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The Little Giants as the Mysterious Six in the Supernatural Great Escape (Volume 2)

By Lynette Harrell

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The Smashed Toad Club

The Mysterious Six had been very pleased with themselves for solving the ‘The Case of the Ghastly Chicken Yegg’ several days earlier. Granted, what they thought was taking chickens turned out to be something else, but the mystery was solved and no more chickens had come up missing. They had also made a new friend, a British kid named Oliver, who had become the newest member of their club. On top of that, they had met a nice old man, Mr. Higgins, who seemed kind of lonely and could use some help around his place. They were happy to help out and it felt good to be able to do something for somebody else.
The week before, while they were working on his fence, Mr. Higgins had mentioned he could use their detective skills in unraveling a mystery but, thanks to the rain that had continued to pour down in the town of Fopple Top for several days now, mystery solving for the Mysterious Six had come to a screeching halt.
They had gotten together at Dexter’s house on one particularly soggy afternoon to introduce Oliver to ‘the Wizard’. No one bothered to tell him about Dexter’s amazing video game reputation nor were they inclined to warn Oliver about his looming annihilation. They simply took him into the living room like a lamb to the slaughter.
“I need to warn you,” Oliver said in his heavy British accent while he took off his jacket, hung it on the hall tree and straightened his glasses, “I’m extraordinarily good at video games. My friends back home would tremble in unmitigated fear when they’d sit down to play with me knowing they’d soon be pulverized like a frog in a blender. I’m what they call a ‘vidspert’.”
“What’s a vidspert?” asked Emily as she took off her hat and also hung it on the hall tree.
“A video game expert,” he said in all seriousness. “I’d be telling a porkei if I said otherwise. But Dexter, I shan’t be too hard on you this time though, or else you may not want to ever play against me again.”
They all glanced at each other with knowing smiles. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching a Brag-a-saurus, that’s stuffed full of himself, get chomped in half by a Thump-your-saurus.
Dexter said nothing and handed Oliver a controller.
Emily turned to Jack and whispered, “What do you suppose a porkei is?” “Well,” he whispered back as he made sure his thinking cap was on straight, “it sort-of sounds like it’s a lie. But probably not a teeny weenie lie but more like a big, fat snorty one.” Jack smiled at his amazing deductive skills, revealing his large buck teeth.
“That’s kind-of what I thought—a snorty porkie,” she replied as she smiled and turned her attention back to the two gamers.
“So what are we playing?” Oliver asked as he found a comfortable spot on the floor.
“Guardians of the Galapagos,” Dexter replied as he strapped an odd-looking, black thing on one hand and wrist.
“Jolly good,” Oliver said with complete confidence, “I hold the record back home with that one.”
Oliver studied Dexter’s wrist thing for a minute and finally asked, “What’s that you’ve strapped onto your wrist?”
“This is what I call a ‘gauntlet’,” Dexter replied as he tightened it on.
“What’s it for?”
“I put it on to slow me down,” Dexter answered as he flexed his gloved fingers.
“Slow you down?!” Oliver questioned as he pushed his glasses farther up onto his nose. “Are you serious?”
“Yep,” Dexter stated, “as serious as a girl asking you to arm wrestle. If I didn’t put it on, the game would probably be over a little too soon.”
Oliver looked a little uncomfortable as he prepared himself by putting his ball cap on backwards and fixing his eyes on the screen.
“You ready?” Dexter asked as he positioned himself.
“Yes, crack on,” Oliver replied.
The music began to play and the game began as the other four sat down on the couch to watch. It was apparent in about one minute how it would end. You could almost see Oliver’s head begin to shrink as the hot air began leaking out of his ego.
“Blimey!! Stone the crows!!” he’d yell. “Great gobs of goo!” he’d yowl as Dexter continued to skewer him like a night crawler on a hook. Oliver started flopping and thrashing as if in horrible pain as the two of them ascended to each new level. The game continued on as Dexter moved with ease and skill and Oliver started sweating like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The score was 32,890 to 2,370 when Oliver finally hollered, “Stop! Stop! You’re beating the ever-lovin’ peanuts out of me!”
The others had been conspicuously quiet for the last several minutes as they’d been holding their breath, trying to stifle their laughter but when Oliver threw down his controller, it was like trying to hold back a mountain of water with a paper plate. Emily was holding her breath so hard that when the dam of laughter finally burst, she ended up spewing all over her lap, which proved to be too much for the rest. The room filled with snorts and guffaws as they all joined her in laughing at Oliver’s outburst and his complete obliteration in the world of computer games.
“Do all Americans play like you?” Oliver asked as he gawked at Dexter and then looked at his friends rolling around on the couch.
“No, not so much,” Dexter said as a small grin formed on his lips and he casually put down his controller.
“He’s got a gift,” Robyn laughed as tears trickled from the corner of her eyes.
“I’ll say,” Oliver said, “a gift of grinding my bones to make his bread. I feel like a smashed toad.”
“Well,” Jack added as he caught his breath and smiled a toothy smile, “welcome to the smashed toad club. We’ve all been flattened, smashed and creamed by Dexter a ton of times.”
“Well, jolly good of you to keep me in the dark about it,” he said sarcastically. “Remind me to keep you in the dark next time you’re about to get hit by a bus.”
Robyn wiped her eyes and glanced out the window, noticing the quiet outside. “Hey, it looks like the rain’s stopped. Maybe the storm’s finally over,” she said.
The others hopped off the couch and peered out the living room window. It was still cloudy but the constant sound of pouring rain had stopped.
“Well, if it’s going to clear up maybe we can go to Mr. Higgins’ tomorrow morning and get started on his mystery,” Bailey suggested as she pushed her glasses back up on her nose.
“Yeah,” said Jack, “it’s kind-of funny that he and his dog were the cause of our last mystery and now he’s got one that needs solved, only his sounds much more bamboozling.” He paused for effect, hoping to amaze them all with his new word. “That means perplexing,” he explained as they just stood there staring at him.
“Bamboozling?” Oliver asked as he narrowed his eyes. “Is that a real word? I don’t think that’s a real word. I think you just made it up.”
“Like you made up ham hawks?” Bailey asked as she turned to Oliver and glared at him. “I looked up ham hawks in the dictionary and there is no such word. It is NOT a type of bird like you said it was Oliver,” she said as she folded her arms and cocked her blond head to one side.
Bailey thought Oliver had sounded so brilliant the other day when he explained to her inquiring mind that ham hawks were excellent hunters, but as it turned out Oliver had just made it up and now the truth had been found out.
Oliver started fidgeting with his shirt buttons and began looking rather uncomfortable.
“Yeah,” she continued as she pierced him with her eyes, “A ham H-O-C-K is the joint on a pig where it’s foot and leg come together. Ham hocks are mostly used for soups and stuff. And here I thought you were probably some sort of genius because you knew so much. Ha! It’s more like you’re a genius at making stuff up. I’m on to you now Oliver Peeples and I’ll be keeping a close eye on everything you say.”
“Well,” Oliver explained as he cleared his throat, “I honestly had heard the word before but I guess I must’ve heard my mum using it instead of hearing it on Animal Kingdom.
“Well,” Bailey said with disdain, “I think you and Jack are full of bug juice.”
“Wait a minute! Jack said defensively. “I am not full of bug juice! Bamboozling is a real word. I heard it the other day on Quacks on the Sidewalk.” (his favorite television show)
“Yeah, whatever,” Bailey said as she threw back one of her braids and looked around the room. ”If it is a real word, then I bet you’re probably using it wrong. Bamboozling is probably more like… uh… what people do who smuggle bamboo out of China.”
They were all quiet for a second as they thought about it. That actually sounded pretty logical.
After a minute of serious thought Robyn chimed in and said, “No, I think it’s more like a baby baboon. I’m pretty sure I heard something like that in school.”
“Well then, wouldn’t it be a baboonzling?” Dexter asked as he grabbed a controller and headed back to the game.
“I think I heard my dad say that a baby baboon is a babooney the other night when Mom and Dad were playing Balderdash,” Emily said.
“No,” Bailey said in that know-it-all tone she got every now and then, “I’m pretty sure a babooney is a person who takes care of all the monkeys at a zoo.”
That shut everybody up again. Although she might not actually know if there was even such a word she always sounded pretty convincing. No one dared to challenge her since she was starting to get that “Grammar Nazi” look on her face. And after all, she did like to read the dictionary.
“Are we going to play some more video games or stand here arguing?” Dexter asked as he plopped down on the floor.
“Yes, no point in ending in an argy-bargy,” Oliver said wanting to change the subject. Bailey continued to glare at him as the others turned and followed Dexter back into the living room.
After several hours of taking turns creaming each other and then ultimately getting cremated by Dexter, they began getting ready to go home for supper. The rain had not only stopped but the clouds were also starting to leave.
“Well,” said Oliver to the others as he put on his rain boots and turned his hat back around, “mum said we’re having bubble and squeak tonight and I sure don’t want to be late for that. This was fun in spite of the fact that I got beaten like an egg in a bowl. Cheerio,” he said and out the door he went.
“There he goes with the cereal thing again,” Emily said as she reached for her floppy hat. “And when he talks about dinner he brings up blowing bubbles and squeaking. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the way he talks.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Bailey as she put on her rain boots, “but he probably feels the same way about us. He’d never heard the word flashlight before, remember? I think I’ll go home and Google ‘bubble and squeak’. Maybe it means foamy soup with…um…mice meatballs.”
Everybody laughed and headed out the door hoping that tomorrow would bring a bamboozling mystery.









































































































