Chapter 6

Will and Laura sat in silence as they cruised along I-80 in east Pennsylvania. No need for talk in such beautiful surroundings: verdant fields, rocky outcrops, and the occasional little red barn. Not to mention the always entertaining Amish sightings.

"New York down, three more states to go until Illinois," Will chirped to break the silence.

"Will, I've been meaning to ask you, just where are we going once we get to Chicago?"

"Who needs to know?," he sang back. "After all, it's a toddlin' town!"

"Yeah, it's also a BIG town. Shouldn't there be more information besides the general vicinity of this toddlin' town?"

"Oh, I'm sure there will be. I mean, once we get there." Will trailed off. "I'm sure we'll know it when we see it," he rallied.

"Well, I'm not so sure. And I'd feel a lot better if we weren't moving toward it while not knowing what IT is."

"You want a pit stop? We could stop off at the next rest stop and consult our bibles," Will suggested, gesturing to the now dog-eared copy of Sooner than Never and the Rand McNally Road Atlas. "Besides, despite Waterbury's luxurious send-off, no real road trip begins without a box of donuts on the dashboard. We need to stock up!"

"Good idea. And we need to sort through our tapes and make a musical selection. I packed them in the trunk, which was really stupid."

They pulled off the highway to a small rest stop, complete with a Roy Rogers, a Baskin Robbins, a gift shop, and a tiny immaculate visitor's center. Seated gingerly at a none-too-clean picnic table, Will and Laura warmed themselves with coffee as they peered at the atlas and thumbed through the novel.

"I agree that chapter 1 seems to be pointing toward Chicago," Laura offered, "but it's just so non-specific. There's got to be more."

"There can't be," Will declared. "To paraphrase Maria von Trapp, the very beginning is a very good place to start."

"But what about the preface?"

"Oh that's just prequel stuff," Will scoffed. "It doesn't matter."

"Will, I once wrote a 25 page seminar paper exclusively devoted to the dedicatory verses of 16th century pamphlets. Trust me, in publishing, EVERYTHING matters."

"Fine. Let's look at the preface then." Will opened the book. "What's even in it?"

"You remember, it's that creepy dream that Lady Violet's mother had. The night she goes into labor with Lady Violet. What's her name? Oh, yes, Mistress Peregrine. . . Ha! Peregrine! I think that signals a clue!"

"What?"

"You know--peregrination. The peregrine falcon. It means wandering . . . traveling. In the play Volpone, Ben Jonson names one of his characters 'Peregrine' because he is a traveler."

"Ben Jonson? Didn't he win the Olympics?" Will teased.

"Cute. Different Ben."

"O.K. So maybe the dream is a clue. Refresh my memory."

Laura began to read:

Mistress Peregrine tossed furiously in her sleep. She imagined herself again in her father's castle, stumbling frantically through the maze of corridors. She scraped her hands along the rough-hewn rocks that made up the walls; they were cold and sharp, like her father's own rough love.

Through a nearby window, she caught a glimpse of the surrounding countryside. It was cold and barren, a desolate, rocky place of scrub-brush and frozen stones. She turned from the window, desperately seeking a corner of solace, a retreat from the frigid landscape of death and sorrow. "I must reach the center. It is the center that I must reach!," she sobbed to herself.

Suddenly, she sensed a throbbing warmth, so intense she was initially unsure whether it came from outside or from within her own frail body. "THE CENTER,!" she cried aloud, both in her dream and aloud, almost waking herself. Feeling herself drawn from the window, she turned to that most forbidding of doors, the rough-hewn oaken entrance to her father's private study. "I should not enter, but I must reach the center," she chanted to herself. The stones around her answered her chant in a haunting echo.

Sixty-one steps it took her to reach the door. Sixty-one. Just as when she was a girl. As she placed her hand on the door, she felt the pulsing warmth that came from within. Slowly pushing inward, she forced the door slowly, inch by inch, to give way to her weakened efforts. The room was just as she remembered it. Lined with book shelves, the study was dominated by a huge heavy black table. Upon the table lay a map of her father's dominion, the land that should have been hers.

