Tunnel of Secrets Read online

  THANKS

  FOR DOWNLOADING THIS EBOOK!

  We have SO many more books for kids in the in-beTWEEN age that we’d love to share with you! Sign up for our IN THE MIDDLE books newsletter and you’ll receive news about other great books, exclusive excerpts, games, author interviews, and more!

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com/middle

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Swallowed Whole

  Chapter 2: Buried Alive

  Chapter 3: Lost Keys

  Chapter 4: They Know!

  Chapter 5: Family Secrets

  Chapter 6: Ghost Hunters

  Chapter 7: The Mole People

  Chapter 8: Ghost Train

  Chapter 9: Ticket to the Underworld

  Chapter 10: Deadly Indigestion

  Chapter 11: The Cavern of Doom

  Chapter 12: Welcome to the Secret City

  Chapter 13: The Woman Behind the Mask

  Chapter 14: From Beyond the Grave

  Chapter 15: At Dagger Point

  Chapter 16: Down the Drain

  Chapter 17: Zombie Graveyard

  Chapter 18: Tomb Raiders

  Chapter 19: Night of the Living Bro

  Chapter 20: The Final Resting Place

  About Franklin W. Dixon

  1

  SWALLOWED WHOLE

  FRANK

  MY BROTHER JOE WAS ALREADY more than six feet underground when one of our hometown’s most famous landmarks fell through a giant hole in the earth.

  It was early Saturday afternoon. Just about all of Bayport had been planning to attend a street fair on the other side of town, but last week’s disappearance of a couple of Bayport High School kids had put a stop to that. Instead most of the townspeople were gathered on the lawn of the square in front of city hall, waiting for Deputy Hixson to start a press conference. With our esteemed—and estimably grumpy—chief of police, Olaf, on vacation, the job of leading the investigation had fallen to his young protégé. But since Deputy Hixson’s daughter, Layla, happened to be one of the missing kids, he had a lot more at stake than just impressing his boss.

  I felt bad for Deputy Hixson. He’s a good cop. He’s also a lot nicer than Chief Olaf when Joe and I interfere with a police investigation, which kind of happens a lot. As Bayport’s foremost amateur detectives, Joe and I have a special knack for solving crimes. It isn’t our fault that a couple of teenagers happen to be better at it than the local police.

  We weren’t officially looking into the missing kids, but Joe was friends with Layla, and I think he liked her as more than a friend, too, so we were keeping a close eye on things.

  Joe wasn’t at the press conference, though; he was under it! He was helping Urbex—the local urban explorers club—map some of the old tunnels hidden under Bayport, the same tunnels that we had helped discover on another case. Police press conferences were usually pretty dull, anyway, so we didn’t think he’d be missing much.

  But I wasn’t just at the press conference to investigate. I was also there as a photographer. A camera can be one of a detective’s most important tools, and I was intent on learning my way around my new digital SLR.

  “Make sure to get some shots of Hixson’s wife, too, Hardy,” a sweet voice said not so sweetly behind me. “It would be great if you could get her crying while he’s talking. The readers really eat up that emotional stuff.”

  I turned around to find Charlene Vale scribbling in the little notebook she carried everywhere. Charlene was the news blogger for our high school’s newspaper . . . and, to be honest, she was another reason I was at the press conference. She was supersmart and supercute and I kind of had a little—okay, maybe not so little—crush on her. She wasn’t exactly warm and cuddly, though. Charlene took being an investigative reporter seriously, which I totally respected, even if it meant she was pretty intense sometimes. When I’d learned she was looking for a photojournalist to help document her stories, I joined the paper as a photographer.

  “Once the press conference starts, I’ll open up the aperture and use a longer lens. That will make the deputy in focus in the foreground with Delia slightly blurred behind him,” I told her.

  Charlene didn’t look impressed. “I don’t care if you draw a picture with crayons as long as you get the shot.”

  “Um, okay,” I said, feeling myself blush. Sometimes I forget that not everybody gets as excited about technology as I do.

