Read Hunter Moran Digs Deep for Free Online

three-thirty.
    I hear footsteps. Coming toward us?
    Yes.
    I’m about to yell for help, but then I remember. Sister Appolonia would probably have us expelled.
    Next to me, Zack whispers, “Wait.”
    From the other side of the door a voice whispers, too. “I can’t let you be mummified in there.”
    Mummified? Horrible. No one would even recognize us. We’d end up in a museum behind a glass window, the sign reading TWO BOYS FROM ANTIQUITY ; ONE WAS CALLED FRED. THEIR FAITHFUL COMPANION LIES BENEATH THEM—A LION, PERHAPS .
    The quavering voice goes on. “I’m going to unlock the door. Don’t try to escape until you count to a thousand by twos. Slowly.”
    That would take all night.
    â€œI’ll be listening,” Sister Ramona says. “I’m tougher than I sound, and I have a pair of drumsticks in my fists. I’ll bop you over the head if you come out sooner.”
    Fred growls.
    â€œAre you speaking English?” Sister asks.
    Zack snickers.
    I whisper to myself as fast as I can, trying not to breathe, in case I run out of air. Two, four, six, eight, ten. Concentrate, I tell myself.
    On and on.
    The footsteps fade, then come back. “I forgot to unlock the door,” Sister says apologetically.
    One hundred eighty-two. Eighty-four.
    It must be the middle of the night.
    I reach five hundred.
    â€œEnough.” Zack crawls over me and pulls at the door. It grinds open, inch by inch, over dirt and stones, and digs into my side.
    I cover my head, just in case. No one wants to be bopped on the head with a pair of drumsticks.
    Fred darts out ahead of us, growling fiercely, and Zack sticks his head around the door. “It’s all clear, Hunter. Come on.”
    We crawl out, blinking. Where are we?
    Which way to escape? Too bad Sister Ramona didn’t leave the light on.
    We feel our way around until we back up against a door, and give it a push. We’re in a cellar hallway. It’s lighter here, but not a whole lot. The place might have been a prison in the olden days. Or worse, another graveyard with skeleton bones crunching underneath my feet.
    â€œHere’s something odd,” Zack says, pointing down to the cement floor. “Someone’s footprints.”
    A kid’s sneaker prints: about our size, maybe a half-inch bigger.
    Someone’s been in the coal chute ahead of us, and it wasn’t Bradley with his fat duck feet.
    So whose?
    Before I can think about it, Fred darts around us, paws full speed ahead, on his way home, if he can find his way out.
    â€œGo for it, Fred,” Zack says as the two of us sink down to catch our breath.
    We’re surrounded by junk: old desks on their sides, one of them missing a leg, a few torn lampshades, cartons filled with dusty books that look as if they must be a hundred years old, the back of a bed with Sister Appolonia’s name written in her own handwriting.
    A bed?
    Sister Appolonia actually sleeps?
    You never know.
    There’s still another door. We open it . . .
    . . . and fall over something, me almost breaking my toe. It cries:
Wah, wah, wah
.
    A baby? Here in the dark? A prisoner.
    What could be worse?
    I reach out and run my hands around what seems to be a couple of plates.
    No, cymbals!
    Zack crashes into something, too. It bangs and echoes. “It’s a drum,” he says.
    We’re in the Music Room.
    â€œWhen we get out of here,” I tell Zack, “I’m heading straight for bed, I’m that worn out. It must be almost midnight.”
    Above us is a dusty window, so small it lets in almost no light. But Zack points. “It’s still daytime.”
    Amazing.
    And now I hear singing:
“Happy birthday, dear Fred, wherever you are.”
    And is that Steadman wailing?
    We’re almost home.
    But I hear footsteps. They’re not the quick patter of Sister Ramona’s, but a heavy
thump-thump
.
    Yeow.
    Sister Appolonia is on the