The Curse of Deadman's Forest (26 page)

Ian eagerly mounted the chair. Very carefully, he lifted the bottom of the earl’s hunting trophy just enough to shine his torch behind it.

He had thought to find the key dangling on a nail, so it was with no small amount of surprise when he gasped and said, “There’s a safe here!”

“Safe?” Carl and Theo said together.

Ian put his torch into his pocket and firmly lifted the antelope head off its nail. It was much lighter than he’d expected, and he handed it to Carl. Ian then pulled his torch back out to closely inspect the safe. It had a combination lock, and when he pulled on the handle, it was stuck fast. “We’ll never get in,” he said, disappointed. “Who knows what combination the earl’s chosen for the lock?”

“Maybe he’s written it down somewhere nearby?” Carl suggested.

“Where?” Ian asked him.

“Dunno, mate,” Carl said with a small grin. “Ask the dial.”

Ian held the dial up and asked, “If the earl has written down the combination to the safe, show us where we might locate it.”

The dial formed a shadow, which pointed across the room. Ian looked up and saw the earl’s huge mahogany desk
directly in line with the shadow. “It says it’s in his desk,” Ian told them. Carl and Theo dashed across the room and began to pull open drawers and search through the earl’s papers. Ian got down off his chair and moved to help them. When he got close, he held the dial right in front of the desk, hoping it would point to a drawer, but instead it pointed directly at the surface. “It’s somewhere in that clutter,” Ian said, motioning to the pile of papers littering the top.

“Oh!” said Theo. “It will take us hours to sort through all this!”

Carl gave up rooting through the drawer he’d pulled open and suggested, “Why don’t you go back to the safe, Ian, and when we find a set of numbers that look like they may be a combination, we’ll call them out for you to try.”

Ian nodded and hurried back to the safe. He waited several minutes while Theo and Carl sifted through the various letters, bits of scrap paper, and newspapers that were heaped on the earl’s desk. “Nothing here looks to me like a combination,” Theo said. Moving a pile of papers to the floor, she squinted at the earl’s calendar blotter. “Maybe he’s written it on here,” she mused.

Growing impatient, Ian turned back to the safe and muttered, “What could the combination be?” After thinking on it, he came up with a small hunch. He tried the earl’s birthday, which he knew because the date was celebrated every year at the orphanage. “Thirty-first, March, 1902,” he said as he spun the dial to thirty-one, then three, then two. Crossing his fingers, he gently pulled on the handle. Nothing
happened. “Blast it!” he muttered. He then tried several combinations of the earl’s birthday, but to no avail. The safe remained sealed tight.

With a sigh he resigned himself to waiting for Theo or Carl to suggest something when he happened to glance at the sundial. The thinnest of shadows was flashing rapidly on the half-past mark. “Huh?” Ian said, squinting down at the dial, and then, as if an idea blossomed in his mind, he turned the combination to the number thirty. Immediately, the shadow disappeared, then reappeared eight notches down from the twelve o’clock position. Ian quickly turned the lock back to the number eight. Glancing down for a third time at the dial’s surface, he was delighted when the shadow disappeared, then reappeared at the twenty-fifth notch. “Twenty-five,” he sang, and spun the dial of the lock forward to that number. There was a click from inside the safe and Ian gasped. “Oy!” he whispered excitedly to his friends. “I’ve done it! I’ve cracked the combination!”

Theo and Carl hurried over. “You have?” Carl asked.

“How’d you do it?”

Ian showed them the sundial proudly. “The dial pointed me to the numbers,” he explained. “Thirty, eight, twenty-five!”

“Ian!” Theo gasped. “That’s your birthday! Thirtieth of August, 1925. Oh! And now I know why it said it was written on the earl’s desk! He’s got your birthday marked on his calendar.”

He blinked at her in shock. He was quite surprised that
not only had the earl marked his birthday, but he’d chosen it to hide his most valuable treasures. Ian didn’t know what to make of that.

“Well, open it, Ian!” Carl said encouragingly.

Ian smiled and got back to the task of retrieving the key. Carefully he pulled up on the handle, which turned easily, and the door to the safe popped opened. Then he moved the beam of his torch to the interior, illuminating an enormous stack of English pound notes, glimmering gems, and various gold watches and other jewelry. “Blimey!” he gasped at the sight.

