“What’s the matter with you?” Joe asked.
“Nothing,” Frank mumbled. “Except I got attacked by a snake or something.”
Joe laughed.
“It’s not funny!” Frank grated.
As they got closer to the old house, there was a tremendous crack and a dark tree branch fell straight at Joe. Frank had no time to warn him. Instead, he knocked his brother down with a football block to get him out of the way. The branch was almost a foot in diameter and Joe shivered once he had recovered from his shock.
“That thing could’ve killed me!” he said hoarsely.
“You want to go back?” Frank asked.
“N-no! There’s the house up ahead.”
It was not much of a house anymore. The original walls were still there, but the roof was almost gone. Much of the floor had been torn up and the cellar was filled with broken boards and scattered debris.
“Not where you think it be, but up the hill and down,” Frank recited from memory, looking around the terrain. It was mostly flat and they already had climbed a little hill to get there.
“Down which way?” Joe asked.
“I suppose we have to go to the back of the house and see what we find.”
Behind the building, indeed, the ground sloped down. But to what?
“The roots sink deep, and Simbu will not sleep,” Joe intoned. “What roots? I can’t even see any big trees anywhere around here.”
“Maybe it refers to a root cellar!” Frank said suddenly. “They were common in those days. People stored their vegetables in them before they had refrigeration.”
“Good idea,” Joe admitted. “Now, where would that root cellar be?”
“We’ll have to hop up and down all over that little hill and see if we hear a hollow sound,” Frank said. “Come on!”
The boys slipped and slid around in the mud for the better part of an hour when Joe suddenly stopped. “I think I heard a hollow echo around here,” he said. “Let’s start digging.”
For the next half-hour the young detectives kept excavating the dirt until they hit wood. Straining hard, they managed to rip off the half-rotted boards and shone their lights into a dark pit. It was about twelve feet deep and completely empty!
Joe groaned. “All this work for nothing!” he complained.
“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “If the old man went to this much trouble, there must be more to it. Maybe the gold was buried under the floor of the root cellar.”
The boys hooked up the rope from Joe’s tool kit, slid down the twelve feet and began prodding the floor. It didn’t take long to find that same hollow sound again. But as they were tearing up the planking over the chamber, the rain began pouring into the root cellar. To make matters worse, the boys found that a groove in the ground that collected water ran down the hill right over the root cellar.
Soon they stood ankle-deep in water and it was climbing.
“We’ll probably drown,” Joe said darkly. “Maybe we should heed the fortune-teller’s warning!”
“You really want to quit now?” Frank asked.
“I suppose not,” the younger Hardy replied and tore away another board. Now they could see a small tunnel underneath, less than five feet high. It led up into the side of the hill, away from the flood.
“The old man designed this well,” Frank said. “Look, it’s nice and dry.”
The boys lowered themselves into the tunnel and followed it to a turn about ten feet to the left. Slowly they crawled around the corner, when they suddenly heard a loud crash!
A bolt of thunder hit exactly at the moment when they came face-to-face with Simbu. They stared at the little figure that sat atop an iron box. Was the gold inside the box?
“Shall we defy Simbu’s curse and look?” Frank whispered.
“I—don’t know,” Joe breathed.
The more they stared at Simbu’s evil little face, the more they hesitated to touch him. At last Frank addressed the ancient guardian. “Simbu, we’re not going to hurt you. And we’re not going to steal your gold. We just want to see if it’s there.”
Then he moved the figure and tried to open the box. However, the locks, despite the years underground, were still strong, and they had no tools that could have broken them.
“Now what’ll we do?” Joe asked. “We could take Simbu—”
Another terrible crash of thunder interrupted him.
“The water’ll build up in the root cellar,” Frank warned. “We’d better get out of here. We can always come back tomorrow.”
“You’re right,” Joe said. He was relieved that Simbu and the gold would stay for the time being.
The boys scrambled back down the passageway and hoisted themselves up into the root cellar. With some difficulty they made their way through the rushing water to their rope and climbed out into the raging storm.
“We’d better divert the water from going into the pit or else it’ll be a pool in the morning,” Frank suggested.
Quickly the Hardys dug a shallow ditch around the opening to the root cellar, then replaced the planks, tamped down the earth and sod, and left.
They returned to their bikes and drove to the hotel, where they managed to get into the parking lot without being observed. At least, they did not see Button’s white Mercedes anywhere.
An hour later, they had an unexpected telephone call from Bayport. Their mother had been taken to the hospital for emergency surgery. Mr. Hardy, who had stopped off in New York, could not be reached for another twenty-four hours, since he was out on Long Island on a stakeout involving boats. So Frank and Joe had to go home fast.
“I suppose we have to postpone our date with Simbu and make arrangements with the hotel to store our bikes,” Frank said. “And I’ll call the airport right away to book us a flight home.”
The following morning, the white Mercedes followed the boys to the airport. “I bet Buffon is real surprised to see us leave,” Joe declared.
“I bet he is,” Frank agreed. “I hope he doesn’t decide to follow us to Bayport, though.”
