Searching For Treasure

chapter 5

As the morning passed, Dana began to relax into the scary yet wonderful feelings she now experienced around Jack. Things weren't really all that different, she decided, she was just much more aware of the physical intimacy that had always existed between them. They had always touched each other; holding hands, affectionate hugs, casual kisses. But what had always been natural and comfortable now seemed strangely exciting.

She began to fear less and less the warm glow she felt spreading through her whenever she looked at him. It was the same kind of warmth she saw looking back at her through Jack's eyes. A look, she realized with a start, that she had been seeing for some time now.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! She gave herself a mental head slap. What's wrong with me? Am I blind or just a coward?

"Rose was right," declared Jack, wiping ineffectively at the soot on his hands. "This is a filthy place to be hiding things." They had spent the morning poking around the different fireplaces on the ground floor. Jack loved to do research and had read up on old places in preparation for this weekend.

One book had mentioned that chimneys used to be fitted with a partition a little below the opening for the flue. The space below this was completely hollow and oftentimes the owner would have a secret hiding place built into the empty area. But it was apparent that the previous owners of Raven Keep Castle had preferred a cleaner place to keep their valuables.

With a devilish glint in his eye, Jack ran his finger down Dana's nose, leaving a streak. "Hey!" Dana shouted.

"I thought you looked way too clean."

"You turkey!" Jack waved his other blackened fingers at her menacingly. Dana cringed away, laughing. "Don't you dare."

Thinking better of his threat, Jack dropped his hands and leaned against the mantel. "I’m very hungry,”Jack said in a sultry voice. Dana coughed and her pupils widened.“Shouldn't it be close to lunchtime?" he continued in his normal voice.

Dana looked at her watch. "Pretty soon I would imagine."

"I wonder if lunch is going to be as lavish as breakfast and supper was."

"The Cook is becoming something of a mystery. None of the guests have seen her yet. The food just seems to appear as if by magic."

This observation was interrupted by voices drifting through the open window, one ringing with anger, the other one pleading, and both rapidly heading towards the castle.

"You said you had a hold of me!"

"I did. My hand slipped."

Josie came dashing into the castle, fighting mad and close to tears. She was also covered in mud from her chin to her knees. Noah followed, clearly upset. Josie whirled on him. "You did it on purpose," Josie said.

"I didn't! Dana, tell her I wouldn't do such a thing."

"He wouldn't do such a thing,”she repeated dutifully. She looked at her brother suspiciously. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! She thinks I intentionally dropped her in the mud."

Dana's lips twitched. "Did you?"

"No!"

"What happened?" Jack asked grinning, clearly enjoying himself.

"There's an old oak tree out back that has a big hole in it just above your head,”Josie began, illustrating with her hands a circle about eight inches across.

"The Whispering Oak?" Jack said.

"No, a different one. In case you haven't noticed, Jack, the place is drowning with oak trees," Noah said.

"Noah, don't be rude." Dana turned to Josie. "Go ahead and finish your story."

"Anyway, Uncle Oscar said that sometimes people used to use holes in trees like mailboxes, you know, to pass letters back and forth? I just wanted to see if maybe something could be inside. But someone had left a garden hose running and there was a big mud hole right where I needed to stand. We dragged a box over, but I still needed to kind of reach way over." Josie twisted her body in an unconscious demonstration. "He said he had me."

"I did." Noah turned to his sister in a desperate appeal. "I didn't mean to, I swear."

Dana tried mightily, but she couldn't quite keep a grin from peeking through. Taking pity, she told the furious girl, "He might be a pain-in-the-butt little brother, but he doesn't lie. If he said it was an accident, you can believe him."

Josie gave an unladylike snort, but seemed somewhat mollified. "I'm a mess."

"There seems to be a lot of that going around," Dana offered, rubbing the smudge on her nose. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

As they headed upstairs, they could hear Jack's laughter rolling up behind them and Noah declaring hotly, "It's not funny."

A half hour later, Josie was freshly scrubbed and changed, and looking very pretty in another pair of short-shorts, canary yellow this time, and a matching tank-top. She seemed quite embarrassed about her display of temper earlier. "I'm sorry I got all riled at Noah, Miss Parker.”

"Don't worry about it,”she replied as they headed down the hall from Josie's bathroom, turning into the girl's bedroom. "And I think we know each other well enough that you can drop the 'Miss'. Besides, it kind of makes me feel old maid-ish."

