Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  The class was in a small studio room. Everyone dropped their bags in the hall and crowded inside. Yoga was popular, and the mats were only inches apart. Stevie used one from the school supply; it was rubbery and purple and smelled a bit like bleach and feet.

  The teacher, Daria, had a little accordion-piano thing she played as she made everyone sit on some blankets at the start of class with their eyes closed. They were supposed to be focusing on their breath, but Stevie kept going back to that flickering moment where she had jerked out of sleep the night before and read the words on the wall. She played it back again and again. How awake had she been when her feet hit the floor, when she tried to memorize the words?

  It was impossible to know. Sleep had its own mysteries, and Daria was telling them to get into downward facing dog. Stevie was still new at this yoga thing and Daria was soon standing over her and arranging her hands and hips and feet. Stevie had watched a few videos to prepare for this before coming, but in the moment, she was completely lost and whatever move she made was somehow wrong. She was two moves behind at all times, at best. Her knee was in the wrong spot, her arm not high enough, her twist not twisty. Daria hovered and, in a sweet, whispery voice, adjusted her positions again and again and eventually planted herself by Stevie as she guided the class. How did everyone else know how to do yoga?

  The one advantage to all of this was that it cleared Stevie’s mind of everything else. She heard exercise did that. Was this what they meant? You were so busy being confused and trying to stop your sweaty hands from slipping on a mat that you couldn’t think anymore?

  Stevie did approve of the fact that yoga ended by lying on the floor in corpse pose.

  “You’re doing your filming thing tonight, right?” Janelle said at the end of a class, as they went out into the hall to retrieve their things. “Because Vi and I are going to . . .”

  She was fishing hard in her bag, poking her hand into the bottom and the pockets.

  “My pass,” she said. “It’s gone. I zipped it up. You saw me.”

  “I did,” Stevie said. “Are you sure it’s not there?”

  Janelle yanked the front pouch open. No pass.

  “How the hell did it get lost?” Janelle said. “Did someone take it? I need to find it. I get access to things, and if I lose that . . .”

  “We’ll look,” Stevie said, already on the floor, digging around in the pile of other bags as people came out of class and took them away.

  “They charge you a hundred and fifty bucks for a new one,” Janelle said. “Crap. Crap.”

  “It’s okay,” Stevie assured her. “Someone must have just screwed up.”

  “How? By going into my bag and taking it? I have to tell Pix. Who steals passes? Who went into my bag?”

  Janelle was getting upset now. This kind of disorder agitated her. And she definitely had put her pass into her bag.

  “Maybe it was a prank?”

  “To steal my pass?”

  Stevie almost said, “Or put a letter on my wall.” But since the jury was out on whether or not that was real, she refrained. It was another weird occurrence in a short amount of time. A letter and a key. It had the feeling of a strange game, and one that filled Stevie with a low, simmering worry.

  Games are not fun when you don’t know you’re playing.

  14

  IT WAS A PERFECT NIGHT TO GO UNDERGROUND.

  Autumn was different up here, Stevie noted, as she and Nate made their way down the path to the art barn at eight o’clock that night. It was more—wild. This was probably to be expected, but still, the experience caught her by surprise. There was more scurrying in the bushes, more drama in the dark treetops, more wind. The air was thick with the fecund smell of early dropping leaves and the fragrant decay of layers of undergrowth. Everything was alive or vocal in its demise. This smell, this feeling—this is why Albert Ellingham had insisted on the spot.

  “My kingdom for a Starbucks or something,” Nate said. “Are you feeling like we’ve been here forever too? When do we start eating each other or fighting for the conch?”

  Stevie and Nate were both wearing dark clothes for this night mission. Nate was wearing baggy dark jeans and a slouchy black sweater that hung down to his fingers, making his long arms even longer. He looked about as excited as he normally did, but Stevie was used to this now. Nate was a rain cloud, but he was her friendly rain cloud, and the world needs some rain. Stevie was fully prepared for the venture with some black cargo pants and her black hoodie. Her wardrobe had not let her down. Both had the school-issued tactical flashlights in their bags.

