Black Creek Crossing (21 page)

“Wow,” Seth breathed. “Look at that!”

Angel kept easing the wood forward, until Seth, who was crouched down low so he could peer up at the bottom of the tread, said, “Hold it—I see something!”

“What?” Angel asked.

“It’s like the whole back and bottom of the tread is fake,” he said, poking his fingers up into some kind of cavity that had appeared in the bottom of the tread. A second later, his voice trembling, he whispered, “There’s something in it. See if you can pull it a little farther.”

Angel reached back so her fingertips curled around the edge of the false bottom, and she pulled. The panel slid stiffly for a moment, then suddenly came loose, sliding entirely free of the tread.

Something dropped from the cavity that had been concealed above the sliding panel, falling into Seth’s hands.

Neither of them said a word, but simply stared at the object. It was a book, bound in leather that was embossed with faded gold lettering. The letters were so ornate that even if the gilt had not all but vanished, neither of them could have made out what they said. Though the leather of the cover looked almost new, there was still something about it that told them it was far older than it appeared.

And its color was exactly the same as the color of the lipstick Angel had found on the floor that morning, and on her fingers, and on the sheets.

Red.

Bloodred.

Chapter 22

ET’S TAKE IT UPSTAIRS, SO WE CAN AT LEAST SEE IT,”
Seth said. “And so I can stand up straight too,” he added, awkwardly scuttling out from under the stairs and standing up to stretch the muscles that had begun to ache as he crouched beneath the steep staircase.

Houdini rose to his feet too, stretched, then darted up the stairs to the kitchen.

Angel paused only long enough to replace the sliding panel that hid the compartment carved out of the bottom of the fifth stair. Fitting the two dovetailed tongues on the panel into the matching grooves on the stair step, she pushed it forward until it was exactly as they’d found it a few minutes ago. Shining the light on it one more time to make certain that nothing betrayed its secret, she turned off the two basement lights and followed Seth up to the kitchen, where he was standing at the table, staring down at the book.

Houdini was on the kitchen table, sniffing at it, and as Angel came near, he looked up at her, placed his right forepaw on the volume, and mewed softly.

In the full light of day, the cover looked even redder, but they could also clearly see how old it was. The gilt was all but gone on the ornate symbols, and though the leather itself was uncracked, parts of its polished surface were worn to the texture of suede. Seth was about to open it when Houdini whirled to face the front of the house, his back arched and the hairs on his body standing on end.

As a hiss of warning erupted from the cat’s throat, Seth yanked his hand away from the book.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked, staring at the cat. “He’s acting like he’s going to bite me!”

“It’s not you,” Angel said. “It’s my dad! I hear his car!”

Seth’s eyes widened. “Maybe we better put the book back!”

“And have him find us in the basement? He’d want to know what we were doing!” Her eyes flicked around the kitchen. “Where can we hide it?”

Seth picked up the book, shoved it in his backpack, and headed toward the back door. “Come on!”

Waiting only long enough to return the flashlight and grab her own backpack so her father wouldn’t know she’d been home, Angel darted out the back door just as she heard the roar of the old Che-velle’s engine cut off. She caught up with Seth as the car door slammed, and when her father would have gotten to the front door, they were running down a narrow path that wound into the forest. By the time her father might have glanced out the back window, they were deep enough into the woods that he wouldn’t be able to see them at all.

And Houdini was with them every step of the way.

“Where are we going?” Angel asked when Seth finally slowed down.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Have you ever come back here since you moved in?” Angel shook her head. “This path leads to the old crossing, where the ferry used to be.”

Suddenly, Houdini let out a howl, then veered off the narrow path, heading into the trees.

“Houdini!” Angel called. “Come back!”

The cat paused, looked back, meowed, then continued moving deeper into the woods.

“Where’s he going?” Angel asked.

Seth shrugged. “How should I know? But I’m not going with him—there isn’t even a path there.”

Turning away, he started once more along the path that led to Black Creek Crossing. Angel, after another anxious glance at the cat, followed.

Less than half a minute later Houdini appeared on the path a few yards ahead of them. Once again his back was arched and he was hissing and spitting.

Seth stopped so fast that Angel almost bumped into him. “Jeez, what’s wrong with him?” He took a step toward the cat, but jerked back when the cat’s paw shot out, swiping at his leg.

Angel stooped down and extended her hand, but once again the cat took a swipe with his paw.

“Maybe he’s rabid,” Seth suggested.

Angel rolled her eyes. “He was fine a minute ago.”

“Then let’s just go around him.” Seth stepped off the path, starting around Houdini.

The cat moved, blocking his way, and hissed again.

Seth moved the other way.

The cat countered, hissing angrily.

“All right, all right,” Seth said, holding up his hands and backing off. He turned to Angel. “So now what do we do? Your dad’s back at your house, and your cat won’t let us down the path.”

Then Houdini was at Seth’s feet, rubbing up against his legs as if nothing had happened. Seth stared down at the cat, mystified. “What’s going on?” he asked Angel. “Is he crazy?”

“How should I know? He’s not my cat!”

But now Houdini was rubbing up against her legs as well, and a moment later he bounded back down the path the way they’d come, but stopping a few yards away to turn, mewing plaintively.

When neither Angel nor Seth moved, he darted toward them, meowed, then turned back.

“If he was a dog, I’d think he wants us to follow him,” Seth said. “But cats don’t do that, do they?”

Now it was Angel who shrugged. “Maybe we should try it.” She glanced around at the dense forest of maples and oaks and pines. “What if we get lost?”

