Pillage

  Kate held onto my sleeve as I pushed the door open. We all stepped inside and I locked the door behind us.

  There was a faint light seeping out from under the wall and through the hole I had created last night. I motioned for Kate to hand me her flashlight. She did so and I flipped it on. A tight beam of light shot out like a saber. I sliced the light through the room to get a better look around and to make sure we were alone.

  The windows were covered with black paint and there were a few broken pieces of furniture scattered around the room: a table that leaned, a chair with a missing arm, and a wardrobe with peeling paint and a warped top. I opened the wardrobe to make sure nobody was inside of it. It was empty. I was surprised to see no other door or opening in the room. Someone had been in here last night and had opened the door for me. It creeped me out to think that whoever it had been had probably been in the room the whole time. I wondered how anyone could have gotten out since I had locked the door from the outside. I checked the window and it slid open easily. The light rain blew in, making the space smell wet. I closed the window.

  “This isn’t a basement,” Kate pointed out.

  “I know,” I whispered. “It’s down there.”

  I shined the flashlight against the wall, illuminating the small hole my foot had made.

  “We go through there?” Milo asked.

  It did seem rather impossible. The wall was covered in a thick floral wallpaper and the hole looked more like part of the pattern than the opening to a basement. I flipped off the flashlight and as our eyes adjusted, we could once again see light coming from the hole.

  Milo crouched down and looked through. “Wow,” he whispered.

  “Shhhh,” I insisted.

  “Move,” Kate said, softly dropping down herself.

  “Why would someone fill in a basement?” Kate whispered. “It’s so weird.”

  I reached down and stuck my fingers through the hole. With almost no effort at all, I pulled up and the hole tore quietly. I tugged harder and the hole became a two-foot-long tear.

  “More,” Kate said, getting to her knees.

  Both Milo and I pulled at the hole, ripping the wallpaper and busting out a nice long chunk of plaster. The hole was the size of a small person. I could see the dirt tunnel and the edges of some buried stairs.

  “Who wants to go—”

  Kate wasn’t waiting for an invitation; she pushed through the opening as far as she could, but it was still too small. She pulled back out.

  “It needs to be a little bigger,” she whispered.

  We all took hold of different parts of the hole and slowly pulled. The wall broke open like a wet cracker. I tore off bits of hanging wallpaper and dropped them to the floor. As scared as I was, I wasn’t about to let Kate go first again. I took a deep breath and flipped on the flashlight again.

  I bent down and put my right foot on the top stair. I had to duck my head and squeeze through, but with a little effort I wiggled all the way in. Kate was right behind, pushing me to move further so she and Milo could get in.

  “Hold on,” I whispered, already regretting my decision to go first; the small tunnel made it difficult to move.

  Kate and Milo squeezed through as I slowly made my way down the dirt-covered stairs. The tunnel was about a foot too short for my tall frame. My back ached as I reached the bottom of the stairs and the bend in the tunnel. I stopped and Kate and Milo pushed up behind me.

  “What are you doing?” Kate asked.

  She answered her own question by looking further down the tunnel. There were three different tunnels.

  “Which one?” she said.

  I turned off the flashlight and waited for my eyes to spot the glimmering light. It was coming from the left tunnel. I could hear something chattering again.

  “Can you hear that?” I whispered.

  “I think so,” Kate said softly. “What is it?”

  “I have no idea. Should we keep going?” I asked.

  Their response wasn’t instant. I was about to turn back when Kate nudged me gently forward. I kept the flashlight off so that if there was something up ahead we would have some element of surprise. Besides there was enough dull light to see our way.

  I could see bits of furniture, material, and corners of walls sticking out of the sides of the dirt tunnel.

  “Who dug this tunnel?” Kate asked, as if I should know.

  “I have no idea,” I replied.

  “Someone determined. Maybe your uncle,” Milo said.

  “Why?” I questioned. “And why did someone fill it up in the first place?”

  We turned another corner and followed the dirt tunnel about a hundred feet. We passed two or three offshoots, but kept heading toward the light.

  “It’s getting brighter,” Milo said needlessly.

  At the end of the long tunnel, seven dirt-covered stairs led down into a space the size of a small bedroom. Against the far side of the room was a desk sticking halfway out of the dirt wall. A wooden stool was resting in front of it. I could see an empty coatrack leaning against the wall, and the hearth of a fireplace stuffed with dirt.

  A single candle was burning on the desk. The brass candleholder sat on top of a stack of dry parchment paper. The air streaming through the tunnel rustled the papers and sent the sound of whispering through the air.

  “Who lit the candle?” Milo asked.

  “Seriously, man, how should I know?” I said, bothered.

  I bent down to look at the flame. I lifted the candle up and, like an idiot who didn’t think things through, I pinched it out. The room was dark.

  “Why would you do that?” Kate said in disbelief. “That was—”

  A few tiny sparks shot up as the candle crackled back to life. We all stared at the flickering flame.

  “Did you know it would do that?” Kate asked.

  “I suspected it would,” I lied.

