Hexes and X's (Z&C Mysteries, #3) (9 page)

“He has been kidnapped awhile before me.” Matilda looked, compassionately. Claire could feel the tears start to sting her own eyes. She blinked them away and said, “Okay, Matilda. Get the sack off his head, if you can, and untie him. Maybe you will have better luck with your hands free. See if the bleeding has stopped. Do what you can. We are going to go on through this maze and try to get us all out of here.”

Just then, there was a loud mechanical clicking sound and the ceiling in the cell fell a few inches. “Oh, good Lord, help us all!” Matilda prayed. “I heard that same sound two other times before.”

Claire said, “Matilda hasn’t been seen for three hours or so by now. So that means this ceiling is moving down maybe three inches per hour.”

Zo calculated, “That means it drops a foot in four hours and that gives us eight hours until tomorrow morning by the looks of the height now to get through this murderous labyrinth. “Mother may I
…” She recalled the message on the entrance. “…Mother may I move across seven more X’s to freedom? The map only showed five X’s, correct?”

“Yes, I’m certain of it.”

“The sign said there were seven more, and if you count the X on the attic’s hatch, that makes eight total. We are missing a piece of the puzzle.”

“It appears that’s so,” Zo mused.

“We just have to go forward, and find out later.” Claire paused a second with an icy look to her eyes. “Now!”

“Yes, but grab Millicent just in case she means something in the game.” Zo grabbed the walking stick as the two of them headed for the narrow passage. “And push Millicent ahead of us, Claire. She will be the first to go if there is a booby-trap. Now our game is timed and we have to hurry.”

ELEVEN

The path was narrow, barely leaving room for the three of them. The walking stick pressed against Millicent’s back, moving her well ahead of themselves. Their flashlight soon showed another opening, this time with big rubber edges like that of windshield wipers. Red letters above the strange doorway said, “Keep ’em high.” Knowing they had to somehow squeeze through, the seamstress form went first.

“I don’t hear any falling or crashing, Mom.”

“Nope, and no screaming from Millicent, so I think we can go ahead through.”

The Kanes felt like they had been squeegeed by the time they got to the other side. There was only one dim light in the roughly finished room of two-by-four boards cross-nailed and lying around.

“When did Millicent get polka dots?”

“Those aren’t polka dots, Mother. They are spiders!”

“Keep lifting your feet, stepping. Don’t stay stationary!”

They jogged in place. Claire shuddered. “Eeeeeeeeeeee, I hate spiders! Good thing I’m wearing boots.”

“Me too. Do you see another door or opening anywhere?!”

A hook on a long handle hung in a corner of the room, while spiders crawled all over it. “No, but look at that.” Claire pointed, still making spider jam under her shoes.

Zo quick-stepped over to the hook. She braced her courage up and swiped at the handle, knocking off the octalegs. Two managed to flick onto her left hand. She had a fit swatting them off, choking off a scream as her back muscles tightened. She continued brushing until she hit the hook to the floor, jarring off the rest of the creepy crawlers.

“I don’t see any exit. Nothing but spider webs on the walls everywhere, Mom.”

“Good point.” Zo jogged over to the wall across the way. She ran the hook across it. “Spiders don’t live in old dusty webs. Oh! Wooo! But evidently they do crawl around under them.” She batted her hook on the floor, before knocking down the rest of the curtain of webs.

“We have another squeegee door. Bring Millicent and the stick.” Claire aimed the flashlight with one hand, and with the other hand stroked the stick across Millicent, knocking off remaining spiders. She began rolling the form across the floor in between pieces of lumber. Her jog was excellent, even though her back had three unseen polka dots.

When she joined her mother, Zo looked her over and brushed her back. She said, “I’m just giving you love pats for courage.” It seemed to soothe Claire’s nerves a little.

“Push Millicent’s body through just a bit, so we can see what else could be lurking ahead.”

“Wait, what’s that say?” She aimed her flashlight at the old wall. Something was etched and faded with time. “I see writing there.” Claire wiped the dust at the door jamb with her hand.

“Down’s an… up. Okay, then, push her through.”

