Tunnel of Secrets Read online

  The wall was booby-trapped!

  “WATCH OUT!” I yelled.

  Joe let go with his right hand and swung away from the wall as the spike whistled past, leaving him hanging by his left hand. The spike shattered into a million pieces on the floor below, showering me with stone shrapnel.

  I dove out of the way. When I looked back up, Joe was dangling from one handhold with both hands, struggling to regain his footing.

  “Make sure to put your foot back on the same stone as before!” I yelled. “Any of the others could be booby-trapped too!”

  It took an excruciating few seconds before Joe managed to steady himself.

  “That was way too close,” he called down. “So much for an easy climb.”

  “Stay where you are,” I warned. “We have to assume the rest of them are rigged as well.”

  “Sure, I’ll just hang here and read a comic book,” Joe said sarcastically.

  “Give me a second to think,” I said.

  Whoever had engineered this was serious about keeping people out (as if the Admiral’s corpse hadn’t been enough evidence of that). They’d made the climb look simple for a reason: Lure you in until you’re too far up to drop safely and then—wham! Spikes start dropping, either skewering you like a kabob or plunging you to your death when you try to get out of the way. It was also possible that certain handholds had been rigged all the way up and Joe had just been lucky enough to avoid them. Either way, we had to figure out something quick, before his muscles gave out.

  “I could try to follow the same path down that I took up,” Joe called.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I said. Even I knew that climbing down is a lot harder than climbing up. You can’t see where you’re going, for one. And Joe was already fatigued from the climb up, making his chances of falling a lot higher. I looked around the chamber, hoping something would spark a solution. There had to be a safe way up; how else would the people who’d built it reach the ladder? Either they’d memorized the correct path up—in which case we were out of luck—or there was a trick to figuring it out.

  “Look,” Joe said, “I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but I’m getting a little tired up here.”

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” I said, trying to kick the problem-solving part of my brain into high gear.

  “Couldn’t they have left a map?” Joe lamented.

  That was it! They had left us a map! I ran back into the shallow pond, kicking away the pebbles on the bottom, revealing the symbols etched in the stone.

  “Now’s not really the time to go for a swim, Frank!” Joe yelled.

  “They did leave us a map, Joe!” I yelled back from the other side of the cavern, searching out a pattern in the symbols. If I was right, the concentric circles aligned with the path Joe had taken up the wall. The fishhook symbol represented the handhold Joe had grabbed when the spear fell. “The carvings on the floor of the pond aren’t random. It’s like a land-mine map, showing where the booby-trapped holds are and a safe path around them. I think I can use it to guide you up!”

  “In that case, you’d better start guiding, ’cause I don’t know how much longer my arms can hold out,” he cried.

  I took a deep breath and double-checked the patterns to make sure I was right.

  “Okay, do you see the handhold above you to the left?”

  “Yup, should I grab it?” Joe said, his hand at the ready.

  “No! Not that one!” I yelled. “The one next to it. Do you think you can reach it?”

  “I’ll try,” he said, stretching his hand as far as it would go and boosting off with his feet to make it the last few inches. For a terrifying moment he was totally suspended in air with nothing to hold on to. If he was short even a fraction of an inch, it was all over. I forced myself to keep my eyes open. And . . .

  “Yes! You made it! Way to go, Joe!”

  He made the next one too. And the one after that. And the one after that. Pretty soon Joe was grabbing hold of the rope ladder and pulling himself into the opening.

  My heart pounded and my forehead dripped with sweat . . . and I wasn’t even the one doing the climbing! Joe lowered the rope to the ground using a crank that he’d found (as I’d speculated). I grabbed his gear bag and climbed up after him.

  We were in the entryway of what appeared to be a long, dark corridor.

  “Now that’s what I call teamwork, bro,” Joe said, throwing up a high five. “With your navigational abilities and my superior strength, coordination, bravery, good looks, and general awesomeness, the Hardy boys are invincible!”

