“If this is the right track, I sure don’t want to see the wrong one!” I said, trying to will my feet to go faster.
“Sorry, bad word choice!” Frank replied. The light behind us grew brighter, filling the tunnel and making our shadows dance along the tracks in front of us.
“We can’t outrun it!” I yelled.
Frank screamed something else, but the sound of the train’s wheels plowing over the track drowned it out. Then I saw it too—the wall with the lockbox Zeke had told us about—but that meant there was nowhere left to run! We were at the end of the line, boxed in with a brick wall in front of us and a train closing in from behind.
I sprinted as hard as I could for the wall, having no idea what we were going to do when we got there, but hoping it would at least give us a few more seconds to wish for a miracle.
I only had to pump my legs a couple more times before I saw that miracle. Or miracles. Two iron doors: one on either side of the tunnel. I went left and Frank went right. Mine was marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. And it was locked.
Frank’s didn’t have a sign. What it did have was a huge skull and crossbones spray-painted in bloodred above the words STAY OUT—DEATH TO ALL WHO ENTER.
I didn’t really care what it said. All I cared was whether or not it opened. And it did.
Frank threw the door open, but he hesitated before entering. Now wasn’t the time for my brother to start worrying about curses.
The light from the train was blinding, the sound deafening. We were out of time.
I dove across the tunnel, plowing into Frank and shoving us both through the door a split second before the train would have plowed into us.
It didn’t me take long to figure out why Frank had stopped, though. And it didn’t have anything to do with pirates or curses. I’d pushed us straight off the ledge into a bottomless pit!
9
TICKET TO THE UNDERWORLD
FRANK
A SPLIT SECOND AFTER JOE smashed into me, the train smashed into the wall. A split second after that found us free-falling into a giant abyss behind the door I had opened.
Upon impact, the train exploded above us, spewing fire into the darkness and illuminating the vast cavern beneath us with an eerie glow. Giant stalactites like jagged teeth hung from the ceiling, and equally jagged rock formations and unstable boulders waited below. It would have been one of the coolest places I’d ever seen if I hadn’t been witnessing it while plummeting through the air.
We weren’t airborne long before we slammed onto a steep, rocky slope. There was just enough incline to break our fall, but not enough to stop us from tumbling the rest of the way down.
I clambered to get a handhold, finally grabbing on to a crag in the rock. Joe was about to slide right past me when I snagged his gear bag. One of the bag’s handles tore free and the bag went flying, but it slowed him down enough to grab on as well.
“Whoa, dude,” my brother said with a gasp, clinging to the rock beside me.
“I think I’ve had enough fun for one day,” I moaned, trying to dodge the stones that had been dislodged by the exploding train and were rolling down the slope after us. “We’d better try to make our way to the bottom before the whole roof comes crashing down.”
Joe surveyed the slope below. “There are plenty of natural handholds in the rock to keep us from sliding all the way down. Shouldn’t be too bad as long as we go slowly.”
As I watched Joe begin his descent, I heard a loud groaning noise coming from above.
“So you know what I said about going slowly?” Joe asked, looking up the slope past me.
“Yeah?”
“Well, new plan.”
I followed his eyes up the slope, where a massive boulder was teetering from its perch. My stomach turned to ice as it began tumbling toward us.
“Slide!” he yelled.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I let go of the rock I was clinging to, and gravity and inertia took care of the rest. We shot down the slope like a couple of kids on a big, bumpy slide.
The boulder came careening down after us, smashing into the place we had been just a moment before and sending a landslide of smaller stones raining down on us. I could hear the boulder picking up speed, crashing into the rocky slope with enormous thuds that shook the whole cavern as it rolled closer, racing us to the bottom.
What we hadn’t realized was that the slope didn’t go all the way to the bottom. The end of it had crumbled away, leaving a vertical drop between us and the cavern floor!
My brother and I screamed as we fell off the edge.
