by Ben Zackheim
And Mrs. Smiley.
My flashlight barely makes a dent in the crawl space's blackness. I keep expecting something to pop out at me.
After three scoots I realize that there's no way Wylie will hear me whistle. The wall is far too thick. I'll need to think of another way to let him know to pull on the hook. I hope I don't have to run back for my walkie-talkies.
After ten scoots, I still can't see a thing, except my beam of light. I carefully pop my head up to see where I am, just in case I haven't cleared the crawlspace yet.
Yup. I've moved past the wall and now I'm in a man-made underground room. Brick walls. The arched ceiling is about twenty feet high.
I catch the second hook in the corner of my eye and go right for it.
I take in every detail. I want to pull on it. Now. But I also don't want to mess anything up. I have to remind myself that this hook connects to something. Some kind of contraption that's over 200 years old. Whatever it is, it's probably not in good shape.
I pull on the hook to test it. It does the same thing the other hook does. It eases back into place with a polite click. No sounds this time, though. Nothing hiding itself behind the walls that I can hear.
Okay. Here we go.
I whistle. It echoes through the room.
I pull on the hook gently.
It slides back into its 200 year old home.
I wait.
Nothing.
Then Wylie's screams cuts through the silence.
***
I don't even bother to put on my mask. I dive into the muck. I've never heard him sound like that. Please be okay, Wylie.
When I emerge on the other side, I shoot my flashlight down the tunnel and see him pacing back and forth. He stops to put his ear against one wall.
"I can't tell where it came from!" he yells at the top of his lungs.
He's just excited.
He's not dying.
I let myself breathe a little easier, but my heart wants to jump out of my chest and hammer him over the head for freaking me out.
"Calm down, Wylie. Where? Where what came from?"
"A noise. A ... a ... bell, I think. I, oh man, so cool, I heard you whistle and, wow-oh-wow, I pulled on the hook. Okay? See?"
"Yes," I say, calmly, hoping it rubs off.
"Okay, and I heard this brkkkkkkk." He makes a sound like tearing paper. I know the sound he's talking about, since I heard it when I pulled on the hook earlier today. It sounds nothing like brkkkkkkk, but I let it go. "Then I heard a hollow sound, like gunk!"
I wait for him to go on, but he just stares at me as if it's my turn.
"And gunk is the sound of a bell?"
"It was a hollow gunk. Metallic. I can't explain it."
"That's true. You can't."
"It was around here somewhere. But I can't tell where. I was too far away."
"So that means when we pull on the hooks at the same time, they activate ... something that sounds like metal being hit."
"But we'll never find where that sound is coming from. It could be anywhere."
"Unless we have ..."
We lock eyes and say "... a third person" together.
Awkward silence.
"So do you want to ask her, or should I?" Wylie mutters.
Chapter Eleven: The First Clue
Wylie and I leave the tunnel together, squinting against the bright sun as we emerge from behind the steel door.
We know within seconds that someone has spotted us. Footsteps echo off the walls of the bridge's cement underpass. I turn to see Marie walking toward us.
With Dad.
Wow, now that's betrayal with teeth!
"Don't freak out, Shirley," Marie pleads. If by "freak out" she means "vow to hide all of her schoolbooks for a whole week," then she has an uphill battle ahead of her.
"I can't believe you, Marie," Wylie says.
"You might want to watch what you say," I advise him. The last thing we need is a Wylie vs. Marie sumo wrestling match. "Explain yourself, Marie." I'm trying to keep my cool. Before she even begins to speak I notice that the two of them are winded. They ran here.
"I'll tell her, Marie." Dad puts a hand on her shoulder. " While I was out for my walk, I saw Marie talking to Mrs. Smiley. I could tell they were talking about you, Shirley, because neither of them could make eye contact with me. Mrs. Smiley is a mother, so she didn't hold out for long. She told me about this search you're on. Marie didn't rat you out. She led me here because you could be in danger."
"What danger?" Wiley asks.
"As Shirley is known to forget," says my dad, "I have a job excavating all sorts of things, including tombs where priceless treasures are buried. I've seen my share of traps. This thing about two hooks that need to be pulled at the same time sounds fishy to me. It could trigger some old explosives, in the worst case scenario. Which is my job to think about." He gives me a slight frown. "As a dad, and as an archaeologist."
I shrug off the concern. "They do activate something, but Wylie says it sounds like a bell."
"We need a third person to help us find where the sound is coming from," says Wylie. I notice that he directs that at Dad, not Marie.
Dad's thinking. Hard. This could be the end of our search.
"All right, then. What are we waiting for?" Dad asks. He claps his hands and rubs them together. My friends and I trade glances.
"Uh ..." I manage to mutter.
Dad is suddenly a big kid. "Come on, it'll be fun!"
"Do we have a choice?" I ask.
"Nope," he responds with a big smile.
***
We get ready for the next test. The tunnel is now filled with humans and the non-stop noises we mortals tend to make. Heavy breathing, footsteps, tumbles, whispers, coughs. I think it's driving us all a little nuts in this echo chamber. Even the tunnel, silent for so long, seems on edge.
