Cass warmed his hands over the flame. “All the comforts of emoh. Er, home.”
“Don’t get too comfy.” I stood up, slinging my wet backpack over my shoulder. “We have a long way to go. How many matches do you have left? Mine are soaked.”
Cass shrugged. “A few.”
“If we run out, I can use the flint,” I said. “My matches and my flashlight are useless after that swim. Aly, you grab some wood, just in case. Cass, you, too. How are you set for other supplies?”
“Three-in-one oil, rubbing alcohol, kerosene, and peanut butter and jelly sandwich—in separate containers.” Cass walked to the mouth of the pathway, shining his flashlight into the blackness. “But I forgot the monster repellant.”
I took the flashlight and stepped cautiously inside. The path seemed to have been blasted through solid rock. The ceiling was about eight feet tall, the walls craggy and covered with moss. I felt a drip of water and looked up to see a small stalactite.
“Looks like there’s a fork ahead,” Aly remarked. “Which way, human GPS?”
“Go right,” Cass called out nervously, then shook his head. “No. Recalculating. Left.”
Aly and I exchanged a wary glance. Our footsteps clopped loudly. The path grew wider and warmer as we approached a blind turn. The flashlight’s globe of light traced a path along the curved wall.
And then it hit a dead end.
“Want to recalculate again?” Aly asked.
“I—I don’t understand…” Cass said, nearing the sheer rock. “I remember this. There should be a fork here, where we go right!”
As I crept closer, I noticed that the wall contained a perfectly rectangular section of stone, placed into it like a large brick. It jutted out just enough for me to wrap the fingers of both hands around it. I handed the flashlight to Aly.
“Be careful,” she warned. “Remember what happened to Torquin.”
I pulled. With a loud sccccraack, the plug slid out. Under it was a collection of dirt and cobwebs, which I blew aside. Aly shone the flashlight in.
“What the—?” Aly said.
“Think,” Cass said. “‘Keys.’ Keys unlock things. Maybe this is some kind of door.”
“But the keys are divisions,” I said. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s a list,” Aly said, staring intently. “The elements must mean something.”
“Sisters, gamblers, seas—they have nothing in common!” Cass insisted.
“People are a combination of their virtues and sins…” I mused.
“Wait!” Aly blurted out. “Camelot!”
Cass and I looked at her.
“The part in the movie where the evil Mordred sings ‘The Seven Deadly Virtues’?” she said. “Seven virtues…seven sins? And…gables! That’s a movie, too, House of the Seven Gables. Well, it started as a book. Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
“Seven Sisters…” I murmured. “My mom went to Smith College. She called it one of the Seven Sisters schools.”
“Seven continents and seven seas!” Cass blurted out. “And seven is a lucky number for gamblers! Don’t ask me how I know that.”
Aly’s fingers were reaching toward the pad. “Seven, divided any way, gives us a fraction with the same number pattern we saw outside, remember? Let’s give it a try.”
Carefully Aly tapped out 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, and 7.
We held our breaths, staring at the rock. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a noise.
“Are we…rising?” Cass asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Look at the ground.”
It felt like we were rising. But only because the stone wall around us was sinking into the floor.
I looked up. From the shadows behind the rock, I could see the top of two archways.
“Yes!” Cass blurted out. “I told you! A fork! Okay, when this baby sinks, we march right!”
I shone the light into the right-hand pathway.
An eyeless, skinless face stared back at me with a toothy grin.
CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT
DON’T LOOK UP
“AAAAAAHHHHH!” CASS’S SCREAM caromed off the stone wall.
We fell over each other trying to run away. I hit my head against a low ceiling. Aly dropped the flashlight.
“Is it behind us?” Cass said.
“It’s dead, Cass!” Aly replied. “It’s a skeleton!”
“So why are we running?” Cass demanded.
I took a deep breath. I stepped back and picked up the flashlight. I shone it back behind us into the empty passageway. “Okay,” I said. “There’s an explanation.”
