Chapter One My younger sister Caitlin wanted to visit the island one last time before the engineer moved onto it She wanted to climb through the old rusty pipe to get there Both the island and pipe are rumored to be haunted I hate dark enclosed spaces When I was little I got trapped for an hour in a closet playing hide-and-seek 1
Pam Withers And I’m not crazy about ghosts Not that I believe in ghosts What thirteen-year old guy does So I won’t crawl through dark pipes but I’m not going to let my eleven-year-old sister do this alone Fog’s really thick Chris Caitlin says as we reach the top of the bluff Thick enough we can’t see our house I say glancing down the hill behind us That’s a good thing Means Mom and Dad can’t see us The pipe is dry inside and just big enough to crawl through Originally the pipe was installed to carry water to a power station on the island But no one ever built the station Instead someone built a hospital for children with leprosy The hospital was shut down seventy years ago My grandfather bought the island cheap because of its history He upgraded the pipe just before he died but until recently Dad had never found a use for it We use the land on the peninsula 2
Bungee Jump for a tree farm that doesn’t make much money but the island and the pipe have gone unused for years Suspended fifteen stories above Misty Passage the pipe is encased in crisscrossed steel supports It’s like a high bridge without walkway or railings Mom and Dad won’t let us go near it Like that has ever stopped us We’ve been using the pipe to get to the island for years Caitlin crawls through I crawl along the top like we are doing now (cid:44)(cid:3)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:80)(cid:88)(cid:73)(cid:192)(cid:72)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:179)(cid:50)(cid:88)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:4)(cid:180)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:78)(cid:81)(cid:82)(cid:90)(cid:3) Caitlin has hit her head on the boxlike hatch that hangs down from the middle Again Can’t wait for the bungee jump to be built Caitlin says as she emerges from the pipe on the island Me too I agree trying to picture a thick rope dangling from a sparkling new steel platform above the pipe And I get to see a real engineer at work 3