The boulder, on the other hand, kept right on going, sailing over our heads close enough that I could feel it mess up my hair.
Joe and I crashed to the ground a few feet below, where we saw the boulder knock over giant stalagmites left and right like they were bowling pins before smashing right through the cavern wall.
“Oof,” Joe said.
“Ungh,” I replied.
“Are we still alive?” Joe asked.
“I think so,” I muttered.
“What now?” Joe asked, picking up his gear bag from its landing spot nearby and dusting off his headlamp, which had also fallen off but was thankfully still working.
I craned my neck to look way, way up at the hole we’d fallen through. The flames from the train wreck had died to a flicker, making it look like a little yellow sun high up in the sky. The distance was enough to give me vertigo. If that slope hadn’t been there to break our fall, we never would have survived the drop.
“Well, there’s no way we’re going back the way we came, that’s for sure,” I said.
“At least not without a couple jet packs,” Joe said.
“So I guess we keep going. Lead the way, Cyclops,” I told Joe, whose headlamp made him look like he had one big eyeball in the middle of his forehead.
Joe kicked aside a hunk of shattered rock as we followed the path of the boulder. “Man, those stalactites didn’t stand a chance.”
“Actually, the columns of calcium salt deposits that rise from the ground are technically called stalagmites,” I corrected. “The ones hanging from the ceiling like icicles are stalactites.”
Joe stopped suddenly. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” I asked, looking around nervously.
“The sound of my eyes rolling,” he said.
“Ha-ha. You’ll thank me when you take geology,” I said.
Joe shone his light through the gaping hole the boulder had left in the cavern wall. “That’s weird. It’s like some kind of chamber.”
“It looks like it was excavated by hand,” I said, stepping inside and running my hand over the wall. It was smoother than the naturally occurring rock on the other side.
Joe did a sweep of the room with his headlamp. The light filtered through the dust, landing on a splash of red. We climbed over a pile of rocks to get a closer look.
Staring back at us from behind a thick curtain of cobwebs were the hollow eyes of a partially mummified human corpse.
A corpse that just happened to be wearing the same kind of hooded red robe as the creep that had attacked us in the library. The robe hung in tatters over the dried flesh clinging to the mummy’s skeleton.
“It looks like this guy shops for clothes at the same place as our ghoul.” Joe shuddered. “As if dead bodies aren’t freaky enough.”
“Well, I guess we don’t have to wonder about how he died,” I said, pointing to the jewel-studded dagger sticking out of the mummy’s back.
Joe winced. “Ouch. I wonder who he is.”
“It’s hard to even tell how old the body is,” I said, trying to examine it without getting too close. “With this type of mummification, it could be fifty years old or two hundred and fifty. Or even older than that. The same conditions that allow the stalactites and stalagmites to form probably helped preserve him. Just the right mixture of minerals and moisture can suspend parts of the decomposition process. It’s hard to tell more
without doing a full forensic postmortem. You’ve got a pocketknife in your gear bag, right?”
Joe looked at me like I was crazy. “Leave the poor guy alone! He’s already been stabbed once!”
“I’m not going to cut him open. I just want something I can use to lift back the robe without touching him.”
Joe handed me a Swiss Army knife, and I unfolded the blade. As I reach forward to try to lift back the mummy’s robe, I noticed something strange about the way its left hand was pressed to its mouth. It looked like the person had died trying to swallow something. But what really caught my eye were its mummified fingers. The mummy’s left hand had only three of them. It was missing the pinkie and ring fingers.
Just like the Admiral.
“Joe,” I said, “I think we just solved Bayport’s oldest missing persons case.”
10
DEADLY INDIGESTION
JOE
YOU MEAN THE DEAD GUY is the Admiral?!” I asked my brother.
Frank nodded, looking every bit as surprised as I felt.
“You mean like the-guy-in-the-statue-that-fell-through-a-giant-hole-in-the-ground-this-morning Admiral?” I asked again, trying to process it.
