The Lighthouse Lounge… Gunshots… The Old Lady… Jake's Fish Surprise… The Thing in the Basement… Brand Catches Up… The One-Bag Trunk… Stef and Andy… Descent into Darkness.
Mouth read what was written beside the cross on the map.
Six times five
Stretching feet,
To lowest point
Get the treat.
We paused, calculating.
“Six times five. That's thirty,” I said.
“Brilliant,” said Mouth.
“Stretching feet,” said Data. “Your feet stretch when you walk.…”
“So that's it!” I said. “If we walk thirty paces, to the lowest point, we'll get the riches.”
Chunk shivered. “I dunno… it's gettin' late. My mom's gonna be worried.” I knew what he meant. It was down and gloomy. “Besides,” he said, “what's that place doin' open in the fall? It's only a summer place—I was here once when I was a kid. But I think I just saw someone walkin' around in there. Seems pretty creepy.”
All of a sudden a car pulled into the drive. It stopped in front of the building, and two guys got out wearing dark business suits. They walked up to the front door and went inside.
“See,” said Data, “there's nothin' to be scared of. There's two other customers goin' in.”
“Maybe they ain't customers,” Chunk whispered. “Maybe they're drug dealers or somethin'.”
Data didn't buy it. “Drug dealers? Did you see their clothes? J.C. Penney polyester. Drug dealers wouldn't be caught dead in those rags.”
I had to agree, although I should say I don't know exactly what drug dealers would be caught dead in. Probably we were all thinking along the same lines, because Mouth seemed kind of put-offish. “So what made you think nobody ever followed this map before and split with whatever's buried there?” he said.
“They could've,” I told him. “But I never heard of anybody finding more stuff than already's in the museum. And anyway, to grown-ups this is already worth enough—you know, they dig up an old map and threw a wooden frame around it and hang it in a museum and can it art.”
“Okay, but how're we s'posed to dig for anything?” Mouth wanted to know. “Knock on the door? Ask whoever's there? 'Scuse me, mind if we wreck your floor? Borrow a cup o' jewels, golden rules, ship of fools'?”
They were starting to chicken out, and I was too chicken to do it alone, so I had to get 'em up for it. “Look, the place is obviously open for business. We can pretend like we're comin' in for somethin' to eat and then joint the case.” Or maybe I meant get on the case.
“You mean case the joint,” said Data.
“Yeah.” That's what I meant. I was just talkin' outta the wrong movie.
We walked down the hill and parked our bikes at the base, right next to the near side of the graveyard. The clouds were almost black and rippin' by like a stormy ocean above us. Man, it was somethin' else.
We stepped real slow between the gravestones. They were at all different angles, so you couldn't tell if you were walkin' on somebody's grave exactly or not, so we tried to go gentle wherever we put our feet. A cemetery's not a place where you want to offend anyone.
Made me think of this Twilight Zone where on a dare this gunfighter has to stick a knife in the grave of the man he killed. So he sticks his knife in the grave, but he accidentally sticks it in his coat, too, so when he stands up, he thinks the guy's tuggin' at him from the grave, so he dies of fright.
I checked to make sure my coat wasn't draggin' on the ground.
Suddenly we heard a loud bang, like a firecracker, coming from the house. We stopped. Then two more: Bam! Bam!
It seemed kind of scary, but it also seemed like here we were in this graveyard, nearly Halloween, and it was really neat scarin' ourselves at any sudden noise.
“That sounded like gunshots,” whispered Chunk. “Not the big ones like you hear in war movies but real ones.”
“Gunshots. Jeez, Chunk, turn off your brain,” I said.
“No problem there,” said Mouth.
“Somebody probably just dropped a pot in the kitchen,” I added, just for an example. I mean, I really thought it was probably somethin' like that. So I started walkin' toward the lighthouse again.
When we got there, it was real quiet. Mouth looked through the front-door windows, but they were too dirty to see anything, he said. Me and Data went to the side of the building, but the windows were too high. Chunk walked over to the garage while I piled a couple of orange crates for me and Data to stand on. We climbed up, put our noses to the glass, and looked inside.