  “So this tunnel,” Nate said as they rounded the path by the whispering statue heads. “What was it?”

  “A supply tunnel for alcohol during Prohibition,” Stevie said. “They used to have trucks come down from Canada. They kept the booze under the observatory in case of a raid, not that anyone would have raided Albert Ellingham.”

  “I mean the tunnel,” Nate said. “Something about it being open again?”

  “Because it was filled up for a while,” Stevie said vaguely. She didn’t want to say, “Since 1938, just unearthed, who even knows what’s down there now.”

  “And we’re allowed?”

  “No one said not to,” Stevie replied.

  “But also we’re not supposed to tell anyone.”

  “Act first, apologize later.”

  She felt Nate staring at her, but she turned the other way to look at one of the grimacing statue heads.

  “I don’t know if this is really going to count for three chapters,” Nate said, digging his hands into his pockets. “We’ve only been doing this for a week.”

  “What did Dr. Quinn say?”

  “That she would consider it when she saw it. But she looks like she considers broken bottles to be part of your complete breakfast.”

  “I think you worry too much,” Stevie said.

  “Of course I worry too much,” Nate said. “But I’m usually right. The people who worry are always right. That’s how that works.”

  Stevie decided not to contradict him on that one.

  Hayes, Maris, and Dash were already waiting by the far wing of the art barn, where the construction equipment and the Dumpsters were, out by the maintenance road. They were also dressed in black—Hayes in something formfitting, Dash in something artistically loose and flowing, and Maris in dark leggings and an oversized fuzzy sweater, with a tight black hat on her head. She even wore a musky, smoky perfume to match the occasion.

  “Okay,” Hayes said, switching on his flashlight. “Let’s go.”

  They entered the woods—the ring of true wilderness that enveloped Ellingham Academy, the place where the trees were not orderly and no statues bloomed. At least, they entered the bit of it by the maintenance road. Stevie had a good sense of where the tunnel ran and where the opening should be, but the opening was going to be flush with the ground. Hayes seemed to have a very clear sense of where he was going.

  “How did you find this?” Maris asked.

  “The tunneling is the best part,” Hayes said with a smile. “This one opened in the spring. They didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “But you knew?”

  “I saw,” he said, grinning and shining his flashlight under his chin.

  He led them about thirty yards from the road, into a tight cluster of trees. Then he stopped and started stomping at the ground. There was the heavy thunk of thick metal.

  “Light,” he said.

  Maris shone a flashlight down as he scraped off an inch or so of loose dirt.

  “They covered it up,” he said, bending down. “And it looks like they put a lock on it. It wasn’t locked before. That’s going to be a problem.”

  “Let me see,” Stevie said, kneeling on the ground beside him. The ground was spongy and cold beneath her knees.

  “Just a standard padlock,” she said, peering at the end. “Can you shine a light?”

  Maris shone her flashlight down on t
he lock. Stevie went into her bag and fished around for a while until she found two paper clips at the bottom. She straightened them and inserted them into the lock. One she used as a tension wrench, and with the other, she manipulated the pins. It was all about slow, careful movement—feeling every millimeter. Locks are tiny, and their pins are tinier still, and the movement needed to lift one is barely a flinch.

  Luckily, she had picked padlocks like this many times. It was a good, cheap hobby to practice while watching mysteries, and it seemed like the kind of skill she should have.

  It popped open.

  “Whoa,” Hayes said. “How the hell did you learn to do that?”

  Stevie simply smiled, got up, and dusted off her hands.

  “Nice one,” Maris added approvingly. Finally, there was something Stevie could do that Maris could not.

  Dash was texting, and Nate stood in stunned silence.

  Hayes pulled open the doors, revealing a pitch-black hole in the ground. Stevie shone her flashlight down on a dozen or so bare concrete steps, leading into more darkness.

  “That’s not ominous-looking at all,” Nate said.

