by E. A. House
“And they were looking for something,” Carrie said. She was peering worriedly out at the trail while Maddison walked across the edges of the trapdoor.
“Probably?” Chris offered, shrugging. “They either had a better search pattern than we do or they were the most boring trespassers ever, why else would you sneak into an abandoned ruin in a state park and then do one nice safe loop around the perimeter?”
“You never know,” Maddison said. “Boring people sometimes like to have wild nights of rule-breaking too. Do me a favor and walk over the trap door once or twice? Carrie already did and I think she wants to head out.”
“The sun’s out,” Carrie said apologetically. Chris hurried over to the trapdoor and wandered around it twice, then hoped it was sturdy enough and walked right across it once. He didn’t fall in, so it must have been sturdy. “And it’s practically noon, if we want to get back to the trailhead at one like we promised Dr. McRae we need to start soon. And that thing will creak when I step on it but it doesn’t mind you stomping over it?”
“I don’t stomp,” Chris said as primly as he could.
CARRIE WAITED UNTIL THEY WERE MARCHING DOWN the trail, sending butterflies scurrying away from puddles, before she brought the topic back to the footprints they’d found in the abandoned church. Of course, she brought up the topic by saying, “So, who do you think was in the church before us, and when?” which made Chris miss a step—he had been thinking longingly of a hot meal and a shower—and narrowly avoid stomping a butterfly.
“Aaaggh . . . stalker number one?” Chris said.
“Number one?” Carrie asked.
“Yeah!” Chris said. “I hate naming things and then finding out that there was actually more than one, so for now whatever mysterious person is lurking behind the scenes watching us is stalker number one.”
Maddison cast a reflexive glance into the trees.
Chris continued, “But if we find out that it’s a team—”
“Based on the fact that there were two sets of footprints,” Carrie interrupted. “If we assume that the footprints are even connected to the person stalking us, which we can’t yet.”
“Because obviously someone else was running around in the park at some unspecified moment in time and just happened to explore the same building we needed to really carefully,” Maddison said with a bit of sarcasm.
“Then the next person is stalker number two, and so on and so forth,” Chris continued. “And if not, then stalker number one sounds cool anyway, so they can’t go after me for giving them a silly name.”
“I think they’re going to go after you for something other than the name you give them,” Carrie said. “Like, oh, the lost treasure of the San Telmo.”
“Okay, true,” Chris sighed. “But I feel like we have more questions than answers again. We found the parish register, even though we can’t read it.”
“Not yet,” Carrie said. “I have a Spanish dictionary and a Latin dictionary, and I already asked Father Michaels to help me translate. We’ll figure it out!”
“But we still don’t know who might be following us, we discovered that two people searched the church before we did, we got tangled up in a film crew, and we didn’t even see a ghost!”
“Did you . . . want to see a ghost?” Maddison asked.
“I don’t know!” Chris said. “I was just really disappointed that the bloody handprints turned out to be corn syrup handprints laid out by a film crew!”
“Aw, cousin,” Carrie said, giving him a very uncomfortable side-hug. “It’s okay, we still got to the register before anyone else. That has to count for something.”
“And, um, I wasn’t going to say anything,” Maddison said, “but you do know that the camera crew only confessed to planting one handprint, right? They left the one at the picnic area, because Todd knew they were going to film there later today. Nobody said anything at all about the one we saw from the side of the trail.”
“They didn’t?” Suddenly Chris was very aware that they had been wandering around in a supposedly haunted woods for two days, and remembered, unbidden, that Annie Six-Fingers had very little patience.
“No,” Maddison said. “And I didn’t think to ask about it. I told Bethy about the one at the picnic area, and she yelled at Todd until he confessed to the one at the picnic area. Nobody said anything about the one off the side of the trail, which wasn’t somewhere they were filming.”
“Oh, hey!” Carrie exclaimed. The staring into the woods looking for ghosts was starting to get ridiculous, and she had taken a peek at her phone. “I have two bars now!”
The tension shattered and they started walking again, Chris and Maddison pulling out their own phones and Carrie pulling up her contacts list.
“I’ve got one whole bar,” Maddison said, just as Carrie tapped a button and held her own phone to her ear. “Who are you calling?”
“Professor Griffin,” Carrie said.
“Huh.” Maddison shrugged and called someone herself.
“Oh, nice,” Chris said. “Ignore me in favor of the phone.” But it was actually a good idea: when you were hiking, the trip back always seemed shorter than the trip there, and today was no exception. They were only about twenty minutes from the trailhead and had made it this far without being attacked for the book or by an angry ghost, so it would be a shame to ruin the streak of good luck by getting kidnapped mere minutes from home.
It was also the last point where stalker number one might try something out of sight of prying eyes. Carrie and Maddison both being on the phone with an adult was an insurance measure to ward off possible attacks, although . . . Chris stepped up his pace so that he was walking next to Maddison and in front of Carrie. As the only person not on the phone he would be the best option for grabbing.
And I would call someone, Chris thought to himself, but Carrie and Maddison have taken the only two adults who know our secret and there is nobody left for me to call.