It was a restaurant with a bar, but it looked shut down, and pretty ratty for sure. The kind of seafood place with shredded fishnet hanging on the ceiling, all covered with dust and cobwebs. There were stuffed fish on the walls, too, except they looked plastic, and crossed oars with rusty pins, and the whole place looked like it had been left behind somebody's refrigerator for about ten years.
Way in the back I saw two people. Shadows of people, actually. Probably the guys we saw go in. They were dragging two long, limp sacks across the floor. I figured flour, or maybe a couple of big swordfish, so I figured these guys were makin' a food delivery, or maybe they were the off-season kitchen help, so I figured maybe they could tell us what the story was.
So I jumped down off the orange crates and went inside. Mouth and Data followed.
It was, like I said, real quiet. The ceiling had high beams that kind of swallowed up all the light from the few bulbs stuck along the walls. Some of the furniture was broken, some of the plaster was cracked. It seemed deserted, but at the same, time I felt watched.
Chunk suddenly came running in, waving his arms and jumpin' around real crazy. There was this old jukebox near the bar, and in a weird way it looked like Chunk was dancing to some silent song that he could hear and we couldn't.
That happens to me sometimes: I hear some melody, I guess it's in my head, 'cause when I say, “Did you hear that?” someone like Brand looks at me like I was crackin' up. But it's there, swear to God, just like the pictures are really there in the clouds, just like there are patterns in the jigsaw puzzle some people can see and some can't. I mean, maybe that does make me a dreamer. But don't you have dreams?
So Chunk started gaspin', “Guys! Guys! We gotta get outta here! There's a car in the garage with—”
But before he could finish, a slamming door cut him off. I jumped high enough to hurt myself coming down. We all turned toward the sound of the door and saw a woman standing there, and I jumped again.
She was sort of old but looked like she could eat the four of us alive and was thinkin' about it. She had on an ugly black dress, black shoes, a black beret, and a black scowl. There was a tattoo on her left arm. Damn, she looked mean.
“How long you boys been at that window?” she growled.
“Long enough to see that this place needs about four hundred roach traps,” said Mouth. Only Mouth could have thought up a crack that fast to this lady. It kind of broke the tension for me, though, and I nearly laughed, especially because you could see she really had it in for Mouth now, so the heat was kind of off the rest of us.
She pulled out a chair at one of the grungy tables and motioned us to have a seat, which we did. She called out, “Jake! We got customers!”
We heard a loud thump in the back room, and then someone called back, “Whattaya mean, customers? This ain't no—” As he was sayin' this last part, he stuck his head out and saw us and said, “Shit, Mama,” real soft.
The old lady snapped her fingers at him, “Now go on. Get in the kitchen. Warm up the stove.”
Jake walked across the room to the kitchen door, giving us the eye the whole way. He was an older guy, maybe thirty, with round, wire glasses and a cool vest and a temper you could see all under everything.
“Okay,” said Mama, “we got a specialized menu here.” She had to be kidding. The table we were at was wobbly and filthy enough to make my mom puke if she ever saw it. I tried to pick up a rusty fork, but it was half stuck down with an expired glop of chewing gum. Really gross.
The other guys looked pretty leery, but Chunk looked like a jumpin' bean, he was squirmin' around so much.
Mama kept talking. “We serve one thing. Fresh Fish Surprise.”
“What kind of fish?” said Chunk. Food could take his mind off anything.
“I said it's a surprise!” shouted Mama, crashing her hand down on the table.
“Okay. Okay. I'll take it,” said Chunk. He looked pretty scared.
I suddenly know she was tryin' to scare us off, so I suddenly didn't think she was really all that scary. Just kinda weird.
And I also thought that if this ugly old lady wanted to scare us away, maybe there was gold buried here. So I was more fixed than ever to stay.
“What about the rest of ya?” said Mama.
“Just a glass of water for me,” I said. The other guys all ordered the same. No one knew what to make of this mess.
“Okay, one Surprise and four waters. That it?” she snarled.
