Episode 11 - The Battle of Big Hill Lake

VIC AND FINGERS ARE BACK!

Matt is King. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

The Bay Village Chronicles, Book 9, The Battle of Big Hill Lake. Victor Malone has a notebook. Dwayne has 19.7 acres, the heated shop, 11 teammates, 1 ghost, and the angriest goose in Kansas. A note before we begin. This is the ninth adventure of the Bay Village Chronicles and the biggest showdown yet. If you remember Book 7, you remember that Victor Malone escaped into the night with something more valuable than money, Dwayne's notebook. With every trap, every plan, and every secret inside it. Including two mysterious words nobody has explained. And if you remember book eight, you remember the lake house in Kansas, the pond that is 32 feet deep, and the lady who still mows her fields at night. This is the story of what happens when those two books collide. 12 kids, two crooks, one ghost, one goose, one week at Big Hill Lake. Chapter 1. The New Notebook. Duane had been rebuilding for three months. Not the traps, the traps were fine, the traps had won. What Duane had been rebuilding was the notebook, because Victor Malone had taken the old one, and Duane knew exactly what that meant. It meant that somewhere out there, a grown man with cold eyes and a long memory was reading 18 months of Duane's best thinking, page by page, learning everything. The pressure plates, the pulley ratios, the hot sauce delivery system, the location of every sensor on Lake Road. And Zone E. Duane tried not to think about zone E, the new notebook was blue. The old one had been green. Duane had chosen blue on purpose as a statement. This is a different book with different plans, and nothing in the old book will help you. He wrote that on the first page, word for word, just in case anyone ever stole this one too. A planner plans for everything. He was on page 41 when his dad walked into the garage holding car keys and grinning. Pack a bag, Uncle Mike said. We're going back to the lake house. Duane looked up. When? Saturday. And it's not just us this time. Uncle Mike's grin got wider. Everybody's coming. The Jaderstons Bear's whole family, all three crews, one property, one week. Your aunt called it a family summit. I'm calling it the loudest week of my life. Duane sat very still for a moment, doing math. Pierce. Henry. Bear himself. That was the core four. Plus Emma and Maddie, plus Lois, Evelyn, and Fredberry, plus Jane, Molly, and Tad, twelve kids, nineteen point seven acres, a sixty by forty heated shop. Dad, Duane said carefully, may I bring some equipment? How much equipment? Some. Uncle Mike had learned over the years not to ask follow up questions, fine, but nothing that requires a permit. Nothing requires a permit if you read the county code carefully, Duane said, and went back to page forty one. Four hundred miles away in a motel outside Columbus, Victor Malone sat at a small desk with one lamp on, reading a green notebook for the eleventh time. He knew it by heart now. He knew zones A through D. He knew which floorboard on the Lake Road staircase was wired and which one was a decoy. He knew the kid's handwriting so well he could have forged it. But the house on Lake Road didn't matter anymore. Vic had a new piece of information, and it had cost him exactly one phone call. Fingers had a cousin. The cousin had a friend. The friend mowed lawns in Bay Village and lawn guys hear everything, three families packing up heading to Kansas, a lake house, middle of nowhere, no neighbors, no alarm company within forty miles. Vic closed the notebook and looked at the wall for a long time. The boy wouldn't have his fortress in Kansas. He wouldn't have eighteen months of preparation, he'd have a duffel bag in a week. And Vic would have the one thing he'd never had before. The boy's own brain in writing sitting right there on the desk. He picked up his phone and dialed. Down the street, in an apartment that smelled like microwave popcorn, Fingers answered on the first ring. It's me, Vic said. Pack a bag. We're going to Kansas. Fingers was quiet for a second. Kansas? The state? Yes. Okay. Another pause. Is this about the kids? Yes. A longer pause. Fingers had complicated feelings about the kids. On one hand, they had humiliated him twice, covered him in paint, glitter, syrup, and on one extremely bad night, something Duane's diagrams had labeled the mayonnaise event. On the other hand, the little one had once handed him a Cheerio through the window while he was stuck in a net, and nobody had ever shared a snack with Fingers without being asked. Not once. Not in his whole life. I'll bring granola bars, Fingers said finally. Bring whatever you want. I'm bringing the variety pack, Vic. This is a road trip. There are rules. Vic hung up. Fingers got out his bag, the same bag, and started packing. The yellow beanie, the variety pack, a flashlight, a second variety pack in case the first one didn't make it past Indiana, and a folding camp stool because last time, his biggest regret, other than the mayonnaise, was never having anywhere good to sit. He looked at himself in the mirror. Third time's the charm, he told his reflection. His reflection had heard that one before. Chapter two twelve kids and a goose. The caravan rolled into Cherry Vale, Kansas on Saturday afternoon. Three vehicles, twelve kids, six adults, and a cooler that Henry had been guarding since Missouri like it contained government secrets. It contained beef sticks, forty of them. Henry had counted twice. The lake house came into view at the end of the long gravel drive, cedar sided and calm, sitting on its nineteen point seven acres like it had been waiting for them. Beyond it, through the trees, Big Hill Lake glittered. The pond sat off to the side, dark and quiet and thirty two feet deep, and the giant heated shop stood at the edge of the yard with its big doors closed. Duane looked at the shop the way other kids look at Christmas morning. That's the correct energy, he whispered. The newcomers spilled out of the cars and immediately scattered in twelve directions, which is what twelve kids do. Jane stepped out, lowered her sunglasses, and surveyed the property. Okay, she announced. It's giving farmhouse, it's giving wilderness, I can work with this. Molly was already unpacking a tote bag of craft supplies onto the porch. I'm making everyone friendship bracelets with a lake theme. Nobody fight me on the colors. Tad got out of the car, looked at the pond, looked at the sky, and said Defish know they're wet. Then he wandered off toward the barn without waiting for an answer because Tad never waited for answers. Answers slowed him down. Emma marched straight for the field, stopped, and pointed. There's a goose. There was a goose. It stood near the pond, enormous and gray and disapproving with the posture of a security guard who has seen everything and liked none of it. It looked at twelve children and one minivan and made a sound like a