by Tifani Clark
CHAPTER 24
Peter nudged me and tilted his head toward the figure that had just stepped from the trees. “Do you see it?” he whispered.
I nodded, terrified. “Who is it?”
He snickered. “Jamie, it’s a deer.”
I looked closer and sure enough, the figure stood on four legs, looking our way with its ears alert and listening. Peter tossed a stick to the ground and the deer bounded away back into the trees.
“I thought for sure it was going to be Jeremiah,” I finally breathed.
“I have a feeling that if Jeremiah were to come, he’d be a lot quieter.”
“Thanks, but that’s not reassuring at all.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
We continued to scramble up the pile until we found an opening big enough for us to slip through. Peter turned on his flashlight and shined it down into the hole. Debris littered the floor below us, but for the most part it was open space. The main part of the barn had been preserved when the walls started to crumble.
“Let me help you go down first,” he said.
“Okay.” I slid through the hole on my stomach as far as I could and then Peter took both my hands and lowered me down. I let go of him and dropped the last two feet to the floor. The thud of my feet hitting the ground echoed through the room. I flipped on my light and shined it around, turning in every direction. A mouse scurried across the floor in front of me and I shivered.
“Is it clear?” Peter called through the hole.
“Yeah. Come down.”
He dropped through the hole and landed gracefully on his feet. For some reason I began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“All of this. Last month I was making plans to spend my summer at the library and now I’m trespassing in an old barn, in a different state, while looking for a treasure map. I keep expecting to wake up from a really long dream.”
“Would you rather be at the library than doing this?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “Absolutely not.”
“Nick said he put Jeremiah’s pouch under a floorboard just outside the second stall from the back on the right, correct?” Peter asked.
“That’s how I remember it.”
We both dropped to our knees and began to brush dirt and debris away with our gloved hands. None of the boards were the slightest bit loose.
“Look at these nails,” Peter said as he aimed the light close to the floor, “they’ve definitely been added since the barn was built. They’re modern.”
My heart fell. “Do you think the whole floor has been replaced? If so, whoever tore it out would have found the pouch for sure.”
Peter slowly walked forward, still bending down with his light close to the floor.
“Look over here, Jamie. Do you see the difference between the nails over there and the ones here?”
I walked to him and crouched down. “The nail heads are a different shape,” I said.
“Exactly. I would bet money that the ones over here are from the 1800s. I don’t think the floor has been completely replaced. They probably just nailed down the loose boards at some point.”
“Is that something you learned from your parents?”
He grinned. “Sometimes it pays to live with a couple of archaeologists.”
We crawled back to the spot where we thought the pouch should be and began to pull on the boards. It was a tight fit and I could barely fit my fingers into the cracks between the boards. I removed my gloves and pulled.
“Stand back, I’m going to see if I can pry a board up,” Peter said. I obeyed and turned to see him holding an old pitchfork.
He wedged the tines under a board and started prying. I helped push back on the pitchfork’s handle with him, but nothing budged. I stood in front of the pitchfork and we kept pushing, putting all our weight into it, until the handle snapped and we both flew backward. I hit my head on one of the old stalls and immediately felt a trickle of blood run down my forehead. I pulled my hood tighter around my face in hopes that Peter wouldn’t notice.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied.
I crawled back to the board we’d been working on. “Peter, we got it loose.” I yanked and pulled on the board until it broke off with a thunderous cracking sound. Peter moved quickly to my side and shined his flashlight at the dirt below the board I’d just removed. There was nothing but empty space.
“Pull up another board.” Now that we had a way to get at the boards we could pry them up fairly easy with our hands and the little shovels we’d brought. My bare hands were full of slivers and started to bleed. I should have put my gloves back on, but I didn’t even care.
Underneath the seventh board sat the old, brown, leather pouch. The burning sensation in my chest deepened and I again felt lightheaded.
“We found it,” I whispered in amazement.
“You do the honors,” Peter said as he shone the light at the pouch.
I reached down and lifted it from the hole. It was covered in dust, but not wet—which was a good thing considering where it was found. I sat on the floor, cross-legged, and unwound the string holding it closed. Peter sat next to me, his head close to mine.
The papers inside were brittle and I touched them gingerly, afraid they would fall apart in my hands. I slowly turned each sheet over. Most of them seemed to be financial records—contracts, and things like that. Finally, near the bottom of the pile was a page with squiggles, symbols and weird markings. At the top of the page was a large ‘H’ written just the same as the signature on the letter to the mysterious Catherine we’d found back home in my attic.
