Curse of the Spider King (13 page)

“It's just a little bit farther,” Johnny said, pointing to a large wooded area and then a peculiar cluster of pine trees set back even farther. “Through there.”

Autumn switched the heavy book to her other arm. “What do you think this book has to do with our cave?”

“I don't know,” Johnny said, spotting the stream up ahead that led into the heart of the forest and eventually flowed right over the very mouth of the cave they sought.

“Maybe we should read the book.”

“What, now?” Johnny stopped.

“Why not?” She took it from underneath her arm. “It might have some instructions or something.”

“Let's just keep going, Autumn.” He started forward again. “I think the cave is the place to read it.”

“You think too much,” Autumn quipped. “It's going to get you in trouble one day.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you're too impatient,” he said over his shoulder. “And it's already gotten you in trouble. More times than I can count, that's for sure.”

Suddenly Sam barked up ahead. “He's found something,” Johnny pointed. “Come on!” They raced through the brush to where Sam stood, snarling at something in the tall grass.

“What is it, Sam?” Autumn asked, drawing near.

“Careful, Autumn.”

There, cradled in the tall grass, was a thick piece of rolled parchment about as long as her arm, bound with thin, translucent thread. Autumn reached down and picked it up. Sam barked.

“What is it?” Johnny asked.

“Dunno.” Autumn took her finger and touched the thin threads that held it shut. “It's sticky.”

“Sticky? Lemme see.” Johnny took the parchment and noticed that the strings were wrapped numerous times around the document, seemingly unending, without start or finish. “That's weird . . . it's not tied or anything.”

“Think you can snap them?”

“Sure.” Johnny shoved his finger underneath the threads and instantly noticed just how sticky the things were. He pulled.

But they were stronger than they appeared.

“What's the problem?” Autumn chided.

Johnny grunted. “These things won't budge.” He pulled again.

“Maybe you can slide them off one of the ends?”

Johnny yanked his finger from the threads, wiping it on his pants once free. Then he tried to slip the threads down the length of the roll. After some effort he pulled them right off the end as a bundle in his palm. “That's weird,” he noted. “Almost like spiderweb.”

“Here, let me see that,” Autumn said as she grabbed the parchment from his hands. She started to unroll it as Johnny looked over her shoulder. His jaw dropped.

“Think it's a treasure map?” Autumn asked.

“A treasure map? Sure, Autumn, and I suppose you think Bartholomew Thorne, infamous pirate of the Caribbean, has been tramping around in Mr. Rizzo's backyard.” Autumn shot him a lethal stare. “You can't even tell what it says, Autumn.” He pointed to various markings. “It's written in some sort of gibberish. And look at all these weird symbols. It looks more like a maze or tunnels or something.”

“Well, whatever it is, it's ours now.”

“You don't know that, Autumn. Suppose it's Mr. Rizzo's or something?”

“Oh, please. It looks like it was just dropped there yesterday! It's not wet from rain. . . . It was practically sitting on top of the grass. No way it's Mr. Rizzo's.”

“Then whosever it is will be coming back, if it was dropped yesterday.”

“Like I said, you think too much.” Autumn crouched, layed the book on a tuft of tall grass, and put the scroll into her backpack. She stood and grinned triumphantly. “Finders Keepers.”

Sam started barking his deep “there's a stranger” bark. Autumn's smile vanished.

“What'sa matter, boy?” asked Johnny. But their pet rushed toward the base of a gnarly, black-barked tree at the edge of the woods. Sam sniffed at its roots, squealed as if he'd been hit, and then barked some more. He repeated the process, darting close and racing away, barking all the time.

“What's gotten into him?” asked Autumn.

“I dunno,” said Johnny. He started to chuckle. “Maybe another dog peed on the tree, and Sam smelled it.”

“What is it with boys that makes pee, poop, and snot so funny?” Autumn glared at her brother. “Be serious. Something's really spooked Sam.”

“Come here, boy!” called Johnny in his lowest “I am master” voice. Sam turned a few tight circles before racing over to Johnny. “There's my good boy,” said Johnny, scratching the fur on Sam's neck. That earned Johnny several sloppy licks on his cheek.