“I'd like-a the antipasto salad, the fettucini Alfredo, the-a veal scallopini, and a bottle of Boticelli, 1981.” This was Mouth doing his Italian imitation, which means that this was Mouth mouthing off from nervousness 'cause he just couldn't shut up.
So he laughed nervously with his tongue flappin', and the old lady grabbed it—grabbed his damn tongue!—and pulled a pocketknife out of her dress and put the blade to that tongue in Mouth and said, “We got one more thing on the menu—tongue. You boys like tongue?”
We shook our heads fast. That was when I realized this lady was not only trying to scare us off, she was a little nutsy.
She let go of Mouth's tongue with a smile then, like she was just kidding all the time, and walked into the kitchen.
Mouth put his hand to his mouth. I got up to look for a trapdoor or some other place a treasure might be hid. As soon as the kitchen door closed, Chunk started to talk, but he was interrupted by arguing in the next room.
“But, Ma,” came Jake's voice, “this was supposed to be our dinner—”
“Just shut up,” yelled the old woman. “Shut up and do what I told you.”
Data whispered to me, “What about those two guys who came in before us? What happened to them?”
Chunk finally pushed in close and told what he'd been trying to tell us since Mama first crowded us. “Guys, look, if we don't get outta here now, there's gonna be some kinda hostage crisis,” he whispered. “Out in the garage there's this truck—the same one I saw this morning—bullet holes in it the size of Big Macs—”
Mouth cut him short, though. “Big Mac, yakkety-yak. Chunk, I'm startin' to O.D. on all your bullshit stories.” I think Mouth was feeling kind of snappish after the business with his tongue.
Then something else bizarre happened. There was this churning, bumping, whirring noise echoing through the place like a washing machine having a nervous break-down. Then this guy started swearing, and there were feet on stairs, and another door flew open, and this guy came stormin' out, spattered all over with dark green ink, yellin' and stompin' across the room toward the kitchen, holdin' up his hand, which had the face of a president stamped on the palm, but I'm not sure which president.
“How the hell am I supposed to finish up downstairs with that piece of Smithsonian shit I got to work with?” he shouted.
Then he saw us. That stopped him. He just stared at us for a second, then made a fist with his hand, and another one with his face, and turned and ran back through the door and slammed it behind him.
Before we could speak, Mama came out of the kitchen carrying a tray of glasses, which she set down on our table. The glasses were filled with this rusty-orange-colored liquid with these scuzzy little particles floating in it. It looked like something from a drainage ditch.
She gave us each a glass.
“This supposed to be water?” said Mouth.
“It's wet, ain't it?” the old lady said.
“Yeah, sure—looks great,” said Data.
“Yeah, great mule piss,” said Mouth. He was really pushin' his luck, it seemed to me. The old lady looked at him real strange. That was Mouth, though—always doin' what he shouldn't.
He started pouring his glass into the others, just to irritate her, I think. The sound of the water trickling sounded kind of like going to the bathroom, which gave me an idea. If I pretended I had to go to the bathroom, I could excuse myself from the table and I might get a little time and privacy to check the place out. So I started to squirm around the way I used to when I was a kid and had to go. That made me remember that this was the sort of place that had daddy longlegs in the bathroom, so I shivered, and then I really did have to go a little.
The kitchen doors flew open, and Jake came out wearing a bloody apron and carrying a huge, steaming pot with a big ladle in it. He set it down on the table and said, “Okay, who ordered Fish Surprise?”
Chunk raised his hand, kind of nervous. Jake ladled a mess of the stuff into Chunk's dish. It was totally gross. Kind of a jellified black soup with fish heads and parts. I think it's considered a delicacy in France or some damn place, but it just made me sick.
“Yummy,” said Chunk. I couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. He knew a lot more about food than I did.
Mama looked into the pot. “Is there any left?” She checked her wristwatch.
Jake nodded.
“Then it's time to feed your brother,” the old lady went on.
“Let Francis do it,” said Jake. “I fed it last night.”
“Francis is busy,” said Mama.
“But I hate goin' down there, Ma. It—”
“He's your brother. Now get goin' before it gets cold.” She pushed him hard.