As it turned out, Buffon stayed behind. A month later, Frank and Joe were sitting in front of the fireplace with their friends Tony Prito and Chet Morton, whom they had just told the story.
“So what happened after your mom got out of the hospital?” Chet demanded. “Did you go back to retrieve the gold?”
“We did,” Joe said, “but we were too late.”
“What do you mean?” Tony asked. “Did someone else get to your friend Simbu first?”
“No. But when we arrived, the highway people had used that heavy construction equipment we had seen that night to build an expressway linking Route three-eighty to an interstate highway. The old man’s property had been transformed into six lanes of brand-new concrete!”
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FLAMING ROCK
Frank and Joe Hardy were driving toward Los Angeles.
“You know,” Joe said suddenly to his brother, “we’re not far from Flaming Rock.”
“Flaming Rock?” Frank asked, puzzled.
“Remember the article we read some time ago about the town that just vanished one day?”
“Oh, yes!” Frank exclaimed. “It was built around a silver mine, in the mountains, a couple of hundred miles from any settled community.”
“Right. The mine was discovered during the Civil War and the heyday of Flaming Rock was between 1863 and 1875. Then the town began to disappear in stages.”
“I remember,” Frank said. “First the people vanished. A prospector, half-mad from hunger and thirst, staggered into Tucson and reported that he had passed through Flaming Rock and found all the people gone.”
“It wasn’t that they had packed up and moved out in an orderly manner.” Joe took up the story. “They left everything behind. Furniture and clothing remained in the houses. Food on stoves was still warm when the prospector arrived. Everything was as it should have been, except there was no sign of life.”
“No one paid a
ttention to the prospector’s story,” Frank said. “They figured he had been driven crazy by the sun and the loneliness. But didn’t a reporter eventually go to Flaming Rock?”
“That’s right. A newspaper editor sent his son and a group of men to look for the people. They also had terrible luck with the town. They started out rather late in the season and got trapped by early-winter snows. So they had to go home. When they tried again in the spring, they not only failed to find the people of Flaming Rock, they couldn’t even find the town!”
“An entire community had vanished from the face of the earth,” Frank said.
“Now people began to take the story seriously,” Joe went on. “Various theories developed. Indian haters claimed that Flaming Rock had been destroyed by the Indians, and that everyone had been massacred or carried off into captivity. Trouble with that theory was that the Indians in that area had never been involved in much warfare with their white neighbors. Such a ferocious attack followed by the complete destruction of the town was not characteristic of the natives at all.”
“I seem to recall that other rumors were circulated,” Frank said. “Some people said the plague had struck Flaming Rock and the few survivors had buried the dead, then burned and leveled the town in order to keep the epidemic from spreading.”
“Yes, except such an occurrence would have been reported somewhere,” Joe said. “Nothing like that happened. “It was also suggested that the people of Flaming Rock were moved away by the government because of some secret project. But no secret project ever came to light.”
“The world was left with the mystery of Flaming Rock until the town popped up again in the early years of this century,” Frank said. “At that point, two people, unknown to each other, reported stumbling upon it. They told almost identical stories. They had seen the town at night. First they had noticed a light, fairly high in the air, swinging. When they followed it, they found it was in the tower of the Flaming Rock Hotel!”
“Just thinking about that spooky story gives me the chills,” Joe said.
Frank nodded. “Remember, when those two guys went into the houses, they discovered everything to be exactly the way the old crazy prospector had described it. Food on the stoves, still warm. Homes that looked like people had left but a few minutes before. But no living creature in sight, not even a dog or a desert scorpion. It was a dead village.”
“And then these witnesses disappeared less than a month later under mysterious circumstances,” Joe added. “No one ever has reported seeing Flaming Rock since then.”
Frank had slowed the car down. Suddenly both boys looked at each other.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Frank asked his younger brother.
Joe nodded his blond head and grinned. “You bet! We’re not far from the place. Let’s check it out!”
The boys turned off the highway onto a feeder road, and after about thirty miles they took a dirt road that climbed straight up into the mountains.
It was a bouncy ride. “This is nothing but a pair of mismatched ruts in the earth,” Joe complained. “I bet the last vehicle to travel this way was a Conestoga covered wagon drawn by the strongest oxen in the world!”
Frank chuckled. “Good thing we rented a four-wheel-drive car and have all our camping gear plus plenty of food and water. This is going to be quite an excursion!”
Suddenly Joe groaned. “It’s starting to rain!” he exclaimed. “You know what that means. The earth is so dry and packed that it doesn’t absorb water easily. Pretty soon we’ll have roaring rivers of flood water coming down these mountains.”
He knew from experience that in that part of the world it only rained a few times a year, and when it did, it often turned into a cloudburst that resulted in floods.
Already the boys noticed animals rushing for higher ground. Deer, skunks, and other furry creatures were moving out of the water’s path. The road quickly turned into twin streams following the ruts.
