The Knights of Silence
By Ariana Stadtlander
“Run faster! Come on!”
Five pairs of sneaker-clad feet speed down the grassy hill.
“Hurry up!” Someone shouts. “They’re gaining on us! Go faster!”
“We’ll never make it!” A voice gasping for air responds.
“We have to. Keep moving!”
Out of the earth, a structure looms in front of them. Tall, old, ominous. A moat surrounds it on all sides. A single drawbridge is the only safe way of crossing.
“Up the drawbridge!” The tallest boy commands. “We’re almost there. Come on!”
Three figures hurry past him, not once breaking their sprint as their feet clatter up the wooden drawbridge. A final figure drags behind. Her little legs push her to keep up with the others, but she fails miserably.
“Wait for me!” She calls. At last she reaches the bridge. The tall boy grabs her hand and pulls her the rest of the way within the safe confines of the refuge. They leap up the stairs in front of them, taking them two at a time. When they reach the top step, they find themselves in a small room. Th little girl slumps down into a rickety chair to catch her breath. A cloud of dust rises as she does.
Her large brown eyes watch as the other four scramble towards the back wall.
“Hurry up!” A girl with her hair tied tightly back into a ponytail shouts. “I can hear them on the drawbridge!”
“Grab the mirror!” Someone yells.
One of the boys, the one with sandy-blonde hair and glasses upon his nose, reaches for
the mirror hanging on the wall. His fingers curl underneath its antique frame and pull. They all hear the quiet sound of a latch releasing, and then a small, square-shaped hole swings inward, revealing a hidden door within the wall. One by one, they drop to their knees and crawl through the hole. The little girl watches as they disappear from her view.
“Come on, Rosy!” Someone calls for her.
She quickly gets to her feet and passes through the hole, barely needing to crouch to fit underneath its frame. The moment she’s cleared it, the door slams behind her, and a lock clicks into place.
Sounds of heavy panting ensue.
“See, I told you we’d make it,” the tall boy says, always so sure of himself.
“You’ve got to admit that was a close one, Michael,” the girl with the ponytail responds.
“Hey, Marie, pass me a water bottle.”
Marie reaches down beside the chair she’s sitting on and grasps the neck of a bottle. She hands it over to James and fights a blush as their fingers briefly brush together. He doesn’t notice as he unscrews the cap and takes a large swig. His other hand removes his thin-framed glasses and wipes the sweat accumulating around his eyes.
“Eddie, you okay?” Rosy asks. She watches the thirteen-year old boy grimace as he touches his ankle.
Nodding, he replies. “Yeah, I think I just twisted it a little. Fell into that stupid hole by Solomon’s Porch again.” Turning his head to look at Michael, who’s sitting across from him, he adds, “You really should think about filling it.”
“Me?” Michael asks with a big grin. “You’re big enough. You take a shovel and some dirt and go fill it. You’re the one who’s always stepping in it anyway.”
“Yeah, Eddie. Maybe you should just watch where you’re going,” Marie says in jest. The others laugh with her. Eddie doesn’t look amused.
“How come I never get a place to sit in here?” Rosy asks in between chuckles.
“Because you’re the youngest,” Marie answers. “You’ve got the most stamina.”
Rosy rolls her eyes. “You’re only four years older than me.”
“Exactly.”
Rosy takes a seat on the creaking plywood floor, to the right of the hidden door. With her knees curled up into her chest, her feet are only a few inches away from the wall opposite her. It’s hard not to feel claustrophobic in the ‘Secret Room’, as the five of them aptly call it. With Michael and James being in the middle of their teenage years, it’s a wonder they can fit comfortably at all. The room is long, about ten feet long in total, but only a couple feet deep, and only five or so feet high. It requires the eldest boys to bend over if in order to move about. Two chairs sit on either end of the room, and not much else is able to fit inside.
“Alright. C’mon, c’mon,” Michael says. “Rosy, can you see if they’re gone?”
Rosy turns her head and peeks through a small hole in the wall behind her. She peers out into the room from where they had just come. She shakes her head. “Nobody’s out there.”
“Good. Then it’s safe.” He clears his throat. “I hereby call the meeting of the Knights of Silence to order. We shall begin with our anthem.”
Sitting up straight and placing their right hands over their hearts, the five sit in complete silence, each resisting the urge to snicker at their clever joke. The Knights of Silence. Their very own assembly, with their own very silent anthem.
After their lengthy, pregnant pause is deemed suitable, Michael clears his throat. “Let our meeting now commence. I --”
“Wait, wait!” Mary interrupts as she grabs a notebook and the stub of a pencil from her back pocket. “I’m not ready.” She writes the date in the upper left-hand corner. July 15th, 2012.
Everybody waits impatiently for her to finish. She looks up from her pad and motions for Michael to continue. “Go on.”
“Now that are Secretary is all set to go, let’s see what items of discovery we made today.”
Rosy stretches out her hand to reveal a greenish-grey telephone insulator. The inside is caked with mud from having been half-buried, and a deep crack runs up the middle. She places it on the shelf across from her, next to various other misfit items equally damaged and covered with mud. Mary looks at the insulator and then bends over her pad and scribbles. Glass telephone thingy. They already had several of those.
“I found a bunch of bottle caps,” Eddie offers. He reaches into his pocket. His tongue peeks out from between his lips as he struggles a little to remove its contents. The other four lean in closer to see seven brightly-colored bottle caps nestled in the palm of his hand. He accidentally drops them, and they clatter to the floor.
“Ed, you’re always making a mess!” Rosy exclaims.
The boy smirks. “What can I say? People are always telling me ‘mess’ is my middle name.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Michael laughs. “You should see his room,” he tells the two girls. “Little tiny army men everywhere.”
“Hundreds of them!” The usually-quiet James interjects with a smile.
Marie laughs as she looks around the ‘Secret Room’. “Speaking of mess, you know what this place needs?” She asks. “A good spring cleaning.” As all of them crane their necks to look around, all of the cobwebs, dust, and broken fragments of wood become apparent. Yet, it’s clear that the boys couldn’t care less about the state of their hideaway. They make faces to one another; Eddie even rolls his eyes.
“If it bothers you so much, then why don’t we just go back outside?”
Michael nods, “Yeah, let’s do that. This barn gets too hot in the summertime. No ventilation.”
“So much for our meeting,” Rosy teases.
“Ehhhh, meetings are boring anyway.”
Laughing, Rosy agrees. “Totally. Let’s go.” She reaches for the latch and swings the secret door inward.
They each stand up, the elder boys crouching before dropping to their knees to crawl through the hole and back out into the small room they had just left. James is the last one out; he slams the door behind him, making sure it latches back into place.
As they turn to walk back down the stairs, the smell of old wood and July heat wafting around them, Marie looks behind her to see just an ordinary wall with an old, decorative mirror hanging from it. She smirks at their little secret so closely guarded, so well hidden, and wishes for these dog days of summer to last forever.
© 2019 Ariana M. Stadtlander