Choke: 2 (Pillage Trilogy (Pillogy)) (10 page)

“You should sell this recipe,” I said honestly.

Millie smiled for the first time since I had been home. “You’re a nice child, Beck. I just wish your father would show up.”

“He said he was going after something important,” I reminded her. “That’s gotta take at least a day.”

“I suppose,” she said sighing and drying her hands on her apron.

“Millie?” I asked. “What do you think about trains?”

“I haven’t given it much thought, but I suppose I like them. Why?”

I just shrugged. I guess I was hoping she knew and would suddenly blurt out the answer to where those tracks went.

“It was windy last night,” Millie said.

“I know. Plus I’m having kind of a hard time sleeping,” I told her. “I think it’s because of all that time in the hospital. I’m sorry if my wandering around wakes anyone up.”

“I didn’t hear you wandering,” she insisted.

“Last night I actually walked outside for a little bit,” I told her. Just to stretch my legs.”

“The outdoors can be quite invigorating,” she replied.

I sighed, feeling better about having to slip out later and follow the tracks. After all, I would just be stretching my legs again.

After dinner I went straight to my room. I lay in bed and looked at
The Grim Knot
for about an hour. I reread some of the pages and stared at all the notes and pictures that were drawn in it. I knew there was more there somewhere. I just couldn’t see it. The book was kind of like the manor, filled with secrets and hidden things you couldn’t easily distinguish. I wished my dad was around to talk to, but chances were even if he were here he wouldn’t say much about the book. It wasn’t a subject he enjoyed talking about. I stared at one of the pages as if it had some hidden picture that would pop out at me. My new pasty friend had told me to look closely, but I couldn’t see anything I hadn’t noticed before.

I closed the old book and set it on my nightstand next to my dictionary and Mr. Binkers. Then I set my alarm, turned out my light, and fell asleep.

When the alarm rang at eleven forty-five, I jumped out of bed. I was tired, but my body was up for some excitement. I changed my clothes, used the bathroom across the hall, grabbed the metal detector and a flashlight, and then made my way out of the manor. I didn’t have a watch, but I made it back behind the garage before midnight.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt whispered fiercely as he sprang out from behind some trees.

Instinctively I dropped the metal detector and hit him right in the nose. He flew back howling as I tried to calm myself enough for my heart to slip back down my throat and into its proper place.

“What the heck,” I breathed. “You scared me to death.”

“You look plenty alive,” Wyatt said holding his snout. “I think you broke my nose.”

“Good. You don’t spring out of the forest at someone at night.”

“It was worth it,” he laughed. “I bet you jumped at least six feet.”

“I should have hit you harder.”

I couldn’t see Wyatt clearly but I could tell he was wearing a white shirt with a jacket over it. He was shorter than me with dark hair and long arms.

“So how are you?” I asked.

“I was fine up until now.”

“Are you guys not getting along?” Kate asked, stepping out from around a corner of the garage.

“He hit me,” Wyatt complained.

“You probably deserved it.”

I liked Kate.

We walked over to where the track had been and I turned on the metal detector. It squealed like a hot microphone, sending feedback into the forest and probably waking all the animals. I adjusted the volume while Kate and Wyatt plugged their ears.

“Now that you’ve woken up the entire mountainside . . .” Kate complained.

“Sorry,” I said. “Come on.”

The metal detector gave off a low beep as I traced the track away from the back of the garage and into the forest. Wyatt was right behind me and Kate was on my left. I could see a couple of stars, but for the most part the sky was hidden by clouds. It was very dark so Kate held her flashlight so that the beam was shining directly in front of the metal detector.

“I thought we were going to see the secret room and the slide,” Wyatt whined.

“We will later,” I whispered. “We want to see where this goes first.”

I heard something large running in the forest and stopped to make sure it wasn’t running toward us.

“Must have been a deer,” Kate said.

We moved again—the sound of the metal detector and our footsteps sounded in a weird, unsettling rhythm. I jammed my leg into a tree branch that I had not seen.

“Shine the light better,” I complained to Kate.

