The Downward Spiral

by Ridley Pearson

  “Our family Bible,” James blurted out. The Bible had been stolen at the start of the school year. No wonder Crudgeon had thrown a fit when it went missing. Not Father’s journal? James wondered.

  “It could be anything. A bank box. It could be hidden somewhere. There would be valuables as well.”

  “Treasure, you said.” James thought of the Cape house, the basement of the Beacon Hill house. He thought of all the trips Father had taken—solo trips lasting weeks. It might be in Hong Kong, where the family fortune had begun.

  “Anything is possible,” said Espiranzo. “I meant it only in the broadest terms.”

  “Moria’s safe.” James made it a statement.

  “There is no reason to think otherwise,” Espiranzo said. “I knew your father, of course. I had the honor of . . . providing my services for him over the past several years. I’ve watched you grow up. It is my honor and pleasure to serve you as well.”

  James twitched with the thought he’d been under surveillance for years without knowing it, without Father saying a thing.

  His throat tight, unable to speak, James nodded at the shape of the man before him, wondering, not for the first time, what he’d been born into.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE FOLLOWING DAY AFTER CLASSES, I WAS TOLD a boy was waiting for me in the Bricks Middle 2 lounge. It was the only place boys were allowed to visit us.

  The furniture was dentist-office modern, the decor a result of a dozen eighth-grade girls trying to give personality to a lifeless space. Throw pillows had been added, mostly of Disney characters. A fake plant. A real cactus. Some artwork on the walls that might have been better left in closets. The artistic Ruby Berliner had hung a string of prisms in one of the three windows, which flashed, winked, and occasionally threw rainbows about the room. Mrs. Tiddly, an assistant coach, currently occupied the dorm proctor’s chair, duchess of the grand desk, commander of the computer, sultana of the schedule.

  The boy turned out to be Sherlock, not my brother, which was fine with me. Lock and I spoke quietly, though not in whispers, as that would result in curiosity and condemnation from the desk.

  “July third, 1811,” he said. “The first successful expedition into eastern Asia by James Wilford. Two years later he formed the Wilford and Stiles Company, though the sign they hung out read with that earlier date. It’s all in Wiki. It also says that Wilford’s ancestors were rumored to have been pirates in and around Hong Kong for decades before that. He was slandered in the London papers at the time of his forming the company, but that’s all it said.”

  “You see? You now know more about my family than I do.”

  “It’s nothing to be proud of, your not knowing.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “I tried to use those numbers as a cipher—”

  “You went back into the computer center?”

  “Of course! We’re conducting an investigation here, Moria! The game’s afoot!”

  “Whatever that means!” I said.

  “It means what it says it means. Game on!”

  “It’s not a game. It’s my father’s death.”

  “I know.” He placed his hand sympathetically on my knee. Mrs. Tiddly clucked loudly. The hand came off my knee. “And I aim to help determine the cause of it, as requested. Sadly, the date of the founding of your family company was not the key to the Bible.”

  “If there is a key to the Bible,” I said.

  Sherlock raised his hand to fend off the prism light orbiting the room. It was partly my fault, because as I’d entered, upon seeing Sherlock, I’d nervously stirred the prisms. They were still spinning and moving slowly in the light. One fell across a photo of a lioness and her kitten.

  Sherlock stood and leaned over me awkwardly, studying the colorful light as it played out onto the photo. He put his tummy in my face, forcing me to scramble to the side of the couch. “Get off me!”

  Another clucking sound from Mrs. Tiddly.

  One of Sherlock’s more annoying personality quirks—and there were many—was his utter silence after questions were asked. He could focus to the point of exclusion of all stimuli around him. At times, admirable. At others, like now, maddening.

  He looked back and forth between the crystal in the window and the light on the photo.

  “Have you never seen a prism before?” I asked him. “You look like my friend’s cat.”

  He collapsed onto the couch alongside of me with a kind of splash. He broke the rule of no whispering. “I know what it is!” he announced, his conceit apparent. “I know what we’re looking for!”

