What secrets had the Order hidden behind the trapdoor that only it, as possessor of the pyramid, could open?
Jack wasn?t sure he wanted to know. He was also sure that no way could he walk away from this door without seeing what lay behind it.
“Okay. On my count of three.” Together they grabbed the ring handle. “One … two …
11
“I can?t believe it.” Jack didn?t know how long they?d stood in silence and stared at the dark hole before Weezy spoke.
He sighed. “Yeah. All that crazy lock business for a hole in the ground.” He squatted for a closer look at the rectangle of empty blackness. “Or maybe not.”
He grabbed one of the flashlights and aimed its beam into the opening. About ten feet down he saw a flat expanse of what looked like wet stone and mud. Weezy was at his side, craning her neck for a look.
“Looks like a subcellar,” she said. “But no stairs.”
Still beaming his flashlight into the opening, Jack moved around to the other side and found something.
“Hey. Steps. Sort of.”
A stone wall sat under Weezy?s side. Deep horizontal grooves had been cut into the surface, allowing it to function as a ladder of sorts.
“I?m going down for a look,” Jack said.
“You think it?s safe?”
He looked at her. “You mean, is there anyone or anything down there? You saw that door. It hasn?t been opened for ages.”
She shrugged. “I guess you?re right. It?s just that it?s so … dark.”
He smiled and held up the flashlight. “That?s why we have these.”
He wasn?t sure why he wanted to descend into the space. Maybe simply because it was there.
Or maybe because he didn?t think he?d ever get another chance like this.
What ever the reason, he felt a tug from the darkness.
He stuck the flashlight in his back pocket and eased himself over the edge until his sneaker found one of the grooves. Then it was almost like climbing a ladder.
When he reached the bottom his sneakers splashed a little. More water down here than he?d originally thought. He was glad he?d worn his old Converses.
“See anything?”
Weezy knelt at the edge of the opening, staring down at him. He glanced around: stone wall in front of him, stone wall behind, and blackness left and right.
“Looks like I?m in a passage of some sort.”
Pulling out the flashlight, he turned it on and moved to his right. He didn?t go far before he ran into a third stone wall. This was cracked and flaky, with water seeping around its edges and through the cracks.
He closed his eyes and oriented himself within the Lodge and realized he was below and beyond its west wall. Which put this wall right near the bank of the lake. He gauged that it would normally sit just above surface level. But now, with the lake so high, it had to be underwater.
This was the lake seeping through.
He backtracked and found Weezy where he?d left her, peering down at him.
“Empty dead end back there. I?ll check this way.”
He?d walked perhaps twenty feet when his beam picked out something leaning against a wall. It took him a moment to recognize its shape, and when he did, he knew he had to show Weezy.
He made his way back to the shaft of light shining from the Lodge?s basement.
“Weez! I found something!”
“What? A book, a scroll? What?”
“You?ve got to see it to believe it. Trust me.”
She hesitated barely a second. “I do.” She held out her flashlight. “Catch.”
He did just that, then watched her scamper down the wall like she?d done it a thousand times.
“You?re pretty good at that.”
She smiled. “Queen of the monkey bars—remember?”
He nodded. She?d been pretty limber and agile as a kid. A lot of the boys had been unable to keep up with her.
She took her flashlight and turned it on.
“Now. Where?s this thing I?ve got to see?”
“Follow me.”
Aiming his light far ahead, he led her down the passage. His beam soon found the object.
“There. How soon can you figure out what it is?”
Jack had been practically on top of it before he recognized it.
Weezy slowed her pace, then stopped a few feet from it.
“It looks like the Septimus seal.”
“Right. It?s the sigil. But I?ve never seen one like this.”
All the others had been either sculpted or molded in relief on a circular base. This was just the figure itself— six feet high, Jack guessed—and not made of the usual stone or plaster.
Weezy stepped forward and ran a finger over its dust-laden surface. “It
feels like …”
Jack did the same and knew what she was thinking. Under the grime the surface was a smooth, shiny black.
Her voice was hushed with awe. “The same material as our pyramid!” She ran her fingers over the rough edges at one of the corners. “But the border is all broken off.”
“All except one section up top.” Jack ran his flash beam over it and immediately recognized the figures carved into the surviving section. “Hey, Weez—”
“I see. The same seven glyphs as on the pyramid—what do they mean? What do they spell?
And why aren?t they on the other sigils, like the one over the front door?”
“Lots of good questions, Weez. And I?ve got a few more. Like, what was written on the other sections? And why does Mister Drexler have one of the glyphs on his cane?”
She looked at him. “The glyphs here and on the locking mechanism on that door don?t leave much question as to the true owner of the pyramid.”
He sighed and gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah. The Lodge.”
Too bad.
“You don?t really think I?m leaving it here, do you? No way. Finders keepers, and I found it.”
Her expression turned fierce as her voice rose. “I am never,
“Okay, but—”
“What is this place, anyway?” she said as she flashed her light around—her mood had done a complete about-face. It seemed to change direction like her flash beam. “I can?t believe they built all this just to store this one broken-down sigil. I—” She stopped when her beam picked up a dark rectangle in the wall farther down on the left side of the passage. “Doesn?t that look like
… ?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, moving toward it. “A doorway. Let?s see.”
Yes, a doorway in the stone wall, with no door. And a little to its right, another opening, smaller, square, chest high.
