Josh spoke up. “I’ve seen something. Couple of trucks parked in front of that old abandoned boarding house on the corner of my block about a week ago. Logo on the truck was some kind of demolition service out of Topeka.”
“What’s unusual about that?” asked Benji. “That place has been empty for years, so they’re tearing it down.”
“Yeah,” Raph said. “But for what? What are they going to put there? Who in his right mind would build anything in the Flats? There’s something going on. I feel it. And that hole in the gym—there’s a tunnel on one end of it—and I want to know who made it and why. I want to see where it goes.”
Nass cleared his throat and gestured toward the open bay door. Raphael was amazed to find Aimee there, in jeans, running shoes, and a thick, light blue parka with a fur-lined hood, smiling at him.
“Hi. Hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We were just finishing,” he turned back to his gang brothers, who all stood there, amused, waiting to see what would happen. “Remember, keep your eyes open,” he said.
In keeping with their Wu-de code of conduct Raphael gave them a small bow, which they returned, signaling that the meeting was adjourned.
Benji glanced from Aimee back to Raphael, “You two want us to give you some privacy?” he teased with a theatrical wink.
“Forget you guys,” said Raphael. He zipped up his jacket, grabbed Aimee’s hand, and led her out to the front of the shop.
“This is a nice surprise,” he said, smiling at her. “I thought you were grounded.”
“I am. Forever. My dad is threatening to send me back to school in Montana.”
Her words made Raphael feel like he’d been hit in the chest with a brick. “When?”
“I don’t know. He took my cell phone last night and locked me in my room this morning. I climbed out the window.”
“You sure that was a good idea?”
“I could be on the next flight out of here, Raphael. I had to see you.”
He knew they should be careful, even with their relationship now out in the open, but when she looked up at him with such longing he forgot about being careful. He put his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed her, long and slow. When it was over, she smiled at him.
“Until I have to go I’m spending every minute with you,” she declared.
Raphael tried to smile and he mostly succeeded, but the thought of losing Aimee filled him with a sorrow that made his soul ache.
Zhai watched from the window of his father’s second-floor library as, below, the two Chinese strangers walked slowly down the walkway, toward the long white Cadillac waiting at the curb for them. The taller man went to the driver’s side. He opened the door and glanced up at the house, perhaps even at Zhai, and then he got into the car and closed the door. As they pulled away, Zhai sat down heavily in a chair near the window, his knees suddenly weak.
He had seen those men before, he was certain of it. But he couldn’t remember where or when. And why did the sight of them fill him with such foreboding? He’d begun having these feelings . . . intuitions . . . during the Halloween battle, and they had grown stronger every day since. As much as he tried to ignore them, he could not deny that they heralded some real event—and somehow, he was sure these men were a part of it. He had to find out what was going on.
Zhai stood, crossed the hall, and went to the door of his father’s study. He could hear his father and Lotus inside, behind the thick, cherrywood door, yelling at each other in Chinese, which worried Zhai. In all the years they’d been married, he’d never heard them exchange anything more spirited than a few impatient words. This sounded like an all-out battle. He knew it would be rude (and perhaps imprudent) to interrupt them, but he had a deep, driving need to learn the truth. He knocked on the door. Instantly, the shouting stopped.
“Yes?” Lotus said, the tension in her voice suddenly replaced with melodic courtesy.
“I’d like to speak with my father, please.”
There was a moment of silence behind the door, followed by a few softly spoken words, then the sound of footsteps. Lotus emerged from the room, slipped past Zhai without so much as glancing at him, and departed down the stairs.
“May I come in?” Zhai asked politely, observing his father’s need for respect. Cheung Shao nodded and looked away.
Zhai crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. Instead of his usual place behind the desk, his dad occupied a brown leather loveseat. His normally erect posture had deflated, and as Zhai drew near, he was dismayed to find his father looking older, wearier than he had ever seen him.
“Please,” his father said, and gestured for Zhai to sit on the couch next to him.
Zhai sat, folded his hands in his lap, and looked down at them, wondering where to begin. For some reason, the prospect of discussing the two strangers seemed frightening. But some force—Shen, perhaps, compelled him. There was nothing to do but be direct.
“Those two visitors,” Zhai said. “I’ve seen them before. Who are they?”
His dad looked at him for a moment, studying him, and then again averted his eyes.
“Ah . . . old business associates,” he said softly, almost to himself. “From China.”
“How do I know them, Father?” Zhai asked. “Where have I seen them? Have they ever come to the house before?”
Cheung Shao shook his head. “No. Not until now.”
“Then when did I see them?”
His dad looked at him again, his expression resolute, as always, giving nothing away. “You don’t remember?” he asked. There was a strange, almost hopeful tone in his voice.
“No,” Zhai said.
His father exhaled, and the worry in his eyes seemed to abate a little. He seemed relieved. “They helped us when we came here,” he said. “To America.”
“On the boat?”
His father nodded. Zhai knew the story: they had come over from China on some sort of cargo ship when he was four years old, shortly after his mother died, but he didn’t remember the journey.
