The following morning, Mr. Thornhill dropped the boys off at Mary’s house. Upon entering her house, a peculiar air of depression greeted them.

“Err…Mrs. Gray, what’s wrong?” Terry questioned.

Her eyes were red and swollen from intense crying. She bore a worried expression on her face.

“Its . . . its Mary . . . she was kidnapped!”

“What?” Terry cried. “How could that have happened?”

“I don’t know. When I woke up this morning she was already gone. There has been no news from the police station since.”

Suddenly, she slapped her forehead as though she had remembered something.

Rising up from the living room couch, she asked the boys if they wanted anything to drink.

“Just some juice,” Joe said.

“Please, let me get it.” Terry said.

A moment later, he called out from the kitchen, “Joe, could you help me with this tray?”

As Joe entered the kitchen, he whispered to Terry.

“You know, I doubt you needed me to carry a few tea cups.”

Ignoring the jest, Terry looked at Joe thoughtfully.

“Listen, something uncanny is definitely going on. I think I know why Mary was kidnapped. We need to get a look at her PC.”

“You think it was because she found something she shouldn’t have? Then it’s our fault!”

“Look, we can’t afford to think that way. It wasn’t our intention for her to get kidnapped, and there’s nothing we can do now, except to find her and bring her back home.”

With Terry as a distraction, Joe snuck into Mary’s bedroom and booted up her laptop. He scanned through her internet browser’s history. The temporary files were wiped clean. There was a spyware on her laptop. After neutralizing it, he searched for any files related to the ancient mansion. He soon found a programmable file, which was dated a day old. Finding it strange that it was hidden, he opened it. There was a message hidden with the code. He began to decipher it on a piece of paper.

The sound of footsteps alarmed Joe. He stashed the paper inside his pocket, promptly memorized the remainder of the message and switched off the laptop. He exited the room and padded silently towards the washroom.

As Mary’s mother called out his name, he opened the washroom door and walked out deceitfully.

“Sorry, Mrs. Gray, I was feeling a bit sick.” Joe said.

She escorted him to the living room and served him the cup of juice.

After chatting for half an hour, they returned home.

“You’ll never believe what I found,” Joe said, beaming.

He unfolded the note and handed it to Terry, who then began to read the words aloud:

Ever since I started my research a week ago, I’ve always felt a strange presence following me around. There was always a shadow lurking around every corner. I failed to find out who they were. They were very careful and indubitably trained. If you’re reading this, it probably means something has happened to me. I do not know what they want but I wager it must be connected to what I’ve discovered.

When Terry finally looked up from the paper, Joe told him that there was more. “She said that she hasn’t been able to connect the dots yet, but feels that something peculiar is going on. The message goes on to say to search the dragon for the clue.”

“Curious. Do you have any idea what the last line means?” Terry questioned.

“Beats me,” Joe replied. “But there is a dragon statue in her bedroom. I noticed it on my way out.”

The duo decided to return to Mary’s house. They asked Mrs. Gray if they could search Mary’s room for any clues that could shed light on her whereabouts or strange disappearance. Mrs. Gray was reluctant at first but decided it was better than sitting on the couch waiting for her daughter to walk through the door and into her arms.

She offered to help canvas the room but the duo insisted that they would manage on their own.

Joe took the dragon statue in his hands and looked at it from all sides. But there seemed to be nothing odd about it. They searched nearly every cabinet they could think of, but came up empty handed.

They felt guilty for invading their friend’s privacy.

They were just about to admit defeat when something tugged at Joe from the back of his mind.

“I think I know where it is!” he exclaimed.

Sliding the glass door of a bookshelf with his hand, he removed a familiar looking storybook. “Remember this?” he asked.

“Sure. Mary brought it to class for exchange-a-book-day. But I don’t see what it has to do with any of this.”

Joe explained that on that day, he had traded books with Mary for the class assignment. “There’s a chapter in here where the author talks about mythical dragons.” He flipped it open to the ‘Dragons’ chapter and peered at the picture of a mythical beast on the left-hand side of the book. There was a hole in the picture. Apparently a few pages had been carved out to create a cosy home for the clue that lay within it.

“Found it!” Joe exclaimed triumphantly. He held out a gray-coloured aluminium-plated serial bus. Seating himself down on the computer chair, he plugged the USB into Mary’s laptop. He tried to open the file, but it was encrypted.

“Shoot!” Terry exclaimed from over Joe’s shoulder. “That was our only lead!” He slammed his fists angrily on the desk.

“Relax! I can still crack it, but I prefer doing it on my own PC.”

When Joe’s parents had arrived at the Thornhill mansion later that evening, Terry was still helping him pack. Joe could hear his mother preaching of the greatness of her favourite auburn-haired singer all the way from the guest room.

“Your mum can really go on about him, don’t you think?” Terry commented.

