Chapter 1
At the side of the narrow road leading in to Big Pine Lodge was an old wooden structure. Real logs had been set vertically into the ground and their tops had been cut into points. There were small slit-like window openings on the two sides that could be seen from the road. Missy was enthralled with the crude structure. It was about the size of a kid’s playhouse. It would be a neat place to spy on visitors, she had thought the first time she had driven by with her mother last March. There had been snow on the ground then and she had seen Kevin’s tracks. He had turned out to be a good friend to her when she had moved up to Big Pine Lodge in June, but he had been spying on her back then. Right now she and Kevin were settling into the little fort with a picnic lunch of sandwiches, cheese, and bottled water. Kevin had warned her that the guests arriving for the Fourth of July week included a bunch of teenage boys that weren’t exactly nice and they were watching for their arrival from the fort.
Missy’s great-grandfather owned Big Pine Lodge. It was a quaint resort on a small lake and boasted a large lodge, several smaller cabins and lots of fun things to do. There were caves that ran under the lake, old Indian graves and settlers’ ruins, and, to Missy’s great delight, a stable of horses that she was in charge of. Kevin’s parents ran the lodge as employees of Mr. Stark’s and Kevin earned spending money by selling snacks and drinks on the beach. The two twelve-year-olds had already this summer been involved in two adventures. First they had discovered ancient pictographs in the caves and found hidden entrances to the caves themselves. Later they had helped capture wild bobcats that were scaring the lodges’ guests.
Missy had made several friends this summer, but after a week or two their vacations were over and they would go back to their homes. Missy was glad she got along so well with Kevin or she would have been very lonely staying with just her great-grandfather. Her mother was back in the city working and would visit occasionally. Missy’s dad had died when she was four, but he had grown up coming here. For Missy, working here in the summer was a way for her to kind of get to know him. She had already learned a lot about him from a diary her great-grandmother had left as well as a secret puzzle box that her father had used to hide things that were special to him.
“Hey,” Kevin said, “Can I borrow your Swiss army knife a second?”
Missy pulled it out of her pocket and handed it over. It was the most useful thing that her dad had left in the secret puzzle box. The other items had been more sentimental: a school picture of a friend, a newspaper article, a round skipping stone, a badminton birdie, a broken wishbone and a tiny silver hat from a Monopoly game. She had taken the items out often and thought about her dad. It was weird to think of him being her age, but it was an interesting change to just knowing him through her mom’s wedding photos.
Kevin used one of the gadgets on the knife to pry off the plastic seal on his bottle then passed it back to Missy.
“This fort would be really cool if it had a roof,” Missy said as she unwrapped her sandwich.
“My dad uses it in the fall as a deer blind. He got a six point buck last year,” Kevin said.
Missy was a little upset to think that people could shoot those beautiful animals, but Kevin seemed proud and added, “Next year I’m taking a hunter safety class so I can hunt, too.”
Missy just nodded and kept her feelings to herself. She took a big bite so she wouldn’t have to answer and swiveled on her pine stump perch to glance out one of the little spying windows. A car was coming. They could hear the crunch of gravel as it turned onto the little lane that led to the lodge. A second crunch indicated that another vehicle was following the first.
Kevin pulled up two large ferns and thrust one at Missy. They held the ferns in front of their faces as camouflage as they peered out at the passing cars. The first one held two sets of parents, none of whom even glanced at the fort. The second car bounced along with its windows open and four boys laughing and cursing inside. The one in the front passenger seat pointed at the fort and from the back seat another boy stuck first his head out the window and then his hand. He flicked the butt of a cigarette toward the fort and yelled, “We see you!”
Missy ducked down and dropped the fern, but Kevin stayed steady. The car rambled on and the noise of the boisterous teens faded.
Kevin scolded Missy, “You shouldn’t have moved, Missy, they couldn’t see us. They were just guessing that I’d be here. They yelled that last year, but I was in the tree on the other side of the road. They’re such jerks. Rob had his license last summer and now it looks like Dave does, too.”
“Dave was the one driving?” Missy asked. “I couldn’t see him. Who was the one who threw out the cigarette?”
