~~~

Cutting off any narrative attempts to describe the outside of the church, Luco scampered forward, passing Wu Dog Yan and going straight for the front door. Despite what he’d just said, he didn’t bother knocking, he just went right in, jumped up onto one of the pews and shouted, ‘show yourself, arrow scum!’

Wu Dog Yan walked in after him and smirked. Zade and Cha Cha both peeked their heads around the doorway and breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Where is he?’ shouted Luco, jumping onto another pew.

‘The whole place is empty,’ said Cha Cha.

‘He must be in here somewhere.’

‘Where? It’s only one room.’

‘Ka, ka, but there are things in this room, so he must be in them. Or behind them. Or under them. Or wearing them.’

Wu Dog Yan scanned the room again. There were two rows of benches, with little boxes tucked underneath, but none of them were large enough for Dog Hood to hide in [or wear]. There was the pulpit with the usual hanging dog motif, which was empty, and the other pulpit, the one with the equally normal radioactive dog symbol, which was also empty. There was the wine jug, which was too small to hide even a hamster inside, and some more boxes stacked up on the left-hand side for dogs to put their shoes in.

Apart from all that, there were walls, windows [the largest one displaying the traditional, iconic painting of the dog saviour], a ceiling and the judgment box, which no dog that wasn’t crazy would ever go inside willingly.

‘Maybe he was hiding behind a gravestone outside.’

‘Or maybe there’s a secret tunnel in here and we just need to find it.’

‘Err…’

‘Everyone, start looking, push the bricks in the walls, tap everything, there’s probably a button or a switch.’

‘You want us to push everything?’ asked Cha Cha, frowning.

‘Ka.’

‘Everything in the whole church?’

‘Stop speaking, start doing, come on.’

The other three shrugged and started doing what Luco had said. It was a bit strange, but then, there really was a figure who’d walked in this direction, and if they weren’t in the church then where else could they be?

After half an hour of turning, pressing, pulling, twisting, hitting, biting and blowing on every single thing in the room, Luco told everyone to stop and take a rest.

‘Finally,’ said Zade, sitting on one of the benches.

‘My paws are dead,’ moaned Cha Cha, collapsing next to him.

‘Ka, it’s hard work. Take it easy for a bit.’ Luco leaned against the pulpit with the hanging dog motif, closed his eyes for a few seconds then opened them again. ‘Right, that’s long enough. Back on your feet.’

‘But we’ve only just sat down…’

‘You can sit when you’re dead. Right now, we’ve got a secret tunnel to find.’

‘There’s no place left to look.’

‘Ka,’ said Cha Cha, massaging her paws, ‘we’ve tried every single thing in this church. Maybe there isn’t a secret tunnel.’

‘Stop complaining…we clearly haven’t checked everything cos if we had, we’d be looking at the secret tunnel, wouldn’t we?’

‘Can’t argue with that logic,’ said Zade sarcastically.

‘Not without getting a migraine,’ added Cha Cha.

Luco ignored them and continued searching all by himself. Zade and Cha Cha took another two minutes of rest before standing up and looking for a fresh place to peek into.

‘It’s weird,’ said Zade, taking in the whole divine structure. ‘This place seems quite different from the churches in Dogholm.’

‘It’s the countryside, they’ve got no money to make bigger ones.’

‘Not the size, I mean, the pictures.’

‘Symbols.’

‘Ka, symbols. The symbols look different.’ Zade walked close to one of the pulpits, bending down and rubbing some dust off the hanging dog motif. ‘Suppose it could just be bad drawing.’

‘Ka…’

‘Like, the artist they hired was sick or tired maybe. Or the owner of the castle tried to draw it all himself.’

‘Zade…’

‘But then…the dog face is drawn quite well, so…’

‘Zade, stop, where’s Wu Dog Yan?’ shouted Cha Cha, spinning around to look at the rest of the church, most notably the judgment box.

‘She went outside to look at the gravestones,’ replied Zade, rubbing more dust off the pulpit stand.

‘What? When?’

‘About fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Why didn’t I know about that?’

‘I thought you noticed.’

‘Nuut…’

‘That’s weird. You usually notice everything she does.’

Cha Cha looked at the church door, which was still open slightly. ‘Do you think she’s trying to get away from us?’

‘More likely from Luco,’ mumbled Zade.

‘What did you say?’ asked Luco, his little head popping up from behind the pulpit with the radioactive dog.

‘Nothing.’

‘You said my name.’

