Penny Dreadful (24 page)

D
ARK IN THE
D
EEP

W
alking quickly, the four friends turned off Main Street and onto a twisty mountain road. They walked in a single line up the narrow shoulder. It was scary, walking along the road like that, but it wasn’t long before Luella suddenly turned to face the guardrail on her right and climbed over it. Then, from where Penny was standing, she appeared to walk straight off the cliff, with Jasper close behind her.

Penny and Duncan leaned over the guardrail to peer after the two girls. They found them crouched, sliding on their bottoms down a very steep hill. Penny and Duncan looked at each other nervously, took a deep breath, and did the same, carefully. They stepped over the metal rail and then slid, with pebbles and dirt scattering beneath them, down into a kind of ravine full of very tall trees. At the bottom was a creek bed, where only the merest trickle of water still ran. Luella led the way along the trickle, past boulders, rusted tin cans, a broken lawn chair, and a moldy duffel bag, beneath a web of leafy green braches and dappled sunlight.

Finally they came to the mouth of a cave. The cave was a black hole cut into the side of the mountain, a gaping yawn. Just above the cave someone had spray-painted the words
NO ENTRY
.

Standing by the opening, Penny shivered. The air that came from the cave’s mouth was cool. She could see nothing past the mouth of the cave. Luella turned on her flashlight and pointed it into the dim. The cave was so enormous, so cavernous, so huge, that the flashlight beam hardly made a dent in the darkness. Who knew what lurked in there?

“You all ready?” Luella asked as she tied the end of her string around a tree that stood at the cave’s mouth.

Penny, who only an hour before had been absolutely certain that the solution to everything waited inside this cave, now felt unsure.

“How will we ever find
anything
in there?” asked Jasper. “It’s so dark.”

“That’s what makes it a treasure
hunt,
” explained Luella. “If the treasure were hanging out in a nice, dry, little cave next to a big sign that said
TREASURE
, it wouldn’t
still
be
there, would it? Somebody else would have found it long before us.”

Penny stared timidly into the pitch-black of the cave. She turned on her flashlight, and Jasper and Duncan followed suit. Three more beams of light met the first and roved around the cave walls like searchlights. When the kids all pointed their beams directly ahead at the cave’s floor about twenty feet in, they saw a plank of wood.

“What’s that wood for?” asked Duncan.

“That’s a bridge,” said Luella. “It’s to keep you from falling into the gully.”

“Gully?” whispered Jasper.

“Well,” qualified Luella, “I don’t know if it’s
technically
a gully, but it’s a big hole in the ground.”

“How big a hole?” asked Duncan. “I mean, if I fell into it, would I … make it?”

“What’s
in
the gully?” asked Penny.

“Oh, come
on
!” cried Luella. “You guys are a pack of sissies.
Yes
, there is a gully, and
yes
, it is deep and scary, and
yes
, it is very dark in the cave, and
yes
, there might even be animals inside it. How do I know? I don’t check with all the animals in the woods, find out their schedules! This is
supposed
to be a treasure hunt, not a tea party!” With that, Luella tromped off into the darkness, her flashlight beam trained on the cave floor just ahead
of her. When her feet hit the plank of wood, Penny could hear a different kind of thud. The clear string unspooled behind her with a whisper. It was very thin string.

The others looked at each other and then pointed their flashlights in Luella’s direction, but she had gone too far into the cave to see much besides a little blur of light. This was not reassuring.

“Come ON—ON—ON—ON!” echoed Luella’s voice, bouncing against the cave walls insistently. Penny, Duncan, and Jasper stared at each other.

“You first,” said Duncan, nudging Penny. “This was
your
idea.”

It
was
her idea, and she did want to find the treasure. She
needed
to find the treasure. With a huge breath, Penny stepped after her friend into the cave, staring at the spot of cave floor illuminated by her flashlight beam. Gently, she touched the taut piece of clear plastic string that connected her to Luella ahead. When she reached the shivery, shaky plank of wood, she tiptoed onto it, trying just to stare at her feet and not to think about what lay beneath it in the gully. She wanted to hang on to the piece of string, but she didn’t, for fear it would snap.

Penny could feel how enormous the drafty space around her was. It was chilly and smelled like a basement, or maybe like rain. She stopped for a second and
pointed her flashlight directly above her, but the ceiling was so high that the spot of light disappeared before it could find the stone roof of the cave. Penny pointed the light back at her feet and stared again at the only spot she could make out in the dark, the white-yellow spot of light traveling six inches ahead of her feet, the speck of light that illuminated the filthy plank of wood. Above her she heard a small scratchy sound, and then a rustle and a flapping of wings. Something brushed past her in the dark, and she gasped, teetered, wobbled, and almost fell.

“Lu?” she called out in a tiny voice. No answer.

“Luella? Are you there?” Her voice echoed endlessly. Penny reached out wildly for the plastic string again but couldn’t find it.

