CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

Johnny closed his eyes. A wave of sick terror swept over him. He was afraid that he would faint, or die. But his resolve was strong, and he summoned up all the courage that was in him.

When he opened his eyes, the horrible shape was still there, sprawled on the cold stones. In the midst of his panic Johnny felt terribly sorry for Chad. He had been peculiar, but he had tried to be nice to Johnny and Fergie. He hadn't been particularly likable, but he hadn't been evil. Johnny swallowed hard, and another sick, convulsive shudder ran through his body. This cleared his head, somehow. He had no time to get upset, not now. He had to press on, and if the Guardian caught up with him . . . well, at least he would go down fighting. Johnny got a good tight grip on the crowbar and the flashlight. Then, turning his eyes away, he edged around the slumped body and flashed his light this way and that. The crypt was a low, gloomy chamber, a sort of basement under the chapel. Rows of stone arches stretched away into the distance. Was there a door that led upstairs? There had to be. Johnny crept forward cautiously, past heavy round pillars. Ahead, at the top of a low flight of stone steps, he saw what he was looking for. Up the steps he went. The door opened easily, and he found that he was peering into a narrow stairwell. More steps corkscrewed upward. He followed them, and at the top was yet another door. He opened it and found that he was in the chapel.

Because it was dark, Johnny had only a dim idea of what the place looked like. He played the flashlight beam about and saw high wooden pews, a stone altar with a bronze crucifix on it, and a series of gothic arches that marched down the side aisles. Johnny loved strange old buildings, and at another time he might have stopped to explore. But he was in a hurry. So, putting on a look of the grimmest determination, he tramped purposefully down the aisle. At the back of the chapel, under the organ loft, was a big, pointed wooden door with two leaves that were held together by a bolt in the middle. There were spring bolts at the top and the bottom. Johnny slid them back. He pulled the handle and the door swung outward. Cold air rushed in, and snowflakes stung Johnny's face. He was out in the open air again at last.

Johnny felt grateful and extremely relieved. He just stood there a moment, eyes closed, and let the tiny frigid white dots hit his face. He had not been cooped up in the tunnel and the crypt for very long, but it had seemed like ages. Greedily he gulped cold air into his lungs. Johnny wanted to stand there forever, but he knew he couldn't. Doggedly he dragged his mind back to the job that was at hand.

Johnny picked his way down the short flight of steps that led to the open space in front of the chapel. He turned and glanced to his right. Beyond the swirling snow he could just barely see the vast black shadow of the mansion. Before him rose the chapel's tower, a stubby structure with battlements on top. Although the church was gothic, the doorway was classical. It was flanked by fluted pillars with scrolled capitals, and there was a fancy stone cornice over the door. Above the cornice was a triangular stone slab called a pediment. Set in its center was a square tablet made of white marble, and on the tablet was the inscription that had excited Johnny so much when he'd read it for the second time in the book he had found in the library. He had copied the inscription out of the book and had pored over it on the train ride up to New Hampshire. In the dark Johnny could not make out the inscription. Nevertheless he could have recited it by heart:

 

In the yeare 1653 when all

thinges Sacred were throughout ye nation

Either demolisht or profaned

Sir Robert Shirley, Barronet,

Founded this church;

Whose singular praise it is,

to haue done the best things in ye worst times,

and

hoped them in the most callamitous.

The righteous shall be had

in everlasting remembrance.

 

Johnny loved the inscription. It sounded grand and thrilling, even though he didn't know anything about Sir Robert Shirley or the calamitous times that he had lived in. He was also filled with smug self-satisfaction, because he had figured out that the ye in ye olde tea shoppe referred to the two ye's in the inscription. He even knew, thanks to the professor, that ye in the old days was sometimes just a funny way of writing the. But Johnny didn't have time to pat himself on the back. He had to find some way of getting up to the place where the inscription was so he could examine it more closely.

With a sinking heart Johnny realized that this was not a part of the treasure hunt that he had planned very carefully. Were there any ladders around? He hadn't seen any, and ladders were not the kinds of things that people left lying about on a deserted estate in the wintertime. Then suddenly Johnny grinned. He had been staring at the solution all the time. A mass of ivy vines grew up one side of the carved doorway, twisting about the columns till they spread their hundreds of spidery tendrils across the inscribed stone tablet at the top. And there was even a little ledge under the tablet. If he ever got up that high, Johnny was sure he could stand on it.

