Lost Cipher

by Michael Oechsle

  The stew was as good as it smelled, and Lucas had already eaten half a bowl before the old man spoke again.

  “Your friend sleepin’?”

  “He probably is by now,” Lucas replied. “Had a lot rougher day than us.”

  “Yeah,” agreed George nervously. He pushed away from the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Uh, do you mind if I have seconds?”

  The man only shrugged and motioned with his spoon again. George headed for the pot on the stove, and the old man looked up at Lucas.

  “I’ll be needin’ all your names,” he said sternly.

  Lucas and George glanced quickly at each other, and the old man saw the suspicion in their eyes.

  “For when them camp people come lookin’ for you, which they hopefully will by mornin’,” he added grumpily. It was the first time the old man had even hinted at getting them back to Camp Kawani.

  “Well,” explained Lucas, “our friend’s name is Alex. Alex Cruz.”

  “George Funderburk,” answered George as he sat back down with his second bowl of stew.

  The old man looked at Lucas. “And you?” he asked.

  “Lucas Whitlatch, sir.”

  “Whiplash?”

  George chuckled under his breath, and the old man shot him an icy glare. “You pokin’ fun at my hearin’, boy?”

  George melted into his chair. “No, sir,” he stammered, “it’s just that I, uh, thought the same thing when I met him. You know, that Lucas’s name was Whiplash.”

  “It’s Whitlatch, sir,” interrupted Lucas. “Kind of a funny name.”

  He realized the old man had kept his own identity a secret, so he worked up the courage to ask.

  “We don’t know your name either. I mean, my grandma’s gonna want to know who found me.”

  “Yeah,” agreed George, “that, and we’re in your house and everything.”

  The old man cast a wary eye across the table, like he was deciding whether or not to trust the two strangers with even his name.

  “Gideon Creech,” he finally said, still staring. “Ol’ Giddy is what they call me in town. ’Cept that ‘giddy’ means crazy to them.” A grin broke across his face. “‘Nuttier than a squirrel turd, that Ol’ Giddy’ is what they’ll tell you.”

  George chuckled again and Creech shot him a look.

  “Well, thank you for helping us, Mr. Creech,” offered Lucas. “And for the food and all.”

  Creech shrugged. “I can’t have kids wanderin’ off and gettin’ killed on my land. A man can get into all sorts of trouble if a dead body or two turns up on his property.”

  The way he said it made Lucas think he was speaking from experience. He’d taken in a three lost kids, but that still didn’t mean he’d have any sympathy for grown-up treasure hunters. Creech’s talk of bodies made him think of the graves out back, including the one marked Morris. The name felt familiar.

  “I thought maybe your name was Morris,” Lucas said. “I saw it on one of the gravestones out there.”

  Creech furrowed his brow and quickly dropped his eyes back to his bowl. He took another spoonful of stew.

  The old man’s odd silence jarred the rest of the memory from Lucas’s head. Morris was the old innkeeper from the treasure story. Lucas knew it was a sore subject with the old man, but his curiosity got the best of him.

  “The counselors at the camp told us a story about a treasure around here, about some secret codes that an innkeeper kept for some explorer who disappeared out west. The innkeeper’s name was Morris too.”

  The man’s chair scraped back and he got up, acting like he hadn’t heard Lucas. He took his bowl to the stove and ladled it half-full again before he spoke.

  “That grave out there’s the innkeeper’s daughter, Annie. My grandmother with three greats. She spent the first eighteen years of her life in that inn. Wasn’t too far from here,” Creech said, “but it’s long gone now. ’Course that treasure story is just that,” he added. “A story. I hope them camp folks told you that part too.”

  “That’s what they said,” Lucas answered.

  “Well, that don’t seem to stop a lot of folks from wanderin’ into my hollow to look for it.” He set his bowl down in front of him and caught Lucas’s eye again. “Lookin’ for somethin’ that wouldn’t even belong to them in the first place, even if it did exist.”

  Lucas felt the old man’s words cutting through him, and he was happy when Creech changed the subject.

  “You say your name’s Whitlatch?”

  “Yes, sir.” Why are you asking?

  “Where you from, Lucas Whitlatch?”

  “West Virginia.”

  Creech didn’t reply, but he was paying attention, so Lucas went on.

  “My town is called Indian Hole. Not really a town. More like just a road that dead-ends up against a mountain. But it’s where all my kin is from, I guess.”

  Creech wiped the corner of his mouth with a knobby thumb. He pushed his bowl away and reached into his pocket, drawing out a pipe. From the same pocket, he retrieved a pouch of tobacco.

  “How’d you come to be in that camp?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, sir?” If Creech knew what the camp was about, he already knew why Lucas was there.

  “I mean, did you lose your pa or your ma?”

  “My pa, Mr. Creech.”

  “He a soldier?” Creech asked, packing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Lucas, a little surprised. “How did you know?”

  “Didn’t,” Creech said. “Just a lucky guess. Or more like unlucky for your pa, I reckon.”

  “I reckon too.” Lucas figured it was the closest thing to sympathy he’d get from the crusty old hermit.

