He reached out and gave the door a tug. It opened with a dim hallway stretching ahead of him. The walls were made of rough stone and a single light bulb hung from a wire on the ceiling.
“This can’t be right,” mumbled Sam. But he really had to go, so he moved into the hallway. Maybe bathrooms were always in dark basement hallways during colonial times.
Sam wandered through the dark corridor, keeping a hand on the wall to maintain his balance. The stone floor was uneven, and he caught his toe on a couple of rocks that were sticking up in his path. He was about to give up and turn around when he heard something up ahead. He stopped in his tracks, thinking about Patrick Henry’s ghost. He listened carefully and heard a man’s voice coming from around the bend.
“Are you sure you hit the right spot? I don’t see anything,” the voice said.
Another man answered. “Yeah, it’s right here. I walked it off exactly from upstairs. This wall is right underneath the…what was that crazy phrase?”
“Underneath the one who spoke of liberty,” said the other man.
“Right – that one. But there’s nothing here. Measure it yourself if you don’t trust me.”
“If Jerry thinks we messed this up, we’ll be dead meat.”
“Maybe this Sweeney guy didn’t know what he was talking about. Where’d Jerry find that diary, anyway? Up in his attic or something? All that gibberish about the marker. Blah, blah! If I wanted a history lesson, I would’ve gone to college. This church is, like, 200 years old. Who knows what could have happened during that time?”
Sam pushed his body against the stone wall, afraid to move a muscle. This definitely wasn’t the way to the bathroom. He knew he should get out of there, but he was curious to know what these guys were talking about. He didn’t recognize the names “Sweeney” or “Jerry.” Did something else happen here 200 years ago besides Patrick Henry’s speech?
The man started talking again. “Listen, all that stuff is Jerry’s job, not ours. He’s the fancy historian. We’re just supposed to dig.” Then the sound of metal against stone echoed down the hall.
Sam took two small steps forward. He leaned around the corner to get a look at the men. They had their backs to him and were working with a crowbar to pry some old stones out of the wall.
This was getting too weird. Sam turned to sneak out. Instead, he smacked hard into a wall and nearly fell over. At least it had felt like a wall. Sam looked up and saw it was actually a man – a big one.
“Where do you think you’re going, kid?” the tall man snarled.
Sam couldn’t see him very well in the shadowy hallway, but this wasn’t one of the men he’d been watching. Sam’s cheek ached. He must have smashed his face into one of the big gold buttons on the man’s jacket.
“I, uh…” stuttered Sam. “I was looking for the bathroom, but I think I’m lost.”
“What are you looking at in there?” The man stepped back closer to the light bulb. He was dressed in one of the colonial costumes, just like their tour guide.
This guy must work here. He’d know what to do, thought Sam. “There’s two men back there digging in the wall. They kind of look like they might be stealing something,” Sam explained in a low voice.
“Two guys, huh? Let’s go check it out.”
Sam turned to leave using the door he’d come in by. He’d seen more than enough for one day. Mrs. H was probably wondering where he’d gone by now. He took a step forward, but the man grabbed his shirt with a jerk.
“Not so fast, kid. You’re coming too.”
Sam’s body tensed. He started sweating as the big man pulled him down the passageway.
“No, really, I’ve seen enough,” Sam cried. He tried to pull away, but his feet were lifted right off the ground. The man seemed to be as strong as a linebacker. They turned the corner and came up behind the other men.
“Making enough noise, you idiots?” yelled the tall man. “You were supposed to be out of here already. There are tours up there!”
Sam felt dizzy. This guy was with the other two? He shouldn’t have come down here. What were they going to do to him?
“Who’s the kid, Jerry?”
“He was watching you from the hallway. He saw everything, didn’t you, kid?” the tall man named Jerry asked.
“No, really! I, I didn’t see anything,” Sam stammered. “I’m just trying to find the bathroom. I need to get back to my class. Really. I gotta go.”