“That was Lonnie. He’s not too bad, but his brother Dave is mean. And the other two brothers, Rob and Rick, are just plain weird. I don’t trust them. They’ll do whatever Dave tells them to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like the first summer both families came up together they tied me to a tree and piled up campfire wood around me. They would have lit it, too, but Dave had kept the matches in his pocket and had gone swimming earlier so they were too wet to light.”
“What did your parents do when they found out?”
“I didn’t tell them because Dave said he’d get me if I did.”
Missy thought about that for a minute and glanced back out the little window toward the road. “Oh, no!” she screamed. She leaped up and grabbed Kevin’s open water bottle and ran out the back of the fort. She skirted around it and stopped where the cigarette had landed and started pouring the water on the small fire that had started in the dry leaves. “That was close!” she exclaimed as Kevin reached her. They both stomped around on the ground until they were sure there weren’t any sparks left that would start another fire.
“Man, that would have been a disaster,” Kevin said, brushing back a lock of his curly brown hair that had fallen in his eyes. “We’re going to have to watch those jerks all the time. No telling what they’ll do.”
“Let’s be sneaky about it,” Missy said, “I don’t want to get tied up and burned.”
“Right.”
The adults were unloading the luggage from the trunks of both cars while the four boys, Dave and Rob in the lead, headed around the lodge to the beach. No way were they going to help by carrying stuff in. They got out of earshot as fast as they could.
Dave pointed at a couple of girls on the beach and made a rude comment about one to Rob who laughed loudly. Lonnie and Ricky pushed past them and ran for the canoes.
“I don’t think so, little brothers,” Dave yelled. He punched Rob on the arm. “Come on. Let’s beat them.”
The older boys quickly outpaced the younger ones and reached the pair of canoes first. They shoved one canoe out then jumped into the second one and started paddling. As they came along side the first canoe Dave reached out and tipped it over with the paddle. They laughed as they watched it fill with water and sink.
“Hey, I’m telling Dad you’re not wearing life jackets,” Lonnie hollered. His older brother, Dave, just looked back and raised up one finger. “Jerk,” Lonnie muttered.
Ricky had already removed his socks and shoes and told Lonnie to do the same. “Come on,” he said, “we can still get the canoe. It’s not deep there.”
From the back porch of the lodge old Mr. Stark stood shaking his head. He dreaded seeing these two families return to the lodge each year. The boys were nothing but trouble and the parents were loud partiers and never disciplined their sons. Already he could see people near the shore picking up their beach towels and relocating to a quieter spot. Kevin’s parents, the Jacksons, would have to smooth things over with the other guests when the complaints started coming in. If things didn’t improve this year he would just have to double the rates for them, though getting twice as much money might not be worth it.
“Hi, Great-grandpa,” Missy said as she and Kevin came around the lodge.
“Hi, Mr. S
tark,” Kevin added, then stopped to stare out at the boys in the canoes. “Hey, they’re not wearing life preservers. Should I go get dad?”
Old Mr. Stark made a grunt-like sound then said, “Don’t bother, Kevin, I’ll go say something to their parents.” He reached out and touched Missy’s shoulder affectionately and smiled at her as he turned toward the door. Then he muttered, “Not that it’ll do any good with those rapscallions.”
After the door closed Kevin asked Missy, “What’s a rapscallion?”
She just shrugged her shoulders. “Guess it’s something bad.”
Out on the lake Ricky was holding onto the canoe, which was now floating upright, while Lonnie was retrieving the paddles from the shoreline. The older boys were almost halfway across the small lake heading straight for the little stone cottage on the other side. Lonnie and Dave’s mother, Mrs. Gilbert, came out of the lodge holding four life vests and shouting in a shrill voice, “You boys get back here and put these life jackets on!” The younger boys protested that they could swim just fine and didn’t need them. “Rules are rules, now you behave. Put these on and take the other two out to your brothers.”
Lonnie and Ricky looked at each other and mumbled something that Kevin and Missy, who were watching intently, couldn’t hear. Mrs. Gilbert hurried toward the lake and hollered to the older boys out on the water. “We can’t hear you!” they hollered back and kept paddling. She shouted louder and they just kept paddling away.
Kevin rolled his eyes at Missy and said, “Man, would I be in trouble if I lied to my parents like that.”
“Me, too.”