Dana moved to the window and looked down. Josie's bedroom was right above the kitchen and dining area and her window looked out towards the gazebo in the back. Down below, she could see Mark taking giant paces along a string of flagstones partially obscured by the overgrown lawn, making her think of a pirate marking out steps for a treasure map.

The path he was following led to what was only barely recognizable as a structure. She could just make out the remains of a sloped roof and a deteriorating porch made of rough wooden planks. It was dotted with huge gaping holes. "What's that,”she asked, pointing.

"That's an old servant cabin. Not much left of it though."

"Cool. I'll have to remember to tell Jack. He'll get a big kick out of poking around."

"Until he disturbs an adder,”Josie joked, referring to a poisonous snake common to the area.

"On second thought-"

Josie had her knees pulled up to her chin in a display of flexibility Dana would have been envious of even when she was Josie's age. Josie was biting her lip thoughtfully and looked at Dana with a solemn expression. "I really like him."

She gave the girl the courtesy of not asking whom she meant. "I think he really likes you, too."

"I'm really jealous of you." As non-sequiturs went, this one was a beaut.

"For heavens sake, why?"

"Because of Jack."

Dana felt her jaw drop. She hadn't expected this. "What?" Dana looked heavenward at the hand-painted ceiling above her hoping for a bolt of inspiration on how to handle the remark. Nothing was forthcoming. "Uh-um, I thought we were talking about Noah."

"We were, I mean we are. Oh, you thought-no! I mean, because of you and Jack, the way you are together."

"Sweetie, I'm sorry, but you've lost me."

"I know you two are just supposed to be friends and stuff, but, you know, you're really great together. The way you talk to each other and listen to each other. He likes you. And you like him. And there's a, I guess you'd call it respect." Josie stopped for a moment as she thought about what she'd just said. "Noah's the first guy to treat me the way Jack treats you."

Finally the verbal threads Josie had been trying to weave together started to show a pattern and Dana began to see what this conversation was about. "You mean he treats you with respect."

"Yeah. With most guys it's like I wear this sign that says 'Boneheaded Blonde: Butt & Boobs, But No Brain'. But Noah doesn't treat me that way. Like he doesn't think I'm a twit. I think it's because he has you for a sister and Jack as a friend. He grew up seeing how men and women are supposed to act toward each other."

Dana had never thought about it, but now that she did, she felt that Josie was probably right. Sometimes you can teach more by example than by any other way. She couldn't wait to tell Jack that they'd become a teenage role model for relationships. He'd laugh his head off.

"Noah was taught to respect people, men and women equally. But most of the time respect isn't that freely given. A lot of people expect you to earn it. And respect, like charity, begins at home. You need to learn to respect yourself. Once you can do that, then guys like Noah won't seem so uncommon. Come on; let's see if lunch is ready. I'm starved."

They left the bedroom and headed down the hall towards the second floor landing, passing a door Dana had not noticed before. Josie stopped abruptly. "Miss, I mean, Dana, look. That door is not supposed to be open." Dana moved closer to the door in question, which was ajar about four inches. With the toe of her shoe she pushed it open wider, quite surprised when it moved silently on its hinges. She had expected it to squeak. Beyond it she saw stairs that led upward into nothing but darkness.

"What's up there?" Dana asked.

"This leads to the widow's walk. My great uncle said that the last owner built it to try and make the castle more romantic. But the door is supposed to be sealed. Uncle Oscar doesn't want anyone up there."

Dana vaguely remembered seeing the widow's walk, hanging like an afterthought on the front of the castle close to the top, wrapped with a wrought iron railing. There had been a door, she recalled, set in the back of it.

Light filtering in from the hallway showed years of accumulated dust covering the treads of the stairs ahead of her. She could also see traces of footprints where the dust had been disturbed. "Somebody's been in here. Hello! Anyone up there?" Hearing nothing, after a moment Dana moved forward towards the stairs.

Josie grabbed her arm. "Wait, maybe we shouldn't. It's not supposed to be safe."

But Dana was practically vibrating with excitement. This was right out of her childhood fantasies, a Nancy Drew adventure come to life, exploring a hidden staircase in an old castle. "Somebody's been this way. If we leave the door open, there will be plenty of light to see by." Josie's hand was still clutching her arm and Dana patted it in reassurance. "We'll check each step before we use it. If any of them seem weak or loose, we'll go back, I promise." She linked her fingers with Josie's, surprised to find them cold. She gave them a comforting squeeze. "Think of this as an adventure."