  The papers on the desk chattered in the light breeze. I grabbed a few and held the candle close to see if I could read what they said. Kate and Milo leaned in around my shoulders. The papers were covered in big flowery writing that looked like a different language.

  Beneath the papers was an old book. It was brown with a raised spine and a raised image on the front. There was so much grime on the book that I couldn’t make out the image or what the title might be. I opened the book and flipped through the pages. I saw the word “Pillage” on a few of them.

  “What is it?” Kate asked.

  “Just a book,” I said lamely.

  “Cool,” Milo said, excited. “It might be important. You should take it.”

  “A book?” I asked. I held onto the book as the slight amount of wind in the tunnel picked up and began to howl at us.

  “Let’s get out and come back tomorrow,” I said.

  Nobody argued with me. I flipped the flashlight on and shined it up the stairs. We moved quickly back down the long tunnel. At the last junction we turned right and climbed back up the stairs and into the room.

  Once we were all out of the tunnel, I suggested we push the wardrobe in front of the hole—just in case. Both Kate and Milo saw the wisdom of my suggestion. The wardrobe was much lighter than it looked and it covered the hole nicely.

  I walked them to the side door and let them out. It was still raining so they ran quickly away. I turned and cut through the dark kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Wane said, stopping both my progress and my heart.

  I shoved the book into the back of my pants. Wane flipped on the kitchen light, gazing at me like I was a formula she needed to memorize. She stood only a couple of feet in front of me, centered in the far doorway of the kitchen. She didn’t look happy. She was wearing tight white leggings and a tank top. She looked more like a woman than I had remembered.

  “You scared me,” I admitted.

  “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

  “I was hungry so I came down to find something.”

  “You could have rang,”
she said suspiciously.

  “This late? I didn’t want to wake anyone up.”

  “I’m awake now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So you were getting food in the dark?”

  “I like to be surprised.”

  Wane didn’t smile.

  “Did you find something?” she asked.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” I said lamely. “In fact, I’m feeling pretty tired.”

  I ran past Wane and didn’t stop until I was in my room. I locked my door and breathed deeply.

  “‘I like to be surprised’?” I muttered, shaking my head at the lame answer I had given Wane.

  I sat down on my bed and looked at the book. There were a number of pictures inside of odd creatures and wild plants. Some of the pictures were of ancient and strange-looking dragons. One illustration in the front showed a dragon emerging from a stone. I didn’t mind the pictures, but the writing in the book was tight and cramped and hard to read.

  I sighed and shoved the book under my mattress. It didn’t help me sleep any sounder.

  Chapter 11

  Ask

  “It’s not tall enough,” Milo said, defeated.

  “It was the tallest one I could find,” I complained, looking up at the ladder. It barely reached halfway up the wall.

  “Kate,” I called.

  “Nothing,” she called back.

  Kate had been kind enough to stand guard on the front side of the conservatory and to let us know if anyone was coming. I had endured another day of school, this one with no calamity or unexplainable incident. Milo and Kate wanted to go back to the basement, but I felt we should wait until later. And since we had a wait on our hands, I figured the best way to kill some time was to find a way into the conservatory. Scott had gone to town, which made our mission that much easier. I knew that what I really should be doing was my homework and going to bed early, but the desire to figure out what was behind the wall was stronger than my need for sleep.

  “What if we threw a rope up there?” I suggested. “Like Batman.”

  “You mean a grappling hook?” Milo clarified. I could almost see the light going off in his head. “Hold on.”

  Milo took off running toward the direction of his house. I walked around the corner and joined Kate as she stared off into the distance.

  “Nobody yet,” she said, keeping her eyes peeled. “Where’s Milo?”

  “I think he ran home to get some rope.”

  “You know there’s probably nothing behind that wall but weeds,” Kate said, sounding like the callous Kate I had first fallen in like with.

  “Maybe,” I shrugged.

  “What then?”

  “I’ll start obsessing about the basement.”

  “It must be nice to have options.” Kate smiled.

  “Is Kingsplot always like this?” I asked. “So odd-feeling?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, turning her gaze from the gardens to me.

  Her blue eyes pointed out the deficiencies of the gray sky.

  “I feel like there’s more than just mist in the air.”

  Kate tilted her head and smiled. “Milo told me about your mom,” she said. “I should have been nicer to you on the train.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “And yes, you should have.”

  “Was she young?”

  “I guess,” I answered. “She always seemed old. Well, not really old, but weighed down. You know?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Being her son wasn’t always easy, but I miss her now. You know, her journal talks about this garden.”

  “It does?” Kate asked excitedly.

  “She grew up here.”

  “And you never visited?”

  “Something happened,” I replied. “I don’t really understand all of her journal, but something happened. I didn’t even know about Kingsplot until my uncle sent me a ticket.”

  “I wonder if she knew what’s in this conservatory.”

  I shrugged. “Her journal doesn’t mention anything.” I watched Kate toss her hair over her shoulder. “What about your parents?”

  “What about them?”

  “Are they alive?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “They’re kinda hippies. My mom paints pictures of fruit and my dad’s a gardener.”

