Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls Part 23

I shrugged. "The last underground tunnel I was in that was built like this one collapsed and nearly killed me."

Heath's eyebrows shot up. "There's a story I want to hear."

I looked at him in the dim light and took in his hunched-over posture and the pain in his eyes, and realized that I had no choice but to suck it up and get him out of there. "I'll tell you," I said. "But after we get you to a doctor."

Heath smiled again. "Deal."

I got up and focused on the ground in front of me. If I looked up and took in the narrowness of my surroundings, I knew I'd start to panic again. "We're not going to be able to make it through here side by side," I told him. "So you lean on me piggyback-style, okay?"

He agreed and I helped him to his feet; then, when I felt his hands grip my shoulders, I began to move us forward. We could still hear the crash of waves and smell the salty air, but no hint of open sky revealed itself as we moved along, although it was still damp and every once in a while I saw a puddle or two.

We went on like that for quite a while, the tunnel bending always to the left; then it curved sharply and we came to a slope, traveling upward until finally we were met with an L-shaped corner. Here the tunnel ended in front of us, and we had to make a tight right turn.

When we came around the corner, I was amazed by what I saw.

"Whoa," I said, pointing my light ahead of us to a much wider tunnel that ran straight and true, dripping with moisture.

"Where are we?" Heath asked.

Above us we both heard the crash of a wave, and I realized what I was looking at. "Heath," I said excitedly. "I think we're under under the causeway!" the causeway!"

I felt his body weight ease forward onto my shoulders as he too peered down the stretch of tunnel in front of us. "No way!"

Another crash of waves echoed right over our heads. "It has to be!" I said. "I mean, think about it. The spiral staircase at the church was at the back of the castle, so we would have come out on the far side of the rock. The narrow tunnel we were just in curved to the left, which means it eventually would have put us on the Irish-coastline side, and this is about the right place for the causeway to be."

"Genius," Heath said admiringly.

"Come on," I told him. "We're almost home."

The tunnel under the causeway was wide enough for Heath and me to walk side by side, which made it easier on Heath as I was able to support his weight. Eventually we reached the end and walked up a flight of stairs to another corridor that bent to the left. We followed that as it sloped upward and eventually ended at a small cramped s.p.a.ce with a heavy iron manhole above our heads. I felt my stomach muscles clench when I realized the manhole might be too heavy for me to push aside, but when I pushed up on it, it eased up and over with only a reasonable amount of effort from me. "Thank you, G.o.d," I whispered, shoving it the rest of the way, then s.h.i.+mmying out of the hole before helping Heath.

We came out onto a bluff with a small cobblestoned platform surrounded by tall hedges, and I sucked in huge gulps of fresh air and relished the feeling of being in a wide-open s.p.a.ce again. "Man! Am I glad to be out of there!"

"Where are we?" Heath wondered as he stood hunched and hurting next to me.

I stepped out from behind the hedges to get a better look at our location and spotted our two vans sitting side by side about fifty yards away. I pointed them out to him, and we could both see that in between the vans and our location was the causeway, confirming that we had indeed traveled under it.

"So, Dunnyvale built an escape route," he said, looking from the causeway to the manhole behind us.

"It makes sense, when you think about it," I told him. "If the castle was ever laid siege to, he could have gotten himself and his family out without the enemy ever being the wiser."

"And now we have a safe and phantom-free route to the castle," Heath said.

I turned to look at him sharply. "Why would we ever ever want to go back there?" want to go back there?"

He in turn appeared confused. "To find Gopher."

I shook my head. "Gopher's not there, Heath. We searched the entire top two stories tonight and much of the lower one on our first trip. There's no way he's still in that G.o.d-awful place."

"So where is he?" Heath pressed.

I turned to look behind us. "My theory is that he might have followed the same route we did. Or he got clear of the castle and made it to the causeway."

Heath sighed heavily. "Or he's dead and no one's found his body, and you and I are both unable to reach him intuitively."

I frowned. That was a possibility. "Or that," I conceded.

"That theory makes the most sense, really," he told me. "Otherwise, if Gopher had made it out, he would have made contact with us."

I looked back again to the causeway, and tried to reconcile my own gut feelings with the theory that Gopher had been killed. What I realized was that in my heart I didn't feel that was the case. I just knew he was alive. But where was he, and why hadn't he at least called one of us?