Then Luella’s voice came back, warm and friendly, from just a few feet ahead. “You’re doing great! Come on, Penny!”

Penny pointed her flashlight directly in front of her at waist level and caught a glimpse of blue denim.

“You only need to walk about ten feet, and then there’s solid ground,” said Luella. “I promise.”

“Okay,” said Penny. “I can do that.”

Behind her Penny could feel Duncan and Jasper stepping onto the plank. Each time more weight was added, the plank bounced slightly. Penny felt frozen, but she forced herself to inch along. Because she
knew
what waited for her on the other side was Luella—and the treasure. She minced forward, her arms rigid in front of her, clutching the flashlight, until suddenly the spot of light before her revealed a dirty stone floor. Penny sprang forward. She thought she’d never been as happy as she was the minute she felt her feet on the reassuring stone surface of the cave floor. She wanted to lie down on it and kiss it.

In the darkness Luella’s hand found Penny’s arm. They lit each other’s faces up and both grinned.

“I did it!” said Penny.

“You sure did,” answered Luella. “And look, here’s Duncan!” She pointed her flashlight at where Duncan was stepping off the plank.

Penny heard a thump, which was Duncan sitting down on the ground immediately.

When he spoke, he sounded relieved and overwhelmed. “W-w-wow,” he said. “Let’s not tell my parents about this.”

Jasper followed, hopping off the plank and hitting the stone floor with a small thud.

“Gosh, Luella,” she called out. “You really do this alone, all by yourself? What if you fell into the gully?”

Luella snickered.

“What?” asked Duncan. “What’s so funny?”

Luella laughed louder.

“What
is
it?” asked Penny, mildly exasperated.

“I lied,” said Luella with a snort. “That
gully
is only a ditch about a foot deep. I dragged the plank there myself one time when it was full of gross water and leaves and my shoes got all wet. I just wanted to see if you guys were chicken. The good news is you aren’t!”

“Hey!” said Duncan. “Hey, that’s mean. I was really scared.”

“That really wasn’t very nice, Luella,” said Jasper.

But Penny found she was strangely grateful to Luella
for the fib. She didn’t
tell
her friend that, because she didn’t think Luella needed to be rewarded for her tricks, and Jasper and Duncan seemed genuinely upset. Still, Penny felt good about what she’d just done, extremely good. So what if it wasn’t really a dangerous gully and a narrow, teetery bridge? It
had
been for a few minutes, as far as Penny was concerned.

Penny smiled in the darkness. With nobody to see her joy, she felt her face split open in a goofy grin. Then she stuck her tongue out and flailed her arms, taking full advantage of the invisibility. It felt good.

“Okay, so now what?” asked Duncan, standing up and brushing off the seat of his jeans. He aimed his flashlight at Luella.

“Over here,” she said, patting the wall beside her. “Follow me along this wall, until you come to an opening.”

They all followed in the dark, with the thin light from their flashlights bouncing along and their hands flat against the wall, until they found the opening. Then they stepped into a much smaller passage. It was long and narrow, and together their four flashlights were enough to cast a dim yellow light evenly throughout the room. The four kids blinked happily, surprised and delighted to see each other’s smudgy faces. The inside of the cave looked how Penny imagined the inside of a dripped
sand castle, all brown and gray and full of stalagmites and stalactites. The walls were wet. There were tunnels leading off in different directions.

“Ooh!” said Penny, glancing around at the shadows and shapes.

“This is
much
better,” said Jasper.

“Yeah,” said Luella. “Almost all the caves are skinny like this once you get past that one big room. Some are really just little tunnels.”

“So,” said Penny, looking at Luella. “
Now
what? Where do we start?”

“You tell me,” said Luella. “I got us here, but you’re the one who’s so sure we’re going to find the treasure today. I’ve been looking for years and haven’t had any luck yet. What’s
your
plan?”

“Oh,” said Penny. “I don’t know. Let me think.”

In Penny’s imagination, the plan had simply been to
find
the treasure. She had envisioned herself stumbling upon the treasure chest and opening it with a creak to reveal a wealth of gold bars and nuggets and coins. She had imagined arriving home with her pockets and hands full of riches, but that was as far as she’d gotten with her plan. She had figured out
what
was supposed to happen, just not
how
it would happen. Penny hadn’t given much thought to the details of the search itself.

So now Penny closed her eyes and felt for an answer. She put her hand in her pocket, touched the note, and said silently,
I wish I knew what to do. I wish there would be a sign
.

Penny waited. No sign.

She tried again, whispering this time, barely mouthing the words. “
Just a tiny sign? Anything at all?
”

Penny searched for a doorknob to turn, and this time something happened. Somewhere down the long, dark tunnel, there was a sound. The sound was so small that nobody else even heard it. It was the sound of a small stick breaking, or the sound of a pebble falling. It was the faint echo of a sound. But Penny heard it.