The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery (9 page)

“The Bloodwaters who lived here before had some pretty bad luck. Like the guy who built the house, James J. Bloodwater. He was trimming his rosebushes one day and got struck by lightning. And back in the 1960s Farley Bloodwater—Crazy Farley—went insane and tried to kill his brother right there in Bloodwater House.”

Eric's jaw dropped.

“Why did he do that?”

“The story is that a chandelier fell on Farley. Right here in the dining room. It cracked his skull wide open. The doctors were able to repair his skull, but as soon as he got out of the hospital, Farley came back here and tried to kill his brother, who he accused of loosening the chandelier. Farley was charged with attempted murder. Then, during the trial, he grabbed a gun from the bailiff, shot his own lawyer and ran out of the courthouse and into the woods. They never caught him.”

“Maybe he's still out there,” said Eric.

“He'd be pretty old by now. But that's not all. A few years later his brother built a set of wings out of balsa wood and silk and launched himself off Barn Bluff. He didn't survive. And a woman who lived here hanged herself from the fence.”

Eric shrugged. “Well, I'm not gonna be doing any flying or hanging. And we don't have any chandeliers. Come on—I want to show you my dad's office.”

On the way upstairs, Roni could hear the twins laughing, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from.

“Owen and Sam are playing hide-and-seek,” Eric explained. “They do that all the time.”

Eric was showing her his father's oversize oak-paneled office when Roni brought the conversation around to the development.

“So is your dad going ahead with the development?” she asked.

“Of course. That's what we came here for.”

“Where did you live before?”

“We've lived all over—Texas, Colorado, California. My dad does all kinds of real estate deals.”

“So why did he have to come all the way back here to tear up Indian Bluff?”

Eric laughed. “My dad doesn't care about that Indian stuff. Besides—” He hesitated. “How come
you
care about it so much?”

“I just don't think you should destroy artifacts that have been preserved for thousands of years.”

“What artifacts? That archaeologist just has it in for us. My dad says that if archaeologists had their way, we'd never build anything at all.”

“I thought you liked it when I brought it up at the meeting yesterday.”

“I thought it was cool that you tweaked the old man in public, but that doesn't mean I want his big project to fail. He's spent months on this deal.”

“So the bulldozers are going to just tear up the bluff?” Roni felt herself starting to lose it.

Eric laughed. “Bulldozers, trenchers, dynamite, whatever it takes. So what?”

She wanted to punch him. “So they could wait a few days to give Dr. Dart a chance to recover and investigate the cave!”

“Cave? I heard there was some sort of cave-in.”

“Where'd you hear that?” Roni asked. It had been only a couple of hours since she and Brian had witnessed the explosion. How could Eric have gotten the news so quickly?

“One of my dad's construction engineers went out there. He told us.”

“Yeah, right. I bet your dad wrecked the cave himself.”

Eric threw back his head and laughed. “My dad? He's so scared of dynamite he won't go within a mile of the stuff.”

Roni felt herself go all cold inside. “How did you know the cave was dynamited?” she asked.

“How else would you cave-in a cave?”

Roni didn't know what to say. Then Eric surprised her.

“You're kind of different, aren't you?”

“What do you mean?” said Roni, cautiously pleased that he was noticing anything at all about her.

“I mean, you're into saving the dead Indians. And I heard you got involved in some kidnapping a while ago.”

Roni shrugged modestly. “I like to check things out,” she said.

“You're, like, Mystery Adventure Girl. You went into that cave the other day. You like dark spooky places? Hey, you want to see something really cool?”

“Sure, but don't we have to get going pretty quick? We have to go to class pretty soon.”

“This won't take long,” Eric said. He stepped over to the oak-paneled wall and ran his fingers along the seam between two of the heavy panels. Roni heard a click, and the panel slid aside to reveal a hidden doorway about four feet high.

“I found this one day when we were cleaning,” he said.

Roni looked inside. The opening led to a dark, dusty, narrow passageway.