  He’d barely gotten the last word out when a heavy iron gate dropped from the ceiling with a loud clank, blocking the passage we’d worked so hard to reach. We pivoted back toward the ladder, but only made it a step before another gate dropped, sealing off the entrance as well.

  And just like that, we were trapped. We’d climbed out of the cavern and right into a cage.

  A flame appeared in the darkness. Two robed figures emerged carrying torches, light flickering over their inhuman faces and curved, birdlike beaks.

  One of them carried an ornately carved wooden cane engraved with symbols. The other stepped silently to the bars of our cage and dropped a pair of heavy iron shackles at our feet.

  From the looks of it, we had just become prisoners of the Admiral’s ghost army.

  12

  WELCOME TO THE SECRET CITY

  JOE

  HEY, BIRDBEAK, YOU MIND LOOSENING these bracelets a little bit? I’ve got sensitive skin,” I muttered as the ghouls marched us through a narrow, torch-lit passage. The ghoul with the cane used it to jab me in the back.

  Both Frank and I were cuffed in wrist shackles that were linked to a single chain held by the non-cane-carrying creep; we were like a couple of dogs on a leash. I could tell Frank was deep in thought trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this. We’d tried talking to each other, but each time we got a sharp poke with the cane.

  I’d been trying to keep track of where we were going, but the tunnels and chambers took so many twists and turns it was like walking through a maze. The explorer in me was pretty stoked, even if I was at the end of a chain led by a couple of cranky ghouls. At least, I assumed they were cranky; they hadn’t uttered so much as a peep.

  “No offense, but you guys are really bad tour guides,” I said as we approached a crossroads where four different tunnels intersected. The one with the cane yanked us to a stop with the chain and gave me another jab in the ribs as he pushed past me.

  I’ll admit, for a second I had started to wonder if Curly had been right about the robed figures being ghosts. But as I watched the one with the cane step unevenly onto the crossroads to examine the symbols on the wall, I realized our captors weren’t ghosts at all. Not unless one of those ghosts happened to have the same limp as a now-former friend of mine.

  “Man, this place must be heaven for an Urbex pro like you, huh, Keith?”

  The figure looked up. I was pretty sure Keith’s mouth had just dropped wide open under his mask.

  The ghoul holding the chain gasped. “They know who we are!”

  “Shut up!” Keith yelled at his partner.

  “Your name is Scott, right?” I asked Keith’s flustered sidekick. “I’m guessing Chris is probably around here somewhere too.”

  “They know, Keith!” Scott said, his voice cracking behind his mask. I smiled. I’d guessed right about the other Urbex members being his accomplices.

  “That’s right, Scotty. And now it’s all starting to make sense. You guys ditched me in the tunnel this morning on purpose. You planned to steal the big bronze dude’s key out of the sinkhole until I found it first. Am I right, guys?”

  “What are we going to do?” Scott said, panicking.

  “I told you to shut up,” Keith said. “It doesn’t matter what they know. It’s not like they’ll get a chance to tell anyone. The Grandmaster will make sure of that.”

  I didn’t like th
e sound of that.

  “Um, Grandmaster?” Frank squeaked. Apparently he didn’t either.

  “So you don’t know everything, huh? Well, we’ve got some surprises in store for you.” Keith jabbed me in the ribs again, shoving us down one of the tunnels. “You like showing up uninvited, but this is one party you’re going to wish you hadn’t crashed.”

  “I’m enjoying it so far,” I said, trying to hide the fact that I was scared witless. “This underground lair has to be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. How did you find it?”

  “It’s awesome, right?” Keith said, unable to hide his excitement. “This place is ancient. No one knows exactly who built it—early Native Americans, probably—but it was used as a hideout for pirates during Colonial times.”

  My tactic had worked. Keith was so caught up in the thrill of his discovery, he had dropped the tough-guy act. I knew Keith was a devoted urban explorer at heart and that he wouldn’t be able to resist talking about it.