  Creech struck a match and lit his pipe, sucking the flame down onto the tobacco. Once it was lit, a stream of blue smoke curled through the bristly white hair surrounding his lips. The smoke enveloped him, and he seemed to drift off in a daze, like he was thinking on something from another time.

  George caught Lucas’s eye and arched his eyebrows, a look that said, Now what?

  Lucas pushed his chair back. “Thanks for the stew, Mr. Creech.” He took his bowl and spoon to the sink and rinsed them. George took his cue and did the same.

  Creech stayed at the table, his pipe smoke drifting up into an old brass light hanging above him. Even when he spoke, he still had a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I’m goin’ to check on your friend’s snakebite one more time. There’s another room across from him. I expect we’ll have company by first light.”

  Lucas figured it was Gideon Creech’s way of saying good night.

  CHAPTER 24

  They found the bedroom down the hall and a lamp just inside. Compared to the fancy room where Alex was sleeping, this room was plain. Two narrow beds with simple, square headboards and a small dresser were pushed against the walls. On top of the dresser next to the lamp lay a dusty, old-fashioned baseball mitt that reminded Lucas of the players in baggy uniforms and tiny caps he’d seen in old pictures. The walls were empty except for a puny rack of deer antlers and a couple hooks that held an antique-looking BB gun. Lucas wondered if this had been Creech’s room when he was a boy. Like the bedroom across the parlor, it looked as if decades had passed since anyone had slept in it.

  “Better than a cave in the woods,” he whispered to George.

  “Maybe,” replied George, his eyes wide to let Lucas know he still saw Creech as a threat.

  Lucas sat down on the bed closest to the door and slipped off his boots. The room was musty and warm, so he got up and pried open the only window, pausing to breathe in the cool night air. Investigating another door, he found that it led out to a small porch at the corner of the house. He was exhausted, but the night outside felt better than the stuffy house, so he t
urned out the bedroom light to keep from attracting bugs and started out the door.

  George had already settled into his bed. “What are you doing?” he asked in a panicked whisper.

  “I can’t breathe in here,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t be out here long.” He left the door open a crack on his way out.

  He swatted the dust and old spiderwebs off a rusty chair and sat down. The crickets and katydids were roaring compared to the quiet of the old farmhouse, and fireflies flickered against the dark wall of the trees edging the meadow around the house. Above, in the last of the twilight, bats dove and spiraled, hunting bugs attracted to the dim light from the house. A breeze carried the damp scent of freshly mowed hay. In the distant valley west, the soft lights of other farms sparkled, and the sight of them reminded Lucas of how far he was from Indian Hole. Before long, his eyelids drooped and he nodded off to sleep.

  When he woke, there were more stars, and the moon had risen higher. He had slept for an hour, maybe longer. Groggily, he pulled himself to his feet and rolled his head on his shoulders to loosen the stiffness in his neck. The door to the bedroom was still cracked, and he stepped back inside. The room had cooled some, and George was snoring softly. Quietly, Lucas sat down on his bed, stripped off his dirty shirt, and lay back on his pillow.

  He had just drifted off again when the floor outside his door creaked.

  Careful not to stir the covers, Lucas lifted his head enough to see the shadow of a tall figure cast by the moonlight streaming into his room from the parlor.

  Creech was just outside the door, looking in and listening.

  Then the faintest of footsteps crossed the parlor, moving away. He heard a metallic click, and a soft-green light filled the crack of the bedroom door.

  Lucas slowly swung his legs to the floor and crept silently to the doorway, keeping his face back in the shadows as he peered out.

  The light came from a green-shaded lamp on top of a large, rolltop desk. Creech was hunched over the desk, the side of his wrinkled face glowing in the lamplight as he quietly worked a key into the lock for the desk top. He was moving slowly, glancing back at the bedrooms every so often. Whatever he was doing, he was trying hard to keep it a secret.

  Creech slid the desk top up inch by inch, then reached in with both hands to remove a small box. Its worn wood had a soft, antique glow, and a small, black padlock was hooked to the front. Creech left the top of the desk up and clicked off the lamp. He held the box closely to his chest with one hand and turned to go back upstairs. At Lucas’s door, he stopped again.

  For a moment, he stared directly into the shadows where Lucas was hidden. But then the old man was out of sight, his footsteps ascending the creaky staircase.

  Lucas crept closer to his door, enough to stick his head out and peek up the stairs. There was no sign of Creech, not even a light from upstairs.

  Scared as he was, Lucas couldn’t help wondering what else was hidden inside the old desk. Stepping as lightly as he could, he crept across the moonlit parlor.

  He didn’t dare turn on the light, but even without it, he could make out the dusty surface of the desk. There was a dark rectangular imprint left behind by the old box Creech had just removed, as if the box had been there a long time.

  A book lay next to the outline of the missing box. It was small and thin with a handwritten title scrawled on a primitive cover made from some kind of smooth bark and bound with a tattered red ribbon. The book looked like something out of a museum.

  Without disturbing the dust, Lucas gingerly picked up the book and moved over to a moonlit window to read the title.

  Blue Ridge Verses. By Annie Morris.

  A book by the old man’s ancestor, the same one buried outside.