The seamstress form got her wheels pushed through the rubber until there was only its metal neck showing. Before they could pull the mannequin back, the unexpected appeared, winding its way out from the next room—a snake.

“Maybe I could learn to love these spiders. They aren’t so bad after all,” Claire squeaked.

“Come on, dear. We’re trapped, and it is possible that Jack has lost too much blood already.”

“Yes. You are right. Actually, it won’t be too long before that ceiling will drop another three inches.” Claire leaned forward, pushing in the form all the way. “Okay then, I’m following in behind Millicent.”

A rank and dank smell slapped them in the face. The light was dim with dust, but the two could see they were sharing a floor with snakes moving here and there, some all balled up with anticipation of intruders into their domain. “Be careful!” didn’t need to be said. Their eyes darted everywhere on high alert.

“I release you from your promise to kill and make designer boots if we ever ran across a snake,” Claire said. “We could start a boot corporation with this lot.”

“Use the stick and I will use the hook to whack these snakes out of the way,” Zo determined.

There were two things of notice, besides the snakes: a door that could slide up, and a hanging net. The two were connected, so that any weight in the net would cause the door to move up. “Over there,” Claire was pointing to the wall on the right side of the room, “is a basket on a nail that says,
‘Come & get it.’”

“That is nice. Do you see that all manner of snakes are slithering in and out of that wall there? And, that the basket itself seems to be a nest of hissers?”

“It is part of the game, Mom. So, we better try and get it.”

“And do you see that the net is too high up for us to reach, even with the hook?”

While the two were talking, trying to map out a way to get out of that room, they also had to keep their eyes on the floor, in every direction, in case they were being moved upon. “See that narrow ledge that goes up to the net from the basket? We have to walk it to reach the netting. That is the obstacle to this room.”

“Claire, you knock away the snakes and get them going out of my way if you can while I do the same and try to manage the basket and the ramp.”

“Oh, Mom!” Claire breathed with the understanding of how dangerous that could be.

“It has to be done. It’s the only way. We might as well get it over with.”

Claire shone the flashlight in the eyes of the snake’s swaying head. All that did was cause it to rise and coil. She then took the walking stick and pushed the end of it along the floor, scattering the majority in different directions. Zo moved ahead with the hook and sometimes hooked it around the body of a reluctant snake, tossing it across the floor to the other side.

A high-pitched “Zzzzzzzz” sounded.

“Mom! Stop! Don’t move! It’s a rattler!” Claire took the larger end of the stick and moved it toward the snake’s profile, whereupon it changed its focus and began hissing at the stick with a more frantic “ZZZZZZZZ.” The diamond-head flicked its forked tongue at the end of the pole, coiled up and struck its wet fangs onto it. Zo leaped ahead toward her destination, out of harm’s way, while Claire took a golfer’s stance and drove the snake to another spot in the room. Timing was everything.

All snakes slithered wildly after that, like everything was too hot to be still. Zo swung her hook up, caught hold of the basket, and threw it upside down. The snakes wound over each other, mad at the intrusion. As Zo pounded the hook on the floor, startling them further away, she spotted a glass vial fall out of the basket and roll a little. Thinking of its odd hiding place, she snatched the vial up and stuck it in her pocket.

Zo then cleared the skinny ledge of snakes to walk up. She had to press her back against the wall to maintain balance, and crept along like someone on a ledge of a high-rise building. She had to continue upward until she was next to the exit door.

“What are we going to fill the net with, Mom? I don’t see anything,” Claire called up.

“With what we’ve got—snakes! Don’t stand under the net in case I drop a couple.”

In all the excitement, Claire forgot to keep watch of her feet. A speedy black snake looped around her ankle. She held still, holding her breath, until it slid down her foot and away.

Zo started hooking snakes from below her ledge, and cast them into the net which deepened more with the weight. When the net was filled to capacity, it still wasn’t heavy enough. She reached for the part of the rope hanging above the net, and rode it down, keeping her knees to her chest. The door moaned as it opened completely.

“One problem, Mom. As soon as you jump off the net, the door will close again. I don’t know if we’ll get through in time.”

“Get Millicent and lift her into the net,” Zo urged.