Suddenly, she seemed not to walk but to float into the room. Hovering just above the reeds strewn carelessly on the floor, she sailed toward the center.

It was then her eye caught a glimpse of the object. It lay on a low wooden table, to the side of her father's desk. It was a pen. Sharp, black, long. She fell to the floor as she saw it.

"It is my pen," she muttered. "Mine. Mine. Mine!" Her voice rising, she nearly screeched as she ran to the table and grasped the pen. "This pen is mine! THIS PENN IS MINE!!!"

She wheeled about and faced the table. In an instant she knew what she had to do, why she had come to this place. She raced to the table and glared at the map. Somebody had written, in red foreboding letters, across the center of the map: "LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA."

Reaching up, her hands clasped around the pen, she stabbed at the center of the map. As the center ripped asunder, out belched flames and sulfur, a vision of Hell escaping into Middle Earth. "The Center is Mine!!!!!," she cried and awoke.

"Oh, yeah. That's a clue," Will said with abashed certainty.

"I can't believe we didn't consider it before. But like I said, I'm bad at this stuff. I'm surprised you didn't notice it, though." She looked questioningly at Will.

"Yeah, well, there are so many red herrings and all, and one doesn't want to waste one's time . . . ."

"You didn't read it, did you?," she accused. She laughed. "You lame-brain."

"Well, prefaces are usually so BORING. 'I'd like to thanks Ms. Marmelstein for her valiant efforts typing this monstrosity of a manuscript . . .' bleh, bleh, bleh."

"Uh, that's 'Acknowledgements.' Preface is a whole different thing."

"Whatever. Lecture me later. I want to take a look at that dream."

He grabbed the book from her. "It's way too drug-induced not to be a clue. And the map is a dead giveaway. So is hot and cold, which runs throughout it. And it's the center of something. Hmmmm . . . And what's that line in Italian?"

"Lasciate ogni speranze. It's from Dante's Inferno. 'Abandon every hope . . .' That's really only partial. The full line translates to 'Abandon every hope, ye that enter.'"

"Have I said lately how good it is to have an M.A. along?" Will patted her head.

"Thanks for noticing."

"But the question is, what does it all add up to?" He looked up in thought, and then focused on the novel again. "I say we start with the most anachronistic thing about this: the pen. I mean, come on, this gothic lady uses a pen?! Is it a bic, or a fountain pen?"

"Oh, 'pen' is not anachronistic. Heck, you see that word in Gower and Chaucer in the 14th century." She nudged him. "What did you think they wrote with . . . their fingers?"

"OK, I'll grant you that. But why is pen spelled 'p-e-n-n' here?" He pointed to the passage in the book.

"It's just a typo. It happens."

"I thought you said that EVERYTHING MATTERS in publishing."

"Alright, lacking all other leads, let's say it is significant. What does it signify?"

"Maybe the treasure is hidden in a pen factory," Will offered slyly. "Or in a pig pen. Or in a federal penitentiary. Or at a big, splashy Hollywood opening. Or in the penultimate place you'd think to look . . ."

"Alright already!!" Laura hollered. "I get the point!"

"Or at the home of William Penn . . ."

Suddenly it hit them, and their faces brightened simultaneously.

"Or in . . ."

"Pennsylvania!" they cheered together.

"So now we've narrowed in," Will continued. "But what are we looking for in Pennsylvania?"

"Hmmm, well . . . what's in Mistress Peregrine's dream? Like you said, hot and cold seem to be indicated. And fire. The fire comes from underground--and Dante's Inferno . . . some kind of hell."

Will banged the table. "And the penn is mine. Are we looking for a mine? A land mine?"

"Or something underground . . . but Lord knows, that could be anything. Where would we even start to look?"

"How about over there?" Will pointed to the visitors' center. "These friendly folks of Pennsylvania. They are so kind to offer information to the weary traveler. So hospitable!" He stretched in self-satisfaction and stood up. "Onward and upward!" he cried out as he led Laura to the whitewashed shack that comprised the visitor's center.

Once inside, Laura marched straight to the information desk. "Excuse me," she addressed the pleasant elderly housewife who stood behind the counter, "I was wondering if you could tell me whether there are any . . . oh, I don't know, dormant volcanoes or hot springs, or anything like that around her?"

