Another Pan (15 page)

“Look what’s over here,” John said, pulling Wendy away from the invisible door and toward one of the many sun-bleached staircases leading downward into a black space beneath their feet. “I might be going nuts here, but does all this look a little familiar?”

Wendy shrugged. She had never seen this place before, but she did get that strange feeling of familiarity when she looked around her. The columns had a cluttering effect — not all that different from the basement they had just left. The pillars looked strangely similar to the pillars holding up the basement staircase — though the ones here were much bigger and greater in number. They were made of mud, hardly the elegant pillars of the Marlowe School. And the steps . . . the steps were the most prominent feature here, just as they were in the Marlowe basement. Except here, they all led downward, deeper into this strange world, instead of upward into the Marlowe School.

Looking around, Wendy could see now that the space they stood in had exactly the same angles and proportions as the basement, though it was definitely bigger. And just like in the Marlowe basement, the stacks were so tall that they formed a trail, exactly like the winding path the janitor had cleared around each stack of junk.

Wendy looked up, but there was no sun in the gray expanse overhead — no sun, no stars, and no clouds, so that she couldn’t tell if it was day or night here. She noticed then that the sky wasn’t a sky at all, but gray rock. She felt confined, as though they were breathing borrowed air. Were they underneath Marlowe? Were they still in the basement? There was something intriguing about the labyrinth that extended out from where they stood, the way it continued on past her line of vision, toward the unknown spaces beyond this eerie clone basement. But then, it couldn’t lead far. The whole place felt like a giant stone prison.
It’s like the inside of a tomb,
Wendy thought.

Wendy motioned to John, and they started walking along another set of steps. They drew closer to the maze, which didn’t seem at all like a part of the fake basement now. In fact, it was as if the room with the pillars and stairs was a part of
it —
a colossal snakelike labyrinth with no end. “As long as we know how to get back,” said John, “it should be OK.” They quickly walked past another set of steps that descended into the oblivion below. They avoided the temptation of the stairs, choosing instead to explore the columned space, with its unruly shrubs and discarded spires. It was dark, and they couldn’t see the entire space the way they might be able to in the Marlowe basement. They fumbled around for another few minutes before they spotted a small circular lake in a clearing a few yards away. It started underneath a pillar and continued on into the bushy maze beyond what should have been the end of the basement. The lake was an icy blue, but sparks were flying from it. Every few seconds the water flashed and a giant flame licked the air above the lake, floating up toward a nonexistent sky, died out, and returned to the water.

Wendy drew a breath.

“What?” John asked. But Wendy couldn’t explain. It seemed so crazy to tell her brother that the lake reminded her of the puddle in the basement — like a larger, darker, more foreboding version of it, this time with huge sparks instead of the tiny flashes of light from exposed electric wires.
Are we still in the basement?
Wendy wondered.
Are we underneath it? Maybe this lake is what caused the basement leak
.

But then something else caught Wendy’s attention. She took a step into the maze beyond the periphery of the twin basement, John following on her heels. Wendy walked tentatively, making mental notes of exactly which turns they took. Five minutes later, when they were already past the lake, they caught sight of a far-off building. Wendy whispered to John, reciting from their father’s lecture. “A tomb made of clay and stone with five pointed pillars and a pyramid base —”

“Painted a golden color since he had no gold of his own,” John finished for her.

“Oh. My. God,” whispered Wendy.

“We have to go there,” said John. “We have to! Do you realize what we could find? That’s the castle from the first legend!”

“No way. No way I’m going farther through this maze, risking getting lost just to find some old bones. Forget it. I want to go back.” Something inside Wendy was absolutely certain that she could never cross the whole maze. She turned around. The pillared space was still close behind them. Something told her that the castle in the distance was much farther away than it looked.

Frightened, they turned to go. Almost as if the labyrinth had heard them, a shadow passed over the maze. A cold breeze blew through Wendy’s hair, and she stiffened, as if she had been brushed by an icy hand. The rocky sky seemed to lower and began to turn into a darker, more menacing gray. Above the tiny gold-painted castle pyramid, Wendy saw a shadow pass to and fro.