Claire knocked off a snake coiled around the neck of the seamstress form, and with great effort lifted her up into the net, which took it down to the floor. Zo jumped off and they swept their way to the door with their sticks. One viper leaped in attack at Zo, which was met with a swing of her hook-stick like a bat, sending it smacking against a wall.

They jumped through the waiting door and down a couple large steps. One step pushed down like a giant button. Fearing it triggered a booby-trap, the ladies readied themselves for Indiana Jones’s rolling boulder or the housekeeper’s disappearing floor. What happened instead was a relief—the door behind them rattled down to a close.

“Well, dear, the good news is we won’t be followed by snakes, and we only have five X’s left.”

“Is there anything in here that is cute at all? We at least had a bunny the last time we were in danger, on that cruise.”

“That depends. How do you feel about sewer rats?” The silhouette of one could be seen skittering along the opposite wall.

“Mother,” Claire stiffened, “I hardly have words. In fact, I feel a scream.”

“Thatta girl! Give me your flashlight.” Not moving off the step, Zo shone the light around. A plank hanging from the ceiling said, “This be the only way through, matey. Yo ho!”
             

Claire started laughing.

“What is so dang funny?!”

“Ah, Mother. Don’t you know what makes everyone laugh, from kids to old folks? A good poo-poo joke. I could just cry!”

Claire took back the flashlight and shone its light on the slow-moving brown creek two flights of stairs down. “We have to journey through the sewage.”

TWELVE

“That’s what stinks.” Zo pinched her nose. “I thought you had passed gas.”

Claire glared at her.

“You are your father’s daughter…”

Another glare. “Anyway, if the methane doesn’t kill us, we might be crazy by the time we get out of here. But I see that is the way out.”

The river of crud was so not the same as one of Zo’s spa mud baths she reveled in back home. “Let’s think of something else,” Zo hoped, looking all around. “We could catch the big rats, weave them together and raft out of here.”

“Next?”

“Okay, so strategy. We take the walking stick and hook-stick to balance us and walk as fast as we can—or swim.”

“Swimming is a no. I don’t want that down my neck!”

“Or worse…”

“Oh, crap!”

“Exactly!”

A loud scream echoed through the sewer tunnel. “At least it is warm” was followed by a shrill giggle.

“Shut up, honey.”

“We are going to need shots and pills, Mom.”

“Yes.”

They were thigh-deep in the stuff, and walked as fast as the heavy liquid would allow. “Antibiotics, antifungal, anti-everything. What kind of sewer is this?” Claire asked.

“This is not a normal cesspool,” Zo said, knowing full-well how these things work as a licensed real estate agent. “Just like the terror rooms we’ve been in, this was designed. Captain Dread obviously grafted into the town’s sewer and piped a lot of it down into here.”

“He was a maniac. And there is no proof that there is any treasure either. It is just a rumor. He was like two cents short a dollar for a sane brain; one fang short a monster.”

“One Depends diaper short a Swamp Thing,” Zo added.

“Yeah!”

After striving through the mucky river a while, Claire said, “You’d think the captain would have a boat hid around here for himself?”

Zo turned to take a look back. “What’s that?”

“Where?”

“A boat—metal one, docked under the last landing of the stairs.” Zo pointed.

“What?! There was a boat?” A scream echoed through the tunnel again.

“Just walk on. I am not retracing my steps.” Just her luck, Zo slipped with her next step and went completely under. Claire dove forward to help pull her up. They slipped some more before standing face to face, trying their best to wipe their eyelids of sludge.

Claire began a giggle behind tight lips. Zo frowned and wagged a finger, but her daughter’s urge to laugh grew in strength and she, too, began to burst behind her own tight lips. Rather than wag, Zo did the next best thing: SLAP! She smacked her daughter hard across the cheek, which paused
Claire’s urge to laugh only for a moment. It was Claire’s turn: SLAP! A couple more back and forth slaps, and they finally stopped laughing. They nodded at each other in satisfaction, and everything was hand signals from then on.