Peter and I looked at each other. This is it. This is what we came all this way to find. Suddenly we both laughed.
Peter reached over, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me right on the lips. I felt the familiar tingle run through my spine and up through my body, warming me all over. Again, he pulled away after just a few seconds. Our moment was interrupted by the ringing of my phone. The sound of such a modern device in that cave of antiquity was horribly out of place as the noise bounced from wall to wall.
“It’s Sophia,” I whispered before putting the phone to my ear and saying, “Hello?”
“Jam . . . I . . . sorry . . . Goodwins . . .”
“Sophia, you’re breaking up. I can’t tell what you’re saying.”
“Goodwi . . . gone . . . can’t . . . find . . . hide . . .” The phone beeped, alerting me that the call had been dropped.
“Crap, Peter, I think she said they lost the Goodwins. We’ve got to get out of here. I’m sure their old home site is one of the first places they’ll go.”
We scrambled to put the remaining pages back in the pouch and Peter slipped it inside his jacket. I carefully folded the map and tucked it down inside my shirt. Going back out the way we came in would be difficult and it would take a long time. We decided to try the front entrance to the barn instead. We wouldn’t have to climb, but we’d have to move some of the boards apart. It probably wasn’t the safest idea, but we were left with no other choice. I wanted to get as far from there as we could get—and fast.
“Pull on that board,” Peter commanded as he pushed on another. He used the broken pitchfork as a wedge to make an opening just big enough for me to crawl through to the cold air outside.
The rain had completely stopped by that point and the earth smelled musty in the darkness. I held the boards I’d just slipped between as Peter tried to climb out after me. Since he was bigger, the opening had to be pried open even farther. I pulled as hard as I could, but just as I managed to open up a space big enough for him to slip through, the boards above shifted and the barn began to groan as boards snapped and pieces fell.
“Peter,” I screamed as the wall he was climbing through completely collapsed. Flying debris knocked me to the ground, but I quickly jumped back up on my hands and knees and crawled to where I’d last seen Peter.
“Jamie
. Jamie!” he yelled from somewhere under the rubble.
“I’m here, Peter.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but what about you?” A sob escaped my throat as I pulled at the boards holding him down.
“I’m okay. They mostly fell around me. My foot is stuck, though. I can’t get it out.”
I continued to pull on the boards, but every time I did the pile shifted. I was terrified that if I pulled on the wrong board the entire structure would collapse, crushing Peter beneath it.
“Peter, I can’t do this without help.” I fumbled for the phone in my pocket, grateful that Camille had stayed back at the hotel—she could get Sophia and Nick to come help. I turned it on and began to dial before I realized that I still didn’t have any reception.
“Peter?”
“I’m still here.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I think so.”
“I can’t get any reception on my phone. I’m going to go find a place where I can call Camille. Will you be all right until I get back?”
From under the pile of wood I heard him laugh. “I’ll be fine, Jamie. It’s not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon. Please be careful.”
“I will.” I stood to leave and turned around.
“I can help.”
I screamed again, breaking the silence of the still night air. Birds in the nearby trees fluttered away, rattling the leaves as they went. And there, right in front of me, appeared Jeremiah Goodwin.
“What’re ya doing in the old barn?” he asked in a mocking tone.
I didn’t say anything.
“You wouldn’t be looking for something would you?”
I remained silent.
He snickered. “After we talked to you the last time, it occurred to us that we’d been tracking the wrong person all these years. Sophia was too dumb to steal the map. She couldn’t possibly have come up with the idea on her own. And then it hit us like a ton of bricks—I killed Nicholas Trenton the same time Sophia died. He knew where I kept things in my house, and he wasn’t as stupid as Sophia had been. We decided to confront him about it and guess what? He was nowhere to be found.”
I involuntarily shuddered as his tone became angrier and he took a step toward me. I took a step back.
“Don’t worry. Our friendly little librarian here paid a visit to your father to find out where you were and why you hadn’t returned your overdue books.” Elsa appeared out of the shadows behind him. “Imagine our surprise when he told her that you’d gone to Virginia of all places.”