“I gather the concert must have been a hit.”

***

“Hold your ground men!”

A huge platoon of German troops was approaching us. We waited silently as German troopers marched unknowingly into an ambush.

“All snipers prepare to fire,” I commanded, speaking into the radio, “Aim for the officers atop the jeeps and wait for my go.”

Gathering a small team armed with RPGs and grenade launchers, I lead the way through the ruins and into an abandoned building across the main trail.

Once most of the ground troops had entered the city, I commanded my RPG squad to aim for the tanks, and my grenadiers to obliterate the soldiers.

Perhaps it was unwise to attack, but whether we decided to remain hidden or not, we were going to suffer a great loss today.

Suddenly, a moment of opportunity presented itself.

“Now!” I ordered.

The Germans were caught completely off guard. Several panzers burst into flames as rockets pummeled into their sides. The explosions of the grenades sent the army into a panic.

With the commanding officers taken out, I ordered my soldiers to close in; we were going to box them in.

Amazing, I thought, even though their army seemed huge and terrifying, we would soon be victorious. Yes, our victory seemed so great and certain, that I could almost taste it in the air . . . or so I thought.

I spun around when I heard a shrill cry from the adjoining room. That was where my RPG squad was stationed.

I hurried over to their aid, but they were already dead. Their throats had been slit.

I froze in fear, wondering who could have done them in so skillfully.

As I backed out through the doorway, I regained my wits. But then, a gleaming blade from above caught my attention. A soldier leaped through a demolished part of the ceiling, waving his blade about threateningly. He lunged forward and stabbed my heart.

I screamed as the pain conquered my body.

 

Sitting upright, Joe wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

“Best dream ever,” he muttered, “Until I got stabbed.”

He had fallen asleep at the computer desk, waiting for the decryption process to be completed. He picked up the book about World War II that lay in his lap and placed it on the desk.

Rubbing his eyes sleepily, he peered at the digital clock that sat atop the desk. It was well past midnight.

Suddenly, he noticed an orange-coloured light emanating from the bottom of the computer screen. He realized that the decryption must have been successful.

Smiling for the first time in the last eight hours, he accessed the only file that was on the serial bus. It was a blueprint. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it seemed to be that of a single room. One of the walls had an ‘X’ marked on it. As he tried to figure it out, his mind formulated all kinds of absurd ideas that couldn’t possibly ring true.

After some time, he gave up and decided to call it a night. He informed Terry via SMS that he would be arriving at the Thornhill mansion first thing in the morning.

As he lay in bed, he found it difficult to fall asleep, especially with everything that was going on. Finally, after tossing and turning endlessly, he dozed off.

 

When Joe had arrived at the mansion the following day, it was still dark out. Terry was waiting for him on the porch. “What could possibly be more important than my sleep?” he joked.

Joe ignored him. “Let’s go inside.”

He led the way towards Terry’s room. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a folded printout of the blueprint. “Look. This is what I found on the pen drive. What do you think it is?”

“A blueprint.”

“Geez, I know that stupid. But what of?”

Terry took it from Joe and studied it carefully.

Looks familiar, he thought. “What the heck’s the red ‘X’ for?” he muttered.

Handing the blueprint to Joe, he ordered him to wait in the wine cellar while he fetched something from the tool shed.

“What’s that for?” Joe asked, after Terry had rejoined him.

“You’ll see.”

He began measuring the dimensions of a few contiguous walls. Noting the observations of a piece of paper, he handed it to Joe and asked him to compare the dimensions.

“Well, I’ll be . . .” Joe began.

“That’s right. The blueprint depicts this very room. All we need to do now is to find whatever that ‘X’ stands for.”

Walking back to the entrance of the room, they corrected the positioning of the blueprint they held in their hand and used it as a map to guide them to the ‘X’.

“Here,” Joe said, “This must be it.”

Terry knelt down and began examining the wine cabinets that stood against the wall. Despite Joe’s help, they were unable to locate the mysterious secret.

“Wait a minute,” Terry said, “This is a very old mansion right?”

“Right.”

“Which means that these cabinets were probably built long after the mansion was. So the ‘X’ must…”

“Have something to do with the wall!” Joe completed his sentence, slapping him on the shoulder.

Together, they pushed the wine cabinet out of the way. It was rather cumbersome, but they were able to manage.

There was a small switch on the wall. Pressing it, a portion of the wall slid to the side, revealing a passage. It was just big enough to crawl through.

Sitting on all fours, they peered inside. It was dark and musty.

“I’d hate to go in there,” Joe remarked, “But it seems to hold to key to rescuing Mary.”

They grabbed two flashlights from the kitchen drawer and ventured into the caliginous passage. As they crawled through the passage, only these thoughts remained on their minds:

What secrets would the dark passage unveil? Would they discover the reason why Mary was kidnapped?