Mischief of One Kind or Another

As each one hopped on their bike, Oliver was the first to notice that something wasn’t right. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, studied his bike and noticed that it was now sporting two horribly flat tires.
“What in the Queen’s waddle—?” he said as he hopped off and stared at his tires.
The others glanced over at his bike tires and then looked down at their own. Sure enough, four bicycles sat on eight deflated tires.
“What in the world?” Bailey asked as she stared at everyone’s tires.
Oliver let out a sigh as he felt one tire with his hand and said, “I think we’ve been nobbled.”
They continued staring at their bikes as they tried to decipher his British verbiage.
“Isn’t that what they do to horses legs so they can’t run away?” Robyn asked as she laid her bike on the ground.
“I think that’s called ‘hobbled’,” Bailey answered, “but it still fits with what just happened to our bikes. They sure won’t be going anywhere.”
“Nobbled means sabotaged,” Oliver explained in an exasperated tone. “It means somebody deliberately did this. They messed with our bikes and let all the air out of our tires while we were in the house.”
They glanced around at each other and then back down at their helpless bikes, wondering what kind of miserable creep would do this. Their minds were racing with possibilities when a name hit them all at the same time.
“Edgar!” they shouted in unison.
“I ought a go punch his rotten, no-good lights out!” Jack yelled.
Just then Dexter opened the front door and looked out. “I thought I heard talking out here. What are you guys doing?”
“Planning Edgar’s demise,” Oliver said as he punched his hand with his fist. “We’re gonna kill him!”
“Yeah!” Jack said, “we’re gonna go get a Sharpee and play ‘dot to dot’ with the freckles on his mean, nasty face!”
“What a jerk,” Emily said as she looked at her motorized scooter. “He couldn’t let the air out of scooter tires so he emptied my gas tank. I think we should call the police.”
“It doesn’t look like it was just tires that he was messing with,” Bailey said as she pointed to the driveway. There, lying on its side as if a victim of a hit and run, was Dexter’s empty trash can. All of its contents had been strewn all over the driveway and street. It was a mess—coffee filters, pork chop bones, empty soup cans, Wow-Mart bags, eggshells, grease-filled paper towels… Since the trash men were coming the next morning the trash can had been filled to overflowing. Now all of its contents were not only lying everywhere, but were soaked.
“Ah, yuck! You’ve got to be kidding!” Dexter exclaimed as he came out and gawked at the trash scattered up and down the street. “Ah, man, this stinks,” he mumbled as he thought about how gross it was going to be picking it all up.
“I tell you, we should call the police,” Emily said as she pushed her long, wavy red hair back behind her ear.
“And what, pray tell, would we tell them?” Oliver asked. “Would we simply say, ‘Excuse me officer, but an awful kid named Edgar, with a nasty disposition and a heart made out of ice cubes, probably did this and you should go and talk to him and let him lie through his teeth to you and tell you that he doesn’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Emily looked down at the ground and let out a sigh. She had to admit that Oliver was right. They had no proof that it was Edgar even though nobody doubted it for a second.
“We gotta get even,” Bailey said as anger rose within her. An idea started forming in her head as she began to elaborate, “No. We gotta get more than even! We’ve gotta get super-even! But it’s gonna have to be subtle and clever. We’ll have to be really sly and shrewd about it and drag it out over a long period of time so that he doesn’t have any idea it’s us. Very subtle. That way we can keep doing stuff to him and make him absolutely miserable and think he’s losing his mind.”
They all chimed in, “Yeah! Let’s get him! Let’s make him wish he were never born! Let’s pull his teeth out, shave his head and rip his legs off…subtly!”
They each turned, said their good-byes again, and began to walk their lifeless bikes home as Dexter went and found some rubber gloves and started picking up the soggy, smelly garbage. The thought of hanging red-headed Edgar James Randolph by his thumbs or poking slugs down his throat danced about in their heads. Revenge needed to be dealt to this bully, otherwise he’d never learn. He’d continue picking on everyone until someone picked back in a huge way. He needed a hard lesson in ‘what goes around comes around’; a painful lesson in ‘you play with fire, you’re gonna get crispified’. They each found comfort in the thought of getting their blissful revenge and looked forward to the satisfying feeling they’d have when they’d made him suffer.
Little did they realize that they had just been set up. The Unseen One, their Loving Savior, had allowed all of this to happen to begin training them in the way of forgiveness; yes, the hard road of Forgiveness. There were so many of His followers who struggled with this difficult but absolutely essential truth; even those who’d walked with Him for many, many years.
He watched them head home as they mumbled, fumed and schemed on how to get even with Edgar the Awful.
“I love you too much to let you stay the way you are,” He said as He followed each one down the sidewalk to their homes. “These thoughts will shackle you. They’ll eat you up from the inside out. But where there is forgiveness, there is tremendous freedom.”

