The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 27

“So, not trying to criticize or anything, but is this your actual plan?” Steve Carrillo was a good-sized kid; with his parka billowing in the wind and the clanking of canteen and flashlight and various other implements dangling from his backpack he looked like someone’s camping tent had pulled up stakes and escaped. “I mean, like us walking about a zillion miles in the rain? And the mud? And it’s getting dark? And did I mention that it’s raining?”

“Just be glad it’s summer-at least it’s warm,” Tyler told him. “And we’ll be out of the rain soon.” At least he hoped so. He didn’t really know much about Grandma Paz’s abandoned silver mine except for where it was on the map, and certainly didn’t want to think about what they were going to do if they got there and couldn’t get inside. He could already imagine what Lucinda would have to say about this latest idea of his, and it wouldn’t be, “Good thinking!”

Steve had started the adventure full of his usual good humor.

“Shouldn’t we be bringing a gun or something?” he asked as they set out in the hot, gray-blue evening between waves of summer storm. “Y’know, in case there are any… monster-type things? Dragons? Stuff like that?”

“A gun?” Tyler was shocked and a little intrigued by the idea. “You don’t have a gun, Carrillo.”

“Not really, but my uncle has a rifle he uses to shoot at crows. I could get that. And I’ve got my paintball rifle. Dude, you know how good I am with that.”

Tyler snorted. “Yeah, and if we need to splatter yellow stuff on a dragon, you’re my first choice. But we’re just going in some tunnels. There’s probably nothing down there but gophers.”

“And snakes. And spiders. And more snakes.” Steve stopped. “Maybe we should think of some different way to do this, Jenkins. Grandma Paz says that place is haunted!”

Tyler shook his head. “It’s not haunted. It’s connected to the Fault Line, like I explained. So every now and then something weird probably comes out of it, like back at the farm. But I know how to deal with the Fault Line, dude! I can totally go in and out. I’ve done it!”

“Yeah, and I was there. And it sucked.” Steve shuddered. “Dude, some crappy monster made out of old rags or something tried to eat me the last time I went anywhere with you.”

“That wasn’t the Fault Line, that was the other side of the mirror. That’s… different.” Although he didn’t really know if that was true. It wasn’t like he could look it up in a textbook or anything.

“I don’t care if the things with teeth that want to kill us come out of a mirror, or a hole in the ground, or a box of cereal,” Steve said forcefully. “Things with teeth equal bad idea.”

“Anyway, you got into the mirror by yourself- I was the one who got you out, remember?” Still, Tyler couldn’t really disagree with Steve Carrillo’s basic point. Walking across the dark fields toward the looming hills, he was growing less and less fond of his own plan every minute.

Tyler hoped it was a good omen that once they reached the foothills they found the little road leading to the mine pretty easily. Flashlights cutting a bright path through the flurrying raindrops, they hiked uphill another mile or so until they reached the mine entrance, a frame of old timbers surrounding a hole in the hill just at the base of a rocky cliff. Someone had nailed some ancient gray boards across the front of it as a barrier, but there were no signs reading “Keep Out! This Means You!” or anything else Tyler had expected from Saturday morning cartoons. A sign over the entrance might once have proclaimed the mine’s name, but rain and wind and sun had scrubbed the wood clean long ago. All they had to do was duck beneath it and they’d be inside.

Thunder boomed in the distance. “Oh, hellz no,” Steve said, eyeing the mine entrance with dismay. “Oh, come on, look at that! That’s like where zombies live. We’re going… in there?”

“Zombies don’t live. But yeah, that’s where we’re going.” Tyler put down his backpack and took a swig from his canteen. “You can stay out here if you like. Your folks have probably called the sheriff’s office by now. They’ll give you a ride home.”

“If they even find me alive. You’re a knobweed, Jenkins. I’m not sitting out here and waiting for the wolves and bears to eat me.”

The thunder rumbled, closer now. Tyler was beginning to see flickering smears of brightness over the distant hills on the other side of Standard Valley, beyond Gideon’s farm. “So, the police or wild animals. Or the lightning could fry you,” said Tyler. “That’s always a possibility, too.”