‘Did I?’

‘You misheard, Luco.’ Cha Cha coughed, a little artificially. ‘He said Wu Dog Yan went outside to look at gravestones.’

‘She what? Gravestones? Outside?’ Luco paused, looking towards the window, then held his paw up in the air. ‘Of course, the gravestones!’

He jumped down from the pulpit and ran past the pew benches and out the front door.

‘Where’s he going?’

‘Outside.’

‘Thanks for that, Zade.’

‘Should we follow?’

‘Ka, I think we should. This church is creepy when there’s only the two of us here.’

Zade looked confused but shrugged and walked outside with Cha Cha. As soon as they were out the door, the two comrades froze in shock. Wu Dog Yan was standing next to one of the gravestones, her legs missing. Or she’d been buried in the ground, with her head kept above the dirt for the birds to eat.

‘Guys, get over here,’ came Luco’s voice from somewhere nearby.

They ran over, almost tripping over some small mounds of dirt on the ground. Whoever made this graveyard didn’t maintain it very often.

Finally, after falling over twice, they made it to Wu Dog Yan. It turned out she wasn’t buried in the ground, she was just standing in an open grave, with some stairs leading down into a dark tunnel. Luco was already halfway down them.

‘A secret passage,’ whispered Zade, trying and failing to whistle.

‘Where does it lead?’ asked Cha Cha.

‘I think it goes directly into the castle,’ said Wu Dog Yan, turning to go back down the stairs.

‘You’ve been down there?’

‘Follow me,’ she said, ignoring the question.

‘How does she know where it goes?’ Zade asked Luco, who had come back up and was trying to grab Zade’s paw to drag him down into the tunnel faster.

‘Huh? You just said. She went down there already.’

‘To the castle?’

‘Nuut, halfway. There was a sign that said To The Castle, so she came back to get us.’

‘And we’re just going down there,’ said Zade reluctantly.

‘Of course, it’s the way in.’

‘But…’

‘Relax, there’s no police.’

‘But…’

‘Wah, stop moaning and hurry up. We’ve got a kung fu master to rescue, you dolt.’

Zade stopped moaning out loud, but his brain kept to the task as he really wasn’t keen on going down a dark tunnel that could lead anywhere. It might take them to a prison, or a torture chamber, and Dog Hood could be waiting for them.

The three factory workers walked to the bottom of the steps and went deeper into the tunnel, using their phones to light the way. They could see Wu Dog Yan’s phone light about thirty metres ahead, so they mostly just followed that. As they started to catch up to her, Cha Cha nudged Luco and said, ‘she seems more cheerful now, don’t you think?’

‘Who?’

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‘Wu Dog Yan.’

‘Ka, I guess.’

‘I was worried about her before. It looked like she was thinking about some bad things, and her face was kind of blank, but-…’

‘Mysterious tunnels always make people happier,’ said Luco, turning to Zade. ‘Except for you. Your face looks like it’s just watched a Loosto Pobrick[1] movie.’

‘Huh?’

‘You know, the Polar bear who makes movies about ice floating under the End of the World bridges in Polo.’

‘I’ve never heard of him. Or his movies.’

‘Seriously?’

‘I watch tiger movies, and tiger TV.’

‘Okay, forget it. The point was, you still look nervous. Which is weird as you’re bigger than a truck, nothing that’s down here could possibly hurt you.’

‘I’m not nervous, just careful.’

‘Like the knife factory crowd earlier…you wouldn’t even gently nudge some worker dogs out of the way.’

‘Also just being careful.’

‘Or scared.’

‘Guys, can we get back to the main issue here?’ asked Cha Cha, who didn’t bother waiting for an answer. ‘Wu Dog Yan looks excited and I really hope it’s not down to drugs.’

‘It’s not drugs,’ said Luco, shaking his head.

‘You really think it’s the mysterious tunnel thing?’

‘Has to be. You can’t be depressed when you might die round the next corner, right?’

Zade’s eyes opened wide and he let out a small growl.

‘Shut up, Zade. We’re not really gonna die. But if you’re in a dark tunnel, going into a mysterious castle, your brain tells you, hey, you might die here. And that kills your sadness, makes you alert, alive. Zade, stop looking like that, nothing’s gonna happen, it’s just psychological, okay?’

The giant tiger didn’t say anything.

And the three comrades kept shuffling along quickly until they had caught up to Wu Dog Yan, who was standing next to the sign that said To The Castle.