rusty door. His name is Sergeant Waddles, Emma declared. Emma, you can't just name a wild goose, Pierce said. His name, Emma repeated, in the voice that had ended every argument in Jaderson family history, is Sergeant Waddles. The goose looked at Emma. Emma looked at the goose. Something passed between them, something ancient. The goose took two steps closer to Emma and then turned and hissed at everyone else, establishing the rules of the property in a single motion. This one is mine. The rest of you are tolerated. Cool, cool, cool, said Henry, backing away. The goose has chosen a champion. That's normal. I'm normal about this. Lois had already climbed onto the porch railing, then the porch roof. Before any adult finished saying the sentence Lois, please do not climb the She lay on the warm shingles and reported down. I can see the whole property from here, the cave's still there, the dock's still there. Hi, Edna. Jane froze halfway up the steps. I'm sorry. Hi. Who? That night, after Burgers, after Uncle Mike's grill smoke drifted off into the dark, after Fred Berry fell asleep mid Cheerio in his mother's lap, the Corps four plus Lois and Evelyn told the newcomers the story. They told it right. They told about Edna Pickett, who had owned this land for fifty years and loved it like a person. About the riding mower and the pond and the night she drove down the dock and never came back up. About the lights they'd seen last summer moving across the field at two in the morning, low and slow in perfectly straight mowing lines. About the lunch tin at the bottom of the pond, the skeleton key, the room in the cave, the letters. And she's nice. Evelyn said quietly into the fire. She's not a scary ghost. She's a watching ghost. Fredberry calls her lady, Lois added. He saw her first. He sees her before anybody. Jane stared at them. I'm sorry. You're telling me this property comes with a ghost and everyone is just eating burgers. She acknowledged our offering, Bear said, flipping open his notebook to a page from last summer. Cookies on the dock, eight forty five PM, gone by morning, plate stacked neatly. I rated the whole interaction a nine point one. It remains the highest paranormal score on record. Tad leaned forward, firelight on his face, deeply serious. Can the ghost mow our lawn at home? Ours has a hill, and Dad complains about the hill. Tad, said Molly, it's a reasonable question. Out past the firelight, past the dock, the pond lay flat and black and still, and far out on the Army Corps land, beyond the tree line where nobody was looking, a pair of headlights turned off the county road and went dark. Chapter three Ladies Warning Fred Berry saw her first. He always saw her first. It was the second morning just after sunrise. He was standing at the back screen door in his pajamas with a fistful of Cheerios, which was his standard equipment looking out at the misty field. Then he pointed one chubby finger at the fog and said, with the calm certainty of a toddler delivering breaking news, Lady, Lois was the only one awake. She came to the door and looked. The fog over the field was thick and gold where the sun touched it, and for just a moment just one held breath. She saw it. A shape out by the tree line. A figure in a wide brimmed hat sitting perfectly still on something low and square. Then the fog shifted, and the shape was gone. Hi, Edna, Lois said softly. Fred Barry ate a cheerio and offered one to the screen door, in case Lady wanted it. It was Bear who found the message an hour later when he went down to the dock to conduct his morning raiding of the pond. Visibility, smell, overall vibes. He stopped at the end of the dock and stood very still. And then he yelled, in his official intel voice, the one that carried across an entire property. Guys, Doc, now, bring Duane first. They came running all of them in various states of breakfast. On the dock, laid out with care, was the plate from last night's offering. The cookies were gone, but the acorns that had been scattered loose across the boards the day before were not scattered anymore. They were arranged neatly, deliberately, in shapes, two stick figures, grown up sized long legs, and next to them a number built from twenty two acorns. Below the figures an arrow made of small stones pointing away from the lake, pointing east, toward the county road. Nobody said anything for a moment. The pond lapped quietly against the dock posts. Two men, Pierce said at last, coming from the road. Henry pulled a beef stick out of his pocket without breaking eye contact with the acorns. This was not hunger. This was coping. Okay, but Jane said, devil's advocate, maybe a squirrel did this. A squirrel, Bear said flatly, made a scale diagram. A talented squirrel. Duane crouched over the acorns for a long time. He measured the stick figures with his thumb. He checked the arrows bearing against the sun. Then he stood up. And everyone got quiet. Because Duane's face had gone into a mode they recognized. They had seen it twice before. Once before the first Battle of Lake Road. Once before the second. It's him. Duane said. You don't know that, said Molly gently. It could be anyone. Salesman. Lost fisherman. He has my notebook. Duane's voice was level. He has 18 months of my work. He knows how I think. And there is exactly one person on this earth who would drive 700 miles for a rematch. He looked up at the tree line, at the Army Corps land stretching away to the east. Victor Malone is in Kansas. The wind moved through the cottonwoods. Cool, said Tad, nodding slowly. Cool, cool, cool. Quick question. Who's Victor Malone? And follow-up question why does everyone's face look like that? Pierce put a hand on Tad's shoulder. We'll catch you up. Emergency meeting. The shop. Five minutes. Can I bring snacks? Tad. War snacks, Pierce. Armies march on their stomachs. I learned that from a granola bar commercial. As they headed up the dock in a tight, fast moving pack, Evelyn paused at the end and looked back at the water. She bent down, took one cookie she had saved from her own breakfast, and set it on the boards right beside the acorn figures. Thank you for telling us, she said quietly. We'll be ready. Out in the middle of the pond, far from any wind, a single ripple crossed the surface, in a perfectly straight line, a mowing line. Chapter four The Inversion Duane stood at the front of the heated shop with a roll of butcher paper, a marker, and the unblinking calm of a general who has been waiting his whole life for this exact briefing. Behind him, taped to the wall, was a hand drawn map of all nineteen point seven acres. The house, the shop, the barn, the pond, the dock, the cave, the long gravel drive, the tree line where the Army Corps land began. In front of him, on folding chairs, hay bales, and one overturned canoe, sat the largest force he had ever commanded. Pierce, Henry, Bear, Lois, Evelyn, Jane, Molly, Tad, Emma, and Maddie, with Fredberry on the floor, stacking Cheerios