I was about to tell Heath what my intuition was saying when I realized that he was clutching his knees with his hands and gritting his teeth. I felt terrible all over again. Here I was trying to figure out our mystery and poor Heath was in a great deal of pain and needed to get to a doctor-p.r.o.nto.

"Come on," I told him. "Let's see if we can't get you some medical attention."

I called Gilley from the hospital. He reacted to the news that Heath was hurt and in the ER the way I expected him to-by completely freaking out.

It took me about half an hour to calm him down, which was exactly how long it took for Heath to get st.i.tched up. "Lucky us that it was a slow night in the ER," I said as I helped to ease him into the van.

Heath winced when he sat down, but only for a moment. His wounds were mostly superficial, as the spike had poked into the more solid part of one of his vertebrae, so his wound was painful but not serious, and would require little follow-up care.

"Are the pain pills kicking in?" I asked, buckling myself into the driver's side.

He nodded dully. "Oh, yeah."

I drove us back to Anya's and by that time Heath was fast asleep. I had to wake Gilley up to help me get Heath into the house. He was really out of it and barely conscious, so it took us a good ten minutes just to move him from the van to the cushy couch in the living room.

"Should we try and get him upstairs?" Gilley asked.

I shook my head. "I've been pus.h.i.+ng him beyond his limits all night. Let's just cover him with a blanket so he can sleep."

After Heath was tucked in, I followed Gil upstairs. "I have news!" he whispered excitedly.

I sighed. I was sick of news. I was sick of this bust. And I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. "Can it wait until morning?" I pleaded.

Gilley's hopeful expression sagged, but then he laid a hand on my arm and said, "Sure, M. J. Get to bed and I'll fill you in tomorrow."

That night I slept like the dead right up until I dreamed about them. "h.e.l.lo, lovely la.s.s," said a familiar voice.

"Lord Dunnyvale," I replied mildly, leaning back against the tree and taking a huge whiff of the flower-scented air.

"I see you've finally discovered the key to your success," he told me, stepping out from behind the tree to take a seat next to me.

"You mean the underground tunnel you built as an escape route?"

Ra.n.a.ld smiled winningly at me. "Bit of an engineering marvel that was," he said proudly. "And it's withstood those cras.h.i.+ng waves all this time so beautifully. Barely a leak in it."

I had to give him credit on that one. "Yes, it is a marvel, my lord."

Dunnyvale pulled at his goatee. "Aye," he agreed. "But that's not what I was referring to, miss, although you did come across a very large clue last night. You're so close to putting your puzzle pieces together, but you still need Alex. She's the one to put it all in place for you."

I leaned my head back against the tree, trying to rein in my impatience. This man talked in circles and he wasn't helping me nearly as much as he liked to think he was. "Who we need is Gopher," I snapped. So much for reining in that impatience. "And at this point we don't even know if he's dead or alive."

"Oh, he's alive all right, and he's been taken somewhere safe for the time being," Dunnyvale a.s.sured me. "Still," he added, "I'm not sure he'll be alive for long without Alex."

I eyed Dunnyvale suspiciously. "You're sure sure he's alive?" he's alive?"

Ra.n.a.ld held up his hand as if he was taking a vow. "I'd swear to it," he a.s.sured me.

I sighed. "I don't understand why you won't just tell me where to find him, then."

"Because it's all connected, la.s.s. Don't you see?"

I shook my head. "I don't, Lord Dunnyvale. Please enlighten me."

Ra.n.a.ld's infectious smile returned. "The phantom is connected to where my dearest heart resides, and that is connected to Bouvet's untimely death, which is also connected to Kincaid's, and Alex holds the key to all that and the way to finding your friend. These pieces you've got spinning all round you, la.s.s. The only way to put them together is to bring her back. Bring Alexandra back to Dunlow and slide it all in place."

"You make about as much sense to me as a theoretical physicist explaining quantum physics."

Dunnyvale laughed and got up. Before he left me, he said, "You've a bright mind, M. J. Holliday. You'll get to the root of it. Of that, I've no doubt."

I woke up the moment Dunnyvale stepped out from under the tree. Frustrated, I got up and dug around for a pen and paper to jot down the dream. A glance at the clock told me it was a little after five a.m. Knowing I'd probably not get back to sleep, I then went downstairs to check on Heath and found him attempting to get a fire going. "Hey," I whispered as I hurried into the room. "Let me do that."

