Junior's Luck - 14

Secret Passageways

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Links to previous chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13

Summary of previous chapter, Chapter 13 - The Shaft

Upon examination, the object Kelsey tripped over is a trapdoor that leads to a tunnel. Junior wants to explore. Kelsey wants to leave, but spots men with flashlights combing the grounds. When he tells Junior about the men, Junior says they can hide in the tunnel until the searchers give up and leave.

The boys struggle to open the trapdoor only to find another door underneath it. Kelsey pushes open the second door which slides open, whacking his head on the opened door in the process. A shaft leads down into a tunnel. In an attempt to mislead the searchers, Junior tosses a stick far away from their position. Rover chases after it. Junior takes the flashlight from Kelsey and lowers himself into the shaft and climbs down into the tunnel. Kelsey is reluctant to follow, but Junior insists. Imagining he is climbing into his own grave, Kelsey enters the shaft.

Chapter 14 - Secret Passageways

The concrete tunnel was tall enough for Kelsey to stand in and as wide as the sidewalks along the streets in his neighborhood. Junior held the flashlight in one hand and the tree branch in the other. In the shadowy light, his face looked like a grinning jack-o'-lantern. He offered the branch to Kelsey.

"Knock out the stick with this."

Kelsey perched on the second rung, where he could get a full swing at the target. To avoid losing his balance and falling, he clung to the top rung with his left hand while he swung with his right.

The branch slipped out of Kelsey's grasp just before it thunked against the stick that propped the lid open, knocking it free. Kelsey ducked into the shaft a heartbeat ahead of the falling door.

"I lost the branch."

"Hey, come on." Junior's voice reverberated from within the tunnel. "This is neat."

With the light in front of him, Kelsey couldn't see enough of his surroundings to tell if there was any yucky stuff, but his sneakers crunched on things as he walked along. Probably big cockroaches, he thought. He was relieved that no rats squeaked, but snakes and ghosts didn't make noise. They could be anywhere. They could be all around. Kelsey hurried to catch up to the bobbing beam.

He joined Junior at an intersection with another tunnel. Junior stopped and pointed the flashlight to the right. It shone into a long, black void.

"Where does this one go?" Kelsey asked.

"I don't know, but we should not follow it. If we stay in this tunnel, it should lead to the mansion and the secret passages."

"No way." Kelsey took a step back. "I'm not going. Someone's in the house."

"What about the bet?"

"We are doing the bet. We will check out these tunnels until they quit looking for us. Then we leave. That's what you said."

"The bet was about secret passages, not tunnels. They won't even realize we're in the building." Junior turned and walked away, the light leaving with him. "Besides," he called over his shoulder. "You don't want to go back alone, in the dark, a ghost might get you." He let out a weak laugh.

Kelsey followed his friend; Junior left him no choice. It wasn't the fear of darkness or ghosts that made Kelsey stay on; Junior wouldn't make it without him. Kelsey wouldn't abandon his friend, although Junior had intended to do just that to him. But maybe it had been a bluff. If Kelsey had stayed put, Junior would have returned for him. Kelsey wanted to believe that, but Junior could be stubborn. If Kelsey had called Junior's bluff and been wrong, he would have had to search for him, alone, in the dark.

It wasn't fair. Junior was sick and dependent on Kelsey to get him back to the hospital alive, yet he still bossed Kelsey around. To show his disgust, Kelsey stayed as far behind him as possible without losing the light.

They walked thirty yards through the tunnel, which seemed longer because Kelsey was afraid. Junior stopped at what appeared to be a shaft. His head disappeared. Kelsey trotted to reach Junior, while watching his friend's torso, then legs, pass from sight as he climbed the iron rungs.

By the time Kelsey arrived at the shaft, which was taller than the previous one at eight or nine feet in height, Junior had climbed to the top of it. This shaft was a metal tube for about six feet, topped by a wooden box for the final three feet. Kelsey saw the outline of a trapdoor cut into the wood above.

Junior grunted, and then he grunted again.