into a small tower that would later prove strategically significant, though nobody knew it yet. Here's our problem, Duane began. Victor Malone has my notebook. Which means he has read every trap I have ever designed. He knows my patterns. He knows I put pressure plates at doorways. He knows I wire the third stair. He knows I always always protect the kitchen first. He paused. He thinks this makes him safe. He uncapped the marker. It makes him doomed. On the butcher paper he wrote one word in letters a foot tall. Inversion. Everything in that notebook is now a lie, Duane said. Every pattern he learned we break. Every instinct that book gives him walks him directly into something worse. He'll avoid the doorways, so the doorways will be safe, and the open floor will not. He'll skip the third stair, so the third stair will be the only safe stair. He spent months studying that notebook. Duane allowed himself one small, terrifying smile. He studied for the wrong test. Jane raised her hand. Okay. I came in skeptical, but that was genuinely chilling, and I'm in. Assignments! Duane said, and the shop snapped to attention. Pierce. Strike team lead. Same as always. You float. You respond to breaches. Pierce nodded once. Calm as Sunday. Bear. Intel. The hayloft window in the barn has sight lines to the drive, the dock, and the tree line. You're our eyes. Bear was already writing. I'll need snacks, a flashlight, and my notebook. I'm instituting a new rating scale for this operation. It goes to fifteen. Henry. Communications and morale. On it. Henry held up a beef stick like a scepter. Morale is currently at an all time high. Communications we're working on. Lois, your vertical operations. Anything that needs climbing, rigging, or retrieving from somewhere a parent would say no about, that's you. Lois cracked her knuckles from the rafters where she had been sitting the entire meeting without anyone noticing she'd gotten up there. Jane, perimeter captain, East Side. Molly. Supply chain and field repairs. Molly saluted with a glue gun. Evelyn. You're our quiet watcher. You notice things nobody else notices. When something feels wrong, you tell Pierce immediately. Evelyn nodded, solemn as a church. Emma you command the goose. The shop went silent. I command the goose, Emma repeated, with enormous satisfaction. Sergeant Waddles is territorial, fearless, and weighs fourteen pounds, Duane said. He is the only soldier on this property who requires no training, no equipment, and no mercy. Emma, your job is to make sure he's fed, happy, and pointed in the right direction. And me? Maddie bounced on her hay bale. What do I do? Is it a performing job? Please say it's a performing job. Maddie, you are special distractions. Maddie gasped so hard she almost fell off the bale. It was the single greatest job title she had ever heard. It was better than princess, it was better than famous. And Tad, Duane said, turning slowly, I have thought very carefully about your assignment. Tad stood up ready. There is a rope in the barn. It's red. It connects to something I'm not going to tell you about. Your entire job your only job is this. Do not pull that rope unless I tell you to. Tad's eyes drifted toward the barn with the dreamy expression of a man falling in love. Tad, look at me. Do not pull the red rope. What happens if I pull it? Tad. I'm just asking for information, Duane. This is a briefing. I'm being briefed. That Duane took a long breath through his nose the way his mother did. Last summer at Lake Road, a person who shall remain. Tad was told not to pull a rope, pulled it, and single-handedly took the Duchess out of the fight. It was a ten out of ten. It was also a complete accident, and we cannot plan around accidents. So what I'm hearing, said Tad, is that I have a perfect record. Duane turned back to the map because there was no winning that one, and tapped the heated shop, the barn, the dock, and the long gravel drive, one by one. We have five days, a sixty by forty workshop with heat and power, nineteen point seven acres, a thirty two foot pond, one ghost, and one extremely hostile goose. He capped the marker. Let's build. Chapter five two men at the Diner. The Cherry Vale Grill had eleven tables, one waitress named Darla, and a pie case that Fingers had been staring at for four straight minutes. Focus, Vic said, and I'm focused. I'm focused on the pie. A man can have two focuses, Vic, that's called depth. They sat in the back booth. Vic had the green notebook open beside his coffee, a roadmap of the county, and three photographs he'd taken that morning from the Army Corps land with a long lens. The cedar house, the dock, and the enormous shop. He had tried one more time to get the Duchess. The call had lasted nine seconds. He'd said the words the kids from Lake Road, and she had said no. He'd said he would double her rate and she had said there is no number and then just before hanging up in a voice Vic had never heard her use, a voice with an actual tremor in it, she had said one final word toddler. Then the line went dead and Vic was left holding a phone and the knowledge that the most feared professional in Ohio had been broken by a two year old with a Cheerio. So it was just the two of them. Here's what we know Vic said low. No alarm company Nearest sheriff is in town, twenty minutes out. The adults drive into independence most afternoons for supplies and the boy has had five days, not eighteen months. Whatever he's built out there, it's improvised improvised fingers repeated, nodding. Then he stopped nodding Vic. I've seen this kid improvise. At Lake Road he improvised something with a kiddie pool and a leaf blower that I still dream about. This time is different. Vic tapped the green notebook. This time we have the manual. I know every move he makes before he makes it pressure plates at doorways, the third stair, the kitchen he flipped pages without looking like a preacher who didn't need the text anymore. He's a system fingers and systems repeat Darla appeared with the coffee pot. You boys finding everything okay We're surveyors, Vic said smoothly. County work Well ain't that nice? She topped him off You surveying out by the old picket place? The booth got very slightly colder. The picket place Vic repeated. Big Hill Lake off the county road new family bought it last year. Nice folks Darla lowered her voice the way people do when they've been waiting all day for someone to ask You know about Edna, I suppose We don't, said Fingers, leaning in, because Fingers loved gossip the way he loved snacks. Edna Pickett owned that land fifty years, drove her mower straight off the dock one October night, and the pond is thirty two feet deep and they never found the mower Darla straightened up, satisfied Folks see lights out there, mowing lights in perfect rows. You couldn't pay me to be on that property after dark She walked away. Fingers turned to Vic with the expression of a man who has just received extremely important