  Scott wasn’t so thrilled, though. “What are you doing, man?” he asked Keith. “That stuff is supposed to be a secret.”

  “Stop worrying so much,” Keith said. “These guys won’t see sunlight again unless the Grandmaster wants them to.”

  “So who’s this Grandmaster guy, anyway?” Frank tried to sound casual, but the crack in his voice gave him away.

  “He’s the one who discovered this place. Or rediscovered it, really,” Keith said. “This used to be run by Admiral Bryant himself. But after he vanished, it was forgotten. That is, until the Grandmaster reclaimed it for the Knights’ descendants.”

  The Knights? I didn’t know what he was talking about, but Frank seemed to be a step ahead of me on this one.

  “The Knights were the Admiral’s secret society, weren’t they?”

  Keith seemed surprised. “The Grandmaster is going to want to know how you found out about that, but yeah. The Secret Order of the Knights of the Bay.”

  “Keith, I really don’t think you should be—” Scott began to protest, but Keith cut him off.

  “If I want to know what you think, I’ll ask.”

  Keith was playing right into our hands. I had a million questions, but I wasn’t sure how much time we had before we reached where they were taking us. I wanted to know what had happened with the sinkhole and what this Grandmaster had to do with it.

  “So what’s the deal with stealing the Admiral’s key anyway? You guys almost killed me twice trying to nab it.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Keith said, not sounding very sorry at all. “But your showing up at the last minute messed with our plans, so we had to ditch you. The tunnels weren’t supposed to cave in like that. Someone put one of the explosives in the wrong place.”

  Keith whacked Scott on the back of the head.

  “Ow! Jeez, Keith, I said I was sorry.”

  “Wait, so you guys created the sinkhole that swallowed the Admiral with a controlled demolition?” Frank said in disbelief. “That’s like a crazy feat of engineering. If one thing went wrong, you could have brought down the entire square.”

  “Yeah, the Grandmaster is a genius. He designed the whole thing himself,” Keith gushed. “He had the tunnels all mapped out and knew exactly where to set the charges. He could even identify the statue’s weak points so I could cut off the key superfast. I would have been back here with it before the smoke cleared, but I got caved in and then you showed up again.”

  Keith couldn’t resist giving me another jab with the cane.

  “What can I say?” I said. “I have impeccable timing.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Keith said ominously. I could practically hear him smirking as he led us into an open space that looked like an underground coliseum carved out of stone.

  Three balcony levels wound their way around the chamber’s circular walls, looking down on a main amphitheater below. Each level was lined with stone dwellings of different sizes. Some of them had portals for windows and looked like they might be ancient dorms or apartments. Others had iron bars and looked like cells.

  More masked figures had gathered around a creepy-looking altar at the center of the amphitheater. Behind the altar were steps leading to a large stone vault with a giant keyhole. The keyhole looked just the right size and shape for the Admiral’s bronze key.

  A large eye was engraved in gold over the vault, and something was written under it in another language. Frank took a moment to translate it.

  “It’s Latin,” he whispered. “It means . . . Sacred Temple of the Secret Order of the Knights of the Bay.”

  “I think we found the Secret City,” I murmured back.

  “Tell the Grandmaster we apprehended two spies trying to infiltrate the city through the South Wall,” Keith ordered the others, who immediately scattered.

  “You!” He pointed to the shortest one in the group. “Come here. I need you to help escort the prisoners to their cell.”

  With Keith momentarily distracted and Scott busy trying to scratch his face under his mask, I saw our chance. I quickly made eye contact with my brother and gestured at the chain running from our shackles back to Scott’s free hand. Frank got it right away, and we both yanked as hard as we could at the same time.

  Scott yelped, falling onto his butt as the chain flew out of his hand. We took off running . . . which would have been a lot easier if we hadn’t still been shackled together with a chain dragging behind us.

  “Stop them!” Keith yelled.