“Check it out,” he said.

Curious, Roni ducked her head and entered the passageway. She became immediately uncomfortable—it reminded her too much of the cave. She started to back out when she heard the click of the panel closing behind her.

The scariest thing about visiting people in hospitals, Brian thought, was that the person might be dead. This had happened to him once when he had gone to visit his grand-mother. He had known that she had cancer and didn't have long to live, but that didn't make it any less horrible when he stopped by Mercy Hospital to find her room empty. He had then found his mother sitting in the waiting room, crying, with his dad's arm around her.

Brian felt that little tingle of fear in his belly as he waited for the elevator, even though he didn't know Dr. Dart that well. You just never knew.

The elevator doors opened and out stepped Professor Bloom.

“Bain!” The professor stopped in surprise.

“Hi, Professor,” said Brian.

“What are you doing here?” asked Professor Bloom.

“I came to see how Dr. Dart is doing.”

“I see. I was just visiting him myself. The poor man seems to be a bit addled.”

“I was hoping he'd be better today.”

“I fear that is not the case.” The professor looked at his watch. “Don't forget, you are due in class in one hour. The unfortunate Dr. Dart was supposed to visit our class today, but I have instead arranged for one of his associates to be on hand. Do not be late.” He thumped the rubber tip of his cane on the floor for emphasis.

“I'll be there,” Brian said.

The professor stalked off quickly with his cane held like a rifle over his shoulder. Brian stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. When the elevator doors opened, Brian nearly collided with a tall, fast-moving blond woman. Brian turned to look at the woman as she got into the elevator. It was Jillian Greystone. Their eyes locked in mutual astonishment as the elevator doors slid closed.

First Professor Bloom, then Jillian Greystone. That was a weird coincidence, Brian thought.

And then he remembered that he didn't believe in coincidences.

 

At first, Roni wasn't scared. Eric had to be just joking around. The panel would open any second and he would laugh and she would get mad and . . . what was he waiting for? Five seconds was maybe a little funny. Fifteen seconds in utter darkness was un-funny.

“Hey!” she yelled, banging her fist on the panel. It felt as solid as the trunk of an oak. “Cut it out, Eric! Not funny!”

She listened, but heard no response.

Fifteen seconds was un-funny; thirty seconds was verging on scary. She felt along the edges of the panel but could find no knobs, levers or hidden catches.

Sixty seconds was even scarier than thirty seconds. Roni could feel her heart pounding.

“LET ME OUT!” she shouted. She braced herself against the opposite wall and kicked the panel as hard as she could. All she managed to do was stir up dust and practically break her foot.

She wished she had her scented candle, but she had left her backpack in the front hallway.

Coughing and limping, Roni worked her way along the narrow passageway. It had to lead someplace. She moved slowly, sliding one foot forward at a time, feeling along the walls with her hands. She imagined Eric standing outside in the hall, laughing. What did he think he was doing? Fear gave way to anger, and with each sliding step Roni swore that when she got out of there, she would kill Eric Bloodwater. No, killing was too easy. She would imprison him in an underground tomb with nothing but liverwurst and asparagus to eat. She would—

Roni let out a yelp as her right foot met nothingness. She flailed about with her arms, searching for something to grab onto, but she couldn't stop herself from falling forward into the dark.

 

Brian walked down the hall to room 313 and peeked inside. Dr. Dart was sitting up in bed talking to a dark-skinned man with a bandage wrapped around his head. At first Brian thought the dark-skinned man was another patient, but then he realized that it wasn't a bandage on the man's head—it was a turban.

“I'm not a ghost, Dr. Dart. I'm a Sikh,” the man said.

“I don't care how sick you are,” said Dr. Dart.

“I'm not ‘sick,' ” the man said, laughing. “You're the one who's sick. I'm a
Sikh.
This is our traditional headwear.”

“Where are you from?”

“I'm Indian.”

“Indian? Last time I saw you, you were dead!”