information. Vic No Vic, the property is haunted there is no ghost there's a ghost lawnmower, Vic. Which is honestly worse because at least a regular ghost can't run you over. Vic closed the notebook with a snap. There are twelve children, two of whom are toddlers, defended by a goose we go tomorrow night. You take the shop it's where he'll stage his equipment. I take the house We find the boy's new notebook, we take it and we leave him with nothing. We take back the only thing he's ever had on us. His eyes were flat and cold The last move is mine. Fingers looked down at the pie menu and didn't really see it. He was thinking about a Cheerio handed through a net two summers ago. He was thinking that in his whole career the only people who had ever beaten him fair and square were children, and the only person who'd ever shared food with him was one of them. He was thinking that Vic used to want money and now he wanted something else something with no number on it and that scared Fingers more than any mower. Can I at least get a slice of pie for the road he said No This town is haunted and has no hospitality Fingers muttered and put on his yellow beanie like a man putting on a helmet. Chapter six Night one The Probe at eleven forty PM Fingers came over the east fence to test the defenses and the property ate him alive. It started with the sprinklers Duane had spent a full day rewiring the irrigation system on the east field into what the butcher paper called the car wash. The sprinkler heads didn't spray water anymore. The first row sprayed water. The second row sprayed water mixed with biodegradable glitter, four pounds of it, donated from Molly's craft tote with full military honors. The third row sprayed something Duane had labeled adhesive mist food grade, which was watered down pancake syrup pressurized through Uncle Mike's power washer. Fingers made it ten steps into the field before the motion sensor woke up. From the hayloft through binoculars, Bear narrated in a calm radio voice Contact East Field one adult male yellow beanie he has entered the car wash stand by the first row hit him and Finger said it's just water in a voice of genuine relief. The second row hit him and the relief ended the third row turned him into something the field had never seen before a tall, sticky, glittering man shaped disco ball staggering through the Kansas night shining in the moonlight like a regret. He's through the car wash, Bear reported. He is Wow He is extremely visible. I can see him without the binoculars, I think you can see him from space rating so far eight point five Fingers pressed on because fingers always pressed on. It was his best and worst quality he reached the hay bales. The hay bales were round the big kine lined up along the field's edge like sleeping buffalo. As fingers passed the third one a trip line went taut, a pin pulled and a wedge dropped and the bale began to roll downhill toward fingers with the deep, patient rumble of one thousand pounds of agriculture, fingers turned around and made a sound that Bear's notebook would later record verbatim as HBBGH. He ran, the bale rolled, he ran faster, glittering wildly. The bale, in full agreement with gravity, also went faster. Man and bale crossed the east field in the moonlight, in a race as old as time, until fingers dove sideways into the drainage ditch and the bale thundered past him, rolled grandly across the lawn, and came to rest against the fence with the satisfied stillness of a job well done. Fingers lay in the ditch, breathing hard, covered in glitter syrup, and now also ditch. Bale deployed, Bear reported, direct miss but spiritually a direct hit nine point two. And then Fingers climbing out of the ditch made his fatal mistake. He cut toward the pond to use the dock light as a landmark which took him through goose territory. Sergeant Waddles had been awake the entire time Geese do not really sleep they wait. He had watched the glittering intruder with rising outrage and when Fingers's sneaker crossed the invisible line that exists only in a goose's heart, Sergeant Waddles unfolded out of the dark like fourteen pounds of feathered judgment, wings out, neck low, hissing like a punctured tire. What followed was not a fight. A fight has two sides. From the house the kids watched out the upstairs window as a glowing, glitter covered man fled across the south lawn screaming, Why is it so fast? And I'm sorry and I don't even know what I did while a goose ran him down with the easy stride of an apex predator who was also somehow gaining speed. Emma stood at the window in her unicorn pajamas, arms crossed, nodding slowly. Good boy, she whispered. Fingers hit the east fence at a dead sprint, went over it in a single adrenaline powered motion that he would never be able to repeat, and lay on the far side in the Army Corps grass, chest heaving, one shoe gone. And that was when he saw it. Far across the dark field, out where no person was no person could be, a single headlight, low to the ground, moving slowly, in a perfectly straight line. Then it stopped, then it turned toward him Fingers did not remember the run back to the car, his body simply did it for him as a gift. He slammed the door, locked it, locked it again, and sat dripping glitter onto the seat until Vic lowered his binoculars and looked at him. Well Vic said The notebook, Fingers gasped, did not mention the goose Vic. The notebook says nothing about a goose. What else isn't in the notebook? Back at the house, Duane stood at the window long after the others had gone to bed, watching the East Field, where the trap line sat reset and waiting. Probe repelled, he said quietly. Now he knows our outside. He turned from the window. Tomorrow he comes inside and tomorrow it's not fingers. Out on the dock a fresh plate of cookies sat in the dark. By morning it was empty and the acorns were arranged in a new shape. A single word if you squinted, built from forty one acorns by patient, careful fifty years of loving this land hands. Ready Chapter seven The Man Who read the notebook Vic spent the next morning in the motel room with the photographs, the green notebook and a pot of terrible coffee and slowly, methodically he figured it out It was the sprinklers that told him. Fingers' soggy, glittering report had included one detail that didn't fit. The sprinkler trap had been in the open field, not at a gate, not at a doorway, not at a choke point. The notebook was absolutely consistent across eighteen months the boy trapped doorways, gates, stairs, thresholds, transitions always transitions. It was on page after page a signature as clear as handwriting. And the field trap broke the signature. Vic sat very still for ten minutes, then he laughed one short cold sound alone in a motel room, which is never a good sign in anyone. He flipped it, Vic said to the empty room. He knows I have the book, so he flipped the book. And here was the thing about Victor Malone, the thing that made him different