“S-sure. The explanation is that that used to be a live person,” Cass said. “Someone who found this maze. Like us. The wall trapped him. He started knocking. And he’s b-been there ever s-s-since—”
“Stop!” Aly said. “I think Wenders set this up. He found a skeleton, maybe from an ancient sacrifice. He set it up. To scare people away from getting into the tunnel.”
I nodded. “Nothing to get freaked about. No big deal.”
“No big deal?” Cass said. “What if there are ghosts in here, or zombies?”
“Those are mythical, Cass,” Aly said.
“So are vromaskis, and superpowers, and shared dreams,” Cass retorted.
Aly leaned forward, putting her hand on Cass’s shoulder. “Hey. I know how you feel. We’re all scared. But we have a mission. Remember?”
Cass nodded. “Marco.”
“Marco,” she said.
“There will be an opening off the right wall,” Cass said softly. “Take it.”
I trained the flashlight ahead. Cass was clinging to Aly. The opening was exactly where he said, and I scratched a mark on the corner with a piece of flint. Then we all edged past the skeleton.
This tunnel was wider. Someone had painted strange-looking animals, now faded and almost transparent. A red bird with the body of a lion. A hook-nosed beast with sharp teeth. “The vromaski and the griffin,” I said.
“I need to see this,” Aly said, taking out her own flashlight.
“Are you nuts?” Cass snatched the flashlight from her. “We can’t sightsee! Let’s get through this place. About fifty feet ahead, we turn left.”
“That is rude, Cass.” Aly lunged toward him and grabbed back the light.
“Guys!” I shouted. “Stop this!”
As Cass lurched away, Aly lost her balance, hurtling to the ground. She cried out, her foot wedged in a hole.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She grimaced, looking straight downward. “I think so. Lost my flashlight, though. Thank you, Cass.”
Cass and I knelt beside her. I shone my light down into the hole. It was bottomless. “Next time you guys want to fight over something,” I said, “make sure it’s not anything our lives depend on.”
“Sorry,” Cass murmured.
I helped Aly up. “We only have one working flashlight. Let’s hope it lasts. How’s your foot?”
She leaned on my shoulder, testing her ankle. “It’s only a flesh wound,” she said through gritted teeth.
Aly held on to the back of my shirt and hobbled forward. After a few steps she was limping along on her own. Our next left was a vast chamber. It vaulted upward into a dome, so high that the flashlight beam barely kissed the top. In the center of the room was a raised stone platform shaped like a keyhole, round and flat with a short walkway leading to a table on the left. The platform was surrounded by five steps. Directly across the chamber was an exit portal, an archway leading deeper into the maze.
We stepped slowly onto the floor of polished stone slabs.
“Looks like an altar,” Aly said.
“Probably where the Atlanteans made the s-s-sacrifices,” Cass added, setting his pack on the floor.
He took the flashlight from my hand and skimmed the beam over the wall behind the altar. It looked like an enormous grayish-green canvas.
I stepped closer to it. “Focus the light on here a mi
nute.”
Cass and Aly were examining the table, but Cass shone the light for me, and I flicked the bottom left of the canvas with a finger. Dust poofed outward. Under the coating was an image of a man wearing a toga. I shook it and saw an entire scene, some kind of ancient festival. This wasn’t a canvas. It was a gigantic tapestry.
The image looked just like Professor Bhegad’s scene from the classroom—the king, queen, Karai, and Massarym. But then the light beam moved, and I turned to see that Cass and Aly were examining something carved into the table.
“Guys, can I have the light back?” I asked. “This is important.”
“There’s some writing here,” Cass said. “I want to copy it down.”
I couldn’t wait. I needed something brighter than a dying flashlight. Something that would show me the whole scene at once. Like a fire.
I grabbed Cass’s pack and angled it so whatever light was in the room would illuminate its contents. I pulled out the kerosene can and found some stray wood. At the bottom of the pack was an old, yellowed newspaper. He hadn’t included it in his inventory of the packs. But it would be useful. Quickly I set the newspaper down, piled the branches on top, and lit it with one of Cass’s matches.