***

Edgar sat happily on his couch with his wild red hair pointing in all directions. He had a menacing grin on his freckled face as he thought about the rotten things he’d just done to the Mysteriously Stupid Six, as he called them. Oh yeah, he knew about their club alright; their little pathetic detectives club and their dumb mysteries.
They think they’re so smart, he thought. They think they’re so cool for sticking up for the Brit, that Oliver kid, who shot me in the back of the head with an acorn, but I’ll teach all of them to mess with me! You protect him and you all get put on my hit list.
“Anybody who messes with Edgar will be sorry they were ever born,” he said out loud as he slammed his fist on the arm of the thread-bare couch. It was at that moment he suddenly heard a truck door slam outside and was jolted out of his deliciously vengeful thoughts. He scrambled to his room as quickly as he could because he sure didn’t want to get in his dad’s way if his dad had been drinking again.
He listened to see who it was and when the door flung open Edgar breathed a sigh of relief—it was his mother. She looked a lot older than she actually was and always came home completely exhausted. Being the sole provider for the family and holding down two jobs would wipe anybody out. He walked back into the little living room and studied his tired-looking mom.
“It looks like the rain has finally stopped,” she said as she took off her jacket and put the bills and the bag of groceries on the table. “You been stayin’ out of trouble?” she asked as she fell into a chair and turned on the T.V.
“Yea, mom,” Edgar said as he looked away. “It’s been just another boring day.”
“Good,” she said as she began to focus on the news and zone out from the rest of the world.

***

Robyn, her two-year-old little brother, Peter, and their mother, sat around the supper table discussing the events of the day. Robyn had shared with her mom the discovery of the flat tires and of the trash that had been thrown all over Dexter’s place and was expressing her anger.
“Why do some kids do that kind of stuff?” she asked as she poked a green bean with her fork. “We didn’t do anything to him except not let him beat up Oliver when he was getting ready to punch his lights out. But even then we didn’t do anything.”
“Well, sweety,” her mom said as she handed Peter a roll, “who knows why some people are mean and others are thoughtful and kind. But I know that we’re supposed to be nice to all of them, in spite of the way we’re treated.”
“I don’t want to be nice to Edgar,” Robyn admitted. “I want to pound nobs on his ugly red head and throw poisonous spiders down his shirt. He’s mean and hateful and needs someone to teach him a lesson.”
“Actually,” her mom replied, “you really don’t even know if it was Edgar or not. What if you have all these bad feelings toward him and he didn’t even do it? Wouldn’t you feel bad for accusing him falsely?”
“Nope,” Robyn answered honestly, her pretty brown eyes flashing with anger. “He’s done enough rotten things in the past to so many other kids that I still want to put him in a corner and feed him eggs with a sling shot.”
“Robyn!” her mom said as she raised her eyebrows. “You really are upset, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am,” she answered as she tried stabbing an olive with her fork. “It’s just not right when somebody gets away with bad stuff time after time. He needs to know what it feels like to be on the other end.”
“Is that what you think Jesus would do? Get even?”
“Well, probably not,” she frowned, “but I’m not Jesus. I’m me and I’m not perfect.”
“Hmm,” her mom said as she picked up the roll that Peter had just dropped on the floor, “I’m pretty sure Jesus knows that we’re not perfect, but I know that He wants us to strive to be. He told us to turn the other cheek when somebody does mean things to us.”
“Why?” Robyn argued. “What good does that do? It just shows mean guys that if they treat people bad they get another cheek pointed at them and can just slap the heck out of that one too.”
Her mom smiled and said, “Well, it could certainly turn out that way but it’s not so much about how they treated you but more about how you treat them. That’s one way we can grow in becoming more like Jesus, by how good we treat other people in spite of how bad they treat us.”
“Hmph,” Robyn grunted as she finished the last of her spaghetti and pushed one of her brown braids behind her. “His way is too hard.”
“Well, why don’t you asked God what He thinks about all of this?” her mom said as Peter dropped his cup of milk on the floor.
“Oh, Peter,” her mom sighed as she made a dash for a kitchen towel.
Robyn visualized throwing cold milk in Edgar’s snarling face. Then she visualized dumping hot, steaming spaghetti on his messy head of hair. Then she thought about poking his rotten mouth with a fork, but for some reason, all of these justifiable thoughts that came to mind didn’t make her feel any better. She actually felt a little bit worse.