from every other crook the boys had ever beaten. He could take a punch to the brain and keep thinking he pulled out a pen and started a new page of notes in the back of Duane's own notebook and handwriting that sat next to the boys like a shadow. If old rule equals trap the door, new rule equals door is safe. If old rule equals skip stair three, new rule equals stair three only walk his old plan backward. He looked at what he'd written, and for the first time in two years Victor Malone smiled. At the lake house, Evelyn felt it before anyone she couldn't have said how. She was sitting on the porch steps shelling peas with her mom when she went very quiet. Quieter even than her usual quiet, and then she got up, walked inside, found Pierce, and said five words He's going to figure out the flip. Pierce didn't ask how she knew you didn't ask Evelyn how she knew. You just rang the bell. The war council reconvened in the shop in four minutes flat, half of them still holding lunch. Evelyn's right, Duane said pacing. I planned the inversion assuming he'd trust the notebook blindly, but Vic isn't fingers. If he detects even one out of pattern trap, he reverse engineers the whole strategy. Inverted plans are still plans he can read a mirror So what beats him? Jane asked If normal is compromised and backward is compromised Duane stopped pacing. And slowly the entire room turned and looked at Tad Tad, who was at that moment trying to balance a screwdriver on his nose Tad, who noticed the silence, lowered the screwdriver and looked back at all of them. What random Duane breathed. He can predict my logic he can predict my logic reversed but he cannot predict the absence of logic He grabbed the marker and wrote on the butcher paper under inversion a new and terrible doctrine layer three chaos tonight we add a third layer to every defense, Duane announced Traps with no pattern, traps designed by people who don't think like me. Maddie, Emma, Tad, report to the workbench Whatever you imagine Molly and I will build Molly raised her glue gun. Supply chain stands ready. What came out of that workbench session would be studied by the kids for years afterward. Maddie designed a trap whose trigger was applause. Emma designed one involving the goose, a kitty pool, and what she described as his angriest hour, which research determined was two AM Tad designed three things that could not be built under current physics and one thing that absolutely could and was and was named by unanimous vote the Tadpole. Nobody outside the shop knew what the tadpole was the red rope was involved that was all anyone would say that evening, as the sun went down orange over Big Hill Lake, Pierce found Duane alone on the dock, looking at the water You okay? He's coming tonight, Duane said. Both of them It's the last night before our parents are all home for the weekend. He knows the schedule the adults will be in independence until ten. He was quiet for a second. Pierce he's good he's actually good at Lake Road I had eighteen months and home field. Here I had five days Pierce looked out at the pond, at the cave darken the hillside, at the acorn still spelling ready on the boards. You also didn't have a ghost last time, he said, or a goose or twelve of us. He put a hand on Duane's shoulder. Lake Road was your house, but this place protects its own. Edna's been defending this land for fifty years and as far as she's concerned we're hers now too. Behind them, in the cave mouth on the hillside something glinted in the last light. Edna Lois climbed up to check it before dinner because climbing up to check things was constitutionally her job. It was the skeleton key, the one from the lunch tin, the one they'd left in the cave room last summer it was hanging on a nail at the cave entrance now polished bright, and beside it on the stone, arranged in fresh acorns, an arrow pointing down the tunnel toward the house. Edna was opening the back door CHAPTER eight Night two Everything at once at nine fifteen PM with the adults still forty minutes from home two shapes detached from the tree line and the battle of Big Hill Lake began in the hayloft Bear keyed the radio Contact two targets they're splitting up yellow beanie heading for the shop Vic a pause Vic is walking straight at the house he's not even sneaking he's just walking that is so much worse All stations, Pierce said from the upstairs hallway. Positions Layer one is armed Henry status Morale is at a nine, Henry reported from the kitchen, and I have distributed emergency beef sticks to all personnel. We are nutritionally unstoppable. Fingers reached the shop first he had argued for this assignment actually argued for it on the grounds that buildings could not be haunted geese were outdoor problems, and a sixty by forty shop was basically a gymnasium and Fingers had always felt good in gymnasiums. He slipped through the side door into the dark, took four confident steps and stepped on the pressure plate that Duane, knowing the notebook said doorways, had placed in the dead center of the open floor. What happened next took nineteen seconds and used every rafter in the building. A counterweight dropped a net did not come down because Fingers was braced for a net. Instead the floor section he stood on rotated smoothly like a lazy Susan, while a shop fan kicked on and a five gallon bucket on a rail delivered from above a payload of packing peanuts mixed with maple syrup residue, so that by the time the rotation stopped Fingers stood facing the wrong direction in the dark, wearing a full suit of packing peanuts, looking like a man shaped snack that had been dropped on the floor of a movie theater. The lights came on every light in the shop all at once, aimed at one spot in the center of the floor, where Fingers stood blinking like the world's stickiest stage performer. And then from a hay bale throne at the far end of the shop, flanked by Molly with a glue gun and a smile, Maddie began to applaud. The applause was the trigger. Maddie's trap, the one she had designed herself, the one Duane had built with tears of professional joy in his eyes, activated. A curtain dropped, revealing a hand painted banner reading Welcome back and a repurposed t shirt cannon fired a single object across the shop in a perfect arc. Fingers caught it on pure instinct it was a granola bar. Fingers stood in the spotlight covered in packing peanuts holding a granola bar while a five year old gave him a standing ovation and something in his chest did something complicated. The notebook he said weakly to nobody mentions none of this at the house things were not funny. Vic came in exactly as Duane had predicted and exactly as Duane had feared, backward. He skipped the safe front door because the old notebook called front doors safe. He entered through the laundry window, the one place the old Duane would never trap, which the new Duane had trapped, which Vic, reading the mirror, had guessed and tested with a broom handle first. The