"It's too heavy-for me," He explained as he came down the ladder, one of his feet nearly beaning Kelsey. Junior gasped for air. "I can move it-a little, but I can't-open it. You try. I need-to rest."

They did a doe-see-doe in the shaft to allow Kelsey to squeeze around Junior and climb the ladder.

The trapdoor was cut out of the subflooring of the first floor. Kelsey located the hinges to make sure he pushed on the open side of the door. He crouched under it, a piston ready to fire. This allowed him to use his legs for extra thrust. Kelsey drew in a deep breath and shoved against the rough boards.

The creak of wood against wood echoed in the shaft. Kelsey felt the trapdoor move and pushed harder. It broke free, and he popped through the opening like a jack-in-the-box.

Kelsey rested the door against the stone surface of the exterior wall, knocking loose some grit that rustled to the floor. He clasped Junior's arm and helped him climb through the opening. They emerged into a narrow alley between the exterior wall and interior walls of the mansion. Any sound might reveal their presence. "We're inside now," Kelsey whispered.

"No kidding." Junior sounded annoyed.

"We're inside. This is a secret passage. Can we get out of here now?"

Junior ignored Kelsey's plea. "Check the prints. Where does this passage go?"

Kelsey looked at the top of the passageway as he tugged the folded blueprints from the back pocket of his jeans. In the dim light, he recognized the subflooring of the next level, at least ten feet above him. Apparently, this part of the house was unoccupied. The only sound came from the crackling of the blueprints as he unfolded them.

"We're near a rear corner of the mansion," Kelsey said after looking over the blueprints. "If we follow this hall to the right, we come to an intersection and another trapdoor that takes us to a tunnel. We can get outside that way."

Junior traced the markings with a translucent index finger that glowed red-orange under the flashlight.

"No," he said.

"No, what?"

Junior didn't need to answer. Kelsey already understood what he meant by saying no. Junior wasn't ready to leave. Not yet.

"If we go to the left, it takes us into the mansion and to other passageways."

"They'll hear us and come after us. We'll be trapped in here," Kelsey argued, but it was hard to be convincing when talking in whispers.

"I doubt if they know about the secret passageways. If we make a noise, they'll think it's the house creaking. Old houses creak a lot or..." Junior grinned and shivered for a moment. "Or they'll think it's ghosts. We can play a little trick on them."

"Oh, no." Kelsey raised a hand and took a step back. "We're going to be quiet and get out of here safe."

"We can make some scary noises. It will be fun."

"No way. What about the real ghosts? They might not like that." Getting caught by humans was one thing, but having ghosts mad at you was another. Kelsey didn't want to take any chances.

"There aren't any ghosts here, stupid. They would have caught us by now."

"You promise no tricks, or I'm not going." Junior always honored his promises.

"All right, party pooper, no tricks. Cross my heart and hope to..."

Junior stopped short of saying the word die. An awkward silence followed. Kelsey realized his friend feared death more than he let on. Had Junior just come to that realization himself?

"Okay," Kelsey said. He helped Junior lower the trapdoor using a notch cut into the top for a handhold. Afterward, Kelsey slapped at the dirt and dead bugs clinging to the knees of his jeans, causing dust to fill the air. This caused Junior to suck in quick little breaths. Kelsey recognized the impending disaster, Junior was about to sneeze, and did the first thing that came to mind.

Junior took one last deep gasp and paused long enough for Kelsey to press an index finger sideways under his nostrils. People did this on television. Kelsey didn't know if it would work or not, or why a finger under the nose stopped someone from sneezing.

Frozen with his mouth open and Kelsey's finger pressed against his upper lip, Junior teetered on the brink of a nasal explosion. Several seconds elapsed until, with a long, rushing sigh, Junior relaxed.

"Thanks." Junior rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. "But don't dust off your pants again."

Single file, they made their way along the passage and soon came to the intersection with the other hallway. Junior turned left without hesitating.

Now and then a board creaked under the weight of a tennis shoe, and the two boys became instant mannequins, frozen in motion, straining to detect ‌astonished voices or panicky footsteps. Each time, they heard nothing. Kelsey figured everyone must have been outside searching the grounds.