He walked across the room without much enthusiasm, opened a creaky old door, and walked down a lot of creaky old stairs.
Now that we were alone with Mama again, it seemed like a good time for me to try out my plan. I stood up. “'Scuse me, ma'am,” I said, real polite. “Where's the men's room?”
She turned to look at me. Chunk, behind her, kept motioning me to forget it, but it just looked like he was dancing to the silent jukebox again, and I was hearing my own tune now—I mean, I really knew I was in the right place at the right time.
Mama glared at me. “Can't you hold it?”
“Yeah, Mikey,” said Chunk, “can't you hold it?”
Mouth, of course, couldn't help stirring things up. He poured a thin, noisy stream of water from one glass to another. What a jerk.
It was perfect for me, though. “Lady, please!”
She nodded kind of understandingly, like maybe she really was somebody's mama once. “Downstairs, to your right,” she said. “And stay to your right!”
I nodded and went to the door before she changed her mind. I could hear Chunk whispering behind me, stuff like “Mikey, don't, you can't…” but I ignored him and started down the stairs.
It was dark, too dark to see much, and twisting down, so I kept my hand against the wall to guide me. The wall was cool, damp stone. The steps were rotting wood. They creaked the whole way down.
At the bottom was a long corridor with a few bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling. There was nobody else around, so I took out the map to see if I could find any comparisons or clues. But I didn't get much time to check, because suddenly I heard this weird growling coming from the other end of the hall. It made my hair tingle.
I put the map away and followed the sounds. They led me, after a little turning, to a thick wooden door, open a crack. The growling was much louder inside, like a sick animal or something, and mixed in with rattling chains.
I don't know, but somehow it wasn't exactly scary, just sort of sad and weird and pitiful.
I pulled the door open a little wider, and I stuck my head inside.
It was a stone room, small, like a jail cell, with heavy, old wood beams and a slatted ceiling. There was a light in the room above us, which sent stripes of light through the slats into this room. There was a thin, stained mattress on the cement floor. There was rotten food and rat turds all over everywhere. And against the far wall, sitting in a hard wooden chair, there was a large… person.
Sort of a person. He was kind of too big, though, and not shaped exactly right—but he was hard to see, 'cause he was all in shadow.
Jake stood beside this guy, holding the pot of food. The guy growled at Jake, not human but like a thing. Jake held the pot out and talked like he was talking to a pet dog.
“Here, boy. You hungry? Want your supper?”
The thing grunted and held out his arms. They were thick, with more muscles than I'd ever seen, covered with curly, dark hair and too long for his grayed old coat. Heavy metal chains wrapped around his wrists, connecting him to the stone wall. He whined like a starving child. Scared as I was, that crying sound made me want to cry tears, swear to God.
Jake held the pot just a few inches from where the chains held the thing. “Here, fella—this what you want? Your Tender Vittles?”
The big guy roared and grabbed for the bowl. Made me jump, it sounded like a wounded wolf. Jake dropped the pot, and the fish-head soup spilled all over the floor.
The big guy cried again, more sort of like a rabbit in a trap.
Jake was real sarcastic, though. “Oh, poor boy. Sorry, fella. Maybe tomorrow night.”
The big thing whimpered. Jake laughed and turned for the door, which I jumped behind to hide. Jake walked right by me. He didn't see me in the dark, so he walked back upstairs. So I came out and took a step into the room.
There was a small black-and-white TV against the wall, and it was turned on now, without the sound. It sat on bricks, near the floor, with a little rabbit-ears antenna on top of it. The reception was awful. It looked like an old movie, with a sword fight and people yelling. I think it was The Count of Monte Cristo, which I never saw, but I read the Classics Comics, so I knew this was definitely a sign, because the count got to be count because he figured out his lost treasure map and dug his way to freedom.
Anyway, this big guy wasn't interested in any of that now. He was on his knees, eating the fish heads and tripe off the floor, sometimes mixing it in accidentally with little bits of cement or rat bones or dirt, making little satisfied grunting sounds. Then he heard me.