“I'm not dead, Dr. Dart,” said the man. “I'm your doctor. Doctor Singh.”

Brian stepped into the room. “Hi,” he said.

Dr. Singh turned and said, “Can I help you?”

“I just came to visit Dr. Dart,” Brian said. “How is he?”

“He's had quite a blow to the head,” said Dr. Singh.

“Stop spinning like that,” said Dr. Dart.

“So you think somebody hit him on the head?”

“At first we assumed that he had fallen and hit his head on a rock,” said Dr. Singh. “But when I reexamined his wound, I noticed that it had very smooth edges, almost as if he'd been hit with a pipe, or a heavy rod of some sort. A rock would have left a more jagged wound.”

“It was a ghost,” offered Dr. Dart.

Dr. Singh smiled, but his forehead wrinkled with concern. “Just try to relax, Dr. Dart. I'll be back to check on you shortly.” Dr. Singh left the room.

Brian approached the bedside. “Hi, Dr. Dart. Do you remember me?”

Dr. Dart focused his eyes on Brian. “Yorick? Is that you?”

“It's Brian Bain,” said Brian.

“Dr. Brain! Have you seen Yorick?”

“Um, not lately. Dr. Dart, you know Jillian Greystone?”

“Jillian?” He looked around wildly.

“Who exactly is she, Dr. Dart?

Dr. Dart's eyes welled with tears. He said, “She'll never forgive me, you know. I love her, but she hates me!”

“Why? What did you do?”

Dr. Dart looked away, and for a moment Brian thought he saw a glint of sanity in his eyes. “I forgot she was a human,” he said. “I forgot she had feelings.”

“Do you remember anything more about what happened to you?”

Dr. Dart put his index finger in his mouth, digging between his teeth. He pulled his finger out of his mouth and looked at it.

“They put rocks in your mouth when you're sleeping,” he said, showing Brian a tiny, dark oblong shape, smaller than a peppercorn, stuck to the tip of his finger.

 

Roni landed hard, scraping her knee on the floor and banging her head on the wall. She lay there for a few seconds wondering if she was mortally injured. Except for the pain in her knee and head, she seemed to be okay. She sat up and felt around, trying to figure out what had happened. She felt a step, and another, and another, and another. She had fallen down four steps onto a landing.

Groping around in the dark, she found another set of steps leading down. Counting, she carefully descended the next staircase. Thirteen steps. Good thing she hadn't fallen down that one.

The passageway went off in two directions at the bottom of the steps. Roni flipped a mental coin and turned to the left. Sooner or later, she told herself, I'm going to get out of here. But another part of her remembered reading that one resident of Bloodwater House—Crazy Farley—had disappeared, never to be found. She imagined herself stumbling across his body. Somehow, once she thought of it, she couldn't think about anything else. What would it feel like to step on a dried-up dead person? What kind of crunch would it make?

Just as she was having that unpleasant thought, someone shrieked in her ear and she was blinded by a brilliant flash of light.

Roni screamed and ran straight into a wall.

“GotchaGotcha!” squealed two identical voices.

 

Brian found Dr. Singh standing at the nurses' station.

“Dr. Singh?”

“Yes? Oh, Dr. Dart's young friend.”

“What's wrong with him?” Brian asked. “Why isn't he getting better?”

Dr. Singh frowned and his turbaned head bobbed on his thin neck. “Head wounds can produce unpredictable effects,” he said. “But I've never seen a case quite like Dr. Dart. This morning, with his other visitors, he was quite lucid. He was talking about going back to that cave where he was injured. Something about some Native American artifacts. He is very passionate about his work!”

“He's kinda out of it right now,” Brian said.

Dr. Singh did his bobblehead thing again and said, “Yes, he seems to be experiencing both auditory and visual hallucinations, almost as if he were drugged.”

“He says somebody has been putting rocks in his mouth,” said Brian. He held out his hand. In the center of his palm was the tiny black seedlike object Dr. Dart had picked from between his teeth. “Why would he have rocks in his mouth?”