  “Shh.”

  “It was right there, Moria! Right there for the seeing!”

  “Well? Are you going to tell me?” I asked in a hush.

  “The illustration in the Bible of James Wilford showed him holding a cross. Remember?”

  “Of course.”

  He closed his eyes. I somehow knew he was imagining the painting, so I shut mine as well. We must have looked pathetic to Mrs. Tiddly.

  “Sunlight streams in from the right,” he said.

  “Yes.” I could see it now. I was practically in the room with James Ashlyn Wilford.

  “It catches the cross and bursts into . . .”

  I thought he was trying to see it clearly in his mental image when in fact he was waiting for me to finish the sentence. I peeked out of one eye. His remained closed. I shut mine quickly and said, “colors.” Hearing myself say it, I understood immediately. “Rainbows! Rainbows of color!”

  When I opened my eyes he was looking at me intensely. “Correct. Rainbows of color. Brilliant color. As in?”

  “A prism,” I said.

  “I’m betting there’s a jewel attached to the bottom of the cross we can’t see. Where is the rainbow of light aimed? In the painting, where is it aimed?” He seemed agitated again, rushed and in a hurry.

  “Onto the book in his lap.”

  “The Bible in his lap. Yes! You see?”

  “Our family Bible.”

  “Precisely. The painting in the book is a message to all generations for how to decode your family Bible. All that’s missing . . .”

  “Is the necklace with the cross,” I said. “But I’ve never seen it. If it was going to show up anywhere, wouldn’t it have been in the hidden space in Father’s desk?”

  “I told you before, Moria. We need to find the extra room in your house. The room we can’t account for in the measurements.”

  “We don’t know there’s any such room, Lock. The extra square feet could just be the chimney or something.” I’d been struggling with the idea of Father keeping so many secrets, our family’s legacy dating back to James Ashlyn Wilford, my brother being initiated into a strange society. I was resisting instead of allowing the truth. It was unfair to Sherlock and everything he believed in. “The evidence,” I said, trying to sound strong. “We need to follow the evidence.”

  “Just so!” Sherlock said. “First things first: once they open up weekend passes, you need to invite me to visit you in Boston.”

  CHAPTER 21

  JAMES WALKED LEXIE CARLISLE BACK TO THE Bricks—the long line of four consecutive brick dormitories attached one to the other like giant railroad cars—after every dinner that week. It was the talk of the third form—the freshman class—as well as my own. I was asked about it, teased about it, and told about it by most of the girls in my dorm. “Lexie, of all girls!” “Do you think it’s a dare?” “Has your brother gone deaf and blind?” There was no end to the cruelty of eighth-grade girls.

  On Wednesday, he took her on a detour into the chapel, where the magic of the stained-glass windows, lit by outdoor path lighting, colored the darkened walls.

  “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never been here at night. Not in the dark, at least.”

  “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Stunning.”

  “Like you,” he said, touching her hand. The chapel pews faced inward toward the center aisle, not forward as in most
churches. The benches were two-hundred-year-old dark wood with no pillows or padding. Kneeling steps folded down from the railing in front of each one. James played with the step with his foot, opening and closing it nervously. The sound of it echoed throughout.

  “You don’t think that, and we both know it, James Moriarty. So why do you say it? Why tease me like that?”

  “Way to kill the moment.”

  “There is no moment. That’s just it. You’re feeding me lines and I don’t know why.”

  “They’re not lines. Forget I said anything,” James said.

  “Don’t be like that,” Lexie said. “Of course I won’t forget. That’s the point, James. I won’t forget! So if you’re being cruel, if this is some kind of game to you, I’m asking you to stop. I’ve enjoyed your attention. Your company. Our talking. I really have. But it’s got to stop or you’re going to hurt me horribly.”

  James placed his hand between her hair and the back of her neck. He gave her a moment to pull away, to object. When she did not, he leaned in ever so slowly and kissed her gently on the lips. Quickly, and a bit awkwardly. Letting go, leaning away, it was difficult to tell if the red on his face was a blush or something from one of the windows.