‘This is the sign you saw before?’ asked Zade, pointing his phone light at the sign.

She nodded.

‘It’s quite far from the graveyard.’

‘I’m a fast walker.’

‘Farther than the distance above ground, from the castle to the church.’

‘Because we were running before.’

‘Ka, maybe.’

‘And it’s dark. That tricks the mind.’ Wu Dog Yan looked back down the tunnel. ‘There haven’t been any corners or turns. Logically, it should be the same distance.’

‘Ka…’

Wu Dog Yan patted Cha Cha on the shoulder. ‘Come on.’

Another fifty, sixty metres down the dark, murky tunnel and there were some steps. Luco shined his phone light upwards to reveal a red door about thirty steps higher.

‘That must be it.’

Wu Dog Yan led the way and, when she reached the door, turned the handle, telling the others that it was probably locked.

It wasn’t.

The door swung open with a small creaking sound. Luco ran ahead of the others, into a corridor that was lit by candles on the walls. The flames on each candle were flickering a lot and appeared quite large. Zade pulled Luco back and whispered in his ear. ‘It looks like someone’s lit them recently.’

‘So?’

‘So, we shouldn’t be running blindly into corridors we don’t know.’

‘You do it your way, I’ll do it mine.’

Luco shrugged off Zade and hurried down the corridor. The others followed, trying to keep up, which wasn’t that hard as, despite running very fast, Luco had tiny legs.

The corridor itself was quite unusual. For the first twenty metres or so, it ran very long and straight, but after that it started to twist and turn, like it was formed around a moving snake. There were no other corridors to turn into, so all they had to do was keep following the single, solitary path.

‘Are you sure this leads to the castle?’ asked Zade, after they stopped by one of the candles to take a rest.

‘It is quite a long walk…’ said Wu Dog Yan, looking back at the way they’d come.

‘Quite? It feels like we’ve walked four times around the whole island,’ said Cha Cha, who lowered her voice when she saw Wu Dog Yan jump a little in shock. ‘Okay, maybe not that long.’

‘There’ll be a door soon,’ said Luco, jogging on the spot. ‘There has to be, otherwise this whole corridor is pointless.’

‘Maybe it’s a joke…’ said Zade, moving his head left an inch as the flame from the candle flicked towards his cheek.

‘A joke?’

‘By the person who built the castle. Maybe he or she wanted to build a maze that would confuse invaders.’

‘But it’s not a maze, it’s a corridor.’

Wu Dog Yan bit her top lip and looked back again at the corridor behind them.

‘What is it?’

‘Nuut kaata.’

‘Try to know.’

‘Luco, don’t be so rude…’ said Cha Cha, edging a step closer to her idol. Wu Dog Yan glanced at her, and the dog comrade took a step back. ‘Of course, she can defend herself. I don’t care that much.’

‘Can’t give any evidence for it, but…it just feels like…we’ve missed something. In the corridor.’

‘We haven’t reached the end yet.’

‘If there is an end.’

‘What are you talking about? Everything has an end.’

‘Does it?’

Luco stopped jogging on the spot and wagged his paw in the air. ‘You can’t just answer with more questions. That’s what children do.’

‘Do they?’

Luco growled and shook his paw.

Wu Dog Yan smiled, patting him on the arm. ‘You get worked up too easily, hamster.’

‘Nuut, I don’t.’

‘Why don’t we try to find the end of this tunnel, see if there’s a door we can use.’

Zade and Cha Cha nodded, and the four animals resumed their trek through the never-ending corridor. It continued twisting and turning, as it had before, but there were still no second or third corridors or doors to go through.

‘Whoever made this must’ve bought a lot of candles…’ said Zade, making Cha Cha and Wu Dog Yan chuckle.

‘Guys, look…’ said Luco a little too loudly. He’d got ahead of them again and was now standing in a large cave-like area, with four sets of stairs of varying lengths spread out over thirty metres or so, each one leading up to a different part of the cave wall.

‘What is this?’ asked Zade, looking around.

‘It’s huge,’ whispered Cha Cha, staring in awe.

Luco rushed up the smallest set of stairs and started feeling the wall. ‘There must be a button or something.’

‘Why?’

‘Something that opens the wall to let us through.’

‘Why?’ repeated Zade.

‘Because there are stairs! Why would someone make stairs if there was no way through?’

‘Nuut kaata…’

‘There’s a hole here,’ said Wu Dog Yan, standing at the top of the farthest set of stairs. ‘I can see through it.’