“So they’re just business associates?”
His father nodded again.
“How long will they be in town?”
Cheung Shao rose and went to the bar. He poured some water into a tall crystal glass and drank half of it down before he answered. “I don’t know. They’re working on a project.”
“What kind of project?”
Zhai’s father looked at him curiously. “You’ve never shown such an interest in my business dealings before,” he said. “Why now? We’ve had many visitors in this house, Zhai. These are just two more.”
But it wasn’t that simple, Zhai knew. The two strangers made his father nervous and his stepmother angry. For the first time in his life, Zhai knew his dad was hiding something from him.
“I just feel like . . . there’s something about them I should remember,” Zhai said.
Cheung looked at Zhai for a long moment and then gave what Zhai thought was a forced chuckle. “Forget them. They are not important.”
Cheung Shao went back to his desk. Zhai knew the conversation was over, but as he walked out of the office and down the hallway, he replayed it in his mind. Why had they called his father a slave? In his room, he closed the door and immediately sat down cross-legged on the rug near the window. Closing his eyes, he took seven deep, slow breaths and allowed himself to sink into meditation. If his father wouldn’t reveal the truth about those two mysterious men, perhaps Shen would.
Chapter Seven
Raphael stood with Aimee outside the entrance to the Middleburg High School gymnasium. There was yellow police tape blocking the doors. Above, the gray sky cast a dreary pallor over the world. He pulled a flashlight from his backpack.
“You all right?” he asked. “
You really don’t have to do this, you know.”
It was the third time he’d made that offer since she’d met him at the auto body shop, and each time she’d declined. When she asked him what he was planning to do today, he should have said something a little safer—folding laundry, maybe, or hanging out at Rack ’Em. But the truth was, he was planning to investigate the hole beneath the school, and as soon as he mentioned it to Aimee, she had insisted on coming, too.
“No—I’m going with you,” she said again, squeezing his hand. “I’m just wondering how we’re going to get in.”
He laughed. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
“About what?”
It was one of the reasons he loved her. She wasn’t all tough and edgy like the Flats girls. She was innocent. Soft. He leaned down and kissed her velvety cheek. “About what it’s like to be a Flat’s rat.”
He led her around to the back of the building to a little trailer that served as the janitor’s office, explaining that the first time he got detention at Middleburg High, he’d been assigned to help old Mr. Simmons mop the hallways. There was a row of potted plants along the front of the trailer, and Raphael went to the one on the far end. To her surprise, he pulled the fake plant out of its pot and withdrew the key hidden beneath it.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand and looked around to make sure they were alone. Then he led her back to the door to the janitor’s office, opened it, and reached inside for the master key that would unlock the gymnasium. “Old Sims keeps his key ring hanging right next to the door,” he explained.
When they were inside the school, Raphael switched on the flashlight, holding it low and keeping it pointed down until they got through the lobby and into the main arena. The gym was just as they’d left it last night. He guessed no one would clean it up until the police and school board and city fathers were done with their investigation into what had caused the cave-in. Raph wondered if his old nemesis Detective Zalewski would be on the case.
The hole was roped off, but he ducked under the police tape and held it up for Aimee. Together, they made their way around the rim of the crater to a spot where the rubble made a natural ramp to the bottom and carefully climbed down. They didn’t waste much time looking at what the cops had already trampled all over. It was a hole, nothing more, and all that was in it was dirt and clay and pebbles, and the collapsed cinderblock of the wall. But that wasn’t what interested Raphael. He shone the light around, and then down to the end, where the hole opened into a passageway.
“Look,” he said. “It’s dry, so it’s not a sewer or a storm drain. And the walls are just dirt. Someone dug a tunnel under here.”
“Why would they?”
“I don’t know—but I’d sure like to know where it leads. I mean, what if it isn’t only under the school? What if it’s under the whole town? Come on—let’s see how far it goes.”
Cautiously, they edged their way into the tunnel, and Raphael swept the flashlight beam from side to side. It was square, probably carved out by some tunnel-boring machine with cutter heads that could chew through rock and deposit the gravel directly into a holding bin. In the seventh grade, Raphael had done a report about Middleburg’s mining past, when that kind of machine was used. But this wasn’t some old abandoned mine shaft; it smelled of freshly dug earth.
The passage headed away from the gymnasium toward the main building. At first they saw rocky, soil walls shored up with logs, but soon the walls were sturdier, carved out of solid granite, the floor littered with loose gravel. In the beam of his flashlight they saw odd objects scattered here and there, probably dropped through carelessness, he thought. There was a shovel, a forgotten work light hanging from a bracket overhead, some cigarette butts, candy and sandwich wrappers and soda and beer cans. In some places the air was okay; in others, it reeked of stale tobacco and sweat.
Several minutes passed and he realized he and Aimee were no longer beneath Middleburg High. The tunnel stretched out before them as far as his light could reach. It was an amazing feeling—the two of them together in the dark, exploring. Scarred walls scrolled along on either side of them, but they didn’t pause to look. They kept on walking, holding hands, talking quietly. He had no sense of dread in this tunnel, as he’d had in the North Tunnel on Halloween night, just curiosity. But Aimee suddenly grew quiet.