The tunnel became darker, and the tunnel became deeper the more they walked. Zo cupped a hand around an ear and pointed ahead of them. It sounded like a sloppy waterfall. She put the hook-stick in the crook of an arm, grabbed the flashlight from
her daughter, and rubbed goop off the lens as much as she could before turning it on. Just as they suspected—it shone on a river of sewage, going over a cliff into a fall. She flashed the light around and stopped on another tunnel going off to the right. They stood awhile, considering their only options.

Zo pointed at herself and then made walking movements with two grimy fingers, motioning that she would take a closer look. She also motioned for Claire to stay put.

Zo worked her way over and found out it wasn’t a tunnel—just a narrow debit in the wall that went back a ways. When flashing her light around to get a better look of the cranny, she spotted something unusual. In closer inspection, it turned out to be an oilskin pouch crammed into a crack. She pulled at the string to open it. Her eyes widened in delight through the goop on her face, and she tucked her find right away into a bra strap.

When she got back, she took her daughter’s hand and traced the letters f-o-l-l-o-w t-h-e h-e-x: p-o-o-p. Zo tapped carefully at the bottom of the river floor with the
hook-stick for firm footing as she inched up to the edge of the fall. Then she backed up and pushed herself forward as fast as she could, leaping off.

“NO!” Claire screamed out in fear

“Run and leap off the falls. It’s safe!” Zo’s voice trailed up to her, followed by a fit of spitting and coughing.

First shaking her head, Claire ran and took a leap of faith off the falls. She ended up in a roll on a slimy floor. The sewage spilled down a large grate behind her. The stink was horrible. The mist from the river filled the air with methane, making it even harder to breath.

Zo took Claire’s hand and pulled her into a run while carrying the walking stick under her arm and the flashlight in her other hand. After a couple of turns they could see a dim down-light which illuminated another “squeegee” door. They passed through it with hope, only to find another squeegee door. After passing through that one, they were standing at two flights of stairs up. They went up them because there was nothing left to do.

At the top
, a door stood before them. They leaned their stick and hook against a corner.

“Give me your key, Claire.”

Claire reached into her sweater at the neck and pulled out the now grimy thing. Zo pushed the end into the slot and the door dragged slowly open. At the same time the lights blinked several times and all kinds of mechanisms could be heard sounding and rumbling. It was scary because the two didn’t know what to expect. They found a ball rolling at them—a bowling ball. They had entered behind the bowling alley’s lanes; there were two. The duo had to duck the blast of pins from a strike.

When they stepped forward, through to the other side and between the lanes, a crowd “Ohhh’d.” Different questions were being asked at once: “What is it?” “What is going on?” “Who are they?”

Zo’s response was, “I realize Claire and I look like slimy versions of The Grinch in this unfortunate filth.”

“Yes. Get away!” a lady councilor spoke loudly. “I mean, go shower!”

“Yes. Go clean up and then come back and tell us what you have been up to,” ordered Judge Huff.

Debbie, the Coven House nurse, came running with plastic bags from behind the refreshment counter. After the two had their feet tied with plastic-bag slippers, Debbie took them back to the mud porch where there was a hand-held shower. She supplied two new bars of soap, shampoo, conditioner, brought large bath towels, two terry robes and slippers. “We keep these in case we get unexpected guests. You don’t mind if I put your clothes in a plastic bag and just… throw them away?” she asked, putting on latex gloves. “You guys stink!”

“First, let me have that flowerpot right there,” Zo said. “I have a couple of things that need to be washed for examination.”

Debbie carefully handed the pot to her. “Also put your clothing in this garbage bag over here. I’ll be back for it when you are finished up. Don’t sit on or touch anything. Take your clothes off on the shower floor.”

Claire went in and soaped and rinsed, soaped and rinsed, and soaped and rinsed, as did her mother when it came her turn. They even opened their mouths and soaped up there. There wasn’t anywhere that didn’t get bubbly-clean, even fingers up nostrils with soap and lots of blowing. When finished, Debbie came to take them to the refrigerator in the kitchen.

“Are either of you allergic to Penicillin?’

“No,” Zo answered.

“You are going to get a shot in the hip,” she said all smiles and with a little laugh.

“Actually, we are glad for that,” Claire assured. There was something in how Debbie looked like Julie Andrews that was comforting.