  “Pretty big turnout,” Charlene observed, thankfully changing the topic. “This disappearance is a big story. I’d love to be able to outscoop the Bugle on this one.”

  The Bugle was Bayport’s daily newspaper, and it usually drew a lot more readers than our high school’s student-run website. Not always, though. Charlene had already beaten the Bugle to the punch on a couple other big headlines this year.

  And this was a big story. Hundreds of people had come out to see what the deputy had to say—even some of the town’s homeless population. I noticed a guy in his fifties, who everyone called Sal, pushing a shopping cart past the courthouse steps.

  “You know, I tried to interview him once for a story on Bayport’s homeless population,” Charlene said, pointing to Sal. “He wrote ‘no comment’ on a piece of paper and walked away.”

  “I guess no one told you he was mute, huh?” I chuckled.

  Sal had been a fixture around Bayport for as long as I could remember. I’d always wondered what his story was, but since he never spoke out loud, I’d never been able to ask him. I’d sometimes see him mouthing things excitedly, only no sound ever came out.

  “I hear Delia Hixson is a member of the Mayflower Society,” Charlene said as Sal pushed his cart past where Layla’s mom was standing, waiting for her husband to address the crowd.

  “Don’t you have to be a descendant of one of the original pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower to be a member of the Mayflower Society?” I asked. The history nerd in me got tingles. I hadn’t realized any Bayport residents were related to some of the colonies’ first settlers way back in 1620.

  Charlene nodded. “I found out while I was doing background for this story. They’ve been Bayport bigwigs since Colonial times, living around here since before Bayport was Bayport. Longer than that guy even,” she said, pointing over her shoulder to the large bronze statue of the Colonial navy officer that stood watch over the other end of the town square.

  “You mean the Admiral?” I asked, taking in the statue of Admiral James T. Bryant, Revolutionary War hero of the seas and one of our town’s foremost founding fathers.

  “Did you know that Admiral Bryant’s fleet of transatlantic merchant ships helped turn Bayport into a major commercial hub?” I went on. “He was friends with all kinds of important historical figures, like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. In fact, if things had gone differently, he might have made it into the history books too. He had big plans to turn Bayport into one of the nation’s great port cities, but he disappeared before he had a chance. That’s why Bayport stayed the sleepy little town it is today. The Admiral’s disappearance is one of Bayport’s great mysteries.”

  She gave me another unimpressed look. “If I ever do a story on the Admiral, I’ll be sure to interview you.”

  Apparently I wasn’t doing a good job impressing her with my knowledge of photographic technique or local history.

  “Come to think of it, I can use Admiral Bryant’s disappearance to draw parallels to what happened to Layla and Dan; it will give the story historical context,” she said, nodding to herself and jotting the idea down in her pad. “See if you can get some shots with his statue in the background.”

  “You got it.” I smiled. Score one for Fr
ank Hardy!

  “That statue really does kind of freak me out, though.” Charlene shuddered. “I keep thinking he’s going to jump off the pedestal and start chasing me around with that giant fork of his.”

  It was a spooky statue. The angry-looking, twenty-foot-tall Admiral held a large trident in his right hand as if he were Poseidon, king of the sea. And if the trident—which actually did look a bit like a giant three-pronged fork—wasn’t freaky enough, all you had to do was look at his other hand, which was missing its pinkie and ring fingers from a battle at sea.

  But that wasn’t the most interesting thing about his left hand. It was holding the coolest-looking book ever to his chest. The book was sealed with a clasp and engraved with all these strange symbols, like spirals, two-headed eagles, and an eye inside a floating pyramid similar to the one on the dollar bill. With his missing fingers and the way he was holding the book, it almost looked like the Admiral was giving the peace sign. There was also a giant bronze skeleton key dangling from a ring on his belt—the key to the city. What the trident and book symbolized, no one really knew for sure.

  “According to legend, Admiral Bryant’s ghost still haunts the old graveyard across town. It’s just waiting for his body to be returned to the empty spot in his family tomb alongside his wife,” I shared.

