CHAPTER 6

HUDSON CAUGHT UP TO THE OTHER TWO. Pancake may have been shaped like a potato, but he proved to be a human tank when it came to clearing a path through the cafeteria, exit doors, and down the hall.

Hudson was just beginning to know his way around the school. He’d never seen an art room. “So where is this place?”

Pancake made the jog from E to D Hall. “The basement.”

“Basement?” Hudson laughed. “I’m picturing concrete walls and a couple big old boilers or something.”

“You got the concrete walls and floors right —but they’re painted,” Pancake said. “It used to be the wood and metal shop classroom like a million years ago.”

Maggie got a half step ahead of them. “Wait’ll you see what Mr. Mann did to the place.”

Pancake trotted up alongside her. “So now you’re the tour director, eh?” He smiled. “You’re so predictable.”

“Really?” She slugged him in the shoulder. “Did you see that coming?”

Pancake laughed and shook his head.

They stopped at a regular-looking classroom door tucked into a small alcove.

“Some call this the dungeon or the Bat Cave,” Pancake said. “The Mann just refers to it as Beneath the Surface.”

Hudson smiled. “The Man?”

“He is the man as far as I’m concerned,” Maggie said. “And if you make fun of him —or anything in the art room —I’ll put you on my blacklist too.”

Hudson raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll be good.”

Pancake swung open the door to a narrow hallway that led to industrial metal stairs and an old-looking steel door. “Feast your eyes.”

The entire hallway had been painted with animated Disney characters. The Seven Dwarfs walked along the cinder block walls, guiding the way down to the steel classroom door below. Hudson pointed at the sign hanging over Grumpy’s head: Last chance to turn back. “That’s comforting.”

He smelled fresh paint, checked his hands, and then realized the smell was coming from the art room itself.

Pancake snickered and bounded down the steps. “The witch is under the stairs. Check it out.”

Hudson looked under the steps and saw a wooden cutout of Snow White’s wicked witch —painted as good as Disney could have done himself. “Creepy. No wonder it’s called the dungeon.”

“Jo and I call it The Mine,” Maggie said.

Joe?

“I’ll film your reaction.” Pancake pointed his phone at Hudson.

Maggie covered the lens with her hand. “Put the phone away, idiot.” She turned to Hudson. “Don’t mind him. He films everything.”

Pancake pocketed his phone and shrugged. He swung the door open wide and motioned Hudson in ahead of him.

The first thing Hudson saw was Frankenstein. A giant painted cutout of the monster’s head. It must have been at least three feet high. Hudson stopped and stared. “Unreal.”

“Like it?” Pancake circled around him. He took his cap off in an almost reverent way . . . like he considered the room to be hallowed ground.

A bigger-than-life Superman wooden cutout hung from the rafters —flying right at Hudson. The Hulk was mounted to the wall like he’d just crashed through it. Peter Parker —half-transformed to Spider-Man.

A row of clocks hung from the ceiling —each giving the time in a different part of the country. San Francisco. Denver. Beneath the Surface. New York. And the last one was simply labeled Somewhere in the World, and the time was locked in at exactly 2:30. The last bell.

Pancake snickered. “You should see your face.”

Hudson closed his mouth.

Pancake pointed behind Hudson. “There’s tons more cool stuff back there.”

“Actually, everywhere,” Maggie said.

Hudson tried to take it all in. Conan the Barbarian —complete with horned helmet. A sarcophagus —a dead ringer for King Tut’s —stood to one side. A giant head of the original Wolfman glared at him, teeth bared. The bride of Frankenstein —deathly blue with a shock of white hair —stared with zombie eyes. Huge painted horror, cartoon, and comic character cutouts from an earlier generation stood in every usable spot in the room. “This is like a museum.”

Pancake nodded. “The coolest one I’ve ever seen.”

Characters hung from the ceiling, too. Hudson’s dad could probably name plenty of them. Every piece seemed entirely random —but together they made for an insanely genius collection. “How many of these things are there?”

“In this room? Two hundred thirty-four.” Maggie shrugged and smiled slightly. “Last year my best friend —Jo —and I counted.”

Best friend? Hudson thought Maggie didn’t have any other friends besides Pancake. But this was the second time she’d mentioned Joe in as many minutes. “That’s a lot of pieces.”

“There’s more if you count the signs upstairs in the halls.”

“This art teacher, Mr. Mann, he made all these?” Hudson felt like he was standing in the hub —or maybe the heart —of the school. And its arteries reached to every corner of Southfield.

“Mr. Mann is The Mann!” Pancake said.

Hudson wandered toward the vintage-green chalkboard mounted at the front of the room. He walked past butcher-block worktables mounted on old steel lockers, each circled with steel and oak stools. He passed a band saw, drill press, and belt sander —all with the inviting smell of oil and sawdust. “It’s a museum and man cave all rolled into one.”

“Excuse me?” Maggie stood there, hands on hips. “What makes this more of a guy’s place than a girl’s?”

Hudson laughed. “You’re absolutely right. I stand corrected.”

A giant bluish-purple hand was mounted next to the chalkboard, the fingers forever frozen like they were clawing the air. A mouth, stretched open in some kind of primal shriek, was painted on the palm. “What’s that all about?”

“It’s the screaming hand,” Maggie said. “Mr. Mann doesn’t take a cramped hand for an excuse to stop working on an art project. If your hand isn’t screaming —if it doesn’t look like this —he doesn’t let us quit.”

Hudson nodded. “I’d definitely like to meet this guy.”

“Here’s your chance.”