Leading the way and propelled by curiosity, Dana stepped cautiously onto the first step, deliberately placing her foot inside the print in the dust. The shoe that had made the print was much larger than her own, a man's shoe. The impulse to put a sinister meaning to the shoe prints leading her up was very strong. With a rueful chuckle at her own imagination, she told herself they were probably made by Oscar when he had inspected the castle.

Just as she had promised Josie, she tested each step before putting her weight on it. Each one appeared as solid as the last. Halfway up the staircase, Dana thought she could detect a faint light above her. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. The best that she could recall was there had been no windows in the door that led out onto the widow's walk. That meant whoever had been up here, had left the outside door open.

Someone else had taken these stairs since yesterday.

A slight scuffing sound made her pause. She wasn't able to tell if the sound was above her, below her or right next to her. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand at attention. Images of spiders, bats and other creepy-crawlies that hid in the shadows flashed through her mind. Holding her breath, she strained her ears for any further sound. The silence seemed to pulse around them.

"Nuts." Dana laughed softly to herself. "I'm getting jumpy in my old age."

But Josie had heard it too, and began to tremble beside her. "Dana, I'm scared."

"There's nothing to be scared of." As if mocking her, the door below them closed with a soft click, cutting off their light.

Josie squeaked in fright and Dana silenced her with a hand across her mouth, although she felt like squeaking, too. She didn't know how she knew it, but somehow she was aware that this wasn't just simply someone passing by and shutting an open door.

The silence seemed to pound at her for what seemed like an eternity until she heard what she had been listening for, what she knew she would hear: a creaking footstep at the bottom of the stair.

Someone was in there with them, someone lurking in silence. The weight of it pressed on her. She wanted to believe it was simply one of their castle mates playing a practical joke, a haunted castle trick. But instinct told her differently. She tried to convince herself that the palpable sense of danger she felt radiating from the bottom of the stairs was simply her imagination and she and Josie were going to look and feel very foolish before long. But she couldn't quite manage it. There was something ominous and threatening about the waiting silence below them.

The second step creaked.

When writers of thrillers would refer to the blood freezing in someone's veins, Dana had always believed that it was just a colorful metaphor. Now she knew exactly what they meant. In fact, her whole body felt frozen. The only thing that still seemed to be working was her heart, which was beating as if it expected to be paid time and a half.

The darkness was suffocating; the only relief was the faint glow above them. Dana could feel perspiration dampening the hair around her face. The Nancy Drew adventure had become a nightmare and the excitement had morphed into fear.

Another step, careful, measured, deliberate. Whoever was down there wanted them to be more than just frightened. He or she wanted them totally terrified. The question was why?

Then amazingly, floating down to them from above, a shout of laughter. Of course, there were people outside.

Dana thought about calling for help, but by the time anyone figured out where they were, it could be too late. Too late for what, she refused to examine. There was only one thing they could do, one place they could go. Dana put her mouth to Josie's ear and whispered, "We have to go up." Josie's body was stiff with fright and she wasn't sure her words had registered. But an instant later, she shook her head, a short choppy movement. Keeping it simple, Dana tried again. "Up. People outside. They can help us."

Finally Josie nodded. Dana removed her hand and began heading up the stairs as quickly as she dared. Thankfully, Josie followed her.

The light from above increased rapidly but so did the pace of the footsteps ascending towards them, which soon quickened into a trot. The only consolation was that whoever was down there had even less light than they did. She hoped.

Soon there was enough daylight filtering in to see their way clearly. Taking a deep breath, she yelled, "Run!" The sound of the single shouted word after so many minutes of strained silence was like a body blow. Dana tore up the steps, praying that Josie was following. The sound of her feet pounding the old wood, the sound of her breath in her ears drowned out all other sounds. Their pursuer could've been right behind them or could've given up and gone home. She had no way of knowing.

The door was directly ahead of her, partially open. She could see it and a section of the roof the walk was anchored to. She picked up her pace, desperate to get outside. For some reason the site of their goal so near, instead of reassuring her, kicked her fear up a notch from desperate to panicked. She had to get out into the open air. She had to get to the daylight where it was safe.

Dana flung herself through the door. The walk was narrower than she had imagined and with no room to stop, she slammed into the metal railing. She felt it move under her hands.

Before she could pull back, Josie raced through the doorway a split second behind her, colliding at a dead run into Dana's back. With a bone-chilling shriek of ripping metal, the railing gave way and they pitched forward into empty space.