***

After Bailey got home, she sat down in front of the computer and Googled ‘bubble and squeak’. When she was finally satisfied with her research she climbed into her favorite cozy chair that she had dubbed the ‘Throne of Knowledge’ and waited for supper to be ready. Ideas started dancing around in her head on clever, sneaky ways to get even with Edgar, the Terrible. She would have to get the others to help her, but she was sure she wouldn’t have any trouble getting them to do that. They all wanted to rub his face in used kitty litter too. After having come up with at least five diabolical ideas, she decided to catch up on her Bible reading. She had tried making a habit of reading a little bit out of it every day and it seemed like the Holy Spirit was always showing her something new. Even if she’d read the same thing a dozen times before, something seemed to always jump off the page and get her to thinking.
“Let’s see...where was I?” she said to herself as she opened it up to where her bookmark lay. She found the spot where she’d left off yesterday and began to read the words in red; “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Bailey shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She didn’t like the sound of any of that and decided to skip it and turn a few pages ahead and read somewhere else.
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
She slammed the Book shut. “Ha ha. Very funny, Lord,” she said as she set it on the table beside her chair. “You set me up. You knew that’s where I’d be reading today.” She stared at the wall, and then stared at the floor and then gazed out the window as she watched the wind chase away the rest of the clouds.
“I don’t want to turn the other cheek. And I don’t want to give him my coat or anything else except maybe a fat lip. He makes me so mad!”
She sat quietly, trying not to hear what she knew the Lord was saying to her spirit.
“No, Lord. That cheek-turning thing is too hard. I want to get even. I want him to pay for being so mean. I want him to be miserable.”
The Lord lovingly knelt down beside her and quietly whispered in her ear, “He already is.”
“Supper’s ready!” her mom called from the dining room as she set the last of the silverware on the table. Bailey hopped up from her chair like it was on fire, glad for the interruption. She didn’t like at all what she thought she just heard Him say.
She decided not to mention anything about the bike tires or Edgar to her parents. She had a pretty good idea of what her folks would say about it and didn’t want to hear it. “Forgive him,” she could imagine them saying. No way! she argued silently in her head. He has to pay for being a creep! And she certainly didn’t want to think about where the Lord was going with the verses she read so she blocked it all out and listened to her mom and dad talk about their day and the various things that were going on in the community.
“Do you remember Mary Balosi?” her Mom asked as she cut her asparagus with her fork. “You know, that sweet little 94-year-old lady who lives on Bauer Street? Well, she managed to drop her car keys down one of those storm drains at the Hinky Dinky parking lot and ended up calling 911 on her cell phone. When the police arrived, they found her lying face down on the pavement and thought that she had had a heart attack. But she was actually sticking her arm down the drain and had just managed to wrap her fingers around the keys when they rushed over to help her up. They startled her so bad that she dropped the keys back down the drain and was so mad at them that she sat up and hit Officer Dudley with her purse! Can you imagine how shocked he must have been to have a sweet little Mary smack him with her purse?” She shook her head and grinned as she continued to cut her asparagus, trying to imagine gentle little Mary clobbering Officer Dudley.
“Say,” she said changing the subject, “did they ever catch the men that robbed Smuggler’s Notch State Bank?”
“No,” her dad answered as he buttered his bread, “it was a clean getaway and they left no clues. Apparently they had planned it out quite well because the police keep trying to track down different leads but none of them have amounted to anything.”
“Mom,” Bailey said changing the subject again, “have you ever tried frying cabbage with potatoes?”
“Hmm,” her mother said as she thought about it. “No, I can’t say that I have. Why do you ask?”
“Well, Oliver, that new kid, said that he needed to get home to eat bubbles and squeaks. I thought maybe it was Coke with pork chops, but I guess that would be ‘bubbles and squeals’, not squeaks,” she reasoned. “Anyway, I looked it up on the internet and it means fried cabbage and potatoes. Why would they call it that?”
“Well,” her dad offered as he took on a serious air, furrowed his brow and slyly winked at her mom. “Maybe after you’ve filled your belly up with this strange combination of vegetables it begins to give you such horrendous gas that your stomach rumbles and churns and bubbles and groans and you painfully clutch your tummy as you writhe in agony and finally take a deep, laborious breath and….hmm…well…squeak…out… in pain.”
Her mom grinned as she took a drink from her glass enjoying her brilliant husband’s odd sense of humor.
“Squeak out in pain?” Bailey asked in all seriousness. “Nobody squeaks out in pain. Squeals out, screams out, yells out, cries out, hollers out, but squeaks out? Really dad, that’s kind-of a lame explanation, don’t you think?”
“You have a better one, little missy?” he asked as he grinned and wiped his face with his napkin.
“No,” Bailey said with a sigh, “Oliver just talks so weird and half the time I don’t understand what he’s saying and then he gets all ticked off about it.”
“Well, darling,” her mom said, “can you imagine what we Americans sound like to him?”
“But all of our words make sense,” Bailey argued.
“Oh, really,” her mom replied. “What about ‘buffalo wings’ and ‘grape nuts’? Do those make sense?”
Bailey thought about it for a minute and said, “No, not really. I guess we all talk kind of weird when you stop and think about it.”
She got up and started clearing the table, deep in thought as she considered other goofy phrases that she took for granted like “good grief”. Was there such a thing as good grief? Wouldn’t bad grief make more sense? What about cold hotdogs or the saying, ‘fine as fish fur’? Fish don’t have fur. Why do we say that?
After she finished with the table and had exhausted all other strange sayings that had come to mind, she went to her room and began gathering up important clue-finding stuff. Dealing with horrible Edgar was just going to have to wait. The Higgins mystery might be the most exciting and hardest one they’d ever tried to tackle and she needed to be as prepared as she could be. As she packed she started talking to her heavenly Friend and Savior about the case. Jesus was listening as she placed her things in her pack.
Of course, He knew she had no idea of what was coming. She would have to mull over the forgiveness issue in her heart for awhile, but there were other tests that she would be facing tomorrow. He never put a test in her path that she could not pass but that truth would be a while in coming to her. She would be given several choices of whether or not to put her faith in Him and if she chose not to, He would allow her to take the test again and again until she began to understand how much He loved her and knew what was absolutely best for her. These tests were often difficult, but little did she realize how valuable they were in making her grow and become stronger when she passed them. He had prepared her for them and now it was up to her to choose to follow. Tomorrow would certainly be a day full of surprises.






























