A door closed and a man walked toward him from the back of the room. Shoulder-length hair. Mustache. Jeans. Comfortably faded shirt. A relaxed walk and an easy smile. Mr. Mann held out his hand.

Hudson gripped it and gave a single handshake. “Hudson Sutton.”

“Welcome to the world beneath the surface.”

And it was a different world down here.

Maggie traced her finger along a pink wooden chest about the size of a standard pillow. Pandora’s Box was written across the front with the painting of a green-eyed girl who looked like she wanted to pop the lid. Not exactly the way Hudson would have pictured the box from Greek mythology. This Pandora’s Box looked way too innocent for all the horror the original box contained.

Mr. Mann motioned toward it. “Thinking about opening that?”

She looked at it in almost a sad way. “Every evil skulking in Pandora’s Box escaped a long time ago.”

Something told Hudson she wasn’t talking about the Greek myth.

Maggie scanned the room and did one of those cleansing breaths. “I love this place. I feel protected down here.”

Mr. Mann nodded. “Ten feet beneath the surface. Twelve-inch concrete walls. No windows. Three ways in or out. Almost four.”

Hudson took the bait. “Almost four?”

Mr. Mann pointed at a round metal cover on the floor —the size of an extra-large pizza. “My escape hatch. I’ve been tunneling out to Martin Lane for years. Should be there soon.” The slightest smile played on his lips.

Pancake laughed.

Maggie still looked like she was in her own zone. “Definitely the safest place in Southfield.”

Mr. Mann shrugged. “Unless of course the Earth’s core heats up. Then we’re the first to go.”

Hudson bent over. The slightest musty smell drifted up from the drain. The grate covering it was smooth and cool to his touch. “I think we’re okay.”

“Watch yourself by that drain,” Mr. Mann said. “If the Thumpasaurus people decide to surface —that’s the way they’ll come up.”

“Thumpasaurus people?”

“Cave dwellers who’ll carry you away if you’re not careful.” Mr. Mann picked up a jar, checked the cap, and swirled the red paint inside. “If you see a hand reaching through the grate, just kick it back down. They’ll leave you alone.”

Hudson wished he’d chosen art for one of his classes. He had no idea art could be this much fun.

Mr. Mann turned his attention to Maggie, still standing by Pandora’s Box. “How is Jo?”

Who was this Joe guy Hudson kept hearing about?

Maggie shook her head and looked at him. Were her eyes tearing? “She’s never coming back.”

She? “Wait a sec,” Hudson said. “Joe is a girl?”

Pancake snickered. “Short for Giovanna. Like Joe and Vah-nah?”

Hudson officially was an idiot.

“You’ve seen her,” Pancake said. “The girl in history class with all the black eyeliner . . . like him.” He pointed to an upright pine coffin with a life-sized heavily made-up “Svengoolie” painted on it. “We all call her Giovanna. Maggie is the only one who calls her —”

“Jo loved art,” Maggie said. “She loved this class. Then she started hanging with girls who were more interested in painting their faces.”

“Katrina and Alexa. They’re in Cutter’s class too,” Pancake said. He was totally in some kind of behind-the-scenes tour guide mode.

Hudson knew exactly who Pancake was talking about. Prima donnas. He pictured Giovanna with the heavy black around her eyes. “She was your best friend?”

“Jo was different then —but she opened her own kind of Pandora’s Box.” Maggie touched the box one more time, then pulled back and wiped her hands on her jeans. “She got swallowed by it.”

Hudson looked at Pandora’s Box. What evil had destroyed their friendship?

“I’m sorry you two never got back to the way things were,” Mr. Mann said.

Maggie stared at the box. “I’m not even sure what happened.”

Mr. Mann sighed. “Evil conquers good a lot more often than we like to admit. One bad kid will take thirty down.”

Hudson wondered . . . was Giovanna the bad kid, or had she been taken down by one?

Mr. Mann sat on the edge of the worktable. “Have you ever opened that box?”

Maggie took a step back.

“C’mon. Open it,” Mr. Mann said. “There’s something inside I want you to see.”

Maggie shook her head —like the painted chest was the Pandora’s Box, filled with all the evil in the world. “She went to the dark side.”

Pancake snorted. “Dark side of the moon.”

Mr. Mann motioned toward Pancake and Hudson. “Glad to see you’re finally making some new friends, Maggie.”

The bell rang.

Zachary Wolfe.

It was as if the bell itself triggered the thought. Wolfe’s angel-face penetrated the foot-thick concrete walls like the Hulk himself —and started messing with Hudson’s head. There was no safe place to hide from guys like that. Not even in this Bat Cave fortress beneath the surface.

“We gotta go,” Pancake said. “Can I show Hudson the elevator, Mr. Mann?”

Was he serious? “There’s an elevator?”

Pancake pointed to the back of the room.

Sure enough, closed elevator doors stood right below a huge Batman sign, a dead ringer for the old sixties logo.

“The stairs will have to do,” Mr. Mann said.

Pancake hustled out the door with Maggie right behind him. Hudson hesitated and eyed Pandora’s Box, wondering exactly what Mann wanted Maggie to see.

Mr. Mann nodded like he’d read Hudson’s mind.

Hudson lifted the lid just enough for a clear view. The box was empty —except for one word painted inside. Suddenly it all made sense. No wonder Mr. Mann wanted Maggie to open the box.

“Be good to Maggie,” Mr. Mann said. “Or I’ll open that grate and hand you over to the Thumpasaurus people myself.”

There was no risk of Hudson becoming a souvenir for the Thumpasaurus people. But there were some others he’d love to open the grate for.