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The dog stares at us, motionless except for its heaving stomach. The light from my phone reflects off its eyes. Its mouth hangs open, tongue sticking to one side, teeth on full display.
“Hey!” Austin whispers. “That’s the mutt that chased me around the mansion.”
“What?”
“Oh…that’s why I ran that one time. This dumb dog was waiting for me outside the door.”
After several seconds, the dog still stands in the same spot, watching us. The terror fades and I take a step forward.
It looks at me and continues panting.
Holding my hand out to touch the dog’s nose, I come a step closer, using my most friendly voice. “Hey, it’s all right. We won’t hurt you.”
Another step.
It lets out an earth-shaking bark.
I wince and stumble back, the noise deafening after so much silence. Apparently, I upset it because it continues to bark loud enough for the entire house to hear. Austin shoves me through the doorway, pushes past me, and yanks me forward. “Let’s get out of here!”
The German shepherd stands in a long hall that runs to the left and right. I shake Austin’s arm off, step around the dog, and sprint to the left. Austin’s frantic yet quiet footsteps are behind me. Every other floorboard creaks, and my shoes boom on the floor like cannon fire. By now, we’ve probably alerted all the servants to our presence. There’s no way we’re hiding from them.
Another door appears on the right wall. Maybe it’s filled with people, but it’s our best bet. Grabbing Austin by the wrist, I twist the knob and fling it open.
It’s empty and as dark as the rest of the hallway. Perfect.
We slip inside and I ease the door shut before turning the phone flashlight off. Darkness fills the room. My pulse pounds in my ears, blocking the surrounding sounds, but it seems the dog has settled down. Hopefully, he stopped soon enough.
Each second lasts an hour as we strain our ears. Any second, a horde of servants—and maybe Hawksley himself—could run around the corner and search for us.
After a full minute, the hall outside is still silent. Maybe they didn’t hear the racket we made. Maybe they crept up without making a noise and are waiting outside. Or maybe they’re still on their way. Or—
“I think we’re clear,” Austin whispers.
“How do you know? They could be just outside.”
“Do you think they wouldn’t touch even one of the screechy floorboards?”
“They could have memorized which floorboards creak.”
“Now you’re just sounding like me.” He tip-toes forward and cracks the door open. Eyes widening, he slips it back shut. “I see light coming from around the corner.”
“Is it moving?”
“I think so.”
Just great. After giving ourselves the perfect opportunity, we immediately made ourselves known to the entire house, and now someone is coming after us. At least the dog can’t tell anyone where we are.
A voice comes from down the hall. I press my ear close to the door and can barely make out the words being said.
“Alright, you dragged me all the way over here. What is it?” The speaker—apparently an old woman—sounds tired, and to confirm this, she loudly yawns. A few seconds of silence follow. “Now what’s this? Did Shane teach you how to open doors?”
My heart leaps into my chest. We forgot to close the door!
The dog whimpers and the woman laughs. “A likely story. But I believe you this time. That little rapscallion never closes a door behind him. I wonder where he’s off to now…” A creak and thud inform us that the door is closed; the sound repeats as if two doors were left open. Quiet footsteps recede down the hall and all grows silent. We wait a few minutes to ensure the danger is really past but hear no other sounds. I turn my flashlight back on and shine it on the ground. “That was too close.”
Only the bottom of Austin’s face is lit like he’s about to tell some ghost story. “Really? Because I thought it wasn’t close enough.”
“Look, we need a plan. We can’t just waltz around this place without direction and expect to find something. Where is that map?”
Austin pulls the papers from his pocket, folded and wrinkled.
I frown; he shrugs. “What? Do you expect me to carry them everywhere in my hand?”
I hold out my palm, and he gives me the map showing the tunnel. Just like the previous times we checked, it remains cryptic with its abstract symbols and lack of explanatory text. The parallel lines marking the tunnel lead to the house and then vanish upon touching the outside wall. “Let’s figure out what these symbols mean. Can you tell which room we’re in now?”
“Not at all. We need to look around more to figure out where we are.”
“So we just have to hope we don’t stumble into the servants’ break room.”
“Correct.”
I sigh. A blind search is hardly ideal, but Austin is right. It’s our only option right now. We have to improvise on the go. “Alright. Let’s get to it, then.”
Austin pushes the door open and glances back and forth before walking into the hall. I follow, glancing up and down the hall again. With how many rooms line the passageway, we should be able to duck into a hiding place should we hear a servant. As long as we don’t try to enter a door that only hides more wall.
Door…wall… Something clicks in my head. Without waiting for Austin, I stride toward the room we exited a few minutes earlier. But the light only falls on identical doors, and nothing shows the secret room from which we just came. My flashlight beam passes over a concentration of faint footsteps in the dust just in front of one door. This must be the same place.
I open the door, but the room is gone. In its place is a solid wall.
Austin realizes it at the same time as I do. “Woah. Does this mean…”
I look the wall over for any signs of a button or handle. “Yeah. We could be dealing with a lot more rooms now. We just need to figure out how to open them.”
“It was pretty easy from the inside. Just push.”
Oh, yeah. That’ll work. Because what’s the point of a secret room if the entrance is actually hard to open? But to humor him, I hit the wall with my shoulder. A thin crack forms, running straight up from the floor, and the wood creaks.
I blink and stare at the faint outline of a door that just appeared.
With another shove, the hidden door swings open, revealing the room we just exited.
Austin’s eyes flit around the walls. “There might be more of these anywhere.”
He’s right. From the outside, the door was completely invisible. There may very well be a secret entrance behind every door that leads to nothing. “We’d better get to work.”