The Skeleton Key

Walking up onto Mr. Higgins’ porch felt altogether different than it had just a week ago. The last time they found themselves knocking on his door they were all shaking in their wee-little boots, having visions of him turning them into kid pot-pies. How silly of them. He’d turned out to be a very nice old man who had a bad leg and seemed pretty lonely. He had his dog, Rosy, to keep him company but that just wasn’t the same as having a real, live people-type person to talk to. When he had mentioned having a mystery that needed solved it seemed to be the perfect solution for everybody. They’d get to practice their detective skills and he’d get to have some company.
They knocked on his front door and waited as they studied the hole in the floor that was right in front of the door.
“We need to help Mr. Higgins fix this hole,” Dexter said as he stared at it. Before too long the door opened and there was Mr. Higgins with cane in hand.
“Well, hello,” he said as his eyes brightened underneath his very bushy gray eyebrows, “I was afraid you weren’t coming back.”
“We wanted to come back sooner,” said Emily, “but the rain kind-of messed everything up.
“Well come in, come in,” he said as he shuffled into his living room. He was tall and thin, with gray hair and eyebrows and because of those bushy eyebrows, he looked like he was constantly frowning, but when he smiled the whole room would light up and all of the unfounded scariness just vanished into thin air. His house had a nice smell to it, like bacon and brownies and Old Spice shaving cream. The furniture was old and the couch had seen better days but the place had a good feel about it—like when you walk into your Grandma’s house and smell bread baking or when you’re sitting on the river bank in the sun with a fishing pole and a can of worms.
“Have a seat,” he said as he pointed to the couch and chairs. They took their shoes off at the door and went and sat down. “Would you like some gingersnap cookies?”
“Yes, please!” Jack replied before anybody else could answer. That was something that Jack always made sure he had with him—his appetite. Mr. Higgins smiled and hobbled into the kitchen.
“I like his house,” Robyn said as the others looked around at all the family pictures hanging on the wall. There was a picture of a bunch of soldiers sitting around a little make shift table eating food out of what looked like big sardine cans. Next to that picture was the famous picture of a bunch of men in a war that were trying to hoist up the American flag and beside that one was something that looked like a picture frame full of medals. She noticed an old clock on the mantelpiece that had birds all over it, a swinging pendulum and a very loud ‘tock’. The others turned to look at what she was staring at when suddenly a little wooden bird came shooting out of a small door in the middle of the clock and began yelling, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” over and over again. Everybody jumped as they watched the noisy little bird scream his head off and finally zip back through his door.
“That must be a cuckoo clock,” Dexter said. “I’ve heard about them but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one.”
“Well,” Oliver said in his British accent as he frowned at it, “I’d say they named it right. You’d be a little cuckoo to own one of those clocks. I’d be jumping out of my skin or throwing milk all over myself every hour on the hour.”
Right at that moment Mr. Higgins came back with a plate full of cookies and set them down on the coffee table. They each took one (or two, in Jack’s case) as Mr. Higgins settled into his recliner and leaned back.
“So,” Bailey said as she finished eating her cookie, “what you told us the other day sounds really interesting. Could you start at the beginning and tell us the whole story? We brought our notebooks this time,” she said as she pulled out a notebook and pencil from her backpack, as did Oliver.
“Yes indeed,” he replied. “It all started about a month ago when I had accidentally left the front gate open and Rosy, always the opportunist, went roaming. When she came back several hours later she had a very strange key in her mouth. Here it is,” he said as he picked it up from the little table by his chair and handed it to Bailey. “I’ve never seen one like it before,” he said. “It looks like an old skeleton key. You know, the kind they had years and years ago but instead of having one or two prongs on it, it has four and I’d say the key is at least four or five times bigger than a typical skeleton key. I can’t imagine what it went to. Key holes are never that large.”
Bailey studied the heavy piece of metal for a minute and then handed it to the others to examine.
“And not only that,” Mr. Higgins continued, “there’s been some strange goings-on around the cliffs at the back of my property. I’ve seen lights back there in the middle of the night when I needed to let Rosy out to water the grass. I’d go check it out myself but I’m not getting around very well these days. My leg seems to be thinking about taking a permanent vacation,” he chuckled as he patted it. Rosy thought it was an invitation to ‘come here’ so she walked over and sat down at his feet with that sappy grin on her face. He leaned forward and lovingly petted her.
“So how many times have you seen the lights?” Oliver inquired as he cleaned his glasses with his shirt.
“Oh, probably four or five times now,” Mr. Higgins answered. “The last time I saw it was a little over two weeks ago but I haven’t seen it since. I called the sheriff and he went and took a look-see but didn’t find anything. With you kids being detectives and all, I thought you might take a harder look than he did.”
Bailey and Oliver scribbled frantically in their notebooks as the others pondered Mr. Higgins’ observation.
“So, Mr. Higgins, what happened to your leg?” Robyn asked as she fiddled with one of her brown braids and studied his leg. “Have you always had to use a cane?”
“No, Robyn, I was just as normal as the rest of you but then I went to war and got shot in the leg. I was lucky that it was just my leg. A lot of others weren’t so lucky. Someone was definitely looking out for me.”
“What war was it?” Jack asked as he stuffed another cookie in his mouth.
“It was the Vietnam war,” he answered as his face grew serious and he gazed off in the distance. “The doctors did the best they could, but they had to take out about two inches of my leg and I’ve had a pretty bad limp ever since. But lately it seems to be getting more and more painful.
They all sat quiet for a minute, thinking about what it would be like to be in a war and get shot at when he spoke up, “Well, do you think it sounds like a mystery you’d be interested in?”
“Oh yes!” they said enthusiastically.
“You’ve asked the right people,” Oliver stated. “The Mysterious Six is our name and solving difficult mysteries is our game. We’ll give it our best shot and see what we can come up with.”
They thanked Mr. Higgins for the cookies as Bailey and Oliver put their notebooks away.
As they headed toward the door and began putting their shoes on, Dexter turned to Mr. Higgins and asked, “Could you show us where you saw the lights shining?”
“Sure thing,” Mr. Higgins replied as they all side-stepped the hole and went outside. He led them to the backyard and pointed to the rocky cliffs that were nestled against the base of a very large hill about half a mile away.
“It seemed to me that the lights I saw were more at the base of the cliffs than on the top,” he said. “It’s the darndest thing. Why would anybody be out snooping around in the middle of the night?”
“We’ll see what we can find out, Mr. Higgins,” Jack said as they walked out of the yard.
They waved goodbye and headed toward the cliffs, excited to finally be working on Mr. Higgins’ humdinger of a mystery.
“We need to give this case a name,” Bailey said as they walked along. “What about the… ‘Case of the Suspicious Lights’?
“Well, that’s pretty good but you can’t forget the key that Rosy found,” Jack said as he pulled his thinking cap down harder on his head. “How about the Case of...uh…well…how about just… ‘The Key to Unlocking a Mystery’?”
“The Key to Unlocking a Mystery,” mused Robyn. “I think that’s a great play on words and sounds pretty mysterious.”
“Yeah, I like it!” Emily said as she stopped to fish a pebble out of her flip flop. “It sounds very secretive-y.”
“There’s not such a word as secretive-y, Emily,” corrected Bailey, the never tiring Grammar Nazi.
“Well, maybe there wasn’t,” Emily replied as she straightened her floppy hat and pushed a strand of wavy red hair behind her ear, “but there should’ve been, so there is now.”
“What if we waited to see how it ends before we give it a name?” Dexter asked as he tripped over a rock. “This key looks pretty important but there may be something even more important than this.”
“Well, that might not be a bad idea,” Bailey said. “Let’s get a little further into this mystery and then name it. ‘Sound good?”
There was a unanimous “yeah” and she promptly changed the subject. “You know, it is pretty weird that somebody was snoopin’ out here in the middle of the night. Why would they do that?”
“Maybe somebody lost their dog and was out looking for it,” Robyn said as she followed behind Jack.
“Lost their dog four times?” asked Jack. “If that were the case they should get rid of their escape artist dog and get a hamster. When a hamster comes up missing you don’t have to look very far. You can normally find it eating in the cat’s food dish, which isn’t a very smart thing for a hamster to do because that’s also where the cat eats.” Jack was suddenly lost in thought as if he were remembering a day in the past. “Yeah, you always need to make sure you latch the door on their little cages otherwise they can turn into Purina Cat Chow real quick.”
Robyn didn’t even want to know what he was talking about and abruptly changed the subject. “Maybe it was a poacher,” she suggested. “They wouldn’t want anybody to know they were out here.”
“Well, that’s a possibility,” Oliver said as he studied the surrounding area, “but you probably wouldn’t poach an animal in the same spot four times in a row, would you?”
“No,” they all answered as they walked along.
They arrived at the cliff wall and began to spread out, looking for clues. The rock wall went on for quite a ways but unfortunately the rain had erased any evidence of activity or footprints that might have been there. After an hour of searching and scouring the area, they were just about to give up when Oliver noticed a place in the mud that was different than anywhere else. The grass and small plants that had been growing against the rocks had been uprooted and were lying in a heap.
“Why would anybody pull up weeds in the dark?” he asked. “That jolly well doesn’t make any sense.”
They searched the entire area again and since it was getting close to supper time, Jack announced that he thought he was going to become extinct from hunger. They agreed that they should probably call it a day and decided to meet at the grotto the next day with their backpacks full of detective equipment and food.
































































