The old woman’s eyes opened very wide. “Oh, goodness, they wouldn’t go there, would they? To the old mine? That’s a terrible place!”
“Which is exactly the kind of place my brother would go.” Lucinda wanted to be angry at him but she was terrified. What would she tell Mom? “He loves stuff like that… Oh, Tyler, you idiot! All because he’s so worked up about Colin Needle and the Contin… ” She suddenly realized Paz was still standing there. “Never mind. What do we do? Where is it? How do we get them before they get themselves killed?”
“I’ll get my car,” said Paz. “I know where they’re going and if they haven’t been gone too long we can beat them there. You girls get your jackets and get shoes on and get in the car. Dios mio, those two! I am going to tan their little backsides…!”
As Carmen and Alma ran off, Lucinda told Paz, “I’m not going. Someone has to stay here to tell Ragnar what’s happening-he’s coming back soon. If they beat you to that mine or whatever it is, then Ragnar will have to be the one to go and get them.” And if he doesn’t already know about the manticores being out, she thought, well, that’s something else that has to be dealt with. She wanted to cry but couldn’t afford to waste any more strength on tears. This was shaping up to be a horrible, horrible night.
Grandma Paz threw her hands up in surrender. “What am I thinking? I have to call Sylvia and Hector, too, tell them what those little idiotas have done. They’ll come right back when they hear, so you won’t be on your own long.”
A scant three minutes later Lucinda stood in the driveway watching Grandma Paz’s big old car bump down the gravel driveway on its painfully slow way toward the Cresta Sol front gate. The drizzle had stopped but the sky was cloudy and the moist, warm breeze tugged at her hair.
“Hurry up!” Lucinda called to them, but all that came back to her was the sound of the rising wind.
Chapter 27
“So, not trying to criticize or anything, but is this your actual plan?” Steve Carrillo was a good-sized kid; with his parka billowing in the wind and the clanking of canteen and flashlight and various other implements dangling from his backpack he looked like someone’s camping tent had pulled up stakes and escaped. “I mean, like us walking about a zillion miles in the rain? And the mud? And it’s getting dark? And did I mention that it’s raining?”
“Just be glad it’s summer-at least it’s warm,” Tyler told him. “And we’ll be out of the rain soon.” At least he hoped so. He didn’t really know much about Grandma Paz’s abandoned silver mine except for where it was on the map, and certainly didn’t want to think about what they were going to do if they got there and couldn’t get inside. He could already imagine what Lucinda would have to say about this latest idea of his, and it wouldn’t be, “Good thinking!”
Steve had started the adventure full of his usual good humor.
“Shouldn’t we be bringing a gun or something?” he asked as they set out in the hot, gray-blue evening between waves of summer storm. “Y’know, in case there are any… monster-type things? Dragons? Stuff like that?”
“A gun?” Tyler was shocked and a little intrigued by the idea. “You don’t have a gun, Carrillo.”
“Not really, but my uncle has a rifle he uses to shoot at crows. I could get that. And I’ve got my paintball rifle. Dude, you know how good I am with that.”
Tyler snorted. “Yeah, and if we need to splatter yellow stuff on a dragon, you’re my first choice. But we’re just going in some tunnels. There’s probably nothing down there but gophers.”
“And snakes. And spiders. And more snakes.” Steve stopped. “Maybe we should think of some different way to do this, Jenkins. Grandma Paz says that place is haunted!”
Tyler shook his head. “It’s not haunted. It’s connected to the Fault Line, like I explained. So every now and then something weird probably comes out of it, like back at the farm. But I know how to deal with the Fault Line, dude! I can totally go in and out. I’ve done it!”
“Yeah, and I was there. And it sucked.” Steve shuddered. “Dude, some crappy monster made out of old rags or something tried to eat me the last time I went anywhere with you.”
“That wasn’t the Fault Line, that was the other side of the mirror. That’s… different.” Although he didn’t really know if that was true. It wasn’t like he could look it up in a textbook or anything.
“I don’t care if the things with teeth that want to kill us come out of a mirror, or a hole in the ground, or a box of cereal,” Steve said forcefully. “Things with teeth equal bad idea.”
“Anyway, you got into the mirror by yourself- I was the one who got you out, remember?” Still, Tyler couldn’t really disagree with Steve Carrillo’s basic point. Walking across the dark fields toward the looming hills, he was growing less and less fond of his own plan every minute.
Tyler hoped it was a good omen that once they reached the foothills they found the little road leading to the mine pretty easily. Flashlights cutting a bright path through the flurrying raindrops, they hiked uphill another mile or so until they reached the mine entrance, a frame of old timbers surrounding a hole in the hill just at the base of a rocky cliff. Someone had nailed some ancient gray boards across the front of it as a barrier, but there were no signs reading “Keep Out! This Means You!” or anything else Tyler had expected from Saturday morning cartoons. A sign over the entrance might once have proclaimed the mine’s name, but rain and wind and sun had scrubbed the wood clean long ago. All they had to do was duck beneath it and they’d be inside.
Thunder boomed in the distance. “Oh, hellz no,” Steve said, eyeing the mine entrance with dismay. “Oh, come on, look at that! That’s like where zombies live. We’re going… in there?”
“Zombies don’t live. But yeah, that’s where we’re going.” Tyler put down his backpack and took a swig from his canteen. “You can stay out here if you like. Your folks have probably called the sheriff’s office by now. They’ll give you a ride home.”
“If they even find me alive. You’re a knobweed, Jenkins. I’m not sitting out here and waiting for the wolves and bears to eat me.”
The thunder rumbled, closer now. Tyler was beginning to see flickering smears of brightness over the distant hills on the other side of Standard Valley, beyond Gideon’s farm. “So, the police or wild animals. Or the lightning could fry you,” said Tyler. “That’s always a possibility, too.”
Steve stretched his round face into an expression of extreme disgust. “I hate you so much, dude. I hate you worse than homework.”
“Yeah. I’ll go first.”
The first part was the easy bit-it was all stairs. They went carefully down the rough shaft on a succession of rickety old wooden ladders and steps until Tyler guessed they had descended about the depth of a four or five story building. Steve’s grandfather and his workers (or whoever) had built the old structures well; they creaked and swayed, but he never felt like they were at serious risk, although Steve Carrillo seemed to think they were only moments away from plunging helplessly into the Earth’s core.
“Look,” Tyler said, pointing his flashlight downward. “You can see the bottom. It’s like climbing a tree. Just pretend this is all sixty-four bit.”
“Does that mean there’s a giant gorilla out there somewhere who’s going to start throwing barrels at us?”
“Ho ho.” Tyler had reached what seemed to be the beginning of the main shaft. He flashed his light around. The final ladder ended in a natural cavern tall enough to stand in, although the three tunnels he could see opening out from there looked a lot less spacious. “Which way do you think we should go?”
“Hey, sure,” said Steve, “I’ll just release my cyborg tracking hound… ” His fingers rapidly flurried the A and B buttons of an imaginary video game controller, then he turned and frowned at Tyler. “Seriously, dude-that part is your job.”
Tyler crouched at the base of the ladder for a moment to consider. He cocked his head, even took a sniff of the warm, damp air. If this had been a movie he would have felt something or heard something and made a brilliant deduction, but this was not a movie. He flicked his flashlight beam along the walls.
