Alliance

by Mark Frost

  “Who needs the Internet,” said Nick. “We have him.”

  “Did he have any other heirs?” asked Will.

  Ajay continued. “Cornish’s only surviving son—Lemuel—sold the castle to Franklin Greenwood in 1932, seventeen years after his father Thomas founded the Center.”

  “True,” said Will. “Mr. Elliot told me that yesterday.”

  “So what did he need these tunnels for?” asked Brooke.

  “Sorry, I don’t have that information,” said Ajay.

  “Do you think Cornish might have been a Knight?” asked Elise.

  “It’s possible,” said Will. “We know the Knights are using the tunnels now.”

  “But for what?” asked Brooke.

  “Duh,” said Nick. “To get to the ‘hospital’ and the ‘old cathedral,’ whatever those are.”

  “Nepsted will tell us all that if we can find his key,” said Will. “And there’s a whole box about Ian Cornish in the tower you can check out later.”

  “Now there’s a job I’m actually suited for,” said Ajay. “Instead of wasting my time down here in the bowels of the earth.”

  The tunnel began sloping back up, at the same angle and grade it had previously descended. The rock underfoot was drier here, and the tunnel began to gradually narrow.

  Ajay consulted his GPS again. “We’ve cleared the lake. We’re under the southern shore now.”

  “We should be coming up on the T intersection we saw last time,” said Will, shining his light ahead.

  They turned a shallow corner and fifty feet ahead another corridor split off to the left at ninety degrees, while straight ahead it turned and dropped around a corner to the right. Will stopped and shined his light down the narrow, rocky passage to the left.

  “This is the way we came in last year, remember?”

  “Yes, that tunnel leads back to the auxiliary locker room,” said Ajay, holding up his GPS.

  “What’s this way?” asked Elise, pointing straight ahead.

  “Never got a chance to scope that out,” said Nick. “This is where the Knights went all Wile E. Coyote on us and we had to meep-meep.”

  “Well, if you know what’s that way, let’s go this way,” said Brooke, and she started walking straight ahead.

  “Wait,” said Will.

  Something washing around in his thoughts came into focus. This tunnel. This particular corner. A double déjà vu sense of familiarity overwhelmed him until he realized, I have another memory about this place. Not just from when we were here last year. Where is this coming from? Did I have a dream about being down here? Was that it?

  No, that didn’t feel right. Will put a hand against the wall, closed his eyes, and tried to bring the vision closer.

  “I know what’s down there,” said Will. “To the right.”

  “Dude, I just said we were in this exact spot last year—”

  “No, I mean around the corner. I saw it in a dream or … something else, I can’t explain.”

  No, not a dream. The closest Will could come to explaining it to himself sounded too loopy to repeat out loud: Somebody is pushing pictures into my mind.

  But who?

  “What are you seeing, Will?” asked Elise, moving beside him.

  “There’s a pair of huge, heavily secured doors around to the right,” said Will, pointing straight ahead. “And there’s something written on them. Ajay, none of us looked around that corner last time, did we?”

  “We didn’t have time,” said Ajay. “They started chasing us.”

  “Let’s test this, then,” said Will. “I need to know how real it is. Go take a look.”

  “Okay,” said Brooke warily.

  Brooke, Nick, and Ajay quickly trotted around the corner. Elise stayed with Will.

  “Are you seeing any of this?” Will whispered to Elise.

  “No.”

  “I don’t have any idea where this is coming from—”

  He was interrupted by the others banging on something solid and wooden. A moment later Brooke ran back into view with a look of grave concern.

  “I’m not saying there is and I’m not saying there isn’t, okay, but do you recall what—if anything—was written on this alleged door?” said Brooke, slightly out of breath.

  “Or carved!” shouted Nick from around the corner.

  “Don’t give him clues,” said Ajay.

  They all returned a moment later. Will closed his eyes again, leaned back against the wall, and pictured the door in his vision: thick, massive, built from towering timbers.

  Two words swam in front of his eyes—one of them crudely etched into the wood, as if with a knife—but he couldn’t make them out completely.

  “The first one’s a slightly shorter word and starts with a C, all in caps,” he said. “And the second one is below it, and it starts with a T.”

  “Now you are seriously disturbing me,” said Ajay warily. “Did you make another trip down here we don’t know about?”

  “Of course he didn’t,” said Elise, watching Will with concern.

  “And I’m naturally inclined to believe him,” said Ajay. “Will, can you by any chance peer back in time and see who carved the words?”

  “Sorry,” said Will, opening his eyes as the vision faded. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  “Wow, that is so deeply disappointing,” said Nick.

  “So what are the words on the door?” Will asked.

  “Come take a look,” said Brooke.

  The tunnel widened and the ceiling rose up above them as soon as they turned the corner. The wooden doors blocked the path before them, fashioned from huge, roughly hewn vertical timbers, standing eight feet wide and fifteen feet high. A barely visible seam ran down between them. Will saw that one of the words from his vision was carved carefully and evenly, above eye level, about a foot high, all in capital letters:

  Below that, scrawled much more hastily, and recently, almost gouged into the wood:

  “Teotwawki … and Cahokia,” said Ajay.

