“We need to build more bat houses,” announced Phineas Lulu early one beautiful summer afternoon. “Let’s go for a walk to scope out some sites.”

“Okay,” replied Susan. “But this time can we make the bat houses lighter? Remember how impossible it was to get that last one up into the tree.”

“Oh, right. That was pretty impossible, come to think of it.” Phineas grinned as he hugged his daughter’s shoulders affectionately.

It was important for the Lulus to lure as many bats as possible to eat mosquitos. The lowest third of their property was wetland, and summer brought millions of evil little blood suckers.

So Phineas sent away for a Bat House Builder’s Handbook. The resulting structure had been so heavy and cumbersome that the Lulus had to ask for help from their neighbors to hang the structures.

Any newer models would be much smaller, and lighter.

Susan and her dad set out, strolling hand in hand up an overgrown logging road. Sunlight enhanced the various greens of the alders, maples, and willows stretching from under the evergreen forest of red cedar, Douglas fir and fragrant white fir towering above.

Soon they approached the old wooden bridge that spanned Skookum Creek, burbling below. As they crossed the bridge, Susan spotted a fawn standing in the mottled light at the edge of the forest as Phineas scanned the trees to find promising places for bat houses.

Susan stopped to gather Oregon grape and huckleberries to make a sumptuous feast for Dolly. When she stood up, something deep in the forest caught her eye. She dropped the berries and ran to get a better view.

The gabled roof of an abandoned house winked invitingly through tangled greenery.

“Oh, Daddy! Who lives there?,” she called to Phineas.

“Nobody lives there anymore, honey. That place was abandoned years ago.”

“Can we go in, Daddy? Pleeeeeeeeez? What if there are hidden treasures in the attic, or money in the wallpaper?”

Susan ran toward the old house, leaving her father behind. As she rounded the corner, she stopped abruptly. She stared at the glassless windows, noticing that much of the siding had been stolen, leaving the structure beneath unprotected.

As she looked past shards of broken glass poking from the edges of the window sills, Susan thought she saw something move within. Her imagination immediately filled in the blanks: the image of a crazy old witch dressed in black gripped Susan. The grinning hag seemed to be peering over her shoulder as she pushed a broom around her ancient kitchen.

Susan rushed back to her father. Her curiosity was still strong, but she felt a lot braver with Phineas by her side.

“Can we go inside, Daddy?”

Susan shook off the vision of the witch, deciding it was just a shadow. She didn’t want Phineas to think she was chicken.

“Well, sure, we can look around, but we must be careful. Let me check first to see how solid these steps are.”

Phineas stomped on the battered old treads, which were sound enough. He held Susan’s hand as they peered through the doorless entrance into the gloom of a littered kitchen. Wallpaper hung in yellowed sheets from the walls and ceiling around a rusted old stove. Pieces of torn newspapers and magazines covered the filthy floor.

“Don’t think there’s much chance of money under that wallpaper, honey,” he observed.

“Oh, Daddy! Look at this!” Susan pulled her hand away and darted into the room, heading toward a ramshackle stairway leading to the upper floor.

“Susan, stop! Those stairs might not be safe.”

Phineas caught his daughter in the middle of the room. He pulled her back toward the door.

“Susan, wood rots if it’s neglected. Those stairs could break under your weight. You might fall and get hurt.”

“Oh, you worry about everything, daddy.”

Susan ripped her hand from her parent’s grip. She dashed toward the stairs, but Phineas was too fast for her. He gripped her hand and shoulder as he aboutfaced his kid.

“Come on, young lady, we’re leaving.”

Susan wailed as her dad marched her into the cheerful sunlight.

“You never let me do anything! What if there’s pirate treasure in there?”

But Phineas was firm.

“Honey, you don’t understand how dangerous abandoned buildings can be. There can be uncovered wells or cellars. If you fall through an upper floor you could break a bone, maybe a really important bone, like your neck! Promise me you won’t play around here.”

“Oh, dad.” Susan was reluctant.

“Come on, now. I need your promise. Scout’s honor?”

“Sure, ’cause I’m not a Scout,” Susan grinned up at her parent’s stern face. “Okay, gee whiz. The best place ever and you won’t even let me check it out.”

