Secrets in the Dark (23 page)

A look of surprise crossed
Olivia’s face and she jerked back. I saw the heel of her shoe brush
against a rock. As if that was a trigger, dozens of boulders
hurtled down the mountain, landing with a thunderous crash on the
rocks already covering the road. Brady yanked Olivia out of the way
just as
one of the largest rocks landed
right where she’d been standing.

For a few moments it was
hard to see — a thick cloud of dust rolled off the hillside,
billowing over the roadway. Small bits of rock and dirt pelted my
face and shoulders. I wrapped my arms protectively around my head,
coughing and choking. I couldn’t stand being unable to watch, and
carefully moved my hand away from my face.

I peered around in
disbelief, aware of my heart pounding frantically in my
chest.

I could barely make out
Olivia and Brady through the haze, and the rock fall had
disappeared completely from sight. Somehow, not being able to see
the stones that continued to bounce and crash down the mountain
made it more terrifying.

Staring at Olivia, who was
standing there as if frozen, a single thought kept repeating over
and over in my head…What if Brady hadn’t been here?

What if he hadn’t been
here!

Olivia turned and stared at
him for a long moment. Then she suddenly threw her arms around him.
“I could have died. Those rocks would have killed me! You totally
saved my life!”

As
I looked on in amazement, Olivia and Brady blushed bright
red, then jumped apart, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Brady cleared his throat,
his freckles invisible for once against the deep flush staining his
face. He said, “Death
was
a possibility, but serious injury was
probable.”

I felt my heart begin to
settle back to a normal rhythm. Not sure what the others would
think about my idea, I said, “Um…Brady’d better check all the
signs, no matter how long it takes.” Doug and Faith nodded in
agreement. “So Brady, the road to the left leads to a perilous
forest? What about the cave?”

No one mentioned how much
the map shook in his hands as Brady checked it. “There’s a forest
near the cave, but we’re still a pretty long way away.”

I felt discouraged.
Everything was taking too much time. “I guess we’d better go back
where the road split and go the other way.”

That’s when it became
apparent we weren’t going to make it to the cave. Not this time.
Olivia had twisted her ankle when Brady pulled her away from the
rocks. “I’m sorry!” She gasped, looking apologetic. “We have to go
home.”

She was limping badly,
obviously in pain. She was moving so slow I was worried we wouldn't
even make it home today. We hadn’t gotten far when she burst out,
“I wish cell phones worked in here. Or anything remotely civilized.
I don’t
want
to
walk all the way back to the tree.”

She pulled out her phone
and looked at it hopefully, like she thought that wish would help.
Then shook her head and shoved it back in her pocket. “I don’t know
why I even bring it in here,” she muttered.

I wasn’t surprised her wish
didn’t work. The good ones never did. Ronny kept saying our wishes
had to trigger an existing spell, but there seemed to be a lot more
bad spells than good ones in here.

Well…except for Brady’s
wish on the map. Seeing the Rejects on it was cool.

And of course, when
I’d
wished for help, we
got our familiars.

So good wishes could work.
Occasionally.



It was a long, slow walk
back. We finally had to take turns helping Olivia. She kept
muttering under her breath, and none of us wanted to know what she
was saying. I was glad when I saw the huge fig tree in the
distance.

“
Nothing else’ll go wrong
now,” I told her. “You’ll be home soon.”

“
Don’t say that. You’re
the one who always talks about jinxing things. I just wish I could
rest.”

“
Oh no!” Brady had been
scanning the map while we walked. We’d been so busy reading signs
and almost getting smashed by rocks, we hadn’t even seen the
Rejects enter Chimera. I didn’t know where they’d been, but I could
see the little red dots heading back toward the tree. Toward us.
And they could go a lot faster than we could with Olivia. No way
could we beat them back to Santa Ramona.

“
Behind the fence,” Doug
said.

We climbed into the field
and lay down, pressed up against the back of the low stone wall.
The others grumbled they couldn’t see the road since we’d left it,
but I had a small space I could reach between two rocks in the
wall. I could get my finger through and as soon as I touched the
road, I could see the road through that space.

I held my breath as the
Rejects went past, sure they’d discover us at any minute. I thought
Carly might have seen us. She glanced over as they walked by and
did a strange double take. She bit her lip, then faced forward and
kept walking. My palms were sweating as I waited for her to tell
Ray we were there, but they kept moving away towards the
tree.

Maybe Faith was
right about Carly.

Though it had been a scary
few minutes, it ended up a good thing. Olivia’s ankle had a chance
to rest, and after that, it was easier for her to walk. Olivia was
so relieved she started babbling. “I was worried what I was going
to tell Mom if I had to go to the doctor.”

It was getting late by the
time we got to the tree. We paused only long enough to tell our
familiars goodbye. After we were all back in Santa Ramona, Faith
said, “Did we learn something this time?”

Olivia said, “Wait for
Brady to read the signs!”

The others laughed but I
sighed, knowing I couldn’t put off what I had to do next. I had to
call Ronny.

Chapter 27

There’s No Place Like
Home?

Ronny was horrified when I
told her what happened. I knew how much she wanted us to reach the
cave, and tried to apologize for failing again, but she wouldn’t
let me.

A soft moan escaped her
before she reached up and rubbed her forehead. “What can be
happening to my home? I never thought you could get on the right
hand road. It was blocked by magick years ago. No one can go down
that road. It has not been used since the accident that killed my
father, and that was forty-three years ago. It created an energy
hole, which causes rocks to fall whenever someone walks by. I am so
sorry.”

