Walter looked uneasily at the hole the rat had disappeared into.
“Yeah, man. You got that right.” He shook his shoulders in an exaggerated shiver. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies. Thinking about all them crazies that lived here. And died here.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. It echoed in the corridor like turning pages. He looked from Jonathan to Colin. “You guys believe in ghosts?”
Colin shook his head, but he didn’t look so sure.
“I don’t know,” Jonathan said, squinting into the blackness ahead of them. “But if there are ghosts, this sure seems like the kind of place they’d be.”
“Yeah,” Walter answered. “No lie.” He looked at Jonathan. He had second thoughts written all over his face.
Jonathan put on a smile that was a lot braver than he felt.
“Well, let’s go find ’em, then.”
Walter shook his head and almost smiled.
“Fine. I’m following you, though.”
They wandered up and down staircases and peeked into sinister-looking side passages. Jonathan was hopelessly lost within minutes. They found one room they were pretty sure used to be some sort of dungeon; rusted chains dangled from the walls. They took a quick look and then kept going.
Suddenly, the light of Jonathan’s lantern fell on something familiar. It was a rope, stretched across a staircase spiraling down into darkness.
“Hey! I know where we are! Mr. Warwick showed this to me.”
Colin and Walter stood shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Yeah,” Colin whispered. “He loved to try and thcare uth with thith.”
“The door to the deep, he called it,” Walter said in a low voice.
“The Hatch.” Jonathan nodded. “What’s really down there?” He felt both Walter and Colin shrug beside him.
“No one knows, man,” Walter whispered. “They’d never tell us. Some big, dark secret, I guess.” From the stairs rose the same thumping and slurping Jonathan had heard the night before. He swallowed, then stepped forward and lifted the rope. He ducked his head beneath it and stepped down onto the top stair.
“What are you doing?” Colin hissed.
“I wanna see it,” Jonathan answered.
He took another step down, then another, holding his lantern out before him. When he didn’t hear any footsteps behind him, he looked back. Colin and Walter were still standing on the other side of the rope in the corridor.
“Come on,” he whispered. His voice echoed eerily in the tight staircase. “Don’t make me go alone. Things are always bigger and darker when they’re secret. Let’s find out how bad it really is.”
Walter gulped. Then he ducked under the rope and followed Jonathan.
“No way,” Colin said. “I’m thtaying here.”
“Suit yourself,” Jonathan said. “But we’ve got both lanterns.”
Colin scooted under the rope and joined Walter. “Jerkth.”
Jonathan reached back to pat Colin on the shoulder.
“Relax,” he said. “Whatever’s down here can’t be worse than the dead Admiral, and we spent plenty of time with him today.”
“Thut up and go.”
The stairs were steep, and the boys held one hand against the slippery wall to steady themselves. The steps curved down around a corner and then stopped at a small, dark landing. The landing was a little bigger than a bed, and on the other side, another staircase climbed up and away from them, in the opposite direction of the one they’d come down. On one wall of the landing was another doorway, smaller and rounded on top.
The scraping, slurping, knocking sounds were coming from the smaller doorway. They were louder here, closer. Goose bumps popped out on Jonathan’s arms. He held his lantern as far out in front of himself as he could toward the doorway.
Through the doorway was another staircase. It dropped down into even deeper darkness. The lantern’s light couldn’t reach the end of it.
He felt Colin breathing in one of his ears, and Walter in the other, looking over his shoulder.
“I ain’t going any farther,” Walter whispered. The darkness down the doorway sloshed and chunked.
“Me neither,” Colin breathed.
“Fine,” Jonathan said. “I’ll go by myself.”
“Why?” Colin asked. “Why don’t we jutht go back, Jonathan?”
Jonathan stared down into the blackness. He answered without turning his head. His voice echoed back at him from the dark downward passageway, like he was talking to himself.
“It’s this big, awful secret, right? The Hatch, down here in the dark? Well, maybe, once you know it, it’s not all that terrible after all.”
He looked back over his shoulder and locked eyes with Walter.
“Maybe it’s the hiding that makes it horrible, you know?”
Walter furrowed his brow.
“Uhh … not really, man. I think we should get outta here. Like, fast.”
Jonathan turned back toward the rattling, grinding blackness. “Big, dark secrets can’t stay that way forever,” he murmured. His free hand rubbed absently at the wrist that was holding the lantern.