Phineas ignored Susan’s glum mood as they turned toward home.

* * *

Several days later, Susan was under the stairs in her sanctuary writing a mystery letter to her new friend Marty. The summer was beginning to drag a bit, so Susan decided to spice things up by leaving a letter and map in her friend’s mail box, luring him into the woods with the promise of secret treasure.

But getting a letter to Marty presented several problems. First of all, Susan was pretty impatient. She could not abide having to wait days and days for Marty to discover the letter, let alone find the treasure.

Also, most of the fun would be watching the new kid stumble around, trying to follow clues, but Susan did not want to have to lie in wait very long for that either.

She decided to spy on Marty’s mail box to find out when the mailman came. She could sneak the mystery letter into the box right after the postman left and melt back into the woods before anyone came to collect the mail.

The second problem was where to bury the treasure. She’d given this a lot of thought. It had to be some place interesting, some place mysterious enough to have a treasure buried there. Her own home, like most homes in the area, was too new to have had any possible opportunity for pirates to have stashed their haul.

Susan worked a while longer on the letter. She decided it looked too new. It needed to look aged, yellowed, perhaps with a burnt edge; old enough to belong to a pirate. Folding it together with her map, she stuffed them with Dolly into her backpack and headed out to the Root Cave.

Earlier that summer, Susan and Marty had discovered that if they climbed to the top of the Cave, then up into a nearby cedar, they could reach a huge fir tree. From there, it was easy to climb up the fir’s evenly spaced boughs, through the canopy of the forest to view the world around them.

When she arrived at the Root Cave, Susan was relieved that none of the usual gang of neighborhood kids was there. She dropped her backpack on the wooden floor, then climbed up through the tangled roots to the roof.

Secure with so many familiar handholds, she moved easily onto the trunk of the big vine maple known as the Monkey Tree. From there, she hoisted herself into the fragrant branches of the red cedar and up, climbing across to the Doug fir where their trunks twisted together.

The bark of the big fir was rough, but its branches were strong, especially if you kept your weight close to the trunk, as Phineas had taught her. Susan’s well worn tennis shoes were flexible and could cling around each branch as she pulled herself up. Blue jeans protected her legs, but she had to protect her eyes from debris with her arm.

She climbed up and up to the top, gazing over the forest at blue sky studded with puffy white clouds. Trees spread in all directions, roads and houses lost beneath unending green.

Susan pretended to be a pirate high atop his mast, scanning the horizon, shading his eyes Eskimo-style, looking for a likely Caribbean atoll on which to bury a strongbox full of doubloons and precious gems.

Then Susan saw something she’d not noticed before. It was the gabled roof of a house, visible among the trees on the other side of the ravine. There could be no doubt that this was the roof of the abandoned house she and her dad had explored just a few days before: the perfect site for buried treasure.

Susan was sure Marty knew nothing about the abandoned house. She would draw her map to take him there from his home on the other side of Skookum Creek. Susan could cross the Doug fir bridge to lay in wait for him.

It would provide a perfect opportunity to make scary noises while Marty searched for the treasure.

Jumpin’ Judy, would he be scared!

Susan fairly flew back down through the branches of the fir. She shinnied along the cedar’s curved trunk onto the Monkey Tree, then jumped into the Root Cave to retrieve her backpack.

Leaping through the air like Black Beauty, she hit the ground running, galloping back along the twisting path to her house where she ducked, unobserved, into her sanctuary under the stairs to make important revisions to Marty’s treasure map and letter.

For one tiny second she remembered that she’d promised Phineas not to go near the abandoned house, but she decided she could just sneak over for a quick look-see.

She’d be careful.

* * *

Susan checked the time. Soon, the mail should be arriving at Marty’s place. The map and letter looked pretty convincing. They just needed to look older, so after she finished addressing the envelope, she went outside to the fire pit for charcoal.

She rubbed black dust over the papers and folded them together, creasing them. Susan wanted to burn the edges, but Phineas kept the matches under lock and key.

There wasn’t enough time to worry about it, so she slid the mystery letter with the map into an old envelope, flung her backpack over her shoulder, and set out. Half an hour later she was strategically hidden in some bushes across the street from Marty’s house, watching the mailman delivering the mail from his car window, then slowly driving down the street.

