“I?m gonna sue,” Eddie said. “No, wait. If I get it back I?ll have to run around all the time.
Forget it!”
Jack said, “Check it out,” as he pointed to a colorful poster on one of the telephone poles.
It announced the arrival of the Taber & Sons circus. The show parked itself near Johnson for a few days every fall. Not a real full-blown circus like Ringling Brothers, just some rides, a few animals, a tent show, and a midway. The local dates had been inked in.
“Hey, it opens tomorrow,” Weezy said. “Maybe later we can go watch them set up.”
Eddie grinned. “Count me out. Watching people work wears me out.”
“Look!” Weezy cried as they approached Quaker Lake. “I?ve never seen it so high.”
Neither had Jack. The lake was overflowing its banks and puddling near Quakerton Road. Mark Mulliner?s canoes sat upside down at the water?s edge. Jack doubted anyone had rented one in a while.
Mr. Rosen had been talking all week about how the ground was saturated and couldn?t hold any more water. What ever came down had to run off somewhere, and much of it was flowing into the lake.
“It?s all the rain,” Jack said.
Eddie said, “Your obvious-fu very strong.”
Jack had to smile. Yeah, pretty dumb thing to say. In defense, he puffed up his chest.
“That?s „Supreme Master of the Obvious? to you.”
The level was even higher than yesterday when he?d crossed the bridge on his way to Old Town. Water was pooled around some of the lakeside benches and willows.
A number of his lawn-cutting customers lived in Old Town, the original settlement that had spawned the sprawling, thousand-person metropolis of Johnson, New Jersey. But the succession of rainy days was interfering with his schedule. Yeah, he could cut wet grass, but it always wound up looking crummy, and then he?d have to come back for a fix-up.
He?d swung by after school yesterday to see if the lawns were dry enough to cut. They were, so he?d raced home to get his mower. But as soon as he wheeled it out of the garage, the skies opened up again.
No mow, no pay. And the longer the grass, the tougher the job, and the longer to get it done. A vicious cycle.
As the three of them pedaled across the bridge over the lake, Jack glanced at a boxy, two-story, stucco building known around town as “the Lodge.” It belonged to the globe-spanning Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. A very secretive bunch, tight-lipped about its activities and purposes and membership, and highly selective about who it accepted.
It had lodges all over the world. Why they?d put one here in Johnson, New Jersey, no one knew.
Well, Weezy knew—or thought she did. She said the Lodge was here before the town, that members of the Order had settled here in prehistoric times. But that was part of her Secret History of the World, and the Septimus Order played a big role in it.
Membership was by invitation only, and this Lodge was rumored to include some of the state?s most influential and powerful people.
Weezy glared at the building as they passed. “You want to find our pyramid, look in there.”
Jack was ahead of Eddie but could hear an eye roll in his tone as he muttered, “Here we go.”
“It?s true,” she said.
Against his better judgment, Jack said, “Things
“Things that are clues to the Secret History don?t get lost, they get hidden away. The Order?s job is to keep the Secret History secret. If we searched that place, we?d find it.”
“Fat chance,” Eddie said. “What are you gonna do, get invited in for milk and cookies?”
“I?ll think of something. And you?ll come with me, right, Jack?”
Jack glanced at the Lodge?s barred windows and figured it was safe to agree—no way they?d ever see the inside of that place.
“If you?re there, I?m there.”
They passed the empty and supposedly haunted Klenke house that had been for sale ever since Jack could remember, and then the home of the town?s supposed witch, Mrs. Clevenger. Jack had heard stories about the weird smells and noises in the Klenke place, but he?d never been in there himself, so he couldn?t say if they were true or not. He had, however, come into contact with Mrs. Clevenger on a number of occasions since the summer, and though she was strange and never gave a straight answer, she wasn?t a witch. Who believed in witches and hauntings anyway?
They approached the place where Quakerton Road ended and the Pine Barrens began. Jack recognized Gus Sooy?s pickup parked by the lightning tree. A lot of folks said Gus?s moonshine—known as applejack—was the best in the Pinelands. Jack also recognized the guy buying from him.
So did Eddie. “There?s Weird Walt,” he said from behind Jack. “Stocking up.”
“Hey,” Weezy called as she brought up the rear on her banana-seat Schwinn. “Don?t call him that.”
She and Walt had a strange bond, and she always took his side.
“It?s gotta be eighty degrees out and he?s wearing leather gloves and you?re telling me he?s not weird?”
Jack glanced over to where Walt was watching Gus Sooy fill a quart bottle with water-clear liquor from one of his big brown jugs. Hard to argue against him being weird. Folks said Walter Erskine hadn?t been right since he?d returned from Vietnam. He said weird things and wore gloves day in and day out.
“He?s a good guy,” Jack said as they turned onto a firebreak trail and followed it into the Pines.
Weezy moved up beside him. “How would you know?”
“He comes into the store every now and then and we talk. He—”
A helicopter, heading southeast, did its
Jack understood her reaction. A few weeks ago, late one August night, government men—at least Jack assumed they were from the government—had used black helicopters to fly backhoes into the Pines and dig up the mound where he and Weezy had found the pyramid and the corpse.
Who had told them about the mound? Who had sent them to tear it apart? These were questions he doubted he?d ever answer.
“It?s not black,” he said. “And it?s not headed our way. Probably some high rollers headed for AC.”
Gambling had been legal in Atlantic City for half a dozen years now and was enormously popular.
Weezy said nothing as she pulled ahead to lead the way. She always rode point when they were in the woods. Made sense. She knew this corner of the Pine Barrens backward, forward, up and down. She never got lost.
As they rode, the forty-foot scrub pines thickened on either side, stretching their gnarled, green-needled branches overhead as they lined the path like sentinels guarding their woodland domain. Jack checked the overcast sky through the needled canopy. This was the kind of day when people got lost in the Pines and were never seen again. But no worry about that with Weezy along.
Weezy led them along the dipping, deeply puddled trail onto Old Man Foster?s land. Foster was something of a mystery. Nobody had ever seen him or seemed to know who he was, but he kept his land heavily posted with signs warning against fishing, hunting, trapping, and trespassing.
Jack ignored them. He figured obeying the first three out of the four was good enough.
At least he wasn?t trapping like a certain someone was doing around a spong they?d be passing along the way.
When they reached the spong they saw Mrs. Clevenger standing with an armload of sticks. She wore her usual long black dress and a black scarf around her neck—which made as much sense in this weather as Walt?s gloves. Her three-legged dog sat to the side, watching their approach.
The big, floppy-eared mutt had the thick body of a Rottweiler but with lots of other breeds mixed in. Its right front leg was missing as if it had never been—not even a scar.
Weezy stopped and waved. “Hi, Mrs. Clevenger. Need any help?”
“No, dear. I?m doing fine.”
Some Piney had been setting leg-hold traps around the spong—the local term for a wet low spot—trying to
