The Demon Conspiracy (4 page)

When I got off the school bus that day I
took my usual detour up the driveway between Chris’ Mustang and
Angie’s minivan. I cut across the yard and dragged my fingertips
over the bark of the huge oak tree out front. Call me weird, but I
just love touching tree bark. It feels so, I don’t know, rough? I
dashed into the house.

I tracked down Angie in the family room. She
was looking out the sliding glass door by the deck. “Hey
Angie!”

“Hi, Kelly. How was school?”

“Good. I have a new friend. Her name’s
Melissa and she’s real good at math and she’s way cool and she
saved my life today and we wanna go to the mall this weekend.”

“I hope you didn’t tell her Saturday. The
cave trip should take up most of the day.”

“No way. I’m not missing
the cave trip for
anything
. Oh, and she gave me this.”
I dug the chess tournament brochure out of my backpack and passed
it to Angie. She looked it over.

“Do you want to do this?”

“I want to see if I’m any good, you
know?”

“Chris thinks you are. I mean, you beat him
pretty bad every time you play and he was on the chess team in high
school. Let’s see, it’s on Halloween weekend, two weeks away. Okay,
I’ll enter you.”

“Thanks, Angie! What’re you looking at?”

Angie pointed out back.
“I’m watching Jon practice with his swords. He’s
really
good. I wish we
could afford to get him into a class, or something. You wouldn’t
happen to know the name of his old instructor, would
you?”

I looked out the door. Jon had no idea we
were spying on him and it was probably a good thing, too. The
fifteen-inch knives he twirled—one in each hand—were razor sharp.
As he stabbed and sliced the air his moves were fluid, graceful and
incredibly dangerous looking. The mastery he showed with the long
knives took my breath away.

“The only weapons instructor he ever had was
Mr. Riker. When our parents died we moved around and Jon stayed
with the Rikers for like three years. Mr. Riker was in the army. He
was a black belt in karate and taught self-defense to soldiers. Jon
was already pretty good at karate, but Mr. Riker taught him all
kinds of new stuff, especially with weapons.”

“Where’s Mr. Riker now?”

“Dead. He got blown up.” Angie got quiet so
I finished the story. “Afghanistan. Mrs. Riker really liked Jon,
but after her husband died she fell apart and sent Jon back to the
children’s home. Since then he hasn’t had a weapons teacher, or a
karate teacher either. He pretty much learns everything now from
the Internet.”

I watched Jon practice as we talked. As
usual he wore school clothes—tan slacks and a snug fitting blue
T-shirt that just showed the muscles in his arms. He stood nearly
six feet tall now, with strands of dirty-blond hair dropping in and
out of his eyes while he worked. I noticed his sword case was open
on the steps. His other three weapons—a Marine Corps officer’s
sword, a Roman gladius and a Scottish Claymore—glistened in the sun
on a blanket spread across the deck.

Jon finished, stepped back and bowed toward
the woods behind the house. Then he twirled the fighting knives and
slid them both into a pair of sheaths strapped under his shirt at
the base of his neck. The move was slick and controlled.

I was impressed. “Whoa!
He’s
way
better.
Last time I saw him do that move he almost cut his finger off. It
bled so much!”

Angie pulled me away from the door. “Don’t
let him hear you say that. Come on, I cut up some fruit for a
snack. You can tell me all about Melissa.”

“Melissa’s so cool. She’s kinda weird, but I
can tell we’re going to be great friends. She always wears black,
you know.”

As we entered the kitchen Chris McCormick
came up the stairs from the basement, covered with cobwebs and dust
bunnies. He looked like he’d been crawling under beds or something.
He carried a baseball bat and a long steel pipe, one in each hand.
“Angie, I don’t know what to do with these. I found them under the
stairs.”

“Take them back where you found them,” said
Angie. “That’s what you can do with them.”

Chris nodded. “Uh, right. So how was school,
Miss Kelly?”

“Fine. What’re you doing, Chris?”

“Cleaning the basement. Well, I’m trying;
it’s such a huge job I don’t know where to begin. I want to make a
room down there and rent it to a college student so we can take in
some extra cash, you know?”

