Lair of Dreams
“An old cellar.”
“No kidding. What’s in it?”
Jericho shrugged.
“Hold on—you’ve never been down in the cellar?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Freddy, it could be a gold mine down there!” Sam tried the ring again. It wouldn’t budge. “I gotta loosen around these boards. Hand me that sword up there, will ya?”
“You mean this antique that’s probably worth more than you are?” Jericho shook his head slowly.
“Fine!” Sam flicked open his Swiss Army knife and sawed the blade around the edges of the door as best he could to loosen the thick layers of sticky, packed dust, but the door still wouldn’t give.
Jericho sighed. “Here. Move.” He grasped the ring with one hand and gave a slight pull, and the door creaked open.
“Holy smokes, Hercules. What are they feeding you?”
Jericho coughed as the dust spiraled up in thick clouds.
“I coulda opened it, you know,” Sam added.
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I was this close.”
“Wrong.” Jericho waved away the last of the dust motes circling in the air. A perilous-looking wooden staircase draped in cobwebs led down into the gloom. “You think those stairs are still any good?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sam said. “Let’s grab some flashlights.”
The wood protested loudly under Sam and Jericho’s sudden weight as the two of them made their way down the old steps into the dark hole, their flashlight beams bouncing across the fragile architecture of cobwebs. They jumped to the bottom, landing on a dirt floor in a large room connected to a long, narrow passageway.
He and Jericho walked the passageway, which was scribbled and scratched with names: James Beardon. Moses Johnson. Maisie Lafayette and children. My name is Osay. There were several X’s instead of names, and a vast mural whose muted colors were ghosts of their former hues. In it, a slave family entered a promised land of bright sun and leafy trees. High above the sun’s rays, someone had etched the word freedom. The mural had clearly been painted by several different hands over time, each artist adding to the story, but the message was the same.
“Looks like the Transcontinental wasn’t the only railroad Cornelius Rathbone built,” Jericho said, shining a light around the cavernous space.
Sam’s mother used to say that inside everyone was the chance to change the world. It sat like a seed eager to grow into greatness. The professor could have his ghosts. Ordinary people were capable of extraordinary bravery. That was the only magic Sam knew or trusted.
“What are we looking for down here?” Jericho asked.
“Not sure,” Sam answered. His light fell upon a closed door nestled in an alcove. “But this might be a good place to start.” He tried the knob. “Locked.”
From his pocket, Sam again pulled out his Swiss Army knife and stuck the point of it into the keyhole.
“Hold on: Are you breaking in?”
“Ish,” Sam said, wobbling his hand in a more-or-less motion.
Jericho leaned against the brick, shaking his head. “You’re something else.”
“C’mon, Freddy,” Sam goaded, still trying to jimmy the lock. “Is your curiosity button on the fritz?”
“No. Neither is my code-of-ethics button. Maybe you can ask Santa to bring you one of those for Christmas.”
“What if inside this very room is just what we need to save our Diviners exhibit? You think about that?”
Jericho pondered the point, then exhaled loudly. “Fine.”
He pushed off from the wall and turned the doorknob roughly. The door opened easily. “It wasn’t even locked. Just needed some strength,” he said, stooping to get through the low doorway.
“I coulda done that,” Sam said again, following.
Sam and Jericho’s flashlight beams bounced around the dank, cramped, cold room, which had been stuffed with all sorts of oddities—oil paintings, broken furniture, a dressmaker’s form, and even a sarcophagus, which hung open on a broken hinge. Two stacks of crates had been shoved into a corner against a large mural, aged and worn by moisture in spots. This mural wasn’t hopeful like the other ones in the museum; it was a complex nightmare in paint. In a dark, denuded forest of the sort found in fairy tales stood a spindly gray carnival barker of a man wearing a tall hat and a coat of black feathers. His outstretched palm bore a glowing symbol: an eye with a jagged lightning bolt underneath. Behind the gray man lay a long line of frightening specters. They all seemed to be advancing on a young Negro man. The number 144 appeared in the broken sky above.