“OK, this is scary. Let’s go,” she said. As they made their way back through the maze (two rights, two lefts, another right), past the fiery lake, and back toward the pillared space, the shadows above them grew darker. They hurried toward the eye that signaled the invisible door. Wendy pushed John forward. “You go through first,” she said. John was chewing his lips nervously. He let go of Wendy’s hand and disappeared into the empty space beyond.

John stepped into the broom closet for only a second. He dove back through the gate just as suddenly and practically fell on top of Wendy. “What are you doing?” Wendy asked. “Let’s get out of here!”

John’s face was as white as a blank sheet of paper. He began muttering. “Simon . . . Simon’s snooping around out there. He might have seen me. If he comes in here —”

“We can’t stay here forever,” she said, looking up at the shadows gathering up above. “How do we know when he’s gone?”

John thought for a moment, and then he jumped up. “I’ve got it,” he said. He dug deep into his pocket and took out a ballpoint pen.

“What are you doing with that?” Wendy asked. The shadows above them were becoming grayer. Wendy’s legs shook as she began to smell a stench coming from over her head. Everything was getting darker now. Looking at the fire-spewing lake, just barely visible in the far corner of the space, Wendy glimpsed a solid figure, the shadow of someone wrapped in thick cloths, passing back and forth, inspecting the ground they had walked. Once in a while, the figure stopped and bent its head, as if it were a person coughing.

“You’ll see,” said John as he unscrewed the bottom of the pen and tossed out the ink tube and the ballpoint. He held the hollow, strawlike casing of the pen and carefully approached the invisible door. He pushed one end of the straw just inside the hidden barrier so that a tiny circle from the tube’s end was inside the broom closet and most of its length was with John and Wendy, in this other world.

“Genius,” said Wendy as she heard Simon’s footsteps through the makeshift periscope. They stood there holding the pen tube for one or two minutes, all the while watching as the ominous figure overhead drew closer, darker. They clutched each other as they heard a dark whisper, somewhere far off. The air was cold now and more confining. Shadows were still hovering above, darkening everything.

Simon’s steps grew louder. John got on one knee and held the end of the tube to his eye so that he could see Simon on the other side of the invisible barrier. Simon was going door to door through the basement, opening closets and bathrooms, peeking under tables.

“He definitely saw me for a second,” said John, watching the curious way Simon searched the basement, like a mental patient trying to prove that his hallucinations were real. Then Simon came to the broom closet, whose door was already ajar. He peered inside. Through the pen tube John could see his huge face. John drew a breath.

John’s pen quivered. Across the curtain separating Marlowe from the underworld maze, they were face-to-face now — Simon in one dimension, staring into a broom closet full of mops, his face only an inch or two away from John’s (only an inch from stumbling into this career-making secret), and John and Wendy in another dimension, their pen-tube barely poking through the barrier, its tip lightly touching Simon’s sweater. They held their breath, hoping that Simon would not lean forward, praying that he would not feel the sharp circle on his belly or see the eye above the door.

“Why doesn’t he go away?” Wendy whispered.

“He’s probably trying to figure out where we went,” said John, putting his thumb over the end of the tube so Simon couldn’t hear. “Just hush and we won’t get into trouble.”

“No.” Wendy shook her head. “I bet he would be all over this if he knew. He’s one of those weasel résumé padders who’d totally screw Dad if he could.”

Wendy looked up again at the impending darkness and began grinding her teeth nervously. For a moment, she thought she might just jump back into the broom closet and take her chances with Simon. Who cares if she got into trouble or if Simon the sleaze took all the credit for a discovery that her father had been so close to making? At least she’d be alive.

Wendy turned around. The figure by the lake was no longer pacing. It stood by the water, its hooded head and female body reminding her of the statues of the death god from the exhibit. Again it seemed to cough, and the humanness of the sound was frightening. The figure was looking right at her, and even from this distance, Wendy felt the force of a deep-blue left eye that she couldn’t see.