“That’s the one,” Frank said. “I’m pretty sure we just solved Bayport’s coldest case. All the pieces fit. The rumors. The robe from the drawing in the book. The fact that he only has three fingers on his left hand.”
I double-checked the mummy’s fingers. Yup. Three. Just like the Admiral.
“I think we finally know what happened to Admiral James T. Bryant,” Frank said.
“Not that it does him much good now,” I said. “Or us, either, for that matter. We still don’t know why he was down here or who killed him or, more importantly, what any of this has to do with the sinkhole or Layla.”
Frank was stumped too. “Let’s see if we can find anything on the Admiral’s body that might give us more of a clue.”
He carefully slid the Swiss Army blade under the collar of the Admiral’s robe to pull it back. The problem was, the robe wasn’t the only thing that pulled back. So did the Admiral’s flesh!
An awful “MAAAAAH!” escaped from the Admiral’s body, along with the two-hundred-year-old air that had been trapped inside, making it sound like he was groaning. We leaped back, Frank thrusting the blade in front of him like he was ready for a mummy attack.
Thankfully, the Admiral stayed where he was. His torso had split open like a dried-out turkey, though, so we could see all the way to his spine.
Frank laughed nervously and lowered the knife. “I guess his flesh stuck to the robe during the mummification process. It doesn’t look like much of his soft tissue or organs were preserved, though.”
I nervously rubbed my own stomach, feeling especially grateful that I still had one. And that’s when I saw it. There was something lying at the bottom of the hollow cavity where the Admiral’s stomach used to be.
“Hey, give me that,” I said to Frank, grabbing the knife and opening the pliers. “I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”
I carefully reached inside the Admiral’s corpse and lifted the object out with the pliers.
It was badly tarnished and corroded, but there was no doubt. It was an exact small-scale replica of the big bronze skeleton key that had been stolen from my bag.
I held it up for Frank.
“Whoa! It’s a regular-size version of the key to the city that the Admiral has in the statue,” he said. “He must have swallowed it before he died to keep whoever killed him from getting it.”
“Talk about a last meal,” I said.
“The gastric acid in his stomach wouldn’t have been able to digest it, so it must have stayed inside him after his stomach decomposed,” Frank informed me.
“Lucky break for us, though I’m getting indigestion just thinking about it.” I groaned.
“I thought we might find a clue on his body,” Frank said. “I wasn’t expecting to find it in his body!”
“It must have been pretty important,” I said, wrapping the key in a bandanna from my gear bag and sliding it inside my pants pocket next to the little emergency kit I carry when I go exploring.
“We’re far below Bayport. It’s not like he wound up here by accident,” Frank said. “I’m thinking this Secret City might be more than a myth after all.”
“Yeah, well, judging from the knife in his back, that curse Curly was talking about might not be a myth either,” I said.
“Just because the Secret City might exist doesn’t mean it’s haunted,” Frank said. “We should try to find it as long as we’re stuck down here.”
“Too bad the Admiral didn’t swallow a map along with the key,” I said.
“I guess we just keep going,” Frank said, stepping deeper into the chamber.
At the far end of the chamber, we found a narrow, partially concealed entrance into a larger corridor that branched off in two different directions. Like the chamber, the corridor had smooth walls, and I could see some of the chisel marks where it had been carved out of the rock by man-made tools.
“I say we go left,” I said, thinking about the Admiral’s left hand and the fingers he’d lost in battle. Not that we had much choice anyway. The passage on the right was caved in.
“Lead the way,” Frank said.
It wasn’t long before we stepped out of the passageway into a larger chamber with a shallow pond of clear water in the center of it. On the other side of the pond, high above the ground, was a perfectly rectangular opening. And dangling from the opening was the end of a rope ladder.
“I’m guessing that’s not a naturally occurring rock formation,” I said to my brother.