The Grotto Has a Secret

The ‘grotto’ was the code name The Mysterious Six had given to the cave they had recently discovered on Emily’s parents’ land. They had each promised not to tell anyone about their new clubhouse and had kept it a complete secret. So the next day, with their backpacks full of sleuthing equipment, they met at the grotto planning on heading over to Mr. Higgins’ cliffs after they checked the equipment they’d brought. Emily’s parents land actually bordered his and so getting to the cliffs was just as easy going through their land as it was going through Mr. Higgins’.
Having meetings in a cave meant you always had to remember your flashlight and so five flashlights and one headlamp, which was Oliver’s, were retrieved from their packs. They all sat down and began going over the list of items they had brought, except for Dexter, who had walked over to the back of the cave with his flashlight and new compass that he’d gotten for his birthday. You never knew when you’d need a compass and he really hadn’t had much opportunity to use it.
Do compasses work in caves? he wondered. He began looking at the wall with the strange markings on it that they had discovered when they found the cave. He peered at the date at the bottom which read ‘1887’ and at the lines that had been scratched on the wall. He saw how they all seemed to connect at the bottom and stepped forward to get a closer look when he accidently dropped his compass, which was normal for Dexter who was slightly on the clumsy side. He shone his flashlight on the ground where the compass fell but couldn’t see it, which was weird because it should have fallen right at his feet. As he searched here and there with his flashlight he caught a glimpse of something shiny and knelt down. He saw what he thought was his compass and how it had rolled under a rock ledge and was sticking out a little. The ledge had about a three inch space between it and the floor and was about three feet wide. Dexter felt around and finally grabbed a smooth, round piece of metal.
What on earth? he said to himself. He tried pulling on it but it wouldn’t budge so he got on his stomach, grabbed it with both hands and pulled with all his might. What happened next caught everyone by surprise.

***

The others were talking about the only clue they had discovered yesterday, that being the pulled up bushes, when they heard a loud, terrible grinding sound behind them.
“What in the Sam Hill was that?” Jack shouted, as they all jumped up and shone their flashlights at the back of the cave. They saw Dexter lying on his stomach with something in his hand. What was once a rock wall in front of him was now a large hole and was about four feet tall and three feet wide.
“Wow!! Look at that! Would ya’ look at that!” Dexter shouted as he jumped up from the floor. The others ran to the back to join him.
“What happened?” Bailey asked excitedly as she and the others gaped at the opening.
“I…I was just feeling around for my compass that I dropped,” Dexter explained, “when I felt a round thing like a metal hoop tucked back under the rock ledge. I yanked on it, trying to get it loose when all of a sudden it gave way and the wall started moving.”
“Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness!” Emily squealed as she hopped up and down. “That’s a door! It’s a door into another room!”
They pointed their flashlights into the darkness. The door had swung open into what looked like a little room or maybe even a tunnel, since they couldn’t see the back of it at all. It was cold, pitch black and smelled of earth and rocks. It wasn’t much taller than they were but it appeared to go on for quite a ways.
“Great snails and snakes!” shouted Oliver. “We absolutely must go and explore this! It might take us to a gold mine or a silver mine or a diamond mine or a—
“Lost mine,” interrupted Bailey. “A very lost mine. We don’t know what’s in there and we could get lost. We could wind up wandering around for days and days and no one would know where we are because we’ve kept this cave a secret. They’d think that we were kidnapped and go looking for us everywhere else but here. Then they’d put our pictures in the paper and on telephone poles and on the missing persons wall at Wow-Mart,” she exclaimed as she got more and more serious. “And then, as the hours drug on, our flashlights would get dimmer and dimmer, and then just go out. We’d be stuck sitting in the dark and wondering what kind of nasty things live in caves—”
“Yes, but what’s your point?” snapped Oliver. “Something like this only comes along once in a life time. This is something that you only read about in books. It never really happens in real life. Most kids would die to have an opportunity pop up like this one.”
“Well,” argued Bailey as she put her hands on her hips, “you might be right about the ‘most kids would die’ part. That might be how we’d wind up—mostly dead. And the ‘once in a life time’ part could end up being a very short life time, like ten years.”
“I think we should check it out,” Jack said, actually agreeing with Oliver, which was rare. “If it starts getting scary we can just turn around and come back.”
“I brought a bag of potato chips,” Robyn said. “We could always leave crumbs on the floor of the tunnel like Hansel and Gretel did so we could find our way back, only there’s no birds in here to eat them up.”
Dexter was listening to the conversation and looking at the tunnel door when he noticed his compass lying off to the side and reached down to pick it up. “And I have my compass,” he said as he shone his light on it. “It looks like it works in caves so we’d know which direction we were going.
“What if there’s bats?” asked Emily, her voice suddenly filling with concern. “Blood-sucking Vampire bats?”
“Those only live in Transylvania,” Oliver stated confidently, as if he’d lived there himself when he was a child. “If there were any bats in here they’d be North American bats that only screech, fly and poop in your hair.”
“Eewww. Yuck,” said the girls at the same time as they felt their hair for foreign matter.
“I say we take a vote,” Jack offered as he looked around at the others. “All those in favor of investigating the tunnel say ‘hey diddle, diddle’.”
Five ‘hey diddle, diddles’ were loudly spoken as the excitement mounted. “All those opposed say ‘pukey lukey’.
“Pukey lukey,” Bailey said emphatically as she stomped her foot. “Pukey lukey, pukey lukey, pukey lukey!”
“That still only counts as one vote,” Oliver announced.
“Well, it’s five to one in favor of investigating it so it looks like we’re going in,” Jack said as he shone his flashlight along the walls.
“For crying out loud!” Bailey yelled as she realized they were serious. “You’re all being a little harebrained about this, don’t you think?”
“Nope,” Oliver replied as he gazed into the eerie darkness. “We’d be a bunch of daft cows if we passed this up. This is a detective’s dream come true and we’re not going to miss it for the world.”
The five turned, went to the front of the cave, grabbed their backpacks and headed for the entrance to the tunnel.
Bailey just stood there in shock, watching them walk away.
“Aren’t you coming?” Robyn asked, surprised that Bailey hadn’t budged.
“No,” Bailey replied as she folded her arms, “somebody’s got to go get help when you guys don’t come back.”
“Fine,” said Oliver as he walked through the opening. “Go ahead and be a lily-livered, dreary goober of a chicken. We’ll have a jolly good time telling you all about the gold we found when we get back.”
Robyn looked back at Bailey nervously as she walked through the opening with the others. “Pull out those crisps Robyn and let’s get cracking,” Oliver said as he positioned his headlamp and led the way.
All five walked slowly into the tunnel and soon disappeared into the darkness. Bailey plopped down at the entrance of the cave, put her face is her hands and stared at the floor.
Maybe I should’ve gone with them, she mused. Heaven knows they need someone to lead them back who’s using their head for more than just growing hair. She was feeling a mixture of emotions; a melancholy type of sad, because they might find something like gold or rubies and she’d have missed out. Then there was the relieved kind of glad she was feeling because they might get lost, scare themselves half to death and then she could rescue them by going and getting help.
She sat there alone, chewing on a fruit roll-up and began to do what she did a lot of anymore… pray.