Just then, through the pen tube, they saw Simon squint suspiciously, turn, and march out of the basement. The sound of his footsteps faded away. Then, overhead, they heard a voice. A thick, raspy voice echoing through the labyrinth, whispering words in a dead tongue. John and Wendy threw themselves into the broom closet and stumbled out. They lay on the floor, panting, for only a second before they grabbed their backpacks and started running out of the basement.

They didn’t make it far. Simon was waiting just above the banister, on his way back down to check on the exhibit.

“What are you two up to?” he asked, his eyes narrow slits.

“We’re done for today,” said Wendy. She glanced at the now-ominous puddle near the staircase. “We’re leaving.”

“Why are you all flushed like that?” Simon asked.

“Heavy lifting,” said Wendy, still panting.

“And where were you a minute ago? I came down and you were missing.”

“We took out a few bags of garbage,” said Wendy, trying to sound very justified and therefore annoyed at his questions.

Simon’s eyes scanned them up and down, examining closely. His arms were folded across his chest. “I’d better not find any of the artifacts missing.”

Wendy took a frustrated breath. “Why would we steal from our own dad?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Simon, laughing. “I wasn’t suggesting
that
. . . . Besides, these things belong to the British Museum, and as the only representative of said museum,
I
am their sole guardian here.”

Wendy didn’t bother to refute him, to defend her own role. She was too freaked out and couldn’t care less about titles right now. There was a moment’s silence, then Wendy made for the door. Like a parking lot barricade, Simon’s arm swung up to block the way. Suddenly, his voice sounded casual, as if he was trying to feign indifference. “Find anything cool down there?” he said. “You know, none of this stuff is that important, anyway.”

He must think we’re morons,
thought Wendy, but she saw that John wanted to share something with Simon. He wanted to impress him. She grabbed John by his backpack and said, “We’re going now.”

Simon shrugged and dropped his arm.

On the walk home, when Wendy and John were alone, they started to puzzle out what had happened.

“I bet he won’t tell on us,” said Wendy.

“I know,” said John. “He’s cool. He’s just protecting the stuff.”

“No, John. He won’t tell because he’s got his own little agenda and he has no respect for Dad. Can’t you see? He’s too stupid to know what’s
really
down there. He probably thinks we found something important and he wants credit.”

“Why would he need to?” said John. “He’s gonna be a famous Egyptologist. He told me so himself. He’s just doing his job.”

“His job is to be Dad’s assistant,” Wendy shot back. She shook her head and added, “Let’s just focus on the more important question. What the heck just happened?”

They walked home, shivering with excitement. They talked about the door, and the book, and how they might have caused the book to react. They puzzled at the location of the door (“Why the broom closet?”) and the words that had appeared in the book (“Why were they in English?”). They wondered how they had opened the gate to begin with. John had broken the corner of a page. Could that be it? He had tried to read the title page in the original Egyptian. Did any of those things bring the book to life? They even considered that scrap of paper in John’s pocket, the one with the names of the hours.

Neither of them remembered the still-open door of the broom closet, or the Eye of Ra, still freshly scorched and ominous in the whitewashed wood. In their rush to get away from Simon, neither of them had seen that it lingered there. As Simon slapped the light switch on his way out, he, too, missed the details. He left the exhibit, muttering about bratty kids, never noticing a silhouette, perhaps a woman, lingering in unseen corners. Why would anyone notice such an ordinary person, after all? She wasn’t strange. She didn’t have the animal head of Egyptian statues or the putrid breath of the underworld on her lips. She was just a person, just a shadow that had become accustomed to blending in and going unnoticed — a sick soul whose illness had gone unnoticed in the fast world of Marlowe. And so Simon, too, overlooked her. But there she was, a silhouette that looked a lot like the new school nurse, picking lint balls from her overworn blue sweater, caressing moths in her palm — such a tiny, unimportant person holding open the broom-closet door, covering the recesses of the dusty closet in black thoughts and shadow.