For several minutes, we check every door in the hall. Many lead to empty rooms, others lead to walls that remain solid after our pounding. We tip-toe around and I cover my flashlight, only letting out barely enough light to see. Another close call might mean the end of our adventure. As we go along, Austin makes notes on the map regarding the symbols. They remain a mystery to us, as whatever these rooms used to be, they’re only dust collectors now. Nothing remains to indicate their original use. But more frustratingly, none of them lead us one step closer to the treasure.
We reach the end of the hall—at which a spiral staircase leads to higher floors—with one last door to check. Behind it lies more wall, which I shove with my shoulder. After a couple dozen times of doing this with no results, I came to expect the wall to push back at me. So when the wall moves and pops open, I lurch forward, flailing my arms. Austin snickers from behind as I regain my footing.
Shining the flashlight down the newly opened passageway, I survey our discovery. It’s another hall, stretching a few yards ahead until reaching a set of stairs and ascending out of view. I glance at Austin and he nods. No point in waiting around.
We step into the hallway.
Twisting and turning, the passage continues gradually up. Up a flight of stairs, around a sharp turn, past a door leading to another empty room, up a spiral staircase, down a ramp, the hall never ends. It branches off at forks and intersections that also lead into darkness. For the first time, I begin to understand just how massive this place is.
As we pass yet another intersection of dark halls, my heart sinks. This is a minotaur’s labyrinth, with a few dozen minotaurs lurking around. We’re never going to find a thing. I whisper over my shoulder, “Are we making any progress on that map?”
“I don’t even know what floor we’re on right now. We could be in-between floors for all I know.”
Just great. Now we’re even more lost. “Maybe we should just go back. This thing is never-ending.”
“It has to stop at some point. I want to see where it goes.”
We round a corner and I stop short. It seems Austin is about to get his wish. Rather than another staircase or ramp or fork, the hall halts in a solid wall. I automatically walk forward to check if it’s a hidden door, shoving it with my shoulder.
It pops open.
I freeze.
The room we stumbled upon appears to be a common room, filled with a few plush chairs and lit by a burning hearth. On those plush chairs sit three servants.
They were engaged in conversation but stopped as soon as I entered. All three heads swivel toward me. “Who are you?” one young man says.
“Oh, we…we are…”
Austin peeps up from behind me. “We’re the new cleaning crew. Mr. Hawksley told us to sweep out this hall. Sorry, we didn’t know there was a door here. We’ll get back to work.”
All three men stand and walk toward us. “Mr. Hawksley isn’t planning on hiring any new cleaning crew.”
Austin laughs nervously. “It was a last-minute thing, really. He probably just didn’t get the chance to…” The excuses do nothing to stop the servants’ advance. “Run, Cannan!”
I spin around on my heel and bolt back down the hallway, not even bothering to close the door. Our pursuers speed up to match our pace, shouting after us to stop. My eyes dart between my phone screen and the winding passage as I rush to turn off the flashlight.
The surroundings are plunged into darkness. Almost immediately, I crash into a wall and slam my head into hard wood. Stumbling away, dazed, I turn and resume sprinting. My head pulses with pain in time with my pounding footsteps.
A hand grabs my arm and jerks me to the right. “Stand here very quietly,” Austin whispers in my ear.
The hallway is completely quiet. I hold my breath. Where did the servants go? Did they stop chasing us this easily?
A second later, I get an answer. The whole hall becomes as bright as day. I can now see that Austin pulled me into one of the intersecting hallways. A corner blocks me from seeing the servants—at least until they come into the intersection and shine their blinding flashlight directly at us.
I lose all sense of strategy and rationale. I only know one word.
Escape.
We dart down the unfamiliar hall and come across a steep staircase. It’ll slow us down, but at least it’ll slow the servants down, too. Hopefully.
After a minute of running up stairs, my heart pounds louder than my head and my breath comes in gasps. Yet there are still many stairs to go, and the servants seem to keep up with us, if not coming closer.
“Austin,” I wheeze between gulps of air. “Once we get to the top, run in a different direction. I’ll draw them away and buy you time.”
He nods. “I’ll—“ A deep breath. “—come back for you.”
Cresting the stairs, we reach level ground. The hall runs straight forward and stops at a door. I push toward it with everything I have left; Austin follows close behind.
The servants all shout louder than they were before. “Don’t go out there! There’s a drop-off!” “Be careful, you’re going to fall!”
I block out their words. Of course they’d try to scare us into stopping. Barely slowing, I turn the handle and fling the door open.
On the other side is nothing but air.
My arms flail and I kick one foot back, but I’m moving forward too quickly.
I have no choice but to watch as momentum pushes me over the edge.
A thousand thoughts fly through my mind in that moment. Eva was right. About everything. This search was doomed to fail from the beginning. If only I could talk to her one more time, thank her for telling me the truth.
But she will never hear it from my lips.
Fingers dig into my back, grabbing my shirt. The cloth stretches against my neck as I’m pulled back from the brink. My feet find solid ground and I turn back to face the hall. The three servants stand at the top of the stairs, flashlight barely visible with sunlight streaming in.
Austin is beside me, breathing hard, hands on his knees. “You’re welcome.”
My legs are jelly and my ears ring. I glance out the door.
For whatever reason, the house’s builder felt the need to add a door to the outside wall of the top story. Far below us is the courtyard of the Hawksley Manor, barely visible in the night. A shudder runs through me as I imagine myself plummeting all the way down.
“Alright, you two.” A stern voice brings me back to the present. The servant holding the flashlight clicks it off and steps forward. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re trespassing. Unless you would rather we call the police, come with us. Mr. Hawksley will be very interested in hearing your story.” Something about his tone makes it clear—Hawksley’s interest is not casual curiosity.
But I can only guess what he’ll do with us.
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