The car’s windshield wipers were working furiously but could hardly keep up with the drenching downpour. Frank was squinting, trying to see through the sheets of water that pounded them. Suddenly, as they came atop a rocky rise, he stepped on the brakes in surprise.
“Joe! There’s a light up ahead!” he cried out.
“It—it’s swinging!” Joe said hoarsely. “Just as those people described it.”
“And after telling their story, they disappeared and were never heard of again,” Frank added. He had stopped the car and the boys stared into the distance.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Joe said. “We don’t know what that light up ahead is and whether it’s even near Flaming Rock. Let’s just keep our wits together, shall we?”
Frank chuckled dryly and accelerated again. “Right.”
But soon he jumped on the brakes once more. “Joe—take a look at that sign!” he gulped.
In the beam of the headlights, the boys stared at a battered piece of wood with words carved into it. It read “Flaming Rock, Ariz.—Pop. 434.”
“Four hundred and thirty-four men, women, and children, and all of them have disappeared,” Joe said.
“Maybe we’ll find them,” Frank tried to joke. “I wonder what they’d look like after all those years.”
“Well,” Joe said, “now that we’re here we can’t back out. Let’s investigate the swinging light.”
The rain had died down a little and so had the wind. Frank and Joe took their flashlights out of the glove compartment and left the car. In the drizzle they soon saw the outlines of buildings.
“There it is, the town of Flaming Rock,” Frank said as he beamed his light around.
“I see the hotel with the tower,” Joe said. “And the light is still swinging.”
“We’ll have to climb up to see if someone’s doing it,” Frank said bravely.
The young detectives walked up to the hotel porch and entered the lobby. Without stopping to look around, they took two steps at a time to the second floor and then to the roof. They passed no one on the way.
When they arrived, the lantern swinger, if he had ever existed, was gone. The lantern was there, but the light was out.
Frank touched the glass. “It’s still hot!” he cried out.
Chills went down the boys’ spines. “Now what?” Joe asked.
“We’ll go down again and look for the person who swung this lantern,” Frank said with determination. “He or she has to be somewhere.”
The Hardys retraced their steps and searched the hotel, calling out as they went. But there was no answer. And just like the prospector who had been there before them, they found everything in place. Clothes hung in some of the rooms. Beds were covered with clean sheets. In the kitchen, food was still cooking and bubbling on stoves with fires burning!
Frank and Joe looked at each other in disbelief. Too shaken to speak, they walked through the hotel lobby and saw a cigar butt smoldering in an ashtray.
Suddenly they heard a strange noise.
Quack, quack, quack! A child’s wind-up toy duck waddled out from under a curtain, walked across the floor, and then fell on its side as it bumped against Joe’s shoe.
The boy bent down to pick it up. But he couldn’t wind it again because the key was missing. Slowly he set it on the floor again, his hand shaking.
“Frank, there were people here,” he whispered. “Living human beings who breathed and laughed and argued were here all around us. Where are they now?”
Frank shrugged helplessly. “Maybe we’ll find the answer if we go on searching for it,” he declared.
So the boys continued to explore. At the back door, leading into the hotel kitchen, were muddy footprints just like the ones the boys had made when they walked into the lobby.
“Bigfoot was here,” Joe said, trying to shake the eerie mood that threatened to stifle them.
“He’s supposed to have big feet.” Frank grinned. “These are regular size, almost like ours.”
The boys went through the res
t of the hotel and found more evidence of recent life, but no human being was anywhere to be seen.
Finally they stepped out into the dark again.
Frank beamed his flashlight around. “There are kerosene lamps in front of some of the houses,” he noted. “Let’s light them. At least we’ll be able to see.”
“Good idea,” Joe said, and the boys proceeded with their task. It proved easy enough since most of the lamps were still full of fuel.
The rain had stopped and a rather sickly looking moon appeared behind a cloud. Yet the erratic desert weather continued to treat the visitors to an occasional lightning flash and a great rumble of thunder, as if to say, “We’re not through with you yet, so don’t relax!”
The boys approached the church, which was just two doors down from the hotel. It was a simple, rectangular building on top of which the town’s carpenters had built a narrow steeple. When the two entered the church, the bell began ringing, sending its ghostly sound vibrating through the night. Terrified, the boys jumped back, and looked at the steeple.
“I don’t believe it!” Joe cried out.
“Someone must be pulling the cord!” Frank said. “There’s hardly any wind now and it can’t move by itself!”
Frank and Joe ran into the church and climbed to the little belfrey. The bell stopped ringing just before they reached it.
Joe pulled the cord. The bell barely moved.
When the boys descended the stairs again, another noise made them jump. A door slammed in the rear.
“It could have b-been the wind,” Joe stammered.
“As I said before, there hardly is any,” Frank pointed out. They continued on to the back door and saw something that chilled them all over again. An arrow was embedded in the wood!
Both boys recalled the legend that Flaming Rock had been wiped out in an Indian attack and stood frozen to the spot.
“Do—do you suppose it’s a warning?” Joe muttered.
Ghost Stories Page 4