Kate directed the flashlight into the air.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

She moved the light back.

“So, where do you think the track goes anyway?” Wyatt asked.

“Straight,” I answered, keeping the metal detector directly in front of me. We walked through the thin trees as the ground began to slope up just a bit.

“You think there’s a tunnel going through the mountain?” Wyatt questioned. “Maybe there’s some sort of secret place . . . with girls.”

Kate and I both stopped and gave Wyatt annoyed looks.

“What? All right, then why would there be a train here?” Wyatt said defensively. “The track is covered with trees.”

“There hasn’t been a train on these tracks in probably a hundred years,” Kate said. “The trees have grown, but the track has to go somewhere. Maybe that place is gone too . . .”

A huge deer ran right across our path. Wyatt swore while Kate dropped the flashlight and slapped me on the arm for no reason.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what? It’s not like I asked that deer to jump in front of us.”

Kate bent down and picked up her flashlight. Once again she pointed the beam of light in front of us.

My shoes crunched as I stepped over the forest floor. The track had not turned in the least. It was running perfectly straight. A tree branch swung back and smacked me in the face. When I realized there was nobody in front of me to make it swing back, I grew a little concerned.

“I think the trees are out to get me,” I whispered.

“It might help if you thought about somebody besides yourself for a minute,” Kate suggested.

We came to a part of the track that wasn’t completely covered by dirt. I could see two wooden railroad ties and about three feet of rusted track.

“Cool,” I said as Kate shined the flashlight on the track.

“We’re getting close to the mountain,” I whispered, although my comment was unnecessary, seeing how the ground was beginning to seriously tilt upward. “What kind of train could go up a track this steep?”

We hiked a couple of hundred feet more before the slope became too steep to continue. The metal detector still told us we were over the tracks. The side of the mountain was stone, and trees were growing sideways and at weird angles out of the cracks. Kate shined the light up and we could faintly see the track cutting between two large stone ridges and going straight up the mountain.

I was familiar with the mountain. It wasn’t one I had hiked before, but it was the closest mountain to the manor. Despite that, however, I had never seen the railroad tracks on it.

“What now?” Wyatt asked.

“Let me see that,” I said, reaching for the flashlight. I took it from Kate and swept the beam over the ground and the small part of the mountainside we could see. There was nothing but trees and stone.

“Shine it over there again,” Kate whispered, pointing to the left of the tracks. “Above those bushes.”

I moved the flashlight’s beam. I could see a big bush growing right out of the base of the stone mountain.

“I don’t see anything,” Wyatt reported for both of us just as a thin rain began to fall. “We should go back.”

“No,” Kate insisted. “Look, that’s a stair.”

I tried to see what she saw, but I couldn’t see any stairs. Kate pushed past me and pulled at the bush. A large, thick section parted, and I could easily see the stone stairs carved right into the mountain.

“Nice,” I said happily.

Kate stepped through the bush. When I followed her, the foliage seemed to bristle and scratch at my already scraped-up body.

“Ouch.”

“It’s just a bush,” Wyatt said as he stepped through scratch- free.

We started hiking up the stone stairway. After five stairs they turned and switched up the other direction—five more stairs and it switched back again, climbing higher. The switchbacks were right next to the train track and hidden behind trees and stone ridges. At certain points you could see back down into the forest, but it was so dark I could hardly distinguish anything below.

The light rain blew into our faces.

All three of us shuffled carefully up the stairs. I was the first one to complain about how tired I was—I was also the second and third.

“You’re the one who wanted to do this,” Wyatt reminded me, breathing hard as we stopped for a short rest.

“Let’s go just a few more steps,” Kate suggested.

“Right,” I agreed, and I began to slowly trudge up the next ten steps. My legs were burning, and my lungs felt like they were going to pop.

The stairs switched back a final time and then ended at the edge of a huge wall. The wall was covered in a thick layer of wet moss. I looked around. We were about halfway up the side of the mountain now. It was sort of disappointing to find nothing but moss, but it was also kind of exhilarating to reach the end of the stairs.