Flames shot upward, first consuming an advertisement for Bob’s Plumbing Supplies and traveling upward to a screaming banner headline: MATTIPACK CRIME-SPREE COUPLE CAUGHT!
As the wood ignited, my mouth fell open. The tapestry came to brilliant life in the amber glow. It showed all the images from Bhegad’s tutorial—the peaceful kingdom, the sparring brothers, the destruction of Atlantis. But I noticed something strange. In the highest right corner of the weaving, there was a man hanging by his arms from what looked like a small beach ball. It looked completely out of place in this scenario. “Cass, Aly—take a look at—”
“What did you just do?”
Cass’s scream shocked me.
I spun around.
“You—you burned my Chronicle!” Cass lunged at me with his fists.
As we struggled, Aly tried to grab Cass from behind. The three of us stumbled back, bouncing off the altar and onto the round platform. Aly caught her heel on a slightly raised lip where two stones met. We all fell onto a disk of polished marble, directly in the center of the platform.
And after a hesitant rumble, it began to sink.
A roar echoed through the chamber, stone scraping on stone.
Cass’s eyes were huge. “What’s happening?”
I leaped back up to the lip of the platform. “This room is bad enough,” I said, reaching down for the others. “I don’t want to see the basement.”
The entire chamber began to vibrate. Dust clouds shot outward from the tapestry. The stone legs of the altar table groaned against the floor as they slid.
As Cass and Aly scrambled upward, a square section of the ceiling moved. I squinted upward to see a stone door on thick metal hinges, opening to release something thick and black.
The mass spilled out, morphing and growing, changing shapes like a living thing.
“Let’s go!” I screamed. I grabbed on to Aly. She locked her fingers around Cass.
Before we could clear the platform, the blob hit us.
CHAPTER TWENTY - NINE
CASS ON FIRE
I FELT THE impact on my left shoulder. A low whoooomp echoed through the chamber.
A gust of warm wind shot toward me—a compression of air from the falling mass. I hurtled away from the platform, rolling myself into a ball to cushion the fall.
I hit the floor hard. And I slid.
I was covered with something dense and grainy. It seemed pelletlike but also fine and slippery. Its stink was intense. I crashed against a wall, but I barely felt it. Everything stung—my eyes, nose, and mouth. It was as if someone had squirted ammonia in my face.
I pulled my pack around and reached frantically inside for my water bottle. With shaky fingers, I uncapped it and squirted water into my face. I tried to blink, but it was like opening my eyes in acid. I squirted again and again.
To my right Aly was writhing on the ground, clawing at her face, screaming. “Ew, ew, ew—I know that smell! It’s bat guano, Jack! Like, five thousand years of it!”
“Look my way!” I shouted, scrabbling over the grime-soaked floor.
As she turned toward me, I shot streams of water into her eye sockets. The goop oozed downward in thin black fingers. “Enough…save the water for later…I can see…” she sputtered.
“Where’s Cass?” I said.
I scanned the edge of the reeking mound. The cavern walls were glowing orange. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the right side of the tapestry, bright as day now.
“Jack, I can see,” Aly repeated, still rubbing her eyes.
“I heard you,” I said. “That’s great. Now let’s find—”
“I shouldn’t be able to see!” Aly said. “Where is the light coming from? It should have been smothered.”
That was when I saw the flames. They danced up from the back of the mountainous pile, growing, spreading, licking against the back wall. With a loud whooshing sound, the tapestry caught fire.
“This stuff is flammable!” I said.
“It’s dried guano, Jack, of course it’s flammable!” Aly shouted.
Cass.
In the growing brightness, I spotted a slight movement. A hand. Sticking out from the edge of the mound.
I raced toward him.
The fire skittered over the top of the guano, gaining ferocity. Aly dug into the pile, scooping the foul stuff from atop Cass. I pulled hard. His shoulders emerged. His face. He was barely breathing.
The flames were descending the slope of the mound now. Coming closer to Cass. I grabbed under his shoulders and yanked as hard as I could.