  We knocked over the short one, who had been standing frozen in place, and lowered our heads to bowl over another one like a two-headed running back. We might have made it too, if Keith hadn’t managed to grab hold of one end of the chain. We tumbled into a heap on top of the ghoul in front of us and found ourselves staring at the end of Keith’s cane—which now had a retractable blade sticking out of it.

  Behind Keith, the short one we’d knocked over was still on the ground, fumbling to pick up a mask that had been knocked off in the scuffle, which allowed me a good look at its face. Or I guess I should say her face.

  “Layla?”

  13

  THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MASK

  FRANK

  I LOOKED UP THE INSTANT I heard my brother say Layla’s name. And there she was, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar as she hurried to slide the mask over her face.

  “Go to your room now!” Keith yanked her away by her robe, but the damage was done. She glanced quickly back at us before running off, but there was no way to read her expression beneath the mask. I had no problem reading my brother’s expression, though: confused and betrayed.

  Layla Hixson was one of them? Had she kidnapped herself? Had we risked our lives trying to save one of the bad guys?

  I was trying to make sense of it as Scott and another one of Keith’s masked lackeys led us up to a cell overlooking the altar.

  The iron gate clanked shut, locking us in a dank stone cell barely large enough for two people. One of the walls had a small barred window into the empty cell next door.

  Joe tested the gate’s lock. “It’s solid. I might be able to pick it if I had my tools, but they took my bag.”

  “At least they didn’t search us,” I said, motioning to Joe’s pocket, where the small skeleton key remained safely hidden.

  “Too bad it’s not the right size for this lock,” he said, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall. “Do you really think she’s part of this? I know it looks bad, but I can’t believe Layla would put her family through this.”

  “Her mom could be a part of it too,” I reminded him. “For all we know, she, Sal, and Layla are in it together. Whatever it is.”

  Joe flung a pebble against the wall. Finding out that the girl you like might be part of a bizarre criminal conspiracy is a hard pill to swallow. We still didn’t have all the facts, though, and the facts we did have didn’t make a lot of sense. We’d managed to solve part of the mystery, but that just made it even more mysteri
ous.

  I started to review what we’d learned so far. “We know for sure the missing kids are connected to the sinkhole that swallowed the Admiral’s statue, but we don’t know how. We know how Keith and his accomplices caused the sinkhole and that they did it to steal the Admiral’s key, but we don’t know who’s really behind it or what they need the key for. And we know it has something to do with the resurrection of an early American secret society started by Admiral Bryant, but we don’t know why or what the master plan is.”

  “And we know we’re locked in a cell a few hundred feet beneath Bayport, where no one will ever find us,” Joe huffed.

  “We’ve squeezed out of tighter spots than this.” I tried to reassure him, but I had to rack my brain to see if it was true. Sure, we’d wrangled out of some tough situations before, but none as tough as this. The Admiral had spent about two hundred fifty years down here waiting for someone to find him!

  Joe must have seen the doubt creep across my face, because he jumped to his feet.

  “No, you’re right. If Layla is innocent, we’re going to help her. And if she’s guilty, well, I’d hate it, but it’s our job to prove it. Either way, we’re going to make it out of here. After all, you’ve got a cute journalist to impress.”

  That was one of the great things about being partners with my brother. One would never let the other give up, no matter how dire the situation. It was a big reason why we had made it out of so many tight spots.

  “Okay, we have to come up with a plan . . . ,” I started to say, but I was interrupted by footsteps.

  “Someone’s coming,” Joe hissed.

  That someone was Layla.

  She was still wearing her mask, but as the shortest of the cult members we’d seen, she was easy to recognize. Joe’s eyes narrowed as she approached the cell door, carrying a tray of food and water.

  She looked around.

  “I’m not supposed to be talking to you. If they caught me, I could be in a lot of trouble, but I was able to convince the guard to take a break and let me bring your lunch. Or maybe it’s dinner. It gets so confusing down here without any sunlight.” Layla paused for a second and looked at Joe. “Did you really come all the way down here looking for me?”