The Door in the Forest (11 page)

The Crowley boys and Emily concentrated on the wooded hill that slanted down from the house. If Bridey had slipped, or been pushed, they might find her there. How could someone like Bridey Byrdsong, a person of such weighty presence, become an absence?

Daniel didn’t think she could. He suspected that Captain Sloper knew exactly where she was—which meant that all this searching was just a charade.

And there the captain was, standing on the rise, a black cutout against a brilliant half-moon.

Could he really be that cruel?

Could he really have killed Bridey Byrdsong?

“Why don’t you keep searching around here?” Daniel whispered, handing Emily the lamp. “I need to check on something at home.”

She gave him a questioning look. “Now?”

“What’s up, Danny?” said Wes.

“Just something I need. I’ll find you,” he said, and disappeared into the shadows. He hadn’t wanted to worry them; but this was the perfect time, while Sloper was busy at the Byrdsong place, to go back and search for that map of Emily’s.

Daniel walked his bicycle across the yard, keeping away from the road till the house was out of sight. Then he jumped on and pedaled like mad. The wind was picking up, swinging from tree to tree, passing him, doubling back, arguing in the branches overhead.

He arrived in a sweat and left his bike in the shadow of the barn, approaching his house from the rear. An old staff car was parked outside. That made him stop, listening hard;
but he couldn’t hear anything over the racket of crickets and the sirens of cicadas.

There was a light in the kitchen, so he circled around to the front and entered there, easing the screen door closed. The place seemed deserted, except for a second lieutenant banging about making coffee in the kitchen. He didn’t notice Daniel steal past, avoiding the squeaky stair as he climbed to the second floor.

On the landing, Daniel had the advantage of a carpet (worn as it was) to muffle his approach to his bedroom. Sloper’s room now.

He lit the kerosene lamp and looked around. It gave him a queer feeling to see the place in such a mess, almost as if it had been burglarized. Sloper might be a disciplinarian with his men, but he’d never been taught, apparently, to straighten his room. An undershirt and a forlorn brown sock lay over the bookcase. A cartridge belt curled on the floor at the foot of the unmade bed. Along the window ledge, Daniel’s collection of tin knights and armored horses was in disarray.

Where, in this chaos, would the captain hide a map?

Daniel knelt beside an open duffel bag, going through it slowly, finding clothes mostly, but also a journal and several books. But no loose papers. Certainly no map.

Carefully he began putting things back. He was about to set the journal where he’d found it, but hesitated. It was of mottled leather, badly scuffed. This might be important, the captain’s private thoughts. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to peek?

Actually, it did hurt, or was beginning to. Daniel might justify looking into a man’s diary, but his nervous system wasn’t going along. To his brain, it was too much like lying.
His skin had a prickly feeling, and pain signals began zipping along neural pathways, making Daniel wince his eyes shut.

Still, why not a quick look? He’d need to do it before the throbbing in his head became intolerable.

He leafed to the most recent page, and the words “kicking myself.” He read on. “Hate to admit I was taken in by that rustic act of theirs. Just simple farmers, stumbling over their dung heaps. All the while …”

Daniel closed his eyes tight and massaged his temples. The pain was sharp and getting sharper. He glanced at the page, scanning the last sentences. “All the while plotting and scheming. The old lady’s worst of all. See how these traitors feel when we leave, and there’s not one stick left standing, nor by God one stone on top of another.”

Daniel slapped the journal shut, sweat beading his forehead, his stomach nauseated with pain—or was it fear? He buried the book under some dirty laundry at the bottom of the duffel.

The man’s crazy
, he thought.
He thinks we’re plotting against him, when all the while he’s the one …

Daniel
had
to find that map. Whatever it meant, it mustn’t be left in Sloper’s hands. Daniel tried to think. Maybe the closet? His own clothes, he found, had been pushed aside, and several of Sloper’s uniforms and shirts hung in their place. He went through pockets and was peering inside shoes when a whistling sound from downstairs stopped him. The sound started low and rose to a scream, like a hysterical woman. The kettle, he realized.

Daniel went back to work. He’d found nothing and was running out of places to look. He turned finally to his
bookcase, to books he hadn’t read since childhood, as well as fantasy stories he still liked to read, a dictionary, a math workbook, a history book he needed to return to the library. No map.

But then, in the darkness at the back of the second shelf, he saw the wavy edge of … something. An old-looking document on wrinkled brown paper. He pulled it out. Yes, that was it.
Now to get out of here
!

Before he could reach the door, he was stopped cold by the sound of voices downstairs. He edged the door open. The voices were muffled, but there was one he recognized: that soldier with the cold eyes and cautious voice—Sloper’s aide, Bailey.

“Got a cup for me?” he was saying.

An indistinct response.

“Can’t stay,” the first voice continued. “The captain wants me to check if the old lady’s turned up.”

“Not here.”

A grunted reply. Then: “How can you drink this stuff?”

“Hey, nobody’s making you.”

A kitchen drawer banged shut, rattling silverware.

“Who cares about old Birdbrain anyway?”

“The captain. Don’t ask me why.”

“He didn’t care about the farmer we dumped in the creek.”

“Yeah, well.”

There was a scrape of a chair, followed by the bang of the flimsy screen door. Then silence.

