“Where does he sleep?”
“That way,” April pointed, taking us around the back. “He likes to sleep in the sun right here.”
She singled out a wooden chair placed against the building. There was a cushion on the seat. Oliver plodded up to it and curled up atop the cushion. He wouldn’t even respond to his name. This is why I hate cats.
“Hmm?”
Just before I could flip the cushion and cat over, Oliver stood up again. He hopped down and stared intently at the grass. I watched it, too, and saw a gray shape flicker past—a rat. The rodent turned back, suddenly noticing the cat, but Oliver took off through the grass like his fur was on fire.
“Oh, not again!” April lamented, shaking her head. Again?
“Does Oliver go chasing rats all the time?”
“Yes, it’s why they don’t go messing up our storehouse, Grampa says…”
“Aha.” What a clever little game the old man was playing. “Let’s follow him.”
“Huh? Wait!” cried Ralph uncertainly, not following the logic. I ignored him. Oliver raced across the grass, yowling loudly. For a tubby little thing, he sure was fast. That was the feline instinct in effect, I supposed.
Sensing its life was in danger, the rat sped through a hole in the wall. Oliver squeezed in after it painfully, somehow managing to slip through. Obviously, we couldn’t do the same. April looked up at the wall in despair. It divided this lot from the neighbors’. There was a black rooftop looming over the far side of the wall.
“The mansion next door, eh?”
“I don’t think anyone’s lived there for a long time,” April said.
“That’s perfect, then.”
We used Ralph as a stepping stone to scale the wall. If he had any complaints, I wasn’t going to hear them out.
“Are we allowed to go over there?”
“If anyone sees us, we’ll just say our cat snuck in, and we’re trying to get him back,” I said, leaving unsaid the question of whether the “anyone” in this case was likely to listen to excuses like that.
No upkeep had been done on the neighboring residence. The trees in the garden hadn’t been pruned, so their branches were twisted like a dancer’s contorted limbs. The garden itself was overgrown; my nose was assaulted by the potent smell of unmanaged greenery. I could only see April’s head. I crouched down, looking for Oliver’s tracks. It seemed he’d gone toward the mansion. Or mansion ruins, in this case. From a distance, it looked like an impressive home, but up close, the walls were crumbling and the roof was leaking and rotten. If we weren’t careful going inside, the place could collapse on top of us.
“Stick close to me,” I warned. April nodded solemnly. We made our way toward the decrepit building.
I expected to see the trail go right inside, but Oliver’s traces turned along the way and went toward the trees.
“Look.”
There stood a huge tree, so large I couldn’t fit my arms around the trunk. It had been there for decades. Inside a large hollow in the trunk, I found a pile of dead leaves. But there was no sign of Oliver.
“Hmm, I see.”
I stuck my hand into the back of the hollow and pulled up a lid. The leaves had been there to hide it.
The hollow actually hid a passage that went down into the ground; a mossy staircase descended behind the lid. I could see that part of the lid was missing, which was how Oliver had gotten inside. The passage was tight, but even I could fit through it.
“It’s like a treasure hunt…,” said April, her eyes shining. She was probably thinking of some romanticized pirate treasure, but this was money that had been amassed from smuggling drugs and slaves. It had been earned through the tears of the weak. There was no romance or wonder.
“Let’s go.”
Ralph got over the wall on his own, wailing not to leave him behind. I glanced at him, then made my way down the stairs. They ended in a passageway with a low ceiling. Ralph could just walk normally through it, but I had to hunch over to make progress.
“It feels weird in here,” said April uncomfortably from the back of the group. “There’s a really big hole that connects to the great big dungeon under the town, but now there’s this other weird hole over here?”
“The dungeon’s more like another world. The hole’s just the entrance to reach it,” I told her. That was how there could be solid earth under the entrance. You could dig under it and not find anything. It was just a black gaping hole in the middle of nothing.
That was how monsters that didn’t exist in this world could show up, and why their rare horns, teeth, and pelts could be traded for so much money. That process was what created this dungeon city.
“You know a lot about it.”
“I know some.”
“Oh, right, because you were an adventurer, too, years ago.”
“Many years ago.”
We were reaching the end. A large door was at the far end of the tunnel. It wouldn’t budge. There was a small hole to the side of the door, which was probably where Oliver had gone. It wasn’t large enough for any of us, of course.
I knocked on the door, and the sound that produced suggested it was quite thick. There was no keyhole, either, and not even a knob. There was only something that looked like a flat panel stuck to it. That left only one answer.
“Here, try touching this.”
“That’s all?” April asked, placing her hand against the panel. It abruptly shone with light, and the door separated into two halves that opened sideways. She said, “What is this?”
“A magic door. You find things like this at ancient ruins and stuff.”
They were built to open only for a specific person.
“You went to one of those, Matthew?”
“It was picked clean,” I said, leaving out the fact that we were the ones who’d ransacked it. “But this seems to be our treasure room.”
With the door open, I lit the candleholder on the wall. The faint light revealed a room with stone walls, probably a secret basement of some kind. The direction we’d gone through the secret passage led away from the decrepit house, though. So the whole place was a feint. April started coughing; the place was full of dust and hadn’t been cleaned. There were rat droppings all over, too.
I handed her a kerchief. “Cover your nose and mouth. Try not to breathe in too much of this air.”
April thanked me, unfolded the handkerchief, and tied it around the back of her head so it covered the lower half of her face. She looked just like a burglar, but nobody was going to blame her there.
“Where’s Oliver?” she asked.
“Leaving traces for us to follow,” I said, noting the little pawprints in the dust on the floor. We followed them carefully; the dust was already filling them up again, but the prints remained. It seemed Oliver traveled through there regularly.
“Whoa, what’s this?” Ralph yelled stupidly. So he’d finally gotten in. “Is this it? Where’s the hidden fortune?” he demanded, looking around the basement.
But there were only stone walls in every direction, and nothing that seemed to be worth money.
“Is this not it?” April wondered.
“He wouldn’t have made it so only you could open the door if there was nothing here,” I pointed out. This had to be it. “Look.”
There was a little hole in the corner. A gray rat popped out of it. But waiting nearby was Oliver, who let out a piercing yowl and rushed at the hole. A crowd of rats scurried past our feet toward the outside. Oliver hurtled after them and vanished.
“So that would explain it.”
Seek out Oliver, he’d said.
“Pardon my reach.”
I stuck my hand into the hole in the corner, reached around, and felt something sticking out. I tugged on it as hard as I could, then heard a heavy sound.