by Finley Aaron
The miles stop one interval shy of Hastings, at the Grand Island exit, the point closest to the rest stop where we were found.
Dad clears his throat behind us. “Whoever wrote those numbers on that notebook left here intending to follow I-80 east.”
Judy’s voice wavers. “And I don’t think they ever came back.”
I stare at the notebook, my heart thumping as I put the pieces together. “When they left here, they went as far as the Grand Island rest stop—on purpose. That was their plan all along?”
“Why?” Mom sounds sincerely nervous about the whole thing. “Do you think they were meeting someone? Do you think they left the kids there deliberately, like someone was supposed to come pick them up, but the babies were discovered and reported before that happened?”
Dad’s shaking his head. “It looks like they knew where they were going. Did they know they were never coming back?”
“Wait!” Judy yelps loudly.
Everyone turns to look at her, but now she’s swallowing hard, like her question scares her too much to speak.
“They went basically to where we live—on purpose,” she whispers hollowly. “They never came back. Do you think…they’re still there?”
Questions pummel me like the thousands of snowflakes falling outside. Who wrote these numbers in the notebook? Our parents? Where’s our biological mother? Our father? Are they really back in Nebraska somewhere near where we live? Or did they mean to stay near us, but something happened to them?
Are they still alive?
Do they know where we live?
Have they been watching us?
Dad’s pacing the floor, chewing a bite of sandwich, his brow furrowed in thought. He stops and looks at the charred remnant of whatever we pulled from the fire. “They tried to destroy evidence of something.” He gestures toward the blackened oval. “I don’t know what that is, but it must be important, or they wouldn’t have tried to destroy it.”
“What was going on here?” Mom slumps into a chair and shakes her head.
I’m staring at the wall—the rock wall that moved earlier when I leaned against it.
What is going on here?
Determined to find answers, I cross the room and slam my shoulder into the rock wall. I’m still wearing my coat, so the hard stones don’t hurt me too much. The wall budges only the slightest bit—just enough to expose the seam.
I shove the last big bite of my sandwich into my mouth, take three steps back, and throw myself into the wall again.
“Rudyard!” Mom leaps to her feet and crosses the room toward me. “Roo, Honey, I know this is frustrating, but this is no way—”
But Judy reaches me first and cuts off Mom’s words. “He’s moving the wall.” She places her fingertips in the seam—still just wide enough to accommodate fingertips.
Dad’s hands trail Judy’s as she traces the outline of the doorway. “It’s a false wall? Made of stone?”
Mom snaps her fingers. “A drug tunnel. I read about them in the newspaper. They have them running across the Mexican border, with doors hidden in people’s basements.”
“I don’t think there’s a big drug-smuggling operation running across the Continental Divide,” Dad corrects her.
Mom scowls at him. “Then what is it?”
Judy chomps a carrot stick. “And how do we open it? There must be a latch or something holding it in place, maybe with a release somewhere. You know how in movies there’s always one book on the shelf that makes the fireplace spin around to the secret laboratory?”
“The fireplace is on the other wall.” Dad chuckles uneasily.
Mom’s still scowling. “This place is dangerous. Something happened here. I don’t think we should stay.”
“I don’t think we can leave.” Dad points to a window. The storm outside has grown only more furious. The wind is howling hard enough to rattle the glass in the windowpanes.
No, leaving isn’t an option right now, so I don’t bother to join the argument. I’m not going anywhere without answers—but there’s nowhere we can go, anyway, not unless we want to freeze to death outside.
While Mom and Dad have been talking, Judy and I have been running our hands over the rock wall, tugging on every protrusion of cut stone, pushing against the wall like a panel of buttons, thumping our fists against every flat spot, anything to try to trigger the latch that will allow the wall to move. But I can’t make any part of the stone wall wiggle in any direction, nor does the wall budge.
“We know there’s a door here,” Judy muses aloud. “It probably goes back to a secret room, maybe a hidden cave inside the mountain. And nobody would bother with a false wall and hidden room unless there was something back there worth hiding.”
Her theories only make me that much more determined to see what’s on the other side. Unfortunately, I’ve slapped, kicked, wiggled, and prodded nearly every inch of the stone wall, and so far all I have to show for it are sore hands. I stop and rub my knuckles while staring upward and trying to think.
The cabin’s main room is a surprisingly large vaulted space. Beams span the room, which are essentially felled trees notched into place. But for the most part, it’s a wide open ceiling high above our heads, made of real logs, complete with knots and natural old wood color variation.
Perhaps that’s why the rope is so hard to see.
That, and it’s hardly a rope. More like a string, maybe a foot or eighteen inches long. Granted, it’s thicker than the thread that snapped outside earlier, but it’s certainly no thicker than my pinkie finger, and it’s a brown color that blends in with the logs above.
It’s also nearly twenty feet above my head.
I glance around, looking for a ladder or something I could use to climb up.
Nothing.
There’s just the futon, the rickety old table and chairs…and the rock wall itself.
I trace a route with my eyes first.
Yes, jutting rock leads to jutting rock, which leads to a beam, which extends more or less under the dangling string.