Susan darted out after making sure the coast was clear. She flipped the mystery letter addressed to Marty into his mailbox. Half a minute later, she was long gone, retracing her steps up a deer path she’d discovered in her ramblings.

The air was fragrant with a kind of delicate cotton candy smell, so she looked around for one of her favorite plants. There it was: the fluffy pink cone of the Douglas spirea hanging nearby. Susan reached up to break one off as she galloped past, patting its softness against her cheek.

She had to give Marty enough time to get the letter, then figure out how to follow the map, but during that time she still had to gather the treasure, get to the abandoned house to bury it, then hide, waiting for Marty to come blundering into her trap.

Suddenly, she remembered the image of the hag she thought she’d seen in the shadows. She felt a shiver of fear, but the day was bright and sunny. Adventure hung in the air like incense. Susan didn’t really believe in that hag, anyway. She knew it was her imagination, so she went home to find a convincing treasure.

She was willing to sacrifice the brass box her stamp pad had come in. She carefully placed a heart-shaped gem she’d found on the floor in a grocery store inside it. A lucky penny, a tiny dried seahorse, and a red flicker feather would have to suffice.

After making a fat peanut butter and blackberry jelly sandwich, Susan grabbed a bottle of water. She jammed everything, including Phineas’ trowel, into her backpack.

Luckily, she didn’t see her dad anywhere, and she didn’t want to. What if he wanted to know what she was up to? She flattened herself against the wall, peering around the corner.

The coast was clear: Phineas was probably building bat houses in his garage.

She hurried back to the Root Cave. She stopped a moment to buckle her backpack more securely before climbing onto the bleached, knobbly roots of the Root Cave to the giant tree trunk spanning the ravine.

The fallen fir was broad enough for a sort of flat path down its middle to have been worn by the steps of countless neighborhood children over the years. Tough young huckleberry bushes and friendly hemlock saplings offered crucial handholds on either side of the mossy path, but Susan had watched the big boys run back and forth across it unaided many times. She felt brave as she stepped out.

“Don’t look down,” she whispered to herself, but she did.

It was a long way down. Devils club clinging to the steep banks bristled with wicked thorns as it lifted huge maple-shaped leaves toward the light. Buttercups provided a riotous blur of yellow flowers along the edges of Skookum Creek rushing along far below.

Susan took a deep breath. She focused on a hemlock sapling growing at the edge of the tree trunk bridge. Just a few more steps and she had made it to the other side by herself, without crawling!

She scurried past the salmonberry thicket that bordered the other side of the ravine, whipping aside threatening nettles with a stick she’d picked up. She caught a glimpse of the abandoned house through undergrowth up ahead.

As she got closer to the old homestead, she spotted a giant maple tree with big trunks spreading out from the center in a circular pattern. The gnarled trunk offered twisted steps with handholds. Susan hoisted herself into a small room inside.

Bright green mosses, some with tiny flowers, carpeted the rough bark of the limbs. Miniature white mushrooms marched up the trunk like tiny soldiers wearing helmets.

This might be a good place to hide. She’d have to be careful not to let Marty see her. Susan flung the backpack off, fishing out her dad’s trowel. Hurrying to the front steps of the old house, she quickly dug a hole. Susan retrieved her box of treasure. She pried off the lid to inspect its contents.

Susan hated to part with the heart-shaped gem, but she refitted the lid, set the little box at the bottom of the hole, and covered it with earth. She took care to make a neat X from light-colored rocks to help her friend locate the treasure. Quickly, she scurried around to the back of the house, even though she knew Marty could be nowhere near.

She played around the giant maple tree some more, ultimately deciding to stash her backpack within its secret room. She noticed that if she leaned way out to one side, she could see through the nearest broken window, through the house’s open entryway, to the overgrown road beyond.

The secret room within the maple tree’s multiple trunks was a perfect size for Susan to lean against her backpack while she gazed skyward up through the leaves. She retrieved her current Goosebumps book and her sandwich. Leaning back, Susan relaxed, reading and munching. She was absorbed in her story when she heard Marty calling.