  Stevie made her way to the front and squatted down, shining her light into the hole. The space in front of her was a violent, velvety dark. Anything could have been there. A million spiders. Someone with a knife. Or worse—just a lot of dark tunnel.

  She counted the steps and felt around with her foot to assure herself she had reached the last one before shining her light up. The million spiders, if present, were well hidden, and there was no one with a knife. The tunnel was made of brick and concrete and was in fairly good condition, aside from a few upsetting jags and cracks that were probably caused by years of snow and ice. There was an overwhelming smell of earth and age and stagnant air. The tunnel felt tighter than she thought it would be, snugly fitting two people across. It made sense, of course. It’s not easy to build a secret underground tunnel. You needed it to be just big enough to get your boxes of booze, or sneak around with your friends while playing one of the Ellingham’s famous games. The brick made it feel like they were inside a horizontal chimney.

  Stevie got light-headed for a moment and ran her hand over the walls. They almost felt wet, and she traced the patterns of the mortar with her fingers. This was history, real history, opening up for her. It was almost too much to take in. She ignored the effort going on around her, as Dash pulled a tripod out of his bag and opened it up, and Maris and Hayes tipped their heads together to read the Truly Devious letter off his phone and work out where to stand.

  Nate slid up alongside Stevie and broke into her reverie.

  “Why do you know how to pick locks?” he asked.

  “Because there are a lot of tutorials online.”

  “That’s how,” he said. “Why?”

  “Who doesn’t want to know how to pick a lock? It only took a few hours. Buy a lock for five bucks . . .”

  “Still not why.”

  “Because they do it on TV,” Stevie finally said. “It seems like a good thing to know. I like detectives, okay? We all have our hobbies.”

  “Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Nate said.

  Stevie stared into the dark. She shone her light into it, but there was no end in sight. Just more dark.

  “Are they sure about the structural integrity?” Nate asked. “Should we really be in here? It feels like an elevator shaft on the Titanic.”

  “It’s fine,” Stevie said. Because it probably was. Most things are.

  Stevie swept her light around, steering it away from a terrifying crack in the side, and then aimed it squarely forward.

  “I’m going to the end,” she said.

  “Seriously?” Nate said.

  “This is what I came here for. My dragons are down there.”

  “Stevie, I wouldn’t . . .”

  “You’re not me,” Stevie said. “If I die, avenge me.”

  She was joking, but not totally. She had to go, and it also felt like a possible mistake.

  Some mistakes you have to make.

  The distance, she knew, was about four hundred feet. Four hundred feet of dark tunnel may not sound like a lot of dark tunnel, but it is, in fact, a lot of dark tunnel. But she was going in, like people who crawled into pockets of pyramids sealed for thousands of years with no idea what was ahead of them went in. There were buried mysteries, and sometimes, you must go into the earth.

  She wondered if she would panic. To her surprise, though, her heartbeat was slow, steady as she took each step into the velvety nothingness of the tunnel. Soon, there would be a door at the end. She reached her arm out in front of her to find it, and eventually she felt the heavy wood at her fingertips.

  Her heart literally skipped a beat and sent a glug of confused blood popping.

  The door was made of thick pieces of wood belted together with iron, that small, sliding window looking like something from a medieval jail. There was no knob on this door, no lock. Originally, this door would have been opened from the other side, so if it was locked on that side, that was the end of her exploring.

  She pushed.

  It opened.

  She was going farther. She was going in. This was like a dream.

  The room beyond was small. Three sides of the space were composed of shelving. This had been the liquor room. The deliveries would come in through the tunnel, then come into this room for storage. A metal ladder went up to a hatch in the ceiling. Stevie tested it for a moment with a shake. It seemed to be firmly secured to the wall and in perfect repair. Could she do this? Could she actually go to the place where it happened?

  The others were nowhere behind her. She was doing this alone.