So
, Daniel thought,
Sloper doesn’t know where she is, either
. That made him feel better somehow, until he thought about
Wayne Eccles, the missing farmer.
Dumped in the creek
! It made Daniel’s chest go cold to think of the snakes.

And there was the journal.
Not one stick left standing
.

He had to get out of here! Just then he heard the lieutenant moving around below. He’d left the kitchen for the sitting room. Daniel was stuck. Nothing to do but hope the soldier didn’t suddenly decide to come upstairs.

His heart beating fast, the boy spread the map open. There were words, smudged by age, around the edge, but no place names, just strange symbols here and there, almost like hieroglyphics. He could only guess that the three large patches along the sides of the map were the three neighboring towns, and that the L-shaped section in the center was Everwood.

He looked closer, grateful that his headache was ebbing. In the center of the central area, he saw, lay a smaller patch. Was that the island? There was no indication it was surrounded by water. And what were those symbols? Three little spirals, each a delicate line curling like a snail shell three times in a leftward direction.

The bang of a door made Daniel jump. A decisive voice—Sloper’s!—and then boots on the stairs, getting louder.

There was no time to think. Sloper was coming this way in a hurry.

Suddenly the bedroom door flew open and the captain strode in. He stopped short.

Daniel became a statue of himself: numb, unable to move, the incriminating document in his hand.

Sloper’s look hardened. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”

Daniel swallowed.

“You know, I have a firing squad for people who steal my things.”

His things
? This didn’t seem the moment to quibble.

“Maybe I should shoot you myself.” He seemed to consider it seriously. “But why mess up the room? Anyway,” he said, growing calmer as he spoke, “what’s so fascinating about that sheet of parchment that you’d risk your life for it?”

“I didn’t think I was risking my life.”

“Oh, you didn’t?”

“I didn’t think you would kill an innocent person.”

“So,” he said, “the thief is innocent.”

Daniel couldn’t answer that.

“What about this map!” said Sloper, grabbing it from the boy’s hands. “What is it? It has to be important.”

Several plausible lies popped into the boy’s head, but he wasn’t able to say them.

“Well?”

“I don’t really know.”

“You’re lying!”

The boy’s initial panic had subsided, and he looked at the captain directly. “I wish I could, believe me.”

Sloper assessed him through narrowed eyes. “All right,” he said, “let’s say you don’t know what it is.” He spread the map out and tapped it with his finger. “What do you
think
it is?”

“I think it’s about the island.”

“Island. What island? The one with the bird?” He bent
over the document. “So you think those are the other towns?”

“Maybe.”

“And this in the middle …”

“Everwood, yes. Well, maybe.”

“And what are these three little marks over here?”

“Symbols of some kind. I don’t know.”

“
I don’t know,
” he mimicked. “You expect me to believe that?” His eyes narrowed again. “Apparently, you do.”

The captain walked over to the window and stared into the darkness. “You sneak in here, risking your neck for a strange-looking map, and you tell me you don’t know what it is! The crazy part of it is I believe you.” He turned. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think those marks are hiding places. I think the rebels have hidden caches of guns and ammunition.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong.”

“Wrong, am I?” He examined the map again. “What else would it be? This whole town”—he waved his hand—“a nest of traitors!”

Part of Daniel was very frightened, but he was able to observe his fear, as if it were someone else’s. The separation allowed him to think. His instincts told him Sloper was wrong about the map. But those markers. They had to be important, even sacred. Sacred symbols on an ancient map.

He remembered: The town was “protected.”

Didn’t feel like it now.

Even if Sloper was wrong, his mistake could lead him to find things his eyes weren’t meant to see. Protections could be ripped away. Certainly, he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy the town. He was planning to. He’d already killed a farmer.

“Think about it, sir. This map is very old.”

“It’s counterfeit! I see that now.”

“No, it’s much older than—What are you doing?”

Sloper had pulled out his own map of the region and was comparing coordinates. “I’m figuring out exactly where those guns are hidden!”

In a calm part of Daniel’s mind, a place beneath the fear, he knew he couldn’t let Sloper succeed. Better that
nobody
had the map.

“Let me bring the light over,” Daniel said.

Sloper wasn’t listening. He had a pencil out and was jotting down numbers.

“Here.” The boy set the kerosene lamp on the desk and turned the toothed knob to bring up the wick and make the flame brighter.

Sloper grunted.

Daniel stood just outside the circle of light. He knew this might be the last minute of his life.
Can’t be helped
, he thought. Picking up
The Arabian Nights
, a substantial volume, a special favorite, one that had taken him a whole week to read when he was younger, he suddenly smashed it against the lamp, shattering the glass shade and spilling flaming kerosene across the desk.

Even before Sloper could leap away, the map was burning.

The room was an instant commotion of flame, kerosene stink, and howls of terrified rage.

Daniel, still clutching the book, was through the door and into the hallway by the time the lieutenant had started up the stairs, a coffee cup wobbling in his hands.

“Help!” Daniel shouted. “Fire in there!”

The soldier looked at him strangely before racing past.

Daniel caught a glimpse of the captain tearing a blanket off the bed and throwing it over the flames, all the while shouting at the soldier; but Daniel didn’t hear what he said. In fact, he didn’t remember getting downstairs. Only when the warm wind hit him did he realize he was outside dashing across the rutted ground to the barn. That’s when he discovered he was holding a book—a book stinking of kerosene. Tossing it aside, he grabbed his bike and pushed it out to the road.