Dreamland Lake Read Online Free PDF Page B

before we sat down.
    “Hitler strikes again,” Flip said finally, but his voice was shaky.
    “That wasn’t there the other day,” I said. “We’d have seen it.”
    “I know.”
    Then a kind of hissing, swishing sound made us look up. We could see a flash of white through a break in the trees over by Dreamland Lake. One of the big swans was soaring in an arc up over the water, like something had stirred him up. He was moving his big wings in a slow, easy motion. Like a large albino bat.
    “Home,” Flip said. And we hustled out of the woods, very close together.
    The other ducks were kind of agitated by the big, swooping swan. They raised an unearthly racket, squawking at each other and swarming out of the water and up on the grassy bank. We were watching them as we walked along the shore path. They were tame as anything and waddled along ahead of us like a bunch of little old men.
    So they got to the barricade closing off the condemned footbridge before we did. And they all waddled over something lying right in the middle of the path. At first, it looked like a stick that had fallen there, but when we got up close we saw it was a long, skinny, leather pouch with a little flap at the top fastened shut.
    “Now what,” I said, as Flip picked it up.
    “I don’t know, but something’s inside it.” He unfastenedthe flap, and there was the handle of something inside. He let the leather sheath fall. And then he was holding the wickedest-looking knife I’d ever seen. Polished to a high chrome finish and razor-sharp.
    If knives are your thing, this one was a beauty. It was like a bayonet, and the handle was perfectly shaped for a good grip. Flip stood there holding it and gawking, completely dumfounded—a look he generally tried to avoid.
    “This is worth something,” he said. “Get the leather thing.” We walked off, and he held it away from himself. It was one mean-looking weapon. “It’d cut your damn fingers off if you took hold of it by the blade,” he said.
    Up by the tennis courts, we sat down on the bleachers they have there for tournament time. Flip laid the knife down between us. “Look, we both found it so it’s ours, but I’ll take it home.”
    “How’d we come to that decision so quick?” I asked, even though I figured it would naturally stay in Flip’s possession.
    “Because if you take it home, your mom will find it. And if I take it home, my mom won’t.” It was as simple as that. My mom notices everything. His mom notices nothing. “Slip it back into the holster or whatever you call that leather thing,” he said, “but be careful.”
    Then we made our final discovery of the day. Right on the handle where Flip had been carrying it, there was a design worked into the black wood. It was getting toward evening, so we had to bend over it to see. There was a little wreath of leaves, very tiny and intricate. Inside that there was an eagle, looking to one side, with stiff, straight wings. The eagle was perchedon a little round thing like a ball or a circle. And inside the circle—you guessed it—another swastika.
    “Is that . . .”
    “Yeah, it sure is,” Flip said. “And this one’s the real thing. I mean it’s a real Nazi relic from Germany.” He was standing up and sort of hopping around in excitement. “From World War II or before. Authentic.”
    “But what’s this all about?” I said. “There aren’t any such things as Nazis anymore. They lost the war. Besides, there never were any in Dunthorpe. Couldn’t have been.”
    “That’s what you said about the roller coaster,” he said, giving me this keen, squint-eyed look, “but there was.”
    And so we started off home, feeling like we’d gotten a little more than we’d bargained for out of that afternoon, but not being sure what. When I turned in at my house, Flip said, “Not a word about this—to anybody.” And I gave him my if-you-can’t-trust-me-you-can’t-trust-yourself look.
    Then he went marching off