“I’ve been poking around here all my life,” Seth told her. “I’ve never gotten lost yet. Come on—let’s at least try it.”

Houdini stayed on the path until they came back to the point where he’d left it a few minutes ago, and once again he veered off, pausing a few yards into the woods and looking back as if to see whether Angel and Seth were following.

“Are you sure we won’t get lost?” Angel fretted.

“We can’t—the road’s a few hundred yards to the left, and the creek’s off to the right. No matter where that stupid cat goes, we’ll be able to find one of them or the other.”

They followed the cat as it moved through the woods, down a path neither of them could see. But the cat nevertheless seemed to know where it was going. After a few minutes they came to the creek, which was no more than twenty feet wide, and shallow enough that many of the rocks lining the bottom cleared the surface and were close enough together to act as stepping-stones across. The stream ran through a channel at least ten times wider than it, and Seth thought it was almost ten feet deep.

“Does it ever flood?” Angel asked as she gazed at the meandering stream.

“Not anymore,” Seth told her. “In the spring it might get to be four feet deep, but that’s all. Most of the water goes into a bunch of reservoirs, and they only let enough out to keep the fish alive.”

“Where was the ferry?”

“Back up that way,” he said, pointing upstream. “It was like a barge, and there was a rope strung across the river, and the barge guy would haul the barge back and forth.”

A few minutes later the cat turned away from the stream again, and the forest seemed to get thicker.

“Do you know where we are?” Angel asked.

“Pretty much,” Seth replied. “If we lose Houdini, I can find my way back to the stream. Then it’s easy.”

“But where are we going?”

“How should I know? I guess we’ll just have to follow and find out.”

Stepping over a fallen limb, he hurried after the cat. Angel followed him, and moments later they came upon what looked like a path, though it was so overgrown as to be barely visible. As they moved along it, the path narrowed and the trees crowded in, and Angel had to crouch low to get under several branches. The terrain began to get rougher, with granite outcroppings thrusting up, and twice the path disappeared completely.

“Are you sure we’re not lost?” she asked as they came into a small open space in front of a bluff of deeply fissured granite.

“I sort of know where we are, but there’s nothing out here,” Seth told her.

Angel scanned the area but didn’t see anything except a small clearing, and beyond that the granite face of the bluff. Still, she followed Seth as the cat moved across the clearing and picked its way over the mound of granite that had fallen from the face of the bluff over the centuries. Now there was no sign of a path at all, and Angel had no idea where they were anymore, even in relation to where they’d come from or even the stream. Then Seth stopped, and a second later Angel caught up with him.

At first she saw nothing, but then, below them and tucked so deeply into one of the fissures in the bluff that it was almost invisible, she spotted something that looked like a wooden wall. “What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Seth said. “Nobody ever comes out here but me, and I’ve never seen this before—I mean, I’ve been in the clearing, but I always thought the rock was just heaped up against the face of the bluff.”

They picked their way down the bank of rubble, to find Houdini scratching at a door that was barely taller than Seth and held closed by a simple wooden latch.

Both of them stared at the door, which seemed so out of place in the cleft of the granite that they could hardly believe it was real.

Finally, Seth reached out and tested the latch.

The door swung slowly open, and the moment the gap was wide enough, Houdini dashed through, vanishing into the darkness. Neither Seth nor Angel made a move to enter until the door had swung far enough that they could see what lay within.

It seemed to be a tiny cabin constructed entirely of great oaken logs, and their unevenness and the adze marks on them made them look to Angel like the hand-hewn timbers that supported the floor of her own house. The cabin was only a single room, but it wasn’t rectangular, or even square. Rather, it was oddly wedge-shaped, to conform to the shape of the fissure within whose confines it had been built; none of its four walls were the same length, and every angle where two walls met was different. At the rear there was a crude fireplace built of uneven chunks of granite that must have been gathered from the slag heap at the base of the bluff. The entire surface of the firebox was covered with a layer of soot, and a heavy wrought-iron pothook was mounted in one wall. To one side of the fireplace there was a stack of split wood and a small pile of kindling.

From the pothook hung a kettle that looked every bit as old as the cabin itself.

Glancing nervously at each other, so dumbstruck by what the cat had led them to that neither of them could say a word, first Seth, then Angel, stepped through the small doorway and into the peculiarly proportioned room. A slab of oak nearly four inches thick had been mounted along one wall to serve as a counter, and three worn wooden ladles hung from pegs in the wall. At the far end of the counter an immense block of granite, nearly two feet on a side, had been hollowed out to form a sink.

A sink that was full of water, the surface of which was shimmering even in the dim light that came in through the open door.

Angel stared at it, her heart racing. “Somebody must live here,” she breathed.

Seth’s eyes were also fastened on the sink, which was full nearly to the rim. But nowhere was there any sign of a faucet, or even a pump handle.

As they stood silently gazing at it, there was a soft
plink,
and the water’s surface rippled.

A moment later they heard the plinking sound again, and as the third drop of water fell, Seth finally spotted its source: high up on the wall above the sink, a small piece of wood protruded, and water dripped from the end of it.

“But where’s the water coming from?” Angel asked as they moved closer to the sink. Now they could see a notch cut in the rim of the sink, perhaps an inch deep, that let overflow water run out through a small wooden trough that also pierced the wall.

“It probably just seeps out of the face of the bluff,” Seth said. “There’s a spot up closer to the stream where it does that, even when it hasn’t been raining in weeks.”

They gazed at the water, which was crystal clear, then Seth took one of the wooden ladles off its hook, dipped it in the water, sniffed it, and tasted it.

“It’s good!” He offered the ladle to Angel, but she shook her head.