“That tree is kind of creepy,” said Autumn. They both stared at it for several thumping heartbeats. Taller than the white pines that surrounded it, the dark broadleaf swayed and creaked in the breeze.

Johnny was the first to speak. “I still think it was just—”

“Don't say it!” She whacked him on the shoulder. “Now, let's go. We don't have a whole lot of daylight left.” With that, the three of them bounded toward the cave.

When they arrived at the stream, Johnny said, “I can take the book across.”

“I can do it,” Autumn answered, placing it securely in her waterproof backpack with the scroll.

They rolled up their pant legs and took off their sneakers before crossing the fast-flowing water. Once on the other side, they put back on their shoes and started down the steep slope into the ravine where a waterfall emptied, carefully picking their way through fallen timbers and giant rocks until they arrived at the face of the falls. And there before them was the subtle, black cave mouth hiding behind the flow of water.

Autumn quickly retrieved the book, swung her backpack on, and flipped the book open to the first page. “See, Johnny. Look at it. I told you it looks just like the book.”

“Sure does,” he mumbled.

Autumn closed the cover and looked at her brother. “Well?”

“Ladies first.” He smiled. But Sam beat them both to it, skirting the main flow of water and ducking into the darkness.

“Sam!” Autumn yelled, tucking the book under her arm and heading after him.

“Wait for me!” cried Johnny. The two of them followed Sam into the cave, ducking so as not to hit their heads on the low-lying ceiling of sandstone. Once inside they heard Sam bark up ahead.

“I can't see anything,” said Autumn.

“Here.” Johnny flicked on a flashlight he had stuffed in his belt for just this occasion. The beam washed over the walls and centered on the floor up ahead. The cave was more like a tunnel, stretching on out of sight, its floor damp with puddles of cold water. “I don't see Sam.”

“He must be really far ahead. Let's go.”

They plunged on into the blackness, dispersed only by their meager flashlight. The dampness sent chills up their spines . . . or was it more than the change in temperature?

“It feels funny in here,” Johnny said.

“Don't be silly.” They both heard Sam bark again from up ahead. “See? Sam says it's fine.”

“He just barked, Autumn.”

“I know; that's his ‘everything's all right' bark.”

Johnny hesitated but moved on anyway. “I'm not so sure.”

They walked through the ankle-high water, Johnny watching for water snakes, Autumn being careful not to trip. Soaking the book would be a horrible mistake. With the sound of the falls now far behind them, Sam let out another bark, this time closer. Slowly, the floor began to rise, and soon Johnny and Autumn were on dry ground. They examined smaller offshoots of the tunnel splitting from the main cave but chose to stay to the larger route. They skirted around large stalactites formed by hundreds of years of dripping minerals, and eventually entered a large chamber. Sam stood at the far end by a wall—the very back of the cave. He barked at them.

“What is it, boy?” Autumn inquired, walking toward him. Sam turned his head toward the unusually flat wall.

“He's such a dumb dog.”

“No, he's not,” Autumn contested as she drew near her pet. “Johnny, look! Footprints!”

“What?” Johnny moved forward and shined the beam on the dry silt floor. Sure enough, there was a series of fresh footprints. “It looks like two sets,” he said examining them. “Don't look like sneakers.”

“No funny lines,” Autumn noted. “Boots?”

“No. They're more like socks or something.”

“Moccasins, like the Indians?”

“Maybe.”

It looked as though one set of prints led into the cave, all the way to the wall, and the other led back out of the cave.

“Huh,” said Johnny. “They came in and turned around just like we are.” Then he noticed something else, something so peculiar that his first thoughts made no sense at all. “Autumn! Look!”

They both knelt down where Sam was standing and examined the spot where the wall met the dirt floor. One of the footprints that led away from the wall was cut exactly in half. “That's impossible,” Johnny blurted out. Sam barked.

“It's like the back of the cave was built after . . . after whoever it was walked through here.”

“Maybe it's a prank.”

“A prank? Out here? On who? Us?”

“Well, maybe it's a fake door or something.” Autumn immediately pounded the wall, but she stopped as soon as her hand throbbed.