  “Why don’t we go sailing?” he said. “The two of us.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Am I being rude, inviting myself? If I am, please don’t take it that way. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not being rude.”

  “Obviously, I’ll stay at my house, but we can still maybe go to a movie or something, along with the sailing, of course!”

  Lexie was tongue-tied.

  “If you want to do something like a movie,” James said. “No pressure.”

  “Of course I do! I’ll check with my mom! Leave here Friday or Saturday?”

  “After basketball. I can arrange for our driver to take us.”

  Lexie just stared.

  “You’ll check?”

  “I’ll call right away. I’ll call tonight!” Her eyes flashed excitedly in the blending colors.

  “You really are pretty,” James said. “I meant it.”

  She craned forward like a bird and pecked him on the cheek. “Get moving! I want to call my parents before curfew!”

  Lexie pushed him off the pew, the two of them laughing like preschoolers.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE THIRD WEEKEND OF WINTER SESSION, THE last weekend of January, was the first weekend students were allowed to leave campus.

  Sherlock’s ugly bruises had mostly healed. The three stitches had been removed and his sling discarded. He’d been rude to teachers and classmates alike, requiring a visit to Headmaster Crudgeon’s office. Sherlock had appealed for permission to leave campus over the weekend, but could feel Crudgeon resisting the idea.

  “We are all worried about you, Mr. Holmes.”

  “I can’t help that, nor will I try to. I’m British. We can handle a good thrashing, believe me. Why is it you don’t want me visiting the Moriartys, Headmaster?” Sherlock’s lack of filters surfaced at the most inappropriate times.

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “So,” Sherlock said, “if I was requesting a weekend in Hartford, you would have the same concerns?”

  “Of course I would! Be careful, young man, you’re treading on thin ice.”

  “I expect more of you than clichés,” Sherlock said.

  “Do not consider yourself my equal, Mr. Holmes. It would prove a grave mistake.”

  “Oh, I do not. Believe me.” Sherlock’s unflinching resolve put a magnetic charge between the two men. North and south. Repulsing.

  “The change of location will do me good,” Sherlock continued. “A walk along the Charles. The cinema. A museum or two. What could be better for the soul?”

  “Supervision is my concern. You’re in a fragile state whether you recognize it or not.”

  “Not.”

  “You see? All the more reason to keep an eye on you.”

  “To what end? Am I a bit low? I am. But not emotionally, Headmaster. Physically. I have hurt for the past few weeks. Physically hurt! As you may know, some teeth were loosened. It made it difficult to talk for some time. I’m better now. Improving. I get along splendidly with Moria. We’re chums. Good chums, at that. I’m told Miss Delphine’s cooking is ‘to die for’—an expression I loathe, let it be known, but just the same, it would be a welcome change to this slop.”

  “Be careful, Mr. Holmes.”

  “The choice is yours, sir. Of that, we are both aware. Moria offered, and I accepted. The poor girl has lost her father. At the very least, can’t we allow her a chum to brighten up a weekend?”

  James informed me—he did not ask—that since Ralph was coming to fetch me and Sherlock that he and Lexie Carlisle would be riding with us and that we’d have to wait until after basketball practice. He also told me that he would ride in the front seat with Ralph and that our guests deserved both windows, so I was to ride in the middle. I had learned to pick my battles with James. This one, I let slide.

  Ralph picked us up from school in the same big black car I had once loved but had since come to think of as Father’s car, a remembrance that made me sad. The evening was frightfully cold, the roads slick, and the going slow.

  Ralph stayed out of our four-way conversation. James talked over the seat to Lexie while Sherlock and I said a few words to each other. Lexie was kind enough to try to include me in the conversation but James just as quickly steered things to a topic familiar only to freshmen. In short: my older brother was being a jerk.