They’ve been to my house? They talked to my dad? My mind raced. I had to get out of there, but how? I didn’t want to leave Peter, but there was no way I could pull him from his trap by myself. I didn’t know where Sophia and Nick were and I had no way of contacting Camille. I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. I had to stay strong if I was going to get out of the situation.
Jeremiah was done pretending to be nice. “Give me the map,” he bellowed as he lunged toward me.
“Jamie, run.” Peter broke his silence and yelled from beneath the rubble.
I didn’t hesitate, but turned on my heel and bolted down the path we’d come in on, back toward the old well. I stumbled, but caught myself and continued in a full-on sprint, hoping there was nothing on the dark path ahead of me. At first I heard the yells and footfalls of the Goodwins behind me, but I soon realized they’d stopped.
I dared to sneak a peek behind me, but I couldn’t see anything. My eyes darted in every direction. They had to have vanished. I knew that I couldn’t outrun a ghost and at any moment they might reappear in front of me and I would be caught.
I made it all the way to the well and stopped, my chest heaving from the run I’d just made. I gripped the edge of the well as I tried to catch my breath.
The lights of the new house were still turned off. I thought about screaming in an attempt to alert the owners, but I was afraid the Goodwins would just harm them right along with the rest of us. They had no respect for human life.
I was still searching the shadows, waiting for the Goodwins to reappear when I realized my mistake. I’d left Peter alone. That had to have been why my pursuers stopped.
I didn’t know what to do. Should I go back for him? Should I try to call Sophia or Nick again? Should I pray? Sophia had told me that the only way to beat Jeremiah and Elsa was to con them, but I didn’t know how to do that.
I didn’t have long to think about it because only a moment later I heard them coming up the path I’d just run in on. I could tell by the noises being made that the Goodwins had Peter with them, and he was fighting to be free.
“Get your hands off me,” he yelled.
I heard a thump and Peter moaned. Jeremiah had definitely done something to him. I stepped out from behind the well.
“Let him go,” I yelled boldly.
“Give me what I want first,” Jeremiah answered. He held up a battered Peter with one hand as the other hand held a gun to Peter’s head.
I’d come so close to getting what I thought was the key to Sophia and Nick’s extrication, yet I was so far. I hesitated for a minute and then reached down inside my shirt and pulled out the sheet of paper.
“Is this what you want?” I held up the paper, not yet ready to give it up.
“It’s the map,” Elsa squeaked. I could feel the evil of the people around me as thick as the mist that was gathering after the rain.
“Give it to me,” Elsa snapped.
“Not until you let him go.” I held the paper up with both hands as if I was going to tear it in half.
“Well I guess we have a problem then—because we’re not letting him go until I have that map in my hand,” she hissed back.
I had to stall until I could think of a plan. “If I give you the map, you’ll just shoot him anyway. In fact, you’ll probably just shoot me, too.”
Jeremiah laughed. “That sounds like a great idea. No one can pin anything on us—since we’re dead—and I haven’t killed anyone for a while. I was kind of starting to miss it. I wonder if we can make it look like a tragic murder-suicide of two teenage lovers.”
Tears again threatened to spill from my eyes to my cheeks. That time they weren’t so much tears of sadness or fear as they were tears of anger. Anger for the lives the Goodwins had ruined in the past, and anger at myself for getting Peter involved in the stupid affair. I stuck my hand in my pocket. I thought if I could feel the right buttons, I could dial Camille’s number on my phone—if I had reception. She might not be able to do anything to save us, but maybe she could at least hear what happened to us so she wouldn’t have to live with the mystery of how her best friends were killed.
When I reached into my pocket, my hand brushed against something small and square next to my phone. I felt it again. Even though every part of me was still damp from all the rain, that thing was miraculously still dry. My heart thumped. I knew I had to do it. It might mean that I was sacrificing my life and Peters, but I was compelled to do it to save the souls of Nick and Sophia.
“Enough games, hand it over,” Jeremiah growled.
A split-second of hesitation was all I still needed before I yanked the hotel matchbook out of my pocket and tore a little cardboard match from the row. I rubbed it along the coarse back of the wrapper, praying that it would light. It started immediately, a little orange glow breaking up the darkness of the night.
“What’re you doing?” Elsa demanded.
“I’m getting revenge. For Sophia . . . for Nick . . . and for everyone that was on the Mary Celeste,” I said. I lifted the brittle paper to the match and it began to burn, engulfing the aged paper immediately.
