Point of No Return (14 page)

Jack had shrugged and told Matt to go down and look.

Matt had refused and said
Jack
should be the first to have a peek since he discovered it.

They had argued back and forth for a few minutes until accusations of “chicken” and “coward” were thrown around. Finally they agreed to go in at the same time, using a rock to prop the door open for light. But no sooner had they reached the bottom of the stairs and faced the yawning, dark tunnel than the rock slipped and the door closed.

“Maybe we should follow the tunnel to see where it leads,” Jack suggested.

Matt snorted. “And get lost in some kind of ancient maze under Odyssey? No way.”

“Then let's just follow it a little ways in,” Jack said irritably. “If it doesn't go anywhere, we'll come back here.”

“And then what?” Matt wondered.

“I don't know. I guess we'll just sit on these stairs until we starve to death.”

“That's not funny,” Matt said as he crept down the stiff, wooden steps to the tunnel floor.

Jack slowly followed him. “Hello?” he called out, not really believing that anyone would call back. He coughed. The air smelled of earth and mildew, like an old basement.

They pressed against the cold, stone wall of the tunnel and inched forward into the blackness. They couldn't even see their hands in front of their faces.

“I heard that a man'll go crazy in a couple of hours in this kind of darkness,” Matt said.

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Jack growled. “What kind of place is this? An old mine shaft maybe?”

Matt suddenly stopped. Jack walked right into the back of him.

“Hey,” Jack complained.

“Watch where you're going,” Matt said.

Jack wanted to ask him
how
he was supposed to watch where he was going, but he decided against it. “Why'd you stop?”

“If this is a mine shaft, there might be big holes,” Matt said in a voice full of worry. “I think we'd better go back to the steps.”

Jack sighed. “And do what? Eat wooden-step sandwiches until somebody finds us? I think we oughtta—” Jack stopped mid-sentence with a sharp intake of air.

“If it's a snake or a rat, I don't want to know,” Matt whispered.

“No,” Jack replied. “Look up ahead. It's a little red light.”

Matt squinted deep into the wall of black but didn't see anything. The darkness was simply
dark.
Then the small dot of red light appeared to him as if out of nowhere. “What do you think it is? I mean, you don't think it's anything
alive
, do you?”

“Huh-uh,” Jack answered. But his tone wasn't confident. “Let's check it out.”

Matt didn't budge. “
You
check it out.”

“Why do
I
have to do everything around here? You're in front;
you
check it out.”

“Nope,” Matt said. “You saw it first, so you can do the honors.”

Jack grumbled his disapproval as he carefully navigated around Matt, keeping his hands on the wall and tapping the ground with the tip of his sneakers to make sure it didn't suddenly open up to a bottomless pit. He listened hard to make sure it
wasn't
some kind of red-eyed monster waiting to devour lost kids. He moved closer and closer until—

Suddenly the red dot turned green.

“Hey,” Jack called out to Matt. “The light turned gr—”

Jack heard a soft click, and the tunnel exploded with white light.

CHAPTER TWO

“O
W
,” J
ACK SAID AS
he winced, covering his eyes with his hands. “Is somebody there?”

“What's going on here?” Matt asked. He squinted against the light and could barely make out Jack's silhouette ahead in the tunnel.

No one answered.

After a minute, their eyes adjusted and they realized there were floodlights attached to the length of the tunnel wall—from the steps to a door about 20 yards ahead.

“The lights must be motion sensitive,” Matt observed.

“Motion
what
?” Jack asked.

“They turn on if something moves,” Matt explained. “We have them above our garage. That red light was probably the sensor.”

Jack breathed a sigh of relief. “At least we know we're not trapped in some abandoned mine shaft. Let's go see where that door leads.”

With renewed confidence, the two boys walked quickly to the end of the tunnel. The door was large and heavy-looking with square, decorative panels and a round, bronze doorknob. Jack reached out, grabbed the knob, and turned it. The latch clicked freely, and the door opened a crack. “Unlocked,” Jack whispered happily.

“You know, there might be somebody on the other side of that door who won't like us barging in,” Matt said.