flower bomb went off on the broom. He stepped through a clean dusted once with white, eyes flat Layer two is gone, Bear said quietly into the radio He's reading the inversions. He's inside he's in the mud room. In the upstairs hall, Pierce gathered the home team Henry, Jane, Evelyn, Emma in her unicorn pajamas, and Fred Berry on Jane's hip, awake, calm, holding his Cheerio cup like a soldier holds his canteen. He'll clear the downstairs in four minutes, Pierce said. He's not here to scare us. He's here for the new notebook. Duane's plan is holding at the stairs. If the stairs fail we go to the basement and we use Edna's door. Everyone remember the tunnel drill? Crawl, don't bonk, Emma recited. Crawl, don't bonk, Pierce confirmed. Downstairs Vic moved through the dark kitchen like smoke. The old notebook said the kitchen is always defended so he expected the inversion, an undefended kitchen. Which is why the kitchen was defended. Layer three did not follow the notebook or the anti notebook. Layer three followed Tad. Vic's foot came down on a floor tile that triggered nothing for three full seconds because Tad had specifically requested a pause so they think they're fine. That's the best part. And then the refrigerator door swung open by itself on a pulley. And from inside the refrigerator, where it had been waiting in the dark with the patience of its species came the goose. No notebook on earth could have predicted the refrigerated goose. Sergeant Waddles had spent ninety minutes In a fridge whose shelves had been removed and replaced with a heat lamp and a nest of towels, perfectly comfortable, exactly as Emma had designed, growing not cold, but angrier, marinating in the patient fury of a soldier who knows his moment is coming. And when that door opened and Sergeant Waddles saw Victor Malone standing in his kitchen, in his house on his land, the sound he made was not a hiss. It was a war cry. Upstairs, the kids heard it. They heard fourteen pounds of goose hit a grown man at chest height. They heard pans go down, a chair go over, and a voice that had stayed cold and level through two entire previous books say in the dark with genuine and human terror. What is happening? Bear's voice came over the radio, hushed and reverent. I'm giving that an eleven. No, stand by. The sound of an eraser working. twelve. Chapter nine. Vic gets up. Here is the difference between Fingers and Victor Malone. Fingers, attacked by a goose, ran into the night, and was never quite the same. Vic got up. He got up off the kitchen floor with feathers on his jacket and flour in his hair, grabbed the laundry basket off the dryer and trapped Sergeant Waddles underneath it in one motion, weighing it down with the toaster. The goose's outrage from under the basket shook the windows, but the goose was contained, and Vic stood in the dark kitchen, breathing hard, recalculating. He's up, Bear reported. And his voice had no jokes in it now. Goose is down, I repeat, the goose is down. Upstairs, Emma's face went through several emotions and settled on one nobody had seen before. Jane took her hand. He's okay, Emma, he's mad, not hurt. Listen to him. From under the basket, muffled, came the sound of a goose composing a list of names. Vic came up the stairs. He came up slowly, methodically, testing. The third stair. The one the old notebook said to skip. The one the inversion made safe. The one layer three had quietly retrapped on Evelyn's suggestion. Because Evelyn had said in her small voice, He'll do the math twice, nobody does the math three times. Gave way under his foot, and Vic dropped knee deep into a step filled with cold canned queso. Molly's contribution. She had donated it like a soldier giving blood. Vic looked down at his queso leg for a long moment. Fine. He said quietly, to the house itself. And pulled free and kept climbing. That was the moment Pearce understood fully what they were dealing with. The traps weren't stopping him. The traps were a price he was willing to pay. He came down the upstairs hallway, dripping flour and feathers and cheese, ruining a notebook's worth of brilliant engineering by simply absorbing it, and his eyes went straight to the bedroom door at the end of the hall behind which Duane stood with the blue notebook in his backpack. Basement plan, Pierce said. Now. They moved. Down the back stairs in a silent drilled line. Pierce. Then Jane carrying Fredberry, then Emma, Evelyn, Henry, and Duane last, while Maddie and Molly held the shop, and Lois ran the rooftop route to meet them, because of course Lois' evacuation route was a roof. The basement was unfinished, stonewalled, old. And in the back corner behind a shelf of paint cans that swung out on hinges Lois had oiled that afternoon was the thing Edna had shown them. A low wooden door older than the house above it with a keyhole worn smooth by fifty years of one woman's hand. Pierce slid the skeleton key in, it turned like it had been waiting. The tunnel beyond was narrow, dry, and dark, sloping gently away under the field toward the hillside, toward the cave, the same tunnel from the blueprints in Edna's hidden room. The kids went in one by one. Crawl, don't bonk. Fredbury went through happily, scattering a trail of Cheerios behind him like a tiny knight salting the earth. Duane went last. He paused in the doorway and looked back across the dark basement, listening to the footsteps upstairs, methodical, room by room, getting closer to the backstairs. You want the notebook? He said softly, to the ceiling. To the man somewhere above it. Come get it. Then he pulled the door shut behind him, and the paint can shelf swung back into place and the basement stood empty. Vic reached the basement ninety seconds later. He stood at the bottom of the stairs with a flashlight and swept it slowly across stone walls, paint cans, a water heater, and no children at all. But Victor Malone had not survived twenty years of this work by missing details. The flashlight beam stopped on the floor, on a single cheerio, then another, a few feet on, then another, in a neat little line that ran across the basement floor and disappeared, impossibly into a shelf of paint cans. Vic walked to the shelf. He felt along its edge, he found the hinge. And out at the dock, where the night wind had gone completely, perfectly still, the surface of the thirty two foot pond began very slowly, to ripple in straight lines. Chapter ten. The Lady of the Lake The kids came out of the cave into the open night, onto the hillside above the pond, and the plan said circle wide, regroup at the shop, wait for headlights on the gravel. The adults were due in fifteen minutes, and Vic knew it too, his clock was almost out of time. The plan was good. The plan died when Fredberry's Cheerio cup, nearly empty, finally betrayed them. I Vic came out of the cave mouth two hundred yards behind them, flower white and feather flecked and quezo legged, moving faster than a man that ruined should be able to move, and