42.

Timothy expected the door to be locked, but to his surprise, the knob turned in his hand. He released it, and the door slowly opened a crack. Timothy stared into the musty darkness. From inside the building, a grinding sound grumbled, the whirring of an ancient engine, the light turning on its old axle.

He kicked the door and it swung open. The whirring sound was louder now. Timothy almost called out Hello? but imagined Jack hiding somewhere inside. He peered into the dark room and soon realized that it was not as dark as it had first seemed.

The room was a perfect circle. Bolted to the wall, a rickety metal staircase swirled around the circumference of the building, ending at an open hatch in the ceiling twenty feet up. From the hatch, every fifteen seconds, the bright light burst forth, but the rest of the time, a dull phosphorescence spilled into the room, dusting the furniture and equipment with a ghostly glow.

Timothy looked around. The room reminded him of Hesselius’s abandoned office—filled with antiques, maps, photos of the surrounding landscape—except that someone had obviously recently been here, possibly even worked here on a regular basis. There was a stack of papers on a nearby desk. A computer. A telephone. A tall halogen floor lamp. A modern-looking office chair. Timothy quickly realized he’d seen all there was to see.

Maybe Abigail was upstairs? The rusting bolts attached to the walls told him it might not be a safe climb.

Timothy closed the door, so that no one might slip in behind him. Crossing to the lamp, he flicked the switch, filling the room with white light. He stood in the center of the room and spun one last time to see if he’d missed a clue, when his sneaker caught in a groove in the concrete floor. Looking down, Timothy gasped.

Familiar words were carved there: Righteousness, Integrity, Sacrifice. Earlier that day, he’d noticed these words stitched in a triangle on a gray flag in Hesselius’s office. But here, under Timothy’s feet, the words were arranged differently. Etched in the stone, the words radiated from a single point, like a three-pronged star. Surrounding the words was a halo of engraved numbers about six feet in diameter.

Timothy bent down to examine the carvings more closely. Brushing the concrete with his fingertips, he noticed that this part of the floor had been built in several fragments. The words had each been sculpted into a separate triangle of concrete, and each number surrounding the center triangle was contained within its own single stone. Timothy stood up and stepped away to get a better view. He read the words again, then traced the circle of numerals several times, trying to glean a pattern.

435, 102, 340, 921, 556, 900, 167, 761, 149, 899, 255, 929, 320, 532, 203, 230 …

Timothy knew he was missing something.

Then, just like that, the answer struck him.

Carlton Quigley. Bucky Jenkins. Leroy “Two Fingers” Fromm. The writing from The Clue of the Incomplete Corpse. The baseball cards. Christian’s clue to his son. The jersey numbers had been the safe’s combination. Once Jack Harwood had discovered his father’s secret office and opened the safe, he’d pieced the puzzle together in the same way Timothy had. The journal inside must have pointed Harwood here, across the river.

Timothy thought of Hesselius’s clue: the names in the book. Maybe this emblem was another part of it? The numbers on the floor were different than the jersey numbers. Bigger. But not too big for page numbers … He closed his eyes, trying to picture the names on the pages and the order Harwood had mentioned. First, second, and third base. Jenkins, Quigley, then Fromm.

Bucky Jenkins … Page 149? Slowly, Timothy crossed the circle and pressed his foot against the stone with the number 149 carved into it. It took a bit of effort, but the stone descended a few inches into the floor and something deep underneath the building shook and clicked into place. Yes! Timothy thought.

Next came Carlton Quigley.

He crossed to the stone that read 102. He pressed his sneaker against the stone, and it too sank a few inches into the floor. Another deep click rattled the building.

One more number to go. Leroy “Two Fingers” Fromm.

Timothy thought for a long time. He wasn’t sure which number to step on. He imagined that each stone might be capable of sinking. He figured he could try stepping on all of the stones, and see which ones descended. But what if he stepped on a wrong number and screwed something up? Abigail had mentioned that Christian Hesselius had been interested in the engineering feats of ancient civilizations. This place might be booby-trapped. He decided he couldn’t take any chances; he needed to remember the code correctly. He glanced around the circle one more time, then intuitively moved toward two adjacent stones: 203 and 230. His memory assured him it was one of these, but he wasn’t quite certain which one. They were too similar. Hesselius might have arranged them to throw off an intruder like him. Timothy took a deep breath, and tried once again to imagine the book. He saw the cover, the title, the look on Zelda Kite’s face. The jacket was tattered. The pages were yellowed. Fromm had been written on a right-hand page, just like Jenkins on 149. An odd number.

Fromm must be an odd number too.

The answer was 203.