“Do you want to go back to the steps and wait until someone finds your skeleton?” Jack asked.

Matt frowned. “The least you can do is knock first.”

Jack thought that was a reasonable idea. He ran his fingers through his dark hair nervously, then rapped his knuckles against the hard wood.

“Nobody's going to hear that,” Matt said and quickly pounded on the door with his clenched fist. They waited. No one answered.

Jack looked at Matt with a smug expression and grabbed the doorknob again. “Ready to go in?”

Matt lifted his shoulders and raised his eyebrows as if to say, “If you insist.”

The door swung open silently on greased hinges. They peeked in uncertainly. Beyond them was a workroom, obviously situated in someone's basement from the look of the rectangular windows high on the walls. A dusty sunshine broke through to give the room a warm, orangy glow. Jack and Matt stepped inside.

The muffled sound of kids talking and laughing made its way down the stairs leading up from the room. “We're back at Whit's End,” Matt said.

Jack nodded. “This has to be where Mr. Whittaker comes up with all his inventions.”

Mr. Whittaker—or Whit, as most people in town knew him— owned Whit's End and ran it as a place where children of all ages could enjoy themselves and even learn something in the process. Whit's End was originally Odyssey's old recreation center; a building that was part house, part church tower, and part gymnasium. Whit completely renovated it to include a soda shop, library, theater, the county's largest train set, and room after room of interactive displays, exhibits, and constantly changing activities.

Standing in the workroom, Jack and Matt suddenly realized just how much time and effort Whit put into his shop. Workbenches littered with tools, electronic parts, and gadgets sat beneath Peg-Boards adorned with schematics, diagrams, cords, wires, safety glasses, and even more tools. Boxes, sawhorses, large drills, a tool chest, and what looked to Matt and Jack like pieces of computer hardware were scattered around the floor. The room was an explosion of half-finished devices, bizarre contraptions, and peculiar equipment—all there for the purpose of making Whit's End a fun and interesting place to visit.

But the thing that caught Matt's and Jack's attention was a large machine sitting in the very center of the room.

“What is it?” Matt gasped as he circled the odd-looking invention. It looked as if someone had combined an old telephone booth with a helicopter cockpit. Through the smoke-colored glass, he could see multicolored lights blinking inside. A low, constant hum seemed to vibrate through his chest.

“Maybe it's one of those booths that takes your picture,” Jack suggested. “You know, like they have at the mall.”

Matt shook his head. “No way. Why would Whit invent something that he could just
buy
? It's some kind of ride.”

Jack, who circled the machine from the other direction, nearly tripped over a large cable. It ran from the invention over to a large box that looked like a washing machine. On second glance, Jack realized that the “washing machine” was some kind of computer. “Check this out,” he called to Matt.

Matt was at Jack's side in an instant. “This is great! The computer must be feeding information into the ride.” Matt gazed at several books, encyclopedias, magazines, and newspaper clippings scattered on a nearby workbench. They referred to the Underground Railroad, slavery in America, and the Civil War. Jack picked up one particular headline that reported Odyssey's “November Riots.” The year 1858 was handwritten in the upper right-hand corner.

“This is
great
! It must be some kind of Civil War ride.” Matt dashed around to the door of the machine. “I love that time in history.”

“Really? I didn't know that,” Jack said offhandedly. History wasn't one of his strong subjects.

The door didn't have a handle, so Matt had to look for a way in. “My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a slave,” he said simply.

Jack did a double take as if realizing for the first time that Matt was black. “You're kidding. You mean he was a slave, like on one of those plantations in the South?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He had never thought much about skin color—his own pale, pink flesh or the honey-brown tone of Matt's. They were friends, and that seemed to be enough. Their parents never drew attention to the difference in their races, either. Why should they? But the thought of Matt having someone in his family who was once a slave made Jack uneasy. What if
his
great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a slave owner?

“Aha!” Matt exclaimed and pushed a button.
Whoosh!
Just like an elevator, the door on the “booth” slid back and disappeared into the side of the machine. Jack suddenly realized what was happening.

“What are you doing?” he asked as Matt climbed in.

“I want to see what it does,” he replied.