***

The others began walking slowly and carefully down the rough corridor and noticed that the path was starting to slope downward. There were low hanging rocks that they had to dodge to keep from bumping their heads and sharp rocks sticking up out of the ground that they had to dodge to keep from stubbing their toes. Sometimes the tunnel got narrower so that they had to squeeze through sideways but sometimes it widened out enough where two could walk side by side. But one thing was always the same—it was black and so incredibly quiet that it was creepy…real creepy.
“We’re headed north,” said Dexter breaking the silence, as he studied his compass.
“What good does it do to know which direction we’re heading?” asked Emily. “It’s not like we have any choice. We either go forward or turn around.”
“Well,” Dexter answered, “for one, there might be other choices coming and two, if we get totally turned around, at least we’ll know we need to head south to get out.”
The path broadened a little as they turned a corner and to their complete surprise and disappointment they found themselves staring at a dead end.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” exclaimed Jack. “This is just a tunnel that leads to nothing? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe whoever dug it got tired of not finding anything and finally gave up,” Robyn said as she nibbled on one of the chips.
“I can’t believe this is all there is!” yelled Oliver, who had visions of gold nuggets and large diamonds dancing around in his head.
They stood there for a few minutes mumbling to one another and then slowly turned around and began heading back to the entrance of the cave. They could easily see the crumbs that Robyn had dropped along the path. That was a little comforting knowing that at least that part of the plan had worked well. It only took about five minutes to make their way back since they were now a little familiar with the tunnel. Bailey had heard them talking as they came nearer and breathed a sigh of relief. They reached the opening and shuffled through.
“Why are you back so soon?” she asked as she got up from the ground and wiped off her backside.
“The tunnel goes a ways and then just stops,” Dexter explained.
“Yeah,” Oliver said long-faced, “it turned out to be a damp squib. I just knew it would lead to some kind of treasure but instead it’s a blasted tunnel to nowhere.”
“Aren’t all squids damp?” Robyn whispered to Jack as she put what was left of her chips in her backpack.
“Well, if they’re not,” Jack whispered back as he grinned and straightened his hat, “then they’d end up being dried up squid which isn’t good for anything but trail mix.”
Robyn burst out laughing. “I heard what you said,” Oliver snapped, “and for your information a damp squib means a failure…a dud. This whole adventure turned out to be a damp-squib. Jolly rotten damp squib.”
“Well, I would have to disagree,” Bailey said as she picked up her backpack and began heading out of the cave. “The fact that you’re all safe and sound is anything but a failure. I could see all kinds of nasty things happening to you in that tunnel. I asked God to watch out for you and He did.”
“Yeah, she’s probably right,” Dexter agreed as he ran a hand through his gel-induced spiked hair. “It might have turned out not so good. You never know.” They all turned and left the cave and began heading to Mr. Higgins’ property and his rock cliffs.
“Well, so much for the Old English Bulldog pup I was going to buy with the gold,” Oliver muttered to himself. “I guess I’m just stuck with a fat, stupid cat.”












































