He lifted his head—and there in the whitish glow of the crummy TV, I saw what he looked like. And man, I was scared.
He was bald except for a little topknot, and his head just wasn't the right shape. High up were two partly formed ears, more like dried apricots that had gone bad. His eyes weren't the same size or color, and they were at two different levels on his face, one near where it was supposed to be and one down along the side of his nose. And his nose was all wrong, too, kind of off-center and squished, like he'd fallen on his face and it was made of clay.
But his mouth was real sad.
He growled at me like I was going to steal his food, though, so I didn't stick around to argue—I just took off and hoped the chains held and he'd had all his shots.
I ran down the basement hall, back up the stairs, and into the lounge so fast, it made me wheeze. And I ran smack into Brand.
He was all dirty and bruised and looked totally pissed off. He grabbed me by the collar and lifted me in the air and stared at me so hard, it hurt. “Death's too good for you,” he said. “I'm savin' you for Mom.”
I wheezed a little louder, and he dropped me. “Brand, what happened? You look awful,” I said. I was actually pretty glad to see him, but with that thing in the basement, and Brand looking like he'd fallen into a blender, I didn't know what to say first.
“I'll tell you what happened, twerp,” he said real quiet but like he was shouting. “I was on your trail on that teeny bike when Troy Perkins pulled alongside me in his red Mustang, with Andy and Stef in the car, and he asked me if I wanted a lift. So I grabbed onto the door handle, and he grabbed my wrist and peeled rubber, and in eight seconds I was going sixty on that bike. So when he finally let go of me, all I could do was plow off the road into the tall grass and wreck myself and follow you here on foot. So I dragged my ass out of the field and found your slimy-snail bike tracks in the dirt, and between those and the Twinkie wrappers Chunk dribbles behind him wherever he goes, it wasn't too hard to keep tabs on you yahoos. So when I saw your little Hobbit sneaker prints toddling up to the lighthouse, I just used my massive powers of deduction and zeroed in on you.”
“Way to go, Brand,” said Mouth. “You've earned your decoder ring for sure.”
“Shut your face, Mouth, or I'll shut it for you.”
“I'm trembling,” said Mouth.
Brand glared at him and then at me. “And after Mom finishes with you, then you got me to deal with.”
I looked over at Chunk for some support, but he'd eaten most of his Fish Surprise and was real obviously wishing he hadn't. “Can we go now, you guys?” he whispered. “I think I'm gonna be sick.”
I looked over at Data, but before I could say anything about anything, Mama walked back into the room from the kitchen. She looked fed up.
“All right, boys. Go on home. It's on the house.” She pointed at Chunk's empty dish.
Chunk stuck his head under the table and barfed.
“And now it's on the floor!” Mouth laughed.
“Go on, get out of here,” Mama said with a smile she didn't mean but tryin' to sound like a mom. “Jake'll clean up. Now git.”
We got. Tried to beat each other to the front door is what we did, and we all won. And as soon as the door was shut behind us, Mama put the CLOSED sign in the window.
We shivered a group shiver.
“Let's go,” said Brand, and he marched us off.
We were pretty quiet until we got to the graveyard, each of us thinking our own thoughts. Chunk spoke first.
“Hey, guys, I gotta stop here a minute. I still feel sick.”
So we stopped. It was getting on to dusk, and the shadows of the tombstones dissolved into the bushes all around us. We sat there a minute while I got it all straight in my head, especially the stuff about this Mr. Gruesome that was so weird, I couldn't even believe I'd actually seen him at first. But I had.
“Okay, now listen up, guys, this is hard to buy, but it's total truth, swear to God. When I went into the basement, I found this room down there, and I'm tellin' you, they got an ‘it’ in there. A giant ‘it.’ And they got it chained to the wall, and when it… when it came into the light and I saw it…” My chest got tight when I thought of that face, and I had to give myself a puff on the inhaler. “Guys, you should have seen its face. It was horrible. All the parts were mixed around—
“Like your brain, lame-o,” said Brand. He hadn't been there for the whole first part like the other guys, so he didn't know how spooky it was. He didn't hear the growling, and he wasn't into finding the treasure. So he just pulled me up. “Say good-bye to your little pals.”