  “Does he grow fruit?” I asked.

  Kate stared at me.

  “You know, so your mom can paint them.”

  Kate halfway smiled.

  I turned from Kate and looked up at the tall, cloud-topped black walls of the conservatory. I let my eyes slowly descend, gazing at the wall for any sign of how to get in. At the base of the walls grew a line of short, thick scrub oak.

  As my vision rested on the scrub oak, a thought came to me.

  “What do you think made that salad fly around?”

  “The principal told us it was the wind.” Kate laughed.

  “Nice to know we’re being taken care of by such brilliant minds,” I said. “Wind? Wind that only blew toward Wyatt?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “I was there and I still don’t understand it.”

  “And the ivy the day before,” I continued, perplexed. “It picked up Wyatt.”

  “Milo said it was weird.”

  I thought about the bush that had warped when I looked at it. I turned my eyes toward the scrub oak and said, “Grow.”

  The scrub oak began to shake and stretch. Kate heard the rustling and looked over.

  “What—” Kate started to say, but stopped in shock.

  The leaves reached up as it grew quickly against the wall. The small branches expanded rapidly, looking like woody toothpaste being rapidly squeezed from a tube. The bushes grew taller and taller, reaching my shoulders in no time. The weight of the bush, however, became too great and it toppled over, falling to the ground.

  “Let’s lift it,” I said urgently.

  I got under the branches and pushed the scrub oak up against the wall. It was still growing.

  “A little help!” I asked frantically.

  Kate stood next to me, both of us trying to keep the heavy growth pushed up against the wall. The branches above us became too heavy and flopped down, pulling us to the ground.

  I rolled out of the scrub oak and told the bush to stop. Kate got to her feet and stared at the huge pile of folded over scrub oak. The bush had stopped growing, just like I’d told it to.

  “How did you do that?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  “I’ve always been good with plants,” I answered, equally stunned.

  “My dad’s good with plants,” Kate whispered in awe. “But he could never do that.”

  “I told you, there’s something in the air.”

  “So . . . you really did make the salad fly?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think it was just looking out for me.”

  “You’re not normal,” Kate said, stepping back. “This is not normal.”

  I opened my hands and looked at my palms as though there might be an explanation printed there.

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Kate replied.

  We both looked back at the enormous scrub oak.

  “You know, if it would stick to the wall, we could climb it.”

  “The wall’s too slick,” Kate pointed out.

  I instantly thought of the bricked-in archway on the back of the conservatory.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching for Kate’s hand.

  Surprisingly, she gave it to me. We ran around the conservatory to the archway. On the ground below the arch was a scrawny patch of purple ivy. I looked at Kate and shrugged.

  “Grow,” I pleaded.

  Just like that, the ivy began to crackle and squeak as it stretched upward. Large purple leaves bloomed and thick, woody strands of vines reached up the wall like greedy fingers looking for something to clutch. The weight of the ivy caused it to lean forward a bit, but t
iny feelers reached out and grabbed hold of the textured bricks. Thousands of tiny shoots spun out like cobwebs, grasping the bricks and climbing the wall.

  The ivy lunged upward, taking a better hold with each brick it touched until the wall was covered with a thick, four-foot wide strip of growth. A tight, stretching sound crackled through the air. I stepped back and watched the ivy creep over the stone letters and into the mist.

  “Seriously,” Kate said, looking at me. “That’s not normal.”

  The noise stopped and the ivy settled. I looked up, grabbed hold of a thick vine, and pulled. It felt as if the ivy was woven into the stone.

  “I think it could hold us.”

  “What about Milo?” Kate asked.

  “He’ll come eventually,” I answered.

  “You first,” Kate said.

  I reached up as high as I could and put my left foot into the ivy. The ivy was wet, but the texture of it made gripping it easy. I pulled myself up. After a few minutes I looked down, surprised at how high I was. Kate was still on the ground.

  “Come on,” I yelled down.

  I pushed up into the mist until I could see the top edge of the wall. The clouds were so thick I couldn’t see clearly if Kate was climbing behind me.

  I moved quicker, wanting desperately to see what was in the conservatory. My hands reached the top and I pulled myself up onto the lip of the wall. I looked down, but the mist was as thick as soup and I couldn’t see anything.

  The ivy curled over the top of the wall and ran down the inside. The thought of climbing into the closed area alone was seventy percent intriguing and thirty percent frightening.

  I finally saw Kate coming up through the fog. She was breathing hard and climbing fast. I reached down and helped her onto the top of the wall.

  “Great,” she said, taking deep breaths. “I can’t see anything.”

  I slipped my legs around the ivy and began climbing down into the walled area.

  “We don’t know what’s down there,” Kate said.

  “That’s why I’m going,” I replied.

  It was even easier to climb down. The thick mist clung to me like wet cotton candy. I grabbed each strand of ivy carefully, making sure my hold was solid. After I climbed down about five feet, the mist started to break up and I could see soil down below. I climbed faster. In my haste, my right foot and left hand slipped simultaneously and I fell the last four feet to the ground.