Johnny took off his gloves and put them into a pocket of his parka. Then he reached out, took hold of the vines, and started to climb. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. The vines were spread out all across the face of the doorway, and Johnny found handholds and footholds everywhere. And so, before long, Johnny was stepping out onto the narrow ledge that stood atop the doorway. He was still clinging to the vines for dear life, terribly afraid he might slip. But when he finally had a firm footing on the ledge, he let go. Now he was standing over the doorway of the church. It was not a terribly long way down, but even so, if he had taken a step backward, he would have had a pretty nasty fall. Johnny tried not to think about that. Instead he slowly lowered himself to his knees until the inscription was at eye level. From the left-hand pocket of his parka he took out the flashlight. He examined the first ye, but there was nothing odd about it. The letters were no more deeply cut than the others around them. Johnny tried the other ye, and this time his heart jumped. Around the word was a faint ragged line—a crack in the stonework. It looked as if the crack had been smeared over with plaster at one time, but wind and weather had eaten most of the plaster away. Johnny dug his hand into the pocket on the right side of his parka and pulled out the screwdriver. Holding the flashlight steady with his left hand, he poked at the crack. Immediately more plaster flaked away. The crack got wider, the tip of the screwdriver sank in deeper, and Johnny wiggled it around to widen the crack. All around the wandering circle he went, poking and prying and loosening. Tiny gray flakes fluttered down onto the ledge. Excitedly Johnny pulled back his right hand, and he stabbed as hard as he could. The tip of the screwdriver sank in an inch or more. Johnny pried, and the slab started to move. But the work would take two hands, and so he laid down the flashlight. Now he heaved with all his strength, and the thick slab of stone fell out onto the ledge with a chunk. Excited, Johnny snatched up his flashlight and peered into the ragged hole. He expected to see a legal-looking bundle tied with red ribbon, or a metal strongbox with a padlock on it.

But what he saw was neither of these. It was a small square can. The label said Herb-Ox Bouillon Cubes.

Johnny could have cried. Was this it then? Was this what he had come up here for, in the snow, in the dark, in the cold? One last flickering hope remained. Maybe the can contained microfilm, and the will was printed on it. Impatiently Johnny pried the lid off. Inside were little cubes wrapped in gold-colored foil. He unwrapped the first one. And the second and the third and all the rest. Chicken bouillon cubes.

With a violent heave, Johnny hurled the can off the ledge and listened as it clattered on the pavement below. He felt like the biggest fool who ever walked on two legs. By now the professor and his grandparents would be frantic with worry. The police were probably out beating the bushes around Duston Heights. Police dogs were sniffing for him in the woods outside town. And when he came back to them, what could he bring? Bouillon cubes.

Johnny knelt there, facing the wall. He wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. His mind was racing through all the possibilities. If Mrs. Woodley really was a witch, maybe she had changed the will into a can of Herb-Ox Bouillon Cubes. It was an idiotic thought, but right now the idea seemed about as reasonable as anything else that he could come up with. He shook his head and heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. The game was over. He would just have to go home. Glumly Johnny picked up the flashlight, stuffed the screwdriver into his pocket, and carefully pulled himself to his feet. Edging to the right, he reached out in the dark and felt for handholds and footholds among the tangled vines. Now he was making his way down, and he found, strangely enough, that he was thinking of hot cereal. He wanted to be in a nice warm room, in his pajamas and bathrobe, eating a steaming bowl of Gramma's oatmeal, with maple syrup and brown sugar and cream.

But when his foot touched the ground Johnny turned around. It seemed to be snowing harder. He wanted to get away, far from this awful place as quickly as he could. With a sinking heart, he realized that he would probably have to go back down through the crypt. There was a high, spike-topped iron fence around the estate, and he didn't feel up to scaling it. But as he turned back toward the dark doorway of the chapel, he saw something. Someone was coming down the steps toward him with arms outstretched. A figure in a yellow raincoat. A figure with hollow mummy eyes and a withered mummy face and clawlike mummy hands. Moving with an awful, tottering, unsteady gait, it came toward him.