The Eye of Midnight by Andrew Brumbach

Author:Andrew Brumbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

Maxine looked up from her map and glanced over her shoulder at William and Nura. The street ended abruptly before them at a tall, wrought-iron gate. A creaking signboard above the entrance indicated their arrival at the Knickerbocker Plainsong Cemetery.

“You’re as good as a slobbery old bloodhound, M,” said William.

“Thanks, I think,” Maxine replied uneasily.

A low mist had settled inside the fence—a gauzy veil that clung to every headstone and hollow. Tangled vines groped the arched gateway and the crumbling monuments.

They shuffled through the gate in a skittish cluster, their eyes darting about the brooding shapes of the lonely graveyard.

“Do you see anything?” whispered Nura.

“Plenty,” Maxine replied. “Nothing I like, though.”

“Maybe the Pigeon had it wrong,” said William. “This hardly seems like the kind of place Grandpa would end up.”

Their feet squelched in the sodden earth as they crept between the neglected headstones, and the graves all around seemed to press closer as they went, as if the monuments were not quite rooted to the ground.

William turned and eyed the stones closest to him. “ ‘DeBoer…Van Kiehle…Janssen…,’ ” he read. “What kind of names are these?”

“Dutch, I think,” said Maxine. “New York City was founded by Dutch settlers.”

“That’s a good sign, I guess—seeing as we’re looking for a dike.”

“Dike,” said Nura. “What does this word mean?”

“I dunno,” said William. “It’s some kind of dam, I think. Dutch people are s’posed to be crazy for ’em. I remember a story about a little Dutch boy who plugged a hole in a dike with his finger. I never saw anything like that in a graveyard, though.”

Maxine pushed William forward, and they continued on, hunched low like scavengers on a moonlit battlefield. They reached the back fence of the cemetery but found no ditches, pools, or dikes, only a silent boulevard of decrepit crypts that jutted from the hanging fog. Beyond these the hulking shape of a darkened factory loomed distant in the mist.

“End of the line,” William said to Maxine, conceding defeat. Nura wandered on, though, roaming the long row of the houses of the dead, reading the names inscribed on each.

She stopped at the largest of the crypts. A carved pair of weeping figures guarded the door, their hooded faces bent toward the ground.

She called the cousins with a low whistle, and pointed to the name inscribed on the lintel.

“ ‘Van Dyck,’ ” read Maxine.

“That’s it, Nura!” cried William with unconcealed admiration. “Inside the dike…You found it! This has to be the dike that the Pigeon was talking about!”

“Maybe.” Nura shrugged. “Maybe it is nothing.”

“What now?” asked Maxine.

“We go inside, I guess,” replied William.

Maxine paled. “Into the tomb? But it’s sealed shut.”

William stepped up to the door and laid his hands against the stone. A carved skull stared him in the face, grinning above a solemn verse:

Take heed, Wanderer,

As thou art, so I once was,

As I am, so shalt thou be.

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