“Get Travis to help. He’s really good at
keeping inventory and organizing stuff.”

“Oh yeah? I’ll talk to him when he gets home
from school.”

“Want a snack while you’re working?” asked
Angie.

“You bet.” Chris took a plate of cut up
apples and headed back downstairs.

About then the patio door opened and Jon
came into the kitchen. He set his sword case on the floor, wiped
his forehead on his sleeve and grinned at me. “What’s up, Kel?”

“You’re all sweaty and
gross is what’s up,” I said. He
was
, too. I was afraid he’d try to
hug me and get me all slimy. Jon had been hugging Travis and me a
lot since we’d moved in with the McCormicks. He’d really missed us
and I knew he felt responsible for taking care of us. “Hey, you’ve
gotten really good with those knife thingys. We were watching
you.”

“Thanks.” Jon blushed. His
eyes became intense. “They’re Elvish fighting knives, like Legolas
carried in the
Lord of the Rings
movies.”

“You have amazing skill with them, Jon.”
Angie passed him a plate of apple slices, neatly cut and
skinned.

“I’ve got a long way to go with the knives,
but at least I’m not bleeding this time.” He grinned at me. “The
Claymore, that’s my best weapon. But if I’m gonna be a stunt man in
movies I’ve got to be good with lots of weapons.”

“A stunt man?” Angie nodded like she thought
it was a good idea. “That’d be really cool. Are you working
tonight?”

Jon glanced at the clock on the kitchen
stove. “Gotta be there in an hour. I better get cleaned up. Can I
eat this upstairs?”

“Bring the plate back down before you
leave.”

“Thanks!” Jon hurried out of the kitchen
with his sword case and the fruit. On the way up the stairs he
yelled, “Trav’s home!”

As soon as he said it I heard a school bus
drive away. It’s funny how I never noticed that bus unless it was
leaving. A moment later Travis came in the front door. As usual he
stopped in the foyer and switched on the crystal chandelier. Travis
had a thing about chandeliers and even the small ones amazed him no
matter how many times he looked them over. He switched the light
off, dropped his new backpack by the stairs and ran into the
kitchen.

“Fruit!” he cried. “That’s what I’m talkin’
about!” He dug into the apple slices like he hadn’t eaten all week.
One thing about Travis, he could eat and eat and never get fat.

Why do you eat so
much?
I asked inside his head.

Cuz I’m hungry!
thought Travis back to me. I smiled. Travis
almost always kept it simple.

Travis’ white-blond hair stuck up wilder
than usual. That kid had some crazy hair, for sure. He was pale,
too. Except for his deep blue eyes he almost looked albino. Travis
smiled while he ate, which made me feel pretty good inside. When he
was younger he rarely smiled around us because he was too worried
about the next time we’d be separated. But since we’d moved in with
Angie and Chris, he smiled more and worried less. He had a great
smile, too. He usually won people over the first time they met him.
Everybody liked Travis.

“Your turn to mark the calendar,” I
said.

Travis’ eyes got big as he munched on an
apple slice. “Yeah!” He turned to the fridge and grabbed the black
Sharpie that hung by a string on the door. He found today’s date
and drew a big X through it. He must have scanned the rest of the
month because he pointed to Halloween and looked back at me.

“You’re in a chess tournament? For
real?”

I shrugged like it was no big deal. Chess
was cool, of course. But right now for me, it was all about the
cave.

“You guys aren’t
too
excited about the
cave trip, are you?” asked Angie.

“I can’t wait,” I said. “Jon’s excited, too,
but he doesn’t show it. How many caves has Chris been in?”

“Chris doesn’t do caves. He’s more of a
putt-putt golf kinda guy.” Angie paused to think. “I mean, the only
cave he’s ever been in that I know of was Luray Caverns, but that’s
got walkways and lights. This will be his first real cave
exploration.”

“Is he gonna lead us?” asked Travis.

“Lord, no. A good friend of ours at the high
school, Anton Edwards, will be leading. He knows all about caves,
especially this one. Anton is Jon’s English teacher.”