Kate and Wyatt began to feel around the moss for some sort of opening or door.

“It’s mushy,” Kate reported. “It kinda feels like wet Styrofoam.”

I shined the light down at the bottom of the moss wall. I could see rusty train tracks going right under the moss.

“This has to be some sort of huge cave opening if it could fit a train,” I said. “Can you push through it?”

Wyatt stepped back. He spit into both of his palms and then stamped at the ground like a charging bull. He leapt forward and jammed his right shoulder into the wall of moss. His body seemed to sink in ten inches.

“I’m stuck,” he growled.

I yanked on his left arm and pulled his shoulder out. There was a wet sucking sound as he slipped free. Once he stepped back, we could see that his impact had created a large depression in the wet growth.

“Do it again,” I said.

“You do it,” Wyatt complained, rubbing his right arm. “This is my throwing arm.”

Kate pushed at the dent mark in the moss and her fingers slipped in a few inches. She wiggled them around. It sounded like someone was playing with a chunky wad of Jell-O.

“Disgusting,” she groused as she pulled her fingers back out.

“All right, move,” I said with authority. I handed Kate the flashlight and stepped back. I then rammed the moss wall with my left shoulder as hard as I could. My shoulder and upper body pushed all the way through the thick, slimy growth. The top half of me was now inside while my legs were still outside by Kate and Wyatt. I could feel one of them pulling on my legs. The moss around my torso broke away and I fell to the ground next to the train tracks. My kicking and falling made the moss opening big enough to walk through. Kate and Wyatt stepped over me as they came through the opening.

As I got back onto my feet I could hear Kate oohing and
aahing at something. I stood up straight and copied her. We were standing in a huge cave. The ceiling was at least thirty feet high, and when Kate shined the light ahead we couldn’t see an end to it. I saw a big metal switch on the wall and without thinking it through I pushed it up. It sparked a little and then instantly there was a humming noise followed by dim lights along the wall popping on.

“That’s better,” I said, trying to sound like I knew that would happen. “There must be some sort of wire leading all the way to the manor.”

Wyatt was staring at me. “Are all those scratches from that bush down there?” he asked in confusion. He hadn’t seen me in the light since my plant accident.

“Yeah,” I lied.

We began to look around. There were some weird drawings on one side of the cave’s walls, and the other side was lined with old furniture and what looked like rolled-up maps and scrolls.

The whole scene was pretty cool, but the most spectacular part was the huge metal train engine sitting on the end of the tracks. It was only one section of train, but it was tall and long. We walked all the way around it in silent awe. The front of it was sloped with a lantern hanging from it and a large cowcatcher at the bottom. It had what looked to be a thick metal roof and a long rectangle body that was divided into four sections. All four sections had windows, and there was a door with steps leading up into the front end. The whole thing looked like a combination train engine and streetcar. Behind it was a giant metal reel that was three times my height and ten feet wide with steel cable coiled on it. One end of the cable was attached to the rear of the train cart. Next to the reel was a bulky looking generator.

Above the train was a steel platform that was attached to the ground with six metal beams. One of the beams had metal rungs that someone could climb to get on top of the platform and look down at the train.

We stepped into the train. There were twelve rows of dusty seats in the back and fancy lights hanging from the ceiling. Frilly mauve curtains adorned the windows and plush, dusty rose-colored carpets were on the floor. Up front was a huge steam engine and two seats. I opened the cast-iron door where the coal was supposed to go. There were small pieces of wood stacked up and a bin full of coal next to the engine. I picked up a box of matches sitting on a short metal shelf.

“We should see if it works,” I said excitedly.

“That’s a really bad idea,” Kate replied.

“How did this make it up that slanted track anyway?” Wyatt asked.

“It has segments,” Kate said. “So it can bend like an accordion and be pulled up and lowered carefully by that cable and generator. Look at the windows. They’re like six inches thick. Probably so they don’t break when the cart shifts.”

“I bet my dad doesn’t even know this is here,” I said. “And The
Grim Knot
doesn’t say a thing about it. Think we can get it started?”