In a perfect world, of course, he would be calling Aunt Elsie, who couldn’t go camping as often as she liked because of work but would be delighted to hear about the ghost, and the film crew, and the parish register. And who would absolutely have believed them about the secret and the treasure. But Aunt Elsie was gone, and could only look down on them from somewhere up high and full of correctly archived masterpieces, and Chris was left listening to half of two conversations at once and trying not to see ghosts in the woods where there weren’t any.
“No, really, it went well,” Maddison was saying to her dad. “I don’t swoon at movie stars and anyway Robin Redd isn’t my type. No, I—yes, there is more to the story than that, I just don’t want to tell you over the phone so I’m saving it for when we get home and I can have . . . no you didn’t. Dad! That was my cereal, you don’t even like that brand!”
So apparently Dr. McRae had a thing for breakfast cereals. Meanwhile, Carrie’s conversation had consisted mostly of the words “yes” and the phrase “everyone is fine” with more or less emphasis as the situation warranted, meaning that Professor Griffin had been worried.
“Yes, we are fine,” Carrie was saying again. “Yes, everyone is fine, no, nobody died, nobody got eaten by a shark, nobody—how were you expecting us to overdose on alcohol in the woods?”
Ah. Professor Griffin must be reading aloud from the list of “things Professor Griffin was not allowed to let Kingsolvers do on pain of having his captain’s hat fed to the alligators.” Officially it was the list of “things that good friends do not let Kingsolvers do on pain of being fed to the alligators.” It was a very long list that had been started by Chris’s great-grandmother after one too many broken Kingsolver bones, and had some strangely specific prohibitions on it, including the rule that you should never try to send Kingsolvers to the moon. As far as Chris knew there had never been an astronaut in the family. As for Professor Griffin, he was more frightened by the idea of watching alligators eat his hat then the idea of being eaten himself.
Carr
ie was still reassuring Professor Griffin that they had not done any of the things on the list, and lying through her teeth because both “trespass on government property” and “appear on a reality television show” were on that list, when they rounded the very last bend and hit the parking lot. Maddison had actually hung up five minutes previously, after telling her father, “We’re about five minutes out, I’ll see you in a bit,” in a voice that carried. Then she’d joined Chris in listening to Carrie’s conversation in amusement.
“Oh, hi!” Carrie said into the phone, and waved. Across the gravel parking lot, Professor Griffin waved back. He was sitting on the picnic bench with a box of muffins, his captain’s hat pulled low over his eyes, grinning at them.
“Smaller Kingsolvers!” he declared, hopping to his feet and striding towards them. “You’re unharmed! I was reasonably sure, but you never can tell until you count all the limbs.” Carrie laughed and gave Professor Griffin a hug, which he returned delightedly. Then he poked her backpack. “Find anything interesting? You were so happy on the phone that I assumed—you’re much less chipper when your missions fail to turn up the goods—but again, you never can count the chickens until you’ve bought the coop.”
Chris tried very hard to find a deeper meaning in that comment before he gave up. Professor Griffin sometimes had gloriously creative sayings and sometimes mixed regular sayings up so horribly that their meaning was impossible to find even with a magnifying glass, and he did both with equal frequency. Instead, Chris patted his own backpack, which was currently mostly full of parish register.
“Brilliant!” Professor Griffin said. He put an arm around both Chris and Carrie and steered them towards the waiting cars. “Do you know,” the professor continued, “that I just had a talk with Abigail and Moby needs another outing?”
Abigail was Professor Griffin’s most responsible grad student and the person who actually kept track of Moby. As Moby was a small submersible, it didn’t actually need outings like a dog needed walks to the park, so what Abigail had actually meant was that Professor Griffin needed to get his permanently malfunctioning submersible to collect useful data before it was set loose in the college swimming pool again.
“If you’ve already made plans, it’s no bother,” Professor Griffin continued, spinning his captain’s hat with one hand, his other hand on his hip. “But if you need a boat for the next leg of your adventures I’m willing to volunteer my own humble vessel.”
Chris was so relieved at the next hurdle to their investigation evaporating on its own that he could do nothing but gape at Professor Griffin, and Carrie had to elbow him.
“I—oh wow, yes, that would be great, thank you!” Chris stammered. Carrie beamed at Professor Griffin.
“I told you it wouldn’t be an issue,” Maddison said. She’d hung back a little shyly when Professor Griffin hijacked the conversation, and at the sound of her voice Professor Griffin gave an exaggerated jump and stared at her. “A smallish not-Kingsolver,” he said, squinting at Maddison like she was a new and unusual species. “Whoever might you be?”
“Maddison,” Maddison said politely, shaking hands and looking at Professor Griffin curiously. She didn’t even get too weirded out when he switched from shaking her hand to giving it a very old-fashioned kiss, which he did sometimes. It tended to go over better with smaller kids than with Chris and Carrie’s teenage friends, and Maddison was winning major bonus points. Most of Chris and Carrie’s friends thought Professor Griffin was too weird to talk to.