How much longer would Junior's good fortune hold out? Kelsey still wondered if it was being wasted on this adventure, leaving too little to help Junior beat the disease. Kelsey's luck ran out long ago. He was only lucky when he was with Junior. Now that might end soon, too.

"Look for signs of drugs." Junior's bushy head was silhouetted against the glow of the flashlight as he turned to speak. "They usually keep them in..."

There was a dull thud. Junior groaned.

Kelsey jerked to a stop and held his breath. Junior must have stopped breathing, too, because there was dead silence for a couple of seconds. Before Kelsey could ask what happened, a voice drifted through the interior wall. Now he could not have breathed even if he wanted to.

The voice grew louder, a muffled, unintelligible shout. The words didn't sound like English. French?

Another voice joined the first one. "For god's sake, man, speak English." The voice had a familiar twangy drawl. "What the hell are you so upset about?"

"A noise," the other voice said. "A noise came from over there. Someone is in this house." This voice, although speaking English, still sounded foreign..

The speaker with the foreign accent had moved close to the wall, where Kelsey and Junior stood sweating on the other side. Kelsey recognized the voice as that of the bearded man he saw with Hartley the previous Saturday.

"Don't be ridiculous." The speaker with the twangy voice was probably Hartley, but thousands of other Oklahomans sounded the same. "What? You think someone is in the hidden passageway? Hah!"

Junior tapped Kelsey on the shoulder. Kelsey turned to see him pointing to a ladder that ran up the wall. It wasn't an actual ladder, but wooden slats nailed across the studs.

On the other side of it, the passage came to a dead end. Junior had collided with a partition.

Panic gripped Kelsey's chest and squeezed hot tears into his eyes. The blueprints did not show a partition along this passageway. The floor plan had changed, which made the blueprints worthless as a guide. Junior and Kelsey might never find their way out.

With improvised sign language, Junior signaled for Kelsey to go up the ladder first. Kelsey pawed at the tears and started to object, but Junior refused to relent. Kelsey gave in. This was no place to argue, even in whispers.

Three rungs up, one of the wooden slats broke in two with a sharp crack. Kelsey's body dropped a foot and a half to the rung below, but his grip on the slat above him kept him from falling to the bottom.

"What was that?" said the voice of the man with the Oklahoma accent, who sounded close by.

"I told you, Hartley, someone is in this house. I'm going to investigate."

Rapid footfalls moved away from the wall.

Junior stood under Kelsey and gave him a boost to the next rung. The trapdoor opened like the one before.

From the second floor, Kelsey watched Junior climb up to the broken rung. Junior paused there and gazed up at him.

"I need help to get over the gap."

Kelsey laid flat on the floor. The crispy exoskeletons of dead bugs crunched beneath his body; he tasted dust in his mouth. Junior handed him the flashlight, grabbed Kelsey's right hand and forearm, and pulled himself past the broken rung. Kelsey's arm felt like it had stretched a couple of inches under the strain of Junior's weight.

Junior climbed out of the trapdoor, slumped against the exterior stone wall, and tried to catch his breath. Kelsey stood up and leaned over to brush the debris from his clothes but didn't for fear that Junior might sneeze. He listened for voices, but heard only his friend's raspy breathing. Were they out of immediate danger, or was something else going on? Hartley and the Frenchman were aware of the secret passages. Were they on their way to capture Kelsey and Junior?

The answer came as the sharp sound of cracking wood directly beneath them shattered the silence. This was accompanied by debris spattering against the floorboards below and an occasional ping and whiz. Kelsey took the flashlight, leaned over the opening, and directed the beam into the passageway.

Someone, probably the crazy foreigner, was spraying the interior wall with bullets. That's the only explanation for what Kelsey saw happening: little eruptions breaking out all over one wall of the passageway, the slats that held the plaster rupturing, throwing splinters and clods of plaster to the floor while the other wall sparked and puffed fine dust. It had to be bullets tearing through the interior wall, traveling across the narrow void, and embedding themselves in the exterior wall or ricocheting off its irregular stone surface.