“We’ll see about that.” Jerry shoved Sam against the wall.
Sam’s heart felt like it was about to explode out of his chest. Would Mrs. H hear him if he screamed as loud as he could?
Jerry turned and looked at the hole the other men had dug. “Well, where is it?”
“There’s nothing here, Jerry. We followed the directions you told us exactly. Nada. That Sweeney guy must have it wrong.”
Jerry smacked the man on the head. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t use any names in front of the kid!” He turned and glared at Sam.
Sam felt like he was going to puke. This couldn’t be happening. He bent over and stared down at his feet. There was a baseball-sized rock against the wall next to him. When he glanced up, the men were all staring at the hole in the wall on the other side of the small room. No one was looking at him.
Almost without thinking, Sam reached down and picked up the rock. He heaved it at the big man in front of him. Since Jerry was so close, Sam’s only choice was to aim for his legs. The rock hit Jerry square in the side of the kneecap, bouncing off with a thud.
“Ahh!” the man screamed, falling onto his other knee.
“What the…” One of the other guys whirled around to see what was going on.
Sam bounced off the crouched man’s shoulder and headed for the hallway. He didn’t look back at the men.
He just ran.
THREE
The Church
Sam flung open the basement door and exploded out into the sunlight. He looked left and right but he didn’t see his class anywhere. The grounds were empty except for the tombstones poking out of the grass. Sam ran around the corner and bounded through the side door into the church. He nearly toppled into Caitlin and Billy, who were bickering in the aisle.
“Billy, that is disgusting!” yelled Caitlin. The look on her face suggested that Billy had just said something gross, which wasn’t all that unusual. Sam bent over in front of them, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.
“Where’s the fire, Jackson?” asked Billy.
“Quick!” Sam panted, scanning the room. “We have to hide!”
“Sam, where have you been?” scolded Caitlin. “Mrs. Haperwink sent us looking for you. We’re wasting time that we could be spending in the gift shop. We’re supposed to meet everyone there and – ”
“No time to explain…Come on…They’re going to get me!” Sam grabbed her arm and hurried down the aisle to the middle of the church.
“Ouch! Sam, that hurts! What’s wrong?” Caitlin said.
“Come on, get down!” whispered Sam. “I’m not joking, we have to hide!” He opened one of the big wooden doors at the end of the rows and scurried under the bench. He pulled Caitlin in behind him, motioning for Billy to follow.
“Man, Jackson, I think you’ve blown a gasket!” Billy said, chuckling. “But if this means we don’t have to go back to school, I’m with you, brother!”
Billy climbed under the bench, squeezing up tight with the others. Sam leaned out and pulled the door shut with a bang.
“You know,” whispered Billy, leaning closer to Caitlin, “it’s kind of spooky in here!” He made a sound that echoed like a ghost.
Caitlin scowled at Billy in the dark cramped space.
“Shhh!” hissed Sam. “Be quiet!”
Before they could argue further, a loud creak of the wooden church door rang through the room. Sam inched his head up and saw the three men from the basement charge in. He ducked back down to stay out of sight.
“Do yo
u see him?” yelled one of the men.
Sam crouched lower into the shadow of the bench and put his finger to his lips. Billy and Caitlin’s eyes opened wider when they heard the men’s voices.
“You guys are so stupid,” growled a deep voice that Sam recognized as Jerry’s. “If you’d have just done your job right in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“It’s just a little kid, Jerry, what are you worried about?” said one of the diggers.
“Yeah, he doesn’t know anything,” added the other man.
“Shut up and look down the aisles,” Jerry said.
Under the pew bench, the kids could hear footsteps moving slowly down the wooden floorboards. Two of the men made quiet steps, but one walked with a loud clackety-clack. Sam figured that was Jerry’s shoes from his colonial costume.
The clackety-clack footsteps stopped near their row.
Everything was dead silent.
Sam could barely make out Caitlin’s face in the dark, but she looked scared.
