No one can know. Nemo can teneo.
Mallory put the Latin words into an online translator and that’s what came out: No one can know. These four words made her heart beat faster. There was a possibility—just a slight one—that they were on to something. Then again, there was the scrawl, as if written by a madman at his wit’s end: “You must burn the water.” That didn’t even make sense: it was impossible to burn water.
Still, she went forward, working her way through what was written in the book. She found chemistry equations. She did not know much about chemistry since it would be another four years before she studied it in school. Still, she read the pages with the notes on them and copied over the letters and numbers as best she could. And then she looked at what she had. She couldn’t tell if they were notations about what the scientist had found, or if they were what he hoped to create, but it was definitely some sort of chemical formula.
She tried rearranging it. She had to look things up, like what letters stood for which chemicals. Some of the terms she knew. H2O was water, and she took that as a good sign. She saw the symbols for uranium and radium, which she figured, if they were in the water of the town, would explain the high radiation readings on Ms. Little’s Geiger counter. There were more benign elements in the equation, too: magnesium, chlorine, calcium. Then there were letters she could not figure: Or. She thought maybe it was just the word: or, like either/or. But that didn’t make sense as she read the equation. She looked at the periodic table online, and it wasn’t there. She searched and searched. She even tried reading through a chemistry book that she’d used as one of her journals. Nothing.
Her eyes burned like they’d been kept open for days, and her head throbbed with the letters and numbers on the pages when she finally pushed the book away.
Disappointment and frustration made her agitated, and she paced around her room, not even bothering to hide the sound of her footfalls. She had told her father she wasn’t feeling well and needed to stay home. He had swallowed the lie as readily as he had the one about Field Day when she’d gone to see her mom. It didn’t make it any easier.
Outside her window, a crow landed on the branch of a tree and cawed at her. She looked past it. In the distance, looming over the town, was the Water Castle.
The lab. She needed to go back. After checking to make sure her father was in his garage, she rolled her bike out to the main road, then pedaled as fast as she could to the Water Castle. Dropping her bike at the side of the house, she ran around back to the old bottling house, pushed aside the ivy, and went through the door. The stillness of the marble room slowed the beat of her heart and she took a deep breath before descending into the tunnels. It was creepier alone. The walls seemed wetter and her footsteps echoed. She went deeper in, and she thought she heard a skittering noise behind her. She stopped. The noise stopped. Her heart beat and beat and beat like the little drums they used in music class. On she walked. Again the noise started, as if someone were following her dragging a stick on the wall. Whirling around, she shined her flashlight up and down the tunnels.
Nothing.
It’s just your imagination, she told herself. All those old stories are bumping around in your head. She rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath, and kept walking. She hadn’t slept much the night before, trying to make sense of what she had read. She hummed to herself to cover any sounds.
She remembered the laboratory being closer than this was; she felt sure she should have been there by now. Had she gone down the wrong path? Had it moved? Now she was starting to think crazily. She took longer strides.
Finally, she saw the door in front of her. It was propped open, so she let herself in and turned on the lights. Right away she saw the bookcase moved out of place and the opening behind it.
The shelf of chemicals was her first stop and she read each label, carefully picking up and replacing each bottle, but there was no clue there, no sign of what “or” might mean. A breeze rushed down the staircase and tickled her neck. A hidden staircase in an underground laboratory. There were no clues in the lab, but maybe she would find something up those stairs.
Up and up and up she climbed. There was faint light from up above and in it she could see all the cobwebs, with the spiders in them, large and lazy. She could feel their eyes on her and could only imagine what they were thinking, to have been undisturbed so long and then suddenly there she was in front of them.
As she climbed higher, the air grew warmer. The light seemed to be getting brighter, too, though it was hard to tell, it happened so slowly. She thought she saw the skeleton of a mouse or rat, but didn’t look any closer. She just shivered and kept going.
The stairs went on for an impossible distance. Her legs started to hurt. She leaned forward and put her hands on the step in front of her. Another step and the wood broke out beneath her foot, her shin scraping against the splinters. “Ow!” Her voice echoed back around her. She felt tears stinging her eyes, but she was so close. She took a deep breath. Up and up and up she kept climbing. Little by little, the light grew brighter and she found herself nearing the opening. It looked like the top of a slide, with a small half dome that covered the opening to the stairs.
After crawling out, she stood and found herself on top of the Water Castle. She was dizzy at the change and had to brace herself. She blinked against the brightness, then pulled herself out of the hole and stood on top of the slate shingles. I’m standing on top of the Water Castle, she thought. It was amazing. She had never been up so high before. It felt like she imagined sitting on the clouds would. The whole town stretched out below her. A cool breeze ruffled her hair. Breathing in deeply, she thought, This is my town, my air. For the first time, she thought it was beautiful.
She reached down to rub her sore shin and saw a metal barrel, about as tall as she was and about as far around. It was stamped with the words Crystal Springs Water Co. Below, faded, something was written. She shuffled across the roof to get a closer look. She recognized the scrawl immediately, and even though it was hard to read them, she knew what the words said: You have to burn the water.