Before I have a chance to overthink anything or get scared, I start climbing. I have to climb pretty fast, because Mom immediately notices and panics and tries to convince me to come down. She might have even tried to remove me physically from the wall, except I’m quick enough, by the time she reacts, I’m too high up for her to reach.
“Rudyard Kipling Morrison, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Balance beam,” I answer, grabbing the tree beam with both hands and pulling myself up to standing.
“Do be careful, Roo,” Judy cautions me.
I don’t know if she’s spotted the string or not, but there’s no point asking our parents if they see it. They didn’t see the mail truck or the mail box. I have no doubt only Judy and I can see the string.
We have crazy sharp vision, like eagle eyes. Super senses. Another weird thing about us. Another secret that I hope to understand, if only I can get the wall to open.
I’m in good practice at shuffling along with one foot in front of the other. The heavy limb under my feet doesn’t even creak from my weight. It’s not until I’m standing directly under the string, arms extended as high as they’ll reach above my head, that I realize I’m still about eight inches too short.
I did not come seven hundred miles and halfway up a mountain through a blizzard just to give up because I’m eight inches too short.
I’ve always wanted to fly. Who says I can’t?
“Stand back,” I tell my family. I don’t want to fall on them if this doesn’t go the way I envision it.
“Why?” Mom asks, but Dad tugs her out of the way.
Judy’s already halfway across the room, where she can see clearly without the beams obstructing her view.
I take a few steps back, then bound forward again, planting my feet once, twice, three times before taking a flying leap, reaching with both hands toward the string—
Got it!
The thrill of victory
lasts a fraction of a second before I realize I’m not going to fly or flutter or float, or even land on my feet on the beam.
I have twenty feet to fall.
Chapter Seven
I clutch the string as my body swings forward, falling almost in slow motion. Ratcheting sounds reverberate through the walls as the string, once less than two feet long, dispenses from somewhere behind the ceiling, extending to six feet, eight feet, twelve feet in length.
There’s a counterweight somewhere on the other end, which slows my descent. The string unfurls until there’s no more string left, and I stop short, dangling a couple feet off the floor.
“Don’t let go!” Judy screams, just as I’m about to drop. “Dad, help me prop the door open!”
Realizing the wall has opened upward like a garage door, and will surely slam shut again if I let go of the rope, I hold tight to the string and dangle, spinning slightly until I can see the stone wall that was behind me.
The door has created a blank gap in the stone wall, but I can’t see anything but dark space beyond.
What’s back there?
It’s too dark to see.
Dad and Judy shove the futon into the gaping void.
“Okay, now you can let go.”
I drop to the floor and approach the doorway cautiously.
Judy’s reaching one hand past what moments ago was a wall. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?” I ask.
“It’s warm,” she explains. “I figured it would be cold air, like the air in our attic is cold in winter, and the air in our basement is always cold. Unused spaces are supposed to be cold, but…it’s warm.”
I wave my hand near hers and inhale deeply. It doesn’t smell musty or old. Though the cabin has a noticeable smoky smell from the fire, the air from the dark doorway smells distinctly metallic, almost like iron or copper.
Judy takes another step forward, about to step through the doorway.
“Don’t go in there!” Mom nearly screams.
“I’m just—”
But Mom cuts her off. “You don’t know what’s in there. You can’t even see.” She sounds frantic.
I grab the lantern and move next to Judy, extending the feeble yellow light into the warm darkness.
It’s more than a cave. It’s got to be a tunnel—not a narrow, close-fitting, claustrophobic kind of tunnel, but more like a hallway, plenty big enough for the two of us to walk side-by-side without ducking our heads, the path bending downward out of the reach of the lantern’s light.
It’s a tunnel made of shadows, of mysteries beyond sight. The kind of tunnel in which you could stretch out your arms forever, always expecting to encounter a wall, and find only nothingness forever in front of you.
And all I can think is that I need to go in there.
“Don’t go!” Mom wails behind us.
“Muriel?” Dad’s been peering over my shoulder into the tunnel we discovered, but now he rounds the futon toward Mom. “Why are you so upset? We won’t go far.”
“You don’t know what’s down there. You don’t know—it might be booby trapped. It’s probably dangerous.”
Judy cranes her neck farther inside the space beyond the wall. “It just looks like a tunnel,” she observes patiently. “We just want to see where it goes.”
“That’s what we’ve been doing this whole time.” Mom’s trembling. “Just go to Boulder, just follow the ruts, just stay in the cabin. Why? Why do you have to push?”
Judy and I exchange looks. My sister clearly feels the same way I do. We came all this way to find out where we came from. We want to know who we are. This tunnel is part of the answer—maybe the answer is at the end of this tunnel.
I try to make my voice sound as soothing as possible. “We just want to know where we came from.”
“Do you think,” Mom gasps, “you came,” she chokes in something like a sob, “from there?” She points into the darkness.
“We won’t know anything until we see what’s down there.” Judy’s voice is equally patient. “We just want to know the truth.”
“The truth?” Mom’s leaning against Dad’s shoulder now, which makes her voice slightly steadier. “No. Please, no.”