‘What, where?’ asked Luco, rushing back down his own stairs and up to where Wu Dog Yan was standing. For an animal as small as a hamster, that kind of distance should’ve taken about a minute to traverse, but Luco was so enthusiastic that it only took him forty-three seconds. Zade and Cha Cha followed after him, stopping about two feet behind Wu Dog Yan so she didn’t feel too crowded.

‘What do you see?’ asked Luco, trying to jump up onto Wu Dog Yan’s shoulder.

‘Wait…’

‘The castle? Is it the castle?’

‘It’s a room. There are books…’

‘A bookshop?’

‘Looks like a library. Wait…someone’s coming in. Quiet.’

Luco opened his mouth to speak, but Zade quickly put his paw over his lips to stop him.

Wu Dog Yan whispered, ‘someone wearing a dark hood. Can’t see his face. Or her face. Could be a lady. Nuut, wait, they’re taking one of the books from the table. I can see something…some of the words…’

As she spoke, Luco got so pent up that he bit Zade’s paw, causing Zade to lose his balance and scrape some loose rocks off the cave wall. Cha Cha reached back quickly and reeled him in. Actually, she wasn’t strong enough to do that, she just steadied him a bit [almost breaking her arm in the process], and the tiger did the rest.

‘Thanks,’ said Zade, breathing out heavily.

‘My arm…’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…’

‘Shhh,’ said Wu Dog Yan, swinging her paw backwards without any kind of aim. The three factory workers obeyed and leaned back in.

In the room, the hooded figure had stopped moving. Had they been replaced by a statue? A mime artist? Before Luco could conjure up time to say hey, what’s going on?, the figure turned its head abruptly and looked directly at the hole Wu Dog Yan was staring through.

‘Wah…’ she said, stepping back and bumping into Zade, forcing him off balance again. Both Cha Cha and Wu Dog Yan tried to reach out and grab his sleeve, and they did, they managed it…but the tiger was so heavy that he pulled them down the steps with him. All three comrades tumbled down to the bottom, finally coming to a rest by the corridor entrance.

‘Have you finished messing around?’ asked Luco, who was still at the top of the steps, paws on hips.

As he finished speaking, the candle above Zade’s head wobbled, loosened itself from its perch and fell without a sound towards his shoulder. The top of the candle [the part with the fire] landed first, seemingly extinguishing the flame.

Seemingly was right.

The candle resurrected itself out of nothing and the flame spread rapidly onto Zade’s fur. Fortunately, the flame was small and burnt only in a cookie-sized circle, not over his whole body.

‘Zade, you’re on fire,’ said Cha Cha, almost without tone.

‘I know.’

‘Nuut, she’s right,’ said Wu Dog Yan, louder, ‘you’re really on fire.’

‘Do you have any water?’

‘Put it out, put it out,’ shrieked Cha Cha, finally snapping out of scientist mode.

‘Ka, I need water.’

‘Use your paw, you clown!’

‘Roll on the ground,’ yelled Wu Dog Yan.

‘Which one?’

‘Any! Both!’

Zade still looked puzzled, so Wu Dog Yan grabbed him by the leg and tried to flip him onto the cave floor. However, Zade was about fifty times too heavy for any dog to lift, so he continued to stand there, on fire, looking down at the famous TV dog trying to lift up his leg.

‘Can’t…’ Wu Dog Yan said, gasping for breath. ‘Too heavy.’

‘Help her, Luco,’ said Cha Cha, looking around the huge cavern, hoping someone had left a 50 litre bottle of bonaqua.

‘What?’ asked Luco, still trying to jump up to the little eyehole in the cave wall.

‘Help her flip Zade over.’

‘There’s no need,’ said Zade, taking Wu Dog Yan’s paw and gently removing it from his leg. ‘I can do it myself.’

Zade calmly laid himself flat on the ground, checking briefly to see if there were any sharp, jagged rocks, then slowly rolled over onto his front, quashing the flames as he did so. He patted the burnt area of his fur a little, frowned, and then stood up again as if nothing had happened.

‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’

‘Just some blackened fur.’

‘But it was real fire,’ said Cha Cha, gawping at the singed area. ‘If you were a dog, that would’ve put you in hospital for weeks.’

‘My fur is very rough, hard to burn fast.’

‘Well,’ said Wu Dog Yan, shaking her phone to re-start the torch light that had just gone dim, ‘if we run out of phone battery, at least we’ll have another light source.’

Cha Cha looked confused, then got the joke and laughed nervously.