  “The Admiral’s Tomb, huh?” Charlene asked. “That doesn’t make me feel any less freaked out by the statue.”

  I started thinking about the Admiral’s mysterious disappearance as Deputy Hixson approached the microphone. The statue almost seemed to be watching the press conference from the other end of the square. It really did give the whole scene a sinister vibe.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Deputy Hixson said. I turned my attention, and my camera, back to the courthouse steps, where he was standing. “As you all know by now, two Bayport High students went missing last week: Councilman Saltz’s son Daniel and my own daughter, Layla.”

  Deputy Hixson had to pause to collect himself. I could see the pain on his face, and my heart went out to him. I knew firsthand how hard it was to have to investigate a family member’s disappearance.

  “So far, we have been unable to establish a clear connection between the children. They are two grades apart in school, but they don’t seem to have known each other. What we do know is that a suspicious figure in a hood was seen following both students shortly before their disappearances, and we have to consider the possibility that they were both taken against their will.”

  The crowd reacted with gasps and frightened murmurs.

  “Please, everyone remain calm,” Deputy Hixson continued. “I can assure you that the Bayport PD has devoted every available resource to finding them. We ask that you remain vigilant but calm and continue to go about your lives as normal.”

  As the deputy spoke, I could hear a rumbling sound in the distance that I figured was probably just thunder. It wasn’t until I felt a vibrating sensation in my feet that I realized the sound wasn’t coming from the sky; it was coming from below.

  “There is no, uh, need, uh . . . ,” the deputy started to stammer midsentence.

  As the rumbling grew more intense, people looked around in confusion.

  “. . . panic.” Deputy Hixson had barely gotten the final word out when . . .

  BOOM!

  It felt like an earthquake and an explosion all at once. The ground rocked under our feet, and a huge cloud of dust erupted from the other end of the town square as the earth collapsed and swallowed the Admiral’s statue whole.

  2

  BURIED ALIVE

  JOE

  HEY, KEITH, DO YOU KNOW Layla Hixson?” I asked.

  The leader of Bayport’s Urbex club just adjusted his headlamp, directing it toward the darkened tunnel branching off to our right. He grunted some sort of reply, but I couldn’t tell if it was a yes or a no.

  “Chris, Scott,” he said to the two Urbex members who’d ventured underground with us, “you guys check out this passage. I’ll take Joe down that way and we’ll reconvene back here in twenty.”

  As far as I could tell, the tunnel we were exploring was right under the town square. A few months earlier, my brother Frank and I had discovered an old secret tunnel below the Bayport Aquarium that a wildlife smuggler had been using to steal an endangered giant sea turtle. We didn’t know it then, but that tunnel turned out to be part of a whole network of abandoned secret passageways winding their way under Bayport. Some of them were hundreds of years old, but no one really knew who originally built them . . . or why.

  Urbex had volunteered to help map the newly discovered tunnels. Keith and his team had a lot of experience exploring Bayport’s abandoned structures and sewers, so they were pretty well qualified to safely lead the expedition. I wasn’t an official Urbex member, but I knew Keith from rock-climbing class, so I’d decided to tag along at the last minute to get my mind off my friend Layla. It wasn’t working, though.

  “I’m usually pretty confident around girls, but Layla always makes me kind of tongue-tied, you know?” I shared with Keith, who ignored me as he led us deeper into the tunnel. “Maybe it’s because her dad’s a cop.”

  Keith started coughing like he’d gotten something stuck in his throat. It was pretty dusty in the tunnel, so I offered him a sip from my water bottle, but he just waved me off.

  “Anyway, I finally worked up the guts to ask her out,” I continued, “but she went missing before I had the chance! I can’t help thinking if I had just asked her, maybe we would have been together the day she disappeared. Then I could have protected her from whatever happened.”