Steve stretched his round face into an expression of extreme disgust. “I hate you so much, dude. I hate you worse than homework.”

“Yeah. I’ll go first.”

The first part was the easy bit-it was all stairs. They went carefully down the rough shaft on a succession of rickety old wooden ladders and steps until Tyler guessed they had descended about the depth of a four or five story building. Steve’s grandfather and his workers (or whoever) had built the old structures well; they creaked and swayed, but he never felt like they were at serious risk, although Steve Carrillo seemed to think they were only moments away from plunging helplessly into the Earth’s core.

“Look,” Tyler said, pointing his flashlight downward. “You can see the bottom. It’s like climbing a tree. Just pretend this is all sixty-four bit.”

“Does that mean there’s a giant gorilla out there somewhere who’s going to start throwing barrels at us?”

“Ho ho.” Tyler had reached what seemed to be the beginning of the main shaft. He flashed his light around. The final ladder ended in a natural cavern tall enough to stand in, although the three tunnels he could see opening out from there looked a lot less spacious. “Which way do you think we should go?”

“Hey, sure,” said Steve, “I’ll just release my cyborg tracking hound… ” His fingers rapidly flurried the A and B buttons of an imaginary video game controller, then he turned and frowned at Tyler. “Seriously, dude-that part is your job.”

Tyler crouched at the base of the ladder for a moment to consider. He cocked his head, even took a sniff of the warm, damp air. If this had been a movie he would have felt something or heard something and made a brilliant deduction, but this was not a movie. He flicked his flashlight beam along the walls.

“Batteries don’t last forever,” Steve reminded him, but it was the fearful undercurrent in his friend’s voice that made Tyler more uncomfortable than the words. Maybe Lucinda was right. Maybe he did jump into things. Maybe he shouldn’t have dragged Steve Carrillo into this crazy plan…

He did his best to think calmly. If this cavern was connected somehow to the Fault Line cavern a mile away at Ordinary Farm, he reasoned, then maybe he could feel the air moving in the one of the tunnels. He licked his fingers and gently moved them from side to side, then turned and did it again.

“There has to be a better way onto your uncle’s farm than this, Tyler, I’m serious,” Steve said. “It’s not like that English lady is going to kill him or anything. She needs him!” He liked this thought. “So we might as well go back to my house. Maybe my folks even know some place we can get into the tunnels closer to your uncle’s property

… ”

Tyler ignored him. He was doing his best to remember what he had felt when he had found the Fault Line the first time. It had been frightening, but it had also been a feeling unlike anything he’d ever had before. After a moment he walked to the first tunnel opening and stood in front of it with his eyes closed and his palms held out, then moved to the second and did the same.

“What’re you doing?” Steve asked. “Asking the spirits to help you? ‘ Eenie, meanie, chili beanie… ’ ”

“Shut up, dude. I mean it.” The third tunnel at first seemed no different, but after a few moments Tyler began to feel what seemed like a faint stirring of the air. It was enough to make up his mind. It had to be-the only other way would be trial and error. “This direction,” he said, then ducked his head and headed down the tunnel. He could hear Steve trudging after him, murmuring darkly to himself.

“How long have we been down here?” Steve had been trying to edge sideways through a narrow spot in the tunnel, but he and his backpack had stuck. Tyler loosened the straps so he could slip out of it. “It seems like days,” Steve complained. “This goes on forever!”

Tyler looked at his watch. “It’s ten. We’ve been down here about an hour.”

“No way. Only an hour?” Steve started to hoist the pack back onto his shoulders, then sighed. “I forgot about the dark.”

“What do you mean, you forgot?”

“Going along in the pitch dark is real creepy, man. Even with flashlights.”

“Yeah. It’s like being in another universe.”

“Don’t say that out loud!” Steve dropped his pack and swore. “Seriously, I need a rest. How about a snack break?”

Tyler nodded. “When we get out of this tunnel into the next open cave.”