“Susan? Is that you, Susan? Don’t you scare me. I know it’s you!”

She leaned out between the trunks of the tree to see Marty approaching cautiously, craning his neck around, trying to see her. He looked uncertain. He glanced down at the piece of paper clutched in his hand.

Susan felt a stab of glee. She lifted herself carefully, stealthily, out of her hiding place, creeping up behind the old building to peer through its broken window. She made a scary, moaning noise. Marty whirled around.

“Susan? Is that you?”

She didn’t answer.

Next she heard sounds of excitement and something scuffling. Was Marty discovering the buried treasure? Susan hurried forward, stepping onto a flat, wooden structure she hadn’t noticed before, because it was hidden by tall grass.

Instantly, the rotten wood gave way under her weight, and Susan plunged into a dark, narrow hole, scraping her side on broken wood. She fell screaming down, down into the dark, before landing on some old beams in three feet of cold, stinking water.

Crying and moaning, miserable Susan pulled herself onto the beams, which lay at crazy angles in the bottom of the shaft. Looking up, she could see light at the top through the broken covering, and realized she’d fallen into a well.

Susan began to shout to Marty for help, screaming and crying as loud as she could, shivering and wretched despite the warm air and sunshine above her. Marty heard the commotion. He ran around the old building to peer down into the shaft. He could barely see Susan below in the gloom.

“Marty! Help! Get me out!”

“How? Can’t you climb up? Can you reach my hand?”

Susan reached up but Marty’s hand hung, uselessly, out of reach.

“Run and get my dad, fast! He’s in his shop. Go get him, Marty, and tell him to bring a rope!”

“I’m running, Susan. Hang on.”

Marty tore off down the road towards Skookum Creek while Susan crouched, shivering, on a slivery timber.

* * *

Back at the house, Phineas missed Susan. He’d checked her room, the sanctuary under the stairs, and her tree house, as well as other favorite haunts, but he couldn’t find her. Frightened, he began calling for her.

“Susan, where are you? Answer me, honey.”

He stopped to listen for a response, but only heard an occasional birdcall, or a truck rumbling on a distant road. He started down the path towards the back woods.

“She better not have gone to that abandoned house,” he muttered to himself.

Phineas started to run towards Skookum Creek when he spotted Marty hurrying up the hill. The kid gasped for breath as he tried to explain what had happened.

“Mister Lulu! Susan fell down a well . . . puff . . . puff . . . Bring a rope!”

“Where is she, Marty?”

“Back behind that old house . . . puff . . . puff . . . Where none of us is s’posed to go!”

“So why did you go there?”

“Because I got this mysterious letter about treasure . . . puff . . . puff . . . I thought it was probably just Susan . . . puff . . . puff . . . but I went to find the treasure and it was Susan but she fell in a well. We have to hurry!”

The entire time Marty was talking, Phineas was moving. He had a rope in his hands as he ran past the boy, down the road towards Skookum Creek and the abandoned house.

He ran down the logging road, trailed by Marty. In response to his anguished cry, his daughter roused herself from despair in the dark, wet prison and began screaming “Daddy” hysterically. Marty directed Phineas around to the rear of the structure, where he spied the wooden covering sticking up at odd, broken angles.

“Susan!”

He threw himself onto his knees to peer down into the darkness.

“Daddy! Hurry and get me out. I’m cold and I’m hurt!”

Phineas pulled off the broken boards and threw them aside. Peering down, he saw his pig-tailed daughter crouching on timbers some fifteen feet below.

“Climb up those timbers to me, Susan. You can do it.”

He lowered the rope with a noose at one end towards his child.

“Put the noose around your waist. Use your feet to walk up the wall while I pull you up.

Slowly, Phineas hauled her up. When she was near the edge, he reached down to pull his cold, scared, dripping daughter into his arms.

“Oh, Susan, are you hurt?”

She was crying, but her only wounds were some nasty-looking scrapes.

“Daddy, I’m sorry I came back here. I know you told me not to, and now I know why. I didn’t even see that rotten old well hiding in the grass.”

Phineas gave Susan a hug and carried her home, with Marty, clutching his treasure, trotting along behind. Susan stuck close to home for the next few days.

She had to. She was grounded.