Tunnel of Secrets (7 page)

“Talk about a last meal,” I said.

“The gastric acid in his stomach wouldn’t have been able to digest it, so it must have stayed inside him after his stomach decomposed,” Frank informed me.

“Lucky break for us, though I’m getting indigestion just thinking about it.” I groaned.

“I thought we might find a clue on his body,” Frank said. “I wasn’t expecting to find it
in
his body!”

“It must have been pretty important,” I said, wrapping the key in a bandanna from my gear bag and sliding it inside my pants pocket next to the little emergency kit I carry when I go exploring.

“We’re far below Bayport. It’s not like he wound up here
by accident,” Frank said. “I’m thinking this Secret City might be more than a myth after all.”

“Yeah, well, judging from the knife in his back, that curse Curly was talking about might not be a myth either,” I said.

“Just because the Secret City might exist doesn’t mean it’s haunted,” Frank said. “We should try to find it as long as we’re stuck down here.”

“Too bad the Admiral didn’t swallow a map along with the key,” I said.

“I guess we just keep going,” Frank said, stepping deeper into the chamber.

At the far end of the chamber, we found a narrow, partially concealed entrance into a larger corridor that branched off in two different directions. Like the chamber, the corridor had smooth walls, and I could see some of the chisel marks where it had been carved out of the rock by man-made tools.

“I say we go left,” I said, thinking about the Admiral’s left hand and the fingers he’d lost in battle. Not that we had much choice anyway. The passage on the right was caved in.

“Lead the way,” Frank said.

It wasn’t long before we stepped out of the passageway into a larger chamber with a shallow pond of clear water in the center of it. On the other side of the pond, high above the ground, was a perfectly rectangular opening. And dangling from the opening was the end of a rope ladder.

“I’m guessing that’s not a naturally occurring rock formation,” I said to my brother.

Frank took another look around the cavern and the sheer rock walls on either side. “Looks like the only way out; it’s not like we can go back the way we came. There must be some kind of crank or pulley that raises and lowers the ladder. But how do we reach it? It’s got to be at least three or four stories off the ground.”

My headlamp threw shadows off a few dozen fist-size rocks that jutted out of the wall every few feet from the bottom to the top.

“It’s a rock wall!”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious, I know it’s made of rock, but how’s that going to help us reach the ladder?” Frank asked.

For a supersmart guy, my brother can be pretty dense sometimes.

“No, like a rock-climbing wall. Someone intentionally carved all those stones into the wall as hand- and footholds so you can climb it. Like an ancient version of the rock walls at the gym. It’s not even a very difficult one. I bet I can make it to the top in no time.”

Frank gave me a concerned look. “You sure? We don’t have any safety gear, and if you fall, well . . .”

He didn’t have to say the rest. There were no ropes, harnesses, or partner on the wall to spot me. Without a system to keep me suspended, there’d be nothing to stop me from crashing to the ground. I was a pretty good climber, but I was still a newbie compared to the pros.

“I’ve got this,” I said, trying to hide the nugget of doubt that had started to creep up on me.

We had to wade across the shallow pond to reach the wall. The water wasn’t more than a foot or two deep, and I could clearly see small pebbles covering the bottom. Kicking aside the pebbles, I noticed symbols carved in the smooth stone beneath. There was a concentric circle and one that looked a little like a fishhook; I recognized them both from the cover of the book carried by the Admiral’s statue.

“I hope we get a chance to tell Mr. Schneider about this,” Frank said. “It basically proves that the secret society he told us about was real.”

“Unless he already knows,” I pointed out. “Maybe he’s the one who attacked us in the library and stole the Admiral’s key.”

“Oh, yeah,” Frank said gloomily. “It is convenient how the ghoul showed up in the library right after he walked away. Plus, he knows more about the Admiral’s secret past than anybody.”

“We’ll worry about that if we ever make it back to the surface,” I said, handing Frank my bag along with my backup flashlight.

I surveyed the wall before making my first move, mapping out the easiest route up the wall to the rope ladder. Whoever made it had built in a pretty straightforward path, with no more than a few feet between handholds. As long as I was careful, I would be fine.