Whoever built the mine had mostly dug tunnels to connect a complex of natural caves, low, angular spaces walled with gray, shiny stone that looked a bit like melting ice cream, but in several places they opened out into chambers of various sizes, a couple of them larger than a small house. Both boys were glad not to have seen much in the way of snakes or spiders, but they had discovered that the caves housed plenty of bats, so when they reached the next large chamber Tyler had to look around for a while until he could find a place for them to perch without having to sit in too much bat guano. The atmosphere didn’t seem to put off Steve Carrillo, though: Tyler had only taken a couple of bites from his sandwich when the last of Steve’s was disappearing.

“So sue me!” Steve said when he saw Tyler’s expression. “All this exercise-I was hungry.” He took a huge, gurgling swallow from his canteen. “And thirsty!”

“Slow down on that water. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to reach the farm.” Tyler was feeling better about his choice of tunnels now-the simple fact that they had been walking so long (when they weren’t crawling and dragging their packs through some of the tighter passages) suggested he had picked the right tunnel to reach Ordinary Farm.

“You never told me what we’re going to do when we get there.”

“I totally did.”

“You totally did not. It was all, ‘We have to find out what they’re doing!’ Like a cartoon. Like ‘Agent Aardvark.’ ” He frowned. “Which makes me Mugsy Meerkat. Crap.”

“Well, we do have to find out what they’re doing. Colin Needle and his mother.”

“Dude, you know you’re a little obsessed, right?”

“I’m not! He’s got the Continuascope, which means if he learns how to use it he can travel in time! And his mother’s got Gideon totally under her control. Hypnotized! Which means they can do anything they want with the farm.”

Steve gave him a look that clearly said, trying to keep crazy person calm. “So we’re supposed to mess with them? What if she puts a spell on us? What if they go back in time and kill our grandfathers or something?”

Tyler hadn’t even thought about what Colin Needle could do to change things that way. In science fiction movies, that was where things always started to go really wrong, and then afterward civilization was destroyed and everyone turned into killer mutants. So Colin Needle and his crazy, nasty mother might not just steal Ordinary Farm-they might accidentally or even purposefully destroy the whole world. “Oh, great! ”, Tyler said, and slapped his hands on his thighs, disgusted he had not thought of this earlier. The sound echoed in the small, high cavern and reverberated down the tunnels in either direction: he could see nothing of this and hear everything.

The echo carried on repeating, far longer than it should have. The smacking sound seemed to have become something else now, something a little quieter…

“Wait,” Tyler said quietly. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Steve looked from side to side, but the erratic flash of his light showed nothing but the stone around them. “Don’t do that-you’re freaking me out! What’s what?”

The noise was getting louder.

“That. Sounds like… footsteps.” A slow patting sound, scratch and flap, scratch and flap. “Ssshh.” Tyler lifted his hand. “Someone’s coming.”

“Dude!” Steve looked about five seconds from a heart attack. He was struggling to keep his voice a whisper-his eyes were so wide the whites were almost glowing. “You’re joking, right?” But Steve could hear it too, now. “It must be someone following us-my dad, maybe… !”

Tyler said, “No, listen. It’s coming from the wrong direction.”

“Oh, man, no way!” Steve made a lunge back toward the tunnel through which they had come, but Tyler grabbed his jacket sleeve and held on even as the other boy nearly pulled him off his feet.

“Steve, don’t move!”

The footfalls came again… tap… skritch… tap… skritch. Tyler turned his flashlight toward the farther tunnel. Something was moving there, an angular shadow. Tyler’s heartbeat stuttered and jerked. A moment later the dark shape stepped out into the cavern and the glare of the flashlight.

A bushy-haired old man in a black suit stood only a few yards away from them, blinking and trying to block the light with his hands. He had a huge mustache like schoolbook pictures of Mark Twain and a day’s growth of white whiskers on his chin. His face was familiar-extremely familiar. Tyler could only stare with his mouth hanging open, but Steven Carrillo sounded like he had something the size of a football stuck in his throat.

“Dude, I’ve seen that guy! In the library at your farm-in that picture!” Steve sucked in air, his whispered words helium-squeaky. “But… but I thought he was dead!”

“He is,” said Tyler, backing away from the apparition. His heart felt like it was going to jump out of his ribcage. “He’s totally, totally dead.

“Steve-that’s Octavio Tinker!”