“Do you see the key?” whispered Theo urgently.

In the face of so much treasure, Ian had almost forgotten about the key. “Yeah,” he said, spying it toward the back of the safe. “It’s right here—” But as he reached for the key, something awful happened. A series of alarms sounded so loudly that he jerked back and fell off the chair. He toppled to the ground with a tremendous crash and Carl had to help him back to his feet. “Run for it!” his friend shouted as he tugged on Ian’s arm.

“The key!” yelled Theo, stepping in front of them. “Get the key first!”

The sirens continued to wail and all about them they could feel the thunder of running feet as the castle came instantly to life and the earl’s staff hurried to find the intruder. Ian was shaking from head to toe while he worked the chair back against the wall and climbed up to reach inside the safe again. He’d dropped his torch in his fall and had to feel around for the key, but finally, he had it in hand, and at that
moment he leapt from the chair and dashed to the door leading to the yard.

“Where’re you going?” demanded Carl. “We should go back through the tunnel!”

“From this side of the castle, the portal’s just through the garden gate!” yelled Ian as he pulled open the door and waved at them to come along. “We can get there faster from here, and we’ve got to reach the gate before they realize we’ve got the key! If they know we have it, they’ll send someone to intercept us!”

“Ian’s right!” shouted Theo above the wailing siren. “Hurry!” she called, and dashed through the opening.

Ian held the door open for Carl, who had the foresight to retrieve the knapsack and torch from the floor before he followed Theo.

Ian was just hurrying out after Carl when the door to the study burst open and an explosion shattered the glass of the French door he was stepping through. Ian ducked low and made a sharp zigzag to his left as another loud explosion rocketed behind him and a clump of grass shot up just off to his right.
“They’re shooting at us!”
he heard Carl shriek from up ahead.

“Get to the portal!” Ian commanded, making sure to weave his way across the lawn as several additional explosions sounded behind them and more grass flew up in huge clumps from all sides.

“It’s too far!” cried Theo. “We’ll never make it!”

And as if that weren’t enough to deal with, somewhere nearby, rising above the wail of the sirens, a bone-chilling
howl sounded in the night and nearly caused Ian to stumble. To make matters worse, that lone howl was immediately picked up by another, equally horrible, and the two haunting choruses reverberated across the land.

Ian’s heart thundered. He couldn’t decide whether it was safer to go back toward the people who were shooting at them or continue their mad dash across the lawn—which would lead them straight into the jaws of the beasts.

“They’re coming up over the wall!” Carl screamed, his voice ragged with fear as he pointed straight ahead.

Ian nearly stumbled again when he caught sight of the enormous black shadow, which leapt easily over the gate they were racing toward. At that instant another explosion sounded from behind him just before a clump of dirt and grass whipped hard into Ian’s thigh.

Making a split-second decision, he grabbed hold of Theo’s arm and pulled her to the right. “This way!” he called, changing course and running sharply toward a large row of hedges on the west side of the lawn.

“Where are you going?” Carl yelled as he came up alongside them.

“To the maze!” Ian said. “We can hide in there until the earl’s men deal with the beasts!”

Behind them it appeared that was already happening. Calls and shouts of “The beasts! The beasts!” were echoing about the lawn, and Ian was at once relieved that no more gunfire was being aimed directly at them, but also terrified that the earl’s men had to contend with
two
of the ugly brutes. And he was sure there were two, because when he
chanced a look over his shoulder, he could see a second black shadow clear the castle wall. With a gulp, Ian sincerely hoped the earl’s men had more guns.

However, he had to focus on reaching the maze and hope that the beasts were far enough away that he could get the three of them safely hidden until they could figure out what to do next.

He realized belatedly that it had been a dreadful mistake to take the garden path instead of the tunnel, but there was no going back now. What was done was done.

With a small dose of relief, Ian reached the garden maze with the others and rushed inside. Theo led the way, which was a good thing, because Ian had not been there for many years. He knew that in recent months, Theo and Jaaved had often visited the maze, sometimes playing there for hours.