Finally, after coming up with a plan that keeps Marie and Wylie as far apart as possible, it's time.
I'm at my station at hook #2. Wylie is at hook #1. Dad and Marie are somewhere in-between the two hooks so they can pinpoint where the sound is coming from.
We did a couple of practice runs, where we pretended to pull on the hooks at exactly the same time and at the exact same speeds. I think we have it down to a dance, which would please Frank Smiley, who used Labanotation to point us here.
I whistle as loud as I can.
Then I pull on the hook. Slowly.
I let go.
I watch it travel up the wall on the thin chain. Halfway home, I hear a loud, clear...
Ping!
I hear muffled voices from the other side of the wall. Excited voices.
I throw my mask on and swim like I've never swum before.
***
When I emerge from the sludge, I see all three of my partners gathered around a single spot. They touch the wall, push it, tap it, kick it.
"What happened?" I ask
"There's a bell behind the wall. Right here," Wylie says, breathless, eyes wide.
"Around here," Marie corrects.
Wylie glares at her. Not now, guys.
After I take a look around, I join them. But instead of flailing blindly, I go right for the hidden entrance. The grout between two bricks is missing. That's a pretty clear clue, now that we know where to look. I slip my fingers into the crack and easily yank out a decayed brick.
"Look at that!" Dad cries.
"Help me," I beg and they do. Brick by brick we create a hole that runs from the floor to our knees. It's just big enough for a grown man to crawl through.
I squat low and shine my flashlight into a long, thin room that runs parallel to the tunnel. It's about eight feet high. I spot the bell hanging from a chain. Just what I thought. The chain is attached to a pulley and runs all the way down the long room and to Wylie's hook.
I break down the contraption in my head before I even crawl in. I can tell that the bell rises up when Wylie pulls the hook, and then it slides
back into place when he lets go.
The hook I pulled on is part of an extra-clever contraption. Its chain emerges from the brick wall and loops through another pulley. A steel plate, about the size of my dad's hands, hangs from its end. The steel piece, when it starts its descent, hits a long wood stick jutting out from the wall. It then swings back and forth as it settles back into its home.
Bells are much tougher to get a ring from than people think. That means the only way anyone could hear the "ping" is if the two hooks are pulled on perfectly. If we were off by even a little bit, then the wedge would miss the bell, or hit it with a thud, and we would just hear random moving parts and have no idea where the hidden room is.
Whoever designed this, I like them.
I crawl into the room and scan it with my high beam. Odd. The brick walls give way to natural stone walls.
Wow, it looks like the bell room was carved out especially for the contraption, but it's nestled on the edge of a much larger space.
No way. A natural cave.
Natural caves are very unusual in New England, because we have a lot of granite under us. But this cave is erosional, from the looks of it. That means it was created primarily by water erosion. The walls are solid granite, irregularly shaped.
I can't wait to find out how much further it goes.
By the time everyone joins me, I've already examined the bell closely. It has no markings on it. It's not particularly impressive, but it was built to do one job. Which it did just fine.
"Wow," Wylie says, as he comprehends how the contraption works.
"It looks like we're onto something here," Dad says. "I can smell it."
"You can smell what?" Marie makes a face.
"Treasure. Let's go in deeper. This way."
The furthest cave wall is about ten feet ahead of us, hidden in the pitch black. Dad flashes his beam on a crevice near the ground. It looks deep. Very deep. We'll have to crawl on our stomachs.
After a minute of slithering like snakes, the space gets too small for Wylie and Dad.
I claw at the dirt floor. It's sandy, which allows me to dig a shallow bowl to crawl through.
"Wait here," I say. "We can keep going for another few yards. I think the ceiling gets higher ahead."
After a few seconds of highly stressful scooting, I'm happy to see that I'm right.
Holy cow.
It's dark as a night with cloud cover in here, but I can feel the space around me open up. My slightest movement echoes everywhere. I've crawled into a huge cavern.
It's only when Marie joins her flashlight's beam to mine that we see just how big it is.
It's more of the natural cave. Water falls from stalactites about twenty feet above our heads. The walls glisten as the water slides down the granite and limestone like droplets of gems. The best I can tell, this place is fifty feet from side to side.
I think Shelburne Falls has a new tourist attraction.
"You see anything?" Wylie cries out. He senses something has happened.
"We'll get back to you in a minute," I say, winking at Marie.
We move into the darkness, holding hands while we aim our beams at the floor.
The ground is like a dirty beach, with sandy mud and puddles of clear water dotting the ground. No sign of a clue anywhere yet. But there's a feeling in the room.
Something.
Something is in here with us.
"I'm sorry, Marie," I say. "I didn't mean to sound like a jerk earlier."
"That's okay. I know I can be irritating sometimes. It's just that Wylie gets to me. Mom is the only other person who can push my buttons like he does."
"Sure. yeah. That makes sense."
"Yeah? Why does it make sense?"
Uh-oh. I don't want to get into a discussion of how she and Wylie belong together. We have other, more pressing duties to attend to.
"What's that?" she asks, her voice quivering a little bit. She's aiming her light at a nearby short, stocky object.
