The Dark Secret of Weatherend (10 page)

Anthony hesitated a moment. Then he seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently. "Hey, Miss Eells! What's the matter? Are you okay? Please say something!"

"Wha... wha..." muttered Miss Eells thickly. "Who are... uh, I mean..." And with that she came to with a jolt. She looked about wildly—at the four grim dark stones, at the circle of shadowy trees, and at Anthony.

"What... what was I doing?" she asked in a wondering, scared voice. "No, don't tell me—I don't want to know. You're right. We've got to get out. Are you ready?"

Anthony nodded. He picked up the hockey stick and handed it to Miss Eells. Then the two of them plunged back into the cedar boughs. It was even harder going out
than coming in, but somehow they made it. They reeled into the open, and after several nervous backward glances they headed toward the tennis court. When they got there, they did not stop but continued on till they got to the road. Emerson had told them that they were supposed to hide in the ruined building, but they'd had enough of enclosed spaces for now. They felt safer, somehow, just along the shoulder of the road.

They waited. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, forty-five, and then a full hour. The shadows of the roadside trees grew longer and longer. Then the sun set behind the distant hills, and the sky grew darker. With a sick, tight feeling in his stomach Anthony knew that something had gone wrong.

He peered anxiously up the winding drive. The white gravel of the road glimmered vaguely in the gathering darkness. When he spoke, his voice was a trembling whisper.

"Miss Eells? Where... where's Emerson? What's wrong? How come he hasn't come back?"

Miss Eells's face was pale and drawn. She bit her lip and shook her head despondently. "I don't know, Tony... I just don't know." She paced up and down a bit, and then lost her temper. She picked up a stone and threw it at the tennis-court fence. "Blast my brother!" she exclaimed in an angry, tearful voice. "He
always
knows what to do! You can't tell him anything, you can't warn him or make him cautious when there's every
reason to be cautious. Em's got it all figured out! Oh, this is awful, Anthony! What on earth are we going to do?"

Anthony looked around. He felt completely helpless. It was so dark that the tennis-court building was just a shadow, and he couldn't see the evil grove of trees at all. Once again panic was creeping over him. He wanted to get out of this awful, unnerving place, even though he knew that he ought to stay and try to help Emerson. He wanted to be brave, but he was terribly, terribly afraid.

Once again he seized Miss Eells's arm and squeezed it. "We've got to go!" he hissed. "They'll get us if we don't!"

Miss Eells pulled herself together. She set her jaw grimly and got a firm grip on her hockey stick. "I want to go running up the road to Borkman's house, burst in on him, and pound knobs on his rotten skull, but I suspect that would not be a very bright idea," she said in a low voice. "No, you're right—we've got to escape. But how? You saw the walls and the cyclone fence—this place is like a prison. And we didn't bring a flashlight with us. We're going to go stumbling about like a couple of blind bats in a brewery."

Miss Eells paused. She pounded the butt of her hockey stick on the ground, took a deep breath, and let it out. She had made up her mind.

"Okay, Tony," she said in a determined voice. "We
may be doomed, but at least we'll go down fighting. We have to go back down the road toward the gate and then pick our way along the fence till we find a weak spot. I saw a couple of places where the wall was broken and had been patched with chain-link fence. Maybe we can climb the wrecked wall and get over the fence somehow."

Miss Eells and Anthony started walking. The road was a pale ribbon in the starlight, and all around them the shadows of trees and bushes seemed to close in and hover over them. The silence was unnerving. Anthony would have been glad to hear the sound of a car passing on the road beyond the wall, or wind in the trees, or even the hooting of an owl. But there was nothing, nothing but the sound of their footfalls on the gravel.

Finally Anthony saw the dim outline of the main gate.

"Hey, Miss Eells!" he yelled, waving his arm. "Look!"

"Great!" she muttered. "Now all we have to do is find a weak spot in the wall. Maybe over there—"

Miss Eells never finished her sentence. She heard a noise, an odd rustling. Fearfully she peered off to her left and saw, by the side of the road, a heap of dead leaves. And though no wind was blowing, the leaves were stirring uneasily. As Anthony and Miss Eells watched, the leaves began to whirl and spin.

