Tunnels 05 - Spiral

lot. They were kind of like my extended family.” Drake smiled to himself. “A bunch of extremely strange but incredibly interesting uncles.”
    “But why are
we
meeting them?” Chester asked. “Why not my dad and Mrs. Burrows?”
    Drake swiveled around in his seat so he could speak to Will and Chester at the same time. “You have no idea how much you’ve both changed, do you?”
    “What do you mean?” Will said, exchanging a glance with Chester.
    “When I first took you under my wing in the Deeps, you were a couple of baby-faced kids, with no idea what you were doing. But you have now.” Drake let his words sink in before he went on. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you with the Styx on your tail.”
    “You can say that again,” Chester muttered.
    “And it shows,” Drake said. “These men will recognize that in you. They’ve been there, too, in their lives. And I need them to realize that the threat is real, and persuade them to come on board. . . . I need them with us if we’ve got a snowball’s chance of beating the Styx.”
    As they got out of the vehicle, Drake turned to them. “Make sure you haven’t got anything electrical on you. Anything with a current. A flashlight, for example.”
    Will and Chester checked their pockets, then Will remembered his digital watch. “Just this, but it only has a small batt —”
    “Doesn’t matter. Take it off,” Drake interrupted. “If he’s not expecting it, you can’t take anything like that near him.”
    “Who’s not expecting it?” Chester inquired, becoming quite unnerved.
    “First up, we’re meeting Captain Sweeney. He’s known as Sparks, but you shouldn’t call him that — not yet, anyway.”
    Will undid the strap on his watch and left it on the car seat. Then Drake unlatched the gate and began down the track, the same track that Chester and Will had run along a few days earlier to reach the woods.
    “Through here,” Drake directed as Will spotted the moss-covered roof he’d noticed before. Drake left the path to descend the embankment. He pushed into what seemed to be a tangle of impenetrable bracken, but in its midst was a narrow track that took them to the crofter’s cottage at the bottom of a small hollow.
    It was difficult to believe anyone lived in the building, which was completely ramshackle. Although the front windows were intact, they were virtually opaque from the bloom of algae on the glass.
    “Stay behind me, and it’s better if you don’t speak. If he does ask you anything, keep your voice low . . . and I mean really low,” Drake said. He knocked once on the door — so gently as to hardly make a noise — and nudged it open on its rusting hinges.
    Drake stepped into the darkness with Will and Chester shuffling blindly behind him as they wondered what they were getting themselves into. The only noise in the room came from their boots crunching in the loose dirt on the bare stone floor, and the air smelled fusty and damp. Unable to see anything, the boys kept close to Drake, until Will felt pressure from Drake’s hand on his arm, which he took as a sign to stop. “Hello, Sparks,” Drake said softly. “Hope we’ve come at a convenient time?”
    “Sure, I was expecting you. Your father said you’d be dropping by,” a gruff voice responded from a far corner. Will and Chester listened as Drake advanced toward the voice, but as much as they strained their eyes, they were unable to make out who was there in the gloom. A match was struck and an oil lantern began to glow wanly through a carbon-streaked shade.
    Beyond Drake’s silhouetted body, someone else was just visible. Although it was still difficult to discern much by the light of the hissing lantern, the man was a good six inches taller than Drake and built like a bear. “Been far too long,” the man added in a rumble, although there was affection evident in his voice.
    “Yes, it has,” Drake said.
    “You’ve brought them both with you. I suppose you’d like me to come outside so they can meet me properly?”
    With Drake guiding them, Will and Chester retraced their steps back through the front door. Like a wraith reluctantly showing itself, the man emerged into the daylight. Although his face was far from clean, the boys saw that around each of his eyes was a series of concentric circles, suggesting something under the skin. The lines were almost black, and the effect was quite disarming — it was evocative of a face decorated for some tribal