the only route left that didn't run a toddler across open ground was down, down to the dock. So that is where it ended. Eight kids at the end of a dock over thirty two feet of black water, under a Kansas sky going from clouded to clear, and Victor Malone walking down the slope toward them, slow now, because there was nowhere left for anyone to go. He stopped at the foot of the dock. Under one arm he held the green notebook. He had carried it on him for three months. It went where he went. You're a remarkable kid, he said to Duane. And the horrible thing was that he meant it. Three layers. The mirror inside the mirror. The chaos layer. He shook his head slowly. I've worked against alarm companies, banks, professionals. None of them ever made me work like you make me work. So I'm going to make this simple. The blue notebook. Hand it over, and I walk up that drive, and you never see me again. I don't want your house. I don't want your money. His voice dropped. Flat and tired and cold. I want to be the one who finally beat you. That's all. That's the whole job now. The pond behind them lay flat as glass. Pierce stepped slightly in front of the younger kids. Henry, without a word, passed Fred Berry his very last beef stick, which in Henry's language was a love letter and a will combined. Duane took off his backpack, he took out the blue notebook. He looked at it for a moment. Eighteen days of work this time, not eighteen months. And Pierce saw his jaw set in a way that meant he had run the numbers and the numbers were bad. Duane, Evelyn said quietly. It's okay, Ev. No. Evelyn was not looking at Duane. She was not looking at Vic. She was looking past both of them out at the middle of the pond, and her voice was small and sure and not afraid at all. Look at the water. Everyone looked at the water. Out in the center of the pond, in thirty two feet of darkness a light had come on, deep down. Faint and gold at first, then brighter, rising, and as it rose the water above it began to stir, and Fred Berry, balanced on Jane's hip, leaned toward the pond, pointed one finger, and announced to the knight, with all the gravity of his entire small being. Lady the surface broke without a splash. There are things you can describe and things you can only be present for. And what came up out of that pond was the second kind, but the parts the kids agreed on afterward were these, a single headlight, round and warm and old fashioned, the shape of a riding mower that had not been manufactured in forty years, water pouring off it and somehow never landing, and seated upon it, in a wide brimmed gardening hat, upright and unhurried, the lady of the land, herself. Edna Pickett rode across the surface of her pond the way she had ridden across her fields for fifty years, in a perfectly straight line. The temperature of the night did not drop. That was the strange thing. It got warmer, like a porch light coming on. Whatever Edna was, she had not come up cold. But Victor Malone did not know her, and she was not warm for him. The headlight swung and fixed on Vic, and the mower came on, dead slow, inevitable, the old engine making a sound underneath the night that no engine makes, and Vic, who did not believe in ghosts, who had said so twice at the diner, stood holding a stolen notebook while a dead woman drove across open water directly at him, and the cold professional calculation that had survived flower and queso and a refrigerated goose performed its final analysis and arrived at the only possible conclusion. Vic ran. He ran up the dock the wrong way, which was the only way toward the end toward the kids who parted around him like water. He ran past Duane and the mower light wheeled to follow him and Vic, blinded, missed the edge. The green notebook came loose as he fell. It spun once in the air, pages flashing white in the headlight and dropped toward the black water, and Vic hit the pond with a colossal slap, and the notebook was still falling, and then it wasn't. Because Lois had left the dock in a flat racing dive while it was still in the air. She came up six feet out with the notebook held high overhead, dry like a torch. Got it, she yelled. I got it, it's dry. Somebody write down that it's dry. Already written, Bear's voice hollered from the hayloft, half a property away, because Bear missed nothing, ever. Dive rated thirteen point five, new scale record. Vic surfaced, gasping ten feet from the dock, and found himself treading water in a black pond at night, with a ghost idling on the surface beside him. Her headlight tilted down at him politely. The way a librarian looks at you over her glasses. Edna did not say anything. The kids would always remember that. She never said one word. She just pointed once at the shore. And Victor Malone, the most patient and most cold blooded crook in three states, swam for the bank doing a panicked doggy paddle, crawled out through the cattails, and sat down hard in the mud, as far up the gravel drive headlights appeared. Two sets. The parents back from independence. And behind them red and blue. The Cherryvale County Sheriff, who had received eleven minutes earlier, a very calm phone call from an eight year old in a hayloft who had reported the intruders given GPS coordinates, described the suspects, and signed off professionally with the words You're going to want to bring a towel. Chapter eleven The morning after, they found fingers in the heated shop, and he was not hiding. He was sitting in a lawn chair. He had found it against the back wall, set it up under the work light, brushed most of the packing peanuts off himself, and settled in to wait, eating the granola bar that Maddie's trap had fired at him, with the peaceful expression of a man who had reached the end of a long road and found at the end of it a chair. When the sheriff's deputy came through the shop door, fingers raised one hand, not in surrender exactly, more like a student with a question. I'd like to make a statement, he said. Several, actually. One. I'm done. I quit at approximately 10 PM when the refrigerator opened. I heard what came out of it, and I sat down. Two. The lady in the pond is real, and she mows at night, and everyone in that diner deserves an apology. Three. He held up the granola bar wrapper. The little one's trap gave me a snack. They booby trapped me with kindness, officer. You can't fight that. There's no counter move. He stood up, stretched, and put his hands out for the cuffs almost cheerfully. Also, if anyone asks, the goose one write that down. The goose one. Vic said nothing at all as they walked him up the drive, dripping, flower streaked, queso cuffed, trailing one stubborn piece of glitter that had survived everything. But at the police car, he stopped and turned, and looked back down the slope, past the kids on the porch to the dock. The pond was flat. The night was just a night. But on the boards at the end of the dock, where there had been nothing an hour before, sat a riding