Before he could pull me outta there, though, Chunk said, “Look,” and pointed back toward the lighthouse. We all looked.
Jake and Francis were coming out the side door, carrying a large, limp bag. Sort of body-sized. Then Mama came out right behind them, carrying another bag all by herself.
Jake opened the garage door.
Chunk gasped. “Lookit there! That's it!” he said. “That's the car from the chase this morning!”
For the first time it occurred to me, maybe his story wasn't total bullshit after all.
Jake opened the back and then pulled up what looked like some kind of false bottom, but it was hard to see in the dark. Jake and Francis stuck their back into the bottom and then tried to load in Mama's bag, but it wouldn't fit, so they closed the trunk on the one and carried the other back into the restaurant.
“What do you think they got in the bags?” whispered Data.
Nobody answered. But I think we all had an idea.
Jake, Francis, and Mama came right back out again and got in the car and drove off.
The wind started to blow, that old October wind, and I got this warm sort of flush all over, the way I feel when they give me a shot for asthma in the emergency room, kind of excited but real, real calm. “Hey,” I said, “the place is ours.”
They all looked at me. I felt… I don't know, magic somehow.
Chunk looked scared and sick. “Our parents are gonna be worried, guys. C'mon, let's go home.”
“What home?” I snapped at him. I didn't like snapping at Chunk, but it just came out. “In a couple more hours it's not gonna be home anymore.” And then it all spun around my mind, all at once—the crazy old lady with the taste for tongues, and the thing in the basement, and the bags that probably had bodies in them, and how brave I wasn't, and the car with the bullet holes in it that might've been chased by the cops earlier that day, so maybe that meant there was a reward for these guys, mean-lookin' Jake and fruity Francis, and how even if everything went wrong, these guys weren't gonna kill five kids, and how there was absolutely without doubt a major treasure in there somewhere, and it was ours if we could follow the map, and how the eviction tomorrow was sad but in a funny way real free, like there was nothin' to lose anymore, and everything before this moment was ancient history, and only this ancient map was real. It was a map of right now, and I was magic in this Halloween wind, I knew I was. I was in some kind of groove, like when you know you made the basket the second the ball leaves your fingers, like I was hearing this music no one else could hear, like it was a perfect chord, and not only that, but I'd heard it before. You know what I mean?
So I tried to explain it to the guys. “C'mon, guys. This is our time. Our last time.” That's the only way I could explain it.
I pulled the map from my pocket and tried to read it. It was too dark, though. “Anybody got a match?” I said.
A small flame appeared. Then a second. We looked up. There, holding two matches, were Andy and Stef.
Andy's eyes sparkled in the match light, they were so clear. But her hand was shaking, and it was obvious right away that she didn't much like being in a cemetery. “Hi, Brand,” she said.
Brand smiled and let go of me.
Stef sat next to Mouth. “Whatcha doin' in the graveyard?” She winked at him. “Diggin' up new girlfriends?”
“Don't knock it,” he cracked. “Stiffs are a lot warmer than you.”
I knew we were gonna do it then. Stef and Mouth would egg each other on, and besides, Mouth would think of how he could mouth off about it at school on Monday. And Brand would want to impress Andy and show her how cool he was and tougher than jerky Troy Perky. And Chunk would want to make up stories about it for years, and he'd never live it down if we all did it and he didn't, and we had wilder stories than his, and ours were true. And Data would never have another chance like this to really do something like 007. And I told you all my reasons. And if all the rest of us were gonna have this adventure, I was damn sure Andy wasn't gonna just sit here in this creepy old graveyard all by herself. So, all of a sudden right then, I just knew we were gonna do it. So I lit another match and studied the map.
Brand looked kind of puzzled at Andy. “What're you doin' here?”
“We followed you. We drove around with Troy for a while, but he was being a real spas-ass—you know, tilting the rearview mirror so he could look down my shirt.” She shrugged, real cool. “So I elbowed his lip.”
