her down on the floor, and shouted into the darkness, “Angelo! Call Smasher.”

  His cry came faintly back. “Smashy! C’mon, Smash!”

  Smasher twitched her ears and shot off into the dark. “Keep talking!” I shouted.

  Angelo’s voice grew louder, then faded again. Smasher pulled so hard on the tie that she half choked herself, and I stumbled along behind her.

  “Smash!” shouted Angelo. “Come here, Smashy!”

  Deadman’s Castle seemed enormous. There was room after room, all alike, every wall sprayed with strange graffiti. But it wasn’t until I saw the same leering skull again and again that I realized we were going in circles. Then I found myself back at the bottomless pit, with a flashlight that could barely light up the planks at my feet.

  The Lizard Man had left no trail here for Smasher to follow. If there really was a way to get down through Deadman’s Castle, I had to find it myself.

  I shook my flashlight to make it bright again. I swung it up and down, back and forth, like I was swinging a baseball bat before my turn at the plate. I should have known better. Just as I’d done with the baseball bat, I let the flashlight fly from my hand.

  It spun away in the darkness, down through the bottomless pit.

  “Oh, no!” I wailed.

  Angelo’s voice drifted up to me. “What’s going on?”

  “My flashlight fell in the pit,” I told him.

  He answered so quietly that I could hardly hear him, in a voice that almost made me smile. “Loser.”

  I didn’t want to go back into the castle without a light. It was my last chance to go home and get help, but Angelo needed me, and I sure wasn’t going to try to cross those narrow planks in the dark. Though they lay right in front of me, I could barely see them.

  “Come on,” I told Smasher. I turned around and started back through the castle, looking for Angelo. With one arm held out in front of me, I groped through the dark like a zombie. I touched a wall and shuffled sideways until I found a doorway. I brushed against cobwebs. I kicked an old bottle and sent it rattling into the darkness.

  At my feet, Smasher started growling. I thought the bottle had scared her, until I heard the chattering sound of the wooden planks. Someone was coming in behind me.

  I had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The clocklike sound of a person walking began to echo from the walls. It got steadily louder, coming closer. Smasher growled again.

  I could hear breathing in the dark. Someone was right there in the room, and Smasher’s little growls made my blood feel cold. A flame appeared, burning in midair. A voice spoke from behind it.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I said, “Zoe?”

  The flame moved down and I saw her face, a white skull floating in front of me. In her black coat, in the darkness, it was like she was just a head without a body. But Catalina was gone and the old Zoe was back, and I was never so glad to see anyone.

  From floors below came Angelo’s voice. “Hurry up,” he said.

  “Are you guys playing a game?” asked Zoe.

  “No!” I said. “He’s locked up down there.”

  Anyone else would have asked a million questions and told me, in the end, to go home and call 911. But Zoe only said, “Do I have to do everything around here?” and marched past me.

  She let her lighter go out, and in that moment—just inches away—she vanished. I grabbed her coat and held on as tightly as I could. With Smasher pulling at the leash, I trailed along behind Zoe.

  “Stairs,” she said.

  “What?”

  My foot went down into thin air. I pitched forward, reaching out to save myself, and found a handrail made of metal pipe. Steep and narrow, the stairs went zigzagging down through Deadman’s Castle, down to the floor where the witches met.

  “I’m going to use the lighter now,” said Zoe. “Watch my feet and don’t look at anything else.”

  The little flame appeared, chasing back the darkness in a circle all around us. It moved along as Zoe walked out of the stairwell, and I watched the heels of her combat boots touch the floor and rise again. I did not look away, but in the corners of my eyes shadowy things appeared and disappeared.

  Behind me, Smasher started howling.

  “You better carry her,” said Zoe. “It’s kind of scary.”

  I picked up the little dog. She buried her face in my arms, her tiny heart beating a million times a minute.

  We squeezed through a narrow tunnel and went down another flight of stairs. At the bottom, I heard Angelo still calling for his dog. “Smash! Over here!”

