Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out…I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams…the kindred of blackness and impulse. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...

  --Anne Sexton, Rumpelstiltskin

  “What are you doing here?” Eli asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously at his sister.

  “There’s supposed to be a storm, and Mom wanted me to come get you.” Idiot. Sadie had changed since her failed séance. Now she wore tight blue jeans crazily tattooed in black ink, and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The top three buttons were undone, giving the boys tantalizing hints of the black lace bra underneath every time she moved.

  “A storm?” Eli frowned. “Says who?”

  The other boys followed his gaze up to the clear blue sky, just as a warm gust of wind blew through, ruffling their hair and blowing up clouds of dust.

  Sadie shrugged, brushing dust from her sleeve. “I don’t care if you believe me or not.” She pointed to the manhole cover. “So, who’s going down first?”

  The boys eyed each other, shifting uneasily.

  “Nobody’s going down there!” Pip’s voice was harsh with indignation.

  Sadie turned to him, contemptuous. “Why not?”

  “Why not?” Pip stared at her, incredulous, “Are you dumb? This thing was buried for a reason! That sewer probably goes to the labyrinth!”

  “Dumb?” she snorted, “No, just not a scared baby like you.” She turned to the others. “Just get me a flashlight. I’ll go in.”

  “On it!” Wes shouted gleefully. “Come on, Perry, let’s go!”

  Pip growled, watching Wes and Perry sprint down the alley. “This is such a bad idea.”

  Clark took a step toward Sadie, his voice quiet but firm.

  “You shouldn’t do this.”

  Sadie turned away, dismissing his concern as easily as she had Pip’s anger.

  “A bunch of baseballs,” Clark persisted, “from the labyrinth, appear from nowhere and we find this. It’s like somebody led us here. Doesn’t that freak you out at all?”

  “Ugh! Stupid mosquitoes!” Sadie said, slapping at her leg, and then her arm. “Why do you all hang out in this disgusting place?”

  He pushed closer. “Hey--are you listening to me?”

  “No,” she answered, swatting at another bug. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see at least a couple of the boys sneaking glances at her chest. She smiled to herself in secret satisfaction. “Your friends all want to know what’s down there,” she said, “And I think you want to know too.”

  “What? I don’t care about—”

  “Give it up, Clark,” Pip cut him off, “Why bother? If she wants to throw herself down a hole, why stop her?”

  Clark fell silent, fuming. He just stood stewing, probably trying to figure out what to do next. Ten awkward minutes later, Wes and Perry reappeared, now running hard against the growing wind. Wes had the flashlight, and Perry carried a heavy crowbar.

  “Pleh!” Perry spit out some of the dirt that had blown into his mouth, then lifted the crowbar triumphantly, “We got it!”

  Sadie held out her hand, and Perry placed the bar across her palm like a surgeon receiving a scalpel. “Then let’s get this thing off.”

  She wedged the blade of the crowbar into the side of the manhole lid.

  “Nobody’s going down this hole!” Clark said, firmly. Sadie pretended not to hear, leaning all of her weight on the lever.

  “Stop!” shouted Clark, stepping on the lid. A line of sweat had formed on his forehead, just beneath his neatly combed brown hair. “Don’t. It’s all just too...weird.”

  “And that’s what makes it fun!” said Sadie, plastering on a fake funhouse grin.

  “Right, fun. Going to sleep forever sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “Hey, I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to go into the labyrinth.”

  “Unless something pulls you in,” Pip said.

  “Oh, right. Unless what pulls me in?”

  Pip didn’t have a response to that.

  “Yeah, only little kids believe those bogey-man stories,” Wes said, grinning, “Everybody knows that people have to walk into the labyrinth.”

  “Yeah,” said Pip, “But why do people walk into the labyrinth? What gets them to do it?”

  Wes’ grin faded a little.

  Sadie looked around at the boys, saw them wavering. “Okay,” she said, “Let’s vote on it.”

  The look of, ‘Are you serious?’ was drawn across Clark’s face.

  Sadie continued, ignoring him, “Raise your hand if you want me to go down the hole.” Wes and Perry’s hands shot up. Jack and Henry’s hands went up too. And finally, a half-raise from Max. Eli was genuinely curious about the hole, but as a rule he avoided supporting his sister, whatever the cause, so he just stood quiet. “That’s me and one, two, three, four and five others. Five to three. Looks like you’ve been outnumbered. So get off.’”