  She tested the ladder again, then tucked her flashlight into her bag. She was going up into the dark. She proceeded slowly, trusting in the ladder and knowing that at some point her head would make contact with the hatch above. She would use that sensation as a guide.

  Up, up, up into the dark, moving more slowly as she went. She felt the hatch against her hair, against her scalp. She backed down a rung and reached up to test it. It didn’t give at first, but she pressed harder. There was an unholy squawk as the ancient springs were forced back into action, but the hatch popped open.

  Some people want to go to see the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. Some people dream of their proms or their someday weddings. Some people dream of going up in a hot-air balloon or scuba diving in clear Caribbean waters. Everyone has a dream place, and Stevie Bell was climbing into hers.

  The domed observatory seemed smaller now that she was inside of it. The thick glass triangles that composed most of the structure were encrusted with dirt, so all was dark. She shone her light around the stone floor, the bench that ran around the side. There was nothing in here now but some dead leaves and dirt. It smelled like a shed.

  Dottie had been here. This is where they found her Sherlock Holmes book. Albert Ellingham had come right through that stout door. He’d been struck and fallen to the floor. Here? On this spot? Had the money been counted here? Was this where it all started to go so very wrong?

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Maybe, if she breathed this air and felt this space, maybe she could go back. . . .

  “Hey!” Dash’s voice cut through the silence as he yelled from below. “Come on. We need you.”

  The moment was over.

  The filming was very quick. All that was needed was for Hayes to recite the Truly Devious letter while walking down the tunnel length. He and Maris passed the camera back and forth to get some long shots, but it was dark and cold and hard to film, and time was not on their side. At eight thirty, they all crept back to the steps. A quick look outside showed that no one was waiting for them to pop out of the hole. The doors were closed.

  “We can’t all go together,” Hayes said, holding the padlock in his hand. “If anyone sees us all coming from this direction, they might realize we were down here. Nate, Stevie, you guys go first. Dash, you should go the othe
r way around. Maris, we can go last.”

  As Stevie and Nate walked back through the dark, Nate glanced over his shoulder.

  “I think they’re going to go back and bone in that tunnel,” he said.

  “Bone,” Stevie repeated. “Did you have to say bone?”

  “Tunnelboner,” Nate said. “A new fragrance for men.”

  “They wouldn’t,” Stevie said. “They won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s . . . the tunnel. You don’t just tunnelbone in that tunnel.”

  “Sometimes a tunnel is just a tunnel,” Nate said.

  Stevie ground her jaw a bit and walked on, her hands deep in her hoodie pockets. The magic of the tunnel and the observatory was still on her, and she wanted to hold it as long as possible.

  She thought of the letter that she had seen on her wall. It really had been so vivid. Dreams had a way of blurring and fading the moment they were over. The edges were sharp on this, the colors bright. Her mind had taken a screenshot.

  Had it been real?

  It was possible; most things are possible. It wasn’t likely, though. What was likely was that her anxious and excited brain, full of new stimuli, conjured up something bright and shiny for her, something so magical and odd that it stamped its impression on her brain cells for a little longer than normal. Thinking about it logically, who knew or cared enough about her to go to those kinds of lengths, and to what end?

  It had been a dream, just as Janelle said. Janelle made sense.

  Still, the feeling was there, and it felt like Truly Devious was calling out from the past. Truly Devious, the known ghoul, the laughing murderer.

  But some things don’t stay buried—not tunnels, not secrets. Truly Devious was not immune.

  * * *

  WHO IS TRULY DEVIOUS? 80 YEARS ON

  Postdetective.com

  April 13, 2016

  On April 8, 1936, a letter arrived at the Burlington, Vermont, office of Albert Ellingham. Albert Ellingham was, at the time, one of the richest men in America. He constructed an estate and a school in the mountains outside of Burlington, and it was there he lived with his wife and his daughter, breathing the sweet, clean air. A Burlington office collected his personal and business mail, and every day, a car would take sacks of correspondence from Burlington to the house, well up on Mount Hatchet, where it would be sorted and processed by his secretary.