Off the Wall (8 page)

But now the light was . . . was it moving away? Could it possibly be that the guard hadn't realized where they were hiding?

She must not have. Because now the light was gone, and the footsteps were walking away.

Still motionless, Jane glanced at the other girls. She could see that they were listening too. A few seconds more, and the sound of the steps was almost gone. Lucy clasped her hands over her head in a silent cheer.

“Wait,” Daria whispered. But she didn't need to warn them. The girls weren't going to move until they were absolutely sure the coast was clear.

In her head Jane counted to a hundred. Then two hundred. There was still no sound outside their cramped little hiding place. She looked questioningly at the other girls. “Okay?” she whispered.

“I guess so,” Lucy said.

They'd been sitting without moving for so long that Jane had to shake the kinks out of her arms and legs when she could finally stand again.

“That was too much,” she told Lucy and Daria crossly. “Being caught by a guard would be even worse than being caught by a mummy. I didn't make this bet—you two did. I'll hunt with you for a half an hour more, and then I'm going back to the Great Hall. By myself, if I have to.”

“I guess you're right.” Lucy sounded subdued. Then her face brightened. “What about the Hall of Extreme Weather? If I were a mummy,
I'd
want to go to the Hall of Extreme Weather. But wait—we have to get Daria's arm fixed up.”

“No need.” Daria showed them her arm. To the astonishment of Jane and Lucy, it looked fine. There were no marks on her skin to show what had happened. Her arm seemed to be completely healed.

“How could that happen?” asked Jane. “Your arm was all shredded up!”

Daria shrugged. “I heal quickly.”

“Get me off this thing! Get me off!”
Jane whispered. Her mouth was dry with fear. But there was no one to help. And she was buckled in. She, Lucy, and Daria were going to have to suffer through the whole tornado before their seats unlocked and they could return to normal.

The Templeton Museum's Hall of Extreme Weather was completely interactive. That made it a lot more interesting than just looking at pictures of different kinds of clouds. Even Daria seemed to loosen up a little. But most of the exhibits were some kind of scary ride, and Jane's stomach was starting to feel woozy. Already the girls had buckled on electronic skis to see how it would feel to be swept up by an avalanche. They'd stood in little booths that felt as hot as the Sahara Desert and as cold as Antarctica. They'd felt the floor shake beneath them in the earthquake simulator and been buried up to their shoulders in fake quicksand. They'd even been struck by lightning—not real lightning, of course, but just as loud and bright.

The tornado simulator was way too realistic for Jane. To ride it, you buckled yourself into a seat and whirled into the air. Or at least that was how it felt. The girls were actually sitting still—only the view in front of them and the vibrations in the floor were changing—but the images on the screen were moving so fast that they were completely believable. The sound of the wind (actually coming from speakers) was so loud it made Jane dizzy. Luckily, no guard would be able to overhear it. The simulator—like all the other rides—was inside a soundproof booth. Lucy explained that this way the museum could still give tours when the rides were being operated.

But Jane wasn't sure what a guard would hear if she suddenly started screaming for help.

Far below, or so it seemed, the girls could see the Missouri farmhouse where the “tornado” had touched down. Now they were moving toward it at terrifying speed. As the ground rushed up at them, Jane closed her eyes . . .

And then everything was quiet. The floor stopped shaking. The ride was over.

With trembling hands, Jane unbuckled her seat belt.

“That was great. Now let's go try One Fateful Day in Pompeii!” said Lucy.

“What happened in Pompeii?” asked Daria.

“You'll see,” replied Lucy.

“You two can go,” said Jane. Her legs didn't feel too steady. “I'll wait for you. Is there a Hall of
Nice
Weather anywhere around here?”

Lucy laughed. “I don't think so. Just go hang out in Colonial American Life—that's next door. We'll meet you there in a few minutes.”

Jane sighed with relief as she headed toward the Extreme Weather exit. When you'd been buried in quicksand and struck by lightning, Colonial American Life would make a nice change.

The colonial galleries turned out to be very, very traditional, which was very, very soothing. Jane wandered happily through an exhibit about candle making and then turned her attention to a wall of samplers. Two hundred years ago, little girls had practiced their needlework by learning to make these samplers. They had cross-stitched wobbling alphabets or little pictures of chicks and flowers. One ambitious girl named Felicity Barrow had tried to stitch a picture of her baby
sister. The baby's head was shaped like a mushroom, but Jane—who had never even held a needle—thought Felicity deserved credit for trying.

This is nice,
Jane thought. It seemed so peaceful to think of girls her age working calmly away at their sewing.

Then she saw the sampler in the next case.

No pretty flowers here. This girl had stitched a tombstone, and she was much more talented at needlework than poor Felicity Barrow.

It was a very detailed tombstone, in different shades of gray thread. And on it Jane read these words:

Sacred to the memory of my classmate and friend

Jerusha Partridge,

who died
May 19, 1791
in the 12th year of her age.

Come hither, mortals, cast an eye

Then go thy way—prepare to die.

Think on thy doom, for yet thou must

One day, like me, be turned to dust.

Here rests my frame in this cold ground,

Where all of you may soon be found.