"Run, Anthony!" yelled Miss Eells suddenly. And with that they were off, racing across the grass. The rustling behind them rose to an angry whirring. Miss
Eells and Anthony ran faster, blindly, into the dark. Now they saw looming before them the great black shadow of the wall that surrounded the estate, and turning sharply to the right, they began to run alongside it. More dead leaves began to stir. As he went pounding along, full speed, Anthony saw a leaf rise up and fly at his face. It brushed his cheek, and he gave a wild yell. The leaf had cut his cheek. He felt the sticky wetness of blood. Miss Eells cried out, and he knew she must have been cut too.

"Up there, up there!" she yelled, waving her hockey stick as she swerved off suddenly into the shadow of the wall. "Wall's... broken..." She gasped. "Climb it quick. These leaves'll... kill us!"

Without knowing what he was doing or why, Anthony ran off after Miss Eells. In seconds he was totally swallowed up by the darkness. Stumbling against a heap of stones, he fell forward onto his hands and knees. But Miss Eells had already dropped the hockey stick and was scrambling madly up a broken rocky slope. Anthony pulled himself to his feet and hurled himself up the wall after her. There was the chain-link fence that had been used to patch this part of the wall. And above him, outlined against the starry sky, was Miss Eells. She was peeling off her padded jacket and yelling commands at Anthony. Despite his confusion and fear, he managed to make out what she was saying. He was supposed to throw his coat over the barbed wire at the top of the fence to protect himself when he jumped over it.

But as Anthony began unbuttoning his coat, a sound like a thousand angry bees rose from the darkness below them. A cloud of leaves had turned into a spiraling tornado that surrounded the two of them. Anthony covered his face with his hands and fell to his knees, screaming. There was no escape—he was going to die.

Every muscle in Anthony's body grew tense. He pressed his hands very hard against his face, digging the nails into his skin. Holding his breath, he waited for the horrible pain to begin. In his fevered brain a thought formed:
Please, let me just black out.
Any minute now, any second now, it would start, and then...

An icy mist blew over Anthony's body. That, and nothing more. For several seconds longer he held his rigid pose. Then he took his hands away from his face and looked around. Miss Eells was lying flat on the top of the wall, her hands over her head. She too straightened up and peered blearily around. The leaves were quiet; the whirring sound had stopped. Except for a couple of minor cuts and scrapes they were all right.

"Well, now!" said Miss Eells as she brushed dirt off her knees. "Life is full of surprises, isn't it? I thought we were going to be turned into hamburger. I guess Old Nasty up there in the mansion is toying with us, having his own ghoulish kind of fun. Let's clear out before our kindly host changes his mind. We'll have to leave our coats behind, but that's better than having our pelts nailed to Mr. Borkman's barn door, don't you think?"

Anthony nodded glumly. He took off his coat and draped it over the barbed wire. Then, gripping the top of the fence, he vaulted over and dropped to the ground. When he looked up he saw Miss Eells hanging by her hands from the top of the wall. She was afraid to let go.

"It's okay, Miss Eells!" Anthony called. "There's a big pile of leaves down here, and they'll—" Anthony clapped his hand to his mouth. He realized what he had just said.

"Break my fall?" said Miss Eells sarcastically. "Okay, one-two-three...
bombs away!"

And she dropped into the leaf pile. She landed on her heels, wobbled a bit, and then fell over onto her back. Immediately she scrambled to her feet and glanced nervously around, as if she expected the leaves to leap up and attack her. But they lay quiet.

"Are you okay?" Anthony asked anxiously as he came running up to her.

"More or less," she said, sighing. "We'd better start hiking. It's at least nine miles back to Hoosac—maybe more. I'm glad I wore my sensible shoes."

"What about Emerson?" Anthony asked.

"There's not a blessed thing we can do about him," said Miss Eells, shaking her head gloomily.

Anthony and Miss Eells started walking. It was dark on the road at first, but later the moon rose over the trees and made the going a little easier.