If at First You Don’t Succeed…

After leaving the cave and walking for quite a ways they found the barbed wire fence that separated Emily’s land from Mr. Higgins’ and began climbing over. Dexter, in typical Dexter fashion, managed to rip his pants on the barbed wire but luckily didn’t rip his skin.
Jack was next and carefully placed his feet between the barbs as he easily climbed over and stood on the other side. Emily, whose turn it was next, needed a little help getting over since climbing wire fences was a new experience for her.
“Just give me your hand,” Jack offered as he held out his hand. “Put your leg over the fence where I did and give me your hand.”
Emily, who’d just witnessed Dexter rip his pants was a little nervous at the prospect of tearing her own favorite jeans but in spite of her fear tried doing what Jack said. She was just about to succeed in climbing over when she suddenly lost her balance and began to fall. Jack, who still had his hand out, tried to help her but rather than take his hand, she grabbed for his head, jumped and hung on for dear life. Jack’s ‘thinking cap’ went flying and Emily haphazardly hung on to one ear and a fist full of hair.
“Let go of my head! Let go of my head!” he hollered as he began stumbling around, trying to grab her clenched hands that were gripped to his ear and hair like a steel trap. Just as she was about to finally trust him and loosen her grip Jack tripped on a rock and they both went tumbling to the ground and landed in a heap.
The others started laughing at the sight of Jack, the gallant and Emily, the princess as they were tangled up like so much spaghetti.
“A big help you are, Jack Ramsey!” she yelled as she yanked her hand out from under Jack’s knee. She got up, brushed the dirt off her designer jeans and began pulling grass out of her hair. “You just broke one of my fingernails!” she said with utter disdain as she looked at nine professionally polished nails and one nub. “And give me my flip flop!”
“Well,” he argued as he pulled her shoe out from under his armpit, picked himself up and grabbed his hat, “you were supposed to grab my hand, not my head. If you ask me, girls are just a bunch of sissies and wansies that should stay home and play with their Barbies!”
Emily’s eyes widened in disbelief at his horribly rude remark. If looks could kill he would have been deader than a feeder mouse in a snake pit. “Well, Jack, my Barbie’s still at your house,” she spit. “Remember? You asked if you could borrow it?”
The girls laughed at Emily’s clever reply but the boys stood there motionless and didn’t think it was a bit funny. This was serious stuff she was accusing him of and needed to be handled as such.
“I did not!!” spewed Jack as he felt his shirt pockets to make sure his beloved candy bars were still intact. “You just made that up! And if I did ever ask to use one of your stupid Barbies, it would be to shoot its head off with a sling shot!”
“You are awful and nasty and…awful,” she hollered as she glared at him. “You’d borrow it so that you would have two to play with—your Cinderella doll and my Barbie!”
It was all Jack could do to not choke her. Hitting girls was off limits but nobody ever said anything about choking them.
“Alright, you two, quit fighting,” Bailey said as she turned and started up the hill. “We can’t be fighting if we’re going to solve this case. It’s going to take teamwork.”
Jack glared at Emily and Emily glared back, as she put on her stray flip flop, and stuck her tongue out at him. They all began heading in the direction of the cliffs, knowing that Bailey had single-handedly just prevented World War III from happening.
Once they arrived where they had previously found the grass and shrubs cleared away they began looking harder for any type of clue. The ground was still a little muddy from the rain and all they could see were the footprints they had left from the day before. Oliver quit looking at the mud and began studying the rock formation that was above the brush-free clearing.
“You know,” he said as he pushed his ball cap back a little and put his hand on the cliff wall, “this section doesn’t seem to look like all the rest. See? It looks odd. It’s a slightly different color and texture.” The others gathered around him and looked at the rocks.
“Now that you mention it,” Dexter said as he studied the wall, “it does look a little different.
They were all examining the peculiar rock when Robyn noticed a shiny object in a small crack about three feet up from the ground. “Look at that!” she said excitedly as she knelt down and took a closer look. “That looks like the same type of ring Dexter found in the grotto!” She wrapped her fingers around the metal ring and gave it a hard pull. It was like a replay of a few hours ago. What looked to be a solid rock wall began to open, making the same grinding noise that the first one had made. It swung into the tunnel and ground to a halt. The opening was quite a bit smaller than the other one but still easy enough for a ten-year-old to fit through.
“Jumpin’ jellybeans!” cried Jack as he gaped at the opening, “another tunnel!”
“No way!” exclaimed Bailey as her eyes widened in amazement. “Two tunnels in one day! That has got to be a record.”
“Well,” Oliver said as he grinned and anxiously fished around in his pack for his headlamp, “we might have struck out on that last tunnel but perhaps this one will take us to our pot of gold. Let’s go check it out.”
It was getting late in the day when they each grabbed their flashlights and took turns going inside. Bailey was the last one to kneel down and venture in. “You’re actually coming with us?” Robyn asked as she raised her eyebrows and smiled with relief.
“Yes,” Bailey answered matter-of-factly as she fiddled with her flashlight. “Somebody has to keep an eye on you guys.” She figured she had probably looked like a big chicken not going in the other tunnel—a big, wise chicken, but a chicken none-the-less.
“Robyn, you got those crisps out yet?” Oliver questioned as he shone his light on the tunnel wall.
Robyn didn’t have to ask what that was. Crackers, chips, Cheeze-Squigglies…whatever left crumbs.
“Hey look!” Jack shouted, “there’s footprints in here!”
They pointed their flashlights toward the ground and saw at least two sets of large footprints. “Those look like grownups footprints,” Dexter said. “Do you suppose they’re fresh?”
“Who knows?” Bailey said. “Being in here out of the weather they could be years and years old.”
“Let’s follow them and see where they lead,” Dexter said as he pulled his compass out of his pocket. “It looks like we’re heading south this time instead of north.”
This new tunnel was very similar to the one in their cave in that it had the ‘bump-your-head’ hangy-down rocks and the ‘stub-your-toe’ sticky-up ones.
“Blimey!” hollered Oliver as he banged his head on some ‘hangy-downs’. “I just cobbed my nob a good one! I’ll need a plaster for sure,” he said as he rubbed his head.
“Ouch!” Emily yowled as she tripped on a ‘sticky-up’, “I think I just broke my toe!” She began hopping around in circles holding her foot as she tried to console her aching toe.
“Yeah,” said Bailey as she watched Emily dance around like a spastic flamingo, “flip flops probably aren’t the best shoe for spelunking.”
“What is spelunking?” Emily asked as she began to hobble alongside Robyn.
Bailey had just opened her mouth to answer when Oliver interrupted. “Cave exploring,” he announced. “We are spelunkers now.”
Bailey raised her eyebrows in surprise. Sometimes Oliver made up stuff and other times he actually knew what he was talking about. Like somebody else she knew really well…..
Not only was it similar to the first tunnel in size it also disappointingly came to a dead end.
“Well this takes the cake!” Jack grumbled. “It’s another cotton-pickin’ dead end!” They all let out an exasperated sigh.
Bailey studied the footprints and the wall of rock. “You know,” she said as she pushed her glasses on her nose and knelt down with her flashlight to get a closer look. “These prints go right up to the wall and then are cut in half. There’s only half a shoe print here. I wonder…,” she said as she stood up.
The others knelt down and studied the footprints while Bailey began shining her light on the wall, searching every square inch of it.
“What are you looking for?” Dexter asked as he began shining his light on the wall also.
“I’m not sure,” Bailey answered. Her light crossed back and forth on the rock wall until an odd shaped hole off to the side caught her eye. “Wait!” she squealed with excitement. “Look! Look there!” The others jumped up as she took off her backpack and began frantically digging around in it for something.
“What did you see?” Dexter asked as he kept shining his light over the area she had been looking at.
“I bet this,” Bailey exclaimed as she held up the enormous key that Mr. Higgins had handed her, “goes with that.” She pointed to an odd-shaped hole in the rock, leaned forward and stuck the key into the hole. It was a perfect fit. As she held her breath and turned it, what was a wall instantly turned into a door and began swinging inward on its huge hinges with the same loud grinding noise that the other door had made.
“Stone the crows!” Oliver whooped. “That’s what the key went to!”
They all shouted excitedly and shone their lights into the gaping opening. “Yes!” Oliver whooped. “Yes! Finally! We’ll find a treasure yet! Just wait and see!”
They all hurried through the doorway and Bailey decided to leave the key in the keyhole since it would be absolutely awful if she lost it. As they followed the large footsteps they noticed the walls of the tunnel were starting to have a little water seeping out of them making it smell like a wet sidewalk after a rain. As they con

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