Dad rubs Mom’s back. “Why is the idea of learning the truth so upsetting?”
“Because the truth is, I did not bear these children. Someone else did, but we don’t know who. We don’t know if some other woman desperately wants them back. If we find the truth—we could lose the kids. Their real parents could take them away from me.” Mom’s words are slightly muffled as she buries her face against Dad’s shoulder, but there’s no mistaking her message.
She’s scared of losing me and Judy.
I look at my sister, expecting to see an expression that mirrors my own feelings—mostly sympathy for mom, along with guilt about wanting so badly to know who we are, all of it tempered by the unflagging need to know what we are and why we’re so different.
But Judy’s face doesn’t show that. Her expression is guiltier than mine—more apologetic, yet somehow, more determined.
I don’t know what Judy’s expression means, but I know we need to reassure Mom so we can move forward with our exploration.
“It’s okay, Mom.” I use my best soothing tone. “We’re just going to take a peek. If it looks booby-trapped, we’ll come back. Nobody’s going to take us away from you. Nobody’s been near here in years. We’re just looking for clues they may have left behind.”
“Nobody can take us away from you if we don’t want them to. I think we’re old enough to decide, aren’t we?” Judy pipes up. “I mean, we’re fifteen years old. Nobody can make us go with somebody else, even if we do find clues to who they are. Besides, our birth parents are not at the other end of this tunnel. Nobody’s been here in fifteen years. We’re just going to take a peek and see what we find. Okay?”
Mom’s pulling herself together. “You’re right. I’m just—this whole trip has been one thing after another, and I just—I don’t want to lose you two. I’ve always feared that someone could swoop in and take you away.” She sucks in a deep breath. “Go. I’ll be okay. Just be careful.”
I raise my eyebrows at Judy, silently asking her if she thinks we should proceed.
She nods.
I grip the handle of the lantern and hold it out in front of us. The yellow ring of light proceeds ahead of us, creating a glowing orb in which we can see just enough to step forward.
We proceed slowly, side-by-side, hands outstretched as though we expect at any moment we might stumble forward and need to catch ourselves, or encounter a tripwire and have to flee.
“Roo?” Judy whispers after we’ve gone about ten steps.
“Yeah, Jude?”
“Footprints.” She points. “Do you see them?”
I freeze. Sure enough, though the outline is faint on the dusty floor, and the flickering flame of our lantern is a feeble weapon against the darkness, the pattern is unmistakable. They’re not boot prints or sneaker prints, but actual bare foot prints pressed into the dust. I can see the outline of each individual toe.
Whoever walked this tunnel last, did so barefoot.
Judy lifts one foot and, grabbing my arm for balance, cautiously eases her leg forward until her boot hovers near one of the prints. “It’s bigger than my foot,” she concludes.
“Hold this.” I hand the lantern to her and lean on her shoulder while moving my foot near a print as well, careful not to disturb it. According to the lines marching up the kitchen doorframe at our house back in Hastings, Judy stopped growing a year or two ago. I’m not only taller than she is, but my feet are bigger, too.
“Bigger than mine, but not by much.”
“So, a grown male, then.” Judy concludes.
“Probably.” I crouch lower and inspect the pattern of prints. High arch. The first toe is the longest, tapering down to the tiny, slightly-curled-under little toe. The prints are uniform in size and shape. “These all appear to have bee
n made by the same person, but there’s more than one set. Somebody made several trips through here.”
“But they’re all pointed down the tunnel—as though the person went in…but never came back out?”
Her words sound a tad ominous, like we might expect to find a body at the other end of the tunnel. “They went down this trail more than once, though,” I remind her. “There must be an exit at the other end.”
“A warm exit,” Judy notes.
Indeed, though it might be my imagination, it does feel warmer here inside the tunnel than it did standing in the opening ten steps behind us. Will it get warmer the further we go?
“I don’t want to disturb the prints.” Judy hands the lantern back to me. “You go first, and I’ll walk in your footprints—that way, we won’t leave any more prints than we have to.”
Though I’m not sure what difference it will make, I agree to her plan with a shrug, and proceed cautiously forward, examining the tunnel as we go.
Slowly, we make our way forward, step by step, alert to any sign of booby traps. The footprints on the floor proceed forward evenly. I’m watching them so closely, I almost miss what should have been clear earlier.
There’s a blank wall of stone in front of us.
“That’s it?” Judy asks.
I hold the lantern in front of me and peer forward to the edge of the circle of light.
“The tunnel ends. The walls just close in and…that’s it.” I crouch down and study the footprints more closely. “But the prints go on.”
“Through the wall?” Judy’s got one hand on my shoulder, leaning over me to see as I stoop to examine the footprints. “Is there another false wall, do you suppose? Where’s the string?”
I stand again, and we both look up.
I don’t see a string.
I don’t see anything but the rock from which the cave was hewn inside the mountain.
“The footprints don’t falter. They don’t get closer together. They’re even-paced. They head straight on through. There’s no shuffling to the side, no stepping toward a secret handle or trigger or anything. It’s like they just walked through…” I stop and meet Judy’s eyes.