“I’m new,” Maddison said when she finally got her hand back. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Well, clearly a new, good thing, right Chris?” Professor Griffin asked, grinning even more widely at the way Chris and Maddison both blushed. “And you’ve only heard the good things about me?” he asked. Maddison nodded, smiling. “It’s lovely to meet you, Maddison,” Professor Griffin said. “I was just talking to your father. We work in some of the same places but we almost never get to chat!”
Dr. McRae, the smaller presence in any area with Professor Griffin in it, gave them a half smile and a wave in greeting. He was leaning against the side of his car, arms crossed over his chest, his expression weirdly blank. Suddenly, Chris remembered Maddison describing her father as having a purposefully blank expression, and understood what she meant. It was just as creepy in person as it had been in his imagination, and it was not in Chris’s imagination that Dr. McRae looked worried as well as weirdly blank.
Dr. McRae moved from his post against the car with a heavy sigh. “We might not be working in the same place for a while,” he said, finally wandering over toward them. He still had his arms crossed and his expression was now simply serious, and when he reached their excited and triumphant little clump he put a hand on Maddison’s shoulder. “I got a call from a colleague in Montana last night.”
“Montana?” Maddison asked. She’d been flushed with triumph and relief and very happy, but something about Montana made her suddenly puzzled and serious. “What’s going on in Montana?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” Dr. McRae said. “It’s—do you remember George?”
“George, from when I was a kid?” Maddison asked. “Yes, I remember George, what happened?”
“He’s been in an accident and can’t teach the rest of his summer classes,” Dr. McRae said. “He’s teaching two and he asked me to fill in for the rest of the week, or at least until he can find a long-term substitute, and the rest of the family—they could really use some support right now. And I can’t say no to George. I owe him too much.”
Maddison pressed both hands over her mouth, and then closed her eyes. Dr. McRae turned to Professor Griffin with a brave smile, and one that Chris had absolutely no right to think was faked. “So I’m afraid I already talked it over with the board,” Dr. McRae said. “They’re putting Henderson in charge for the week and letting me take my week’s vacation starting now. I feel horrible doing this to you so soon after I started this job, but George . . . ”
“Well, that’s terrible!” Professor Griffin said. “Of course you should go, take all the time you need, nobody at the Archive is going to complain about a situation like this. Will you have to leave your family?”
“That’s the other thing,” Dr. McRae said. Maddison sighed. She was dry eyed and fiddling with her braid. “I hate to do this to you, Maddison,” Dr. McRae said, “but . . . you and mom are coming with me. I’m so sorry, I know it’s a mess, I know you had other plans, but George asked for you and he might not have much time left.”
“Oh dear,” Professor Griffin said faintly. Carrie hissed in sympathy. Even Dr. McRae looked stricken, as though this was the last thing he wanted to have to tell his daughter.
“It’s okay, Dad,” Maddison said. She wasn’t looking at anyone and was fiddling with the ribbon she’d pulled out of her hair. “I understand. It’s going to suck, but . . . ” She looked at Chris, really looked at him like she was willing him to read her mind. “I can’t skip this,” she said. “I’m really, really sorry, but I can’t skip this. You’re going to have to go without me.”
There was something going on under the surface here, but Chris couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. Except he was certain the McRaes did not really have to go to Montana to help a friend of Maddison’s father. But Maddison looked determined, stricken, even, and Chris sensed that making a fuss was the worst possible thing to do. So he swallowed, and tried to smile, and told Maddison that of course it was fine, and that they would just be sorry not to have her around, and jumped a mile when Maddison suddenly tackled him in a hug before running to her car.
Dr. McRae looked at them all for a moment longer, frowning. Then he made a move that was either an aborted attempt to shake Chris’s hand or clap him on the back, and tucked his hands into his pockets. Then he smiled at Carrie, didn’t even look at Professor Griffin, and said, “We will be seeing you,” before he joined his daughter in the car and the
y pulled out of the parking lot in a shower of gravel.
Chris, Carrie, and Professor Griffin stood there, lost. Finally, Professor Griffin broke the spell by wandering back over to the picnic table and closing the lid on his box of muffins.
“Well, that was odd,” he said. “I guess I should . . . take you two home?”
ODDER STILL WAS WHAT CHRIS FOUND IN HIS pocket when he was unpacking later that evening. He’d already hidden the parish register safely under his floorboards, in a proper acid-free box to protect it, and had managed to dodge most of his mother’s well-meaning questions about the hike and if Maddison had liked the state parks and would she like to come over for dinner sometime this week? Declaring that he needed to go get his laundry sorted before the wet clothes in his bag started to mold was his excuse to escape. It was also how he discovered the clue Maddison had left him in one of his sweatshirt pockets.
He’d been wearing his sweatshirt tied around his waist for most of the hike back, because it had been slightly damp and he couldn’t fit it in his backpack along with the parish register, and so it had been right there with convenient pockets when Maddison had hugged him. Which must have been when she had tucked her purple ribbon into the same pouch as his Tic Tacs, which he went to retrieve before washing the still-damp sweatshirt. He recognized it instantly: it was the same knotted purple ribbon last seen in a bow on the end of Maddison’s braid.