“Cool,” said Travis. “Does the cave have a
name?”

“Yes, Pandora’s Cave.”

“Pandora’s Cave,” I repeated. “I like
it.”

Somebody had
written
Crystal Creek Park caving
trip
on the calendar for this coming
Saturday. Travis made his usual count down.

“Two more days ‘til we crawl through cave
slime. Yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

3

THE HAUNTING OF PANDORA’S
CAVE

NED

People were a pain in the
butt. That’s what Ned Taylor thought and he had good reason. It was
people who tore up the campground and left trash all over the
picnic areas that
somebody
would need to clean up. It was people who’d sneak
into Pandora’s Cave at night to party and write graffiti all over
the walls that
somebody
would have to remove. And it was people who’d
drink too much and get into fights that
somebody
would have to break up.
Guess who that
somebody
was?

Yep, in Ned’s mind people were a royal pain.
But without them he wouldn’t have a job.

Ned had been a seasonal ranger in Crystal
Creek Park since he’d graduated from high school three years ago.
The tiny park was located about twenty miles south of Front Royal,
Virginia, and backed up to the northeast boundary of the Shenandoah
National Park. Ned had Googled Crystal Creek Park more than once,
but nothing ever showed up.

A rich old widow named Pandora Wilby still
owned the park property, though she had already deeded the land to
the National Park Service. On her death the NPS would absorb the
additional four hundred acres of forest and low mountains into the
Shenandoah National Park. Until then Mrs. Wilby’s shrewd attorney
made sure the park service was solely responsible for maintenance
and operation of land they didn’t even own yet.

Ned Taylor worked as a park ranger three
seasons a year. The salary wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep
him in a small apartment, own a used car and go to college. Working
the graveyard shift never interfered with class schedules while he
went after an accounting degree. And now that it was mid-October
people hardly mattered. The campground was closed and the only
reason anybody even came to the park was to hike or go on a picnic.
As long as Ned worked eleven to seven he wouldn’t have to deal with
people again until next summer.

His cousin, Eric Wooden, had gotten him the
ranger job. Eric was three years older and had been working in the
park system for nearly seven years. He loved the work, but he also
loved confrontations. With Eric the more problems people caused the
better he liked his job. Eric should have been a cop.

Ned parked his Jeep in front of the
one-story log rancher that served as the ranger station. Lights
glowed from inside the building and right away he heard the deep
barking of Ripper the wonder dog in the pen around back. Ripper was
Eric’s dog, a black Lab-German Shepherd mix that was the park’s
unofficial mascot. Eric had originally gotten Ripper to keep him
company on the lonely evening shifts, but now all the rangers
preferred to have the dog around. Ned sure did, especially in the
middle of the night when he finished studying and all the shows on
TV were infomercials or reruns. Ripper was friendly, but he looked
dangerous and answered only to the rangers. Campers and hikers had
a healthy fear of the dog, which helped the rangers keep order.

“Hey, Ripper!” called Ned as he got out of
the Jeep. “How you doin’ boy?”

Ripper whined and jumped excitedly. Eric and
Ned had set up Ripper with a fenced-in dog run, a first-class house
and plenty of dog biscuits.

“You wanna cookie? I got a cookie!”

Ripper licked his mouth and barked
again.

Ned was a bit stocky, standing about
five-eight, with medium length burnt-orange hair. He liked the
outdoors and enjoyed quail hunting and fishing. He’d given up
hunting larger animals ever since he’d shot and killed a
seven-point buck four years ago. Man, that whole scene had given
him nightmares. He’d never forget looking into the deep brown eyes
of that dying animal and seeing the life fizzle right out of it.
His hunting friends laughed at him and said he had Bambi syndrome.
Ned didn’t know about that. He just figured he’d stick with
quail.

Ned zipped up his jacket against the chilly
October breeze, then checked his pockets. Plenty of dog biscuits.
Satisfied, he tossed his backpack over one shoulder and stopped by
the pen to give Ripper some love and a couple of biscuits. Then he
went inside the station.