Finally they arrived at the Rolling Stone library. And who should be sitting on the steps that led up the grassy bank but Emerson Eells.

"Em!" Miss Eells whooped joyfully, running toward him. "Em! It's you!" She threw her arms around her brother and gave him a big hug.

"Good evening," said Emerson, and he smiled in a dreamy, distant way. "Well, we didn't quite do what we set out to, did we?"

Miss Eells stared curiously at Emerson. Why was he acting so unbelievably calm? Then she hugged her brother again, hard. "I'm just glad you're okay!" She paused and again peered questioningly at him. "You are okay, aren't you?"

Emerson nodded. "I think so. I feel a bit dazed, but otherwise I'm all right. In case you're wondering, I've been teleported here. I got out of the truck and was starting up the walk when Borkman opened the door to the mansion and said, 'Enjoy your trip, Mr. Eells!' Then he raised his hand and
zippo!
—here I was, sitting on these blasted steps." He sighed and looked vaguely annoyed. "I'm afraid that I've underestimated Anders Borkman."

"What happened to the truck?" asked Anthony. His feet were sore from walking, and he would have liked to ride the rest of the way home.

Emerson shrugged. "It seems to have vanished. I've been waiting here for hours, hoping you would show up."

Miss Eells told Emerson they had found the holes in the four stone slabs. Strangely enough, he did not seem terribly pleased by this.

"Much good that information will do us," he snapped, shrugging. "If we go anywhere near the estate, Borkman will just teleport us back home. He's too strong for us—much too strong."

Miss Eells shook her head in despair. "What are we going to do? Just sit around while that monster cooks up a scheme that will destroy the world?"

Emerson gazed blandly at his sister. "Heavens, Myra, I don't think he means to do that! Now that I've seen him, I am convinced that he merely wants to be left alone with his barometers and weather magic. Oh, he may cause a thunderstorm or hailstorm from time to time, but I believe that's all he'll do. And who knows? Maybe he'll even find out something that will allow us to control the weather. What a wonderful boon that would be! I think we should leave Borkman alone. The only real danger would arise from our interfering with him."

Miss Eells and Anthony were stunned. They couldn't believe what Emerson was saying. He had led the expe
dition because he was convinced that Borkman's weather magic was a threat to the entire world. And now he seemed to think that Borkman was just a harmless crank. It was all very mysterious.

Miss Eells folded her arms and looked very hard at her brother for a long time. "Emerson," she said finally, "do you mean that you're going to just
give up?
That's not like you, not like you at all! Where did you get the idea that Borkman is merely fooling around with magic? You didn't think that before. What has come over you?"

Emerson avoided his sister's gaze. He looked off into space, and in the moonlight his expression seemed strangely peaceful, but also a bit stubborn. "Nothing has come over me," he said calmly. "I've... merely changed my mind, that's all." He got up and brushed dirt off the seat of his coveralls. "And now," he said in a cold and businesslike tone, "I think we had better head back to Hoosac. Myra, do you still have a key to this library? If so, I think we should call a taxi. Standing around in the night air is not going to do any of us a great deal of good."

Miss Eells and Anthony stared at each other, mystified. With a deep sigh Miss Eells reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a key ring.

When they were inside the library, Miss Eells called the Gegenfurtner Taxi Company, which was run by Ray Gegenfurtner, the son of an old friend of hers. She was sure that young Ray would drive them home without asking too many questions.

As they sat waiting for the cab to arrive, Anthony began thinking about what would happen to him when he got home. It was after eight, and it had been dark for a good three hours. Convincing his parents that he had been playing touch football all this time would be impossible. And what explanation could he give for losing his good winter coat? Anthony braced himself for the wrath that was to come.

When Anthony got home, he discovered that his worst fears had come true. His mother was furious. It seemed that she had been calling everyone to find out where he was, including nosy Mrs. Schweikert, who had told her she had seen Anthony heading up Pine Street toward Miss Eells's house earlier that day. If there was anything that Mrs. Monday hated, it was lying. And so she told Anthony that while he could go to school and work at the library in the afternoons, otherwise he had to stay at home for two whole weeks.