  Keith stopped without saying anything and began studying his hand-drawn schematics of the different tunnels. “I mean, at first, everyone was saying maybe she ran away, but that totally isn’t like her. She’s a genuinely happy person. And after Daniel went missing—I mean, come on, two kids from the same high school in one week?” I said, the detective in me starting to kick into gear. “You know the police have to be thinking it’s kidnapping at this point, or they wouldn’t have called a press conference on a Saturday.”

  Keith swung around abruptly so that his headlamp shone right into my eyes, making me see spots.

  “Would you shut it already?” he snapped. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “Sorry, dude, just trying to make conversation,” I said, raising my hand to block the light—not that it did much good.

  “Well, don’t,” Keith muttered.

  “Sheesh! No need to get all aggro about it,” I said, wondering what had Keith so uptight.

  He grunted. “Just stay here until I come back for you, okay? I’m going to check out that junction ahead.”

  “Fine, whatever, man,” I said, trying not to get angry. I had invited myself on his expedition, after all. Keith had been pretty grumpy the whole morning, which was weird, because he usually joked a lot. I hadn’t thought he’d mind me tagging along with the Urbex crew, but I was starting to get the impression that I wasn’t welcome.

  I watched Keith’s headlamp grow smaller as he walked down the tunnel. Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled about being left alone. It can be pretty easy to get lost underground if you’re not careful. And the tunnels were spooky. Not that I was scared or anything. At least, not until a minute later, when Keith’s light went out and he seemed to vanish into the darkness.

  “Keith?” I called out. “You okay, man?”

  There was no reply, and my headlamp wasn’t powerful enough to see that far ahead. I tore off a strip of the neon-yellow reflective tape we all carried (the tape is easy to see when the light hits it), stuck it to a beam to mark my trail, and headed off down the tunnel. It ended at a T-section that split into two smaller tunnels. I shone my headlamp down one and then the other. Still no Keith.

  I was about to call his name again when I felt the floor moving. A second later, a muffled thump sent a wave of vibrations through the tunnel.

  I didn’t know what was going on, but it definitely wasn�
��t good. Before I had a chance to decide if I should go after Keith or run back to the rendezvous point, a BOOM rumbled through the tunnel, shaking the walls and knocking me off my feet.

  There are two words you never want to have to worry about while exploring underground: cave-in. Judging by the chunks of dirt falling on my head, I was trapped in the middle of one! Instinct kicked in as the beam above me snapped. I rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being pinned to the floor. I slammed into the dirt wall where the tunnel split. My headlamp flickered, but it was still working. Not that I liked what I saw.

  The path we’d come down was now totally blocked by rocks and debris, leaving me with two choices: left or right. I had no idea which way Keith had gone, but the tunnel on the left had less debris blocking it, so that’s the one I took.

  I pushed away all thoughts of being buried alive and kept my feet moving forward. Freezing up in a panic can be just as deadly as a falling beam.

  I was focusing on taking slow breaths when I heard scraping and scratching. The sounds grew louder until I caught sight of the beam from a headlamp up ahead. Keith was on the ground, trying to clear away wreckage from another cave-in.

  “Man, is it good to see you!” I cried. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  Keith swiveled at the sound of my voice. He was covered in dirt and had a dazed look about him. “I’m, uh, okay. My ankle, it’s sprained, I think. I, uh, we need to get out of here.”

  “I’m with you, man. I’ll help you dig.”

  I quickly surveyed our situation. It looked like we were in some kind of underground chamber, only it was hard to tell because everything except the tunnel I’d come down was now walled off in rubble. It was mostly dirt and rock and some old beams, but then my headlamp flickered over something shinier on the ground.

  I was about to move toward it when Keith started yelping, “Forget about that! Why aren’t you digging?! We have to get out of here now!”

  He almost seemed on the verge of attacking me. I guess some people really can’t stand being trapped in confined spaces. It seemed like an inconvenient phobia for the leader of an urban explorers club, but there was no time to think about that now. The two of us were trapped underground with a limited supply of air, and a wall of rubble between us and freedom.