  “I’m not moving,” said Clark.

  “We voted.”

  “What do you mean we? There is no we. You’re not part of this group.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Come on, Clark,” Henry complained, “Just let her go down the hole. It’s just a stupid manhole.”

  “Yeah,” said Wes, “We’ve been down them a billion times in other parts of town.”

  “This is different.”

  “Why are you being such a chicken?” Sadie asked.

  Clark gritted his teeth. “I just have a bad feeling about it.”

  “Well, I have a good feeling about it,” Sadie replied. Clark didn’t budge.

  “Fine. I’ll just push you off,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Good luck with that,” laughed Max.

  “Yeah, once Clark is on something, you’re not going to move him off it,” said Henry.

  “Seriously,” added Wes.

  “Really?” said Sadie, looking at Clark contemptuously.

  Clark met her eyes. “Try it.”

  Sadie dropped the crowbar and shoved at him as hard as she could. He pivoted easily, and she lost her balance, landing on her knees in the dirt. The boys burst into laughter.

  “I told you!” said Henry, laughing.

  Humiliated, Sadie scrambled up, her face flaming. “Why do you care if I go down the stupid manhole? Or...” she spat, a wicked smile suddenly appearing, “Is this because I didn’t want to go to the dance with you?”

  Clark flushed. “What?” He looked around at the other boys, who were suddenly stunned silent by the revelation that Clark had asked Sadie Samuels to the dance. And got rejected. “This has nothing to do with that!”

  “Then get off.”

  “No.”

  She sighed, “Look, I’m sorry I had to turn you down. But hey, I’ll tell you what, maybe some time we can go get some ice cream together. Would you like that?”

  Clark’s face darkened with anger. “Whatever happens, is on you.”

  He stepped aside.

  Now that the way was open, Sadie suddenly felt nervous. Putting on a bold smile, she took hold of the crowbar and once again leaned on it with all her weight and strength. In their eagerness, the boys joined in—all except Pip and Clark. They grabbed at the bar, awkwardly pushing and pulling on whatever handhold they could get. Still, it didn’t budge.

  Until Jack had the idea to count down, and they all threw their force into it together at once. “…3—2—1—PULL!” Then, with a strange suction sound, it suddenly gave way. Quickly, they moved the lid to the side and scrambled to look down the dark hole left in its place.

  The air that arose from the hole assaulted Sadie’s senses. It smelled stale, dead, rotten. The moment the first wave of stench hit them, they all jumped back from the hole, coughing, repulsed by its rank filthiness.

  Sadie, stunned, fought back the sudden wave of fear and revulsion. She stepped to the edge of the hole. Too late to turn back now. She held out her hand. “Flashlight, please.”

  Perry, still coughing, solemnly handed her the flashlight.

  Before she could change her mind or even think, Sadie turned and lowered herself, climbing down to the ladder and into the darkness with an almost frantic speed.

  She looked up once, at the circle of light narrowing over her head, and quickly looked away. No going back. She moved faster, her feet slipping once or twice on the corroded rungs.

  Slow down, slow down, slow down..but she couldn’t, she couldn’t slow down, she was going to fall—

  And then, suddenly, there was only emptiness below her foot. Only her panicked grip kept her from dropping down into the dark. She hung still for a few seconds, forcing herself to calm down, to breathe, to think.

  This is the bottom. It’s just the bottom of the ladder. The bottom of the hole must be right there. Slowly, she lowered herself down, until the toe of her shoe touched something solid. She let go, landing with an unexpected splash. Fighting off the panic, she felt for the flashlight’s switch. It was one of those big, bulky models, like a car headlight with a handle on top. Her finger finally found the button and the light flicked on, the beam stretching out into the void of tunnel beyond. She aimed the light at her feet and saw that she had landed in a shallow stream of water that entirely covered the floor of the narrow tunnel. The fetid water had already soaked her shoes, she could feel it against her skin.

  It’s just water, it’ll wash off. Anyway, she didn’t have a choice: there was no dry ground anywhere.

  “You okay down there?” called Wes, his voice distorted by the thrum of wind blowing across the open mouth of the hole.