Just as it seemed like the man would never leave, the clackety-clack started up again as he moved to the back of the church.
“Forget it. The little creep must have left with his group. Let’s get out of here,” Jerry ordered. “You two get back down there. Clean up that mess before we have any more surprises. And this time, lock that door like I told you!”
“Okay, Jerry, no problem. Take it easy.”
“I’ll take it easy when this is done. I’m taking a big risk here. And make sure you smooth out the dirt behind the marker too. I don’t want anybody nosing around here and getting suspicious.” The voices faded as the men skulked back outside. The door banged shut behind them.
Sam was sure he could hear his heart pounding through the silence. Billy was starting to squirm next to him, but Sam waited ten more seconds before slowly peeking his head over the bench.
The church was quiet. The men were gone.
A shrill squeak broke the silence.
“Eww! Billy!” shouted Caitlin, holding her nose. She jumped up from their hiding spot and smacked Billy in the shoulder. “Don’t ever do that again!”
“We were sitting under there a long time!” Billy explained through a wide grin and turned to Sam. “That was epic!”
Sam finally exhaled a long breath and stood up. “Knock it off, you guys!”
Caitlin moved into the aisle and watched the door. “Sam, who were those men?” she asked. “Were they looking for you? What have you been doing?”
“Yeah, I ran into them when I was looking for the bathroom. They were searching for something in the basement, and they grabbed me.” Sam shuddered as he remembered feeling the tall man clutch his shoulders.
Billy slapped Sam on the back. “Whoa, Jackson, you were almost history!”
Sam quietly led the way to the front of the church, opening the door just enough to see through the crack. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We can talk about it on the bus.” He motioned them forward into the cemetery.
***
The bus bounced over a pothole as it sped down Church Hill. Sam turned his head and saw the steeple of St. John’s Church disappear behind some trees in the distance. That was one class trip he would not soon forget.
He realized he’d never gone to the bathroom. With all of the excitement, he didn’t need to go anymore. He hoped his eyeballs didn’t turn yellow.
Caitlin looked over at Sam. “So what was that all about?” She was next to him in a three-seater.
Billy leaned over from the seat in front of them. Caitlin had refused to let him in their row, so he had to sit next to Janice Sweetsen, who always smelled like oranges. Janice claimed it was because she was so sweet, but Sam didn’t think so. Caitlin said maybe some of it would rub off on Billy.
Sam glanced over the seat toward the front of the bus. “Keep your voice down. I don’t want Mrs. H to hear us.” Their teacher was showing one of the class moms a package of homemade colonial soap she’d bought in the gift shop.
Sam quietly recounted his escapades in the basement to Billy and Caitlin.
“Holy cow!” yelled Billy, loud enough for the entire bus to hear. Everybody turned and stared at them. Sam gave Billy a fierce scowl.
Mrs. H looked up from her soap. “Billy, turn around in your seat!”
“Do you even know what ‘inconspicuous’ means, Billy?” asked Caitlin.
Billy sat down, but he jammed his head into the crack between the seat cushion and the window so he could still hear. “What are you going to do?” he tried to whisper.
“What could they have been searching for?” Caitlin asked.
“Well, we know one thing,” said Sam. “They said, ‘beneath the one that spoke of liberty’ – that’s got to be Patrick Henry, right? It’s why St. John’s Church is so famous.”
“So something important is underneath the spot where Patrick Henry gave his speech?” asked Caitlin.
“I guess,” said Sam. “They were digging for something in the stone wall, but nothing was there. They were worried the tall guy, Jerry, would be mad at them.”
“What did they mean when they talked in the church about covering something up by the marker?” asked Caitlin. “What’s a marker?”
“Maybe they stole a magic marker from some kid on a tour and they wanted to hide the evidence,” said Billy from behind the seat.
Sam remembered hearing about markers before. “I think a marker can be another name for a gravestone.”
They all sat silently, listening to the bus motoring along the highway.