Will had no patience with this approach. He scanned the walls, which were lined with tourist brochures, casually skimming over the various titles. "See the World's Greatest Miniature Town!," one beckoned. "Pennsylvania's Oldest Working Water Mill!," screamed another. "Visit Historic Intercourse, Pennsylvania," invited a third. Will smiled. No need even to comment.

Then it caught his eye. "Eureka!" he called out to Laura. "We're on our way!"

********

As they sped along I-80, Will's face was alight with intrigue.

"So why won't you tell me where we're going? I am driving after all."

"Hush, I want it to be a surprise. You'll see I'm right. . . . Oh! Pull off here," he added, consulting the road atlas.

"But there's nothing here. Just that little town. And it's not much of a town. What's that smell?"

"This my dear, is the center. The center of Penn which is mine. And that smell is sulfur. A by-product of burning coal. Welcome to Centralia, Pennsylvania."

"Charming. So what?"

"So let me fill you in. According to this ever so helpful Green Peace brochure, Centralia is a pleasant side-trip for anyone traversing Pennsylvania who wishes to take in the lovely sights, sounds and smells of man-made devastation at is worst--a monument to bureaucratic mismanagement."

Laura parked the car on a deserted main thoroughfare. Nothing and everything was wrong with this town. What buildings remained were quaint, whitewashed little row houses, tiny storefront shops, steepled churches. But they were separated by empty fields, overgrown with wildflowers or simply plowed under. The sidewalk was well-maintained, but walkways led up to vacant lots, and front porches that no longer existed. Single houses, once propped up by their fellows, stood alone against the sky. The lots that remained look like the gaps between teeth in a rotting mouth, a jack o'lantern smile. A misty haze hung over the town, though there had been a clear, cloudless autumn sky all day. It was eerie, like something out of the twilight zone.

The decaying town seemed to cast a spell over the two visitors. Faced with the inexplicable landscape, Will and Laura had momentarily forgotten their quest. They wandered up the main drag, looking for any sign of life, a human companion who could explain what they were seeing--a town at once so normal and so out of the ordinary.

As they walked, Laura began to sense a warmth in her feet. Slowly, it became more intense.

"Uh, Will? Are your feet feeling hot?"

Hardly seeming to hear her, he muttered a response. "What? Oh, yeah." He stared intently ahead and kept walking toward the center of town. Laura jogged to catch up, her face screwed up in disgust as she caught an especially strong whiff of sulfur.

"Will, what's going on here? This place is weird. Where are we going."

Suddenly Will stopped short. "Laura--Dante's Inferno. What's it like?"

"Well, it's a big place. It's broken up into a bunch of circles, and there are different areas within each circle. The notion is that there are different gradations of sin, and different kinds of punishment suited to those sins . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what is the significance of 'Lashy-ahh . . .' whatever that Italian phrase was."

"Well, just that once consigned to Hell, whatever circle, you can't get out. You are there for all eternity."

"So it's a pit of fire that is never-ending. Eternal burning with no escape?"

"That pretty much sizes it up." Laura fidgeted. "Will, is there a point to this?"

"The point is, my dear, that we have found the location of the first clue. Some 35 years ago, there was fire in the Centralia trash dump. No great tragedy, except that this little town happens to be located directly above a coal mine--get it?-- 'The Center Which is Mine.' Centralia is centered over a mine--a mine which is on fire, and has been on fire since 1962."

"And they can't put it out?"

Will waved his Green Peace brochure with a flourish. "Well, that's the splendor of bureaucracy. Apparently, millions have been spent, to no avail, and all the government studies have ended up contradictory and basically ineffectual. The so-called final solution has been to move the residents out and rule this a dead town, but the Feds have been slow to cough up the money to relocate the town, and not all the happy residents of Hell wish to leave. Population currently stands at 46--down from the original 1,400 or so."

Will stopped short and stared intently at the brochure. "And I imagine we will find our clue located at the 'center,' in the spot where--how did the story put it?--Hell escapes into Middle Earth."

Laura shot him an impatient look. "And that would be . . .?"

"The burn."

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