Chapter 16

Chapter 16 Amy hated crowds, but the idea of plunging into the middle of seven million dead people didn't bother her. Nellie, Dan, and she hurried down a metal staircase. They found themselves in a limestone corridor with metal pipes running overhead and dim electric lights. The warm air smelled of mildew and wet rock. "Only one exit, guys," Nellie said nervously. "If we get caught down here—" "The tunnel should branch out soon," Amy said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. The stone walls were etched with graffiti. Some looked recent, some ancient. One inscription was engraved on a marble slab right above their heads.

"Stop, mortals," Nellie translated. "This is the empire of death." "Cheerful," Dan muttered. They kept walking. The floor under Amy's feet was slushy gravel. Amy was still thinking about Uncle Alistair. Had he really known something about their parents, or was he just manipulating them? She tried to put it out of her mind. "Where are the bones?" Dan asked. Then they turned a corner into a large room and Dan said, "Oh." It was the creepiest place Amy had ever seen. Against the walls, human bones were stacked like firewood from the floor to above Amy's head. The remains were yellow and brown — mostly leg bones, but skulls stared out here and there like patches on a quilt. A line of skulls topped each stack. Amy walked in awed silence. The next room was the same as the first — wall after wall of moldering remains. Dim electric lights cast eerie shadows over the dead, making their empty eye sockets look even scarier. "Gross," Nellie managed. "There's, like,

thousands." "Millions," Amy said. "This is only one small part." "They dug all these people up?" Dan asked. "Who would want that job?" Amy didn't know, but she was amazed how the workers had made patterns with skulls in the stacks of femurs — diagonals, stripes, connect-the-dot shapes. In a weird, horrible way, it was almost beautiful. In the third room, they found a stone altar with unlit candles. "We need to find the oldest section," Amy said. "These bones are too recent. Look at the plaque. It's from 1804." She led the way. Eyeless sockets of the dead seemed to stare at them as they passed. "These are cool," Dan decided. "Maybe I could —" "No, Dan," Amy said. "You can't collect human bones." "Awww." Nellie mumbled something that sounded like a prayer in Spanish. "Why would Benjamin Franklin

want to come down here?" "He was a scientist." Amy kept walking, reading the dates on the brass plaques. "He liked public works projects. This would've fascinated him." "Millions of dead people," Nellie said. "Real fascinating." They turned down a narrow corridor and found themselves facing a metal gate. Amy shook the bars. The gate creaked open like it hadn't been used in hundreds of years. "Are you sure we should go down there?" Nellie asked. Amy nodded. The dates were getting older. On the other hand, there were no metal pipes on the ceiling up ahead, which meant no electric lights. "Anybody got a flashlight?" she asked. "Yeah," Nellie said. "On my keychain." She pulled out her keys and handed them to Amy. There was a little push-button pin light. Not much, but better than nothing. They kept going. After a hundred feet, they emerged in a small room with only one other exit.

Amy shone the flashlight on an old plaque framed in skulls. "1785! These have to be the first bones put down here." The wall they were looking at was in bad shape. The bones were brown and crumbly, and some had scattered across the floor. The skulls along the top had been crushed, though the ones quilted into the wall looked fairly intact. They were done in a square pattern — nothing exciting. "Search around," Amy said. "It has to be here." Dan stuck his hands into some of the gaps in the bone wall. Nellie checked the top of the stack. Amy looked into the skulls' eye sockets with the flashlight, but she saw nothing. "It's hopeless," she said at last. "If there was anything here, another team must've found it." Dan scratched his head. Then he scratched a skull's head. "Why are they numbered?" Amy wasn't in the mood for his games. "What numbers?" "Here on the forehead." Dan tapped one of the skulls. "This guy was number three. Were they on a football team or something?" Amy leaned in closer. Dan was right. The

number was very faint, but scratched into the skull's forehead, like someone had carved it with a knife, was the Roman numeral III. She examined the skull below it. XIX. A square pattern. Skulls with numbers. "Check them all. Quick!" It didn't take long. There were sixteen skulls woven into the pile of bones, done in four rows and four columns. Three of the skulls didn't have numbers. The rest did. They looked like this: