I called this meeting to give you one last chance to come clean.”
Peter positioned us on the couch, with Elias in the middle. Laudia sat in a Lazy-Boy, engaged in a furious knit.
My stomach growled. I’d missed dinner. My hosts didn’t seem to show much sympathy.
“So, let’s start at the beginning.” Peter pulled a chair directly in front of Elias. “Are you connected in any way to these young ladies?”
“Yes.”
It was in the way he said it. My Elias was gone, and I slumped into the couch.
“And would you be willing to describe that connection?”
“Guard and guide. Beyond that, everything is privileged information.”
“But clearly not sisters and brother?”
“What really makes a family these days?” Izzy forced a smile, and quickly fell silent.
“Guard and guide,” Elias repeated. “That’s all you need to know about Clarita and Izzy. And don’t assume those are their real names. Don’t think I’m that foolish.”
Elias sounded smug. He also seemed to be digging a deeper hole with every word.
Peter winced. “Were you not just . . . in a compromised position with Clarita?”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” Izzy glared at me, and I shrugged.
“I was not, and I never have been in any compromising position with Clarita. That would be disrespectful.”
Peter sat back and scratched his head, peeking toward Laudia. “I just saw those two all pressed together.”
Laudia gasped, and Elias shot to his feet.
“Apologise to Clarita immediately! Do you know who she is?”
Peter said nothing.
“Do you not see the resemblance between her and your queen?”
“My queen?” Peter rubbed his eyes. “I tell you, I know what I saw.”
“Very well.” Elias folded his arms. “Then we need to leave. We will move on. If lies are going to be told in this place . . . Izzy? Clarita? Let’s go.”
“But what about your . . . parents?” Peter asked.
“Clarita has none, I don’t either. Elias has half a pair.” Izzy smiled. “We are family. I don’t care what you saw or thought you saw. We’re family. They’re all I have. Thanks for the meal.”
“Wait!” Laudia exhaled. “Just wait. Please. We have a son. I told you about him. Kenton, he’s . . . he’s lost. He rarely answers us anymore. Would you, could you talk to him, Elias?”
“It would be my pleasure, but I need to take Clarita.”
Peter took hold of his wife’s arm. “I don’t trust that girl with our son.”
Laudia broke free. “With Kenton? Don’t be ridiculous.”
She led the two of us toward the back room on the main level. “He’s in there. Don’t bother knocking. He won’t respond. I miss him so much.”
Laudia opened the door to a darkened room. “Thanks for this. If you get through to him, I don’t care what Peter saw. I want my son back more than you know.” She gestured us in and closed the door behind us.
The room was bathed in the eerie glow of several computer screens. Electronic gadgets and caving gear littered the floor, and beneath the covers of the bed, a young-man-sized lump.
“Kenton. My name is Elias.” The Other One approached. “I’m here with Clarita. I want to talk to you.”
No movement.
“He’s dead,” I hissed.
“No.” Elias bent down, picked a brick off the floor, and hurled it at the head end of the lump. Still, Kenton didn’t move.
“He’s not there. See the shape? Asymmetrically impossible for a human.” He strode forward and pulled off the comforter. Several pillows, but no boy.
“So now what?” I asked.
“Now, we wait.”
Elias pulled a chair to one of the computer screens. A battle raged. Bloody awful.
“It’s running by itself, looping over and over.” I plunked down on the bed. “So we are going to wait for what, exactly?”
“We’ll wait for Kenton. This family needs our help. This is the Lightkeeper’s doing.”
I lay down, suddenly knackered. “All the evils in the world cannot be the result of one person’s life.”
Elias breathed deeply. “Tell me more about your dad, my king.”
He had me.
“My dad, the king, is unique in his ability to destroy things.”
“Is he? Or did some of that get passed down to you?”
“I’ve never destroyed any . . . I’ve never . . .” I started to hyperventilate, and the room spun. “Maybe I could tell you a story from my travels. From the manual.”
Elias shook his head. “No, I want to hear about this hideous man.”
He loved to fly. Planes, balloons, helicopters. I, on the other hand, possessed a childhood fear of any place too high or buried too deep. The surface seemed a perfectly respectable place to live.
But his laugh, it was — it probably still is — infectious. It used to wash away all fear. When he laughed, I was safe, and willing to try anything, including helicopter travel. I may have been five, perhaps six. And he took me to the fair. “Helicopter rides, ten pounds!” the man cried out. It did not appear much of a helicopter. It was small — not the large transport helicopters of today, but the small, zippy ones. The glass ones.
The ones with no doors.
It was meant for two. Two seats. Two seat belts. The pilot climbed in. My father climbed in.
“Have a nice trip, Daddy.”
He laughed, and soon I was caught up in his arms. The helicopter lifted up, and the pilot was manic — first angry, then joyful, and then angry again. The helicopter was manic as well. Flying, soaring, dipping, stalling . . . only to regain momentum.
The whole time I looked out into the blue of the sky. There was no door. There was no belt. There was only my dad’s arms. His strong arms, and his laugh.
I was so afraid, but all I could do was laugh, and press back into Dad’s chest, and when all was done, ask for another.
I peeked at Elias.
“He doesn’t sound like a rotten man,” Elias said.
“No,” I whispered. “He doesn’t.”
He isn’t.
From inside the closet, a crumbling, and then a grunting and a scratching. I jumped to my feet, but Elias sat as stone, calm and fixed, and slowly I lowered myself down.
A muffled voice forced itself from behind the door.
“So it’s the seventeenth left and then a right. Seventeenth left and then a right.” The closet door flew open and a boy tumbled out, the light from his miner’s hat temporarily blinding me.
I blinked away the light spot. The boy was short and stocky and filthy, his cheeks covered with either soot or dirt. He seemed unaffected by the presence of two strangers.
“Two people in my room. Two people I don’t know in my room.” He paused. “But the seventeenth left and then the right.” He ran to his desk, reached over Elias, and grabbed a piece of paper and began a frantic scribble. “Done.” He slowly turned.
“I have some questions for the two of you.” He took off his helmet, and his gaze fell on me. Stuck on me. Traveled me. I had felt those eyes wandering many times before, and I quickly rose from his bed.
“I’m Kenton,” he said.
“Yes, I shall say you are. That is Elias, and I am Clara — Clarita. My name is Clarita.”
“Nice name. You are in my personal, private, very unvisited bedroom, where I keep my personal, private, very unvisited things. Did Mom let you in here?”
“We’re temporary neighbours. We moved in next door for a few days.”
A huge smile crossed Kenton’s face. “Down and the first left and up.”
“It was not intentional,” Elias said. “We had planned on staying in town, but your mom was kind.”
“Downtown. That’s the challenge, but very possible.” Kenton turned to a computer, clicked a key, and typed furiously. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”
Elias wandered the room, staring at Star Wars posters on the wall. “You’re in trouble, Kenton. I see it. And I’m here to help.”
“Trouble?” He scoffed and glanced at me. “Who is this guy?”
Elias flipped on the light, and we all squinted. “We aren’t here by chance, or simply your mother’s request. We followed my star map, as well as Clarita’s interpretation manual. And Izzy’s with us too.”
“Star map?” Kenton slowed on the computer and glanced over his shoulder.
I rolled my eyes. “I know it’s a little strange. It must seem a little strange, unbelievable, really. Ridiculous. Bizarre. Ludicrous —”
“Clarita . . .” interrupted Elias.
“Right. Well, Izzy and some mythical story about a constellation brought us to this town. You must think us completely blasted or crazed or —”
“Brilliant. Not brilliant like me, but . . .” Kenton rummaged for his miner’s helmet and carbide lamp. He held them up. “Find one of these, and one of these in your size. There are plenty around. You are not going to believe what the stars can do.” He did a little jig, which for this chunky lad proved quite the sight.
We strapped on helmets and followed him into his closet, the door of which he shut behind me. “Okay, now where is it?” His meaty hand grabbed my ankle, and remained.
“That is not what you are looking for.”
“No, that’s right.” He released me. “Here, it’s here. Now scoot back against the door. It’s a drop.”
The floor creaked, and the closet filled with dank and cool. I looked down, and my light illumined not carpet but dirt ten feet down.
“Tunnel,” Elias said.
“Railroad.” Kenton slapped him on the shoulder and descended thin brick stairs. “Someone to show. Finally, someone to show!” His voice sing-songed into darkness.
“Go ahead, Elias.” I slapped his shoulder as Kenton had done.
“No, you’re my guide.”
Your guide to unreachable places.
I carefully descended a rough-hewn ladder until I stood on the earth.
The air in the underground cavern was still, and an unnatural heaviness pressed in around me. Up. Out. I wanted out. I looked up, but my beam illuminated little beyond the hole. The real world was hidden from view.
Panic took hold, and I reached for the ladder.
“No, wait!” Kenton said.
I scampered back up until my head poked back into the closet. I took a deep breath and my stomach sank.
Because I had just climbed out. I was afraid and it was dark so I just climbed the ladder. I turned my beam toward Elias, watched as he looked about. My Elias, the half who trusted me; I broke his ladder. His medicine, imperfect as it was, likely provided him an occasional escape from his darkness. But I would not let him have it. I tried to keep him in his panic so I could rid myself of my own.
Shame swept over, and hideous me descended the steps once again, to be with the Other One. To know what my lost Elias was feeling trapped beneath his brain’s surface. Though I hated it below, I owed him that much.
Kenton stretched out his arms. “Are you okay?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “Good. Now behold the Underground Railroad!”
Elias turned toward me, and blinded my eyes.
Kenton clicked his tongue. “You aren’t responding with the right amount of awe. In school, weren’t we taught that the railroad was underground in name only? That it meant ‘secret’? And that’s mostly true. Slaves moved from the south to the north, stopping at ‘safe stations,’ which were really homes or farms of sympathetic people along the way. Mostly under cover of darkness. But here in Salem, one of the northernmost stops on the railroad, the town took the underground part seriously.”
“We’re in the underground railroad?” I asked.
“Slave families hurried through right where you’re standing. Some of the unfortunate ones are still down here, but those were the ones who got lost.”
Kenton turned and walked, soon coming to a fork, and another fork.
I quickened my steps and glanced back. “If it’s such a labyrinth . . .”
“Don’t worry. I practically live down here,” Kenton said. “Let me continue the story. See, everyone in Salem knows of a few stations in town. Six or seven entry points to underground passages are marked. The Quakers who once lived in these ‘stations’ hid hundreds of slaves, but they’re all private homes now and people don’t realise what’s beneath.” He stopped walking. “Nobody knows that the entire town is connected by a crazy tunnel system, and not just the homes. This maze stretches the length of Salem. That offshoot there ends up beneath the present-day school.”
Unbelievable. The air was thick, but the spirit was thicker. Hope and fear rolled into one. Voices. You could hear them.
“Are we alone down here, Kenton?” I asked.
“You feel them too? Sometimes I swear I do.” Kenton glanced about. “Sometimes. Sometimes they’re weeping. Sometimes they’re humming. Always there’s a hushing. Dads and moms telling their children to hush.” He lowered his head. “Once I heard a dog too. Plain as plain.”
“But you keep coming down.”
“Yeah.” His voice gained strength. “And here is the awesome part. How do you think they navigated this tunnel?”
“Luck?” I asked.
“No. Not luck. Look up.”
I did. The spot from my beam shone on a brick ceiling.
“What do you see?” Kenton jumped like a puppy.
“Light.”
“Exactly. Now, a lot of those escaping couldn’t read, but thanks to all those miles traveled at night, they could read the sky. Every exit point from down here corresponds to a star in a major constellation. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m plotting all the exits. Gemini there. Two lefts and you reach the Leo exit. How cool is this?”
“It’s fascinating but . . . So we came because of this story about Orion. Izzy or Elias said there would be trouble waiting in this town, but that we needed to follow Orion. Where’s that exit?”
Kenton wiped his forehead. “Well, that’s the thing. If you’re really my neighbour, Orion’s belt exits up into your place.”
I whipped around. No Elias.
“Elias!”
A hand slapped over my mouth. “The distance between here” — Kenton pointed up — “and the floors above is sometimes paper thin. No sounds. Besides, for a lot of reasons, we should backtrack to the Orion exit.”
I ripped his hand off my mouth. “I need to find him. He’ll be fine, right? I mean, he can’t get in too much trouble down here.”
“If his light goes out and he gets cold . . . Well, that won’t happen. Follow me.”
We weaved back the way we came. At least it felt a tad like the way we came. “Slow here. Look straight ahead,” he said firmly.
Wrong thing to tell me, and I glanced to the right. Large skeleton, small skeleton. I screamed, and again received a taste of Kenton’s smothering fingers. “Straight ahead. That’s not going to happen to Elias. Our station is just ahead. By that . . . light.”
Elias. He sat cross-legged on the ground, staring at the brick wall, and the scratchings etched into the brick.
“One. Two. Three. Three days or three weeks.” His voice was distant. “How long were they hiding down here?”
I slapped his helmet hard, but he did not turn. “So much sadness in the past. Who knew this cancer was growing in the heart of Salem? The queen didn’t. The king doesn’t. We need to set this right. We need to find it and stop it . . .”
The urge to shake him overpowered. If there was an evil Keeper, he had no power over the slave trade. Elias should know. But the Keeper was still the touchstone, the point where both of him came together. Even after my great embarrassment in the tower, I was more determined than ever to reconnect his dots. This Keeper; I wanted to see him as badly as I wanted my dad . . . I rubbed my face. The words, like a distant echo, sounded again. I want Dad. Hundreds of children sitting in the dark, hushed by their mums while their fathers checked out the next passage.
I want my dad.
I heard it stronger.
I want my dad.
It reverberated in my head.
Dad, I love . . .
No! I would not give him that prise. Never again.
Pounding shook from above, and Kenton doused his light, gesturing for us to do the same. He quietly climbed the ladder, and I sat down next to Elias.
“We need to help these people,” he said.
“Elias, I don’t pretend to know my American history, but this happened over a hundred years ago. They’re all gone.”
“Are they?”
Kenton descended and whispered, “Police. Did you do something? Are you hiding something? Cops are searching your house. They’ll search down here. We need to move.”
“Not without my guard,” Elias said.
I stroked Elias’s head. “Think, Elias. Izzy’s not there. She’s smart. Why would they be looking if they found her?” I turned. “Kenton, help me. We need to find Izzy. If you were brave and arrogant, like Bonnie or Clyde, and mighty good with a shotgun, where would you make your last stand?”
He relit his beam. “Follow me to Arcterus. You’ll see!”
Twenty curved minutes later, we reached another set of stairs. “This is tricky. You’ll come out beneath a bright-red trolley set in the middle of town. Glass on all sides. She could see everyone coming from every angle.” Kenton swallowed. “But it would be a death trap. Wait. This is crazy. This isn’t some Wild West shootout. Nobody does that anymore.”
Elias and I exchanged glances.
“I’m not going up there with you,” Kenton said. “I can’t.”
I nodded and kissed him quickly. “Your mum, she worries. She worries you’ve gone where she can’t go, and I see why now. I see it. But don’t leave her,” I said. “Please, don’t leave her. She just might need you someday.”
“Maybe for another kiss I’ll consider letting her in on —”
I granted his wish.
He wiped his brow. “Yeah, I mean, what could be the harm in telling her, you know?”
Elias nudged me. “Maybe for a kiss I would consider —”
I slapped his helmet. “Not before we discuss the business that occurred in the tower.”
He cocked his head, and I climbed the stairs. The rock above my head crumbled, but there was no opening. “Ever been out this way, Kenton?”
“No. Just an educated guess. Here, use my hand pick.” Kenton removed the tool from his pack. “I knew it would come in handy one day. I’ll seal up the hole tomorrow.” He handed me the pick, and ten minutes later I stared up at the bottom of what must be a trolley. I pounded on the metal underside, and a shotgun blast sent a shell not one foot from my head.
“Hold on! It’s Clarita! Come out! Come down. We came to get you out.”
Distant sirens grew nearer.
Izzy’s eye appeared through the hole made by her shell. “I can hold them off. I have great sight lines all around. You two go. It’s been a pleasure.”
“If you think I put up with you this long just to watch you perish in a gun fight . . .” I crawled onto my belly, jumped up and ran around to the trolley door, and climbed in.
I grabbed my bag and Elias’s pack and leaped back out, pitching them toward Elias’s waiting arms. Back into the trolley, I took hold of Izzy’s neckline and yanked. She broke free and shoved me onto the floor.
“I swear, Clarita, I will shoot you myself.”
“Oh, shut it! Go ahead.”
Flashing lights screamed nearer, and Izzy lowered her gun, stared at the hole her shot had made, and grabbed her guitar case. “Okay, London. Lead me to the promised land.” She followed me out, and ten seconds later we were safely into the tunnel.
“This is absolutely my most awesome escape ever!” Izzy pumped her fist. “I am definitely coming back —”
I shook Izzy hard. “Are you raving mad? Is everybody here mad? Do you have some sort of death wish, or is this journey all a game, because I really need to know who I’m traveling with. That was all for show. I mean, you wouldn’t hurt a copper . . . would you?” No answer. “Or would you . . .”
“We can discuss this later, Clarita,” Elias said. “Where’s the truck, Izzy?”
“An abandoned farm outside of town,” she said cheerfully.
Kenton exhaled. “Okay, well, that could be a problem.”
Elias dug in his pack and brought out his star map. Kenton stared for a moment and swept his hand over the constellations. “So we’re here, Arcterus. We’ve come from Orion. We need to get you out of here, out of Salem.”
“No,” Elias said.
“Yes, says the guide.” I smiled. “We need the easternmost station.”
Kenton shrugged and pointed to a small constellation on the eastern horizon. “That should be here. I’ve not mapped it this far, but there should be a way up.”
I grabbed the map from Elias’s hands and handed it to Kenton. “Carry on.”
As we trundled forward, the lunacy of this whole experience struck. For days, I had silently mocked the craziness of following a star map, and yet here I was, following an eastern star. I placed all my hope in it.
Reality did me no good. Not on this journey.
The tunnel narrowed from five meters in diameter to four meters to three.
Behind us, voices.
“Police,” Izzy said.
“I don’t think so,” Elias said. “Those voices have been here a long time.”
Two meters.
I removed my bag and dropped to my knees, shoving it in front of me. “Kenton? We can’t go on.” My voice muffled, even as those behind me grew louder.
One.
I pushed ahead, the faint grunting of Elias and the sound of men’s voices now all I heard. That and my breath. Loud. Forced. Desperate.
Then, stars. Brilliant and bright. The world opened and the grass waved and the trees rustled in the blackness of night. I turned. The lights of Salem were bright behind us, but before us there was nothing.
“Wow.” Kenton stood and brushed himself off. “So this is how they got out. Right out of town. You’ll be following a slave route for a while, I figure.” He handed the star map back to Elias. Izzy finally emerged, her guitar case scraping out of the cave-like opening.
“Terrible.”
“What? The crawl?”
She shook her head and muttered. “Terrible. Terrible.”
I rounded her shoulder. “Maybe we weren’t the only ones traveling through.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“You might soon,” Kenton said. “Over that ridge is the only abandoned place I know. Abandoned for good reason. And after I tell you the story, I need to leave. I forgot to reshape the pillows beneath my blanket.”
Kenton pointed. “If you follow Salem Road east, soon —”
“You arrive at a T, and the right turn looks like it’s headed back into Salem,” Izzy said.
“So you went left, and it turned into gravel, and then there it was, a big, old vacant Civil War place. An entire family died in that house. It was brutal and sad. This was back in, like, 1940, but five of them lived there. Mom, dad, three kids.” Kenton breathed deeply. “Everything was going fine, right? But then this traveling shoe salesman blows in. He sets up a shop in town. Soon he’s having an affair with the wife. She says she’s gonna leave her husband, but then, suddenly, she changes her mind. A few days later, the whole family is found dead, and the drifter has moved on. But every once in a while people still see his car. Driving back and forth in front of the house. Maybe from remorse. Maybe from anger. Freaky stuff.”
“And you hid our truck at that house?” I asked.
Izzy’s hands raised to her hips. “I was not given the haunted history of Salem, Ohio, before I arrived.”
“It’s all right.” Elias nodded. “We’re all here. We’re close to the truck, and we met Kenton, a fine citizen of Salem. We rescued Izzy and found our way through a very sad darkness, dangers that we knew from Izzy’s Orion interpretation would be waiting for us. We’re definitely on the right track.”
I exhaled loud and slow. Maybe Elias found comfort and certainty from the events of this place. Not me. I didn’t discover anything. I lost what I had. In my lack of control in the tower; in the below-the-surface panic I so lightly put Elias through . . . I lost what little self-respect I owned.
The Other One didn’t know about my failures, but what would my Elias think?
“We should go,” Elias said.
Kenton swallowed. “You really need to? I mean, you probably do, but it’d be cool to have you stay. I don’t care what you all did.” He scratched the side of his neck, lowering his voice. “It’s just me here. Me and these tunnels. My parents, they think I’m crazy . . . they’re perfect, you know? And I’m this freak.”
The night fell silent, and Kenton continued. “Just nice to have a couple other freaks like me nearby, you know?”
Izzy strode up to Kenton, reached up and gently held his face in her hands. “I get it.”
The longer they stood, the smaller my earlier kiss became. Twice now, both in the tower and in the tunnel, I had given boys exactly what they’d always requested. But Izzy’s words were going somewhere my affections couldn’t reach. I felt such the fool.
We all stood as statues, until Elias reached into his pack and removed a pencil and sketchbook. He looked at Kenton, and five minutes later gently tore the drawing from the pad. He handed it to Kenton, whose eyes grew wide.
“Seriously?”
Elias smiled. Kenton pressed it into his chest. “Okay, yeah, okay.” He started to cry, dirt on his cheeks smearing to mud. “I need to get back.” He carefully folded the gift and raised it in the air. “Thanks, Elias.”
It was the time for my gentle gesture. Izzy and Elias had both extended a farewell moment to Kenton. But standing there, I suddenly felt the needy one. The empty-handed outsider. The shared freak who threw around kisses like currency.
Kenton disappeared back into the hole.
“May I ask what you drew for him?” I asked.
“No.”
I wanted badly to know. I wanted him to draw something happy for me. I wanted to cry again.