mower's hubcap, sixty years old polished to a shine, placed neatly in the center of the dock like a trophy on a shelf. Vic looked at it for a long, long moment. Then he got in the car, and the door shut, and the battle of Big Hill Lake was over. The debrief took place the next morning over the largest breakfast in the history of the property. Uncle Mike made pancakes and shifts. The parents had been told a version of events that was one hundred percent true, and yet somehow left out the refrigerated goose, the syrup sprinklers, and the part where their children had evacuated through a secret ghost tunnel. That information was released slowly over several days in small doses. The way you let adults find things out for their own good. Bear stood on a kitchen chair and delivered the official ratings. The car wash eight point five with a bonus point awarded retroactively for glitter persistence. The deputy found glitter in his car, and he never went near the field. Final nine point five. The hay bale nine point two the shop rotation and packing peanut delivery ten. Maddie's applause trap. Bear paused and looked up from the notebook. Eleven. And I want to say something. We trapped a guy with a snack and a standing ovation, and he surrendered. I've been keeping these books for four years. I have never recorded anything like it. He cleared his throat and continued. The refrigerated goose, twelve. Lois's dive, thirteen point five, scale record. And the lady of the lake. Bear closed the notebook. Unrated. Some things are above the scale. That's the whole point of having a scale. What about the tadpole? Tad demanded. The kitchen went quiet. Because here was the thing about the tadpole. Nobody had pulled the red rope. The entire battle had come and gone, and Tad, given one job, the job of not doing something, had not done it. He had stood beside that rope through the whole evacuation with his hand hovering over it, waiting for Duane's order, and the order had never come. And Tad had not pulled. Tad, Duane said and stood up, and there was a strange thickness in his voice. Last summer you won a battle by ignoring instructions. Last night you won something harder. You followed them. He raised his orange juice. To Tad, the only soldier in history whose greatest move was nothing. To Tad the table thundered. I would still like to pull it before we leave, said Tad. Absolutely not. Duane, it's right there. That evening, their last at the lake house, the kids walked down to the dock together at sunset, all twelve of them, and laid out the biggest offering the property had ever seen. Cookies, a friendship bracelet in lake colors from Molly, a drawing of Sergeant Waddles by Emma, one beef stick from Henry's reserve, surrendered without complaint which everyone understood to be the single most expensive item on the plate, and from Fredberry placed at the very center with two small, careful hands, one cheerio. Evelyn knelt and straightened the plate. Thank you for the warning, she said to the water. Thank you for the tunnel. Thank you for the dock. She paused. He never did beat us. We thought you'd want to know. The pond glowed orange under the sunset and out across the field, where the light was going long in gold, the mowed grass lay in perfectly straight lines that no one all week had mowed. Chapter twelve Zone E The fire pit on the last night burned low and warm, and the twelve of them sat around it in a ring of lawn chairs and blankets full of s'mores, watching the sparks go up to a sky absolutely crowded with Kansas stars. The green notebook lay in Duane's lap. He had not opened it yet. It had sat on his dresser all day, recovered, dry, his again, and somehow he had not been able to open it until now with everyone here. Go on, Pierce said quietly. Duane opened the notebook. The first pages were exactly as he'd left them. The lake road maps, the trap diagrams, the wiring tables, eighteen months of his own careful handwriting. He turned the pages slowly. And then he reached the back and stopped, because the back was not as he'd left it. Vick's handwriting filled six pages, cramped, slanted, cold. Notes on Duane's patterns, notes on the inversion, a list titled What He'll Do Next with seven predictions, five of them right. And on the last page of Vic's notes, circled three times, pressed so hard into the paper that it had torn slightly. Two words and a question mark. Zone E. Below it Vic had written, Not at the house, not anywhere, checked every diagram, zones A to D are real. E doesn't exist. So why does he have a key labeled E on page twelve? The fire popped. Eleven faces turned toward Duane. Duane, Jane said slowly, what is Zone E? Duane looked into the fire for a while. When he spoke, his voice was different, lower, the planning voice gone, and something older in its place. You know how every trap I've ever built has been to keep something out, he said. Zone E is the only thing I've ever designed to keep something in. He closed the notebook. And it isn't in Kansas, it's home, in Bay Village, under the Creek Bridge. The fire crackled. Somewhere out on the lake, a loon called once and went quiet. The underground, Pierce said. It wasn't a question. Past the fourth gate, Duane said. There's a fifth door. Margaret Ellery's blueprints show it, and her journal stops talking about it on purpose. I found it eighteen months ago. I measured it. I planned for it. And then I closed my book and decided we weren't ready. He looked around the fire, at all of them, at the team that had just beaten Victor Malone with a goose, a ghost, a toddler, and a granola bar. Vic spent three months staring at those two words. And never got close. But he asked the right question. Which is Henry asked, around the last beef stick, which he had bought back from the offering plate with two s'mores and a formal apology. Not what a Zony Duane slid the notebook into his backpack and zipped it shut. Why would somebody build a door that only opens from our side? Nobody said anything for a long moment. Okay, I hate that, said Jane. Yeah, said Molly. I love that, said Tad. Maddie stood up on her chair, struck a pose, and announced to the fire, the stars, and the sleeping goose to be continued because somebody had to say it, and it was always going to be her. And far away in a town in Ohio, under an old bridge, over the sound of a creek that never stopped running, something behind a fifth door went on, waiting patiently, the way it had waited for a very long time, for the children to come home. The End. Coming next in the Bay Village Chronicles. Book 10. Deeper than the depths. The notebook is home, the crew is home. And under the Creek Bridge, past the fourth gate, a fifth door is waiting. A door Margaret Ellery built, a door her journal refuses to explain, a door that only opens from one side. Ours. Duane measured it 18 months ago and decided they weren't ready. They're ready now. And never forget. Uncle Matt is the king. He is king. He is king. He is king.