  Lucas opened the book to the first page and saw that the handwritten words were a poem titled Leaves.

  Turning more pages, he found that each held a different poem, all in the same fancy cursive. The edges of each page were brown and brittle, and he had to be careful not to tear them from the ribbon holding them between the covers.

  He noted a few of the poems’ titles and read some of their first lines. Most had to do with the mountains or the forest, though a couple were more like love poems. Lucas imagined a teenaged girl growing up in the shadow of the mountains, wandering the same waterfall-laced hollows and rocky peaks the three of them had struggled through the last two days.

  But their experience had been an ordeal. Annie Morris’s words described her mountain world as a paradise—just like Lucas’s was to him.

  Suddenly the ceiling creaked, and the sound of footsteps crossed toward the top of the stairs.

  Creech was coming back.

  Lucas closed the book and moved quickly away from the window. He was still holding it delicately, trying not to disturb the dust on its cover, and when he stepped toward the desk, he lost his grip. The book fell from his hands. Its pages fluttered, and Lucas knew Creech would hear it hit the floor. He shot his hand out blindly, barely snagging the old book by one cover.

  Frantically, Lucas placed the book back in its spot on the desk. By now, Creech was at the top of the stairs, where he’d surely see Lucas run for the bedroom. Lucas looked around the parlor in a panic. He scurried to the one corner that lay in the shadows and put his back to the wall just as Creech’s legs appeared on the staircase.

  Creech crept down the stairs with the old box in his hand. He glanced once at Lucas’s room, then walked silently back to the desk. For a terrifying moment, Lucas expected him to turn on the lamp again. Instead, he placed the box next to the book and began to close the desk.

  Then Creech stopped.

  He leaned in closer and touched the book’s cover. Quietly, he picked it up and moved to stand by the same moonlit window where Lucas had been just moments before.

  Lucas’s heart hammered in his chest as Creech examined the book. Surely, he’d left fingerprints or knocked the dust off when he’d caught it. Creech would know he’d held it just minutes ago. And the old man would find him, hiding like a thief.

  But Creech moved out of the light and set the book back in place. He closed the desk and locked it, not quite as concerned about keeping quiet now. He dropped the desk key in his shirt pocket and started for the stairs.

  When he reached the door to Lucas’s room, he stopped to look in again.

  Across the parlor in the shadows, Lucas could see George’s bed illuminated by the moonlight from the parlor, but his own empty bed was out of sight, hidden in darkness behind the door. He watched as Creech lightly placed his hand on the door and began to slowly push it open, trying to peer deeper inside. What would Creech do to him when he caught him snooping around?

  Just then, George’s rhythmic snoring erupted into a single mighty snort that seemed to rattle the entire house.

  Creech and Lucas both nearly jumped out of their skin.

  It took Creech a few seconds to recover from the scare, but George’s snoring seemed to satisfy him that both boys were asleep, and he backed away from the door. Casting a final glance toward the desk, the old man disappeared up the dim staircase.

  Lucas let out his breath, but he waited until Creech’s steps crossed the ceiling above him before tiptoeing back across the parlor. As he passed the old desk, the curtains fluttered and the breeze blew something bright across the floor at his feet.

  A piece of paper.

  Lucas reached for it, and when he touched its brittle edges, he knew what it was.

  One of the poems. It had come loose when he’d dropped the book.

  He started to slip it under the locked top of the desk but stopped. If the old man opened the desk in the morning, he’d know someone had been in it. There was no way he could get the page back into the book, not without telling Creech, and he wasn’t about to do that. Not without being a long way from Moccasin Hollow first.

 
Careful not to tear the paper, Lucas folded the page and put it delicately into his pocket. He slipped back into the bedroom without moving the door and climbed into bed. After thinking on it for a few minutes, he decided he’d explain the page to Maggie and hope she wasn’t too afraid to return it to Moccasin Hollow for him.

  Once Lucas’s heart finally stopped racing, it didn’t take long for his exhausted body to give in. He fell asleep wondering about the box in the desk and why the old man was so bent on sneaking it to his room in the middle of the night.

  CHAPTER 25

  The room was already bright when Lucas woke.

  George was watching him. “Jeez, Lucas, I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up. He’s cooking breakfast in there, but you gotta go in with me.”

  Lucas started to tell George about Creech’s mysterious retrieval of the old box, but a faint thumping noise interrupted him. George noticed him listening, and they both deciphered the noise at the same time.

  Helicopter. Getting closer.

  It sounded like it was coming down the side of the mountain straight toward Creech’s farmhouse.

  Lucas threw back the covers, and both boys dashed out into the parlor and through the kitchen, following the roar of the chopper out onto the back porch. Creech was already there, waving his arms over his head to signal the pilot, though he didn’t need to. The blue-and-white helicopter hovered down over the massive oak tree in the backyard. “Virginia State Police” was painted in large blue letters beneath the pilot’s window. The downdraft from the whirling blades sent a shower of leaves and grass swirling around the backyard. Over the noise of the chopper, Lucas heard Creech cursing.

  Suddenly a voice boomed down at them. “If you are Alex Cruz, George Funderburk, or Lucas Whitlatch, cross your arms above your head!”