Heath s.h.i.+vered and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders. "It's freezing in here."

I got the fire lit, and we both huddled together on the couch, waiting for its warmth to heat the room. "What's that?" he asked, noticing the paper I'd written my dream on, which I'd placed on the coffee table while I worked on the fire.

I told him all about my dream and how Dunnyvale had been checking in on me periodically.

"What's interesting to me," said Heath, "is that he's essentially telling you that someone took took Gopher." Gopher."

"You know, that is a good point," I said, remembering Ra.n.a.ld mentioning that Gopher had been taken somewhere safe. "And it's just like we suspected in that note that was left for us, that sort of hinted that Gopher had been kidnapped."

"What's your gut say?"

I sat with that for a minute. "It says that the letter wasn't some prank by the local kids, and someone really did did kidnap Gopher." kidnap Gopher."

"But why would anyone take him him of all people?" Heath wondered. "I mean, yeah, he's got connections to big money at the network, but we know the kidnapper hasn't tried to use them because the network bra.s.s doesn't believe that Gopher's missing and they fired us. So what's the objective?" of all people?" Heath wondered. "I mean, yeah, he's got connections to big money at the network, but we know the kidnapper hasn't tried to use them because the network bra.s.s doesn't believe that Gopher's missing and they fired us. So what's the objective?"

And then it started to click in my head. "It's exactly like it said in that letter. The kidnapper wants us to deal with the phantom!"

"But why?" Heath pressed. "The phantom is tied to the rock. As far as we know, it can't even move beyond it to the coast, so why force us to deal with it?"

"Because something valuable is on the rock, and you can't get to it without dealing with the phantom," I said, thinking out loud.

"You mean the gold?"

I nodded.

"But Bertie already told us that the treasure's probably just a myth."

"Not everyone believes that, though," I reasoned. "I mean, look at who's already attempted to find it: Bouvet, Kincaid ... us."

Heath considered that for a bit. "s.h.i.+t," he said at last. "This could be worse than I thought. I mean, we have no idea how to deal with the phantom. We've barely managed to escape with our lives and our sanity whenever we've gotten up close and personal with it."

I stared into the orange glow of the fire and realized Dunnyvale was probably pus.h.i.+ng me to connect these specific dots. "Alex has to be the key," I said. "She has to know how to deal with the phantom."

"Then why didn't she four years ago before her fiance was killed?"

I shrugged. "That's the sixty-five-thousand-dollar question, my friend. And one we really need to have answered."

A bit later we heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by shuffling around the corner out in the hallway. I c.o.c.ked my head to listen, knowing it must be Gilley, and wasn't surprised when I heard the icebox open and dishes being rattled. I winked at Heath and got up quietly from the couch to tiptoe into the kitchen, where I found Gilley with his head in the fridge, rummaging around for something to eat. "Anya should be up soon to start breakfast," I said.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Gilley squealed, before b.u.mping his head on the top of the icebox. Gilley squealed, before b.u.mping his head on the top of the icebox.

I laughed hilariously as he backed up and stared at me with wide eyes, clutching a Tupperware container and a plate of custard-filled doughnuts.

"Don't ... do do ... that!" he said in between deep breaths. ... that!" he said in between deep breaths.

"That'll teach you to raid the fridge at all hours," I told him, still chuckling at the scene.

"I was hungry, okay?" he snapped, setting the Tupperware container down but holding fiercely to the pastries.

"Sweetie," I said gently. "You know how you get when you're on this kind of a food kick. We ride the carbo wave for a while until you can't fit into your pants. Then you starve yourself and make everyone around you miserable because your blood sugar is low."

Gilley glowered at me and pulled back the wrap covering the doughnuts. "I can't help it!" he yelled. "I'm stressed-out!"

"Gil," I warned as he reached for a pastry. "Hand it over."

"No!"

"Gilley," I said more firmly. "I'm serious. Step away from the doughnuts."

But Gil defiantly shoved his hand underneath the wrap and pulled out a doughnut to stuff into his mouth, just to taunt me.

"You stubborn son of a-" I growled, darting forward to grab the dish.

Gilley whirled away from me, stuffing his mouth with more pastry as I chased him around the kitchen. "Mwaaaaah!" he yelled as crumbs flew out of his mouth.

"Gilley Morehouse Gillespie!" I shouted when I tried to grab his s.h.i.+rt and missed. "Gimme that plate!"