She looked so upset I
quickly assured her, “We’re okay, Ronny. We’ll let Brady interpret
all of the signs from now on. Don’t worry.” It bothered me to see
her so upset. Although it had been scary at the time, everything
turned out okay. Olivia was
barely limping
now.

“
I cannot promise it will
not happen again. I do not know why some of the magick is failing.
And I may not remember to tell you everything important. I have
taken it all for granted for so many years.” She took a deep breath
and closed her eyes. “Maybe this is not a good idea.”

“
Look, we should’ve let
Brady finish translating. He tried to get us to listen. Really.
We’ll be careful in the future.”

She jerked her head up and
pinned me with her eyes, like I was a butterfly displayed on a
science room wall. “Promise! Promise you will be careful. Or you
have to stop.”

“
We promise, Ronny.” I
looked at the others, “Right?”

I was afraid Faith would
say we should stay out of Chimera. But she only hesitated a moment
before she agreed.



The month of July passed
more slowly than any time I could remember. Ever! Santa Ramona was
no different, but it seemed…boring. There were only a few things
that stood out that month from the day-to-day parts of my
life.

In mid-July, Faith, Olivia
and I had to duck into the library one more time. I knew Mom
was
serious about us spending at least ten
minutes looking at books before we left, so I began pulling books
off the shelf at random, flipping through them, trying to keep
track of how long we were there.

I wished I could find a
book to help me embarrass the Rejects. I was tired of hiding from
them all the time.

The next book I pulled out
made me laugh out loud, and I clapped my hand quickly over my mouth
to stifle the sound. When I got myself under control, I spoke the
title out loud. “Insults Unlimited.”

“
What?” Olivia
hissed.

“
Tell you in a minute.” I
opened the book and gasped at the long lists of words that could be
combined into crazy insults. I motioned to Faith and Olivia that we
could leave as I took the book to the front to check it out. I
planned to memorize a bunch of insults to use on the
Rejects.



It was during the last week
before Chimera opened that Santa Ramona got…weird.

Wednesday night, all nine
of the town’s VW beetles turned upside down. The Police Chief said
he’d prosecute whoever was responsible, and asked the town to
report any suspicious behavior. But no one had seen
anything.

On Friday, the electricity
went off all over town. It stayed off for two hours and three
minutes, or as they reported later, exactly 123 minutes. I thought
I’d go crazy. No TV, no radio, no computer. The next morning, as I
was getting ready to leave for Chimera, Mom was listening to the
news. Normally I’m not interested, but this caught my
attention.

No one knew why the
electricity had gone out.

And they didn’t know why it
suddenly came on again.

I asked Olivia and Faith if
they’d heard what was being said about the power. They didn’t
understand why I found it so interesting. “But no one knows what
caused it. Don’t you think that’s weird?” I asked.

“
Who cares, as long as it
never happens again,” Olivia said. “In addition to no TV, Mom
forgot to reset the time on her alarm clock and got up late. She
hates getting up after all the kidlets
.
I was really glad to get out of
there!” She grinned and moved next to the tree. “See you on the
other side!”

One by one, we followed her
into the tree. Faith was the last one through. As she stumbled out,
she said, “Hurry. The Rejects are coming!”

We didn’t stop to welcome
our familiars, but started quickly down the road. Brady pulled out
the map and looked at it quickly. He passed it to Doug.

Brady said, “So we take the
second road to the right—“

“
No way!” Faith
exclaimed.

Olivia said, “Are you
crazy? We did that before and got totally lost. We’re not supposed
to leave the road!”

“
I’m not suggesting that.
Stop assuming!” Brady said. “If we take the second road we can turn
towards the mountains, and then take the second road to the
left—”

“
What’s up with you and
second roads?” Olivia asked.

Brady glared at her, took
the map back from Doug and all but shoved it in her face. “Look at
the map.” He stabbed his finger on it. “Using the first road would
take us out of our way.”

“
So if we take the second
road where do we go?”

“
According to the map,
we’ll reach the mountain road closer to the cave. That should keep
us away from the Rejects.”

Faith said, “Stop arguing
and hurry up! We need to go before they get here.”

Doug turned to Olivia, “We
can take whichever road you like. As long as we stay on the road,
no matter what.”

Olivia shrugged.
“Whatever.”

As we turned onto the
second road, I couldn’t help thinking about the last time we’d been
there. Doug was right. There was no way I was going leave the road
again!

Other than our familiars,
the only hint something else was alive in here was the horrible
howling we’d heard twice.

I frowned, considering
this. We’d never actually seen anyone in here. Just how likely was
it that we’d find Ghalynn at the cave? I asked, “So, what do
you
think we’ll find
when we get to the cave?”

“
I don’t think we’ll find
anything,” Doug said. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by
his answer. “I just want an excuse to keep exploring this
place.”

I definitely wasn’t
surprised by Brady’s. “I wish we’d find more signs in there. I
could learn more of their language, and decipher everything much
more expeditiously.”

“
Is that all you boys
think about?” Olivia looked ready to fight about it. ”We’re
supposed to look for Ronny’s mom.”

“
I just wish we could find
something in the cave to tell us where everyone has
gone,” I said.

“
They could be hiding in
the cave,” Faith said, but she didn’t sound like she believed it.
“We don’t know what happened. There must be a reason we haven’t
seen anyone.”

The road began twisting and
turning, making conversation more difficult. I remembered that from
last time. Then the low rolling hills started. As we reached the
bottom of one of the hills, I pointed to the left. “That’s where we
left the road last time, isn’t it?” My voice had dropped nearly to
a whisper, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because just looking at
that field creeped me out.