Dana didn't have time to scream before she felt her body wrench and slap against hard, unforgiving metal. Somehow she had managed to hook her right arm around a curved section of the elaborately designed ironwork, which by some miracle was still stubbornly clinging to the castle at one end. In desperation, Josie had grabbed Dana around the waist as they fell. The railing shuddered and swayed with their weight.

Her mind in shock, Dana couldn't quite grasp that they hadn't fallen the three or so stories to the ground below. Her right arm was bearing the brunt of their weight, her left hand clutching the rail in a death's grip. Her body felt pulled and stretched, and her arms strained with Josie's weight dragging on her. The harsh metal bit into her skin painfully and she felt an iron flower piercing her cheek.

In mindless panic, Josie began kicking and thrashing her feet, her mouth pressed against Dana's belly in a silent scream. The hanging metal vibrated cruelly.

"Josie, for God's sake, be still!" She could vaguely make out shouting and the sounds of confusion somewhere underneath them. "Somebody help us!"

"Oh, God, I'm slipping!" Fear giving her strength, Josie's arms tightened around Dana's middle, making it harder to breathe.

She didn't know how long they hung there. Time seemed to stretch on endlessly. Then Rose's voice, as calm and as unruffled as if she'd been asking for the salt, sailed up to surround them with sanity. "All right, Josie, we're going to catch you now. You can let go."

The terrified girl sucked in her breath and let it out in a single sob. "I can't."

Oscar's voice, only slightly less calm than Rose's had been, followed. "Yes, you can. Josie. Please, you have to trust us. We'll catch you. Let go."

Dana couldn't see what was happening below her. The metal against her face and the blue Sky behind it took up her whole field of vision. Her senses had heightened painfully. The Sky seemed too bright to her eyes, the smell of rust in her nostrils too pungent, and Rose's voice was too clear in her ears.

Josie was gasping huge painful breaths now and if possible was squeezing her even tighter. "Josie, please,”she cried. "My arm feels like it's breaking. I can't hold us anymore." Josie released her hold.

The sudden shift in weight, easing the tension on the rail, caused it to relax and swing, and the metal bolts holding it protested shrilly from the abuse. Dana felt a violent trembling, but she couldn't tell if it was her or the metal she clung to. Her heart pounded and her head felt tight as she waited to fall.

"Okay, Dana, now you," Rose said, calmly.

"I'm not sure I can." The arm she'd been hanging from felt numb and locked into position. Trying her best to support her weight with her left hand she painfully began extracting her right arm from the twisted design. Finally, once her wrist was free, she let go, falling backward into space.

She felt air rushing past her ears and then a cottony softness broke her fall, a softness that flung her body back up ever so slightly before she was gently lowered to the ground.

Jack and Noah were around her in an instant, holding her, kissing her, and crying over her. Their voices were a babbling roar in her head.

"Boys, give her room, let her breathe." Rose pulled them apart and helped Dana to her feet, her eyes searching Dana's face. "Girl, you scared the pee-wonky-doodle out of us."

Dana shocked everyone, herself most of all, when she dissolved into a fit of giggles at the bizarre choice of words. Jack moved towards her, fearing an onset of hysteria. But Rose waved him off, nodding in satisfaction. "She'll be all right."

The reason for their ordeal snapped back into her mind and Dana looked around her, searching for a missing face. Where’s Brett? Wait, there he was leaning against a tree, looking as white and shaken as everyone else. Even Austin, glowering as usual, was at the edge of the group clustered around her. While it had felt like a lifetime, she knew they couldn't have been hanging off of the widow's walk for more than a minute. Could their pursuer have gotten out here so quickly?

"Has everyone been out here the whole time?" Dana asked.

Puzzled faces greeted what seemed like a strange question, but Josie, who had been weeping softly in the warm circle of her uncle's arms, finally came to life. "That's right." She looked around accusingly. "Somebody chased us." Then with a broken sob, she threw herself into Dana's arms knocking her backwards into Jack, who grasped her tightly by the shoulders. Clutching Dana's shirt, Josie cried, "But you saved us. You held on and on, I was so scared, you didn't let go... you didn't let go."

Dana held her tightly and tried to offer comfort to the crying girl. "Hey, that's enough of that; you're going to make yourself sick." She pulled Josie away slightly and smiled gently. "Actually, I think it was they," she said with a nod at the others around them, "who saved us."