  I set her on the ground again. She tried to run but only got caught up by her leash. With a yelp she twisted around, then back again, and popped herself free from her collar. In another moment she was gone, racing away through the dark with her toes clicking on the concrete floors.

  “Smasher!” I shouted.

  “It’s okay,” said Zoe. “I think she’s heading for the dungeon.”

  “There’s a dungeon?” I said.

  “Well, that’s what I call it. Maybe it was a furnace room or something.”

  I shoved the tie and collar into my pocket and followed Zoe through echoing rooms. She stopped now and then to flash her lighter and find the way, but we moved through the castle in darkness. Then a yellow glow of candlelight appeared ahead, and I heard Smasher whining sadly.

  We came to an iron grate set into the floor. Smasher had her nose pressed through the bars, her tiny tail wagging. The light from the candle shone up from below, casting her shadow onto the ceiling like a huge black bear. Zoe and I looked down through the grate, into a tiny room.

  Angelo was standing there, gazing up at us with the most desperate look I’d ever seen. He looked even wetter than me, and he stood shoeless in a big puddle, with his sodden socks stretched out like penguin feet. All alone down there, he had nothing but a guttering candle. The smell of wax and smoke made me want to sneeze.

  Zoe said, “What are you doing in the dungeon?”

  Angelo didn’t even try to explain. “You’ve got to get me out of here,” he said. “The guy’s crazy, Igor. He thinks I’m you. He says I’m going to die in here.”

  “Who’s crazy?” asked Zoe.

  “Never mind,” I said. “We’ll lift the grate and get you out, Angelo.”

  “Forget it,” said Zoe. “It’s welded shut.”

  “Then you gotta come down and open the door!” cried Angelo. “Hurry—I’m scared.”

  Zoe said she knew the way. But Smasher didn’t want to leave. When I tried to pick her up she growled and backed away.

  “Leave her,” said Zoe. “We’ll get her later.”

  I had no idea where we
were. For a guy with a lousy sense of direction, trying to find the way in the dark was hopeless. I just clung to Zoe’s sleeve and let her guide me. She was just as blind as I was, but she stopped only once to flick her lighter. She tried to warn me—“Close your eyes”—but I wasn’t fast enough.

  There was a click, a spark, and then the flame appeared. In a weird and flickering glow, it showed me things I wished I hadn’t seen: the curled-up skeleton of a little dog; a leghold trap and a coil of chain. I saw a rat scurrying along a twisted pipe, and a message painted in huge letters across the wall: Beware. The end is near.

  A cold draft pulled at the flame, bending it sideways, drawing out shadows until the skeletal dog seemed to stretch and stand up.

  “This way,” said Zoe, as calm as ever.

  Angelo’s little prison seemed as deep in Deadman’s Castle as anyone could go. At the very end of a long corridor, it was sealed by a huge metal door.

  I pressed my hands against it. I shouted, “Angelo!”

  “I’m here!” he yelled back.

  I felt the smallest tremble through the door as he pressed himself against the other side. It was all that stood between us, but I couldn’t see how to open it.

  But somewhere not too far away, with a screech of rusted hinges, another door swung open. The Lizard Man was back.

  AN OLD SONG

  The distant door opened and closed on creaking hinges. There was a thundering boom as it slammed shut. For the first time in my life I heard the Lizard Man speak.

  His voice was an awful rasp that seemed to crawl out of the darkness. “Daddy’s home,” he said.

  There was a tock-tock-tock from his shoes as he came walking toward us. He started whistling.

  I had heard his song long ago. It took me back to a house I’d forgotten, the music coming from the radio, my mother singing along in the kitchen. But now the Lizard Man whistled only the first few notes, over and over as he walked down that long corridor. Here Comes the Sun. Here Comes the Sun.

  “Hurry up,” said Angelo.

  Through the steel door, his voice was barely louder than a whisper. But I was terrified that the Lizard Man would hear him. “Shh!” I said. “He’s back.”