"That, my friend, is a chest."
Right smack dab in the middle of the cave. It sits on a boulder, at an odd angle, as if it's intended to fall over for a hundred years or so. It's about three feet wide and two feet tall.
We move toward it slowly. The wood surface is decorated in a dozen gems. I can't tell if they're real, or decorative but my guess is real. I wipe one off. It's an emerald. It shines green like a Christmas light.
"Wow," Marie manages.
"Yeah." I point to the lid. It's ajar. There's no lock on it. "Stand back," I tell her. I pull a run of string from my supplies and gently loop it through a crack in the chest's latch. I unroll it about ten feet away, toward the cave wall, then I pull it open slowly.
Its hinges squeak. I wait for them to break but, miraculously, they don't.
"Shirley, what's going on in there?" Dad's voice startles Marie and me. I'd forgotten they were there.
"We're opening a treasure chest!"
"WHAT?" I hear Dad and Wylie scream. I smile at the image in my head of them jumping up and down on the other side of the cave wall. Half excited, half enraged.
There's a flash as Marie takes a picture with her iPhone. In the moment where the whole room is lit, I see something disappointing.
From where I stand, the chest looks empty.
I sneak up on it, still careful. I don't know if there are any traps waiting for me. I peek in.
I'm filled with disappointment and excitement at the same time. There's no treasure. I knew there wouldn't be. We need to find the Lock family's clue to know where to dig that up. Still, how could I not be let down?
The exciting part is the slip of paper. It sits, folded up neatly, in the middle of the chest's floor.
I pick it up with two fingers, careful not to rip it. It's definitely seen water damage. I unfold it while Marie provides the light.
I can make out some words, faded, written by an educated hand. A riddle...
Her last word there
Her first word here
And in the middle
Are jewels most fair
I run the riddle through my head seven times before Marie asks, "What does it mean?"
I don't want to answer her, because the answer frightens me.
"I don't know," I say.
And I don't. I'm sorry, Mrs. Smiley, I don't.
"Maybe the second half of the clue will answer it for us."
"I hope so. But which of my relatives can lead us to it?"
***
Dad and Wylie are chomping at the bit to get answers from us when we emerge. With flashlights flickering around, in the broken darkness of the bell room, I explain everything, including the riddle.
With Dad up to speed, I see his face light up. "So you need to find the member of the Lock family who has the location of the second clue."
"And break him!" Wylie exclaims.
"It's not you?" I ask Dad, point blank.
He's accustomed to my directness. He doesn't flinch. "No."
"Is it Mom?"
"She's not a Lock, but could be. My dad always liked her more than me. If it is her, good luck getting an answer. She's like a vault."
Marie crosses her arms. "But Mrs. Smiley will lose her house without that treasure."
"We could give her the treasure chest. The gems on it would probably cover the house," Wylie says. The desperation in his voice makes me feel bad for him all over again.
"That could be tricky," Dad says. "The town would be on solid ground to claim rights to the chest, since it's under Main Street."
"We could just not tell them," Wylie says, expressing what each of us is thinking.
Marie shakes her head. "That chest got in the cave somehow. And it wasn't from this direction. My guess is we'll find another entrance to it once we explore more. We'd have to sneak it out."
"It's not the right thing to do," I say. "There's another way. Who else could be the protector?"
"Protector?" Dad asks.
"The person w
ho holds the second clue."
"Uncle Bernie might have been. But he died a few years ago."
"In a train accident," I recall. "No siblings."
"No kids, either."
Uncle Bernie may not have made proper arrangements to pass the clue on to someone when he died. That would make his death a double tragedy. I wondered aloud, "Who could he have passed the clue on to?"
"If it had to be a Lock descendant," Dad says, "I'm the only one left. Or you, Shirley."
"I barely remember him."
Wait. I recall something Dad said in the kitchen while we were eating. Marie had been asking him about it when she was prying information from him earlier today.
"You said Uncle Bernie talked about family history a lot at your wedding."
"That's right."
"Did he say anything about the Lock family, anything at all, that could be a clue?"
Dad's brow edges down. "I don't think so. He'd had a little too much to drink. He'd always get chatty about something when he drank. He talked about the Lock family and how we've been in this area for a long time. He asked about the house. He was kind enough to sell us his share of it when my parents left me their half. But he always loved that house."
"It's beautiful," Marie agrees.
"Hold on ...." Dad tries to remember something. We're silent as we wait. I taught Wylie and Marie to be quiet when someone is trying to remember something. Even the slightest sound can discourage memory from kicking in. "He did keep saying something over and over when the reception was wrapping up. He was saying goodbye, have a good honeymoon ..."
We wait. I hold my breath.
"I... don't remember. What was it again? Darn it. By the end of the day we'd all had too much to drink. Something about love. He must have said it ten times. I remember it started to get under your mom's skin. She had her cop face on in that great gown of hers." He smiles, relaxing, remembering the day clearly. And that does it. Seeing Mom in her dress in his mind's eye pushes his memory over the tipping point.
His eyes go wide.
"Love! That's it. He said, 'When you're in love, you can't hide anything anymore. Even in the attic!'"