Frank took another look around the cavern and the sheer rock walls on either side. “Looks like the only way out; it’s not like we can go back the way we came. There must be some kind of crank or pulley that raises and lowers the ladder. But how do we reach it? It’s got to be at least three or four stories off the ground.”
My headlamp threw shadows off a few dozen fist-size rocks that jutted out of the wall every few feet from the bottom to the top.
“It’s a rock wall!”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious, I know it’s made of rock, but how’s that going to help us reach the ladder?” Frank asked.
For a supersmart guy, my brother can be pretty dense sometimes.
“No, like a rock-climbing wall. Someone intentionally carved all those stones into the wall as hand- and footholds so you can climb it. Like an ancient version of the rock walls at the gym. It’s not even a very difficult one. I bet I can make it to the top in no time.”
Frank gave me a concerned look. “You sure? We don’t have any safety gear, and if you fall, well . . .”
He didn’t have to say the rest. There were no ropes, harnesses, or partner on the wall to spot me. Without a system to keep me suspended, there’d be nothing to stop me from crashing to the ground. I was a pretty good climber, but I was still a newbie compared to the pros.
“I’ve got this,” I said, trying to hide the nugget of doubt that had started to creep up on me.
We had to wade across the shallow pond to reach the wall. The water wasn’t more than a foot or two deep, and I could clearly see small pebbles covering the bottom. Kicking aside the pebbles, I noticed symbols carved in the smooth stone beneath. There was a concentric circle and one that looked a little like a fishhook; I recognized them both from the cover of the book carried by the Admiral’s statue.
“I hope we get a chance to tell Mr. Schneider about this,” Frank said. “It basically proves that the secret society he told us about was real.”
“Unless he already knows,” I pointed out. “Maybe he’s the one who attacked us in the library and stole the Admiral’s key.”
“Oh, yeah,” Frank said gloomily. “It is convenient how the ghoul showed up in the library right after he walked away. Plus, he knows more about the Admiral’s secret past than anybody.”
“We’ll wo
rry about that if we ever make it back to the surface,” I said, handing Frank my bag along with my backup flashlight.
I surveyed the wall before making my first move, mapping out the easiest route up the wall to the rope ladder. Whoever made it had built in a pretty straightforward path, with no more than a few feet between handholds. As long as I was careful, I would be fine.
I reached for the first handhold.
“Good luck,” Frank said somberly.
“Who needs luck when you’ve got skills like mine?!” I said.
I started climbing, using my leg muscles to propel me from one handhold to the next, taking the burden off my arms like I’d been taught. It was a pretty easy climb, no harder than any of the walls at the gym. Still, I had to be cautious. I was high enough off the ground that I couldn’t just hop off if my arms got tired. One little slip and I was a goner. I was feeling pretty confident, though.
Then I grabbed an unusual handhold. As soon as I put pressure on it, it tilted down about an inch, and I heard a strange metallic clicking sound.
Rock walls aren’t supposed to make metallic clicking sounds. Not unless they’re booby-trapped.
11
THE CAVERN OF DOOM
FRANK
I THINK I WAS MORE nervous just watching Joe climb than he was actually climbing. I was letting my brother risk his life, and I was pretty much helpless if anything went wrong.
Despite his confident act, I could tell he was scared. But I guess that’s a good thing. I know from experience that a little bit of fear can sharpen your focus during life-or-death situations. Like our dad says, even heroes feel frightened sometimes; they just don’t let it stop them from doing what needs to be done.
And Joe was handling it like a hero. Or a gecko. The way he was flying up the wall, you’d think he’d been born with sticky lizard feet. He was halfway up the wall and I was finally starting to relax when . . .
“Uh-oh,” I heard him say.
“Joe, are you . . . ,” I started to ask, when a whooshing sound cut me off. I barely had time to register the stone spike barreling down from the ceiling.
Tunnel of Secrets Page 5