Tentatively, he stepped on that stone and felt it sink into the floor. Another solid clicking sound shook the building; then suddenly, the floor began to tremble. Timothy scuttled away from the circle, watching from a safe spot near the desk as dust puffed out from the cracks between the stones. One by one, each triangular panel slid straight down into the floor. First went Righteousness. Then Integrity. And finally, Sacrifice.

By the time the lighthouse had settled again into the sound of its steady engine whirring, a steep spiral staircase had descended into the floor. The numbered stones had risen, erasing the code, once more becoming level with the rest of the concrete slab. Each of the word panels had lowered to form a step, each step two feet lower than its predecessor, ending at Sacrifice. From there, a dark, ragged gash in the bedrock opened into a rough-hewn tunnel directly underneath the building.

Timothy held his sleeve to his mouth, marveling at the gaping black hole, until the dust had dissipated.

He flicked his flashlight on and off to be sure it still worked. By shining the beam into the new hole, Timothy revealed a steep, wet slope that disappeared at an early bend in the black passage. No way, Timothy thought. I have to go down there?

But he had no choice. The full moon was rising, and he had to find Abigail.

As he climbed down the spiral steps and into the tunnel, Timothy’s last thought was of Zilpha edging down the stairs. He hoped she’d be okay.

In the dark, he concentrated on the tight walls and low ceiling. He forced himself to take deep breaths, as if that would help the tunnel expand. The steep floor was slick with moisture. Rocks jutted every few feet, creating makeshift stairs. Every step he took echoed into the earth. The flashlight glinted off the rock, reflecting cobwebs and several large white scurrying insects. Timothy backed away, as if the bugs might suddenly grow huge and attack him. He leapt over them quickly and kept moving forward. Every time water dripped into his face from the ceiling, Timothy yelped, wiping it quickly away. After he passed an especially tight squeeze between the rocks, he almost started to hyperventilate. How much farther? The flashlight beam shook as his hand trembled. Looking into the infinite darkness, he squeaked, “Abigail?” His voice mocked him as it mimicked him, passing up and down the tunnel like a rodent searching desperately for a way out. Timothy felt the same.

He closed his eyes and imagined his brother, not the zombie version, but the real one, who was somewhere in Maryland, lying unconscious in a bed. His brother was a hero. Timothy thought he must try to be one too.

When he opened his eyes again, the walls had receded. The ceiling was higher. Timothy could actually stand up straight. Ahead, several grim tunnels went deeper into the earth. Even if he knew the right way, he was unsure he could bring himself to go any farther.

Accidentally sweeping the flashlight at the wall beside him, Timothy noticed a large iron door, rusted black. Swung inward nearly a foot, it revealed another dark cavern. Two L-shaped brackets were attached to the outside of the door. On the floor lay a wooden plank, longer than the width of the iron slab. When fitted into the brackets, it appeared, the plank would lock the door shut from the outside. Timothy listened to the darkness inside. Very faintly, he heard someone breathing. His own throat began to close. “Abigail?” he managed to whisper.

Moments later, he heard a high-pitched moan from inside the room.

Abigail!

Timothy threw his body against the heavy door and pushed it open even farther. The rusting hinges squealed, but the door gave way, scraping against the floor.

As he shined the light into the new cavern, the first thing Timothy noticed was a pale lump sitting in the middle of what looked like a pile of rubble. The shape glanced at him, showing a grubby face and black hair. Abigail’s eyes were red-rimmed and wide with terror. Someone had bound her mouth with what looked like strands of white cobweb. With her arms behind her back, she’d been tied to a wooden column that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.

As Timothy took a step into the room, he noticed with horror that the rubble under Abigail was crumbling grayish bones. They’re only bones, he told himself, feeling as though he might faint. But then Abigail made a pleading noise. “We’ll get out of here,” he promised. “Don’t be scared.”

Something was moving in one of the tunnels behind him. Timothy spun, shining the flashlight into the darkness. He screamed as a pair of cobweb-covered claws reached for his face. A Nightmary. She swooped closer, her face shifting underneath her veil. He swung the flashlight up at her, but his hand passed through the illusion and the girl disappeared. The flashlight slipped out of his hand, fell to the floor, and rolled against the far wall outside the chamber. With a shout, Timothy toppled backward into the room with Abigail.

Before he caught his balance, strong hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him deeper into the chamber. Timothy hit the ground as someone rushed past him and out the door. He quickly turned and glanced at the entry. The beam from his flashlight moved as someone picked it up. Timothy tried to crawl back toward the metal slab. Before he could reach out and grab hold of it, he saw a face peek at him from around the edge.

Jack grinned and said, “Good night, children.” Then the old man yanked the door shut.