“You okay?” he asked, stopping for a minute to put his arms around her. “You want to go back?”
“No. I’m good. It’s just that . . .”
She hesitated, a frown crossing her lovely face.
“What?” he said gently.
He waited, and after a moment she said, “I never told you about the night Tyler died.”
“No.”
“It was just outside the North tunnel,” she said quietly, her voice echoing eerily through the black catacomb. “The Middleburg Monster killed him. I . . . I saw it. That’s why everyone thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not. You probably think so, too. It does sound insane when I say it out loud, even to me.”
“Not to me. I saw it when I was looking for you and Oberon.”
“You did?” Aimee asked, clearly surprised. “You never told me that.”
He sighed as the reality of their situation hit him again. “It’s not like we’ve really been able to talk much, you know. But yeah—big, black, shadowy snake-worm-centipede thing with three-foot-long fangs?”
“Right, exactly!”
“Yeah. I hate that thing. I rode on its back and it almost ate me.”
“So . . . you don’t think I’m crazy?” Even in the darkness, Aimee’s eyes shone with a hopeful light.
“Only about me,” he said with a grin. Then he added more seriously, “I don’t think you’re crazy, Aimee. I never did.”
She moved into his arms and hugged him. “Thank you,” she whispered, her face pressed against his coat.
As he returned her embrace, his eyes traced vague outlines of the shadows around them; talking about the monster had put him on edge.
They kept on walking, moving from solid granite walls to log-reinforced dirt and rock and then sandstone, until Raphael estimated, from the direction they were travelling and the distance they’d gone, that they had probably passed Golden Avenue and were approaching the edge of town, near the locomotive graveyard.
Then, the tunnel they were in opened into a huge, dark, cavernous space. They both recognized it: the North Tunnel.
“This is so weird,” he whispered to himself. “What is it? What’s it for?”
“Do you want to keep going?” she asked tentatively, sounding a little afraid.
“No. Not today. Let’s get out of here.” He didn’t have to remind her what they’d gone through in the tunnels, not so long ago, when Oberon had dragged Aimee off into some strange, foreign world where he intended to keep her. Raph didn’t want to do that again.
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” he said. “Bring reinforcements and more flashlights.”
That’s when they heard it.
“Aimee . . .” Faintly. Whispering. And again, “Aimee. . .”
Aimee stopped walking. “Raphael—that’s my mom!”
Raphael froze in place too, listening. “Are you sure it’s her? You told me Oberon tricked you before, right?”
“But Oberon’s gone,” she said. “Why would I hear her voice if she’s not down here somewhere? You heard it, right?”
“I heard it. But—”
“Aimeeeee . . .” Plaintive. Sad.
“Raphael, we have to look.” Aimee’s eyes filled with emotion. “What if it is her? What if she’s down here?”
Raphael studied her for a moment. He would much rather come back tomorrow with lots of reinforcements, more flashlights, and a longer stretch of daylight ahead of them, but he knew Aimee was right. If there was even the slightest chance her mom was down there, the
y couldn’t just walk away and leave her.
“All right,” he said. “But stay behind me—and stay close.”
And he led the way forward. Ahead, somewhere in the dark, was the big X where the two railroad tracks crossed, and beneath it, the mysterious Wheel of Illusion.
“Mom?” Aimee called again.
Nothing.
But she had heard her mother’s voice in this tunnel, the same as she’d heard it before, when Oberon had abducted her.
And it was real.
Her mother was close.
She tried to clear her mind of everything else. She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating until she had a picture of her mom in her head, and then she held on to the image. She saw her mother as she’d looked when Aimee was getting on the plane to go to Montana, her face streaked with tears, waving goodbye. The vision made her heart ache, but she held on to it anyway.
“Mom?” she called hopefully. Nothing.
Together, she and Raphael pressed on.
“We’re close to the X where the tracks cross,” she said. “If we use the Wheel of Illusion, I know we can find her. She’s close—I can feel it.”
Already she could make out the faint amber glow that illuminated the Wheel’s control panel. In just minutes, they found it—the site of the old underground roundhouse where, back in the day, railroad workers could switch locomotives to pull a different load, or turn them around to go back the way they came. But this was no ordinary roundhouse, she knew. It was the Wheel of Illusion, a massive piece of ancient machinery filled with some mysterious power that allowed its user to travel through time. When she was last here, Raphael used the Wheel to bring her back from the terrifying jungle world Oberon had dragged her into. She could feel the wheel’s energy all around her now, throbbing, humming, singing through every cell of her body and making the little hairs on her arms stand on end.
Aimee put one hand on the control panel’s heavy, brass lever and looked back at Raphael. He groaned, and she could see the worry on his face.
“It might be dangerous, Aimee,” he said. “Look, I’ll go. You wait here and—”
GHOST CROWN: THE TRACKS TRILOGY - Book Two Page 12