The younger boys pulled the canoe onto the beach and dropped the paddles. “We’re gonna check out the trails, Mom. See ya,” Lonnie said and he and Ricky slipped their shoes and socks back on and raced off towards the woods. Mrs. Gilbert just stood there for a moment debating whether or not to keep yelling at the older boys. Finally she turned around and carried the jackets back to the lodge.
“What do you think they’ll do in the woods?” Missy asked Kevin.
“I don’t know, but I’m more worried about Dave and Rob. They’re headed for the stone cottage and the entrance to the caves. They’re such jerks that they’d probably love to ruin the ancient drawings that are down there, once they find out about them.” Kevin glanced toward the trail along the beach. “I bet I know where the younger brothers are going. If they run they can beat the canoes to the other side. Come on, let’s go follow them.”
Without a second’s hesitation Missy took off after Kevin. The hard-packed earth on the trail was easy to run on as long as they didn’t trip on any of the roots or rocks that littered the path. They slowed down every time the trail took a sharp turn, but otherwise they kept a pretty fast pace with Kevin in the lead. There were several other trails that forked off and led to various destinations such as the Indian graves and the old settlers’ ruins, but they kept taking the left fork, staying close to the lake.
“Tell me again which one is which?” Missy said. Kevin took a moment to think of the best way to describe them then told her that she could remember easiest by linking the first letter of their names to a feature. Dave was dark. He had dark hair and eyes and a dark personality. His brother Lonnie was little. He was the shortest of the four. His hair was more of reddish brown and he actually looked like he belonged in Rob and Ricky’s family instead. Rob and Ricky had the same first initial and were both red-heads, but Ricky, the younger brother had freckles and was still a little pudgy. “Okay,” Missy said, “I think I’ve got them straight.”
They almost caught up to Lonnie and Ricky when the trail opened up to the yard around the stone cottage. Kevin slowed down before they reached the open area and he and Missy ducked down behind a big boulder that was wedged between two large oak trees. They could see the seventeen-year-olds just reaching the shore in the canoe while the fifteen-year-olds were standing at the door to the cottage yelling at their older brothers.
“Man, are you slow!” Lonnie shouted.
“Yeah, you row like girls,” Ricky added.
“You row a boat. You PADDLE a canoe, you A-holes.” Dave yelled.
“Yeah, YOU’RE the little girls here, you morons. Just wait till we get you!” Rob added. He and Dave tossed the paddles on the shore after they beached the canoe and started racing to the cottage.
Lonnie and Ricky ducked inside and Ricky opened the trap door to the cellar, but Lonnie grabbed Ricky’s sleeve and pulled him away from the opening. He motioned for him to follow him and they slipped around the corner and hid in what was once a small bedroom. They were quiet and motionless when they heard their brothers barge into the front room and scramble down the ladder into the cellar and the access to the caves.
Lonnie looked at Ricky and whispered, “Let’s put something heavy on the trap door so they can’t get out.”
“What if somebody else is down there?’
“So?”
“Is there another way out?”
“Who cares? Somebody’ll come along sooner or later.”
“Shhh. Wait. I think I heard something.”
Missy and Kevin creaked the front door open and tiptoed into the cottage. They were whispering, too. Kevin checked the box of flashlights that they kept there and counted how many were left.
“They’re all here,” he whispered. “They didn’t know about the flashlights. They’ll probably use their cigarette lighters or one of the candles that are in the cellar.” He handed Missy a small flashlight and she tucked it into her back pocket.
“I don’t think I want to go down there,” she said. “I’m not scared. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Kevin picked up a large flashlight and was about to whisper back when Ricky and Lonnie stepped around the corner. “Well, well, well,” Lonnie said, “if it isn’t little Mr. Jackson, son of big Mr. Jackson. Look, Ricky, the little snot-nosed kid got himself a girlfriend.”
“Down the hatch, you two,” Ricky said, gesturing toward the trap door. Lonnie reached out and grabbed the flashlight out of Kevin’s hand then pushed him toward the opening. “Ladies first,” he said, still pushing Kevin ahead of Missy. Missy followed, but was able to keep facing them so they couldn’t see the flashlight in her back pocket. She said nothing as she climbed down. She didn’t even dare to look them in the eye though she was mad and scared and her heart was fluttering faster than a hummingbird’s wings. When she reached the bottom she backed away from the ladder and bumped into Kevin just as the trap door was closed above them and they were thrust into darkness.