The Bridge to Never Land by Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online

and an arrow pointing down.
    “Oh my god,” said Aidan, again.
    Without a word, Sarah found a stick on the ground and used it to brush away the cobwebs from the door. Scales of rust fell off as the stick scraped against them. Sarah then crouched and used the stick to push aside several inches of dirt accumulated at the bottom of the door.
    “What exactly are you doing?” said Aidan.
    “We’re going inside.”
    “You think that’s a good idea? There could be bats in there. With rabies. If you get rabies you have to get like six hundred shots. In the stomach.”
    “If you’re chicken, you can stay here. I’ll go in alone.”
    “Stop calling me chicken. I am not chicken.”
    “Good. Then you can go first.”
    Aidan frowned; this was not going as he’d planned. He stepped forward and pushed gently on the door. It didn’t budge.
    “It’s locked,” he said, relieved.
    “Step aside,” said Sarah. She raised her right foot and kicked the door hard. It eased open a few inches, still partially blocked by the dirt around the bottom. Sarah kicked again. And again. With each kick the door opened a little wider. On the fourth kick it swung fully open, its rusted hinges groaning. Sarah and Aidan peered inside at a narrow, low-ceilinged, pitch-black tunnel, sloping downward. They felt a slight movement of dank air wafting up toward them, stale and sour. There was another odor, vaguely familiar to both of them, although neither mentioned it.
    Like a wet dog, thought Aidan.
    “Go ahead,” said Sarah.
    Aidan shined his light down into the tunnel. He couldn’t see where it ended—only cold, dark stone.
    “I don’t know about this,” he said.
    Sarah clucked like a chicken.
    “Shut up,” said Aidan. He dropped onto his belly and wriggled forward. The fit was tight; his shoulders scraped against the tunnel walls. He could not turn around now even if he’d wanted to—which he did. But he hated the thought of chickening out in front of his sister. So, fighting back his fear, he wriggled forward, aiming the flashlight ahead.
    Sarah crouched at the entrance, watching her brother slowly move deeper into the tunnel; she almost felt sorry for him. After a minute all she could see of Aidan was a shadowy blob moving deep in the narrow tunnel, like a cork in the neck of a bottle.
    Suddenly, the blob stopped. Aidan’s silhouette flickered as he waved the flashlight around.
    “Whoa!” he called. “You’re not going to believe this!”
    “What?” shouted Sarah.
    But Aidan was gone; he’d apparently pulled himself into a larger space. Sarah could hear him clambering to his feet.
    Sarah took a deep breath, dropped to her stomach, pushed the backpack into the tunnel, and began wriggling after it, pausing to brush spiderwebs from her face. From ahead she could hear Aidan shouting something, his words lost in a jumble of echoes. Finally, she came to the opening into which Aidan had disappeared. She poked her head through.
    “No way!” she said. Aidan was standing proudly inside a much larger tunnel; it looked big enough to drive a truck through.
    “What do you think?” he said, shining his light around. The tunnel stretched so far in both directions that the flashlight beam simply faded into darkness.
    “What is this?” she said, her voice echoing off the hard stone walls.
    “Mister Magill’s private dungeon,” said Aidan.
    Sarah pulled herself forward and got to her feet.
    “Seriously,” she said. “Why is this here?”
    “It must be a mine,” said Aidan. “Or it was a mine. It’s old. No lights. No equipment. Who knows how long this has been here.”
    “Still think I’m crazy?”
    “You don’t really want me to answer that.”
    Sarah dragged her heel on the dusty floor, drawing a line from one side of the tunnel to the other.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Marking our entrance,” she said, pointing to the small hole in the wall they’d crawled through. It would be easy to miss.
    “Now what?” said