Brand smiled like he liked that answer. I didn't pay much attention to them after that, though—I was too interested in figuring out exactly where we were on the map. And where we were going.
“Okay,” I said, holding the parchment in front of me, “if it's thirty paces… one… two… three…” I began to walk.
Data stopped me, though. “No, Mikey. Your feet are too small. We must do this scientifically.” He took a calculator out of his backpack.
Mouth pushed Data out of the way, though. “Paces are paces. You think this Willy dude had a calculator?” He started walking in the direction I'd started, with much longer strides. Right toward the restaurant.
He counted off the paces like Elmer Fudd. “One… two… twee… Shhh! Be vewy vewy quiet! I'm hunting wabbits! Hee hee hee heel” That's the way he let off nervous energy, you know, clowning around.
He kept walking, though, and we followed. I was excited—we were all really in it together now. Mouth was trying to be a big shot, and Stef was trying to see him fall on his face. Chunk was scared but stickin' with his Goony brothers. And Andy was gettin' coy with Brand.
“Poor Troy,” I heard her say. “Guess he won't be makin' out with anybody for a while. Boy, am I gonna miss that.” Then she snuggled up real close to Brand and said softer, “C'mon, Brandy. Let's get out of here. Graveyards freak me out.”
I didn't have to look—I could hear the gleam in Brand's eye. He was sizin' this up as the best night of his life. I saw him turn back with her, but then he stopped and said, “I can't leave without my brother. Just hold on, one second…”
We were already at the front door of the place by the time he caught up with us, though.
The front door was locked. Mouth tried it. I tried it. Nothin' doin'.
Chunk was standing there real tense, and that gave Mouth an idea. “Hey, Chunk,” he said, “I got some naked Polaroids of your mom takin' a bath. Wanna buy 'em cheap?”
That was Chunk's last straw. He charged at Mouth like a linebacker. At the last second Mouth dodged out of the way, and, Chunk smashed into the door, breaking the old rusty lock that was holding it closed, and falling into the front room.
Another Chunky accident. Mouth laughed like Eddie Haskel on Leave It to Beaver and casually walked inside.
Chunk was really upset now. He brushed himself off as he stood. “Now my mom's really gonna kill me. I'll have to pay for this door out of my allowance, and my dad's gonna cut my allowance off—
“Chunk,” I whispered, “we're all gonna be rich.”
Andy shouted from outside. “I'm going home. You guys are gonna get in big trouble!”
I saw her turn to go, and she walked right into a big stone gargoyle sitting on one of the tombstones. She jumped about a foot in the air and then trotted over to us—to Brand, actually, who hugged her like a brave soldier, which meant he was with us now for sure, since he wasn't about to be shown up in front of Andy by his wimpy little brother.
Inside, Mouth kept counting paces, back with his Elmer Fudd routine. “Twenty-eight… twenty-nine… toity. This is it! That wascally wabbit must be under here!”
Stef rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “You can stop auditioning to be popular. You don't impress rue anymore.”
“I'd rather dive into a swimming pool full of razor blades than impress you,” he said. Which was obviously bullshit.
I looked at the map. “We gotta get to the lowest spot.”
“We gotta get outta here,” said Brand. His sensible half was having second thoughts. He grabbed me, but I pulled away.
“C'mon, Brand, what's another couple a minutes gonna hurt? What if we find somethin'? Huh?” No way was I gonna leave now. The lowest spot beneath the place we were standing was about to make us the richest Goonies on earth.
I opened the basement door. It was as black as a grave down there and three times as deep. I looked back at them—Mouth, Chunk, Data, Stef, Andy, Brand—seven of us all together. Like The Magnificent Seven. Made me feel like Steve McQueen. Invincible. Cool. Certain.
I started descending the stairs, more scared than I'd ever been. In a couple seconds the others followed. I suddenly realized I wasn't last anymore. I was leading.
I held on to the stone wall again and led us, twisting down. We all stopped halfway, though, in the middle of the same step, because at the same time we heard the same thing.
A low growling and a rattling of chains.