  James had always seen the worst first. Once into his teens he’d complained even more, seeing the bad in everything. He could pick at any topic like it was a scab, scratch until those around him could no longer ignore it.

  I didn’t like being reminded of my (few and small) imperfections, but I could tolerate it. It was his complaints about others I found disturbing—his withering criticism of every meal, television show, and film; the personal attacks on people he barely knew. The one benefit to me was that my brother, by being such an intolerable and insufferable critic, helped me to see that perfection was not worth striving for. It didn’t exist; there would always be a James out there to remind me of my flaws. My strategy, my goal, became to manage my shortcomings, ticks, and abnormalities. To work for a balance and avoid extremes. I began to appreciate my friends as much for what they weren’t as for what they were.

  Prior to Baskerville, living with James had been like living on a volcanic island with smoke and steam and lava threatening to blow. Since the initiation, if anything, he’d only gotten worse.

  “So, sailing, huh?” I said into the car.

  “Yes,” Lexie said.

  James glowered at me, wanting me to keep my nose out of it.

  Sherlock came out of his trance. “I’ve never been.”

  “Oh! You must come sometime,” Lexie said.

  “Yes!” I agreed.

  James went even more sour toward me, if that were possible.

  “Winter sailing,” Lexie said. “Not that I’d recommend it as a first try!”

  “Scary,” I said. I heard the next words coming out of my mouth before I understood my motivation behind them. I suppose I felt pushed to the side and diminished, so I was trying to prove myself. “James met up with a winter sailor the morning we were heading back from Christmas break on the Cape.”

  No matter my motivation, I reveled in seeing his reaction. I might as well have thrown him out of the car or punched him squarely in the nose.

  With the knife in, why not twist it? I wondered. “You took the whaler out to a sloop on the morning we left the Cape house, James. Remember? Who was that you were visiting? A girlfriend?” Seeing a speechless James Moriarty was as rare as catching sight of an Attwater’s prairie chicken.

  Lexie looked surprised as well.

  Ralph broke the tension by offering to stop for French fries, as long as we wouldn’t let it wreck our appetites. W
e voted unanimously in favor.

  James bumped me with his shoulder on the way into the fast-food place. Lexie and I used the washroom. When we were at the sinks she spoke to me in the mirror.

  “James seemed upset about that.”

  I didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. “He didn’t know I knew. Brothers.”

  “Why was he so mad about it?”

  “Brothers,” I repeated.

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  And now I knew the source of her anguish.

  I laughed and left that as my answer.

  “No one?” she asked.

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Truthfully, I didn’t think he knew girls existed. Lord knows he’s never treated me like one.”

  She laughed. She had a deep, full-throated laugh that made me like her right away. The way a person laughed told me a lot about them.

  “Are you and him . . . ?” I said.

  “Us? No!!” But her eyes told me otherwise.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Don’t tell him! Please!” She looked terrified.

  “Of course not! Besides, he won’t speak to me for another few years at this point.”

  “The sailboat thing?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why’s he so weird about it?” Lexie asked.

  I arched my eyebrows. That was as much as I’d give her.

  The car’s backseat windows fogged. Our fries, I suppose. Or our body heat from the tension that hung in the air along with the smell of catsup.

  A gloom filled the car. Ralph fiddled with the defrost. James scribbled into a small notebook, the kind with a black elastic band around it. It wasn’t his diary. Not the one I knew of. This was a new notebook. One he kept on his person at all times. Hid on his person at all times.

  A notebook I was suddenly desperate to read.

  CHAPTER 23

  LEXIE CARLISLE LIVED ON AN EXCLUSIVE PENINSULA at the end of a half-mile-long causeway for residents only. The home, one of maybe a hundred on the peninsula, was roughly the size of an airport terminal, with its own dock where an eighty-foot yacht was tied up to one side, and a forty-eight-foot schooner to the other. At the end of the dock, a boathouse, bigger than most homes, accommodated smaller sailboats, rowboats, a Boston Whaler, kayaks, and two Jet Skis.