Read Online Through the Hidden Door by Rosemary Wells - Free Book Online

got to be some kid’s game. So a kid carved up a set of stone steps. So what? Could have been done five years ago, for all we know. Maybe a kid found the cave and never told anyone.”
    “Barney, I told you there were no footprints when I first came down here. You could see for yourself there were only my prints and the dog’s.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “But the ceiling drips here, and it’s damp air. In five years, ten, maybe our footprints would settle in the sand and a crust would form from the moisture. That could happen in six months.”
    “Until this October there was no cave entrance, Barney. That rock that moved in the earthquake is the only entrance to the cave.”
    “How do you know? There may be other rock overhangs, other crevices ...
    “I checked the inside of the cave, Barney. It took me four days. The way we come in is the only entrance. The way we go out connects to it. There’s a small hole in the ceiling about half a mile away, but no one could come in that way because it’s about a hundred-yard drop to the floor and the hole’s only as big as your fist. It’s the way the bats go out.”
    “Bats!” I said, my skin popping out in a cold sweat.
    “They won’t hurt you. They’re on the ceiling. The first day I was here, the dog barked for some reason, I heard them on the ceiling and I shone my light on them. Then I watched them fly out at about five thirty. They all go through that tiny hole like bees going into a hive.”
    “Bats carry rabies!” I said, standing up and looking at the ceiling nervously.
    “C’mon, Barney. Don’t be such a paranoid. They’re harmless. As long as we don’t frighten them with loud noises.”
    I still felt uneasy about them. I began pacing in a circle.
    “Are you about to give up?” he asked. “Because you’re scared to death of a few bats like some geek who won’t walk under a ladder?”
    I stamped, rubbed my chapped hands, and stuck them under my armpits for warmth. “It’s hopeless,” I said, dodging his question. “How are we going to find anything in this ... this freezing underground desert? Even in a parka and a vest I’m cold.”
    “It’s not hopeless,” Snowy said. “We just have to keep at it. Boy, I’d hate to be with you in a lifeboat.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “A little cold and a few perfectly nice bats make you a quitter,” said Snowy. “We’ve got a chance to make the find of the century here, Barney. Something nobody’s ever seen before. And you’re going to quit.”
    “Snowy, at best it’s just some toy thing made by Indians. If there was anything else, we’d have found it long ago.”
    “It’s not a toy thing, and it wasn’t made by Indians.”
    “How do you know? What do you think it is?”
    “If I told you, you’d laugh.”
    “I promise not to.”
    Snowy too was stamping and rubbing his hands. “Forty years ago, Barney,” he said between his teeth, “some guys, some U.S. Marines, landed on an unoccupied island in the Pacific. Okay? The island wasn’t even on a map. Only one guy survived. The island was inhabited by a race of pygmies.”
    “Come on, Snowy.”
    “This is the truth!”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “The people were no bigger than up to your knee.”
    “Okay, what happened to them? How come National Geographic didn’t go out there and take pictures, huh? How come they haven’t been on TV?”
    “Because the Japanese bombed the place to pieces, that’s why. The one American guy who survived and told about it had a piece of shrapnel in his head this big. No one believed him.”
    “So how come you believe that story? Where did you hear about this?”
    Snowy wouldn’t tell me. I knew it was straight out of the pages of Soldier of Fortune, and Soldier of Fortune was worse than the National Enquirer to me.
    I was about to say, “Forget it. Take me home,” but I thought flickeringly of Rudy and the boys. Some afternoons there were no sports practices. Special assembly days we got out at three