  “Mean anything to you?” asked Elise.

  “No,” said Will.

  “Rings no bells for me either, I’m afraid,” said Ajay.

  “Dude, it’s not somebody’s name, is it?” asked Nick, staring at the words.

  “Are you serious?” asked Elise, making a face.

  “Yeah, it could be like Norwegian, right?”

  “Of course, Cahokia Teotwawki, the great Norwegian opera singer,” said Ajay, rolling his eyes.

  “Really?!” asked Nick eagerly.

  “No.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be mean, I’m not gonna play anymore,” said Nick.

  “They kind of sound like Native American words, don’t you think?” asked Brooke.

  “Maybe,” said Will. “I’ll ask Coach Jericho about them.”

  “Elise, you study calligraphy and typefaces. What do you think?” asked Ajay.

  Elise was already scrutinizing the letters up close. “Whoever carved this took their time with CAHOKIA. It looks official—see how it’s centered in the middle? Like someone in charge put it there. And it’s definitely nineteenth century, with all these serifs.”

  “Did whoever built the doors also put the word there?” asked Ajay.

  “I think so,” said Elise.

  “What about the other word?” asked Brooke.

  “Different,” said Elise, tracing the carving with her fingers. “This came later. The scars in the wood look newer. TEOTWAWKI. Written fast, scrawled even, as some kind of comment about the first word. Almost like graffiti.”

  Nick hopped to his feet, retreated up the tunnel, sprinted back toward the door, jump kicked it with both feet, and bounced back onto the ground. The wood didn’t give even a fraction of an inch.

  “And, in
case you’re wondering, these puppies are locked down tighter than a hatch on a nucular sub,” said Nick, examining the edges.

  “Nuclear,” said Ajay, aggravated.

  “No knobs, handles, keyholes. No way to get leverage. Nothin’.”

  “Hinges must be on the inside,” said Ajay, measuring one of the walls with another small device from his vest. “And according to my density reading, this wood is massively thick, at least ten inches. Probably reinforced on the other side as well.”

  “It looks like this is as far as we can go, then,” said Brooke.

  “We have to get through,” said Will. “Nepsted’s key is somewhere on the other side.”

  “Stand back,” said Nick. “I got this.”

  Nick stepped close to the door, spread his arms open wide, and shouted, “Friend!” Nothing happened. “Amigo!” Nothing, then he turned to the others and whispered, “What’s another foreign word for friend?”

  “Mon ami,” said Brooke.

  “Mon ami!” Nick shouted at the door.

  “What are you doing?” asked Elise.

  “Trying to bust a move from outside the box,” said Nick, and when she rolled her eyes: “Hey, it worked in Lord of the Rings.”

  “Dumber than a can of paint,” said Ajay, shaking his head. “Perhaps I should take my hatchet to it.”

  “And you didn’t like my idea?” asked Nick.

  “Hold on,” said Will, holding up a hand, asking for silence.

  He closed his eyes. Another image came floating into his mind. Another picture.

  “There’s something else,” he said. “Something back this way.”

  He led them back up the tunnel to the T intersection. Will backed into the smaller corridor, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall straight ahead of him. Nick tried to follow, but Elise jerked him back out of the way.

  “Give him room, dodo bird,” she said.

  Will opened and closed his eyes a few times, trying to line up the picture that had materialized in his mind with the actual wall in front of him.

  “What is it, Will?” asked Brooke.

  “There’s something buried in the wall,” said Will, walking slowly forward to it. “Covered over with rocks or mud or moss. Eye level. Somewhere in here.”

  Will took out his Swiss Army knife, flipped open a blade, and scraped four sides of a square on the wall. The others pointed their flashlights at the two-foot square Will had outlined.

  “Want me to use my hatchet?” asked Ajay, reaching into his backpack.

  “No need, little buddy,” said Nick behind Ajay as he took a sheathed bowie knife from his pack. “Let’s see what a real knife can do.”

  Nick pulled out a wicked-looking foot-long blade and dug in along with Will as the others lit up the square with their flashlights. After they’d hacked away chunks of rock for nearly a minute, something glinted underneath, reflecting back a flash of light. Nick flipped his knife around and stabbed at the spot. They heard a solid thunk of metal on metal.

  “That’s it,” said Will.

  They doubled their efforts, quickly scraping mud and dirt off a rusted metallic surface—dull brass, a foot square, deeply embedded in the rock.

  “It’s some kind of metal plate,” said Nick.

  Will pulled away a final slab, revealing what looked like a large, old-fashioned keyhole in the center of the plate.

  “No,” said Will. “It’s a lock.”

  They cleared away the last of the rocky debris, then stood back and studied it.

  “Fifty bucks says it opens that door,” said Elise.

  “Right, like I’m gonna take that bet,” said Nick.

  “Hand me the keys, Nick,” said Will.

  Nick handed over the tunnel keys and Will picked through them. None of the five keys on the ring looked anywhere near big enough to fit inside the lock.

  “That figures,” said Nick, kicking the dirt in frustration.