“Noooooo. You witch!” Elsa screamed and lunged for the burning paper.
I stuck my hand out over the top of the well and let go. Jeremiah shoved Peter to the ground and jumped to the well. He vanished immediately and I felt a brush of air pass me as he raced into the well after the burning
paper. The screams of horror coming from inside the well echoed up at me and I stepped back, trembling.
“I’m going to kill you.” Elsa’s eyes had become wild and she loomed large as she bent to retrieve the gun Jeremiah had dropped as he jumped into the well.
I backed away slowly. I knew there was no outrunning them that time. They had no cards left to play—nor did I. Elsa lifted the gun as Jeremiah reappeared at the edge of the well, shaking with rage. I closed my eyes and covered my face, waiting for the sound or the pain, whichever came first. But instead of a gunshot, I heard a scream and a thump. I opened my eyes to see Nick standing over a lifeless Elsa, holding one of the shovels we’d left at the barn. Sophia was right beside Nick, staring down Jeremiah, posed for a fight.
Elsa recovered quickly and tried to sit up, but in the faint glow of the moonlight I saw a look of pure terror spread over her face. Confused, I looked at Jeremiah. He had the same terrified expression, staring at his wife.
“Nooo . . .” Elsa moaned quietly. “Not now.” She tried to crawl toward Jeremiah as the rest of us gawked in wonder. But just before their outstretched hands touched, their bodies slowly disappeared. Nothing remained except for a pile of clothes and the pistol that had threatened to end my life.
Peter picked himself up from the ground and limped toward me. I whipped my head around, trying to figure out where the Goodwins had vanished to. Sophia sat on the ground where she was and sobbed—huge, body shaking sobs. Nick hunched over her, his arms wrapped tightly around her heaving shoulders.
“Where are they?” My voice trembled in fear.
“They’re gone,” Nick said.
“I know they’re gone, but where did they go?” My body still pumped adrenaline and I couldn’t calm down.
Sophia lifted her head and instead of the fear I expected to see, I saw the smile I loved so much. They were tears of joy.
“They’re gone, Jamie. Forever. You finished their business for them. That’s why when they vanished this time their clothes were left behind. Their auras disappeared with them. They’re not ever coming back.” She sobbed again.
I was so overwhelmed and relieved that I had to sit down, too. I stepped back against the rock well and slid down until I was sitting on the ground. Peter sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders.
“You got our revenge for us, Jamie. You took away the thing that was most important to them, just like they took away the things that were most important to us when we were alive,” Nick said quietly.
A light came on at the back of the new house. “Hello? Is someone out there?” a male voice called from the balcony.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Peter whispered. “We can’t just disappear like you two.”
We quickly gathered the Goodwins clothing and, removing their wallets first, dropped the pile and the gun into the old well. We listened until we heard a faint thud and knew the items had reached the bottom. It would be a long time, if ever, before they were found again.
Peter stuffed the wallets into his jacket with the leather pouch, took my hand, and we all ran into the trees beyond the well, back to where our wild night had started.
We didn’t get very far into the grove before Sophia yelled for Peter and me to wait. I turned to see that she and Nick had stopped a few paces back. They weren’t moving.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered loudly.
“Jamie . . .” From the tone of her voice, I knew immediately what was wrong.
They’d finished their business, too.
“I can feel the pulling sensation everyone talks about—it . . . it’s . . . time for us to go.”
A lump worked its way up my throat. I couldn’t speak. I wanted to say so much, but I couldn’t form my thoughts and feelings into sentences. Sophia let go of Nick and walked slowly toward me, concentrating hard on every step she took. She put her arms around me and we hugged, both of us crying into each other’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” she managed to whisper.
I still couldn’t say anything but I hugged her tighter, desperate not let go of the one person I’d ever felt was truly like a sister.
“Sophia . . . it’s time,” Nick said quietly from where he stood.
Sophia unwound herself from my arms as another sob escaped my throat. She walked back toward Nick and Peter took over the place she’d just vacated, holding me tight in his strong arms.
“Jamie . . . I should . . . warn you.” Sophia stopped to catch her breath. “Once someone . . . becomes a soul saver . . . they’re more likely . . . to become one . . . again.”
“What did you say?” I lifted my head to look at her, but it was too late. She and Nick were gone—and their clothes lay entwined on the muddy ground of the forest floor.