“Where to?”
“The Pines.”
Eddie shook his head. “No way. Last time I was in there with you two we found a dead guy, and pretty soon a whole bunch of guys were dead.”
Jack shrugged. “Look at it this way: How many times can that happen? Chances of finding another dead guy are almost zilch.”
“You guarantee that?”
“Let‟s go,” was all Jack said.
Nothing was guaranteed in the Pines.
2
They finally convinced Eddie to come along. Jack was leading the way off Adams onto
North Franklin when he spotted a familiar blond-haired kid on a bike.
“Hey, Cody!” Jack called. “I thought you were going back home!”
“I am! I am!”
“Did you stop off in Canada along the way?”
The kid laughed. “No!”
Jack pointed toward Jefferson Street. “Better get back before your folks find out and sell you to the circus.”
He grinned as he pedaled away. “That‟d be soooo cool!”
Jack watched him turn the corner onto Jefferson and disappear from view, then signaled Weezy and Eddie back into motion.
“You handled that like a pro,” Weezy said as they rode.
“Yeah, well, I‟m positive his parents don‟t know he‟s out here. My mother knows his folks and she says he wears them out. Never stops moving.”
She slapped Eddie on the arm. “That’s where all your energy went. Cody Bockman stole it.”
“I‟m gonna sue,” Eddie said. “No, wait. If I get it back I‟ll have to run around all the time.
Forget it!”
Jack said, “Check it out,” as he pointed to a colorful poster on one of the telephone poles.
It announced the arrival of the Taber & Sons circus. The show parked itself near Johnson for a few days every fall. Not a real full-blown circus like Ringling Brothers, just some rides, a few animals, a tent show, and a midway. The local dates had been inked in.
“Hey, it opens tomorrow,” Weezy said. “Maybe later we can go watch them set up.”
Eddie grinned. “Count me out. Watching people work wears me out.”
“Look!” Weezy cried as they approached Quaker Lake. “I‟ve never seen it so high.”
Neither had Jack. The lake was overflowing its banks and puddling near Quakerton Road. Mark Mulliner‟s canoes sat upside down at the water‟s edge. Jack doubted anyone had rented one in a while.
Mr. Rosen had been talking all week about how the ground was saturated and couldn‟t hold any more water. What ever came down had to run off somewhere, and much of it was flowing into the lake.
“It‟s all the rain,” Jack said.
Eddie said, “Your obvious-fu very strong.”
Jack had to smile. Yeah, pretty dumb thing to say. In defense, he puffed up his chest.
“That‟s „Supreme Master of the Obvious‟ to you.”
The level was even higher than yesterday when he‟d crossed the bridge on his way to Old Town. Water was pooled around some of the lakeside benches and willows.
A number of his lawn-cutting customers lived in Old Town, the original settlement that had spawned the sprawling, thousand-person metropolis of Johnson, New Jersey. But the succession of rainy days was interfering with his schedule. Yeah, he could cut wet grass, but it always wound up looking crummy, and then he‟d have to come back for a fix-up.
He‟d swung by after school yesterday to see if the lawns were dry enough to cut. They were, so he‟d raced home to get his mower. But as soon as he wheeled it out of the garage, the skies opened up again.
No mow, no pay. And the longer the grass, the tougher the job, and the longer to get it done. A vicious cycle.
As the three of them pedaled across the bridge over the lake, Jack glanced at a boxy, two-story, stucco building known around town as “the Lodge.” It belonged to the globe-spanning Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. A very secretive bunch, tight-lipped about its activities and purposes and membership, and highly selective about who it accepted.
It had lodges all over the world. Why they‟d put one here in Johnson, New Jersey, no one knew.
Well, Weezy knew—or thought she did. She said the Lodge was here before the town, that members of the Order had settled here in prehistoric times. But that was part of her Secret History of the World, and the Septimus Order played a big role in it.
Membership was by invitation only, and this Lodge was rumored to include some of the state‟s most influential and powerful people.
Weezy glared at the building as they passed. “You want to find our pyramid, look in there.”
Jack was ahead of Eddie but could hear an eye roll in his tone as he muttered, “Here we go.”
“It‟s true,” she said.
Against his better judgment, Jack said, “Things do get lost, Weez. It happens all the time.”
“Things that are clues to the Secret History don‟t get lost, they get hidden away. The Order‟s job is to keep the Secret History secret. If we searched that place, we‟d find it.”
“Fat chance,” Eddie said. “What are you gonna do, get invited in for milk and cookies?”
“I‟ll think of something. And you‟ll come with me, right, Jack?”
Jack glanced at the Lodge‟s barred windows and figured it was safe to agree—no way they‟d ever see the inside of that place.