Aly took his arm, but Cass was pinned by the dense mass. The flames spat sparks all around us. “Pull!” I yelled.
I planted my feet. I leaned hard. Aly’s face was red.
With a sudden jerk, Cass slid loose. I flew backward. The mound shifted, collapsing around the area Cass had vacated. A ball of flame arched through the air.
It landed on Cass’s body. His guano-covered shirt instantly went up in flames.
“He’s on fire!” Aly shouted.
I whipped off my still-wet pack and began battering the fire with it. Aly had found a bottle of water in her own pack and was pouring it on him. Finally I threw myself on top of Cass, the wet backpack between us, and held tight.
I could feel the heat radiating upward. I stayed there until I was sure the fire was out, and then rolled off.
“Is he alive?” Aly asked.
His chest wasn’t moving. He was limp, motionless. I knelt and slapped his face. I’d taken a CPR class and tried to recall what we’d learned—compressions above the lungs. I pressed hard, in bursts of three. Cass’s skin was red, and some of it looked papery.
“Geaaaahhh!” As Cass’s face came to life, he spat out a hunk of guano. He began to convulse, spitting and coughing. I sat him up and doused his face with water.
He was screaming like a wounded animal. I could barely recognize his voice.
“Come on, let’s get him out of here!” I shouted. “Quick.”
With one of Cass’s arms over draped my good shoulder, the other over Aly’s, we dragged him away from the flaming guano. The fire’s light showed that there were two passageways branching off ahead—one to the left and one farther ahead to the right.
“My eyes!” Cass screamed.
With my free hand, I squeezed the remaining contents of my water bottle into his face. Aly was coughing now—wracking, rattling explosions that made her body heave. Her eyes were red and swollen. We staggered forward, our lungs filling with toxic fumes.
We passed through the archway on the other side, into a narrow tunnel. Smoke was billowing from behind us.
“Where do we go?” Aly said. “There’s another fork ahead.”
“Guh…go…” Cass moaned. “Rrrahh…?
??
“What’s he saying?” Aly asked.
“Go right?” I repeated. “Is that what you said, Cass—go right?”
“Ssss…” he said, his eyes flickering shut. I took that for a yes.
We limped into the increasing darkness. The stench was lessening, but Aly could barely walk for her coughing. My heart was beating too fast. My breaths were quick and ragged, my eyes near swollen shut. “I feel…weak…” I said, gasping for breath.
“The fire…” Aly paused to cough. “Toxic fumes…”
The fork seemed twice as far as it looked. When we finally made the turn, we collapsed onto the floor.
The air was clearer here, the fire a dull, distant glow.
“Light…” Cass said. “Dropped into…pack.”
Aly eyed his backpack, which was now nearly solid black with fire-cured guano. I could tell she was not going to touch it.
Cass had zipped up the pack. I hoped the interior would be intact. I unzipped it and reached in, holding back my own revulsion.
Incredibly, the flashlight was fine. I shone the beam to the left. “Ready?”
Cass grimaced. “I hurt,” he said.
His face was matted with blood. Welts bubbled up on his arms. His shirt was charred and tattered, the shreds saturated with sweat and blood. Under them was an angry cross-hatching of burn marks. “We…we’re going to have to clean you up,” I said.
“Like, now.” Aly pulled a water bottle out of her own pack and poured it on Cass’s chest.
“Yeeeeaaaagh!” His scream was like a body blow.
Aly fell back in shock. “Sorry!”
Cass convulsed. “You’re going to be fine,” I said.
He grabbed my hand and Aly’s. His chest was rising and falling rapidly. “I’m dying. Leave me. Go.”
“We can’t do that!” Aly said.
Cass flinched. “When you get out…send help. Go!”
I looked at Aly. We couldn’t let him die. I put my arm around his shoulders and tried to hoist him up. “We’ll get through. Return home to our families. All three of us.”
“Stop!” Cass said, his face twisted with pain. “That newspaper…Chronicle…”