"It was Rose,”Henry said admiringly, speaking up for the first time. "Wow, I've never seen anyone better in a crisis. We were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, yelling for a ladder. But she ran inside with Mark in tow and had him pull down the drapes from the front room."

Dana looked at her feet, noticing for the first time the thick brocade fabric they had used to catch them. It was now looking a little frayed around the edges where fists had gripped it.

"It was the closest thing around that looked strong enough to use as a makeshift net. There wasn't time for a ladder, assuming we could find one," Rose said.

Everyone jumped when, with a groan and a final shudder, the wrought iron railing of the widow's walk gave up its tenacious hold on the castle and crashed into the bushes beside them.

Looking at Rose with heartfelt gratitude, Dana pulled the older woman into a group hug with Josie, who had refused to give up her hold.

"Thank you," Dana whispered fervently. "Thank you."

"Hey, hey, let's not get mushy." Rose pulled away gruffly, clearly embarrassed. "You'd have done the same."

"Dana, what happened?" asked Grace.

Expectant, curious faces looked at Dana. "Why don't I tell you about it inside?" Dana tugged ineffectually at Josie's arms, the girl still clinging to her like a barnacle. She was afraid she'd have to be surgically removed. "Shouldn't it be about time for lunch?"

Seemingly the result of some kind of second-sight, a light and simple lunch had been laid out, consisting of steaming bowls of thick and buttery tomato bisque and lightly toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. Chilled pitchers of fruit punch complimented the meal. After everyone was seated around the table, Oscar turned to his niece. "Josie, what were you doing up there? I know I told you, I didn't want anyone up there."

"Uncle Oscar, the door was open-”she began, but Dana interjected quickly.

"That was my fault," she insisted. "We saw the door was opened and that someone else had been up the stairs. I convinced Josie to do a little exploring. It seemed," she shrugged helplessly, "like fun."

"Yeah,”Josie shuddered, her eyes bright with remembering, "Until someone shut us up in there and began stalking us."

The already keen interest around the table sharpened at her words. "We thought it might have been one of you playing a gag." Dana decided not to mention the intuitive sense she'd had that whoever had followed them on the stairs had meant them real harm. She was aware that Josie had felt the same thing and hoped the girl would follow her lead. "I guess maybe we just overreacted."

"Overreacted!" Uncharacteristically silent for the past several minutes, Jack finally exploded. "Jeepers, you were almost killed!"

Josie's face blanched white and Dana cut Jack a warning glance.

Noah put a hand on his arm in an attempt to calm him down. "Hey, man, chill out, okay?" With a disgusted snort, Jack stormed out of the dining room. They all stared after him, everyone except Noah and Dana surprised by this unexpected display of temper. Noah shrugged an apology. "He had a bad scare. It makes him cranky."

"What about us?" Josie burst out uncharitably. "Someone tried to scare us to death and that was before we fell off the castle."

Everyone traded looks with everyone else and then looked back at Dana and Josie. Nobody admitted anything.

"I can't say for certain where everyone was just prior to the collapse of the widow's walk,”Oscar said, "but I do know that everyone participated in getting you down." He looked around the table. "We were all right there outside."

"Maybe," Brett, offered, strangely tentative, "you just imagined it?"

Dana stared at him incredulously. "Both of us?"

He shrugged. "Mass hysteria?"

"Could there be someone else in the castle?" Grace asked breathlessly.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Have you been reading those gothic romances again?"

"The only one here, besides all of us, is the Cook. She's an elderly lady that I highly doubt would be chasing young girls on darkened stairwells," Oscar said.

"A caretaker?" Grace continued stubbornly. "A handyman? The gardener?"

Oscar simply shook his head. "Josie and I have been doing all of the work ourselves. I haven't been able to afford part-time help since the contractors finished their repairs."

"What about a hobo or homeless man?" Grace said.

"With so many people constantly about? He would have been discovered by now."

"Maybe it was a ghost,”Noah said with a laugh, then subsided when no one else laughed, too.

"Oh, good God,”growled Austin.

"Hey, I was kidding."

The lunch conversation petered off after that with no satisfactory conclusions reached. Dana excused herself to her room. In the bright light of day, Dana was beginning to wonder if maybe she had overreacted to a simple prank and had infected Josie with the same paranoia. And once the joke turned nasty, the perpetrator was too ashamed or too embarrassed to now admit it. Somehow this explanation didn't feel right, but it made more sense than anything else did.