I kept telling myself there were an awful lot of places a boy could hide. And I remembered what Mrs. Pike had said - not to panic. But I couldn"t help feeling just a little panicky. Why couldn"t I find him? Maybe he wasn"t within two blocks after all. If he was, surely he"d hear me calling.
"Nicky! NICK-EEE!" I shouted.
"Yeah?"
He"d appeared out of nowhere, looking dirty and sweaty.
I jumped a mile. "Nicky!" I exclaimed, half angry, half relieved. "Where were you?"
"Somewhere cool," he replied smugly. "The triplets didn"t want me to come swimming with them, but I cooled off anyway. I showed them and 1 followed the rule."
I shook my head. "Come on. Let"s go back to your house. You can shower off under the sprinkler. . . . And don"t scare me like that again!"
"Sorry," said Nicky. He smiled at me. I smiled back, glad the crisis was over, but thoroughly mystified.
Chapter 6.
When I got home that afternoon, Jeff was still off swimming. I didn"t like to admit it, but I was nervous about Nicky"s disappearance. Things like that scare me to death. I"d never gotten over the time I couldn"t find Buddy Barrett. Children do get kidnapped. And I"m afraid it"s going to happen sometime while I"m baby-sitting. It"s not impossible. In fact, it happens every day. You read about it in the papers or see it on the news. I heard that there are thousands and thousands of missing kids.
So could I help it if I panicked a little when I couldn"t find Nicky?
I needed to relax. I took my library book out to the barn. Now, the barn is not the coolest place I can think of on a hot summer day - but it is the most relaxing. It"s almost silent. There"s not much in the barn that can make a sound, and the sounds outside are m.u.f.fled.
Usually I climb up to the hayloft to find a comfortable spot to read, but heat rises, so there was no way I was going to be anywhere above ground on that day. I looked around for a place with enough light to read by. But instead I settled for a spot with a little dry hay scattered around that actually seemed cool.
I sat down, all prepared to open to "The Haunting of Weatherstaff Moor," but I had no sooner gotten into a comfortable position than I heard a crash.
The crash was me! I was falling.
I dropped down, down, like Alice through the rabbit hole.
"Help!" I cried.
Thump. I landed hard.
"Ow!"
I looked up. Although I"d only fallen about five feet, it felt like five thousand. I was in darkness, but above me I could see a square of light, and beyond that, the beams in the roof of the barn.
I stood up shakily.
I was in some kind of bas.e.m.e.nt or tunnel. No wonder that spot I"d been sitting on had seemed cool. All that bas.e.m.e.nt air was circulating underneath.
Wait a second. Barns don"t have bas.e.m.e.nts. Do they?
Maybe I was in - Nah. Impossible. Besides, what was I? Crazy? I was standing in a pitch-black hole. I had to get out.
I felt around gingerly. I was positive my fingers were going to touch spiders - fat, hairy spiders (possibly fat, hairy, biting spiders) - or slimy things.
But they didn"t. Instead they touched a narrow wooden beam, and above that another, and another, and another. It was a ladder!
I climbed back into the barn and examined the top of the hole. I"d fallen through a trapdoor. It must not have been latched properly.
Okay, so in our barn was a trapdoor with a ladder leading down into . . .
I shrieked. I had found a secret pa.s.sage! I really had! What else could it be?
I flew into our house, grabbed a flashlight out of a drawer in the kitchen, and flew back to the barn. I was feeling pretty brave, especially considering what a chicken I"d been about exploring the attic the other day. But that day had been dark and gloomy. It was hard to feel frightened with the sun shining so brightly. Besides, I"d found what I"d been searching for so desperately. How could I not explore my own personal secret pa.s.sage?
I shined the light down the hole. There was the ladder I"d climbed up. I backed down it carefully, holding the flashlight in my left hand. When I reached the bottom, I examined the floor. It was hard-packed dirt. I shined the light around and saw that the pa.s.sage veered off to the left - toward our house.
I began to walk. The pa.s.sage sloped down slightly. I was moving through a tunnel of earth with a few support beams here and there. The only light was from my flashlight.
I edged forward for a good distance. I was moving slowly, and everything seemed sort of unreal. At long last, the pa.s.sage began to slope upward.
I shivered. This was so exciting. If I were just a little older, I could be Nancy Drew. Wait until Claudia heard about this!
"Hey!" I exclaimed aloud. Ahead, my flashlight was shining on a dirt wall. After all this, had I come to a dead end?
No, the pa.s.sage made a sharp right turn.
I rounded the corner - and drew in my breath.
I found myself facing a crude wooden staircase. My heart began to pound faster. I climbed the staircase slowly. Where was I? Somewhere inside our house? I felt like the mice in The Tailor of Gloucester, darting from house to house in their secret pa.s.sageways.