Death suddenly took hold of me,

And so the case of you may be.

Death gave to me a sudden call,

I have obeyed and so must all.

Death is a debt to Nature due

Which I have paid—and so must you.

Jane shivered. It was creepy to think of the death of a girl about her own age—and what kind of person put a tombstone on a sampler?

She turned, startled, when Lucy tapped her on the shoulder. “Oh! It's you!” Lucy and Daria were standing right behind her.

“Who did you think it would be?” asked Lucy.

Jane didn't answer her.

“Oh, right,” Lucy answered her own question. “The mummy. Well, it's just us.”

“What are you so interested in, anyway?” asked Daria.

Jane gestured to the sampler.

“That's so sad!” said Lucy when she'd read it. But Daria was frowning.

“Whoever wrote that poem should have made it shorter,” she said. “It just keeps saying the same thing over and over.”

“That's true,” Jane admitted. “Maybe she just liked to embroider letters. But it's still sad.”

“Oh well, it was a long time ago. Let's not think about it anymore,” said Lucy. “Pompeii was
great
. We got away from the lava just in time. Let's go see the dioramas.”

The dioramas in the next gallery showed what family life in that area had been like two hundred years before. Life-size figures in old-fashioned clothes were posed in all kinds of settings. Daria wasn't much interested, but Lucy and Jane pored over each new scene. In one, a girl untangled wool while her sister churned butter; in another, a man was tapping a maple tree for sap. A string of boys played crack-the-whip on a frozen pond, and a teacher who looked about their age was teaching in a one-room schoolhouse with six students. Pigs strolled through a diorama that showed what the center of town had looked like. It turned out that pigs in the street had been very common back then.

Lucy's favorite diorama featured a blacksmith shoeing a horse. Jane's was a colonial kitchen where a woman was stirring an iron pot hanging on a fireplace hook. The kitchen looked smoky and dark but also cozy. Strings of onions and dried herbs were hanging on the wall, and in
the corner a small black cat was dozing next to a baby's cradle.

As the girls were passing on to the next diorama—an old-fashioned barber shop—Lucy came to an abrupt stop.

“Wait a sec,” she said. “I saw something moving in the kitchen. Maybe it was the mummy!”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Daria. “A mummy wouldn't go in there.”

“How do you know?” asked Jane.

“Look!” Lucy yelled before Daria could answer. Lucy's eyes were wide and scared. She pointed behind the two other girls with a shaking hand.

Jane and Daria turned around.

And stood motionless.

The little black cat that had been dozing in front of the fire was standing up now, its green eyes blazing. As they watched, it stretched for a long second . . . and then slowly began to walk directly toward them.

“This is not possible,” said Jane. If she could have screamed, she would have.

The black cat gave a slow blink. Was it Jane's imagination—or was he staring at Daria?

He certainly wasn't scared of her. As they watched, he crossed lazily under the velvet rope and brushed against Daria's ankle. With a little meow, he curled up next to her feet.

“Shoo! Go back where you belong!” Daria shoved the cat with her foot, but he wouldn't budge. He only looked up as if to ask her what was next.

“He must belong to the museum.” Jane sounded as if she didn't quite believe her own words.

“Do museums even have cats?” said Lucy doubtfully. “Like, to catch mice and rats?”

Mice, rats,
and
mummies? And not to mention the bugs in the bug exhibit. Templeton Museum was starting to sound
jammed
with things Jane didn't want to meet.

Daria leaned over and patted the cat on the head. Purring, he pressed his forehead up against her hand.

“Don't cats have some kind of sixth sense? Kitty, where do you think we should go next to find the mummy?” asked Lucy.

As if he had understood her, the cat stood up and began to walk away, looking back over his shoulder at them.

“Prrrrrrt?” he meowed encouragingly.

It was too tempting to resist. The girls followed the cat out of the room.

Silently he crossed the wide marble landing that led to the stairs. He padded down the steps, glancing back at them every couple of seconds.

The three girls tiptoed down after him.

On the second floor, he walked leisurely down a row of glass cases holding old pottery beads. He turned left at the installation about frogs and sauntered past a room full of models of sea creatures. Then he paused. Tail twitching, he stared attentively at a niche in the wall. In the niche stood a massive carved totem pole. For some reason a long cloth cord was lying on the floor in front of it. One end of the string was hidden behind the pole.

The cat seemed to be deciding what to do next. Finally he took a deliberate step toward the totem pole.

“What does he want us to do?” asked Jane. “We can see perfectly well from here.”

“He doesn't want anything,” said Daria. “Let's go. This is—”

The cord on the floor twitched.

The three girls froze.

It twitched again. The cat was watching it closely. He
stretched out a paw and gave the cord a pat. The cord began to move toward the totem pole as if—

As if someone was pulling it in.

The cat was mesmerized, and so were the girls.

“Prrrrrowp?” said the cat. It sounded like a question. As the cord began to vanish behind the totem pole, the cat followed it.

And out from behind the totem pole emerged a pale hand.

The three girls stared.

The hand beckoned the cat invitingly.

“Don't,”
whispered Jane.