Jack glanced around nervously. “What if Mr. Whittaker comes down?”

“Then we'll get in trouble,” Matt said with a shrug. “But we'll still be the first ones to try his new ride.”

Jack couldn't argue with his point, so he smiled and squeezed into the chair next to Matt. It was large and comfortable. They faced a dashboard of buttons, small lights, and digital displays. “This is amazing,” Jack said. He picked up a large sheet of blue paper with crude sketches of the machine, numbers, lines, and, on the bottom, the words
The Imagination Station (Revisions & Improvements)
.

“The Imagination Station?” Matt mused. A flashing red button— larger than the rest—beckoned them. “Let's push this one and see what happens.”

“Are you sure it's worth it if we get in trouble?” Jack asked.

Matt smiled. “We won't know until we try it, will we?”

For an instant, Jack understood why their parents complained that the two boys weren't good for each other. He dismissed the thought and said, “Push it.”

Matt poked at the red button with his finger. It clicked down. Nothing happened.

Disappointed, Jack slumped a little in the seat. “Maybe Mr. Whittaker hasn't finished it yet.”

Matt was about to answer when the door quickly slid shut with another
whoosh
. The machine made a low, rattling sound that soon got louder and louder.

“It sounds like it's going to fall apart,” Jack said, worried.

Matt reached for the red button. “Maybe I should stop it.”

It was too late. The Imagination Station shifted into a higher gear with a shrill, whirring sound.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but his breath was taken away as the machine lurched forward.
Or did it?
Neither of them could be sure. All they knew right then was that it felt as if they had just been blasted out of a rocket silo into warp-speed hyperspace. Butterflies danced in their stomachs. Their eyes grew wide.

The colors of the lighted dashboard, the smoky glass, and the workroom beyond spun out of control. Jack and Matt cried out.

Then everything went dark.

CHAPTER THREE

“T
HIS IS WEIRD
,” Jack said in the darkness. He was on his knees, but he didn't know how he got that way.

“
Too
weird,” Matt replied from Jack's left. “We're back in the tunnel again.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked, but all his senses told him it was true. The cool earth beneath him, the smell of damp, and the endless night ahead and behind him confirmed it. Matt patted the tunnel wall with the flat of his hand. “It's the tunnel all right. But I can't figure out how we got back here.”

“Maybe we've been stuck here for hours and only dreamed about Mr. Whittaker's workroom and the Imagination Station and…” Jack stopped himself. Two people couldn't have the same dream, could they? “You remember the workroom and the machine, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Matt answered. “That's what makes it so weird. How could we be sitting in the machine and the next second be in the tunnel again?”

Jack suddenly gasped and reached out. His hand collided with Matt's chest.

“Ouch. What's wrong?” Matt asked.

Jack shushed him. “Don't you hear those voices?”

Matt listened for a moment. Muted, almost unhearable voices drifted down the tunnel. They were quiet, as if someone had left a radio on somewhere.

“This way,” Jack said as he felt his way forward into the tunnel. He looked for the red light that had signaled the motion-sensitive lights. It wasn't there. Instead, he saw a thin, yellow line stretching across the ground and up the tunnel wall. As his eyes adjusted, he realized it was light coming out from under the bottom and side of a door. By the time they were only a few feet away, they could see its outline completely. The door was slightly ajar. The voices were more distinct. Two men were arguing.

“This is
really
weird,” Matt whispered as they got closer. Together the boys huddled at the crack in the door and peered through. The workroom was completely different from the one they'd seen before. The workbenches were gone. In their place sat a couple of sleeping cots covered with ragged wool blankets. The walls were bare wood and stone. In the center of the room, a scarred wooden table and wooden chairs crouched on fragile legs. Two men stood on opposite sides of the table. Jack and Matt didn't recognize either one of them. One was a tall, slender white man with salt-and-pepper-colored hair that stuck out in wavy tufts. He wore a clerical collar atop a blue shirt and trousers. The other man was taller and stockier. His coat, shirt, and pants were an ill-fitting patchwork that made him look even larger than he was. His face was dark brown and glistened with sweat. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other while clinging with both hands to a frayed hat.