At the top of the staircase the pa.s.sage, which was now very narrow, and all wooden (I was sure, somehow, that I was between the walls of our house) took another turn, and then, a few feet beyond, really did come to a dead end. I began feeling the walls around me, and suddenly something made a loud clicking noise and the whole wall to my right swung away from me.
I gasped.
I was looking into my own bedroom!
I stepped inside. The wall that had swung open was the one with the fancy molding that had sounded hollow the other day. The end of the pa.s.sage was between my room and Mom"s.
I was startled but immediately decided I wanted to explore the pa.s.sage again more carefully. So I left the secret door to my room open (just in case), and stepped back into the pa.s.sage. This time I kept the flashlight trained on the floor.
I blew up little flurries of dust bunnies as I made my way back to the staircase, crept carefully down the steps (who knew how st.u.r.dy they were?), and was soon back in the dirt tunnel.
And that was where I found it - the metal b.u.t.ton. It looked positively ancient. I"d never seen one like it. It was sort of squashed in the middle, but I could tell that a design like a shield had been stamped on it.
A few feet further along I found something else I"d missed. A large tarnished buckle. It was too big for a belt buckle, and not quite the right shape. A shoe buckle? People hadn"t worn buckles that size on their shoes since . . . the eighteen hundreds?
I felt a chill begin at the nape of my neck and creep down my back.
A key was the last thing I found. It certainly looked old - very long and narrow with a large ring to hold it by. How many years had the key been in the pa.s.sage?
How many years had all the things been in the pa.s.sage? More importantly, why were they there? Maybe they were all that was left of someone who had died in the pa.s.sage - or worse, someone who had been locked up there to die. Maybe the poor prisoner had been trying to escape using the key. But he hadn"t made it and had died a lonely, bitter death.
I knew it. I just knew it: Our house was haunted. It was haunted by the ghost of the secret pa.s.sage. No one was going to believe it, but it was true. I remembered the rapping noises I had heard the night of the storm. Now I knew what had really made them.
Chapter 7.
The nice weather didn"t last very long. By Friday it was gloomy again, and that night, the skies let loose with a storm that my grandfather would have described as a "ripsnorter." I didn"t know it then, but while Jeff and I were having a ghostly adventure in our old house, Kristy was having an adventure of her own in her new house.
Earlier that evening, she"d been left in charge of David Michael, and Karen and Andrew, who were visiting for the. weekend. Her two older brothers were at a party, and her mom and stepfather had gone to the theater in Stamford.
When everyone had left, the sky had simply been dark and threatening. An hour later, rain was falling, the wind was howling, thunder was crashing, and lightning was flashing.
Inside, Kristy was trying to interest the kids in a game of Chutes and Ladders, but it wasn"t easy. Every time a clap of thunder sounded, David Michael shrieked, Andrew leaped into Kristy"s lap, Louie the collie jumped (and skidded on the game board), and Karen looked disgusted and called everybody nitwits.
After that had happened three times, Kristy suggested, "Let"s read a book instead of play ing Chutes and Ladders. What should we read?"
"The Little Engine That Could," said Andrew.
"Fantastic Mr. Fox," said David Michael.
"Ramona and Her Father," said Karen.
Kristy rolled her eyes. "How about - "
"How "bout if I tell a story?" Karen interrupted.
Kristy paused. Karen"s stories are notorious. She never means to frighten anyone or to cause any trouble, but she always manages to.
"Do you know any nice, happy stories?" asked Kristy hopefully.
Karen thought for a moment. "Nope," she said.
"I want to hear a scary story," said David Michael bravely.
"You do?" asked Kristy incredulously, as thunder crashed and her brother jumped a foot in the air.
"Um . . . yes," replied David Michael.
"Me, too," said Andrew, not to be undone.
Kristy thought that all of this was a bad idea.
"Oh, we can tell scary stories any old time," she said. "Let"s tell jokes instead. Knock, knock."
David Michael, Karen, and Andrew glanced at each other.
"I said, knock, knock," Kristy repeated.
David Michael heaved a great sigh. "Who"s there?"
"Banana," said Kristy.
"Banana who?" asked David Michael.
"Knock, knock."
"Huh? Wait, you were supposed to tell the joke part then."
"Trust me," said Kristy. "This one"s a little different."
"Oh, all right. Who"s there?" asked David Michael.
"Banana."
"Banana who?"
"Knock, knock."
"Who"s there?"
"Banana."
"Banana who?"
"Knock, knock."
"Who"s there?" demanded David Michael.
"Orange."
"Orange who?"
"Orange you glad I didn"t say "banana"?" Kristy burst into giggles.
The three kids looked mystified.
"So," said Karen, "this is the tale of what made old Ben Brewer so weird."
Andrew and David Michael sat up straighter.
Kristy made a face and began to put the Chutes and Ladders game away. When she finished, she left the kids in the playroom, went downstairs, and straightened up the kitchen. She found a package of graham crackers in one of the cabinets, placed it on a tray with four gla.s.ses and a carton of milk, and took the tray upstairs to the playroom.