He followed her dutifully to the first right turn, then along the hedge for a bit to a left, then another quick left, and finally to an open spot, which had both a right and left exit. In the background was the now nearly constant barrage of gunfire, growling, howling, and commotion. He crossed his fingers that the beasts would be shot dead, but as they made yet another left turn, the gunfire ended, and Ian heard someone say, “I’ve run out of ammunition! Someone fetch me some bullets or find me another gun!” Ian bit his lip. There was a terrified scream then, and the sound of breaking glass. Theo nearly tripped in front of him and he managed to catch her before she fell.

“The beasts are attacking the castle!” Carl said from behind him. And sure enough, there was another roar and
several more screams, followed by the sound of overturned furniture and splintering wood.

“We have to get as deep into the maze as we can!” Ian warned.

The hedge maze at Castle Dover was hundreds of years old. It had been built by the seventh Duke of Kent for his bride, and in all that time, the ancient hedges had grown thick and nearly impenetrable. They would not be able to stop a bullet, but they might hold back a monster made of flesh and bone—at least for a little while.

Theo ran on, twisting and turning with each new choice. Ian had no idea how she managed to keep track of such a complicated course, but finally she came to an abrupt stop, panting hard with her hand on her chest. “This … is … it,” she wheezed with a sweep of her hand. “This … is … the center … of the maze.”

The boys tumbled to the ground and lay there side by side, breathing heavily. Ian closed his eyes while his heart thumped loudly in his ears, but not loudly enough to drown out the chaos all about the lawn.

There was still a terrible ruckus happening near the earl’s study, but suddenly a new series of explosions resonated from the northeast section of the lawn, followed by the deafening screech of a wounded animal. Ian’s eyes flew open and Carl exclaimed, “They’ve shot one!”

Ian sat up, straining his ears for any indication that at least one of the beasts was dead. He could hear men shouting, and now a horde of dogs were baying and barking as the earl’s hounds were released into the hunt.

A furious cascade of growls, howls, and baying all but obliterated the sound of the men, but soon more gunfire resounded in the night. Ian, Carl, and Theo held perfectly still while they listened intently, and soon the noise drifted off to somewhere well northeast of their position. “I think they’re all moving toward the village,” Ian whispered.

As if to confirm that, a howl pierced the din of dogs and humans, and it did seem to be coming from the direction of the center of Dover. “Oh, my,” whispered Theo. “I hope they kill those awful creatures before they hurt anyone!”

Ian wiped the sweat from his brow. The sirens coming from inside the castle had stopped abruptly, and now they could clearly hear the voices of the members of the earl’s staff who had not joined the hunt. A discussion was taking place somewhere nearby on the lawn.

“I shall alert the earl immediately,” said a voice that sounded like Binsford’s. “I just thank heavens that no one was hurt, although you may want to comfort Miss Baker. She had a frightful scare before we pulled her through the door away from that beast.”

“What about the intruders?” asked a woman, and Ian suspected that it was Miss Carlyle, another of the earl’s staff. “Was anything taken?”

“No,” said Binsford. “I believe the alarm startled the intruders and they left before they could get their grubby hands on any of the valuables. I’ve looked through the safe myself, and the inventory seems intact.”

“How did they find their way in?” asked Miss Carlyle.

“I’m quite certain they broke the glass on one of the
French doors and unlocked it,” Binsford replied. “I managed to get several rounds off at them but I’m afraid I blew apart the door in the process.”

“Did you get a good look at them at least?”

“Only one,” Binsford confessed. “A wiry-looking fellow just shy of my own height, I’d wager.” Ian’s brows shot up in surprise. That was exactly how tall he was.

“I don’t expect they’ll be back tonight,” said Miss Carlyle.

“No,” Binsford agreed. “I suspect they’ll take this opportunity to flee Kent, in fact—that is,
if
they manage to escape the beasts and our men on foot.”

“You say that one of the beasts is dead?”

“Yes,” Binsford confirmed. “It was shot by Robert the hounds man. A bloody good marksman he is. Shot the brute right through the heart.”

Ian felt relief. If one of the beasts was dead, and the other was being chased off by the earl’s men, then he, Theo, and Carl should be safe enough to leave the maze and make their way down to the portal without being seen. Ian was quite certain that every available man was in hot pursuit of the remaining beast.