“Maybe it was a Sharpie,” said Billy, breaking the quiet. “You have to be careful what you write on with those.”
Caitlin glared at him.
“What?” asked Billy. “The ink doesn’t come out if you get it on your clothes. My mom hates that.”
Sam rolled his eyes and tried to focus. “This is complicated,” he said. “I think we need to do more research. They said it was 200 years old and mentioned someone else named Sweeney. I didn’t hear anything about someone named Sweeney on the tour, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Caitlin. She pulled her notebook out of her bag. “I think we need to make a list of what we don’t know.”
Caitlin was just too organized sometimes, thought Sam. On the paper she wrote:
Questions:
1. Spoke on liberty = Patrick Henry
2. What is underneath him?
3. Who is Sweeney?
4. What happened 200 years ago?
5. What is a marker?
“I told you, it’s a Sharpie,” said Billy, straining to see.
“Billy, please!” Caitlin copied the list onto a second piece of paper and gave it to Sam. “I can try to do some digging on the computer to find more answers.”
“And I’ll talk to my brother, Derek,” said Sam. “He loves mysteries, and I think we’ve definitely found another one!”
FOUR
The Plan
Sam got a ride home from school with Michael Harmon’s mom since their class returned from the field trip after the normal bus dismissal. When he got back to his house, Sam threw his backpack against the wall and dashed upstairs to his bedroom that he shared with Derek. He found his brother standing on his bed with headphones on, bopping to a song on his iPod.
“Derek!”
Derek turned around and smiled. He gave Sam the thumbs up sign. Then he started to wiggle his arms back and forth like he was a wave on the ocean.
“Derek!” Sam called again. He reached up and yanked at the ear buds.
“Hey! I was just getting to the good part,” Derek said. “You were about to see my signature move.”
He jumped off the bed and struck a pose toward his reflection in the mirror like he was really hot stuff. Ever since they started at their new school this year after finding the lost coins, Derek considered himself a bit of a local celebrity. Sam figured it would wear off eventually, but he hoped it would be soon.
&n
bsp; “Knock it off and listen to me!” yelled Sam. “You’re not going to believe this. I think I’ve found another mystery!”
“No way, did you find more coins?” asked Derek. “I thought they searched the woods and didn’t find anything last summer.”
“Not coins – this could be even better,” Sam said. “Do you remember how Mom told us about that speech Patrick Henry gave?”
Derek looked back at the mirror, standing straight as an arrow. He dramatically held his arm out and sang in an opera-singer voice, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” He stumbled backward and collapsed on the bed.
“Bravo, Derek. Now stop it and listen,” Sam said. “You know how I had my field trip at St. John’s?”
“Yeah. Wait, don’t tell me.” Derek put his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes like he was doing a magic trick. “I see a church…and a hill…?”
Sam sighed. Why did Derek always have to be such a screwball?
“Yes, but you won’t believe what happened at the church,” Sam said. He sat on the edge of the bed and told Derek everything. He read back the list Caitlin had written on the bus.
“We should go back there and look around,” said Derek. “The only way to answer these questions is to get more clues.”
“Uh, no way!” said Sam.
“What do you mean, no?” asked Derek. “Why not?”
Sam stood up and paced. “Well, for one thing, I was just there. And for another, did you not hear me say those guys nearly killed me?”
“They weren’t going to kill you – I’ll bet you just surprised them. What we need,” Derek said, “is a good excuse for Mom and Dad to take us back there. We can’t wait for the next class trip to roll around. They’d like all the history. Mom’s really into that kind of stuff, isn’t she?”
“I don’t think you’re hearing me,” said Sam. He stopped his pacing to look Derek in the eye.
“Sam, if we quit every time you got scared, we’d just sit in our room all day. We need to get out there and solve this mystery! Now help me think. How can we get Mom and Dad there?”
The Virginia Mysteries Collection: Books 1-3 Page 8