  “Yeah.” She called back, and the echo of her voice was weirdly long and loud. “I’m at the bottom.”

  She swung the light, inspecting her surroundings. Now that the panic had subsided, she could see that it was just ordinary sewer. The water came from one way, and went out the other. She was almost disappointed.

  She figured she’d just hang out a bit longer, then go back up and tell the boys—Clark especially—that they were stupid for being so scared in the first place. Now almost bored, she played the light across the walls, hoping for something interesting to kill the time until she climbed back up. For some reason, the word canaliculi suddenly came into her mind. It struck her as odd, vaguely profane—then she remembered that she had heard it in biology: it was the name for the tiny tunnels that drained old tears from the human eye.

  The strange association quickly disappeared as her flashlight landed on something that seemed out of place—a shred of paper or cloth caught on a bolt that fastened together the tunnel sections. As she moved closer, she saw it was an envelope. Picking it up, she realized it was tied to something. There was a small hole punched in the envelope’s corner that had a nearly transparent fishing line threaded and knotted through it.

  She turned the envelope over and found scrawled on it in a crayoned, childlike hand the words Sadie Samuels.

  The panic was back in a heartbeat. She shot the light around frantically, as though there could be something there to tell her what was going on.

  WHAT THE HELL… Trying to slow her breathing of the rank air, she scanned the darkness again more slowly, her flashlight beam playing over slick, mossy walls and the shallow stream that wound its way through the tunnel. Nothing.

  She turned the envelope over again and again, as though it might suddenly make sense to her. But it didn’t.

  She tugged on the fishing line attached to the envelope. It seemed to be heading downstream—towards the labyrinth. She took one step to follow it, and then stopped. Bad idea, bad, bad idea...Pip’s words echoed in her head, grating. Suddenly she had to go, had to see where it led.

  At least I’ll have something interesting to tell, she thought. Gripping the envelope in the hand holding the flashlight, she began reeling in the fishing line with her free hand as she followed it down the tunnel. Who’s reeling who, she thought, then pushed the thought away. It was a hundred feet at least to the fence, maybe even two hundred—or was it fifty? In spite of her uncertainty, she plunged ahead, the soft splashes of her footsteps echoing into the void.

  The beam of her flashlight landed on a rusted iron grate, its bars slick with water and grime. The tunnel continued only a foot or so beyond the bars and then vanished, cut off into nothing. The fishing line also ran through the bars, into a dark lump of something lying on just the other side. As she looked closer, the lump of something became a body lying at the edge of the drop-off, and the fishing line was tangled around what looked like an arm.

  Sadie froze.

  The shape’s back was to her, water pooled against it, ran around it and over the edge into the bottomless void. Sadie’s pulse thundered in her ears as her mind raced with possibilities. Who is it? How did they get here?

  It had to be a sleeper, someone who had come down before... Before what?...and somehow gotten through the grate and...

  And that meant she was standing at the edge of the labyrinth.

  In horror, she took a step backward, still holding on to the fishing line. Her movement tugged on the arm, pulling it back, and then rolling the body over toward her.

  Its head limply lolled around to face her. Then Sadie found herself looking at...herself. The body had her face. Her face exactly. Not like her, it was her.

  Frantically, she released the line and the body rolled slowly back. Its momentum carried it over the ledge and it disappeared into the bottomless pit. The fishing line played out its slack as the body fell, until it jerked and then tore from the envelope Sadie was still unconsciously gripping in her fist.

  Sadie could not even scream. She took one step back and stumbled, landing hard in the water. Desperate, she scrambled backward, unwilling to take her eyes from the grate, from the ledge, from the pit beyond. Until somehow she made it to her feet and ran to the ladder and climbed blindly toward the light and then there were hands on her arms, pulling her up and out into the air and a world that no longer seemed quite real. Shaking, dripping wet, blanche-white, she stood trying to gather the pieces of herself together while the boys circled around her in excited anticipation.

  “How’d it go? Anything down there?” asked Jack, finally.

  She dropped the flashlight and turned without a word, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind her, leaving the boys open-mouthed in the gathering storm, too distracted to notice the envelope that she was still clutching in her wet and shivering hand—the envelope that was addressed to her.