  “You think if somebody builds a super-super-triple-secret door they’re going to leave the key hanging on a hook?” asked Elise.

  “We don’t even know if there is a key for this,” said Will.

  “I could whack it with my hatchet,” said Ajay.

  “Not your best suggestion,” said Brooke.

  “Looks like we’re stymied, then,” said Ajay. “Hardly the time or place to call in a locksmith.”

  Will turned to Nick. “That’s your cue, bro.”

  “Riiiight,” said Nick, then quickly rifled through the outer pockets of his backpack.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Brooke.

  “You already gots a lock-meister in your midst, mis amigos,” said Nick, opening his bag. “And you’re looking at him.”

  “Nick picked up a few … miscellaneous skills growing up,” said Will.

  “One of the accidental benefits,” said Nick, retrieving his ring of professional lock picks, “of a misspent youth.” He pronounced it yout. “Give me some light here, peeps.”

  The other four centered their lights on the brass plate. Nick focused his headlamp on the keyhole, then went to work with a lock pick and tension wrench. As he probed the interior with the curved picks, they heard clicks and whirrs inside the lock that sounded promising. Followed immediately by a much less promising series of crunches and grinding of gears that yanked the picks right out of Nick’s hands into the hole, followed by the sound of shattering metal.

  “The damn thing ate my picks,” said Nick, astonished.

  “What do you think, Will, is this some kind of aphotic technology?” asked Brooke.

  “It’s worse than that. It’s freakin’ carnivorous,” said Nick.

  Will took out his dark glasses, put them on, and looked closely at the plate. “I don’t see anything—”

  “I paid thirty-nine bucks for those picks,” said Nick.

  “At where, Thieves Are Us?” asked Elise.

  Nick banged his fist on the plate in frustration. Everyone else took a step backward, like it might hit back.

  “This isn’t aphotic,” said Will, putting his glasses away. “But let’s think this through. If it is some kind of lock, whoever installed this here must have put it in at the same time they built the doors, right?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ajay. “It would have taken ages for the plate to get covered up like that by any natural geologic process, unless …”

  “Unless what?” asked Brooke.

  “Unless the rocks were added artificially,” said Will. “As camouflage. Which makes more sense.”

  “Maybe it’s a trap,” said Nick. “Maybe you open that door and a monster bites your head off.”

  “Yes, perhaps we should leave well enough alone,” said Ajay, taking tentative backward steps toward the exit. “After all, we need to be back in the dorm before curfew—”

  “Buck up, little cowpoke,” said Elise, hooking Ajay by the elbow and holding on. “It’s only nine-thirty and we’ve just begun to fight.”

  “Yeah, you think we want to go through another ambiguous landing all over again just to sneak down here?” asked Nick.

  “Amphibious,” said Ajay.

  “Maybe the key’s stashed somewhere nearby,” said Brooke. “You know, like a spare key in a potted plant on the back porch.”

  “I note a distinct absence of potted delphiniums in our immediate vicinity,” said Ajay.

  “Good idea, Brooke,” said Will. “Let’s look around.”

  They spent five minutes scouring every inch of the intersection, all the way to the door and back, searching every nook and crevice.

  No key. Nothing.

  “I have a question,” said Brooke, raising her hand.

  “Yes, Miss Springer,” said Ajay.

  “Not trying to be a wet blanket here, but are we absolutely sure w
e want to open that door?” she asked.

  “Dude,” said Nick impatiently, pointing toward the doors. “Nepsted’s key?”

  “But isn’t it worth considering that maybe this door wasn’t built to keep people out,” said Brooke. “Maybe it was built to keep something, on the other side, in.”

  They all considered the idea. Ajay wiped sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Look,” said Will. “Nepsted says there is a key—way down deep, at the bottom of the stairs—that will open the magic lock on his cage. And he won’t tell us what he knows about the school and the Knights or anything else until we do.”

  “And, trust us, he knows a lot,” said Nick.

  “So I’m not leaving until we open those doors and find what we came here for,” said Will.

  Elise made a gesture with her hands, as if weighing the two ideas. “Yeah, okay. We’re opening the door.”

  Another idea whispered its way into Will’s mind. He gave up wondering where they came from and walked over and spoke softly to Elise.

  “Sing to it,” he said.

  “Are you serious?” asked Elise.

  “I don’t even know why I think that’s worth trying, but I do.”

  “You mean sing … like a song?”

  “No,” said Will, trying to be discreet. “Not a song song. One of those other skills you said you’ve been working on.”

  Elise got the message. She walked over to the plate, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and brought her hands together in a yoga pose, centering herself. A moment later she stepped into a martial arts stance, drew her head back, and opened her mouth.

  A clear, high sound, like a bell ringing in one continuous peel, filled the enclosed space. She raised her hands and moved them in front of her and the quality of the sound changed, as if she was bending and shaping it or …

  Sharpening it. The sound grew taut and tangibly powerful. Elise directed the sound—Will swore he could almost see it moving through the air—toward the plate in the wall. When it made contact with the plate, a second note arose—in harmony with the first—as the brass resonated. Vibrating, slowly at first, then at an increasingly high rate of speed, filling the air with sound.