I reached for the first handhold.

“Good luck,” Frank said somberly.

“Who needs luck when you’ve got skills like mine?!” I said.

I started climbing, using my leg muscles to propel me from one handhold to the next, taking the burden off my arms like I’d been taught. It was a pretty easy climb, no harder than any of the walls at the gym. Still, I had to be cautious. I was high enough off the ground that I couldn’t just hop off if my arms got tired. One little slip and I was a goner. I was feeling pretty confident, though.

Then I grabbed an unusual handhold. As soon as I put pressure on it, it tilted down about an inch, and I heard a strange metallic clicking sound.

Rock walls aren’t supposed to make metallic clicking sounds. Not unless they’re booby-trapped.

I
THINK I WAS MORE
nervous just watching Joe climb than he was actually climbing. I was letting my brother risk his life, and I was pretty much helpless if anything went wrong.

Despite his confident act, I could tell he was scared. But I guess that’s a good thing. I know from experience that a little bit of fear can sharpen your focus during life-or-death situations. Like our dad says, even heroes feel frightened sometimes; they just don’t let it stop them from doing what needs to be done.

And Joe was handling it like a hero. Or a gecko. The way he was flying up the wall, you’d think he’d been born with sticky lizard feet. He was halfway up the wall and I was finally starting to relax when . . .

“Uh-oh,” I heard him say.

“Joe, are you . . . ,” I started to ask, when a whooshing sound cut me off. I barely had time to register the stone spike barreling down from the ceiling.

The wall was booby-trapped!

“WATCH OUT!” I yelled.

Joe let go with his right hand and swung away from the wall as the spike whistled past, leaving him hanging by his left hand. The spike shattered into a million pieces on the floor below, showering me with stone shrapnel.

I dove out of the way. When I looked back up, Joe was dangling from one handhold with both hands, struggling to regain his footing.

“Make sure to put your foot back on the same stone as before!” I yelled. “Any of the others could be booby-trapped too!”

It took an excruciating few seconds before Joe managed to steady himself.

“That was way too close,” he called down. “So much for an easy climb.”

“Stay where you are,” I warned. “We have to assume the rest of them are rigged as well.”

“Sure, I’ll just hang here and read a comic book,” Joe said sarcastically.

“Give me a second to think,” I said.

Whoever had engineered this was serious about keeping people out (as if the Admiral’s corpse hadn’t been enough
evidence of that). They’d made the climb look simple for a reason: Lure you in until you’re too far up to drop safely and then—
wham!
Spikes start dropping, either skewering you like a kabob or plunging you to your death when you try to get out of the way. It was also possible that certain handholds had been rigged all the way up and Joe had just been lucky enough to avoid them. Either way, we had to figure out something quick, before his muscles gave out.

“I could try to follow the same path down that I took up,” Joe called.

“It’s too dangerous,” I said. Even I knew that climbing down is a lot harder than climbing up. You can’t see where you’re going, for one. And Joe was already fatigued from the climb up, making his chances of falling a lot higher. I looked around the chamber, hoping something would spark a solution. There had to be a safe way up; how else would the people who’d built it reach the ladder? Either they’d memorized the correct path up—in which case we were out of luck—or there was a trick to figuring it out.

“Look,” Joe said, “I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but I’m getting a little tired up here.”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” I said, trying to kick the problem-solving part of my brain into high gear.

“Couldn’t they have left a map?” Joe lamented.

That was it! They
had
left us a map! I ran back into the shallow pond, kicking away the pebbles on the bottom, revealing the symbols etched in the stone.

“Now’s
not really the time to go for a swim, Frank!” Joe yelled.

“They
did
leave us a map, Joe!” I yelled back from the other side of the cavern, searching out a pattern in the symbols. If I was right, the concentric circles aligned with the path Joe had taken up the wall. The fishhook symbol represented the handhold Joe had grabbed when the spear fell. “The carvings on the floor of the pond aren’t random. It’s like a land-mine map, showing where the booby-trapped holds are and a safe path around them. I think I can use it to guide you up!”