Zade shrugged, mumbled that he’d prefer not to be set on fire, if possible, then walked up the stairs to Luco. As he climbed, Luco stopped jumping, ran down to ground level and then up the shortest steps set a few yards away. ‘Over here, Zade.’

Zade followed, picking him up and placing the little hamster on a rock platform just below the eyehole.

‘What do you see?’ asked Wu Dog Yan, moving up behind.

‘Nothing, it’s empty.’

‘What kind of room is it?’

‘Big one. Maybe the main hall. There are some pillars blocking my view so I can’t see everything, but…hang on.’

Luco went quiet, apart from an annoying clucking sound every few seconds.

‘What is it?’ asked Cha Cha.

‘The man…or woman…the one with the hood…’

The other three waited patiently for Luco to add to his sentence, but nothing came.

‘Well?’

Luco didn’t answer, just more clucking sounds.

‘What are they doing?’

Another cluck.

‘Luco…’

As soon as his name was mentioned, he sparked up again. ‘They’ve gone.’

‘Gone? Gone where?’

‘Nuut kaata. He walked behind one of the pillars and I waited for him to come out the other side, but…he didn’t appear.’

‘Maybe he’s doing something behind the pillar?’

‘Nuut, it’s been too long for that.’

‘Maybe there’s a door.’

‘Perhaps.’

Wu Dog Yan clapped her paws together, not too loud. ‘Okay, listen up gang. It’s almost three, that means we’ve been here for over two and a half hours, and so far, we haven’t even made it into the castle. This is not progress.’

‘We can see inside the castle, that’s something…’

‘Nuut, it’s a waste of time. What we need to do is find the way in. I said before there was something missing from this corridor, and…I reckon…I’m not sure, but I reckon there is a door to get in but, somehow, we missed it. So, basically, we need to go back to go forward.’

‘I’m not going back,’ said Luco, hitting the cave wall with a little fist. ‘Dog Lee needs us.’

‘I don’t mind going back,’ said Zade quietly.

Wu Dog Yan waved a paw in the air. ‘You’re missing my point, both of you. I’m saying we need to go back to the start of the corridor, maybe even the tunnel, and look for another door. Not go home.’

‘But it’s pretty late.’

‘Ka, didn’t you say the boat woman was coming back to meet us at six?’ asked Cha Cha, soft as she could make it.

‘We still have time. Three hours maybe. Two hours here, forty five minutes to get back down to the boat. But we need to find that door fast. Luco?’

Luco looked at the cave wall one last time, then turned back and shrugged.

Wu Dog Yan took that as a ‘ka’ so turned, held her phone out in front of her body and started walking back through the corridor. Luckily, the candles were still burning so she put her phone away in he rhoodie pocket and told the others to pick up the pace.

‘What?’ asked Zade, confused.

‘She wants us to go faster,’ said Cha Cha.

‘Picking pace means go fast?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Oh.’

Luco walked past Zade, patting him on the ankle. ‘I knew that one.’

‘I have no way to verify that.’

Luco smirked.

‘Do you know what verify means?’ asked Cha Cha, stopping just short of winking at Zade…then realising it was probably too dark to see anything and winking anyway.

‘Of course.’

Cha Cha waited for Luco to give the definition, but instead he just repeated, ‘let’s pick up the pace,’ and scurried off after Wu Dog Yan. Cha Cha hung back a bit and nudged Zade in the leg. ‘I don’t think he knows what verify means.’

‘What?’

‘I said I think he doesn’t know verify, the meaning of it.’

‘Verify? What’s that?’

Cha Cha stared at Zade, puzzled. ‘The word you just said.’

‘Did I?’ Zade looked left and down, at his burnt patch of fur. ‘Ah, verify. I get it. You said the first part differently, I didn’t understand.’

‘Oh, Zade…’ Cha Cha patted him again on the leg then the two of them hurried after their friends. Or one friend and one DogTV celebrity. It was probably too soon to call Wu Dog Yan their friend, especially as she often looked creeped out by how much Cha Cha knew about her. And a little annoyed with Luco’s stubbornness.

Oddly, she didn’t seem to mind Zade though…which was a good thing. Everyone liked Zade, once they got to know him. If they didn’t know him, they would usually run in fear, but…if they actually talked to him for more than five minutes…they liked him.

Mostly.

~~~

----------------------------------------

[1] A film director from Injo Peak who made bleak films where every character was depressed, every area was empty and every object was drained of colour.