Johnny used the flashlight to search for a secret lever or a hidden button. He had seen it plenty of times in the movies. “I dunno. I just can't explain it.”

“Neither can I,” Autumn said, scratching her head. They both knelt and puzzled over the strange sight, until finally Autumn sat down and set the book on her lap. “Hold the light up for me, would ya?”

“Why do I feel like we shouldn't do this in here?” Johnny asked as he sat down next to her.

“Because you worry too much?” She sat cross-legged, Sam sidling up beside her. “We showed the book to Mom. We told her we were going to read. What could happen?”

“Y-e-a-hh, I g-u-e-s-s,” he said slowly. “But it wasn't the same for Mom. She thought it was some kind of Old West book. What'd she call it?”

“
Pioneers of the Western United States
,” Autumn replied.

“How'd she get that, Autumn? Look at it!
The History of Berinfell
:
The Chronicles of the Elf Lords and Their Kin
. There's something messed up with this book. Maybe we shouldn't read it in here after all. It's getting late, and who knows how long this battery will last.”

“Ah, you worry too much. Of course we should read it in here,” Autumn declared with know-it-all finality. “How else are we going to figure out what's going on?”

Johnny didn't have an answer for that. He stared down at the book. The beam of his flashlight shone down, setting the gilded title ablaze. “So where do we start?”

“At the beginning,” Autumn said, opening the book and flipping past the artwork to the table of contents. She scanned down the page. “. . . or maybe not right at the beginning. This “Fall of Berinfell” chapter sounds cool. Lessee . . .” She began to flip through the pages. “Here we are, page 287. Man, look at this fancy writing . . . like an invitation to a prince's ball.” She reached out a finger to touch the script.

“Autumn, the chapter starts on page 277, not—”

Johnny never finished the sentence. The temperature in the cave dropped even colder, so low he could see his breath. Dust on the cave floor began to swirl in small eddies like miniature tornadoes, and Johnny's flashlight dimmed, then went out. A foul smell filled the air. Then a lick of flame leaped up from the book illuminating the back of the cave, and the wall seemed to ripple like water.

“Fire!” Johnny yelled, backing away. Sam jumped back, too. “Close the book, Autumn!”

Her face an odd mixture of frozen shock, utter disbelief, and blank confusion, Autumn shut the book. With a flanging
whoosh
, the cave went back to normal, including the flashlight coming back on. “What . . . what happened?” she asked, for once without an answer.

“It all came from the book,” Johnny whispered. “When you touched the page, I smelled something weird. Did you smell it?” Sam sniffed the air. “It's gone now.”

Sam whined.

“But how can a book—?”

“Open it up again,” suggested Johnny.

“I don't think we should.”

“You even said it's the only way to find out.”

“Yeah, but that was before . . . before . . . before all that fire and stuff!”

“Oh, come on, Sis. Here, lemme do it.” Johnny took the book out of her lap, but before he could blink, Autumn had it back. Lightning fast. Johnny sat stunned. He had never seen hands move so fast! “How'd . . . how'd you do that?”

Autumn blinked, again at a loss . . . but only for a moment. “If anyone's going to open this book back up, it's me,” she said. “'Cause I want to be able to close it before we burn ourselves to death.” Autumn cracked open the book and flipped back to the same page. Nothing happened. “I think you're right,” she said. “I must need to touch the page.”

No sooner had her fingertips brushed the text than the temperature dropped, the flashlight went out, and wind swirled. The air filled once more with the peculiar, unpleasant odor, and fire leaped up from the page.

Autumn looked questioningly over her shoulder to her brother.

He shook his head.

This time, Autumn didn't close the book.

The fire was merely the top of a torch. It rose out of the book and was held in a gloved hand. Autumn dropped the book and edged away. The torch-bearing hand belonged to a soldier. Other warriors followed the first one. The cave shimmered and changed before Autumn's and Johnny's eyes. Strange, curving stone walls emerged from the book and began to curl and twist. No, they were tunnels . . . tunnels beneath a huge castle city. Within the tunnels these soldiers moved at great speed, as if on some urgent errand. And yet not far behind—clambering across crenulated walls, on rooftops, and along the streets—was another army.