“In that case, you’d better start guiding, ’cause I don’t know how much longer my arms can hold out,” he cried.

I took a deep breath and double-checked the patterns to make sure I was right.

“Okay, do you see the handhold above you to the left?”

“Yup, should I grab it?” Joe said, his hand at the ready.

“No! Not that one!” I yelled. “The one next to it. Do you think you can reach it?”

“I’ll try,” he said, stretching his hand as far as it would go and boosting off with his feet to make it the last few inches. For a terrifying moment he was totally suspended in air with nothing to hold on to. If he was short even a fraction of an inch, it was all over. I forced myself to keep my eyes open. And . . .

“Yes! You made it! Way to go, Joe!”

He made the next one too. And the one after that. And
the one after that. Pretty soon Joe was grabbing hold of the rope ladder and pulling himself into the opening.

My heart pounded and my forehead dripped with sweat . . . and I wasn’t even the one doing the climbing! Joe lowered the rope to the ground using a crank that he’d found (as I’d speculated). I grabbed his gear bag and climbed up after him.

We were in the entryway of what appeared to be a long, dark corridor.

“Now that’s what I call teamwork, bro,” Joe said, throwing up a high five. “With your navigational abilities and my superior strength, coordination, bravery, good looks, and general awesomeness, the Hardy boys are invincible!”

He’d barely gotten the last word out when a heavy iron gate dropped from the ceiling with a loud clank, blocking the passage we’d worked so hard to reach. We pivoted back toward the ladder, but only made it a step before another gate dropped, sealing off the entrance as well.

And just like that, we were trapped. We’d climbed out of the cavern and right into a cage.

A flame appeared in the darkness. Two robed figures emerged carrying torches, light flickering over their inhuman faces and curved, birdlike beaks.

One of them carried an ornately carved wooden cane engraved with symbols. The other stepped silently to the bars of our cage and dropped a pair of heavy iron shackles at our feet.

From the looks of it, we had just become prisoners of the Admiral’s ghost army.

H
EY, BIRDBEAK, YOU MIND LOOSENING
these bracelets a little bit? I’ve got sensitive skin,” I muttered as the ghouls marched us through a narrow, torch-lit passage. The ghoul with the cane used it to jab me in the back.

Both Frank and I were cuffed in wrist shackles that were linked to a single chain held by the non-cane-carrying creep; we were like a couple of dogs on a leash. I could tell Frank was deep in thought trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this. We’d tried talking to each other, but each time we got a sharp poke with the cane.

I’d been trying to keep track of where we were going, but the tunnels and chambers took so many twists and turns it was like walking through a maze. The explorer in me
was pretty stoked, even if I was at the end of a chain led by a couple of cranky ghouls. At least, I assumed they were cranky; they hadn’t uttered so much as a peep.

“No offense, but you guys are really bad tour guides,” I said as we approached a crossroads where four different tunnels intersected. The one with the cane yanked us to a stop with the chain and gave me another jab in the ribs as he pushed past me.

I’ll admit, for a second I had started to wonder if Curly had been right about the robed figures being ghosts. But as I watched the one with the cane step unevenly onto the crossroads to examine the symbols on the wall, I realized our captors weren’t ghosts at all. Not unless one of those ghosts happened to have the same limp as a now-former friend of mine.

“Man, this place must be heaven for an Urbex pro like you, huh, Keith?”

The figure looked up. I was pretty sure Keith’s mouth had just dropped wide open under his mask.

The ghoul holding the chain gasped. “They know who we are!”

“Shut up!” Keith yelled at his partner.

“Your name is Scott, right?” I asked Keith’s flustered sidekick. “I’m guessing Chris is probably around here somewhere too.”

“They know, Keith!” Scott said, his voice cracking behind his mask. I smiled. I’d guessed right about the other Urbex members being his accomplices.

“That’s right, Scotty. And now it’s all starting to make sense. You guys ditched me in the tunnel this morning on purpose. You planned to steal the big bronze dude’s key out of the sinkhole until I found it first. Am I right, guys?”